Sunday eve, Nov. 9th… A good day… We made a dent in the list!

We started out the morning with a trip to our friend Charlie’s house to return his ladder. His brother-in-law is going to come and clean Charlie’s chimney for him this week, so we returned his ladder which we’ve had since we started building the barn. It was about time to return it anyway, because we were done with it. Charlie said to just keep it until he needed it again……… he said, “I know where it is if I need it.” Well, after returning the ladder, we returned and winterized the water lines by blowing compressed air through the lines and purging all the water out of the lines and hoses. A short break for lunch and we were back out to the big barn to clean the chicken house of the do-do those chickens give us, along with the eggs, in exchange for the feed we give them. Well…..the eggs are nice anyway. When the barn was cleaned and sprayed with disinfectant, we moved on to the duck house and did the same there, then on to the old hen house and cleaned it. I designed the roosting rails in the old hen house to be removable…… seems that I am smarter than the average bear, you can remove the roost and have all the room in the world for cleaning. You can see it in the photos. Boy it makes cleaning up easy if you use the wood chips on the floor and keep water out of the duck house. There is nothing more scrungie than water and duck dirt. It stinks and draws maggots, which spells sick chickens and ducks. We kept the water away from the ducks and chickens inside and we had no trouble with flies, maggots or smell, all summer long.
The two Canadian Wild Geese that have been here off and on all summer long are back again. I don’t think they are going to go south like the others this year. Who knows, but I know there are Canadians here year round, because I’ve seen them in various places. I don’t know what they do when everything freezes up completely, but they show up as soon as any water opens up.
Before dark, we’ll have to go on a seek & find mission and check everywhere Tina haunts during the day, to see if she might have laid another egg. I know there were none in the barn corner today, yet anyway! Perhaps she laid one in a chicken dusting nest in the flow beds out front or along the side deck. Maybe around the old hen house where I spread scratch for the chickens. She hangs out there too. If we find another egg, we will put it into the incubator with her first one to hatch and maybe give us a few new turkeys for next spring.
Again, it must be threatening to rain…… as my knees are starting to ache like a bugger. They do this from a day to an hour, right before it is gonna rain. Did anyone hear the forecast? My knees must have! They ache like a toothache. Ouch!!