That’s my goal this week; maintaining the status quo. Sue is off on her week long class at U.C. Davis and I’m doing my best to hold down the fort. Day #2 (well, one and a half) and I’m already pooped. I had this list, in my head, of things I was going to get done before Sue got home. Somehow, I don’t think I’m going to make it. We’ll just have to see. Here’s the list of things that happened today.
Still trying to work out the order of morning chores. What works for me I mean to get me to finish everything and get myself to work by 7. I made it today, but felt rushed. The biggest issue is that it’s still dark out at 5 and even at 5:30, it’s too dark to let the chickens out… too many owls around. So, I think I’ll feed the cats and dogs first thing, then get the chicken oaks and veggies mixed up (having chopped them the night before, that really helps), then go do the goats as the sun is really coming over the horizon. Then I can be back and work on all the chickens still giving myself enough time to get office ready afterwards. We’ll try that out and see what happens.

Told the ladies at work that there is a possibility that I could be a bit late if something comes up, and that I need to leave right at 1 every day this week so I can be back in time to get everything done for afternoon chores. I almost made it out of the office by 1! I’ll try harder tomorrow. Think I just need to keep my door closed. Anyway, everyone is doing well and I just want to keep it that way.  The three goat boys are getting along famously; the little ones continue to grow and grow and grow – I’ll try to get some good photos of them to share. We have 4 chickens and 1 duck that are on the DL right now. Well, two of the chickens are just separated from the flock for their own good. They were really getting chased by one of the roosters and not wanting to go in the coop and they weren’t eating, so we put them up for a while till he gets over his fixation, or we move him out to pasture. Two chickens are sick, but we’re trying to see them through it. I started adding vitamins and this natural chicken remedy that we use sometimes. We’ll see if it helps. We have the one duck who we think has a tumor, but she also has bumble foot… I can’t really treat her by myself while Sue’s gone, but we’ve got it wrapped up with some Prid to see if we can draw out the infection.

The two project goals I set for myself to accomplish today were to get the WiFi up, as you can see that one was accomplished. Took an hour and a half on the phone with the provider, but he was patient and very helpful, so we got everything working again. The other was to empty the large Goose/Duck Pool. We have to drain it with a hose, at least enough that we can dump it, but it had some gnarly green algae growing and the emptying out took exceedingly long.  I started it before doing any of the other afternoon chores, by 6:30 I was finally able to dump it out. Got as much of the algae off of the bottom and sides as I could… think I need to by a rather large brush – or maybe a broom for this purpose. But its a lot cleaner and then I had to chase everyone out at 7 to put them to bed. They were much happier.

Tomorrow the goals are: remember to put the trash out in the morning (it’s important and I have a hard time remembering- I can’t do it now because it’ll blow over and the trash will go everywhere) move alfalfa over to the garage for the goat boys, change or add hay to the little Goat Boys crate, water pots and wall. I might not be able to do all of those because I have a goodbye dinner for my assistant. I’m hoping I can come home early or on time and get it all done, go to dinner and come back in time to put everyone in. Yep, it’s good to have goals. We’ll see how well I’m able to pull off the next few days; report on Wednesday. Until then, as always~
Thanks for reading.

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Today’s weather: Very Warm. Very Windy. Right now we’re reading 32mph on gusts, 17-18 sustained. I really hate it when it’s like this. It makes everything you try to do outside that much harder. Supposed to be like this all day tomorrow. Yuck. Looks like our low tonight will only be 50°, right now at 7:58 it is 67°.

Egg report: Saturday= 1 goose, 1 duck, 28 chicken. Sunday= zero goose, 1 duck, 43 chicken. Monday= 1 goose (inside the new nesting boxes), 2 duck (one inside the new nesting box), 36 chicken eggs.  We have one of the new Bantum chickens brooding, so Sue left her with four eggs. I couldn’t tell, on Monday, which four eggs, so now she has either 7 or 8. I marked them this morning, but she kept stuffing them under herself so fast, I lost track of the number because I was laughing so hard. This afternoon I picked up 4 that were unmarked, and we have another hen trying to sit the eggs with her – not sure how this will all turn out. Always an adventure.