Does that title bring to mind any song from the 80’s with specific dance moves attached to it? Electric Slide anyone? Well, if you’re not too sure exactly what I mean and you make through to the end of this post today, “I’ll teach you, teach you, teach you; I’ll teach you the electric slide.” Anyway… what Sue suggested I write about today is the visit from our two math-physics-engineering friends Ron and Kathy. See this graphic to the right? It’s all just nonsense to me, but these two super bright people get this kind of stuff. So, before we ever embark into possibly difficult or dangerous territory, we ask them to take a field trip and impart magnificent words of wisdom unto our ears. Continue on, if this sounds interesting.

A bit of a back story. You know that the RCW was built to travel around the back pasture; well, we also use an electrified fence around it as a layer of protection from the coyotes and also to keep the chickens from wandering out into the road. They’d have to travel pretty far, but sometimes they can be adventurous. Anyway- we’ve been moving them around the field for about six months now, tethered to an electrical outlet that was added to the field when the electricity was run out to the Dinky House. So we’ve used every

position within reach of the current current (ha! see what I did there? that’s funny stuff.) and now we’ve got to do something that will allow us to broaden their reach. The areas where they’ve already been are not ready to host them again. We need to either add another electric outlet station somewhere or make the electrical wire going from the existing outlet to the fence much longer, or maybe both! If it involves electricity we need to check with electrical engineers – thus the call to Ron and Kathy. Now, I was at work while they were visiting with Sue, so I wasn’t able to take any photos. Just so you can put some faces to the names, I’m inserting this photo from earlier this year. (We took this at church on Western Heritage Sunday, because they were all wearing the same style material. We were joking that they were a new musical group – The Buffalo Plaids!) You may recognize Ron and Kathy as they’ve been featured in our blog before, helping with out electrical issues and also helping to build the RCW.  Back to our story.

So – Ron and Kathy took a good long look at what Sue wanted to accomplish out in the field, talked about the pros and cons, thought it out and gave her some pointers. Basically, either way, we need to heavier electrical wire. In the meantime, we can use the lighter wire, but they warned that its not the best for use in wet weather. Sue may purchase some of the lighter wire to use so we can still move the chickens tomorrow to a new spot and then purchase the heavier to make a more permanent use line and to get electricity from the Dinky House out into the other half of the field. We’ll see how this goes tomorrow and then report in. I believe she’ll be replacing the existing wire with new and longer wire until she can purchase the heavier stuff. Then we’ll do our normal RCW Moving Procedure. I’ll try to remember to take photos, or maybe some video, as we move this time. It’s kind of a fun process to watch – not that easy to perform. That’s another story. Maybe a Monday story. Until then, as always~
Thanks for reading!

---

Today’s Weather: Rather cold this morning. 34° as I left for work at around 6:30. Warmed up for a while, but wind picked up and brought in the cold along with the clouds. Still looking at a slight possibility of rain on Sunday. Right now, at 6:50 p.m., it is 48° with 37% humidity. Sunrise today was at 7:11 and sunset 5:19. Next Friday is the Winter Solstice, so we’ll be slowly adding minutes to our day!

Egg report: Thursday – 14 chicken. Friday – 13 chicken. Tom the Baker is going to be a bit disappointed with our numbers. It’s been two weeks and I think we’ll be hard pressed to get him 6 dozen because the heavy layers are still the Banty’s and those eggs are too small for him.

****OK – for all of you who made it to the bitter end – here’s your video lesson on The Electric Slide. After watching, you too will be able to say the title of this post in the same way I hear it in my head. Just sayin’.****