Around The Farm

Early mornings in August are beautiful. Sometimes the skies are pink and sometimes the far field is covered in mist:

My little hens have been allowed their freedom all day, every day:

And they make the most of it, traveling everywhere:

Sometimes the hens all stick together and sometimes they go solo:

I use fish nets to clean the debris out of the stock tank every day but Remy discovered that he could reach them and began ruining them by shredding the netting and bending the frame with his teeth. I had purchased three fish nets (which aren't cheap or available locally, by the way) and he ruined two of them before I wised up and began hanging the last net where he couldn't reach it:

The baby chicks aren't such babies anymore. They began living freely with the pigeons and then gradually were introduced to the big chickens. These things must be done slowly and carefully lest one of them get hurt:

Of course they are bantams, so they'll never be big. This is about the age of three weeks, not quite as big as he broom head;

They are developing some pretty colors. The sad part is that about half of them will be roosters and I'll have to pay someone to butcher them. The upside is that I'll have some good chicken dinners:

The pigeons are not really happy about the chicken invasion but they can at least fly up to a high shelf and escape the peeping mayhem:

The Rugosa roses have been blooming wildly in spite of the drought. It would have been an even more spectacular display if we'd had more rainfall. The white wildflowers growing with the roses are Bouncing Bet. They make a nice combo, almost as if it had been planned:

I cleaned the chicken coop and dumped the resulting litter, poop, etc. in the tractor bucket to be dumped later. That turned out to be a mistake because the chickens went into the barn and scratched most of it back out of the bucket and onto the floor:

Most of the pigeons stay indoors but there are six or seven who enjoy getting out for a bit of fresh air in the morning. By afternoon, the metal roof is too hot: