The Birds & The Bees

See this scary place? It's the inside of a baler. We call her "Lucy" because she's rather old and when we use her to make square bales they are a bit loose. Hubby had her fired up yesterday while working on her. Those tines sticking out are what pick up the hay, thank goodness he didn't have those moving. This morning he went to fire her up again and glanced in at the tines. He saw a Banty barn bird and what he thought was one chick nesting in the corner. He came and got me (men are just not good at things like this or at least mine isn't). He told me he thought there might be two chicks, so I told him I would take one and place it under my Barred Rock chicken who has been sitting for almost four weeks! Adoption works pretty good or at least I was hoping it would. I toodled out to the shop and when I bent down I started counting...one, two, three, right up to 13! Thirteen little chicks! Well the hardest thing was getting the new Mama Banty under control, and while Hubby was holding her I maneuvered over the tines (I felt like I was laying on a rotisserie and probably still have poke marks across my chest). I managed to get all but one chick, poor little thing fell through but I was able to scoop it up from below. The Mama Banty was not impressed as they are vicious little creatures and very, very protective. I'm sure they grow teeth while they're setting, only to lose them sunk deep into a human hand! Hubby even went and put a pair of gloves on, made me laugh, here's a big tough man and a 6 pound banty scrappin' it out. Anyway... (I'm still chucklin')... I took six of her chicks and slipped them under my Barred Rock... things were a bit testy at first, but after a bit she took them all. I've checked on her a few times today and even though I should have slipped them in at night, I think the adoption can be finalized :)

After all was done with the adoption, we headed out to pick up some lines on a couple of fields. Our regular pipe changer hasn't shown up for the second day in a row and I've been helping out with that. My nephew Mikey came and got me and I grabbed the kids and my brother and headed out. Here's a few pictures.


Nothin' fancy around here but we get the job done! We're taking the pipes off the Horn and heading up to the Hump with them.

Jevan helps out lifting pipes onto the pipe wagon. Poor gaff is just a tad too short to get them up and over, but we'll give him a couple of years :)


Sydney was more interested in sitting on the back hollering "Look Mama NO HANDS."

Off to lay out what we just picked up!

"Do you mind... I'm nursing here." This gal wasn't moving too far and we ended up driving around her.

And that's it for today... well I did do a bunch of stuff in the garden. I have water! and lots of it! The fence sprinkler works pretty good. I used the poly pipe along the fence but also had so many sprinkler heads I ended up using cheapy hoses too. I punctured them, screwed in the heads and they work great!