Operation Closer to Pool Party Day 1

Oh...the horror of the heat.  Another record 3 days in a row. Lets give a shout out to 103 degrees. Seriously. 


It took several breaks coming inside the house to cool off in the AC, 3 bottles of Gatorade, and several full body soakings with the water hose to make day one of operation redo patio successful.   


I know I seem a little bipolar, ok manic, when it comes to projects, but I have a week off and Im trying to get everything done within this week since I'm off of work. Did I forget to mention I'm off from rotting in the box for the whole week? Hell yeah I am. I would like to call it "My attempt to regain sanity and not be constantly annoyed by humanity week." So far so good. 


So I decided to extend the patio out and to the sides. The pool will reside within this patio. The deck for the pool was totally freaking me out design wise and financially i don't think we could afford what we really wanted around it right now, so we figured we would do it this way instead of rushing into something. Insert sigh of life and relief here. 


So today I leveled out the existing dirt, inserted edging around the perimeter to define the patio, raised the fire pit, sweated profusely, and ordered more AC pads(we use them as pavers). We will move in texas black gravel to fill in the patio, hopefully friday once I put down some super kick ass weed barrier.  After this is done, we can set and level the pool and insert the lining and pump. 


Tag me out. Now I'm sore and my back hurts. 

Today I found the girls smoking Cigarettes and Reading the Times

A few months ago my friend Jess said, "Hey I read an article about Coffee Chaff . You should come and get some for your chickens." Remember Jess and Elizabeth, they own the Austin Roasting Coffee. Seriously, buy some of their coffee. So good.


A few days ago I stopped by his roasting shop asking for a huge favor(see cannon ball post) and he said I really needed to take some of his chaff. I had read a few blog posts and articles about using it and decided I would finally give it a shot. Good stuff from The tangled Nest  

Chaff

I am using the deep litter method with wood shavings. It works well except I'm still having a lot of flies hanging around. Im pretty sure it's this wicked heat so to combat this I added some sweet pdz, a horse stall cleaner that should help with the smell and well, wet poop. I know gross. But maybe the chaff can help. So I added the layer of chaff to the existing layer of wood shavings and so far so good. Like the linked article said, a major drawback is because it is so light and airy, it easily gets scratched into the waterer. After a week of it being in the coop this is the only con I have found. I feel like maybe it's airiness will also be good for the girls and help keep them cooler, rather than piles and piles of wood shavings. 


The girls love it.  At first they were apprehensive, I snuck it in while they were free ranging. But after they got over the initial shock they were happy to scratch around and give it a try. By the end of the day they were dust bathing, loving the new litter. 


Contact your local coffee roaster and I'm sure they would be glad to give you some of their chaff. My lot was from one day of roasting (not sure of how many pounds) and it was enough to cover the whole bottom of the coop.  I'm going to try it for the summer and see how it fares vs. the wood shavings.  Thank god the caffeine content is out of this chaff or Im sure the girls would be pecking me for their next coffee run. 

Cannon Ball

So a couple of years ago I was at my cousin Jacq's in Marfa and she had a stock tank in her yard that she was going to turn into a pool. I thought this was brilliant and filed that into my list of things I wanted to accomplish when I became a lucky homeowner.

Enter the heat.


Now that we have our own place and it's ridiculously hot, I decided it's time for our very own stock tank pool. I have done a little research online and a couple of people have already attempted to do this very same thing. The Brick House and Waldorf Modern  have a few tutorials on how they set up their pools. I am going to try something a little different.I am going to line ours with a pool liner so the salt water, if I decide to go this way or chlorine (yeah yeah I know, but I grew up in a chlorine pool and Im still alive, healthy and hey I'm weaning of the antipsychotics now as we speak) won't erode the steel tank. I also drank out of the water hose as a child. What what? I am going to add a pump and filter, so I won't have to waste water each time by dumping it out and refilling when the water gets nasty. The tank I bought today is ginormous at 10 ft  round x 2 ft high and holds 1100 gallons. Refilling each and every time or dying from some bacteria stowing away in the tank is out of the question. Gotta have a pump. 


How hard was it to get home? A pain in my ass honestly. Oh and my friend Jess's. He lovingly helped me haul this baby home.  He happens to work right by the place that I bought the tank from and when I found out they wouldn't deliver it to my house, I asked Jess to help with a favor. I think we both thought it would be easy. Just strap this bad boy to the back of his pickup and head home. Oh no. It's never that easy though. 

I mean it hung off the sides of Jess's truck say 2 ft each way, but I thought, "oh yeah, this is totally going to work." But I grew up in Louisiana and he grew up in California and he felt that this was a little too backwoods red neck of sorts. This big tank was totally going to blow off his truck and kill someone he figured. Reluctantly I agreed. Flash forward to us two hours later, in the sweltering 101 degree Austin heat today, finally finding a flatbed truck to rent. 

Loading it up 

So the plan in the next few weeks is to build a deck around it, add a liner, pump, and filter, fill it up with water, and enjoy for the summer. Thanks to Jess for helping as I couldn't have done it without him. 


Now, who wants to swim. We are having a pool party and everyone is invited. Just NO DIVING or RUNNING or I'm gonna have to blow the damn whistle. 

The Girls are Panting

And this may be the reason why:

Seriously. Yeah. I know. That says 112 degrees and yes, my car was parked in the shade. Holy crap its's hot in Austin already.
It's supposed to be in the upper 90's all week. That being said it is easier for one of the girls to die from heat than it is from the cold. I have been reading on how to keep the girls nice and cool and there are many techniques that can be used. I tried frozen water bottles in the coop, but they were just super skeptical.  I thought maybe they would sit by them or even on top of them to cool off (ok, I may have done a little demonstration for them) but no luck. They literally stared at me and I could tell they were contemplating what the hell I was thinking. 
Water bottles.......... no good. Enter the mister. 

Nothing fancy, but it works. I got the 9.99 Home depot special and ran a water hose all the way to the back. I turn it on intermittently throughout the day to keep them nice and cool. They love the water from it and they also love the wet ground it creates. It's their favorite part of the coop to scratch around in once the mister is off. They still pant and spread their wings because the heat is ridiculous, but I think it helps throughout the day. Aaaaannnnd  Global warming.....end scene. 
Another tip I have been using is putting electrolytes in their water. I went to the local feed store and got a bottle of the good stuff. I add a teaspoon per gallon to their water. It does not affect the taste  and I know that this simple step keeps them well hydrated. 
I am also going to get a battery powered fan to put in the henhouse for the nights it doesn't drop below 90. The circulation and ventilation will help for when it gets super bad in mid June and July. Since the heat is already offensive now, I can't imagine what its going to be like in a few months. 



Anyone else have any other tips to beat the heat? 

I love Chicken Shit

Harvest

Sad little harvest so far. So far all I have grown is a Strawberry(ate it), a couple of banana peppers, a few super sweet 100's and some yellow pear tomatoes. Oh and a Jalapeno but big Barb got it before I was able to pick it. And they took out the eggplant in 2.5 seconds when I wasn't looking. Damn they are super fast those girls (Im a sucker for free ranging) .

Seriously. Famine style.
This fall, it's gonna be huge. Huge I'm telling you. 

It was bound to Happen

The wind blew and the gate I thought was latched came undone and the boys got loose. 

I was in the back fighting with a water hose when I heard it. The girls were free ranging. 

Yeah. I know.

Rouge couldn't get to the coop fast enough and the boys got her. 

She's ok. Thankfully. They got a few feathers off of her back and hurt her leg. She wasn't bearing weight on it for about 2 days. Finally today she is putting her leg down and is walking. Throughout it all, that Rouge girl never stopped eating or drinking(she would never miss a treat) and even kept laying. She's a resilient girl. I sprayed her wound with an antiseptic ointment, massaged her leg(advice from the poultry forum) and added electrolytes and vitamins to their water. So far she is doing great. 

I felt guilty for not latching that gate and was super mad at the boys. But it was my fault. The gate should have been latched. Lesson learned. 

Lots of training yet to be done with those two. Sooner rather than later. 

My Rouge girl in front. 

Fight the Blight......and other things

Well I received an email back from the Texas Master gardener. According to him, I have a "variety" of problems going on. Good stuff. My thumb has gone from a faint hint of green to black and necrotic on the verge of falling off. Seriously ouch. 


Luckily, I don't have any nematodes. One of the problems I have is called early tomato blight. Seeing as though it has not rained in Austin for 2 months and has been dry dry dry, tomato blight should not be a very common disease occurrence right now.  I guess it's sort of not my style to grow things easily. I think I may have been super paranoid about watering in the beginning and ended up watering too much. The fungus is now out of control so I am going to have to use a copper fungicide, still organic, to kill it. I was going to spray over the past few days, but the forecast called for rain. Hopefully tonight we will get that nice, welcome cold front. I clipped off all the dead, affected leaves and I am hoping to salvage what's left. Surprisingly, I do have quite a few tomatoes growing even though the plants are somewhat small still. 


The second problem I have is a bug infestation. The master gardener couldn't tell for sure what type of bug it is and I have yet to see any so I am going to start using NEEM oil to get rid of any type of infestation.


Even after reading a ton of material on what to do and what not to do, I still cant grow a damn tomato. Lesson #1 learned: even the simplest mistake can ruin something, but next time I swear I won't go crazy with the water.