Life is complicated

It's Friday morning. Joe is sick with whatever Finley just got over, and in spite of a runny nose, I've just come in from spending a little time in the garden.

This morning, I planted some watermelon seed that Joe insisted I buy and some pie pumpkin seed saved from the fall. Together with the Pennsylvania Dutch Crookneck Squash (my favorite variety of butternut), I'm sure the garden will be overrun with vines, but who cares? I have completely given up on having the ultimate, practical garden plan until the house is done. The water is on the garden now, since we're not expecting rain any time soon. I think I need a new sprinkler, because the oscillating one I have keeps getting stuck. I just set out one of those clicky, revolving types on a T-post, but it isn't watering too evenly... What to do?

I do need to get my sour-dough going again, though. Tomatoes are on the way, and there's nothing better than a tomato sandwich on sour-dough.

The deeper we get into this raising chickens thing, the more complicated it seems to get. I am very tired of the extra chickens running around and crowding my feet, so I had planned to gather the ones I wanted to butcher into the chicken tractor to fatten them up. In order to do that, I wanted to make a couple more nesting boxes for the big coop since my broody hens are taking up two of them, and some of my other chickens have started laying in the chicken tractor. (Sandbox hen moved to the tractor after the kids filled the sandbox up with water earlier this week. I kind of miss her.) When I went to refresh my memory on the proper nesting box size, I read that broody hens really should be separated since other hens tend to sneak onto her nest when she's out grabbing a bite to eat (which has happened) and the other chickens might try to kill the chicks when they hatch. Great. So, ideally, I need to try to move my broody hen out to the chicken tractor (at night, the book says... it didn't work last time I tried that during the day), but then where do I put the chickens I want to fatten up? I do have the frame of an old truck topper I could cover in netting or chicken wire to use, and though it might not be tall enough, it might just have to do...

And I think I've figured out how to build the plucker, and just spent some money ordering plucking fingers, so I'm committed to this now. I can't just 'chicken out' and give them away on craigslist.