Thud!

The sound of Connor's hopes being dashed. But I guess I should say 'Splash'. Connor had his first opportunity, as a certified soccer referee, to ref a Capital Area Soccer tournament. He was going to make $144 for six hours' work. Not bad for a twelve-year-old. I heard him come downstairs this morning, about 7, all dressed in his referee uniform, only for me to tell him the tournament was cancelled due to the rain we had overnight (I had gotten up earlier to check, but fell back to sleep before O told him). DARN! Back upstairs to change out of his ref uniform.

At least now we know he'll get to his piano recital on time this afternoon. He and Kenzie are playing a duet for the first time in public. After all the battles between those two, while trying to learn their ensemble piece, I'm very proud of them for hammering through their "creative differences" and putting together this song. If I can get a good video of it, I'll post it here.

Alex's day is still on schedule. His high school baseball team has a game in Frederick, about 2+ hours from his school. I guess they got less rain than we, since they haven't cancelled the game, and the radar show all the rain has passed. He just got picked up by some friends to go meet the bus, which will be passing by our house on the way to the game in about an hour. Seems kind of pointless, but that's what you get when you go to a school thirty miles away, in the wrong direction.

I still don't know if all the other local games/practices are still on, or not. Tay has baseball at noon. Ty has soccer at 3. Kenzie also has softball at 3, but I don't know when she'll be getting home from piano. It really doesn't matter if she misses some of this softball. It's a rec team. Most of the girls could never play at a level any higher, which is fine, that's why we have rec sports. Kenzie will have fun because she loves the game, at any level. I'll have fun, because all the stresses of travel are not there; and because I, as an assistant coach, can be involved with teaching the kids what little I know about the game. Anyway, I'm thinking the fields, especially infields, will be too soggy for play.

I almost forgot to mention we had an attack this morning. We lost two hens to a fox. We actually saw him, this morning, munching on one of them for breakfast (only got a measly head because I scared it off). Too bad my .357 is too loud to be fired in a neighborhood; I really hate that fox right now. Kenzie and I, out in the mud this morning, tried to fix the holes it dug under the fence, but now that it knows food is so easily available, it won't go away, I'm sure. Kenzie's going to have to be a very diligent shep-, I mean chicken-herd, for a while, making sure her hens are secure inside the coop every night.

Tomorrow, we have another long distance game; this time in Hagerstown. It's a soccer game for Kenzie. She wants to ride with some friends, not her dad, so if I want to go I need to bum a ride with someone else, too. I'm not driving, alone, for a four hour round trip no matter how much I enjoy watching her play. On the other hand, some of my other kids will want to go, so I won't be alone after all.

New Babies Due Soon!

And here's the proud mama, in full brood mode. She's sitting on twelve eggs that, by my calculations, are due to hatch tomorrow. Once we noticed that she was getting very "broody" last month, we decided to try and let her hatch some baby chicks. So far, we've hatched chicks in an incubator, and bought some day-old chicks from a hatchery; but we've never let nature take its course in the hen house, so what the heck. I just hope we don't get too many roosters. I did not enjoy culling the roosters from the flock the last time.

This has gotten Kenzie interested in her chickens again. She was getting a little lax in her attendance to their feeding, watering, etc., but now she's getting things ready for the new additions. Once the chicks hatch, we'll move them to an area of the coop that mama can keep protected from her coop-mates and Nugget (the rooster). She's already gotten very bossy; even Nugget seems afraid of her. I think she'll be a good mother hen.

Chicken Girl is Back

We thought it was time to increase the flock. A friend of ours just started their backyard chicken farm by buying a couple dozen chickens from a hatchery. The minimum order was too many chickens for them, so they asked if we wanted any. We bought five, 6-week old hens from them. I would have taken more, but there were other friends of ours who were also interested in increasing their flock. They should start laying by the end of November and, since this is they're first year, they should lay right through the winter. This is good, since winter tends to be a slow time for egg production.

Kenzie hasn't left the coop or the run since we got our new additions. She's worried that the older hens are picking on the new ones too much. They just need to learn their place in the packing order (and grow a little bit more); then all will be well in chicken land. Here's some shots of our newest additions. 

Catching Up

I just transferred some pictures from my camera to my computer, and thought I'd send some here as well.

Here's Kenzie in her indoor softball tournament in January. Her team won all three games.














Tay and Ty got some Eitech (similar to Erector Set) Sets and began building all kinds of stuff. Here's Tay with his windmill. Then, they both designed and built their own rocketships.















Here was a lazy day in early February.














The weather broke nice one day, so we let the chickens scratch outside their pen. It made their day. They love to scratch up new territory.


















Finally, here's Kearsyn.

New Egg Record

Okay, you've seen the large egg(s) of the past. Now, for the small egg record. This one was laid yesterday. I put it next to a normal-sized egg (also laid yesterday). Looks like a pidgeon got into our chicken coop, doesn't it?

Chicken Update

It's been a long, long time since I've thought of posting a chicken update, so here's a quick one (I hope).

We now have twenty hens laying full force, giving us between a dozen and eighteen eggs every day. Most of the pullet-sized eggs have moved on to mediums or larges, with some jumbos and a rare egg so big that I wouldn't know how to classify it (too big to fit in any egg carton we have).

Needless to say, we have plenty of eggs for personal consumption (I usually keep about three dozen in the upstair's fridge for us), with up to 9 (or more) dozen a week that we can sell off. Whenever we get about 8 or 9 extra dozen, Kenzie loads her wagon with eggs and goes door-to-door, selling eggs, with a big brother in tow as bodyguard. Today she had over 9 dozen eggs when she left, and had 15 eggs (and $22) when she got home. She gave one dozen away to a customer that overpaid last week because nobody had change. She's stilling them for $3 a dozen, but told everyone today that next time, the price will $3.50, unless they return an empty egg carton, in which case she'll keep the price at $3. We used up all our saved up cartons and had to buy more, and they cost between a quarter and a half-dollar each, so she just added the higher price to the eggs.

It seems that every time she goes a-sellin', she finds new customers. If they all ever decide they want eggs at the same time, we'll never be able to supply them all.

I always get a little worried when I see the supply of eggs piling up in the fridge, because I wouldn't know what to do with a gross of eggs, but somehow she always sells them all. We haven't had to give any free ones away to our close neighbors for months. I really don't want to go "commercial" because I don't want to get the government involved in our little backyard lesson in economics, entrepreneurship, and free enterprise. I figure, when Kenzie's ready to go that step, she'll be asking if she can call the county and get herself incorporated, regulated, and overtaxed, like any other business.

Salesgirl

A couple weeks ago we had a few dozen backed up in our fridge. For some reason, our normal customers didn't buy their normal amount. Well, Kenzie decided to take her eggs on the road, hawking her wares, door to door, through the neighborhood. She had no luck that day, only selling some eggs to one of our usual customers.

Undeterred, she tried again yesterday. Our hens must be in full summer-production mode because we again had eggs to spare. This time she hit some of the same houses (I told her skip the houses from the last attempt where she received a less than welcome reception). She not only had greater success in her sales business (3.5 dozen sold), but she also found three new friends who have moved in, temporarily (they're only here until they sell their house and move away), down the street.

It's nice to see her efforts rewarded.





And, here's her card:






UPDATE: Kenzie and her new friends sold the rest of the eggs today (she even had to dig into our personal supply), to several new customers (a total of 8 dozen in two days). There's another dozen on order for tomorrow so the chickens need to get a-layin'. One of her new friends is holding a dozen for her neighbor and will get Kenzie the money this afternoon. I guess that means that Kenzie now has her first "employee". Look out world, there is no stopping this girl!

Pickles, and Other Stuff

I tried my hand, for the first time, at canning something I grew. Cucumbers are coming in faster than I know what to do with, so I thought I'd try to make pickles. I used a recipe that called for 6 pounds of cucumbers and 3 pounds of onions plus all the usual pickling ingredients like vinegar, etc. I chased the kids out of the house, first with the onion fumes (sliced thin; I cried a lot); then with the boiling vinegar fumes. Whew! that's smelly stuff! Anyway, I wound up with 7 jars. Of course, I had to make a label. If this stuff's any good, I think I'll give them out for Christmas presents. I also have enough cucumbers to make another batch, and enough on the vines for several more. What was I thinking when i planted all those stupid cucumbers? Here's a picture of the garden where they came from. It looks like a jungle, and it looks small because it's in a narrow space, but it is very long. Besides cucumbers, we are growing watermelon, cantaloupe, pumpkins (boy are we ever growin' pumpkins!), tomatoes, zucchini, squash, broccoli (all :o( gone), carrots, radishes (again :o( all gone), lettuce, green peppers, cauliflower (which didn't taste right for some reason), and right now, we are growing lots and lots of weeds that I just haven't had time to get rid of.

Today, the kids were getting a little bored. They decided they wanted to go bowling, so they set up this bowling alley on our deck. They're using bowling pins that various kids have received over the years from birthday/bowling parties. The ball is my MIL's. It's been in our attic for years. The kids found it recently and have been looking for a reason to roll it somewhere. This looks like it was a pretty good shot. Way to go Tay!

The chickens had a record day over the weekend: 14 eggs in one day. They only produced 8 yesterday, but were back up to 11 today, with one smooshed one. We have twenty hens, and we're still waiting for some of them to start laying. The really hot weather isn't helping. Over 90, and they start getting lazy, and it's been well over 90 for several days, now. It's supposed to cool off tomorrow, and that's good, because we are selling eggs faster than we can collect them. We actually had a backorder over the weekend. Kenzie sold 3 dozen to one neighbor on Saturday; another showed up on Sunday, asking for 2 dozen more. We only had 8 decent-sized eggs, so he paid for 2 dozen, took the 8, and Kenzie delivered the rest on Monday afternoon. The neighbor who bought 3 dozen said she'd take as many more as we can spare, up to 6 dozen a week! And this doesn't include some other people at our church who have expressed interest in buying homegrown eggs. We're going to need more hens. Kenzie already said she wants to try hatching some more over the winter. We now have two roosters, so we should be able to get plenty of fertilized eggs.

Finally, for today, it is summer. And that means my kids turn into fish in the backyard pool, so here are some fish pictures. For some reason, I just got the girls this time, so maybe I should say here are some pictures of my mermaids:

Giant Egg

One of our hens has begun laying gigantic eggs. Here's a picture of the first one she laid yesterday, next to a normal sized pullet egg. We thought it was a fluke, but she laid a second one today. These things are huge. I haven't cracked one open yet, so I don't know how many yolks are inside. I'm guessing at least three since these eggs are much bigger than the double-yolks we've been getting.

Kenzie was outside today when a neighbor walked by. He began telling her how he missed his chickens that he had back in Spain. When he goes for walks, he slows down as he passes our house, hoping to catch Nugget cock-a-doodle-doo-ing. He also hinted that he might like some eggs when we start getting extra, which should be real soon, once all the girls start laying reliably. Maybe Kenzie can start earning her tuition money by selling eggs, except I don't know what legal hoops we'd have to jump through to sell (legally, anyway) backyard chicken eggs.

Snow?

What job can you have where you get paid thousands of dollars, can be on TV, always be wrong, and never get fired? That's right: Weatherman. Here's pictures of our rainy Sunday afternoon. The chickens enjoyed it until the "rain" got to around three inches deep; that's when they headed inside. I really can't believe that people are getting all worked up into a panic over warnings of 'global warming' when these warnings are coming from the same people and their "computer models" that tell us it's going to rain an hour before it snows three inches. Yeah, yeah, I know it only takes a degree or two, to make the difference, but isn't that what global warming is all about? a global warming of a degree or two?

Nugget and his hens:











The back yard:

Egg Update

No eggs yesterday, but we got one this morning. Kenzie's getting a little impatient for full production to begin, but I think she's got a couple weeks to wait before we see that. At least she has an egg to eat for lunch today.

Alex begins guitar lessons tonight. I told him the secret this morning. I figured part of the fun would the anticipation of starting his lessons, and I didn't want to deprive him of that. I'm trying to show him good things happen to those who earn them. He's done well this week, except for a slight slide in yesterday's language arts work. He's been very stubborn about learning a couple concepts that I have to repeat over and over and over again. That's true of everybody, though. They (We) all have things that we just can't seem to get stuck into our brains. I'll just have to keep stuffing into the one ear whatever keeps falling out of the other ear.

Two Eggs, Three Yolks

Our second egg arrived today. It had two yolks. Kenzie called it as soon as she saw it. For a first egg from one our chickens (don't know which one, but I'm sure it wasn't the same hen that laid yesterday's first egg), it was huge. It had a crack in it, so we decided to see if Kenzie's double-yolk prediction was correct. It was. Since this one was laid, another has been discovered, making a total of three eggs (probably a total of 4 yolks). At least the average price of eggs is declining around here. Keep up the good work, chickies!

The $700 Egg

Happy Shrove Tuesday!

Well, I was figurin' on getting our first egg by Easter, and we got it just before Lent! Kenzie, of course, is very excited. She's called all our chicken friends with the news. She won't tell me when we can eat it, though. We have to make sure everyone who is anyone gets to see it first. With all the expense that has gone into these chickens, this first egg has cost me $700.16 (don't tell Vicki), not including our last trip to the hardware store for our Spring coop construction supplies, which still has stuff on the credit card. We'd better get a lot more eggs from these girls before I spend another $700 on them. I think Kenzie is already planning on setting up her "Home Grown Brown Eggs For Sale" stand for this Summer. Most kids sell lemonade, or even Girl Scout cookies, but not my Chicken Girl.

In answer to the age-old question of which came first; in our case, the egg, which incubated 'til it hatched and grew into the chicken that laid this egg. Full cycle. Pretty cool.

We're headed to our church's pancake supper tonight. No Cooking! Yay!

Dinner Is Served

Or will be, soon. A wee bit graphic below, regarding chicken executions; consider yourself warned.

I don't know how much ya'll know about our roosters, but lately they've become more trouble than they're worth. They've been fighting each other, and driving the hens crazy. The problem is numbers: 6 rooster, 8 hens. That's a horrible ratio; couldn't be much worse for the poor hens. We've always planned on butchering the roosters, but we were going to try to wait until the person who does that could schedule a day we could bring our roosters to her place. We only have 5 we want to eat, and she needs to get more lined up before she'll make the effort.

Well, after yesterday's impromptu cock fight, injuring one rooster, and the hens being chased all over the place, all the time, I got the hatchet today and headed to the coop. I did call everyone I could, trying to find someone to do this for me, but I had no luck. I never chopped the head off a chicken before, and I wasn't looking forward to it.

It actually wasn't that bad. I don't have any pictures of the process because it was snowing all morning (didn't want to get my camera wet), and you probably wouldn't want to see them anyway. We now have four butchered and cleaned roosters in the freezer. Well, two are in the fridge for dinner tonight. We tossed the one that got injured in the fight because I don't know what he could have picked up in the way of bacteria, through an open wound on its neck.

Once the feathers came off, the job got pretty easy. It looked just like the chickens you get at the store, except I had to yank the guts out myself. No problem there, for a Biology nut like me. I dissected all kinds of stuff in college, and actually got to give some mini anatomy lessons to some of the kids as we cleaned the chickens out. Tyler, of course, wanted me to cut up everything so we could look inside, to see what made a chicken tick. I only showed him the insides of the heart, lung, and liver.

Chicken Girl Kenzie did surprisingly well. She even watched one or two of the beheadings, and helped hold the basket down, over the flopping bodies, to keep them from running around "like chickens with their heads cut off". I never disbelieved that saying, but it is amazing to see, nevertheless. The fifth one did escape the basket and ran across the back yard, behind the coop. Luckily, it got trapped in a corner and didn't get too far. At that point, I shooed the kids away until I could recapture it. They didn't really need the trauma of seeing that. Not that I could keep their curious eyes away for long.

Kenzie says she feels weird, now. I told her she should feel a little weird. I do, too. You're not supposed to feel happy about killing something. But you also shouldn't feel bad about it, if you're humane and responsible in how you treat the animals God gave us to use as food. God, in making the first leather clothes for Adam and Eve (Gen 4:21), showed us that it's okay to kill animals for our use. It's the price we pay for sin, so it shouldn't feel good, even though it's sometimes necessary for survival.

Even on a day we take off from school, there is still so much to learn. For her, and for me.

New Chicks Are Here

The post office called this morning with word that our chicks are here. Naturally, we had them home within the next fifteen minutes. I have to say, I never ever thought I'd ever go to the post office and ask about picking up my chickens. The door was locked (the PO hadn't even opened yet) but they let us in anyway. I guess they saw the forlorn look on Kenzie's face and weren't about to disappoint her. Here's some pictures from this morning's adventure.














ADDENDUM: I was curious, so I looked up where these chicks came from: Webster City, Iowa. They hatched on Feb. 10 and travelled 1100 miles to get here 48 hours later. I'm amazed at this. Our last batch was locally grown and home-hatched, and I was worried about them surviving my kids.

A Manger, Bike Rides, and Chickens

Kenzie's been working on this 3-D manger scene for several days, now. Every time I turn around, I find cut-up paper or cardboard somewhere on the floor. This started with a few paper figures glued to the back of a box. Then she devised a way to make 3D figures and make them them stand up. After adding some angels and straw, she made the three wise men. Today, she added the animals and the doves. I don't know if she's done, yet. All of a sudden, my kids have become self-motivated in Art. This is a good thing, I guess, because they all start a weekly Art class, run by the county Parks and Recreation Dept., this coming Wednesday.
Today was the third day in a row that I got to go on a long bike ride. I can't believe this weather. The temperature, again, was in the mid-sixties, which is unheard of here, in January; forget about weeks on end of this mild weather! It's really hard to believe you folks out west are getting record snowstorms and all that ice! We live only a couple miles from the Bay, and a park that has lots of trails that almost nobody seems to know about. They are great for walking or biking through some woods and along the beach. The kids and I call it the Haunted Forest Trail. We go through 'Big Foot Forest', where we have to look out for Big Foot and his Ghost friends. From there, it's 'Pterodactyl Alley' (keep a watch on the skies, but you also need to keep watch for T-Rex). Next is 'The Marsh' where you might see 'Swamp Thing'. Once we get by him (or her, I could never tell the difference with Swamp Things), we come the 'Three Troll Bridges', where you have to go really fast over the bridges or they'll get ya (they are really slow trolls). Near the end of the forest, you have to watch the skies again, because the 'Giant Spiders', who lurk in the trees, might try to snatch you up for dinner. Then, leaving the forest, you have to pass 'The Black Lagoon', where the water really does look black. And we know 'The Creature' is just waiting for someone to stray to close to his water. Finally, we reach the spot of the above picture, 'The Quicksand', where wind has blown the beach over the path. I got stuck in it, so I took a moment to take that picture (only a brief moment, before I sunk too far).

Yesterday, I had all Alex, Taylor, Tyler, and Bekah with me. I'm pretty impressed that the twins can make that long bike ride. It takes me about an hour when I'm by myself. Today, Bekah and I were the only ones on the ride; she was in her perch on my bike, behind me. She only time she got impatient was when I stopped to talk to some friends of mine playing tennis at a recreational park that's along the trail.

Earlier today, Kenzie and I cleaned the chicken coop. That's one disadvantage to the warm weather: smelly chicken coop. I also finished up my new brooder. It's now all ready for the baby chicks when they arrive next month. I betcha that's when the cold weather will really hit: right when I'm trying to keep baby chicks warm, out in the chicken coop. Next, we need to expand the chicken run. We can start that once I get a few more fence posts and another roll of chicken wire fencing. Oh, and some bird netting might be advisable. I saw that nasty, chicken-eating hawk in the neighborhood again yesterday.

Trouble in Chicken World

Our new roosters are beginning to cock-a-doodle and Vicki's getting, to put it gently, worried about what the neighbors will say. I say, when the neighbors get rid of their massive Rottweiler and the howling Beagle, they can say something about our roosters. As far as I know, there is not a single, legal thing anybody can do about our having roosters in the back yard. I think she's afraid our psycho neighbor might sic his mastiff on our hen house, or something, and that has a very messy potential, especially if Kenzie sees the beast chowing down on her chickens. Actually, we only have one really loud and very persistent cockerel so far, and I already said he's on the menu in February.

Well, a bargain was cut (unbeknownst to Chicken Girl) and now, in my eldest daughter's eyes, I am a traitor. Here's the deal. Since I only wanted one rooster to propagate the flock, I bargained away all the roosters for permission to mail-order a bunch of new hens (shipped from the hatchery the day they hatch). This is a much more efficient way of raising egg-layers, anyway, since you can order just hens, and not waste food on raising a bunch of roosters. And you can still eat any hens that aren't pulling their weight in the egg-laying assignment. So, I just placed an order for 25 new hens, of various breeds, just to add color to the flock. They should arrive on February 12 or 13. I was told by the hatchery that the post office will call me when they arrive and I'll have to pick them up, but our mail lady knows I'm home, so she may deliver them to me. We'll see. Oh, and the hatchery also includes an extra, 'surprise chicken' with baby chick orders. It's supposed to be "rare or special" breed that we can attempt to identify as it matures. Hopefully, they also send the answer along, just in case we can't figure it out.

Back to the deal. Although Kenzie got to pick exactly which breeds of chicken she wanted (which she did), and she's thrilled about the "surprise" chick, she's not so pleased at the prospect of losing Nugget. She doesn't appreciate the fact that, come meal time, he'll become an integral part of her life. I didn't use these exact words; I think they would fall on unappreciative ears. Kenzie is even less thrilled with the prospect that we'll have way too many hens and will have to cull the flock (more yummy dinners) if we can't sell or give the extra hens away. She's gotten so bad that, tonight, when we had a very tasty slow-cooked, store-bought chicken, Kenzie wouldn't eat it because she said it tasted like a home-grown chicken. I love the fact that she relishes (no pun intended) her role as a backyard chicken farmer, but I think she's been ruined on chicken dinners for years to come.

Today, in the muck of our back yard (we've already had three inches of rain this year, on top of an exceptionally wet December), Kenzie, with the enlisted help of a reluctant Tyler, was measuring for an extended chicken run. We want to add a second run so we can alternate between the two. This should allow us to grow grass in the area the chickens destroy (it's amazing how fast they can defoliate an area) while providing them with fresh grass and bugs, at least periodically throughout the year. At least the areas that get consumed by chickens will be well fertilized.

What Are The Odds...

What are the odds that this picture would be featured on page two, the National section, of our local newspaper on the same morning of our fatal hawk attack? We've been so busy lately, I finally got around to reading Thursday's paper, today. There wasn't even an article about it; just the picture and caption. It just struck me as really weird, that's all.

With the sun finally returning to our neighborhood, I could get a good picture of our improved chicken run. You can see, pretty well, how the whole space is covered up. The only problem now is that it's hard to visit the chickens if you're over four feet tall, and I like to go sit and watch them once in a while. It's kinda like watching fish in a fish tank: there's a therapeutic effect to it. Well, no more nasty hawks are going to get our birds now!

I tried to do some Christmas shopping today. For the past seven years I've done most or all of my shopping online. This year I thought I'd give stores another try. BIG MISTAKE. I bought one thing for a gift, and it wasn't even anything I planned on buying. Back to online shopping, for me. I can almost always find what I want, somewhere on the internet; and, I can compare prices without driving all over the place. Plus, the kids use the internet to make their wish list so if they can find what they want, so can I.

I did have to go to a store the other day for Bekah's bed, and they tried to sell me something I didn't want. Boy that irritates me. I went in, said I wanted the mattress/box set in the store flyer, priced at $129. Not in stock. I just got flyer that previous day! How can they be out of stock the next morning? I made them ship the items I wanted from their warehouse. I would have gone to another store just on principle, but we don't have many choices around here for that kind of thing.

Connor was a little perturbed with the Terps today. They got beat pretty bad. In their first two possessions they fumbled the ball that was returned for a touchdown both times. They were losing 14-0 in the first five minutes of the game. That's when I leave a game. Connor is loyal enough to watch, in agony, as his team get slaughtered. Not me; I admit, I'm a fair-weather fan. But for Connor's sake, I hope the Ravens do better tomorrow.

Chickens Have No Memory

Despite the drizzle, wind, and tornado watch (ugh), Kenzie and I just finished covering the chicken run with bird netting. I'd show it to you, but it's almost impossible to see it, especially in a picture. This was one of our fastest projects ever. We opened the chicken door, and those idiot chickens just pop back outside as if their comrade never existed, let alone became bird food just four hours ago. And that evil bird of prey is still circling overhead. I bet if she had a slingshot, Kenzie would take care of that thing in short order.

A Sad Day In Chicken World

Kenzie and I had just gotten back from our morning walk when I noticed something strange in our chicken run. One bird was out, and was staying in one place. Chickens don't normally stay that still. It was still a little dim outside so I had to walk back to see what was going on. I discovered a hawk having a chicken breakfast. One of our favorite (definitely the nicest) new hens. Chicken Girl (and the rest of us) is very sad. I think we'll take off school and go buy some bird netting for the top of the run, and try to put it up before the rain comes today.

>:o(