It feels like spring!

Wow, I should really update more often, huh?

Well, we really enjoyed having President's Day off to do some work around the farm, and were blessed with wonderful weather to do it.

In the morning, we decided to make a trip to town to get feed, gasoline for the tractor, and other stuff. However, on the way there, I ran over some debris in the road which included a nail that embedded in my right front tire (and damaged, a bit, my right fender). So we ended up having an hour cut out of our day while waiting on the shop to fix that.

Then Steven and I began working on fencing the holding pen corral. All that is left of that corral from years-gone-by were the posts - none of the board fencing or the ramp/loading dock. We enclosed it all with woven wire, and plan to use it as a small holding area for the buck; or maybe for a doe and her babies; or whatever we need to keep separate until we get the rest of that second pasture finished.

The older doe should drop about any day. Steven is checking her often, and she is huge; but so far not acting like she's ready to delivery. The younger girl is not as big -- not sure what her schedule is going to be.

I've been meaning for some time to post this photo of the hay feeder Steven made. It didn't end up exactly the way he originally planned it, but it has worked quite well this winter. He will probably do some modifications on it before next winter.

He used logs (trees he cut from the grove) to make the bottom stability posts, and the uprights and the cross-beams on the top. He used wire then (he originally planned to use young branches stripped) to make the upright lattice work to hold the hay. He never really got the "tray" beneath finished -- and they keep breaking it off anyway by climbing on it. Anyway, this was about as low budget as you can get -- he cut all the wood himself, and the wire we had around, so there was no cash put into this, and it works fine.

Later in the day yesterday, we tore apart all the plumbing to the bathtub in the house, because the lime build up has really made for water flow problems. I'm going to pick up new hardware on the way home today, and hopefully put it all back together tonight.

This weekend we plan a controlled burn of the orchard meadow, and some brush piles, weather permitting. Try to get the poison ivy problem under control.