Busy Weekend

Every weekend is busy around here, so the title is one of those "yeah, what else is new?" kind of things.  However, this weekend it felt like we made great strides around here, so I thought I'd share.

• I worked on the fence protecting the raspberry/blackberry bushes from the marauding chickens.  We had a beautiful flush of berries last year that none of us got to enjoy, except for the chickens, who liked them when they were slightly under ripe.  As much as I love my chickens, I would like to enjoy our crops, so a fence is being constructed out of all found sticks and branches.  I will share pics when I'm done, and this weekend I almost finished.  Yeay!
• I worked on a fence around the front garden area.  Last year I dug out a huge garden bed in the front--one solely for flowers and "for pretty".  The chickens ate the roses, the geese ate everything else, including my beloved irises.  I was too busy establishing food beds to do anything about this garden last year, but as the largest garden bed is already in place, I can turn my attention to the "fluffier" parts of the house, like this bed.  The fence uses old parts of that playhouse we took down when we first moved here, and some inexpensive bird netting.  It should keep everyone out so the plants have a chance to grow.  Won't that be something? 
• Speaking of that playhouse, it just keeps giving and giving.  There was a lovely (sarcasm) blue slide on it that we just did not know what to do with.  What do you do with a blue fiberglass slide anyway?  My husband had the brainy idea to cut it in half and try to solve the pond's never ending leakage problem.  So while I was doing 8 million other things, he cut the slide in half and banged it into the ground where the leak is worst.  Then together we dug out dirt from the pond and piled it on top, along with rocks and wood and whatever else we could find, to try to build a bank.  The result so far is this:

You can see only one side of the slide above the water.  The other is to the left in the photo, and it's totally buried.  There needs to be more dirt moved here, but neither of us had it yesterday.  Wet dirt is heavy!

• Also on tap for yesterday; banding the birds.  Do you band?  Some people do, many don't.  We do, because I like there to be some identifying something on a bird if it, say, wanders off, as the ducks are prone to do.  Ours are a little fancy, they have the name of the farm on them and a number.  I don't use the numbers as identifiers, because with 13 breeds of chicken, they all pretty much look different.  And if they don't, they just get the same name and that's that (which is why we have 4 Hermiones).  But I do like that the farm's name is on there, so there's no question as to whom they belong.  Of course, banding a flock of birds is no picnic, and it took me, my husband and my daughter as catcher a full hour to band them all. 

....... Well, all except for

Pete!  Dum dum dah dum!!! 

Yup, Pete did not get a bracelet, and therefore Pete did not get a pass.  Pete insists on attacking everyone all the time and I am just tired of it.  Pete my friend, you will go where the fighty little roosters go one day soon.  So sorry.  You just could not learn to get along.

• The incubator seems to be doing ok.  Out of the four eggs that were in there, two of them had no one home, so I chucked them out.  There are two left, but I candled them this morning, and one looks like it may have died.  I'm giving it another two days just because the dark spotty eggs are so hard to see through, but I'm pretty sure.  That leaves just one little guy in there.  I am hoping the little one makes it, but I am worried about having just one chick all by his/her lonesome.  Poor little banana!  He or she will probably be a house chick in a basket until it can be joined by his/her many brothers and sisters that will hopefully hatch in my daughter's classroom.  Won't my husband love that?  Probably not, no. 

I believe that's all the news that's fit to print, so I'm on my way outside now to try and finish a fence or two.  Have a great day!