Morning Meditations-Early Fall

This morning it was cool, cool enough for me to wear a jacket and my big rubber (neoprene) boots.

I start by feeding the rabbits. They don’t need a refill on thier water. Now that it’s cooler, they don’t go through thier water as quickly. I admire the work I did on the entryway to the garden. The Hackberry trees work perfectly to create an arch to hold up the fencing and loofah vine trailing over the entry to the garden, it’s a pretty flexible wood. I think I read somewhere that Hackberry was used by Native Americans for hunting bows, because of it’s flexibility.

I work my way to the yellow chicken coop that’s stationary and leads to the chicken run that wraps all the way around the garden. They have two blue eggs, they probably laid them yesterday. I refill one of the two waterers for them and secure the latches on thier doors. I place the eggs in my jacket pocket…hoping I don’t forget about them and crack them in my pocket.

I check on the lavender Orpingtons in the blue mobile chicken coop. No eggs in there and they don’t need any refills on food or water. The three young lavenders in there are looking good. I hatched them in the incubator at the end of August. I think they’re all roosters but not certain just yet. The three older lavendar orpingtons are looking good too. One of the hens looks like she’s getting new feathers. She must be molting, they do that late summer or early fall usually.

Lastly I head to the barn to feed the dogs. After I feed the dogs in thier respective corners of the barn and check to make sure that thier wireless fence collars are charged, I ask Titus to sit and let the ewes out. I keep him at my side, with a handful of treats, all the way down the sheep run and close the gate.

I need to switch the water hose from the donkeys water trough to the ewes water trough. The spicket for the donkeys water had broken last week when the shade shelter blew over, with the water trough attached to the it, it snapped off above the shut off.

My hand i slippery from Titus slobber feeding him treats as we walked down the to the gate. I wipe my hands off on my pants. I also grab a piece of cedar bark to scrub out the water trough before I refill it. It gets full of this redish bound scum all around it. In the summer it’s a green algea, but in the fall it’s more brown. I scrub it out, switch out the hoses and leave it to fill up.

I go back towards the barn and close the gate to the sheep run that leads to pastures 2 and 3, and open the gate to pasture 4. I go over the the ram shack where the rams, and wether are and ask Titus to sit behind the door, with bits of dog food as motivation. I open the ram shack door and let the rams and wether out. I ask Titus to stay until they have gotten through the gate to pasture 4 and the release him and close the gate.

I turn off the water from the rain barrel, grab 4 dog treats and head out of the main barn gate. Titus comes with me and the other dogs stay in. I ask all four of them to sit and give each a treat. They love the dried beef lung treats.

It is nice weather. It’s cool but the wind isn’t biting. I take a peak at our youngest chicks. I think they’re about 7 wks old now. They have thier feathers in but I’m not going to put them with the big chickens until they’re a little bigger. We lost two of the last batch shortly after I moved them and I think it’s because they got picked on too much but I’m not sure. I hope to avoid any more losses with the next transition.

I head back in the house to get the boys breakfast. I take off my boots and slip them under the bench in the garage.. I take the eggs out if my pocket (still inact, thank you). I tell Titus that he’s too dirty to come in. When the grass is heavy with dew in the morning he just gets filthy and I wait to let him back inside until he’s dry and the dirt has a chance to fall off of him, usually after lunch.

Soon the time will change. I’m not sure how that will change my morning routine. It has been raining regularly so I don’t have to worry about watering any plants accept the ones on the porch, infact it’s rained enough that I need to find time to mow soon.