Upgrade! (maybe)

Summer is about as here as it is going to get and I need to get my garden going. I am usually planted by this time.

Ducks have been living in my Pea Bed and Chicks have been in the greenhouse. To get the garden planted we had to move them all around again yesterday. I began by shoveling 11 wheelbarrow loads of composted poo out of the pig pen.

I have all of it dumped onto my south-facing garden slope and will turn it into the dirt tomorrow. I was promised a couple loads of top soil when I had the back of our lot sloped for gardening, but he forgot so all I have is glacial silt sand. I have been lazy the last two summers and have not done much to it to get it in better shape. It desperately needs more organic matter mixed into it. Luckily a monkey can grow potatoes and it has not mattered much for that endeavor. The real problem is that in dry weather a good wind will make a big dust storm out of it and then we are scraping dirt out of our ears. Once I get more compost into it I am hoping it will both be better for the other things I grow and it will stay put better in a breeze. If it were up to my kids it would be their own giant private sand box to get filthy in all summer.

After taking my compost pike out of the pen my hubby dug a "pool" at one end that he lined with a tarp. We covered the ground and inside of the pen with fresh hay and turned the birds loose. They have a lot more room and this is a nice safe permanent home. They also have an actual shelter to hang out in. The weather will get nasty. It always gets nasty. They only had a lean-to in the Pea Bed.

In a couple weeks I will try teach them to spend their days out on the pond but I want them fully feathered out and I want the geese big and scary before I take the plunge into the wild.

UPDATE: I went to check the birds first thing this morning and found a dead duck floating in the "pool". The water level had dropped and left sort of a trough of water. I think it could not get out and eventually chilled and died. I am very disappointed. It weighed a good 4-5 pounds and was only 5 weeks old! I could have EATEN IT! Actually at work we debated whether we should go ahead and eat it anyway since we know how it died. I think I am going to pass...but it still stinks!

I have covered what water is left in the pool for today and we will rethink it tonight and see if we can upgrade it into a safer swimming hole. It had seemed perfect. :(