Carol Dee
Garden Master
DITTO - kind what I have in mind. Well maybe less snow! and NO ICE>Haven't seen a wooly bear yet. I'm hoping for a milder, snowier winter, myself. Milder around here means zero or above. I really hate those sub-zero days with wind chills that would frighten an Inuit into staying home. The only thing worse is mild enough to ice everything. I can dress for the worst cold, but ice means dangerous driving conditions for everyone.




We kinda live in a snow drought area. The Almanac puts Indianpolis and US on the same zone, but they get lake effect and We DON'T. Go figure It should make it warmer for my animals, too. I already have 450 bales of hay in the loft, and I'll pick up all of the straw that I need by Thanksgiving. I pretty much fixed the "lake" in front of my horse's shelter. The roofers didn't reattach the gutter from the south side of the barn roof, so it was leaking in front of the shelter and the gutter that hangs on the overhang at the entrance is "just for show". NO WONDER that I had up to 3 feet of water at the entrance. I saw a giant vet bill in my future! I hired some help, we fixed That gutter by reattaching it, cleaned out all of bedding that had worked it's way into this puddle (~ 12 x 12 ft.), then added 3,000 pounds of sand and almost all of the 9 ton of limestone that I had delivered. We left a pile of the limestone next to the shelter, in case it should sink, but I'm thinking THAT isn't gonna happen. My help finished with the limestone and then drove the tractor over it to strip the shelter and it didn't sink Then. Plus I put two 4 x 6 mats at the entrance to redistribute their weight and nothing has sunk. I botched my chick incubation last month, but DH and I decided to try one last time this year, so we should have chicks by the middle/end of this month, especially since HE wanted to be in charge of it. AS SOON AS we have the incubator/egg turner full I am harvesting my three rotten, dark cornish roosters. One of them stabbed me when I was putting out feed two days ago! It was all I could do to NOT step on him once I had him in the net!
Then I can start winterizing the coop for the hens, who will have to make it through one more winter before they are replaced. They are 2yo and 3yo hens, which I didn't plan for.
I am hoping to move the 5 arbor vitae that are 5-6 ft tall, started from 12 inches years ago out to be a wind block behind the shelter and barn. They were free, the roots aren't deep and so it's worth it to dig them up and move them later this month. Plus they are now shading my garden beds.