There was an area of garden I would have liked to till last fall, but I didn’t, because there were a couple of small trees in the way that needed to be transplanted first. Ken transplanted those trees today and did the tilling. We’re only about a month away, I hope, from planting the early crops. In the photo above, Ken has dug up one of the trees and put it in the wheelbarrow. Patience has approached to admire Ken’s digging.
Next: Ken with the tiller
With the tilling done, the chickens now cluster around to explore the fresh-dug dirt.
That’s Patience at Ken’s left hand. She has a huge crush on Ken.
The hawk mesh over the entire garden is almost done. I have to pick up more fishing line, though, before Ken can finish the job. He calculates that he has used about 1.6 miles of fishing line so far. We’re confident that the fishing line will keep the hawks away from the chickens. But it remains to be seen how long the fishing line will last. A long time, I hope, because it was a huge amount of work for Ken putting it up.
How many eggs a week do you get from the girls? If I were one of the girls I would have a crush on Ken too the way he cares and protects them from harm! LOL….
The girls slacked off more this winter than they did last winter. From the three hens, I’d say we averaged two eggs a day half the time and one egg a day half the time. There were two or three no-egg days and maybe one or two three-egg days.
Will the hawks be harmed by the fishline or will they see it and be turned off? How do you imagine it working?
I don’t think the fishing line would hurt the hawks, even if they flew into it. The fishing line is stretchy and flexible. The line is spaced 12 inches apart, and we estimate the hawks’ wingspan at at least 24 inches, so we think they’d see the fishing line and go away. From Googling, other people seem to have been successful with fishing line hawk guards, so we’ve got our finger crossed. This very morning when I went to let the chickens out, there was a hawk circling about 500 feet up. But it went away when it saw me.
Excellent…