What a blow!

Last night we had the first big wind of the season - bent the flag's bracket back about 180 degrees! I brought in the wind chimes and glass lights last night, just to be safe. The Shrine Goddess, thankfully, is protected in the border by the trees - she's fine.

We have a lot of branches down and a few boards from the fence. The ducks were a bit alarmed last night, we could hear them inside the house. The cheekins were put off egg laying, we'll be adding more wind protection for them and increasing their hutch space hopefully this weekend. Meanwhile, we are trying an experiment by allowing the cheekins out to forage.

Josh's main job this weekend is gravel. We need a layer of small rock as a foundation for the new shed and a few inches deep inside Duckgard, since I'm slipping all over the place on the wet hay. It works well in summer, but it's just too damn damp in the Fall and I shudder to think what it will be like in Winter once things start freezing a bit!

Update: We've purchased several yards' worth of Lummi gravel and already have half the pen covered. So far it's managed to be much easier to walk on without slipping and completely capable of draining roughly 10 gallons of water poured on top. Something of vital necessity given that I must pour out the water bins inside the pen to clean and re-fill.

Hi ho, hi ho, off to work we . . . went

Crazy amount of work done today.

We bought another cubic yard of Lummin to set as foundation under the new shed, but realized after roto-tilling the soil that it would do nicely on its own. Four years as Bunhalla has made the soil very rich, several weeks of rain has made it nice and soft. It took about two hours to resettle the soil, level it off with a 10 foot length of 2x4, then place the foundation pieces. Tomorrow Josh will work on the walls, when I get home I'll help him with the roof.

Duckgard received 1 cubic yard of 5/8th Lummin rock, spread out and around. Bio-filter pump was cleaned, pond was skimmed and water porch reset with fresh, clean water. Which lasted a whole five minutes, I think. I'm still piling rocks around the bio-filter, my hope is to have a natural looking hill of rock covering it or at least, blocking the view.

We had a surprise draking - one of the chocolate anconas is a BOY! Grr. I paid duck (hen) price for him, too. *grits teeth* Katherina is now Nicholas.

And yes, as promised, duck porn. Please turn down your speakers!