Today we had some clouds with a High of 82F and a Low of 63F. The winds were light at 5 to 10mph out of the East/Southeast. The Relative Humidity is 88% and the dew point 66F. The barometer stands at 30.11 and is still holding. The sunrise came at 6:54am and it set this evening at 5:28pm. The weather is changing. We are due for a cold front to come through in the next day or two. Temperatures are predicted to drop on average 20 degrees, with winds blowing 20 to 25 mph! I am looking forward to the change.

I was up this morning at 5AM. I wrote Mary a Happy Birthday message on her Facebook:

"It was, it seems, a long time ago, when I stood in Georgetown Hospital, and watched as you came into the world. You were a beautiful sight to me. I was greatly gladdened to see you arrive safely. You can not imagine the worry we had, waiting for you to get here. Other than the soap bars in the toilet (which caused me to dig up the entire septic system) and pulling the hat tree over on top of you and breaking it into 20 different pieces (this was the Christmas of your third year), you were never ever any trouble to me. You have been a great kid Mary, and I am proud beyond belief of the woman you have become. I love you. I miss you. I still worry after you. I hope your day is a blessed one. I pray for you always, everyday, several times a day, for your safety and your happiness. I hope you can be happy, and I hope you have a Happy Birthday! I love you.......Daddy" .

Than I wrote her a Happy Birthday email, and I sent her a Happy Birthday text message. She is a great kid, and I hope she had a safe and Happy Birthday. I will call tonight, at around 9pm EST to see how her day went. I am hoping to catch her before she goes out for the evening.

Last night we found a Kennel for sale on Craig's List. We called this morning at 8AM. The Kennel was located in Leigh High Acres, and the owner was willing to get off the price a little (we had priced a 10X10X6 at $450.00). We ended getting this 12 X 12 X 6 kennel for a buck fifty. So, I unloaded the truck, and off we went. We spent some time chasing down a chicken supplier (which we finally found), picked up some hog feed, and stopped for lunch and some shopping at Walmart. I got some sets for the garden, picked up some lime and a bag of fertilizer.

At around 1PM we got to the kennel. It required some disassembling, and some materials will be necessary to make the proper repairs, but it is a good kennel, and a good deal. We stopped and picked up most of the repair materials at the Tru-Value in Labelle, and headed back to Palmdale. Once here, I off loaded the kennel, made repairs, and assembled three of the four sides. I can not go further until I have two additional corner brackets.

Once finished for the evening on the kennel, I went straight for the raised beds. I fertilized utilizing some pot ash, lime, and 4-6-8 fertilizer. I mixed this in really good, installed the drip irrigation system, and covered with "black mulch". Tomorrow I will plant the starts I purchased today, as well as the starts I started when we arrived on November 15th. So this year, we will have our garden, our chickens, and our hog.

Tomorrow I have to build the coop, bury the kennel 6" in the ground. put on a wire top, and build a divider down the center of the pen (half for the hog, half for the chickens). I also have to get the 'hav-a-heart' live trap out, and get it up to speed. I will be trapping coons soon.

On Thursday we get our chickens, and our hog. I am really looking forward to this! We will have our own little Palmdale farmett. It is good to have projects, other than work, that allows me a distraction. I like chickens, and the resultant fresh eggs. I have never had a hog before, so this will be interesting. It should be an efficient use of our scraps, plus we have a huge acorn (or as they say here, A-kerns) crop this year, which is a good source of hog food. The build out of the coop will be fun. The last coop I build was with John Calvin last year. We threw one together over a two week-end period in the summer. It was a chicken coop and goat house all in one. Our coop is not going to get nearly as involved. We will only have two or three hens and a rooster, so we will have just a small nesting box, accessible from the outside of the pen. We will see. It is a project in progress. I have a structure at Todd's that will work, but it is so nice we are probably going to turn it into a garden shed. I will need to build a floor for this structure, so I will probably pick up the materials for this tomorrow along with the materials I need for the coop and the divider.