We have a lot more going on here than usual right now, and in spite of the heat, though I do have to take it easy in the midday sun. We have started piling up hay for winter, finally. I have the firewood coming along, and we are bottle feeding four calves that will be sold, or butchered, or both, depending on the situation come the end their time being raised up. The kids are in school on top of all this, and I am their home liaison, or teacher, depending on the child. Meanwhile, Missus is trying to set up a home-based business and see how it goes. She is doing that while holding down a full-time job, as you do.
I was working on the fence in the south pen on this side of the street when the dogs out back started barking. Turns out the goat and dog that live together had got out again. That turned our priority yesterday into replacing the fence that kept the older dog safely in. That dog lives with a goat; long story.
We got the fence on the dog run replaced by the end of the day and put the Odd Couple back into it. This morning I put in an N-brace in the end of the pens that I had started working on yesterday. I am setting those pens up to have large gates at their west end, so I can get things in and out, like the lawnmower, eventually a tractor, and haul out anything that dies in them. It is a practical move.
A real question I am kicking around right now is if I should let the Odd Couple continue on like they are and eliminate the goat’s old pen, making more room for another firewood bunk, or should I put it back together and keep them separate? I could use the space!
On the far west end of the property, where the gates will let out from the pens, I am building in an access driveway. I could put firewood along that, or I could line it with some poplar trees. I think I like poplar trees to shade the animals in the pens in the afternoons and to shade a place to park the truck. Just another thing I am kicking around. The drive is meant to make it easier to access the back with a trailer in tow and allow me to not have to back it. I have no troubles backing trailers, but I don’t trust there won’t be someone there at some point. I don’t want to run someone down.
Oh, and today I am watering the orchard trees, as one of them appears to have died. That’s not good.