Adventures In Homesteading (Day 45)
Hello Everyone!
Close enough to being on time, Side quests galore, An earthen bridge, A small farm pond & Bob Backwards is missed!
Alright I am running about an hour behind schedule with my writing routine which yup is totally fine with me. Considering the long day that I have had and the handful of tasks that I have left to do are going to burn p almost the rest of the daylight time... I dunno how much to even try spelling out here!
Early in the day I decided that I had finally had it with hiking through the entirety of the big gulch between my camps... which initiated a very long series of events and the inevitable side quests. My simple goal was to make a very tiny farm pond and then use all the clay and dirt from it to fix my gulch problem in regards to walking.
For the most part I made a big square hole in the ground and as I was digging like crazy just to get down a few feet into the clay bed. The hole itself is a square that is roughly four feet on each side and overall (down in the gulch) it is about fifty-six inches below grade which is the level of the path that leads downhill to the gulch.
By the end of the day I could easily walk on either of the large berms that I created beside each other and I only have eight more inches to fill in the berm on the left with the berm on the right. Once I get to that point I will have quite the large earthen bridge spanning the gulch and I can either leave it as is or keep building it higher so that it creates a smooth transition.
Since I am unsure how the farm pond itself will come out and where the water will pool I decided to leave myself enough room at each end of the earthen bridge to dig trenches if they are needed. The way that everything is setup currently none of the water in the pond would be relying on the berms to be held back but rather the ground itself and even how I dug it out is done so to aid in that.
Not that I am truly worried about having much water in the pond at this point because unless it comes bubbling up out of the ground there I do not have extra water to fill it with. I am at the point now with the frigging that it has really slowed down (due to density of the clay and soil) and I am going to have to begin using the chisel on the rock bar to etch away at it,
On a dfferenet note I am still pretty bummed about the passing of Bob Backwards so suddenly and both the other chickens have been sitting by his pen looking forlornly at it. Even Good Girl seems to miss his presence and honestly I do too because on top of everything else likable about him... he made for quite the night watchman.
Well I am fading out here on the writing and need to go bang out those other tasks. I hope that everyone is doing well. Ta ta for now.
Do you still have Backwards Bob? I did not know Bob Backwards and my heart hurts for him and you.
You did a lot of digging today. Remember, baby steps so you don't overwork your body.
Ha! I am a champ at pacing myself so there is no need to worry about that.
As for Bob Backwards (the rooster) I found him dead in his pen with his neck wrung. Unless he had some kind of freak accident... something got to him in broad daylight somehow... while the dogs were near enough that any critter with any sense would not approach his pen because they were on two sides of it... plus with Emily (the hen) and Bob (the other rooster) roaming around... and being much easier targets... so I dunno what happened to him exactly.
Before I buried him I checked his neck and it felt like he had two damaged (and dislodged) vertebrate and that his head had been wrenched completely around in a clockwise motion as if by sudden force being applied to it. Even his body had the feeling to it that he had gone from being alive to dead very quickly.
Truly it is a mystery as to what exactly happened... and if I had not heard so many loud and angry arguments around here I would write 'human involvement' out of the equation altogether. Just that I cannot exclude human activity tells me all I really need to know about the area that I am in.
For now though... I am going with 'freak accident' but I buried him shallow enough that I can examine the bones of his neck more closely... once the ants and bugs finish their job.
It either had to be a snake or maybe he got his head caught in the wire and flopped around until it broke his neck and then fell out of the wire. I do not believe a person did it, your dogs would have alerted you of them, and if any other animal would have done it, the dogs would have done the same. It is just sad that you will never know for sure what happened.
I had a guest at the time and there was a long period of time that we were off site. As a side note the comings and goings of folks around here is pretty hard to miss considering that we are all right on top of each other along a dead end road.
I am sticking to it all being an unknown given that I do not have any real evidence (aside from the broken neck) to paint a clearer picture. There are plenty of factors to it all that make me suspicious but I am by far not drawing any conclusions.
If all goes well over the coming weeks I will be blowing this popsicle stand with the bulk of my goals achieved for what I wanted to do with the place in regards to it being a farm.
One of the reasons that I have not been building stuff here is that I do not want to create a bunch of maintenance for myself in the future. So like that new berm being just made of 'earth' instead of a bridge will help spare me from having to maintain a bridge forever. In other words the lighter my touch on the place is now... the less hassle that I will have later on.
Early on I switched gears from making a home and farm here... to just making a farm. The local environment with all the loud angry voices, the constant traffic, the no privacy... plus a gazillion gunshots and explosions every week... simply is not the kind of place that I (nor the dogs) could ever 'be at home' in. It is just too stressful.
I am sorry this place is not working out to be the home you need.