I started, or rather continued, working on the Egg-Mobile around 10, after an hour and a half harvest, and a thirty minute talk with Jim about Permaculture and his soil and other things like that. Jim pulled the trailer over to the work shop for me so it would be easier to work on. The thing is, there are two types of trailers, Goose neck trailers and bumper pulled trailers. Goose necks usually connect in the middle of the bed of a truck where as bumper pull is what you traditionally see on trucks. The tractor's draw bar only has a bumper pull hitch, but Jim has a lot of Goose neck trailers. So whats the solution, he designed and built his own hitch adapter that allows him to pull Goose necks! He welded together this big old upside down "T" shaped thing that hooks on to the implement connectors with the long part of the cross going up a to form the gooseneck hitch. It is a fairly simple design and it works really well! But it is one of a kind, home made and as Jim put it, "Hopefully it is built well enough that my grand kids will be using it." I think the concept of solving our own problems in this way is largely lost on my generation, unless kids from my generation are lucky enough to grow up on a farm. :)
While I was working all day on the Egg-Mobile, Jim made about 7 more beds! Thank god for Ol' Blue, the tractor, I can't imagine breaking all that earth by hand.
Jim and I both worked from 10 till about 1 on our perspective projects, at which point Tina brought out some food for Jim. He scarfed it in about 5 minutes, and I just kept working, I had a double serving of oatmeal this morning. We kept working from 1 till about 3:30 at which point Jim had to take the kids swimming, and I caved into my hunger. I went back to my barn, but saw an odd scene... It was like one of those kids magazines where is says "What's wrong with this picture?". I walked past brooder 1(which is where all the chicks are raised into chickens and saw about 15 chicks walking around. But what was really odd about the situation was that there were 5 goats in brooder 1! I don't think I can paint the picture well enough with words but essentially there are a couple of different entrances into the brooder, and you have to go through two doors to get to brooder 1 whichever entrance you take. There is the feed room door which leads to the feed room (obviously) and then at the back of the feed room there is an door for humans which a "Doggy Door" in the bottom of it for the chicks to go in and out of the yard of brooder 1 and the pen in brooder 1 which is inside. For the other entrance it is just two doors that were both closed. What happened was the goats busted into the feed room because they smelled the feed and then when they got bored they crawled through the doggy door at the base of the human door. So when I got there I was flabbergasted because It at first didn't occur to me that goats could crawl, or that they could fit through the little hole. So to me it just looked like they had been beamed in there or something! Anyhow, I shooed them out and then proceeded to chase down the 15 escapee chicks, hence the title of today's post, "chasing chicks".. How many of you thought I was out cruisin' for girls?? Haha! Anyways, It was a bit of an ordeal to chase down all the chicks because they really aren't chicks anymore, I partially called them that for the play on words, but also they were chicks when I got here, more or less. They were plenty fast, and in their little minds, they were running for their life! It took me about 15 minutes to catch them all. At one point I had three under one arm and another two in the other hand! Once I dropped off the two in my right hand I took this picture:
After the "Goats in brooder 1" fiasco it was about 3:45 and I still hadn't had lunch. By the way, the reason the chicks got out was because the goats forgot to close the feed room door behind them after they bashed their way in. So any chick who wanted to brave the open out doors, beyond the confines of brooder 1 could have. I was lucky it was only 15 of them rather than all 100!
I finally was able to have lunch around 3:50, but since Jim and I didn't go grocery shopping yesterday after market, because we had to rush back and water some plants, I had limited options. Lunch today was a can of tuna and some tomatoes! I ate it in about 5 minutes and was back to work at 4. I worked on skunk proofing the trailer until about 5:15 and finally reached a point where I felt that I could stop. I pretty much finished boarding up the whole inside, as well as installing lay boxes (they were already built I just screwed them into the wall) and then the majority of my day was spend hanging chicken wire over the gate.
I took this picture of the gate, and really the only thing that you can tell from the picture is just how sunny it was when I took it. I couldn't even see my screen because it was so dusty and bright out so my apologies for the poor picture quality. If you can make it out though, there are light colored boards running all up and down the frame of the gate and they are pinning down the chicken wire stretched out across the whole thing!
So the reason I worked from 10 am to 5:15 pm on this thing, with a short chick chasing break, and 5 minutes of eating tuna, is because Jim wants it finished as soon as possible so we can move the 100, border line chicks into the pasture and get them out of the brooder. They should have been moved out a while ago, but Jim got ripped off by a restaurant and has been behind on things at the farm ever since. The chicks are to big for the brooder now and really do need more space, but now he has extra motivation to get the Egg-Mobile up and running because a big tour of the farm is coming this Sunday. The thing is, it takes some time to re-locate the chicks, mentally that is. We have to keep them in the Egg-Mobile for at least 5 days, preferably like 2 weeks if we had the time, to acclimate them to their new home. Other wise they would just go running back to the brooder.
I finally ended my work day at about 6, so it was 12 hour day for me, except for a half hour breakfast and 5 minute lunch. I'm realizing there is one huge benefit of a wife, she could be cooking my meals for me so that I could actually be resting during my break rather than cooking or doing dishes. I never like to be on break while Jim is working, so when he is done eating I try to be done, but I have to prepare, eat, and clean up each meal in the time he takes to just eat! Maybe I'll order a monkey trained in the cullinary arts, or maybe I should just get a wife.. Something tells me a trained chef monkey would be more practical though! :)
That's all for now! Goodnight!
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