Catch Up

We are a little behind on blogging. Holy Week and the Triduum were busy, plus the kids decided to start a little Strepidemic running through the house. So what can we say, it’s been an off week.

Happy cows are tasty cows!

The willow and witch hazel in the pasture are starting to leaf out.

Even if it’s just a couple of buds here and there, it’s a good sign. Hopefully they survive the drought.

This one got run over by the steers. The shoved the wire cage off the the side and slid it right over the tree, broke it off a few inches from the ground. The leaves that were forming on the upper portion are a loss, but there was one shoot growing on the section below the damage, so we will see if that can transition into a shoot and save the tree.

So that is a downside of this method of tree protection.

More woodchips! The kids loved watching them get dumped off. But they loved playing on the pile of woodchips even more. They are always very disappointed when Daddy and Uncle remove those wood chips for actual mulching and such.

Apparently, Winnie is a flower princess.

Ellie and Seppi took a break from scaling Mt. Woodchip to come help me plumb the new yard hydrant in the orchard. Ellie tried with all her might, but she is not quite strong enough to compress the pex pinch clamps.

Turns out I wasn’t either.

Or rather, trying to get the clamp in place in such tight quarters was a challenge, so the clamp didn’t seat in the pliers properly, and got pinched sideways instead of compressed properly.

The result was a leak. A very fast leak.

Then some dirt and grit got into the ratchet mechanism of the pinch clamp pliers and those wouldn’t work until I cleaned them out. But eventually we got the old one taken off and a new one seated properly.

This one did not leak (the water in the picture above was from the previous leak. Wire tied the hydrant riser to the t-post and put in an old bucket as a form holder.

Evie brought a wheelbarrow load of gravel to help it drain.

The hydrant is sitting on a T-connector, and a 3/4 pex line runs westward about 3 feet where it dead-ends in a shut-off valve and a pipe end.

This is about 3 feet down, accessible through a valve cover, although it is so deep that it would be impossible to work on without digging it up. This is there in case we want to branch off this water line to extend out for whatever reason. Mostly because I had all the parts to do it, and so why not.

Miss Winnie helped fill in the ditch.

Then we dumped out the nasty duck and goose waters, rinsed out the troughs, and re-filled them with nice clean water.

Job well done.

“Duckies! Go get your new water!”

Beautiful little cabbage patch, with interplanted onion sets, a couple of nasturtiums (volunteer) and borage (volunteer).

Baby duckies from last week.

With their favorite Mama duck. Trust me, if these are not the fattest meat ducks you ever saw in 5 weeks, it won’t be for lack of feed. Winnie makes sure of that.