Hoops and Guineas

Check out my hoops!  Brandon and I managed to put up the hoops for the greenhouse on Sunday.  The weather was spectacular for the this time of year, so pounding stakes and assembling hoops with an audience of chickens and guineas was great fun.  

The greenhouse has been patiently waiting in a big pile of parts ever since we helped Joe disassemble it from it's last home.  

The most physically demanding part of this job was pounding the long metal rods that hold the hoops into the ground with a giant hammer.  But even that wasn't as hard as trying to follow the directions for making the greenhouse square.  The directions explain how to use a measuring tape and some string to measure the sides and from corner to corner.  This was so hard for us!  We measured and stretched our string, then remeasured and re-stretched our string so many times I lost count.  At one point I was googling Pythagoras's theorum and trying how to find a square root function on my phone calculator.  It was madness.  Two college graduates stumped by simple geometry!  In the end I think we figured it out, because it looks squarish.  Not level, but at least squarish.  

The hoop pieces slide together very easily, and were light enough that we could flip them up and place them on the rods embedded in the ground.  Joe warned us that we may want to invest in longer rods since we have so much wind, but we decided to use what we had. If our greenhouse blows away in a storm, we can't say we weren't warned.   

I think I like these guineas, despite their bad reputation.  Of coarse, these are still young, and haven't been out and about on their own for very long, but so far, they have been very entertaining.  

Recently, Jamie played a video for me that Joe made of his guineas making a terrible racket.  I keep getting warnings from folks that guineas are going to be more trouble then they are worth.  Since I have no idea what they are worth - this may be true.  Two people have told stories of their childhood encounters with guineas that left them with a lingering fear of them.  I'm a little nervous.  

As I was out taking pictures of the greenhouse hoops yesterday, I heard the guineas approach (sounds like squeaky wheels), so I made my own video of the guineas making their noises.  I happened to catch some R rated chicken action too!  Enjoy!