Never Ending To Do's

Outside preparations. On going it seems. Or never ending is a better way to put it. It seems that I have been trying to wrap things up outside since September. Every time I think I am close to the end - the end seems to move farther away. I have been trying my hardest to get things complete before the bad weather sets in. I did manage to get some of these things done in some really beautiful weather. One of those things was the cleaning out and resealing of the gutters and their joints. No pictures of this, cause well, gutters are not that interesting and who wants to see dirty gutters. I know I didn't.

Stain. It could be a spot of something mysterious from who knows where on your favorite shirt of pair of jeans but in this instance it's wood stain. You can see in this picture how dry the wood is for the fence of the coop. The front and one top plank on the side of the fence have been stained. The bottom two planks along the side have not yet had the stain applied. The difference was amazing. 

Once again stain. We treat the coop with stain about this time every year. Whether it needs it or not. Clearly, as you can see by the picture it is in desperate need of a good staining. The right side around the window has newly applied stain. The rest hasn't yet been done. 

What a difference stain can make. The coop has a new coat of stain all the way around. Protected against the elements for another year. The clucks may not notice or care but I do. Now when I look out my kitchen window I smile at what a beautiful coop the Lady Clucks have. 

I moved all of the plants in from the patio to the mud room. They are quite happy there and have gifted me with some new blooms. 

Last week was a busy week for us here. All of that busyness tumbled right over into the weekend. 

Thank You

The words thank you do not convey the depth of our gratitude for those who have given so much of themselves for this country we call home. We have many family members and friends who have served and are currently serving in our great nations military. We here at 3Beeze Homestead hold great pride and are humbly honored to call these people friends, fathers, uncles, aunt, cousin, grand fathers and great grandmother.                                                                                                         

Weekend Recap

    We have had one busy end to October and start of November. I can not believe that we are nearing the end of this year. With birthdays and holidays around the corner we have a busy next few months ahead as well. Note to self-don't forget to stop and smell the coffee.  We had lots of to do's this weekend and only managed to check a few off of our list. (We didn't have a list. But you know what I mean.) 

I love Geraniums. I remember my mom always having them when I was a kid. Hers were pink. So each summer I go out and get my Geraniums. Red ones. Love the red. Each year when we get the freezing temps I lose them. The leaves get all sucked up looking and brown. This year I intend to keep these little pretties alive in our mudroom/laundry room. No sense in wasting these happy, colorful bits of summer. You all know how much I love summer. 

So I trimmed all of the brown sucked up leaves off. To find that these plants still had some life left and not all was lost in the recent below freezing temps. Very happy about this. I had to replant them in some smaller pots in order to move them indoors. They seem quite happy in their new digs. Now all I have to do is not forget to water them.

We had some raking to do this weekend as well. We still have lots more to do. I managed to get the area around the coop and run raked out. The roof to the run raked off and the run raked and cleaned out. Now that the walnut tree has lost all of its leaves and the dang walnuts, it was safe to get in and get things all cleaned up with out the worry of being assaulted by walnuts falling from the tree. They hurt when they hit you. 

As you can see in this picture and the one above our ugly girl is finally getting some feathers back. She has been in a molt since February. I am happy to see signs of her getting her feathers back. Our other hens have been molting here and there but not with quite as much gusto as this Australorp. Our egg production has dropped off considerably the last months of summer and this past week we have been two days with not a single egg. We got one egg on Saturday and nothing again yesterday. These clucks better get laying. I need eggs!!!

In all of the activity this weekend, raking leaves, moving trailers, cleaning gutters and the clucks coop and run we managed to enjoy the outside and had some nice weather. While we were outside we let the clucks out to forage in the yard and piles of leaves. They can really do a number on a nice pile of leaves. Our Easter Egger rooster Little Bit was working hard at his rooster duties. We have a resident mama hawk who resides in the trees by the creek and guess what? She decided it was time to do some hunting. I heard her and kept an ear open to where her squawks were coming from. Most of her noise was coming from a distance but one was directly over head. I looked up and sure enough there she was. Looking to mark her target. I looked into the yard and saw that Little Bit had all of his ladies gathered underneath the big pine tree. He had heard her too. What a good boy.

I told the guys and we hurried to get the ladies into the safety of their covered run. Little Bit was quite happy with that and remained in the yard with us guarding his precious ladies. The lady clucks were quite happy to be in their run. Preening themselves in the sun after foraging in the yard. 

Not everything that we had intended to do this weekend got done but we did do some of it, as well as some things that we hadn't intended on doing. Most importantly we enjoyed each others company.