Worming

I bet you all thought this would be about having earthworms in the garden.  Nope, 7 years and we still don't seem to have earthworms.  We had some red compost worms last year that made it through the winter under some straw in the vegie garden but no sign of them this year.  It was too dry, I think.  Not a tiny bit of rain all winter and spring.  Oh, what an exciting day it was in Fernley when we found our first earthworm after only living there a couple of years.  Here in our sandy realm, so far not a one.

Nope, today we wormed the cat, the two dogs, the three goats and the miniature horse.  We generally do this in early June every year.  I don't recall why we do it in early June but we must have had our reasons when we first started this tradition.

We are worming the cat and the dogs specifically for tapeworms.  Penney had tapeworms a couple of years ago.  I thought is was shocking.  In all my years of dog ownership, I had never actually had a dog with known tapeworms.  There are no fleas here so we thought we were safe.  Turns out that if the cat or dog eats rabbits [and ours do] the rabbits all have tapeworms which the directly pass on to the dog or cat.  Isn't nature fascinating!  Yuck.

Any way, it is real and we are working to prevent problems.

I finally found a farrier that will come out our way.  I got a recommendation from the vet tech at the animal clinic we have been taking the dogs to occasionally.  Honestly, we worm and give the basic shots ourselves so unless your getting neutered or need rabies or are really sick, when you are a pet around here you don't see the inside of the vet's office.  Saves us a ton of money.

A Morning at Home

I fed the goats and the dogs this morning.  The cat showed up late and he didn't get his canned catfood.  Don't worry.  He has a mountain of dry catfood on an old table inside a shed.  I cleaned the goat pen.  Got the wet straw out of the goat shed.  Cleaned the water trough and got those cute goats some clean water.  I decided to take the goats out and let them start eating weeds.  We have just the tiniest bit of green grass coming up and I am counting on those goats to keep the cheat grass and mustard down to a minimum.  Obie, the big goat, decided to take a couple of big chunks out of my nice pine tree on the way back to the pen.  I have got to get a piece of fencing around that tree before it is completely destroyed.

I then got the seed starting materials organized.  Well, maybe organized is a pretty strong word for this mess.  I found a lot of the trays and such that I need to get things moving.  I ordered coconut coir seed starting medium but it hasn't arrived yet.  About March 15th I need to get some seeds in the dirt.  I still have to straighten out the greenhouse and get some water in the reservoir inside the greenhouse.  That keeps the moisture level up and helps even out the daytime and nighttime temps.

Hubby got one of our nice new gates up.  We still have to put wire on the bottom since I don't want the dogs in this area.  I also want to be able to keep little Penny Poo Poo locked into the backyard.  The pots and seed starting stuff are behind the wooden shed.  The shed definitely has a forward lean to it.  The wind has been eating the sand out.  Maybe we will have to jack it up and see if we can straighten it out a bit.  The wood siding is looking really dry so I either need to sand and paint or get some Thomson's Waterseal on that thing.  Painting it white with green trim would look really good and go with our color theme but I really hate to add another project on to my list so we shall see.

Here is the second gate Hubby put up.  Looks fantastic.  We have to get some wire on the bottom of this gate as well.  Penny is definitely going to be able to go right through the bottom rungs. Hubby has the T-post in place for us to get another short piece of wire up on the right side.  Looks like Rusty the Red Dog snuck into the picture.  In the background you can see my giant pile of compost.  I am running a sprinkler on it today.  I can't keep it moist enough to actually want to break down into compost since it has been too cold to run much water.  We'll be spreading it into the garden pretty soon, ready or not, and letting finish composting in the dirt.  That actually ends up working out okay for us.  

You can see the goat pen gate on the right and the shade cover/hay shed/wood shed on the left.  You can't see the greenhouse in this photo.  It is forwards from the shade cover.  The veggie garden will be well protected from dogs and goats when the fencing is finished.  The far left side is going to have a 14 foot gate and a 4 foot man gate.  When both are opened up, we will have an 18 foot wide hole to aim at when we are backing a trailer in there.  Unfortunately, when we designed the greenhouse and veggie garden, we designed a jig jog from the driveway on the side of the house into the back area.  You try to plan ahead but sometimes you just don't quite get it right!

The wind is supposed to come up later today and it is supposed to be warm.  Tomorrow is supposed to go much colder.  This is why we never get any fruit on our fruit trees.  Warm, cold, warm, cold.  Oh well.

Since the wind isn't blowing yet, I decided to take the hedge trimmer out for a spin.  I whacked and sliced and trimmed for quite some time.  Sadly, I am not done yet but I am seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.  I still have to rake and gather it all into piles for burning when we get a day that isn't windy.  I might need two days.  That's a lot of dead grass and brush out there.

Noon- Time to eat lunch, take a break, maybe get a little nap in and start all over again!

A Really Big Chainsaw

Hubby has two helpers - Rusty the Red Dog and 

Little Penny Poo Poo 

This is Hubby's new pride and joy.  It is a really big chainsaw.  He is cleaning it up.  He traded one of the neighbors for it. Hubby had a big block Chevy intake manifold and the neighbor had this saw Hubby was eye balling so one day they swapped.  Junk for junk :)   Actually, they both think they got a good deal.

Hubby now has three saws.  All Husquevarna which he seems to have taken a shine to.  He has been ordering all kinds of bits and pieces to put on the saws.  A fuel line here and an air filter there.  He said something about pistons rings and a piston borer not too long ago.  I tried to look fascinated.

What else to do on the day off?  I burned a little brush.  I cut it down yesterday and raked it into piles.  Always risky since, if the wind comes up, all that hard work of raking is for naught.  I checked the weather forecast before raking yesterday.  Fortunately, it all worked out fine.

The dogs, and the cat,were a little behind on shots.  We do the animal shots ourselves since we save a bunch of money doing it that way.  I don't like needles at all.  Hubby doesn't mind poking the animals so I hold them and he pokes them.  We will have to give the goats their shots when we get to the feed store in a few weeks.

The cat, the dogs and the goats got wormed last week.  Penny likes to eat bunnies and so does the cat.  The rabbits have tapeworms and that means the other animals can get tapeworms from eating the bunnies.  I don't even know if the goats have worms.  You are supposed to worm them every so often, just  as a precaution, I guess.

Hubby has gone over to the neighbor's house.  They are probably telling bad jokes and Hubby is telling him all about how he got that saw running.  All in all, a nice relaxing day off.

I can't help but be impatient that we aren't getting the fencing done.  The new reason is because he wants to make sure the four foot gates we are buying will really fit in a four foot hole.  I told him that they specifically said they do fit in a four foot hole including hardware.  Oh, well, maybe we will get this moving next week.  I am searching for a driving pony and I need to get this done!