Sad News

We had some sad news yesterday to find that one of our hens was very sick and dying. She was a great hen and good layer who hatched babies earlier this year. She has been looking a bit worse for wear but we didn’t know she was sick till we found her curled up under the henhouse on Sunday. It was clearly too late to save her, so we isolated her to try and save the rest of the flock from catching the disease and buried her a little while later when she died.
I have done various internet searches since then but reading up about one poultry disease sounds very much like the symptoms of another and so it is very difficult to ascertain exactly what she had. We just hope that the other chickens will be ok – but so far no sign of symptoms from the others.
It is Monday and I can report that over the weekend my hubby was hard at work rebuilding the wind turbine that did not work last week. The old one has become a work of art mounted in our orchard to try and chase away birds from our developing fruit – amazing how failures can come in handy. The new one is a shinier, snazzier version than the clunky metal 1st attempt, with Perspex blades and the alternator mounted straight onto the blades to prevent increased resistance to turning. Now we just need to wire her up and see if she produces any current. We know we have the wind out here but is it enough to produce any usable current remains to be seen.
Grant was also hard at work – sick and all – on building his mud cottage. The walls are going up with mud bricks and he has put in his door frames already. Next weekend he should be up to window height – go boy! It is really looking great. I can’t believe that you can build an entire house out of mud bricks made and baked on your own land – very inspiring.
Besides that, the wind is howling and I am not looking forward to going out to water my veggies later, but the rain seems to have passed over so I will be braving the hurricane later.
Oh, and it seems like we may have found a solution for how to seal our dam. Yes, the one that has been sitting empty for more than a year now. A dam lining supplier can supply us with 550 micron recycled printing plastic at half the price of normal plastic that thick. It pays to take the time and look around at your options before making a decision of this size – 400 square meters in size – but we are glad to have found a solution that will get us water on our property, and that we are doing something for the environment by using recycled material at the same time.