What A Day

The barn floor was literally littered yesterday with furry pancakes; six or seven squirrels lying languorously, waiting for the breakfast buffet.  Al is the one who makes me laugh out loud.  He has taken to making a dive, head down and forearms outstretched, into an an area of loose dirt, looking for all the world like a base runner diving for home plate.  Confident he's been called "Safe!," he lifts his head and blows puffs of dust from his snoot and blinks dirt from his eyes.  Lying full length, he proceeds to chew on the wad of seeds he's carrying in his cheek pouch, just like a ball player.  Who needs TV?

Coming back up the hill, lugging two buckets of milk, I glanced over and noted chickens where chickens ought not be.  There were a couple of the older hens scratching happily in the leaves under the oak...maybe they'd flown over the fence, and I hoped against hope that the pullets hadn't followed.  Setting down the buckets, I went around the other side of the hen house and, drat it!, there were the majority of the little girls out in the thick weeds.  Even more upset than I that her chickens were on the loose, Bessie immediately went into round-up mode, dashing about and sending the pullets into panic.  Bessie turns off her hearing when she's intent on her job, so it took some doing to catch her on the fly and put her into the nearby feed room.  "But, Mom, I can help!"  Scared, the pullets clustered at the fence line and I was able to catch and drop them one at a time over the fence back into their pen.  I found the hole under the chicken wire where they'd made their great escape and blocked it temporarily with a wooden pallet.  I've been plugging escape routes with whatever came to hand for some time, but it was obviously time to do some serious repairs.  Releasing a chastened Bess from solitary confinement, I took the milk in to strain and chill, and took a breather for myself.  Out in the barn, I uncovered the tail end of a roll of two-inch by four-inch wire fencing.  Perfect.  Then came the search for the big bolt cutters I knew we had.  The right tool makes any job easier, and I needed to cut the fencing to size.  Given Steve's sense of organization, I always find a lot of things I might need in the future while I'm hunting for what I need now; nothing, of course, where one might expect it to be.  I did find the bolt cutters, I did cut the fencing, I did reinforce large sections of the chicken pen.  Whatever plan I might have had for the morning was shot in the foot, for sure.

In the afternoon, I really wanted to get the weeds in the vegetable garden cut down.  I had to move the lawn tractor to get the weedeater out.  Well, as long as I had to start the mower anyway, I might as well mow the front yard...and then the side yard.  Thinking there might still be time to get to the garden, I needed to hose off the tractor; it had been a little wheezy toward the last and struggling up the hills.  That spray that had cooled the Tire Guy turned into a full-fledged fountain and little to nothing was coming out of the squirter end.  Remembering that I'd seen a broken hose reel somewhere (while I was searching for something else), I found that and removed the perfectly good feeder hose to replace the leaking one on the wall reel.  There was a slight delay here while I ran to get the spray to kill the wasps that were building a nest in the reel.  There was definitely a method to Steve's madness about saving every little thing, and I give him credit where due.  However, by the time I'd finished switching hoses and washing down the tractor, there was about enough daylight left to water the garden and call it a day.

I left the tractor out so I can get to the weedeater tomorrow.