That was the gist of our discussion about what to do on our day off together this week. Now before you get all judgey, we are not talking about getting spun on illegal amphetamines, we are talking about caffeine in general and the Vev specifically. What is the Vev you ask? As a wedding present my good friend and mentor on things of beauty and quality Karen Kosogald gifted us this amazing Italian stove top espresso maker. The coffee these things make is strong and delicious and it is necessary to do something extremely active after drinking a cup or your head will explode ( at least mine will ). We made up a pot and drank it with a dollop of premium Georgetown honey and some heavy cream and went at it.
Our project: a fence that will keep the chickens corralled in the back portion of the yard, keeping them out of our new raised beds while providing an aesthetic breakup of the yard. Also, Husband was hell bent on making a small close-able box for the little peepers to nest in when we start to leave them out side at night.
We had gotten one post in and mapped out where the rest would go about a week ago. The first two posts are going to become the gate/ hop trellis so they have to be TALL. And when you need TALL posts you have to dig DOWN to make sure they are stable. In our case that meant if we wanted our trellis to be 8 feet above ground we needed to dig down 4 feet. We looked on-line at a couple different sites to acquire this ratio, but everyone we have talked to since thinks we are crazy for digging that far down.
So while Husband built the little peeper box I got to digging with our newest tool, the post hole digger.
This task would be nearly impossible without this tool. Plus this one has marks on the side to tell you how much more you have to dig. Still need to go one more foot!
Done!
I then took the sledge hammer and busted up pieces of the mysterious concrete curb that was running the length of our yard before we removed it last spring. I found the process of making the rubble strangely zen. It's a bit like splitting logs when you hit that perfect spot with a huge but kind of effortless swing that sends a huge immovable piece of something into smaller perfect sized bits. I kept singing to myself that Clash song with the line "Breaking rocks in the hot sun. I fought the law and the law won." I felt a bit like an old-timey jailbird on a chain gang. Ok, not really, but you know what I mean. Anyway, after taking out that curb last year we are extremely reluctant to put in any more concrete that we might have to take out someday. So while a lot of people recommend cementing in fence posts, our system is: layer of rubble, tamp with old broom handle or two by four until you can't feel your hands, layer of dirt, tamp, layer of rubble, tamp, layer of dirt, tamp. All the while the other person is adjusting the post with the help of a level to make sure the post is well... level ( strait up and down in this case ) and lined up with the other posts.
The two tall posts in!
As we worked closer to the existing fence setting our posts securely in the ground, we realized that we had done our measuring sloppily and were on a collision course with one of two yew trees that we had wanted to bypass. We talked about our options but there was no way we were gonna dig up the posts we had just set and we thought about zagging the fence around the tree or making a diagonal part right there. In the end, the tree didn't have a chance. Thus, powered by the Vev we cut down the tree, set our posts and called it a day. Whew!
Above is a pic of the temporary scrap lumber box that Husband built for the little peepers. We are now keeping them outside underneath the big girls coop cordoned off with a length of hardware cloth. This will help the chickens get acquainted with one another in the run with out too much feather plucking and bloodshed. In time they will have to re-establish the pecking order but we want to wait 'til the little ones get bigger and better able to defend themselves. Then we will slip them in the coop and onto the roost in the middle of the night. Apparently this will psyche the birds into thinking this was always how it has been, all one big happy family. We'll see.
While we were tamping and rubbling and cutting down trees I noticed that the BOB's were back! Blue Orchard Bees that is. We have a small hive for them set onto the south facing side of the chicken run and today I looked in there and saw three little bee faces covered with pollen looking back at me. These bees are more solitary than honey bees and while they don't produce honey they do collect pollen and so are immensely important for pollinating early blooming fruit trees like the pear tree that is blooming in our yard right now. Plus unlike honey bees they will work hard regardless of the cold or rain. It was so exciting to see them! I have been sad about our honey bee hive dying, so to see these little bees was for me a sign that all can still be well. Thanks Bob's!
