Just for the heck of it...  Lights in a chicken coop.  It is  a coup alright.  My girls are doing it now:  more than, drumrollllllll   100 eggs in one day.

Gave my presentation on Pok power, hoeing hens and hennabagoes at the Mercantile in McKittrick, the local food circle meeting.  It went fine, especially since I brought my own computer and big screen monitor; the peripheral electronics didn't work, again.  I can talk about chickens for hours: for one they are delicious for two they are really stupid and funny, and they can hatch out eggs, which I can't.   So the long and the short of the movable chicken coop benefits are: weed control, 100 lb of nitrogen to the acre, less tillage and eggs.  Installed lights for the chickens, on a giant extension cord.  If they get 14 hours of light they lay better.   
So this week I really feel like the egg man ( I am the walrus coocoo ke choo), there is an upward curve: today was a 65 egg day. Big omlet, making quiche and egg fu young right now.  Eggnog anyone?  For now Yellow wood farm takes what is being laid.    Talking about laying, the other day, collecting eggs around 3 o clock, I open the back of the coop and there is a chicken in one of the laying boxes, working on her project.  I am watching this chicken, it sits with its head upward, squatting on two leggs, and all of a sudden I hear: "pok".  The sound of an egg falling half an inch on the wooden floor.  Have you ever seen an egg being laid?  Stranger things have happened, but still, quite remarkable. 
Someone asked me at the food circle meeting if they could rent one of my wagons, mind you, seriously, with the chickens in it.  And, seriously, I am all up for that.   How about if you rent my chickens for a week, with all the feeders and fencers and chargers and lights to clean up your yard for a bit?   Slogans galore of course: egg on the neighbor, rent my hoe,  dig a chick, your west county upgrade.   I may just take a wagon to market and sell the farm freshest eggs ever.  "You want a dozen?  Just hang on a little it and listen for the cackling.".

Apart from the chicks: just leisure: November 15th and 60 degrees, water that works, wood in sufficient quantities, and I got the old Dodge Neon car  running.  It is not a purple car: it is cranberry colored with a pearl finish, and now it runs and it is for sale.  The outside is rough and the inside looks like 10 long haired dogs lived in it for a year.  I should go and clean the shed, but it cools off so fast at night, maybe better to go to the bar and  add some more to the tab from last week.  Later gater. 

Proud of my couple of rows of turnips.   Then I go and look at my neighbors' pasture.  It looks green, lush green, the cows are in it and then I notice he has sown turnips in his pasture: cowfeed.  Acres and acres, and of course they are huge.
Water issues at the house:  I opened a valve next to the little pump house to activate a hydrant in the middle of the field to water chickens,  anyway, something breaks.   A day later I have free flowing water from a line 3 feet deep in the ground.  And then you are screwed, you have seen it and you can't go back to bed.  So, after half a day I now have a  3 feet deep wet mud hole.   I vaguely remember plumbing this 15 years ago, and slowly the nightmare comes back to me and in this crater where you could by now bury a Cadillac,  I see 4 lines come together.   And if one piece breaks, it all has to be replaced, well guess what? No don't even bother.  So didn't have any water for a day, neither did the mobile home, or the chickens.   So I plumbed it real quick with my favorite washing machine hose connections, rude plumbing. Perfect! But how long would those hoses hold up in the ground?  Cover it up and dig it up again? in a few years?  AH SHIT.  To break my karma and do it right... it took another foot of digging, and bailing the water out for the 10th time.  Anyway, it seems to be working again.  Those joys of jobs well done that no one ever will see.  But through this hole runs the waste water line from my bathtub/shower and kitchen sink.  Ah, let me check it.  More nasties.  Imagine my surprise: you drain a bathtub, the water goes out of the tub,  but no water comes out of the drain.  Neh, it must have gone right under the house.  No wonder the house" is sinking.  Fixed that right quick though, made a hole in the bathroom wall, hooked a pipe up to the tub and now it drains into the yard, parallel to the washing machine drain that has its' own pipe through the wall.  
Went to Columbia, gave a presentation to about 100 people about the hoeing hens.  The actual presentation can be found on the page under hoeing hens. When I got there it was not so good, none of the files I had brought worked, and the computer people were not allowed to down load something or another, long story short, 50 slides made but no pictures, talk about brrrrrr..... 
Beautiful fall so far.  Moved the chickens, impressive, the damage they can inflict.  Power in numbers.  Planted the other half of tunnel to miscellaneous, and found the strawberries back in the other half of the tunnel.  Lookin' purty.  Outdid myself, watered the greenhouse, and, AND turned the water back off.  Got 5 truckloads of wood, plenty of winter projects, and water.  Water is good.