All's Well That Ends Well

Have you ever tried to water a garden and corn field with small water bottles?  We have.  And not because we thought it would be fun.  It definitely wasn't.  So why, might you ask, were we watering a massive garden with such small amounts of water?  Because when you're relying on your vegetables to keep you through the winter and your well pump dies of old age mid-garden water you'll do time-consuming things to keep your plants alive. 

Well Crane

If it had been a typical June month here in Washington it wouldn't have been so necessary to scramble for water for the garden.  Given that the temperatures had been over eighty degrees for a week with no rain in sight, we called a well repair man and dug out a case of water bottles from storage in the laundry room.  Luckily, at 12:30 a.m. that night we were blessed with a new well pump and water in the reservoir the next morning.

We learned our lesson about not keeping enough water stored and snagged a rain barrel to set up under one of our gutters.  With our fifty plus animals on the property now, we need to keep enough water around for them to have to drink, for us to drink, and for our garden and fruit trees.

In other news, we finally eliminated the mole that had been creating such chaos in the front yard landscaping and that had made us late to Kenn's dad's birthday dinner.  After months of setting traps and trying to kill the mole's food source we were finally able to get him. 

Proud Mole Hunter

It's definitely a matter of being in the right place at the right time when getting this job done.  When rounding the corner into the front yard on Saturday, I spotted a moving mole hill and yelled for Kenn to grab the shotgun.  Moles are pretty sensitive to vibrations and the mole hill stopped moving with my yelling.   After about fifteen minutes of standing still next to the mole hill though, it started moving again.  Kenn, point blank, shot the hill and after some digging around in the dirt we found our perpetrator.  Apparently this is a pretty effective method as we used it on a second mole the next day.  As I learned from Kenn's dad, moles come in pairs.  Hopefully we get a break from these buggers for a few weeks before new ones move in.

Brave New World

Checking out their new surroundings

Over the last week and weekend we were able to put the finishing touches on the run for the chicks and turkeys.  The gate is on, chicken wire staked down, and netting is up.  Seems pretty predator proof but I think Kenn is secretly hoping for a bobcat to fall victim to our netting over the top of the run. 

For hours we watched our chicks and turkeys take brave leaps out of the barn coop and into their new outdoor world.  It was amusing to watch as they flailed and hurled themselves out the doors.  I thought they needed a ramp at least to get back into the coop, but nope!  Those brave birds were able to hop right back into the safety of their indoor home.