Those li'l chickies that were so tiny on Saturday have been eating and growing, and I suspect that by the weekend they'll be ready to transplant to a bigger cage. Soon thereafter, it'll be time to shop for duckies.
Some of the tomato plants out in the garden are growing quickly, too, and are about to need cages. The plan calls for clearing the weeds around them, mulching the heck out of the surrounding area, putting in the cages, and soon putting in the drip irrigation system.
I did buy another couple of bales of pine shavings to use as mulch; it looks like a cheap, biodegradable material for the purpose, and I do have rather a lot of garden to cover. Sometime before fall tilling I should round up some high-nitrogen fertilizer to compensate for the wood - and using clover for a winter cover crop shouldn't hurt.
The area that I didn't start tilling until last fall does seem to have a surfeit of Johnson grass, so another pass with the herbicide will be called for. I think that end is where I'll put some late-season things that should help stop erosion and also maybe produce some crops eventually.
Ah, well. Too muddy for much gardening today. Better deal with various indoors stuff.
Additional: The smallish food/water silos I bought for little birds in a little cage turn out to have some deficiencies as we're trying to use them, so I set about CADding up alternatives. But, the design and the 3D printing parameters need fiddling, and dialing in, and... well, the critters are growing fast enough that it's probably not worth it; they'll graduate to a bigger cage before I get usable parts ready. I could make the parts anyway, for duck use, but... probably not worthwhile. Maybe I'll just create little tripod bases to raise the dispensers a bit higher above the level of the cage litter.
Oh, and I picked up some seed mix for a chicken garden; it seems like a good thing to include when preparing their outdoors run, and I suppose I could start some in a little plastic container, after the manner of kitty grass.
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