We thankfully did not get the hurricane, but we did get lots of rain. Twelve days of it, 7 inches total. Too much rain for sure. It was like 2 months worth all in one shot. We took a lot of time to huddle the chicken tractors together, and tied them down due to the high winds. Everyone was sick of it, humans and animals alike.
We spent most of Monday just cleaning up the animals. For the girl's pen, we kept putting straw down to help keep their feet as dry as possible. The shot above is from us raking it up to help the ground beneath dry out, and try to avoid fire ants in their pen. When it rains, the fire ants come to the surface horribly for us. This year it seems worse than ever.
The plus of this goop, is it is garden gold. All of this, and what we scraped out of the chicken's area, got put on the round garden bed I am working on setting up. By spring it will have all decomposed, and make an extremely fertile area to plant whatever I want.
Even with letting this sit all day with the sun on it, it was still damp, so we had to do another layer of straw before we let the girls back in later in the day.
Speaking of fire ants..........They are evil beyond belief. We had cut our pasture before the rains hit, and got a good batch of it raked up and stored under a tarp, to use for the animals during the rains, when they couldn't be out eating. I was putting my hands in, grabbing some to feed the goats one morning, and bam! Fire ants swarmed up from the bottom and got me badly.
The plus of this goop, is it is garden gold. All of this, and what we scraped out of the chicken's area, got put on the round garden bed I am working on setting up. By spring it will have all decomposed, and make an extremely fertile area to plant whatever I want.
Even with letting this sit all day with the sun on it, it was still damp, so we had to do another layer of straw before we let the girls back in later in the day.
Speaking of fire ants..........They are evil beyond belief. We had cut our pasture before the rains hit, and got a good batch of it raked up and stored under a tarp, to use for the animals during the rains, when they couldn't be out eating. I was putting my hands in, grabbing some to feed the goats one morning, and bam! Fire ants swarmed up from the bottom and got me badly.
I need to get some fire ant bait and get this property treated ASAP, but the budget isn't being kind to me lately. Hopefully by the end of the month. The best way to attack them, from what I have read, is to broadcast bait all over the property, and treat individual mounds as well. I had really good luck with Amdro last year, so I am going to use that again.
We are slowly getting caught up on things outside, now that we have sun again. Thankfully we didn't have any flooding. I have been constantly praying for the southern side of our state, and South Carolina, who got it the worst.
So, no, we didn't float away, it's just a bit crazy here. I am going to work hard to get back on a normal schedule for blog posts to share with you soon. Stay tuned, lots of good stuff coming!
We are slowly getting caught up on things outside, now that we have sun again. Thankfully we didn't have any flooding. I have been constantly praying for the southern side of our state, and South Carolina, who got it the worst.
So, no, we didn't float away, it's just a bit crazy here. I am going to work hard to get back on a normal schedule for blog posts to share with you soon. Stay tuned, lots of good stuff coming!