New Ramp Installed

A new drive up ramp to the grass area was installed today to take the place of the previous ramp that was put out of commission by the location of citrus trees.

Garden Area READY to Plant!

Students completed a walkway and completed the fixing of irrigation lines that had been damaged since the last growing season.  READY TO PLANT!

Irrigation lines about complete

The students have been repairing existing irrigation lines for garden. Almost complete. 

Busy Day Today

Today as shown earlier we had 4 baby chicks hatch in the last 24 hours, we received a new pregnant goat, and the students began working on the garden to get it ready for planting next month.

The new goat

working hard or hardly working?

Felicia always wants to be involved

making a new gate

some of the new chicks

Work continues on the Garden

The past two days students have been adding and leveling the dirt in the garden. The students also repaired broken irrigation lines.  The chickens have now been banned from  the garden. In November we opened the garden up to the chickens to scratch, they did a wonderful job just about eliminating all plant life. They have now been banned so we can prepare for the winter/spring planting season.

Photo of students making repair to an existing irrigation manifold. The garden is divided into 13 different growing areas. Four areas were redone as part of a grant in Nov/Dec 2018. The students are making repairs to six of the existing irrigation systems to the other areas.

And Then There Were 4!

We are up to 4 chicks with two more eggs to go!

New Family Member

The baby chicks started hatching today.

Traffic Jam

Hope to eliminate traffic jams! LOL

Wednesday 1-23-19

Today the students spent time regrading the chicken coop floor to allow for better water flow when/if we have any more heavy rains. This past week we had over 8" of rain fall with 4" coming on Thursday alone. Thursdays rains caused some structural damage to the chicken coop which will be addressed.  But today the students brought in wheel barrow loads of crushed granite, sand, and soil to level out the floor of the coop. We created some high areas which we hope will redirect rain water to drains that were cored into an existing block wall at low part of the coop.

Students also began adding soil to low parts of the garden area as well as rake the walkways and began prepping to repair drip irrigation lines. We hope to begin planting early February.

We did observe a line at the hen box. We now refer to this as the squawk line! LOL

Prepping Coop for future Rains!

Today students surveyed the area just outside and inside the coop to find the low spot or flow line of water using a survey level to determine grade. We then moved many wheel barrows full of wet hay out of the cage and began bringing in crushed granite stone to raise some portions of the floor to enable us to control the water flow.

Adding Rain Protection on to Small Coop Only

Last week we experienced over 6" of rain with devastating results to the chicken coop. No animals were harmed  but we did have extensive damage to the chain link fence roof. As a result of a tarp hold water on the chain link we had a few areas cave in some. We removed the tarp and are preparing the smaller coop to handle rain by placing tarps on its roof. The original purpose of the chain link roof still exists in keeping predators out of the cage.

The students also removed hay from the ground to help in the drying process of the cage soil floor.