5/3

We had a bunny in the garden this morning. It heard me pointing it out to Rachel through the window, and ran out under the chicken wire gate. I'll have to put something across the bottom to keep it from getting in.

Ash-gray blister beetles are devouring the autumn olive foliage on both trees. There are too many to hand-pick. Once they're finished with the trees they'll move on to the garden just like last year. I'll get one of those 'organic' biological sprays and see if that works.

We've had hot summer weather with no rain the last several days. With gutters on the barn now there's no shortage of rainwater in the barrels. But we'll still need to filter the iron out of the well-water to use it for watering the garden and pasture, as well as filling the pool.

I'm still working on siding the upper story of the barn. The front is done, I'm working on finishing the back - then only the sides are left. It goes very slowly.

Our three bottle baby goats are up in the old coop and are still getting bottles 4 times a day. They guzzle their bottles and are growing fast. They're saanan/lamancha mixes - all white. We have two of the babies' mother here and Rachel milks her twice a day. She was giving up to a gallon and a half for a while, but seems to have settled down to 5 quarts a day - which is still great for a goat. The mother is on loan, and we'll probably keep her till the babies are weaned, maybe even up until it's time to breed her.

We've finally got the electric fence up around our first pasture. We had a problem with the corner posts grounding out the fence, but now that that's fixed, the charger puts out almost 16,000 volts, and our voltmeter blinks out at 9.9 thousand volts on the line. So we've got plenty of voltage. Now we just need to improve the ground. Apparently the recommended grounding system of 3 6' rods 12' apart is not enough for our 6.3 joule 50 mile charger. We're going to pick up 2 9' lengths of 3/4" galvanized pipe to add 2 more rods to the system [the pipe will be easier to drive, go deeper, and have a greater surface area for conductivity than the 5/8" rods]. Once we get the ground right the shock should be tremendous - which is what we need to keep in goats and keep out predators.

The sex links are nearly the size of our banty Little Bit so have been released from their pen and are out in the coop with the big birds. They're still very friendly and come right up to me for a treat when I go in the coop. They can be petted and will perch on me. We did have to put 5 of the 6 up on the roost last night. They know how to roost for sure, and can fly okay, but I think are nervous about going up and by big chickens like Rosy and Claudia who are always nasty to them.

The aracaunas are out of the house now and in the old sex links pen. We lost one the other morning and so have 7. They seem to be doing well but are not nearly as friendly as the sex links.

Today is Mabel's last due date to kid. She's shown all the signs for weeks, and is now a barrel on 4 legs. Onyx looks barely pregnant so maybe the woman we bought them from had her dates wrong.

All our potatoes are planted in heavy mulch, we're planting beans between them to see if that strategy really works to foil the Colorado potato and Mexican beetles.