The "Coop deVille" is Complete!

The coop of all chicken coops is finally complete! Yep, Hubby finished up all the final items on Friday and Saturday morning and then we spent the majority of Saturday staining the exterior wood. I am confident the hens will absolutely love it!

Installing the chains for hanging the feeders and water supply.

Roosting bars are in place.

Set in place in the garden area.

Now we just need the occupants!

Pumpkin Watch - Week 13

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Making Progress on the Coop.

Hubby's master carpenter skills have been diligently at work on the coop this week... Almost finished! The deadline is this weekend... the new "girls" are set to come to their new home on Saturday!

Hubby demonstrating the new door with the chicken sliding hatch door built in with a latch to hold it up in place!

The new chicken ramp on the inside!

The roof is completely installed now.

The shingles are on the nesting boxes.

Installing the bottom mesh around the perimeter.

Hubby and the supervisor.

More Tragedy in the Patch!

Why does it always seem to happen when we are away for a few days? Do the resident wildlife just KNOW that we are gone? It happened again... and it is MUCH worse this time. I am sad to announce the deer have treated our beautiful lush green pumpkin patch as a dinner buffet on a Saturday night. On three different nights this past week while we were on vacation in a far away place, the deer took advantage of our goods. And I have them on camera!

Yep, on three different nights the deer came through the fence knocking over a wood post and then having the buffet of its life. How bad is it? Just compare this next photo to the ones we posted early last week....

So sad, isn't it? The bad news: they ate almost 95% of the pumpkin leave slap off the vines! The good news: They did not touch the pumpkins.

The pumpkins are still good... Hopefully.. or at least until we harvest for the Halloween season!

Pumpkin Watch - Week 12!

Tragedy in the Patch!

You would have thought we learned our lesson the first time. We should have been more attentive to the timetable of our being gone for a week and not applying the liquid repellent before we left. You would have thought so... Hubby called with the news after he arrived at the farm on Friday afternoon... 6 days after our last visit to the farm. Probably 14+ days since we applied the liquid repellent to the deer/plot saver fencing around the pumpkin patch. UGH. Dang deer struck again!!!



Can you see they cleaned house on the leaves and blooms right off the vine extensions?





Dad gum varmint deer!!



So what do we do about it? We add an extension to the plot saver fence at dusk no less! That seemed to be the best option.







Had the opportunity to do more investigating around the plot in the sunlight of the next morning.... Yep, dang deer even pulled up some of my young jack-o-lantern plants, ate them and ate the tops out of the other small plants!



Hopefully, something will grow from the ones they left behind...



Of course, I just head on over to the good side of the patch and hug my big boy white pumpkins... makes the day much better!

Cleaning Up the Pumpkin Patch.

Once we picked all of our third planting of corn last Saturday, we pulled all the stalks down and tilled up those areas for weed control and general clean up. The running morning glory weeds have just taken over everything it seems... I can pulled them out every time I come into the patch, but they outnumber me thousands fold! The plot looked much better once we finished tilling up the corn rows!

Now you can start to see some of the pumpkins in the middle of the patch!

More Work on da Coop!

We have officially named the under-construction chicken coop "Coop deVille"... Fitting for such a nice castle for the hens! The coop is still in progress as Hubby has time between work and work travel... Here are few progress shots over the past few days:











Someone got in a fight with the grinding wheel!