Friday’s Farm Fotos for May 27

Another week on the farm, and another week with tornadoes skipping around us.  Fortunately, these were baby-sized compared to the mega monsters that went through this area a month ago.  Aside from losing more shingles off the roof, and a few smaller limbs down, we didn’t have any damage.

Except, I really do wonder about our roof after the last couple of storms.  Yesterday I picked up a shingle out of the front yard.  This morning I found one down by the pond.  Makes me wonder what shape our roof is in.  Kind of hate to find out though…. a good friend who had a lot more tornado damage got an estimate to replace their roof… and wow!  Around $15,000!!!

I believe I’ll think about non-storm-damage stuff instead.  Like the fact our Rosebay Rhododendron is blooming.

It isn’t growing very quickly, but every year it has more blooms than the year before, so I guess that’s progress!

Of course, a whole lot of other things are blooming now also, including the rose bushes.  The rambler blooms have come and gone, and the climbing roses about the same.  However, the tea roses still have blooms, like this one:

The Farmer has put up chicken wire fencing around his garden to keep out chickens, guineas and hopefully rabbits!

How do you like our bright blue gate?  That bit of improvisation was my idea.  It’s the ‘skirting table’ I used to use when cleaning fleeces before selling them.  I painted it bright blue because that happened to be the color paint we had on hand that would waterproof the wood.

Of course, The Farmer left one end of the dug up garden dirt for a chicken spa.

They were all fluffing their feathers in the dirt until they saw me and decided to move on.  Maybe they are embarrassed to be caught bathing? 

The guineas do their share of dust bathing also, but they can also be found scrounging around under the bird feeder. 

The squirrels also like to look around in the grass and see if they can find any sunflower seeds.  This one is watching for his (her?) chance to jump down and check things out.

Other entertainment this week included watching a bonfire down the road at the neighbors farm.  They cultivate a lot of fields, and grow a lot of sweet potatoes.  They store them in big wooden pallet boxes, and evidently some of the boxes were past their prime and they decided to burn them up.

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Unfortunately, it’s hard to get a good perspective on just how big this fire really was since there’s nothing nearby to compare it to.  When The Cave Geek got home from work, he came in to ask if we knew something big was on fire.  We went out and looked, and it looked like someone’s house was burning.  It was a relief to see it was just a bunch of old wooden boxes!

And that’s the news from around the farm this week!

It’s been a hail of a week. . .

Once upon a midnight dreary,

While I pondered weak and weary,

Came a knocking on the house,

Much too loud to be a mouse.

The hail bounced around on the sidewalk.  .  .

It covered the sidewalks and filled up the rosebed. . .

It fell noisily from the sky and bounced on the roof and sidewalk.

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Yep, it’s been a hail of a week!

Sunset & Roosting Guineas

One evening recently I went out to take some pictures of the sunset.

I thought there were some interesting cloud formations. . .

While I was out there I noticed the guineas were going to roost in the catalpa tree by the sheep shed.  It’s one of their favorite spots.  I took a little video, and although it’s a little dark… I did say it was sunset! … you can still see enough to tell what’s going on.

Actually, the video was lighter until I uploaded it to YouTube, and it turned out darker there.  Oh well…

That’s Toby barking in the back ground.  And you can hear the guineas making a fuss, and a couple of the guineas walking across the metal roof of the sheep shed. 

In the summer after the walnut trees have leafed out, they like to go high up in those to roost at night.  I think they try to hide among the leaves so the owls don’t see them.

But for now, the catalpa tree does nicely.

Good night Guineas!

A man and his dog. . .

The Farmer and I were out measuring the pond this weekend.  He needed to calculate how big it is so he’d know how many fish he needs to order to stock it.  It’s not as big as he thought I’m afraid!

Anyway, while he was waiting on me to come outside, he and his best buddy, Toby, were resting.

You can see The Farmer has a big reel of measuring tape there we used to get the width and length of the pond.  It’s in the shape of an ELLIPSE, so my mathematical genius Farmer had to use some special whiz-bang calculations to figure out the size.

Now to find someone who sells fish in smaller quantities.  We don’t need lots of 100!

For A Swinging Good Time. . .

A while back I placed an ad in one of the local Freecycle lists to ask if anyone had a swingset frame.  No slide or swings, just the frame.  I got an email from a very nice guy about an hour away from us, who said he had one in his back yard he’d let us have.

The first pretty weekend, we drove over to pick it up.  We were expecting one of the modern, cheap, lightweight metal frames.  Nope, this is a homemade job someone welded together with HEAVY pipe, and is 7 1/2′ tall!

And did I mention it’s HEAVY???

It was a chore getting the thing up into the bed of our pickup truck.  The Farmer took some rope with him, but fortunately we also had spare rope and bungee cords under the backseat, because this stuck out a lot further than we expected.

We didn’t put enough on to start with, and part-way home the frame slipped off the end of the bed and was dragging along behind the truck.  Fortunately, there was a handy parking lot to turn into, and some nice dude stopped and helped The Farmer weave a web of bungee cords to hold it on.

Considering the effort the guys had getting this onto the truck, we decided to wait until such time as the Cave Geek could help unload it.

Cause did I mention it is big and HEAVY?

I might also mention that those bungee cords were stretched really TIGHT.  When The Farmer loosened the end of one, it flew waaaaaaaay up into the air, and ended up here…

Even with the arrow pointing to it, you can’t see it without using a telescopic lens. . .

I think we might as well count that bungee cord as a loss.  It would take a ladder on a firetruck to reach it, or maybe one of those buckets on a utility truck… naw, I don’t think they’d reach high enough.

At any rate, we finally got the swingset frame unloaded with help from the Cave Geek. 

Oh, so why did I want a fame without swings or slide?  It’s to go in the peacock aviary. . .

They need a new perch as the old one was wood and finally rotted and fell apart.  However, since this one is 7 1/2′ tall and aviary is only 8′ tall, The Farmer is going to have to dig holes for the posts so it will be low enough for the peacocks to perch on!

They won’t have a swinging good time, but they’ll love being up high!