07/22/2025
Good Morning from the farm. It’s Tuesday the 22nd of July, and so far this has been quite a Hot, Wet Summer.
We have gotten heavy downpours pretty much everyday, with temps in the high 80’s -90’s F ( 26 - 32C) and humidity levels running at 90%+, making “Feel Like” temps above 105F+ (40C+).
Great for certain garden vegetables and for our Pecan and Chestnut trees, but with so much rain, several areas within our animal pens has gotten over-saturated, and we are having to dig new drainage trenches to release the water locked into areas within our pens.
The average rainfall in July for our location is about 3 Inches, however, we have recorded over 5 Inches so far, and about 30% above normal. This has also taken us out of the Drought status we had going into this year.
Currently, we are preparing to get our first batch of ducklings into a larger area to get acquainted with the rest of the flock before they actually join them.
Once that area is complete and the ducks moved, the 2nd group of later hatchlings will move into the smaller outdoor coop until their time to transfer to the larger pen.
We are still working on reenforcing the outer perimeter and installing counter measures to deter the Sable Fox couple that got several of our birds this past spring / early summer. We did have the male back in the chicken area a few days ago, but he was hunting for eggs and we spooked him before he made it to the inner coop area.
We have a flock of Crows and Ravens that hang out in the lower area, abd they have been great lookouts, making a lot of commotion when a fox comes near the fence line and alerting our hens to go back to the inner coop area.
Our first batch of Chicken / Turkey hatchlings are all doing great in the expanded area, becoming accustomed to our flock of chickens, ducks and the goats too.
We believe we have at least 3 new Roosters, one of which is our Houdan and another our “Vampire” Naked Neck cross Turken (Mother is a Naked Neck - Father a Siptzhauben).
We may have another but have not identified it yet. Many of the new chickens do have our Spitzhauben Rooster look and one may be a Spitzhauben - Ayam Cemani cross.
Our wild patch of native Morning Glories have started to flower, and the first ones that we believed were going to be the native white color flowers are actually a pale blue, which is a nice surprise.
The Morning Glories we planted out on the front pathway have gone crazy with several already crossing over the tops of our trellises, and 3 varieties (Pink, Purple and Dark Purple) of flowers have bloomed. Still waiting on the variegated and spotted blooms to appear.
The garden area looks like a jungle due to all the rain and not being able to mow or w**d wack. We did get a little mowing done with our Ego 56v Mower but because the grass was so dense and damp, the battery doesn’t last as long, and we only have the 1 large 7.5 Amp battery, and the smaller ones tend to heat up and lose charge in a few minutes of use in the mower.
We are still trying to get the Koi Pond finished this summer. I still have some more excavating in the middle and to level up the embankments before we lay the liners and pipe work for the skimmer and pumps.
All this rain did allow us to identify low areas around the new pond and driveway which we are filling in but ensuring a drain area to the culvert to allow water to flow and stop pooling on the driveway.
Once we get the pond lined, we will build a small Grist Mill with Water Wheel on to of the foundation of the original Koi pond. This will house our bio-filtration and water return pump to power the Water Wheel feature, back into the new pond area.
In addition, we plan to widen the driveway a bit more at the top entrance and midway down by the pond, and raise the center section about a foot to make it easier for delivery trucks when they pull in.
Here are some pictures from this morning abd during the past few days:
Have a great and safe week.
