I hope my poor, malingering blueberries will malinger no more!  The little things haven't had much going for them in the two years they've been in the yard.  I bought them for a few bucks at Wal-Mart when they'd barely grown a root apiece, then I stuck them in sweet soil and mulched them with nitrogen-leaching wood chips.

I'm hoping to remedy the damage with a little TLC.  Yesterday I treated them to some soil acidifier, as well as a nice mulch of mixed pine needles and decidous leaf mould from the hill above the house.  I also used a gift certificate to order a few larger plants from a more reputable nursery.  The pullets are busy scratching up and fertilizing the new ground in preparation for our second round of blueberries' arrival this spring.

I also decided to experiment a bit with the mudhole between the nectarine and grapes.  The soil there is pure clay and in our recent wet spell the chickens churned it up into a mass of mud.  I found some old grain seeds hidden behind my desk and sowed them in the muddiest spots.  If I remember right, the grain is rye, meant to be planted in early fall as a cover crop.  But maybe it'll do something to hold the soil together and outcompete the Japanese honeysuckle which is what naturally grows in that area.  Only time will tell...

The additional bead of Gorilla glue eliminated the wiggle and is still holding up well. Now it's a question of time. How much pressure can the bond take and for how long?

The Gorilla glue expanded out of the groove and has held up under some minor log splitting action.

It looks like another round of glue is in order. There is a tiny wiggle that I think can be deleted if I apply a small bead around the entire handle.

I'll wait till tonight for that step so I can get some chopping done this afternoon.

We have had the Super Splitter wood maul for over a year now and it's already showing signs of fatigue. A few weeks ago the maul head came apart from the fiberglass handle. A bit of electrical tape helped it stay put for a couple of days, but now we need a more serious solution.

I have heard good things about Gorilla glue and for this application an adhesive that expands might just be the answer. If the handle was broke or cracked in any way I would switch to something wooden, but I'm willing to give this one a second chance.

The real test will be if it stays put under the intense stress of log splitting?

Before we left to go to South Carolina, Mark set up a crock pot in one chicken tractor and the ice and easy in the other.  He also put some backup waterers in each tractor just in case.

Turns out that the ice and easy won the contest by a long shot.  When we got home, the crock pot had pretty much evaporated dry while the ice and easy's trough was still halfway full of water.  It looks like the crockpot will only work in sustained cold weather.  (We left during a warm spell and the daytime temperature reached 50 F.)

I'm sure Mark will be playing with his design over the next few weeks, maybe figuring out some way to make a crockpot turn itself off when the water temperature rises above freezing.  But for now, my advice is to stick to the ice and easy!

"I thought you guys had two chicken tractors? How can you make one Ice and Easy serve both tractors?"

Jack, Houston TX

I have not figured out a way to do that, but an alternative to the Ice and Easy might be a simple Crock Pot.

I tried it last night in the other tractor and it worked fine. It seems that if you keep the cover off and the setting on low the water stays close to luke warm. Be sure to switch it off during the day if it gets hotter than 40. Our hens even seemed to enjoy the warm water in the morning, but that could be just my imagination.

The chickens seem to enjoy eating the new pinto bean sprouts. No surprise there. I give them about a handful a day.

I didn't expect our dog, Lucy to be so enthusiastic about the new source of protein and vitamins. We have decided it makes a good supplement to her current dog food, which is mainly corn and other various dog food ingredients if you believe what's printed on the bag.

This experiment has caused me to seriously consider changing from store bought dog food to a home made mixture. There is way too much information on the internet to sort through it all on this topic, but it seems the only food items you should avoid are onions, grapes, and raisins.

Since the sprouts need to be rinsed on a daily basis I decided to drill several holes in a couple of jar lids. This makes it easy to submerge your sprouts and empty the water out.

There is an automatic way to do this, but it will cost you over a hundred bucks, and I'm not sure how much easier this contraption would be to operate.

The tall jar I used to soak the pinto beans in has been cracked for over a year now and I guess the pressure of the beans expanding was just too much for it to handle. I've switched over to soaking them in a bowl to avoid any further bean blow outs.

If you would like to learn more about the history of bean breeding in this country you might want to check out this informative Michigan State University article.

The modern high yield bean of today owes a lot to a couple of plant pathologists working for the USDA in the 1940's. They pioneered a program using X-ray mutation breeding that helped to bring about one of the first bush navy bean varieties.

One question I have had since I started my journey into the chicken world is how can a guy supplement the laying pellets we get from the feed store. A 50 pound bag usually costs about 11 dollars, which is a good deal if you're a small time poultry person. You seem to only get a price break if you buy the individual ingredients by the ton, and that's way out of our league.

Today's experiment will attempt to find out if it's cost effective to sprout some pinto beans from the store at 35 cents a pound and use them to supplement the laying pellet mixture. Sprouts are a good source of amino acids, vitamins, and calories, which according to a Backyard Poultry article will increase our winter egg yields and boost our flock's immune abilities. The picture is step 1. Soak beans for about 8 hours. I will post more about this when the beans make it past step 2, which is to rinse daily and wait for sprouts.