Progress at Last!

I can't believe the shop is essentially finished!  All that needs to be completed is paining the faschia.  I finished the electrical, put the trim up and we have it roofed.  We did hire a young guy to do the sheetrock while we left for the weekend.  It was great to come home and not see exposed studs and insulation any more!  So, I'm slowly starting to move my tools in.  Yay!  On Easter, I drove down to San Diego to suprise my family with a visit and my dad gave me two more tools - a nice router table with a high quality router.  I have a router, but no router table and now I can keep one handy for hand use and keep the table one set up for use without having to change the router in and out.  He also gave me a nice quality board planer!  This is cool.  Now, I can take boards and set them to whatever thickness I want and run them through the planer.  The other thing he is giving me I couldn't get in the car and I'll have to get it later.  A really nice quality Grizzly drill press.  Wow, my lucky weekend!

 I have a lot of stuff sitting on the floor right now because I need storage mounted on the walls.  I'm trying to find some kitchen cupboards from someone doing a remodel and who are getting rid of their cabinets.  I think they make much better shop storage than shelves.  So, I'm on the hunt for that!  The next thing we will start is the attached carport.  That's phase 2.  One thing at a time.

The not so baby chickens are doing great!  I can't believe they are 9 weeks old today!  Looks like I have found a home for one of the roosters and I'm working on the finding a home for the other one.  I'm waiting just a bit longer to make sure they really are roosters, but I'm pretty certain. All four are very healthy and doing great.  It's exciting to know that I'll have raised the hens from birth (well, momma hen did) and that I will have seen them all the way from being IN an egg to laying eggs!

 

I've started insulating the coop for the hot summer approaching.  I know - spoiled chickens!  I think they need all the help they can get.  Last summer it got up to 112 and it's hard on them.  So, I'm insulating all the walls and ceiling and hoping that will help them some.  You will really think I'm off my rocker when I tell you I saw a portable evaporative cooler (swamp cooler that uses virtually no energy and cools great in places like the desert with very low humidity) good for rooms 100sf or less for under $100.  I'm thinking of putting it in their coop, pointing the draft away from them and towards the wall and cooling their coop.  Jury is still out on that one.  

I also think I may have solved my squirrel problem.  I buy organic layer feed at $23.75 and the squirrels were feasting on it!  I bought what is basically a treadle feeder from ebay at a great price and it looks like it's working.  The squirrels are too light to open the feeder, but the chickens can.  I haven't seen a squirrel in there for a few days but here's one from about a week ago panicking and trying to find a way out of the run!

I was getting very frustrated with the garden's lack of progress with soil testing, building the structure, etc, but the last couple of days seem to be showing promise!  It has been unusually cold here this Spring and I think it just hasn't been warm enough.  We've had a week or so of warm and what did manage to sprout seem to be taking off now.  I'm gonna monitor and hopefully I'll have something worth taking pictures of very soon!