Shari’s Gone Country

Yeppers! One of our pullets has laid her first egg.

Only two disappointments… the egg wasn’t laid in the nice wool lined nest boxes and Mom (these are her chickens) didn’t find it. I did.

That’s ok, ’cause we went and got both her and the camera, leaving the egg in it’s place for her to see, and then handing it carefully to her.

Now you, too can see our first little pullet egg.

These gals were born on April 23, so that makes them just a couple days shy of 19 weeks. Now, what we don’t know is “who done it”.

Or is that Shari starts her training to train Dakota.

It’s important I get this right. With Dakota being a yearling, she needs to learn respect and grow out of her “pocket pet” attitude.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit losing 80 or so pounds would be good for me. You should see me huff and puff my way around the farm.

Actually, I’m getting better. At least I don’t completely run out of air before I get the daily chores done.

But, working a horse in our round pen, is a lot more work. The ground is very soft sand, and is quite uneven as the horses sink halfway up their hooves. That leaves big divots to navigate… that and the road apples they drop.

Dakota’s first lesson yesterday was to accept the “stick and string”. She’d been trained to voice and whistle. However, I prefer to point, “cluck”, and then hit the ground with the stick and string. That’s the method taught by Clinton Anderson of Downunder Horsemanship.

She did very well, letting me rub her all over with the stick and string. Also, the stick and string extend my reach, effectively moving her out of my face… can you spell “pushy filly”?

Her response to “get going” in that direction was satisfactory, even if I couldn’t keep up with her. She had been used to a smaller round pen, so she kept tightening her circles around me. That’s not acceptable, even though I was glad not to have to jog around a larger circle.

When it came to changing directions, coming to me… let’s just say “operator error”. I’ve got some serious work to do. I’m supposed to step in front of her “drive line”, get her eye, move the stick to my outside (towards the pen rail) hand, point with me free hand (the direction I want her to go) and cluck.

I keep visualizing it… but the body has yet to clearly internalize the entire process.

Time out to watch more video… this time on “gaining respect”.

Whew! Now things can get back to a more leisurely pace. You see, this last holiday weekend, was really one big “work party”.

Thursday afternoon, Bev, Mom and I made a trip into Cedar City for lumber, chicken feed, and a few groceries. By the time we were done… the first paycheck was history. The lumber we bought cost just over $400 and that is about half what we need.

A couple weeks ago, Clyde, another neighbor of ours had come over and spent some “tractor time”. The first day, he leveled the new corral area and we removed the east wall from Dusty’s stable/stall area.

A few days later, he returned with a great big auger (12 inches). So much for Bev and I continuing to dig post holes by hand. The only trick with his big auger on the tractor was that we had to really lean hard on it to get it to dig a hole straight down. Ya’ don’t want no crooked posts when you’re building stuff, ya’ know.

So, now we have all the posts we need, and enough lumber to frame in the roof line (we think).

Michael, the guy Cindy works with at the farm has a lot of construction experience and offered his help for the weekend. Mom offered to feed him, and that sealed the deal.

Bev and Cindy both had to work Friday, and I took time to get as much writing done as possible, as well as install some additional software. Aside from chores, we really didn’t do much outside.

Saturday morning, we did chores at Clyde’s (they had gone out of town and asked if we’d feed). I took care of all the chores here… that’s about an hour’s work now, with the three horses, sheep, and chickens.

We set about backfilling posts. With nearly 20 posts, that was a lot of shovel work, and leveling and plumb bobbing. We had to pull and swap one set of posts for more height, and move a couple other posts so they’d line up straight.

Once Michael was here, we were able to frame most of the roof line. Bev headed for town to get still more lumber… an additional 10 2×6x12 footers. The rest of us worked until we got chased to the house by a thunderstorm/windstorm.

Sunday afternoon was more of the same. Bev and Cindy had things to do in Enterprise in the morning, so I “chored” at Clyde’s as well as here before Michael got here.

We finished the side boards and part of the back wall before once again getting chased in by thunderstorms. It was just one of those weekends for weather.

Monday was a bit more relaxed with chores, and only a little outside work before enjoying dinner with neighbors.