Making progress

Along with the usual weekend chores, we have been working on the growers pens at the yard.

http://annie-ayearinthelifeof.blogspot.com/2009/04/making-start.html

It really is a race against time, as we need to get the oldest chicks moved in sometime this week. The broody's eggs are due to hatch next weekend and she will need the small ark the youngest chicks are in, so they will need to go into the older chicks run, hence the need for the older chicks to move on. All pens will need to be scrubbed, disinfected and aired, so we are looking at mid week at the latest.

Progress has been fairly good. The old house has been renovated, the outside painted with bitumen paint and the inside cleaned with Virkon S. Most of the fencing for one of the pens is completed. We are just left with the gate to hang and the house to move from the fowls run into position.

The pen we are moving them into is the pen we were going to put the boars in, but it was the one with less to do to complete. So the chicks will be in there for a couple of weeks until we finish the other side and then we will be able to swap them over.

The old fence we will leave up until the boars have gone, until then it will act as a chase to drive the pigs into the trailer. (all photos I was going to add,at this stage, are still on the camera....at the yard)

While we were working at the yard it struck me that the sounds around me were those of quintessential village life - a cricket match on the village cricket pitch, choir and organ practice in the church, next door, the neighbouring farmer's lambs calling for their mother's as they wandered a little too far and the bullocks on the hill shouting. Yet at the same time peaceful.