Hot, busy weekend.

It was a very busy weekend and the hot humid weather did not help. But at least it was not raining. The pastures are just now starting to dry up from the flooding we had back at the end of of June. To deal with the mud and standing water, we lined the goats' congregation areas with gravel. One benefit from the flood and rain was the several tons of gravel from the driveways and roadside that washed onto our property. We had planned on having a dumptruck load of gravel delivered for that purpose, so with a bit of work - moving a ton and a half of gravel several hundred yards, we saved a couple hundred dollars.

We lined the area around the water trough with gravel and large flat rocks dug out of the pasture. That will keep their feet out of the muck and help wear down their hooves.

We also finished laying the last 3 feet of flooring in the goat barn and rolled a nice big 700lb bale of hay into the pasture.

Toss in berry-picking, 10 enormous zuchinnis, weeding and many loaves of zuchinni bread baked. A full, very tiring weekend.

Baby Chicks, Baby Turkeys

We had a double arrival. On Thursday morning, a shipment of 60 day old broiler chicks showed up at the Hagerstown post office. Friday morning, we picked up a shipment of 25 two day old turkeys. All are scratching about comfortably in the newly constructed summer brooding house. The broilers will be turned out on pasture in about 2 weeks and will be fully grown at 6-8 weeks. The turkeys are a good bit more fragile and will probably remain brooding for 3-4 weeks, then to a covered pen for another 1-3 weeks, then off to free-range until Thanksgiving.