Colonel's Blog, Earthdate 29 March 2023...
Hey Y'all!
Good morning! There was ice floating in the water troughs this morning, not enough that we had to break it open but it was cold enough that our hands were numb by the time we completed rounds. The animals are great! I realized that I didn't give you an update on the Beef Chickens yesterday. There are only 3 left in the hospital brooder and only one of those is still exhibiting issues. The one remaining is progressing nicely although it still is a bit wobbly when it stands. All of the curled toes are back straight. I guess that is the other side of the coin. Although things can go wrong really quickly, they can also reverse and go right just as quickly. The top pic is a few of the Beef Chickens in their brooder. The middle pic is the layer chicks in their brooder. They are maturing also, just not growing nearly as big. The bottom pic is the feed we picked up yesterday and unloaded into the barn. We delivered pork when we went to town to pick up feed. We made a cheese with wild onions to flavor it, turned out good! Today we are shifting gears from picking up pork from the processor to fixing a water leak.
We've been noticing reduced water pressure over the last couple of days. It seemed to coincide with hooking up a hose to the float valve in the sheep waterer. We checked it and there was a little water running and we thought it could be the case. So we turned it off and unhooked the hose. It seemed to get a bit better. This morning, two days later, the pressure was low again. Over the past year and a half, we have learned that low pressure means there is a leak somewhere. Our well supplies water through thousands of feet of piping throughout the property. Some of the waterers are 300' below the level of the pump, the pressure on those is really high. For a couple of the waterers the water flows 300' downhill and then about 350' uphill. I mention all of that to say that it only takes a small leak somewhere to make a big impact on the system. This morning, we went on the search for the leak and it wasn't in any of the typical, easy to reach places. We continued to search. We finally found an underground 1" gate valve at a waterer across the creek with a steady leak. We've had to replace a similar valve on another waterer. It requires a machine to dig up the valve as they are 3' underground in the rocky Ozark soil. It's a fairly big production to dig a hole big enough to access the valve, remove the faulty one, and have enough 'play' in the pipes to get a new one back in place. Amazing neighbors to the rescue again! Our neighbor has a full-size backhoe and is generously going to allow us to use it this afternoon to dig up the valve. AMAZING! Good neighbors are worth their weight in gold! Wish us luck that the entire process is straightforward and we don't make the situation worse before better.
Local Farm Report for 28 March 2023:
Harvest:
36 Chicken eggs
9 Duck eggs
1 Goose egg
5 1/2 Gallons of milk
Sales:
1 Gallon of milk
2 Dozen chicken eggs
Cheers! Psycho & Shelley
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