Nevermind

I guess we need to clip the chickens' wings. 🙄

Escape Artists

I'm sure when you read the title you guessed that this post would be about goats since they are notorious for escaping their pens. It's actually about our poultry! 

We had locked them up in the pasture in an attempt to keep them out of the neighbor's yard. As you can see from this picture, they weren't huge fans. They kept trying to go into the front yard where there is more ground cover and plenty of tasty things to eat. 

They had only been locked up like this for maybe an hour or two when I looked outside and saw two ducks on the other side of the fence. The neighbor's side. There must have been a small hole under the fence that let them squeeze through. 

I threw J in a carrier and headed outside to see if I could plug the holes. I had planned to use cement landscaping block (on hand for a future project), but that was too heavy to do safely while holding J. I settled on using pieces of wood from our firewood pile. Those fit perfectly in the gaps under the fence. 

You might think that it's tricky to make ducks and chickens go where you want them to. You would be correct. I did get them corralled back into the pasture area by slowly walking and pretending that I wasn't trying to herd them anywhere. 😅 

That kept them in for a while. 

When G got home and checked the animals, one duck snuck underneath the fence between her area and the goat/jip area. She couldn't figure out how to get back underneath so G had to catch her in the goat shed and put her back on her correct side.

More logs got shoved into that crack. Now I think our fence is FINALLY duck proof.

Last night we brought some "sorry our ducks pooped on your lawn and our chickens ate your perennials" gingersnaps over to our neighbor's house and told them to let us know if any of our poultry make their way over again. 

So far, so good!

 

Jip and the Goats

Jip loves to play with the goats. They tolerate him. One way he gets their attention is to lie on their food... He stood up the split second before I took this picture. 

Fritz will headbutt Jip if he gets too annoying, so will Svetlana. Gerda is too timid and she often ends up 'stuck' on the woodpile to get away from Jip. 

Sometimes he'll climb up and sit with her though!

Maybe once the little kids are out, Jip will have playmates. 

Castiron

Our castiron skills continue to improve. G has cooked eggs in it without them sticking. I made pancakes and Geman pizza in it the other day.

I was a little nervous about things sticking, but the trick is to make sure it's hot enough before putting anything inside. I've also found there's a point when the item is cooked (not sticking) and if you leave it in too long after that, then it burns/overcooks/sticks to the pan. 

PS - The potatoes in the above dish are some of the ones from a previous post with the super long sprouts. Still taste good!

Snow No More

We got some snow on Sunday, light fluffy stuff that fell in huge flakes. The birds had a heyday with it... our ducks waddled around snapping it up and the wild birds flitted around our deck. You might be able to see a few in the picture. 

And just like that, the snow melted. One minute there was snow, the next time I looked outside it was gone. 

More birds have returned. I saw three cranes yesterday (one landed in the pond and the other two flew overhead). The swans have made an appearance again. They never stay long. 

Our ducks have been wandering. They made it almost all the way down to the pond yesterday to enjoy the puddles from the melted snow. Unfortunately, they're also wandering over to the neighbor's house. We heard from them that our ducks have been pooping where the grandkids play and the chickens are eating the first flowers coming up. 😬 

G built a short chicken fence to continue the existing fence dividing our properties and so far it seems to have worked. Still, I keep a sharp eye on them. If they go around the fence, we're going to have to put them in the pasture.