Sunday Reading - Clearing the Remains

The tree cutting part of the fence project is now complete. I even managed to get all the left over small limbs removed from the paddock area and stacked up ready to burn as soon as I get a nice calm day to do so. Of course around here that may not be until Spring now.

All told I cut out five weed trees from the paddock area and fence line and left two large Mulberry trees and one smaller one for shade in the Summer. Honestly Mulberry is pretty good burning wood but you really don't get as much firewood for the effort because they have so many small branches on them. I ended up making four large piles like the one you see above and probably barely got a full load of firewood out of it. I also wasn't being as particular about trying to get every reasonably sized stick off the limbs either because I am in a bit of a rush.

You can kinda see what I am doing in the above picture. The wood I am saving to cure is scattered there but you can see about how big the new ram area is going to be. About half again as large as he is used to. The end of the red building you see in the back will be one wall of his shelter I hope to get started on tomorrow.

Of course the hens came running when they heard me working over there. They are always underfoot it seems and when the hens come the roosters are soon to follow.

Yes I said roosters. We now have three roosters as the only two surviving chicks ended up being roosters. I figure there is some kind of natural law that made that happen. Now that the two chicks have grown into roosters and started crowing and gang raping the hens Rueben the older rooster has started getting kinda mean and aggressive.

Or maybe it's just because he is over a year old now himself. That year to year and a half mark seems to be the time when the meanness kinda starts coming out.

Anyway it seems to first victim of a newly aggressive rooster around here is always my son. Not sure why that is but it's happened twice now. Mornings seem to be the worst times too. I noticed Thursday when I was getting ready for the market day move than Reuben was doing that little sideways walk towards me and pretending he was eating when he wasn't.

When I got home yesterday my son told me he had killed Reuben. Apparently the rooster attacked him from behind while he was attempting to wire a part of the fence Frazier was busting through but my son had his shepherds crook with him and took a swing at the rooster knocking him flat. When I got home he said the rooster hadn't moved since he hit him and that was over an hour ago. When I went back to investigate however there was no rooster body to be found.

A few hours later though Reuben did in fact show up hiding in the coop. He didn't come out the rest of the day either and has made it a point to stay far away from people ever since. Maybe he learned a valuable lesson?

He better have because we got two new roosters we can try out already. As I said roosters are a dime a dozen so no reason to put up with a mean one and so far every one we get eventually turns mean.

So anyway I am about on schedule so far. Still hoping to have the shelter built and fence wire up by the end of this week just in time to turn the ewes out with the rams and then start work on the east pasture. I have plans for a brief stop tomorrow afternoon to spin out the honey I harvested last Thursday and then it will be right back to fence work once again.

Keep Prepping Everyone!!!!!!