Coop de Ville

Dear Folks -
Well, with the very much looked-forward-to week-long visit from a darling granddaughter, the days have sort of escaped me and I discover I haven't written anything all week.

We made excellent pasture progress on Monday (likely the last cool day until the first of November). The farmer changed out a bunch of water nozzles to put more water in some places, and less in others. Also repaired line breaks from trenching for electrical, built a permanent levee instead of the bags-of-mulch deal I had concocted, mulched and fertilized parts of the south pasture, and wrangled a couple of great crews of workers. One group were the trenchers to get the electrical line in, and one group cleaned out the beef steer's pen (and a huge atta-boy to them). I understand better now how the rock-hard floors of native African huts are constructed with cattle manure and tamping, just like Shortcake the steer did. Our guys were going at it with picks, hoes, shovels, rakes, and they did a great job. If we are lucky, we don't have to do it again until Shortcake becomes Beefcake.

Once Shortcake was let out to "freedom" though, he realized that there was a world outside his pen and there was no stopping him for a while - he kept hoppin' the fence. Finally had to add another panel and solidify the project. I now understand oh-so much better what my son-in-law meant when he said that you can *never* own too many panels. We had to have a few to build a temporary containment pen for Shortcake, and then another sturdy one to block off the break-through spot.

Today, we are adding in a few chicks of a different breed -- the newbies are Blue Ameraucanas that actually lay blue eggs! They are the brightest blue in the Spring, but still blue year round. So (knock on wood) we will have several shades of brown from the deepest browns of Cuckoo Marens to barely tinted rosy ones. There will be white ones from the oh-so-productive California Pearl Leghorns and everything in between including both green and now blue Ameraucanas. Who needs commercial dyes when we have the Coop de Ville?

Thinking of ewe -
The Shepherd