Spring Maintenance, Weeding and Enjoying the Day

Thursday June 25, 2020 Guerneville CA.

Checking springs today

I fed the chickens first thing this morning. Here’s a few of them.

Springs

My brother was saying he’s not getting enough water for his gardens from our springs so I rode the dirt bike up into the hills to see how the springs were doing and make sure there weren’t any broken pipes.

Vegetables take a lot of water to make them tender and get some size to them. He has some wells for backup when he needs them.

Water tanks

I stopped here at our water tanks first.The tanks were about half full of water.

Water flow

I walked up into this ravine where I have some water valves from our springs where I can check the water flow to the tanks.

I measured the gallons per minute and found they were giving 4 gallons a minute, down two gallons as last time I measured 6 gallons a couple weeks ago.

Slowing springs

There’s a lot of reasons the springs might be down 2 gallons a minute. As the year progresses the springs usually slow down a bit depending how much rain we had last winter and how warm the daily temperature is. With warmer weather the big trees suck  more water so there’s less coming out of the springs.

I  hopped back on the dirt bike and rode on up the hill to check some springs and their water pipes, up this road.

I stopped at this spring first and checked it out and all was good.

Pig Wallow spring was next. The water had slowed here a bit and the pipes were all good.

All checks out

Everything at the springs seemed to be working as good as it could. I think the warmer weather is causing the big trees to use more water possibly.

Strawberries

I was satisfied there was nothing I could do to improve the flow of water so I  headed on down the hill stopping to eat a few strawberries at my brother’s garden. Yummy they are getting lots of flavor now.

Back home I chair hopped and supervised the chickens some, mostly just enjoying the day.

Weeds for feed

In the evening I rounded up the wheelbarrow and a shovel to dig some weeds up out of the raspberry patch, I was planning to dig the ones up behind the wheelbarrow to start.

I got those weeds dug up and loaded in the wheelbarrow for transport to the chicken’s pen. Lot’s more to go but better to do a little at a time to take it easy on my back.

I wheeled the weeds over to the chicken’s pen.

Peeps pen

And put all the weeds in with the peeps so they’d have something to munch on as they don’t get out like the larger birds.

Trouble maker

I checked the nesting chickens. This red bird has moved in on the gray bird that was sitting on eggs. The red bird doesn’t seem to like the new nest boxes I gave them the other day. She has a bunch of chicks under her too.

I evicted her and eventually she found another box, but there was quite a squabble.

Feed shed

After that I went into the chicken’s feed room and mixed up some seed for feed to get a bit ahead for my helper as I’m planning to go on a little trip soon.

It was a nice evening so I sat around outside until about dark.

Nice day.