I was pretty much set up to do some chicken roosts this morning as I got it all together yesterday. The peeps won’t need a roost for quite some time, but it’s something that needed to get done and out of the way.
Putting it here
Here’s where I’m constructing this first chicken roost. I put some cement blocks in the ground mostly because I had them. They might keep the chickens from digging up under the posts.
Adjusting as I go
I had an idea of what I wanted to make, but I adjusted the plan as things progressed and this is what I ended up with.
Need to let the peeps into this pen soon
Here it is from another angle. I wanted to get the heavy construction done in this pen as I’d like to let the peeps into it soon, maybe tomorrow.
Making things for the peeps
I need to block some of the smaller holes I have around the doors for the little peeps so they can’t get out. I hadn’t really designed things for little peeps, but some adjustments here and there should make it all work out for them.
Ice cream like smoothies
As always I visited the raspberry patch and the blueberry patch. I also picked some of these to make some frozen type banana smoothies. I freeze the bananas and put some ice cubes in it to make a sort of ice cream without the ice cream that is just about as good as ice cream. Hummmmm good.
My plan today was to start making some chicken roosts in the runs. I was sitting out there getting the tools and materials I’d need together for the job. I sit and think about what I need and go get it and sit some more and eventually I have what I need and can get started.
Heard a commotion next door
I was almost ready to get started when I heard a commotion next door at my neighbors place and then I hear get some water. I looked up and saw some smoke showing me we had a forest fire in the making.
Calling 911
I ran to the house to call 911. The 911 lady had a hard time understanding me as I seemed to have beat myself heading for the house and my back started to spasm which made me harder to understand. Once I was over that enough I asked if she had any other calls for fires. Yes, Sweetwater Springs Road. I said good, that’s it and said I was going out to see what I could do about the fire.
Forest fire in the making
The fire was only about fifty feet up the hill and one of the neighbor guys was trying to move fuel away form it with a rake at the top. They had a hose but it only made it to the bottom which was useless. I started to organize the people there as most didn’t know what to do. I shouted someone get another hose. Shortly I saw a lady packing a hose over so helped her hook it to the other one and took it up the hill to the top of the fire to head it off as if it gets going any more there would be no stopping it without air support. The guy up there raking moved off to the side as it was getting too hot and he was tired out and I started to wet things down and put some water on the fire in between times I was wetting things down. I knew I didn’t’ t have enough water to stop the fire cold, but if I could at least slow it down until the fire guys could get on the line it would be good.
Fortunately for me I’m an older guy with lots of experience doing things. I’ve got some experience with Cal Fire running a bull dozer on a ranch on so called controlled burns that got out of control and lucky they had a bull dozer standing by. That was back about 1982. I’ve got more but that will give you the idea, so I knew what to do.
Sheriff causes me trouble
A sheriff got there first and insisted we come down off the hill or the fire guys couldn’t work, but they weren’t quite there yet, but I could hear their trucks coming through the apple orchard. I told him I’d come down when the fire guys got on the fire as I didn’t want it to get away now. He kept insisting, but I stood firm and kept spraying my water and it looked like I was winning.
Always plan an escape route
Just after the sheriff was done with me a small bush flared up in front of me. They give off intense heat when they get too hot and burst into flame. I had a plan already as that’s what you do if you want to survive, have an escape route planned and ready to go. My out was a 5 foot diameter fir three at the top of the fire where I was working. I ducked behind it and sprayed water around the side of the big tree to tone the flare up down and from spreading up the hill and yes I was thanking the big tree for being there, not that it cared one way or the other, ……………but I sure did.
Added later just before dark
I still smelled some smoke in the evening so I went back over to have a look and didn’t see any smoke.
There’s the five foot fir tree I took protection behind when that bush on the left started to flash off. Thanks again tree.
oh and the yellow jackets have found their nest hole and are doing well. And no they did not attack me. :O) I suspect they’ve had enough trouble for one day.
Finally the trucks arrive
Trucks started to arrive and the fire guys got their hoses out. This is shortly after they arrived as I had no camera while I was fighting the fire.
More fire trucks arrived on the scene.
They get on the fire
Here’s the fire guys just starting to get into the fire and have put out most of the flames at this point.
They’ve almost got it out, but the forest mulch is deep so they have to tear it up and spray a lot of water on it to get anything that might be deep and would restart.
Things are under control
The fire is mostly out and they are doing the clean up trying to make sure all the hot embers are out.
In the mean time the fire inspector guy found me and I filled out a report of what I knew about the fire. I did complain there was no spell checker.
Pretty much out, but they spent another hour or so on it making sure.
What my neighbor said started the fire
I saw my neighbor and asked him what happened? Kids? No he said he had done a burn pile a couple days before by permit and put it out, but it had started again after a couple days.
Looking good but watch out for the yellow jacket nest
Later I found that there was a yellow jacket nest right where they are spraying. I think the smoke may have saved us from them. The guys covered up the yellow jacket hole so after the fire bees were trying to find there nest, but the fire guys may have jetted their nest with water while putting out the fire. Anyway, without a nest they aren’t real mean.
Moving peeps
My brother Tom wanted to move his chicks that were mixed in with mine so we got a box and I caught all of his. Sixteen of them were his, one more than they thought I had of their chicks. But I still had 15 of my New Hampshire chicks so all was well. I now have 31 peeps.
I’m hyped
Needless to say my adrenaline was really peaking and still is, so I went back home to rest up a bit, then I thought I better go check my automatic gate and see if it was closed to keep the deer out of the yard. They had to come though my gate to get to the fire as they couldn’t get across the creek from my neighbors place.
Gate’s a casualty
Well, my gate was a casualty of the fire. Who ever opened it just pushed it open instead of using the button which I sorta expected might be the case.
The broken gate mount all bent up.
Hunting up gate parts
I removed the bent parts and was going to go to the garage and bend them back when I remembered I think I have some new parts somewhere. So I looked in the gate parts box, but lots of gate stuff but not those parts.
Hummm, I remember seeing some more gate parts somewhere, maybe on the junk on the porch.
Sure enough I found two sets of what I needed and they were a bit more heavy duty than the bent parts.
The bent parts and the new parts.
Settling down
I need to settle down some before I can fix that gate up that’s why I decided to write this blog up. I’m still up so it’s going to take a bit so not much work is going to get done today, but I will try to tackle the gate thing after I do enough chair hopping.
Maybe I’ll get back to the roost building and maybe not. I still have a half day left, but it’s warm out there so maybe I won’t.
Quite an interesting way to start off one’s day. Good to get it out as fires that start here in Guerneville have been known to burn all the way to the ocean burning our neighbors to the west out.
There are over a hundred pictures that are served up randomly every time you visit or change pages. They are of earlier pictures of interest and also some just to remind me of things.
A Sony AX33 4K, a video camera that takes stills too. What am I doing with that? I take pictures from my Kayak a lot. I found I was missing interesting shots, because my pic was being processed in my camera, before it would let me take another pic. Since I like to take what I call action stills, I bought this camera to take videos, that I could make stills out of, but, as a bonus, this camera also came with buttons to just take stills and that's what I mostly do, unless something is real interesting or too far away for my still zooms. My digilat zoom setting for video goes to two hundred x, and sometimes I need that, but usually, I only use the 10x lens zoom. Because this camera is HD and 4K, the quality has to be real good and it has a lot of stabilizers on it which really helps out a lot for taking pics on the water.
The other thing it has that is a must is a view finder and I had to buy Sony's top of the line cam to get it. This is a must for taking pics on the water, as you must hold the camera as still as posible and putting that eye piece to the eye forms a tripod with your arms that helps a lot. The eye piece is also a must as it works way better than a LED screen to see what you are taking a picture of in the daylight as the LED screens wash out easily in sunlight.
I also have another video camera, a Canon VIXIA G30. I use them both to mostly take stills. The Sony takes higher resolution stills than the G30. That was a bit of a disappointment as I bought the G30 to replace an older camera I dunked in the river, but then had to buy the Sony to get higher still picture resolution that the G30 was lacking.
