New Cow!

And its the ugliest thing you ever did see. But after a brief head butting session has settled right in to our pasture. The other cow has stopped mooing and balance is restored.

We found him on Craigslist and after a trip to choose him where we got to choose him from a  large herd, he was delivered last night. 

Irrigation started on Saturday and it has been a bit of a pain to work with the gates on the gated pipe. But we will get it down.  the garden didn't like it very much and now we need to do some repairs since the water was rough on our ditches.  I'm not used to the amount of pressure in gated pipe versus regular head gates.  We'll figure it all out I'm sure.

My husband is working on our new chicken coop. After some discussion we decided that we could use a chicken coop we already had which still had a sturdy frame.  A few modifications and it should work.  It started life as one of those honeybee shelters that you see in farmers fields.  The frame was solid still, the floor was rotted out from chicken poop and the walls are really weathered. The roof is solid.  So we will most likely replace the walls, the floor will drop to the ground and have a sand/dirt floor and hubby is going to pop out some nesting boxes out the back.  So, a big change, but much cheaper than building from scratch. We will also demolish another old coop we have and keep a smaller coop that is getting worn, but is still a good place for young chicks when they are ready to come outside.

Did I mention the strawberry plants?  I had someone call me on Saturday who wanted to buy 500. I said sure thing.  He asked about bartering and we discovered he had firewood and we needed firewood.  We thought 1 cord wood to 600 plants.  When he got here yesterday morning he said he realized he didn't have a full cord (don't know if he didn't have room or didn't have the wood) so he also brought cash.  We settled on 50 plants for $80 worth of wood and $70 cash. So a great trade!  And even better when we were sorting out the plants and I realized I only had 500.  So I would have been short! 

I think the strawberry farm people may have gypped me. I planted about 500 plants, Dad got 200, I sold about 140 or so.  This guy took 500, I count a shortage of 200+  I will be leaving a negative review.