February 2, 2026 Moving forward again

 We have made some minor progress this year so far. Our plans to do some work in the kitchen has gone forward, but slower than we planned. A typical thing here, the farm has its own schedule and ignores ours.   Lots going on anyway.

Pixie had her pups two days ago, ten beautiful little Basset babies. But toward the end of her pregnancy she got so big that we had to spend quite a bit more time with her. We started taking shifts to cover her care 24/7 and got very little sleep for about a week. Her whelping was pretty quick without any troubles at all. Now we take shifts watching the pups and keeping them cleaned up and safe. Two pups already have a home and the rest usually go pretty quick. We'll have them until at least early April and we can begin sleeping regular schedules in about a week.

The arrival of puppies may allow us the money to finally put in the parking lot project. We gleaned fence fabric for the project years ago and hope to get the fence posts and gates in during April. This graveled and fenced area will finally allow us to get our cars off the street and provide a place for segregating dogs when we need to. Between puppies and dog boarding we spend quite a bit of time on the dog business. Having a parking area will help with having people come around more often as our customer base of visiting Hounds gets a bit bigger. 

This coming week we hope to find time to finish the tile backsplash and then go on to some minor cabinet fixes before painting everything. Some things had to wait after we built the house and finishing the kitchen will take until late Winter at least. But it will be a welcome change.

Our egg sales are brisk. The flock is laying around a dozen eggs a day and we sell almost half of them and we eat the rest. Just as before the eggs sold pay for all the eggs produced. I just wish the business would scale up and add to our income. But it doesn't. Costs rise as quickly as production and the time needed to do the job take time from other projects, so there isn't anything extra to be gained by having a  bigger flock. Small enough to manage, big enough to have really good eggs . . . We'll take it. 

The chickens and ducks are free ranging and their scratching has opened up holes at the bottom of the fence keeping dogs and birds in, so we have had a few escapes in the past month. We have a fix for the problem and fix the holes almost as quikly as they find them. Hounds are good at finding holes in the fence, but easy enough to catch.  Luckily for us there's not too much traffic on the road out front. 

Life goes on apace through a farily warm Winter. There's plenty of rain and plenty of work to do. It seems the world outside is not nearly so nice we want to go out into it much right now, but things will improve. We are hopeful for the future. Today however is something of a drag on the spirit.