Dr Copa

Lately my wife and I have been considering getting a few backyard chickens to help keep the tick population under control. We keep hearing stories of so many people in the area getting lyme tick disease that it is starting to make us nervous about walking around in our own back yards! We’ve been noticing that there are a few neighbors that have been selling some fresh eggs, and it gave us the idea that maybe in addition to keeping the tick population down an added benefit would be to cut down on our grocery bill a little bit by eating the freshly laid eggs from our own chickens.

Of course we need to research the different chickens for sale and price out the cost of chicken feed to add all of that into the calculations. And just as important, we have to come up with a game plan for how to keep the wild foxes from killing the chickens. I’m not sure that we will be able to keep the chickens safe.

 This past weekend I was happy to finally be able to burn the brush pile that I have been building for months.  There has been a drought in the area, which resulted in a burning moratorium.  We’ve had a few days of rain, and they lifted the moratorium, so I burned the pile.

I was truly in my element, out there, rake in hand, tending the fire.  It burned high and quick.  My wife was nervous about sparks setting the nearby woods on fire, or even our roof, but I had everything under control.  She is such a worrier!

I was surprised, though, that the pile smoldered for four days afterwards!  A little surprise rose out of this, on the third night, I let the dogs out about two o’clock in the morning.  Within minutes, they started barking and growling.  As I stepped out onto the deck to see what the matter was, I saw two large glowing eyes staring at me from the middle of the lawn.  Upon further examination, I noticed that it was two hot spots from the pile of ashes and embers that was driving the dogs crazy.  The next day I hosed the spot down and took care of it.

We really have lucked out this winter, only a few inches of snow as of yet and it is almost February for heaven’s sake. I can only hope that we don’t end up paying out the nose for this blessing by having some crazy winter storm come and make up for all the lost time. I’m getting anxious for spring and summer to get here, I’ve never been a big fan of cold weather and I have a lot plans for the yard that I’m getting ready for.

I’ve been checking out some online flowers and getting some really good ideas from various Gardening sites. It amazing how many varieties of plants, flowers, shrubs, tree and bushes there is out there for people’s landscaping concepts. I’ve never been the best at making choices, but I’m taking my time, showing my ideas around and getting good feedback so far. I’m really looking forward to getting outside and getting my hands dirty instead of freezing cold as they have for many months now.

Guest Post by Mark Ouellette

But you can’t take the country out of the man. All right, I admit I still live in the country, and I just wanted to say that. Every year when winter sets in and I have the time in between plowing and sanding I try to to re-evaluate all of our equipment and plan what equipment needs to be replaced soon, and whether to start looking for used tractors for sale or if we should be looking for a couple of gently used trucks for sale to be able to move the crew from one location to another.

Last fall I found a good deal on an overstocked backhoe for sale and I have been keeping that in the cemetery garage, waiting for the ground to thaw so we can use that for the spring burial rush. I was thinking about buying a used bull dozer as well last fall as I found a really good deal on one, but my wife told me that if I bought that with our money then I would need to get myself a new wife as well. The cemetery won’t agree to buy it this year, so I guess that will just have to go on the back burner since I don’t think I can afford to get that AND a new wife quite yet!

I saw a cool garden hose storage unit that I want to buy for our place.  Actually, I want to buy two of them; one for the front yard, and one for the back yard!  What am I talking about?  A no-crank garden hose reel!  These things wind up a garden hose using water pressure!  So you don’t have to crank it by hand!  How cool is that? You can find more information (and order them) from the website http://no-crank.com.  Especially interesting is that the company is currently offering a No-Crank Rewards Program that you can sign up for.  The rewards program involves having your friends that buy one take enter the serial number of their unit into an account on the internet.  You get points and rewards and discounts as a result.