My order of 25 baby chicks didn’t happen as the company that I was supposed to get them from flaked out. Only after calling the hatchery again did I get told that two of the chicken breeds  in my order weren’t going to be ready this year. I don’t know why they didn’t call me to at least let me know so I could make other arraignments. The other hatchery that I called up to see if I could get chicks from them was all sold out. So that left me scrambling around town trying to find some chicks. Most were sold out as chick season is almost over and I only got one breed that I was wanting. Next year I will be putting my order in for chicks at a bigger hatchery so I won’t have this problem.

I ended up getting….

• 4 Barred Rocks
• 3 Rhode Island Reds
• 2 Golden Laced Wyandottes
• 2 Araucanas
• 1 Sumatra

Lee set up the box for them early this morning. We are going to keep them in the house until we can’t stand it as the coop isn’t quite ready for them. The box he made will expand as we need it to.

I have been looking forward to this day ever since we moved in. We had the two Port Orford Cedars by the front of the house taken out. They were way to close and blocked a lot of light. Along with that we had the huge tree that was also in the front yard limbed up some. We had that done for light reasons and because the branches were hanging down way to low.

This is what it looked like before we had the trees taken out.

The first tree we had cut about 14 feet up so it wouldn’t smash into our newly planted fruit trees.

After that he cut off the rest of it.

The second tree he had to trim up the limbs so they wouldn’t scrape on our house when it fell down. That is him up in the tree.

Then he tied off the tree and just when it was about ready to fall he got in his truck and pulled it over with that. Both trees went exactly where he said they would.

This is what it looks like now. Thankfully we still have our house intact! Now we just have a big mess to clean up.

Remember this?

We’ve been busy. This is what this section looks like now.

We brought our washer out from storage. Both of the existing water hookups leak so we have a bucket under the hoses and keep the valves turned off when not in use. I am very excited as I hadn’t done laundry in about three weeks. Though that means piles of dirty clothes and I can only do one load a day as the weather has gone bad.

So here was how I dried them the first night.

We’ve had “unnamed puppy” for 10 days now, so it was high time that we came up with a name.  Early contenders were Fergie and Jules.  However, I’m (probably) getting a  Ferguson TO-20 tractor and didn’t want my dog named after a tractor.  I liked Jules (as in Jules Verne) or Joules (as in a Watt/Sec) but I was afraid people would think Jewels (ughh!).  I found that multiple sources recommended dog names that are two syllables ending in a long vowel or a soft ‘a’.  This led me to Haiku, which I still like, but Robin hated.  We considered Cedar or Sugi (Japanese for “cedar”).  I found a variety of Gaelic names that I liked, but all of them ended up being similar to (or identical) to people’s names that either Robin or I knew.

For almost 24 hours we settled on Georgi as a name both of us liked.  It’s based on the root name of George, a Greek name meaning “farmer”.  That seems appropriate for a farm dog.  Unfortunately, the next day I noticed the similarity to a certain recent president and instantly soured to the idea …

So, what did we finally name poor unnamed puppy?  Aggie!  It had been on our list almost from the beginning.  It sounds cute but not terribly common (it’s the 1,764th most common name according to an L.A. survey).  Aggie is a shortened form of Agatha, a Greek name meaning “good, honorable”.  Hopefully that describes her! 

Sorry for the lack of pictures.  I take most of the pictures, but I also take out the dog the most.  Cameras and puppies don’t mix well.  We’ll try to rectify that.

I got burn pile seven and eight done today. Yup, another exciting news flash.

A neighbor came by and offered to rototill our garden for us with his tractor for the cost of the diesel that he would use. He did two passed and the dirt looks awesome. It would have taken Lee six passes and he still would not have gotten into the ground as deep at the tractors rototiller did. We really appreciated the neighbors help!

All but one of the fruit trees that we planted earlier have blossomed out. Hopefully the American Persimmon is just taking it’s own sweet time and not dead. I am going to be very busy watering all the trees this summer. We got 5 gallon buckets and drilled a hole into the bottom of them so we can keep track of how much water they are getting.

We choose the classic farm color of red and white. I still have some touch ups to do and I need to finish painting the eves. Of course I also need to paint inside to seal the wood up.

This weekend was very busy. Lee built another wood rack, we bought a used mower and then I mowed for hours trying to get the grass under control by the house, we went to the dump and got rid of that NASTY freezer that’s in the above pictures (I’ve been hating that thing for forever!), Lee sawed off the part of the wood shacks entry way so you no longer have to duck your head to go in, we got rid of some more scrap wood, and then we just all around tidied up.

We had a Cedar tree taken down that was near the chicken coop. It looked almost dead so we wanted it gone before we put in the new fence. After it was fallen we were super glad that we decided to have it taken out as the core of the tree was rotten.

Boy does it smell good outside. Like one big cedar chest. We took a chunk of the wood inside the house and used it as an air freshener. I’ve seen chunks of cedar sold in stores for you to buy and store around your clothes. Maybe I should get into business and do something like that eh? Or just make sure that I save some for when I have an actual closet.