Ditch Deer

Back in March the kids and I were doing some pretty long bike rides trying to get out of the house during state wide lock downs. It kept us busy and away from people since we are out in the country. On one of the rides we were out on a country road near a large drainage ditch for a field and took a break in the shade. The ditch had large chunks of concrete and among the concrete were these sad little concrete deer someone had tossed. They were missing ears and tails and parts of their legs but the rebar was still there.

Greta insisted we save them so once we got home the truck was taken back and the deer picked up. One was a buck and the other a doe and it turns out their fawn was in the ditch as well but it's head had broken off and was beyond repair.

The poor things sat under a large tree for nearly two months before I got around to figuring out a plan for their repairs. My dad mentioned Bondo might work so I ordered a tub of that off of Amazon. It was considered "non-essential" so it took a couple of weeks to get here.

I went out on a 95 degree day and sat under the tree in full vapor mask and mixed up the Bondo into a gooey paste and attempted to "sculpt" ears and a tail and fix the cracks. I didn't really know anything about Bondo but it set up within a minute or two so I had to work fast.

The definitely aren't perfect but it will work. I used a hand sander and sanded down the Bondo and went out and spray painted them last week. While painting them I saw 1961 stamped on their sides. The little antique ditch deer have a new lease on life.

Random This and That

The pool made it through the winter. We weren't sure how an inexpensive above ground pool would fair through our midwest winters but it did alright. We lowered the water below the filter lines, put winterizer in it and covered it with a pool tarp and then coated it with this blue shrink wrap to keep the cover on. It worked for a few months before our crazy wind got it off. So we re-shrink wrapped it and it made it into February before once again blowing the cover off. This time we just left it off since it was so close to spring. The down side to not recovering it was the water started growing stuff so we had to pump it out (fried our pond pump doing this) and scrub it down. I hope this fall we are able to come up with a better solution to keep the cover on. The kids are sure enjoying the pool again this season.

I had blogged about our progress on the walnut grove fence project. Sean welded the fence along the front of the property and we were able to get cattle panels attached so no goats make a run for it through the large areas in the fence. We are pretty happy with how it turned out. Now we just have the other three sides of this never ending project to finish.

Things are still weird in our world regarding coronavirus. Most restaurants have reopened, some with their lobby open some still with only curbside pickup. We've started a fun tradition of picking up food and going to a nearby church lawn and having a picnic dinner. We were finding our food was soggy by the time we made the 30 minuted drive home so this way we enjoy these beautiful evenings and have fresh food. It's a win win!

A couple of years ago we stumbled upon a local bike trail that connects several small towns around us. Wesley and I have ridden it before and had a great time so we invited my folks who were still in town for a ride. Greta also joined us as she's become a pretty confident bike rider. It was sure fun! We will have to go again soon.

The Bird House

Do you know how I can tell it's Spring? I fall into bed at night totally exhausted. I don't think I could cram one more thing into these days. I do love Spring and Summer. Well my chicks hatched. The ones is the incubator and the ones under the broody hen. I bought 11 hatching eggs from a gal I found online (5 guinea eggs and 6 chicken eggs). I put the majority of the chicken eggs under the broody hen and the guinea eggs in the incubator. The hen hatched out the chicken eggs no problem. I checked her for several days collecting the little balls of fluff and put them in the brooder. I felt awful taking them but our barn cats would not have allowed them to survive. I got 3 of the 5 guinea eggs to hatch in the incubator, I was hoping for all of them but oh well. I think incubators might be a little more tricky than I first thought.

Seven chicks and seven keets.

The first batch of guinea keets I bought at the feed store are now teenagers and outside doing well in their "nursery coop". I built a transitional coop in the back of the goat house so that they have a safe place to roost at night. Often times guineas roost in trees and are slowly picked off each night by owls. To prevent this it's good to train them to roost in a coop that can be shut each night. I moved out 10X10 foot dog kennel next to the new coop so they have an outdoor run while they are growing up.

It's bird central around here! It's been fun seeing what hatches and having little chicks and keets in the house. The kids are always over at the brooder feeding them dried meal worms through the little front window.