Pools, Toilets, School, and Geese!

28 May 2026

Just another day around the house today. It started off in the morning for me moving the chickens to their new spots. Afterwards, it was off to the pool. I’ve been battling mustard algae in the pool for the last couple weeks, but I think I have it under control now, or perhaps, at least for the moment.

This picture was a few days ago. Since then, I’ve had the chlorine up high, around 20 ppm to kill off the algae.

Last night, I left the pump off to get what I could to settle out, and I vacuumed this morning. It’s less green now, but still hazy. I’ll get a better picture tomorrow of where its at. Hopefully the kids can get back in it in a few days.

After dealing with the pool, it was off to unclog a toilet that Randal had backed up. He’s still getting the hang of the proper amount of toilet paper, so its a thing. I’ve come to really appreciate toilet closet augers. Much better than plungers and more effective.

We sold a couple baby geese that we hatched. We still have these for which are up for finding a new home, or possibly becoming guard geese for the other chicken pen. Geese are pretty good at keeping things at bay.

After the morning chores and tasks were done, I worked with Evan on his school work.

The kids had a smoothie for breakfast, which helps with the teeth pain from the recent braces adjustment.

We had rain off and on all day netting about 2 inches of rain, which was good as we are short on water for the year so far.

Meagan, Randal, and I spent a while on the porch enjoying the storm while Randal blew bubbles.

After school work was done, the kids watched Back to the Future to help distract from the braces pain. Jarek, in particular, and Arya as well, have been in a fair amount of pain and unable to focus on their usual school work. Hopefully it settles down over the next few days.

After that, it was back to work on my bookkeeping. I have added a media project to my list – reorganizing the music cds. I am also now going through the piles of family photos we have and digitizing them and adding them to the photo repository. The negative scanner and flatbed both showed up today, so I’ve been having fun playing with both of those.

The kids went off to swim practice, and then dinner, and that was pretty much it for the day!

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#video #life #moments #geese #homestead #pool

26-27 May 2026

Tuesday was a pretty easy day. Jarek and Arya are recovering from their recent adjustment. Jarek had his braces put on his upper teeth on Tuesday.

So the pain was new to him and was a bit uncomfortable.

Smolder says the laundry left on the homeschool tables makes a great bed.

Then it was off to Swim Team practice. Arya, blue swim suit, jumps off while Jarek watches from the back.

Randal shows off his current favorite ‘magic trick’ of hanging onto, then sliding down the fireman’s pole on our playset.

Garrett and Randal love their ice pops. We send them out to the swing so there is less mess to clean up. Randal, of course, is quite happy to help himself to extra pops now and then.

We were going through some bins of our old SCA fighting gear, and Garrett thought it was great. He got himself all dressed up and is ready to go!

One last video:

Garrett and Randal found themselves a piece of bubble wrap, and it is the best thing ever!

I have another project I want to do, adding video cameras to the chicken tractors for streaming, but that will have to wait a bit!

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#video #life #moments

Video: Randal helping me get the eggs today!

Well, I have an idea of what happened, but this will fix the issue.

This is one of our Chickshaw chicken tractors. It does a pretty good job for the chickens. We have had it in use for about a year now and it is holding up well.

I’ve got some more videos and things to post, and I’ll get to those soon! Life has been busy, Jarek got his braces today, and we are getting ready to wrap up the <home> school year.

I’ve got another project to do, as part of our stuff reduction, scanning and processing family photos that we’ve inherited from various sides of the family, so that will be fun.

I continue to nerd out on the webserver and working to optimize it among other things. I’ve been able to get a few little projects done on it that make me happy, but mostly it’s me avoiding the bathroom remodel (it’s hot now!) and other, more boring projects that I really should be doing.

chickens #homestead #fresheggs #pasturedpoultry #video

Old Jennings backpacking trip

A couple of weekends ago, I took Jarek and Arya on a trip through the Old Jennings State Forest. This was a fairly aggressive trip planned, it had a 9 mile leg in it. I wanted to see if we were ready to take on a more aggressive longer multi-day trip that would have us doing ~10 miles a day or so. Spoiler – we were not!

Ready the story here – https://www.wolfandraven.blog/2026/05/old-jennings-backpacking-trip/

#hiking #backpacking #adventure #outdoors #forest #camping #outdoors

Chicken Tractor #2 progress

Presently working on building chicken tractor # 2 with my little helpers.

A few stops and starts and a couple extra trips to the store, but progress has been made. Another trip to the store tomorrow. The hinges I ordered haven’t come in yet, so off to get some off the shelf. I made the initial parts order via online for pick up, but apparently I picked something that wasn’t available.

Randal helps me by holding the roosting bars up so I can secure the brace for the nesting boxes.

Another day or two, and it will be ready for prime time! Which will be great as the little chicks are growing up fast!

#2026 #homestead #chickens #building #ducks #goose #geese