Spare time, enclosures, wildlife

Mama and I will be busy with church and play practice beginning tomorrow evening so I was anxious to get some things done at the house last night in a brief moment of uncommitted time. It is difficult in times like this to know where to start so I started in the well house getting a makeshift work bench torn out in order to paint the wall behind it so we can put shelving there enabling me to empty the garage. It took Mama’s help and about an hour to get that done – less the painting.

There were some things I could arrange in the garage to give us more room until we can move things into the areas where we are going to either use them or store them, so I worked on that for about an hour also. Now there is room to actually park a car in the garage when needed. In the very near future I hope to have room for two cars in that garage.

All of that happened after dark because Mama and I went to Lowe’s after I got home because she wanted to show me a small metal building she and Grandpa had found that could serve as a chicken coop. They had already bought the material for the hog building so getting the coop ready would be the next project. Grandpa should get started on the hog building late today after they look at a house for rent in Weatherford.

The little metal building will do for the present but I would like to build a proper coop in the near future, but with Grandpa anxious to get off the farm in Bowie I will have to make something work for now to keep Mama’s flock near her. With the enclosure we have at the house in Chico we can make the coop and yard in very short order. And it should be defendable against a family of raccoons we see on a regular basis at the property as well as serving a secondary purpose for more storage at the farm once we get the larger coop in operation.

Last night before I went to bed I got one of the powerful flashlights I keep on hand and looked over the back yard and the property beyond it. I saw a large hog for the first time – about a 250 pounder. I also saw the raccoons in question as well as several deer.

I suppose our property has the largest concentration of oak trees in the area and the wildlife in our area are well aware of that fact. These oak trees produced a huge crop of tiny acorns which all the variety of animals seem to like. I do not think we can keep them off of the property so we will have to figure out how to share it with them while still getting the produce we desire from the ground – like garden plants, fruit trees and flowering bulbs.

So with the rabbits, the squirrels, the hogs, the deer, the raccoons, the birds of many varieties, the armadillos, the skunks, the possums and the  regular population of rats, mice, moles and lizards we will have to figure out how to make this work. Not to mention adding our chickens, pot belly pigs, cattle and dogs to the mix.

This could become quite entertaining.