Random Friday

1.  I don't know about everyone else, but I'm counting the days until the end of August.  I think I rode Lucy once -- ONCE, this month.  The nights have started to cool down nicely and we can open all the windows at 8pm or so.  Last night we were down to 68F when we went to bed at 10pm and this morning we were in the upper 50s while I mucked the oak pasture before work.  During the day, we are still 90ish but the nights are feeling like heaven.

2.  Another sign of fall coming is the flock of wild turkeys that cross the road in front of my car almost every morning as I head into work.  Quail scurry into the blackberry bushes when I pull into our driveway in the evenings.  Leaves have been falling for a few weeks, but that is as much related to the drought as to the weather.

3.  Brett has been busy building more compost bins.  It is slow going in the heat.  He is building a bank of four connecting bins so we will be able to turn the compost three times before it hits the last bin.  From there it will go into my garden.  Brett already built a bin near the pasture the boys are sharing with the goats.  We use compost from this bin to spread under trees and on the front lawn (the dry brown front lawn - we don't irrigate it so it only truly exists as a lawn in the winter).  He has finished the back of it -- a block wall -- and will put in the wood sides next.

4.  For the past few weeks while Brett has been busy building the oak pasture compost bins, I've been without an official place to put the mares' manure (and Jackson, of course, can't forget him).  So, I've been filling the muck cart and then dumping it in a pile near a low spot on the back fenceline.  Then, I scoop and fling fork-fulls over the fence into the blackberry bushes.  Brett says its good for my core.  And Camille noted that my arm muscles looked good when we were in Mendocino.  All the same, I'll be glad when the bins are finished.

5.  We have a very broody hen.  She's been sitting in the corner nesting box, wedged under the cover, jealously guarding everyone's eggs.  I've never had a Barred Rock go broody on my before and she is seriously broody. In the past, I've been able to reach under a broody hen who pecks at my arm but not viciously.  This hen fluffs herself up as big as possible and aggressively attacks.  We have to nudge her with a long stick to get her to leave, and she will often fly at our legs on her way out of the henhouse.  I'm naming her Attila the Hen.