Working On the Chicken Run and an Unexpected Motorcycle Ride and Some Weed Mowing

Thursday May 17m 2018 Guerneville CA.

One more panel

I only had one roof panel to make to complete this part of the project, the main run.

I cut and welded up the rebar and put the wire on it.

I hauled the panel over to where it goes and put it up and wired it into it’s place.

Needs some shade

I was then thinking about some metal roofing for shade and rain protection. I had some old metal roofing pieces I’ve been saving for just such a use. I had to figure out how to make them fit so I did some trial and error. That means I put a couple sheets of the metal up of different lengths and checked things out until I found something that would work.

New machine

While I was doing that my brother Barry came by. He gave me this wheeled weed eater. I like the other mower for mowing grass, but this might work out good to harvest weeds for the chickens to eat as I don’t have a sickle.

Barry took off up the hill to cut some trees off the roads.

Out of water so hopped on the motorcycle

I went back to work and shortly after that my brother Tom comes by and says the main spring tank water pressure is low.

So I got some repair stuff and climbed on my brother Mikes motorcycle and went for a ride up the hill to check out why the water pressure was low.

I stopped here first to see if there was water coming down the pipes from the two springs.

I have to hike up the hill a bit to get to the place I can check the water flow.

One spring had slowed down a lot

There was very little water coming down from our main spring, but the other spring was flowing nicely.

Some hiking

I rode up the hill to where the water comes out of the hill. I had to hike up through here to get to the spring.

There was only a little water coming out of the main spring. I checked the pipe that takes the water down the hill to the tanks and there were no leaks.

Measured how much water

So I went back to the valves and measured the water from the two springs. The main spring barely had two gallons a minute and it should have about five. So it’s slowed down for some reason. The other spring was really flowing at just under four gallons a minute, so we had a total of just under six gallons a minute.

Our main water tanks that were empty.

Using too much water

That meant my brother Tom was using too much water for his garden and would have to cut back or go on a well we have for that purpose.

Motorcycle ride

As long as I was out on the bike I headed to the top of the hill for a view.

Here’s the little town of Guerneville in the forest and there is a river going through there too.

Back to the roof

Back to work on getting the roof up. I got most of it up. I hope no winds come up because I wasn’t able to get it fastened down yet.

Here we are under the roof in the main chicken run.

Weeds need mowing

I needed to get some of the weeds mowed down so late in the day I gassed up the mower and mowed weeds.

Eventually the mower quit on me and I assumed it ran out of gas. I was out of gas so that was good enough for me to stop and I was worn out. I got about half of it done for now.

I spent the last part of the day digging ditches around the pen and burying the wire in the ground that keeps the varmints from digging under the pen. I still have a bit more of that to do as it got dark and I didn’t get finished.

And that was my day for a good one.