01/24/2009 Saturday. A Hard Day's Work Around the Farm and Progress.

Damp and chilly. Sun tried to shine and mostly succeeded.

Chas discovered yesterday that my Yamasa ATV's battery was almost out of water. It took him awhile to get the ATV apart. The battery is buried under the seat and requires that the whole back end be removed to get at the battery. Anyhow he filled the battery and trickle charged it. Today he installed it and jumped it with my car. We let it run for awhile to charge the battery. When I finally turned it off I was able to start it up really easily.

Enrique and Juan came to work today. I had them put the barn cleanings they dumped in a couple of weeks ago into the holes the pigs had dug. Enrique put wire on the hog panels and attached the hog panels back to the t-posts. This means I can toss some grass seed into the pen so the pigs have something to root up and eat - at least for a little while.

On my list of things to do was to remove the five-strand hi-tensile wire from the area behind the green barn. The guys removed the wire and wound it up into coils for me. The old fence used to run between the corner post with the DOT property south down the hill and just stopped dead in the middle of the open area to the south of the wood shed.

If I ever plan to use that area for a pasture I will put in temporary fences with rebar and polywire and insulators.

I plan to use the wire we removed on the new corrals in the road pasture. I may also put a corral in the Dexter pasture, too. I certainly need to widen the winter sacrifice pasture and make that pasture permanent.

I had Enrique and Juan move several hay bales into the Dexter stall for emergency feeding and had them put some over in the green barn for daily use. I use the hay in the green barn to feed the goats, sheep and calf and the hay in the stall to feed the Dexters if I don't want to put a new round bale in the Dexter's feeder.

After moving the hay, I had the two of them remove the flat, sharp stones that were put in vertically and outlined the flower beds immediately adjacent to the new arbor I put in two weekends ago. They removed the flat stones and laid them in the path under the arbor. Enrique and Juan moved in new river rock that I had stored and enlarged the bed slightly. Juan trimmed back the asters and other dead plants in that area. Next week I'll put in some chicken compost and will make that area look a little better.

I wanted the arbor to be the entrance way to the garden so we had to remove the stones from immediately in front of the hog panel. I still need to tear up a sheet to use to tie down the wisteria and to prune it once I have most of the branches in place.

Boy, It's a lot cheaper buying a hog panel and bending it to use as an arbor than it is to buy one. I have to scrub up the white arbor that Mike and Mary brought me and set it up in the cottage garden. I have to make a final decision as to where I want it to live in the garden.

Dinner was salmon burgers with rice and succotash. Boring but tasty.