Adding Martyrs to the Mix

This year on All Hallows Eve, we attended a parish costume party, complete with games and prizes. Since my kids are older, they kicked up the costume fun a notch. Of course I prodded my kids about costumes for over a month beforehand. No one was particularly interested. None of them wanted to settle on their saint or work on their costumes. Then,  the day before the party, they kicked into high gear. 

I had been trying to interest my oldest and was making jokes about how he should attend as a martyr, especially one that was unique like St. Lawrence, Pope St. Clement I, etc. His imagination and sense of humor was finally stirred by my suggestion to be St. John the Baptist after he was beheaded. This is what we came up with. 

For the table, he took a box, fixed wooden fence stakes to it for legs, and a thin piece of plywood to the top so that a tablecloth would hang in a convincing way. We duct taped some spare fabric around the plywood edge so that the cloth went to the floor, and used an old decorative table cloth layered over that. He cut a hole big enough for his head to fit through the box and wood. We cut Xs in the cloth so that his head could fit through those. Then we cut an aluminum serving tray in two, duct taped the edges to protect him from cuts. This was to be fitted on either side of his neck in order to make it appear that his head was on a platter.

He really didn't need a wig, but thought an old ratty one we had was extra humorous. So he used red lipstick for blood on his neck, eye liner for a scruffy beard, crouched in the box, donned the wig, and tried to look dead. Unfortunately, this first dry run was the only picture I captured, but you get the idea. 

My oldest daughter liked the martyr idea after that too. She decided on St. Joan of Arc due to her hair cut. I fashioned cardboard flames for her that caused an emotional and nerve wracking kick off to the party. (We ran out of time when working on the flames, and had to settle for plain yellow paint which wouldn't dry. That meant that we had to go in two separate vehicles and that she was late for the line-up. We didn't even get time to make her look like she was tied to the stake! Oh, well.) The flames were zip tied to a PVC pipe that I spray painted to look like hammered metal. She wore her dad's white shirt, an old skirt of mine, and some awesome shoes that she constructed. She had old, orange, Croc-style rubber shoes. To these she tied some split wood by lacing twice around the wood and through the holes in the shoes. To the shoes she hot glued sticks and leaves. They were cumbersome to walk in, but really "made" her costume. Here's how it turned out.

My youngest daughter was St. Kateri Tekakwitha because she wanted to put her long hair to good use. :)

My middle boy was St. Joseph.

My husband went as St. Maximilian Kolbe in his prison uniform. 

I transformed a striped pair of pajamas for the occasion.

And I went as St. Christopher holding the Christ Child (my youngest, curly-headed son.) I wore a button-down shirt of my husband's, some rolled up work pants, my rope sandals, carried a staff, and lugged my son around. He was dressed in a white onesie under a white slip, with white leather slippers. He was absolutely adorable.

My oldest two were the only saints depicted during or after martyrdom. I guess that's a bit gruesome, but we tried not to be too gory, and it certainly resonated with my 'tween and teen. They would have been begrudging participants otherwise. 

Coyote in the Road

Early last week, while driving, as I rounded a blind curve on a road near our house, I came upon a coyote. It was hemmed in on either side by cattle fences, so it turned and ran from my vehicle along the road. I followed it at a distance, slowly, in awe, making exclamations to the kids. Eventually, I thought to fish out my phone and snap a photo. That can tell you both how slowly I was driving, and how long this coyote ran down the road! It passed a driveway, but did not turn off. It even passed a horse pasture with board fence, as this picture shows. Finally it came to a break in the cattle fence where there was a pipe gate, and it ducked through. I stopped the car to look after it. And it turned to look at me. It was a weird, magical, surreal occurrence. But all five of my kids were with me, and they will attest to the the veracity of this description. And I have these blurry pictures as proof too. And no, for you skeptics out there, it was NOT a German Shepherd mix- different tails, different ears, different coloring, different leg set-up that makes coyotes look more "leggy." And the coyote was near a point where we often spot coyotes hunting in some fields. 

Chicken Attrition

the "ladies" foraging through the leaves in the bluebell pasture

Remember how I figured I'd lose some "ladies?" Well, I have. I had been letting the chickens free range. It started because they were such great flyers and sailed over the 5 foot fence lining the small pasture I wanted to let them forage in. They also scooted under the sliding barn door and flew up into the hay and walked the stall doors and walls. They perched on the top of the hoop house, and even the roof of the barn! 

Hercules and the black Sumatran hen

Because I am busy with a one year old, and four other kids who are home educated (even a high schooler) etc. I just didn't have the time to clip flight feathers. Besides, that takes two people, and my husband is gone a lot, making getting that difficult to line up. I did not having the heart to pen them up either, especially with the roosters treading them. Two roosters to twelve hens is a lot. So they blissfully scratched through leaves and gravel, took dust baths in the flower beds, foraged through the grass, and snuck up into the hay bales.

Our first poultry loss was the chick that my middle boy held a little too firmly. It didn't make it through the night. Then there was the first missing hen. It was gone, no alarm call that anyone had noticed (although my husband had responded to one that seemed to be a false alarm that day) no pile of feathers, no trail of blood... in broad daylight... the middle of the afternoon when most of the family was outside. I figured that it was a hawk, since I had chased one away previously.

Even after this loss, and down to thirteen chickens, I continued to let them roam. The thought that the roosters were a bit much for the hens to bear with no means of escaping them, and I didn't have the heart to kill them. I did get mean and murderous by not cooping the roosters up on several occasions, but they were always crowing at 4:30 the next morning and strutting around the coop, so I eventually gave that up. 

About a week later, I lost another hen in the middle of the day. This time there was a tiny pile of feathers on the turf near the bluebell pasture and next to the animal pen that their coop was in. It was under a branch that extended out over the grass. There was no sign of a fight, no blood, just some white down, some under feathers. Maybe the hawk again? Maybe it was going to come back once a week for a good meal. 

Rusty the rooster, RIP. His crows ended on a downward slide.

So plans were kicked into high gear for readying the hoop house for their permanent occupancy- electrifying the hoop house for winter so as to keep their water from freezing, attaching an automatic door between it and the coop, and adding a light to supplement them on the short days of winter. Before all the plans could be realized, we lost a ROOSTER in the middle of the day. It was the red one, the more aggressive one, the only rooster  that had earned a name at that time- "Rusty." Again, there was no sign of a scuffle, no blood, no trail, no feathers even. Maybe we were dealing with a coyote marauding by daylight. It seemed unlikely that a hawk could take out a rooster. And we see coyotes all the time. At least it was a rooster, and it was the meaner of the two... but still.

Hercules crowing his heart out. His crows end on a raised note.

Now the girls have been shut in with the white rooster that I have since taken to calling Hercules. They would have ended up being cooped up this week anyway, because the weather has been wintry (we've had snow on multiple occasions) and they would have been at risk of frostbite roaming about outdoors at 19 degrees. 

This is Rosie, looking partially plucked for roasting.

Speaking of frostbite, the chicken that is going though a "hard molt" (which can take up to FIVE months I just read during another stint of research) is still half bare. She could pass for a poorly plucked cornish hen! I'm going to have to bring her inside in a cage to keep her warm enough and to coddle her in an effort to induce refeathering. Because of her large, red, and strange comb, my daughters have named her, "Rosie." 

Attila the Hen is on the left in the foreground.
She's a silver laced Wyandotte.
To her right is a silver spangled Hamburg.

So now we're down to one rooster named Hercules, and ten hens. So far only four of them have names: Millie (a Lakenvelder), Myrtle (a Dominique), Attila the Hen (a silver-laced Wyandotte), and the aforementioned Rosie. 

Herding Chickens

So... the chickens.... They are 18 weeks old now. Most of them have beautiful feathers. I am a little disappointed at how similar the Sicilian Buttercup, the Golden Penciled Hamburg, and the Golden Campine look though. Other than the nuanced differences in tail angle and body shape, they mostly just have necks of slightly different colors at this point. 

I say that "most" have beautiful feathers because there is an oddball, an "ugly duckling," if you will. She seems to suffer from a genetic mutation or from being ill-tended while in the egg (not turned enough or a period without the proper warmth.) Her partial molts, that all pullets go through, have been slow and ugly, with large bare patches of bright pink skin showing. She has not been fully feathered since they began. The feathers she does have are partially frizzled, and some stick out at weird angles. 

At first I worried about some chicken disease or malnutrition, but I have made certain that she is well fed and that she is not being henpecked. And none of the other birds have presented with any oddities. She is primarily white, with a few black flecks, and very long legs. She has a double comb like a red cap, which I ordered, but which is not white. The only primarily white hen that I ordered was a Lakenvelder. Lakenvelders have a white body with a black head/neck, black tail, and a black wing band. I clearly have one of those. So I can't even identify what breed she is out of the list that I ordered! She resembles none of them so far, and the roosters complicate identification too.

Yes, you read that right. I have not one, but TWO roosters- out of an order of 15 HENS. One of them seems to be a Silver Leghorn. The other might be a Rose Comb Brown Leg. (It's a bit hard to tell because they don't have all of their adult feathers yet, and because roosters are marked differently than hens.) 

The Rose Comb/"red rooster" crowed from pretty early on. We thought perhaps it was the phenomenon wherein the dominant female, due to lack of a male, takes on the role of boss and protector and tries to crow. "She" didn't have spurs. But then "she" got saddle and hackle feathers, and the rooster like squawks became definite crows. Sigh. 

Eventually, I noticed that another "hen" seemed to be getting saddle and hackle feathers too! But I never heard or saw it crow and it didn't have spurs either. So I clung to the hope that I was just seeing fancy feathering that were misleading. Nope. 

The chicken with the red comb is the Silver Leghorn/"white" rooster.
The blurry hen in the lower left is the Lakenvelder. 

One day the rooster crowed incessantly. I thought perhaps there was a predator bothering the chickens and went out to investigate. What was really going down (or should I say, "up") was that the suspected white rooster had flown up to the 6 foot tall fence post, and started crowing. He was taunting the "red rooster," who is not as agile of a flier or who is a natural home-body. (He always hangs around the hoop house/chicken run. It was a war of sorts. Ever since then, 5 of the hens have seemed to be in the white/Silver Leghorn's harem; he and his flock fly over the fence each day and worry me by often wandering into the edge of the woods during their scratching and foraging.

Speaking of the woods, I've had a couple of fun times with the chickens and the woods. Once, the goat got fed up with the chickens. In the morning when there is heavy dew or when it is rainy or when they are bored, they like to go and scratch in the bedding of her stall. She does not like this, especially now that there are two noisy males. She sometimes charges at them, chases them around, etc. Well that day I had not walked her to the back pasture. So she got annoyed, managed to kick the chain latch loose on the gate, and herd all the chickens out and into the woods. Fully satisfied and full of defiance she came to the house, stood right out front, and stared into the windows until one of the kids noticed her. 

I went out to close her back up, and she followed me eagerly to her stall without any shenanigans. It was only after she was safely closed up again that I realized that it was too quiet and still. I realized that I didn't hear or see even a SINGLE chicken anywhere! Then I noted that the Lily was covered in burrs and weed seeds and was soaked. So she didn't kick open the gate and just mosey up to the house because she was looking for companionship or because of boredom. She had been out gallivanting through the "bluebell pasture" or the woods. 

I went in, settled children, changed clothes, and went in search of the flock. By then, the misty morning had turned into a rainy midday. So in the damp chill I beat through the undergrowth of the woods with a stick, stopping every now and then to listen. Finally, I heard the red rooster make a weak and feeble crow. (This was before the white one revealed himself.) There were my bedraggled chickens, huddled under some multiflora roses. It was the first and only time that I have been happy about owning a rooster. With his help, I herded them back to their pasture and into the hoop house/run, and didn't lose any. Have you ever tried herding chickens in the woods? Phew. 

And just this morning, I was upstairs reading aloud to my 5 and 7 year olds when my 10 year old came in, asking what that crazy noise was. I paused and heard an unusual, loud, and steady squawking. Sighing, I put a kid on temporary toddler duty, booted up, and went to investigate. Upon exiting my house, it was clear that the noise came from the woods. I walked over and before entering, a hawk flew off through the trees and a hen came scurrying out of the undergrowth, and made a beeline for the chicken pen. I chased all the chickens under cover. (They free-range, as I have not clipped pin feathers, and they are exceedingly good flyers.) I observed the hen that had escaped for a while, and she showed no visible signs of injury. Luckily it was Attila the Hen, who is the largest of them all. I'll have to do a closer inspection tonight after the children are in bed, but she has been perching and scratching normally so far today.

I'm lucky that the chickens are good flyers though. Yesterday we had an incident that could have been ugly. When showing my mother-in-law the chickens and their set-up, my 5 year old let the pop door fall on the hoop house. So when my husband went out to close the coop, only a few birds were inside. They could not get through the hoop house/run to get into the attached chicken coop. Some chickens were roosting on the stack of square bales in the pole barn, and some were roosting on the top of the hoop house/run. The white rooster was pacing about. 

After much difficulty, which included a flashlight, ladder, and a broom, chasing hens in the twilight, and carrying struggling squawkers to the run, we thought they were all inside. The white rooster flew to the barn roof for a while, but we managed to get him down. I counted the milling, disoriented poultry in the coop over and over again, usually coming up one short. But after a time, I gave up, assumed they were all in, and went back to the usual duties. 

This morning when I went to let them out of the coop for the day, the Egyptian Fayoumis was pacing along the pasture fence- on the outside. So I WAS one short. Luckily she had found a safe perch, and had made it through the night. It's a good thing too, because coming in last night I heard an owl hooting in the woods. 

As you can see, by just the example of these few adventures, chicken ownership has been eventful this far.

Close-up Vulture

One day, recently, my son called out to me from the living room, "There's some sort of hawk or something thrashing in the bushes!" I feared that a hawk, hunting for a small bird, had entangled itself in the deer netting that had been draped over the bushes by the previous owners of our home. I sighed. 

When I took a look, I knew right away that it wasn't a hawk. I couldn't see much of the bird at first, just a wing flapping up now and then, but it was a BIG wing. After some minutes, it became obvious that we were looking at a turkey vulture. We still didn't know if it was caught in the netting or not, but it was thrashing about wildly in the bushes. 

Just when I was wondering whether or not to go out to it to see if it was stuck, and wondering if I'd need to call a wildlife specialist, the vulture moved. It became apparent that it was eating something. I snapped a few pictures, and must have disturbed it when  my lens bumped the glass of the window, because it flew to a nearby branch. I took a few more pictures while it moved about the branch preening. 

Later, after tending the livestock, I caught a whiff of something terrible. It came from the bushes that generated such movement and excitement earlier in the day. Gingerly, and unable to ignore my morbid curiosity, I walked closer and took a look.  What I saw was the carcass of a giant black snake, about as big around as my wrist. Yuck. To my knowledge the snake is still in said bush. I am not going to extract the smelly, torn, and mangled thing. Those bushes are slated to be removed anyway. So the snake can wait. We just won't hang out down wind of it!

A few days later, two vultures showed up on the same branch that the first had occupied. They never returned to the bush. Perhaps some other varmint had already eaten it. Perhaps our presence at the nearby window deterred them. 

We often see these birds from a distance soaring and scavenging. I love to see them riding thermals. But up close, their nostrils and ugly heads are far from beautiful! Here are links to a previous posts of mine about these giant birds, in case you're interested: http://livingwaterhobbyfarm.blogspot.com/2013/08/vultures.html  http://livingwaterhobbyfarm.blogspot.com/2014/03/fish-and-vultures.html

Blue to Red

My husband on the little Ford clearing the driveway last winter

My husband ended up buying another tractor. He likes to say that we "switched from red to blue." But we haven't switched yet. We simply have two tractors now. But the old one IS a Ford, and the new one IS Massey Ferguson. Actually, there's no "we" about it either. I've never driven the old tractor or the "new" one. The one time my husband suggested that I learn how to drive the Ford, I couldn't fit behind the steering wheel because I was an obscenely pregnant woman. And I never even saw the new one until it was parked in front of my house.

But back to the story. In order to get the tractor to our place, he had to figure out how to haul it here. Being the schmoozer that he is, he somehow got a real estate agent who also has an office in his building, to loan him her husband's trailer. It turned out that her spouse was part owner of a used car lot. He also found out from her that the folks from whom he was going to buy the tractor had been convicted of animal cruelty last year for having starving horses. They had 34 of them, and were in the process of buying more when they were indicted! Lovely.

Anyway, despite my protestations, he drove to another small town with my oldest and picked up the trailer. His light connector couldn't be adapted to work, so the trailer had no lights. Even better. Luckily it was close to the location from which he purchased the tractor. Unfortunately, neither were close to our home!

He found out the hard way that the trailer and tractor together were heavier than the truck, for the truck started rolling away upon his first attempt at loading. He had to chock the wheels. But despite all the risks he was taking, he managed to get home safe, much to my relief and much to my children's delight. He was the hero of the day for my tractor loving boys. In fact, our youngest sat for a very long time blissfully "loading" his siblings and monkeying with the controls as his doting oldest brother kept him from tumbling off.

Unloading the tractor was a bit dicey, and I think that the ramps were a little more bent than they were to start with. Upon the first usage of the tractor, it wouldn't start. This led to several frustrated hours until my husband finally figured out that the battery terminals had corroded and he was losing connection to the battery. Phew! His next step was to get a seat belt and install it. Of course,  the seatbelt kit didn't arrive with bolts, so after he tracked some down, he was good to go. Now the tires just have to last for a bit. They're in terrible shape. 

"Attila the Hen"

The goat has been escaping lately. She's lonely. We keep finding her standing quietly in the drive behind the garage. She meekly follows us back to her stall when we take her. When we leave her out to be near us, she is skittish, and starts away from any sudden noise or movement, which basically means, she shies away from the kids. 

Due to this tendency, I have not turned the chickens out into her pasture, as I had hoped to do, as it would afford them a bit of protection. But I'm afraid she might trample or charge them or that they might batter themselves against the fence in a flurry of feathers in their efforts to escape her. Because they are skittish too (sigh.)

The chickens are still a pain. The bossiest one is pulling the others' tail feathers out. It's better that the cannibal chicken adventures I had a while back, but it is still frustrating.

I suppose that they are bored. They are very active, being heritage breeds. There are also a few that are physically bigger than the others, and so the cycle perpetuates, because their bossiness prevents the smaller, more timid birds from eating as much, leaving the bossy birds always bigger. 

It's gotten so bad, that I'm close to taking out "Attila the Hen" and letting her roam the place. If she were taken by a hawk, fox, coyote, raccoon, stray dog, or wandered off into the woods forever, it would not be the end of the world. Although, the pecking order would change and another pullet would rise to her place, it is hard for me to imagine another as vicious as she is. I've seen her defend two different feeders at the same time, and not eat a bit. She's charged at pullet after pullet, flying at them, striking them hard with her beak on the back of their head or their back. Grasping a tail feather with her beak and giving a sharp tug. 

Sometimes, the other chickens are not so easily deterred, and they meet midair with talons extended, feathers flying, and a great squawking and fluttering. More space should help with this, as then the feeders could be too far apart to defend both. But then maybe I'd just have two bossy birds. And I don't like the idea of a feeder outside. But it would help with the boredom.

I keep getting close to turning them out into the "yard" when we're out, but then worry that the stinkers would wander into the woods, never to return, would roost in the trees at night, leaving me to search for them for hours, haul a ladder from tree to tree, and then have to physically remove the cluckers. 

For those of you who don't know, chickens go into a passive, trancelike state when they sleep at night. You can't wake them up really. I once had to dislodge a Lakenvelder from our front crabapple tree at our old place with a broom in order to transfer her to her roost and safety for the night. It took some doing! Gentle nudges and bright lights didn't cut it. After the time and money invested so far, I keep wimping out. Hopefully I'll get the gumption soon.

As I type, my oldest boy and husband are off checking over a used tractor that they intend to purchase. They have a borrowed trailer and the road that the tractor is located on is a bit of a doozie, so I'll rest easier when they are home, despite my complete lack of enthusiasm for this purchase. (I just don't see it making financial sense, and fail to see the need for a front end loader, etc.) 

The baby is up from his nap, so I'm off to tend my own little chick.  

Rain

Another day is nearly done. A storm with heavy rain blew through earlier today, and then it tapered off to a steady rain. We anticipated its arrival just in time to coop up the chickens, shut in the goat, gather all the scattered outdoor toys and close up the toy shed, take down the hammock, and bring in the mail. 

Once the worst of it blew over, we let the chickens back out into their run. Some of my children decided to stay out after that. They enjoyed frolicking in the light rain and filling every container they could find with rainwater. They came in to dinner thoroughly soaked and happy. 

After some black bean and salsa soup, with a side of home-made guacamole and chips, and a warm shower, they are all tucked snugly in their beds. The worst of the mess is cleaned up and the dishwasher is now running. My husband is away, so I am taking a much-needed breather on the screened-in porch. 

The rain is falling steadily. It pops on the cloth gazebo roof. It pings in the fire bowl. It drums down  the bent drainpipe. It thrums on the cement patio. It patters on the many trees, causing their leaves to dip and flip. It is an altogether soothing sound, and in general, I like rain.

The chimney swifts raising their second brood in a mud nest plastered to the stone siding under the eves are busy. As the sun sets, they swoop in the golden, glowing downpour with determination, catching insect after insect just above the moss-green grass. Their chicks peep all the while in a frenzy of hunger.

But I'm thinking of the complete battery of tests I started administering my oldest daughter today and of the math section that is slated for tomorrow.... of the research paper my oldest boy is wrapping up... of the tractor my husband put a hold on today- without consulting me first... of the latest fit my middle son threw at bedtime... of my youngest daughter's teeth. They are failing to fall out of her now shark-like lower jaw, and I need to schedule a dentist appointment to have them pulled. These and a myriad of other jumbled thoughts crowd my mind.

A cardinal is calling now. It sounds so loud, even above the noisy rain. It calls me back to my surroundings. A robin chucks occasionally, as if complaining about the cardinal. The sagging gutter on the barn is overflowing where is has for too long. Our neighbor's portion of the hay sits on the field still, irking me. The large round bales seemingly balanced at precarious angles along the ridge and the back side of the hill. And my mind wanders to the recent haying and the dishonesty and disrespect shown to us by the neighbors with whom we share this task. Where is my peace? It eludes me tonight.

I suppose I should go fold the four waiting baskets of clean laundry. I suppose I should correct my son's Spanish exercises. The shower surround I re-grouted is still waiting for an application of grout sealer. The stair carpet removal project is still only half finished. Four banker boxes of filing are waiting for culling and reclassification in the stone room. The downstairs bathroom is still without paint, a sink, or a mirror, etc., etc. And those are only the bigger things. My list is so long. Sigh... 

The infrequency of my posts is usually caused by one of two things. Either it's lack of time, because I am so tremendously busy that I can't even steal any. Or it's the fact that I'm temporarily blind to the bits of beauty in my life, and don't care to immortalize my pessimistic thoughts. Lately, it seems to be a bit of both. In fact, Patty Griffin's song, "Rain", is running through my head right now. It'll give you a glimpse into my mood.

Sometimes the hurt is so deep, deep, deep
You think that you're gonna drown
Sometimes all I can do is weep, weep, weep
With all this rain fallin' down

Strange, how hard it rains now
Rows and rows of big dark clouds
When I'm holding on underneath this shroud
Rain

It's hard to know when to give up the fight
Some things you want will just never be right
It's never rained like it has tonight before

High Maintenance Ladies

It's been 5 weeks since the chicks arrived in the mail. And what a busy 5 weeks it's been! For starters, there were 2 weeks of sailing camp for my oldest in there. It was a day camp that required me to drive (with all the kids) 2 hours every day.... and that's with someone else hauling him the last 30 minutes of the drive! But at least my son was certified by US Sailing as a "small boat sailor" under light winds by the end of it all. 

credit: Chris Howell | Herald-Times

Said son also had a robotics day camp that required the same amount of driving each day. He presented his team's code on a giant screen to a large audience for the third year in a row. They won the Mars Rover Expedition Grand Challenge. He received a leadership award (again, for the third year running.) And in the end, his photo ended up on the cover of a newspaper, the accompanying article got nationally syndicated, and he was featured in their promo video. Go, boy, go!

My middle boy had his 5th birthday in the last 5 weeks. There was also a big family get-together for a weekend at a nearby campground. Think bugs, poison ivy, nearly as many dogs as children, hot grills, open fires, a toddler, etc. I don't think I need to say more about that! Our wedding anniversary fell in this time span, as well as Fathers Day and another storm that nearly blew the gazebo over. (Imagine me soaking wet trying to weight it down with cement blocks as it slid and moved and the kids all shouted directions from the windows :) 

I prepped and re-grouted the shower surround in the boys' bathroom in the last 5 weeks. I even started removing the carpet on the stairs. To make things crazier, my husband had a business trip one of those weeks. Maybe there were two trips in there? Really it's all a blur. I'm sure he was gone for the tornado warning which I spent in the basement with the kiddos until an indecent hour. (Of course it was all torn up because my husband had removed all of the ancient ceiling insulation shortly before.) And I'm sure he was gone the day the tree fell across our drive when we went to drop off my oldest. (Another one fell into the hay field!) That involved shifting everyone to the truck, driving through the hay, across the dam, around the hay barn, and through our neighbor's property in order to get him to his destination on time. And it meant parking halfway up our long drive on the return trip, climbing through the tree with all the other kiddos, and lugging the 16 month old all the way back to the house. It also included returning to the truck with snow sleds in order to haul the groceries up to the house, etc.)  I'm also sure that he was gone when the air conditioner was repaired. And he was definitely gone the day after the the Chicken Civil War began. Right... so, back to the "girls." Being a Catholic, litanies come naturally to me- sorry! 

I got heritage breed chickens. They are hardy, good foragers, and have more anti-predator instinct left in them. And then I figured that since they were to be layers and there would be 15 of them, that it would be handy for them to all look different in order to keep track of health, whereabouts, etc. I tried hard to get the smaller, lightweight birds, so that they would be pretty evenly matched, could fit into a smaller roosting space, and would use less food to produce eggs as well. This all seemed reasonable at the time... use up table scraps, reduce the local insect population, fertilizer for gardening, fresh eggs for the family, teach the kids a bit about animal husbandry, etc.

I was not prepared for the headache this has been. We've had baby birds before, both chickens and ducks. We have not, however, had quite so many. I think 8 is the most I've raised at once. Add to that the fact that these ladies are feisty heritage breeds instead of Production Reds, and different breeds that mature at different rates, and they've been a maintenance nightmare. 

Things started out with the trip-induced pasty butt. That got me one "girl" in the house in a box, and me scrubbing lots of chicken rumps at intervals while fussing over their feed. Next came my 5 year old squeezing a bird he held too tightly. I'll let you imagine the rest of that story. Then they started being able to move the brooder ring when running to the other side in unison. And not too long after that, they began flying out of the 2 foot tall brooder ring. So I moved them to the bottom of my chicken coop with the roof off. It only took a while before they flew over that too.

As I was deciding whether to move them outside or make a bigger and taller brooder ring, they started pecking each other. It was probably innocent. Their self-preservation instinct was so active, that they were a flurry of feathers and squeaking no matter how many times I fed them, changed their water, changed their bedding, handled them, adjusted the heat lamp, etc. So I bet the first injured bird happened when, as they scrambled over and under each other, one of their backs got scratched. At that point, another instinct kicked in- to peck at anything red, and the poor pullet got a bit bloodied and de-feathered on her back. Ugh! That made 2 birds in boxes in the "stone room."

I made a 4 foot tall ring so that they wouldn't fly out, made it much bigger than the coop, and added roosts and scratch and stuff. I checked on them often. Nearly immediately 2 more birds were mildly bloodied. FUN! So after running in circles in a flurry of claws, beaks, and feathers in order to single out the injured ones, I had a regular chicken infirmary with gentian violet colored birds in their own little cubicles. That made 5 chicken abodes to feed water and change. That was obviously not tenable, so I worked most of a night to get the chicken run buttoned up, but even with my battery lantern and the garage light, it got too dark to complete. But I can tell you that the good parts about working on a chicken run in the dark as a thunderstorm brews above you, the temps hover at 85 with with 80% humidity, and the insects enjoy you for their late night snack are as follows: You get to hear the bullfrogs sing bass below the chorus of the crickets and tree frogs, while the mosquitoes and gnats make thin noises like the strings, and thunder rumbles like kettle drums in the distance. You get to see clouds of moths dancing about the lamp as the lightning bugs rise out of the hay field behind it, flashing against the dark sky that trembles with intermittent lighting. And the claw on the hammer makes a good back scratcher!

The silver thing is the larger brooder ring.
Behind it is the wire hoop run.
The gray thing is the roof removed from the coop.

So the next day, scratching at bug bites, sore, and even more tired than usual, I moved the ring and birds outdoors, figuring they were bored, and I worked like mad to complete the run. The wind kept blowing the ring over, and once a few birds escaped for a bit. But I got the run in workable condition, attached the coop, and moved 10 chickens (because 1 died, and 4 were still in the chicken infirmary) before it was time to pick up my oldest. 

We went inside to clean up, and one of the "infirmarians" had escaped. We were limited on time, as we didn't want to be late, so after chasing her around unsuccessfully, (my toddler thoroughly enjoyed this!) we had to leave her loose, wedged behind a desk where she had taken shelter. On the way home we got stuck in traffic for a long time due to an accident. We watched in horror as a storm blew in. And a doozie blew through as we sat in the car. We worried about whether the pullets would be smart enough to go into the coop to stay dry when they had not been roosting in it yet and might not recognize it with the roof on. We wondered if the tree it was under and the proximity to the house had protected the run from the wind. We came home and found them wet and huddled together in a corner of the run. The tarp, tree, and house had done little to protect them. So then I had pneumonia or some such thing to worry about, not to mention the chicken loose in one of my rooms to tend to. And yup, my hubby was gone for the second round of birdie bloodbath and chicken drowning too.

But the story ends happily (so far.) None of the chickens got sick. The injured and de-feathered birds have been duly coated with yet another layer of gentian violet and returned to the flock and seem to be getting along better than the neurotic way they were in their individual boxes. Hopefully they continue to recuperate. The chicken mess is cleaned up. The "ladies" are roosting at night, scratching in the run during the day, and going into the coop voluntarily now when I go out to shut them up. (Yes, they needed to be individually caught and placed in the coop each night at first. I think maybe now I'll train them to go into their coop at night when I sing, "Goodnight Ladies." What do you think?) They are eating table scraps and taking dust baths. The kids are racing downstairs each morning to see who can let the chickens out. Most of their feathers are in, and they are doing a great job weeding the gravel pad behind my garage. But they remain high maintenance. And... my husband is out of town again this week.

Cheepers

Well, I took the plunge this spring and ordered 15 heritage breed chickens from a reputable hatchery. I figured we'd never have chickens again unless we dove in, that necessity would drive coop building, etc. "Why 15 chickens?" you ask- because it was the minimum order due to shipping requirements for warmth, etc. I also figured we'd lose some to predators. And finally, it takes about 2 chickens per person if you want to supply all of your own eggs (one egg per person per day.)

I broke down and purchased a coop. I'm a cheapskate, so it was painful. But I figured that this coop would be a stopgap measure that I could resell when I no longer needed it, or be a future brooder house. It breaks down flat and pops together, will never need paint, is lightweight, and portable.

My son built a wheeled frame for it, and he's working on a hoop run of a design I adapted from a greenhouse I saw. It's constructed of a 2x4 frame, and bent cattle panels that make an arch. There's a framed door, and the whole thing is wrapped in ¼ inch 20 gauge wire. He was interested and willing, so I turned him loose with the project. He, of course, had to improvise and didn't quite grasp the necessity for not having ANY gaps in the wire, so although it is mostly finished, there's a lot of "buttoning up" that I need to do still. I'm not complaining though. I'm glad to have the help! This picture shows the framing and most of the cattle panels in place. (In the background is a stretch of board fence he replaced! GO, KID!) 

I plan to strap the coop above to the back of this run, and turn them out in it during the day to protect them from dogs, hawks, etc. And I hope to move it around the property so that they get to forage on a new section of grass every few days.  When we're out and about I hope to let them out of the run near us, but we'll have to see if they have a penchant for flying, are attracted to the woods, or refuse to go home. 

The chicks were hatched at an unfortunate time, the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend. That means that they didn't get shipped until Tuesday. It was a rough start. Because of this, a few of them have been battling "pasty butt" so I have been having recurring festivals of chicken rump scrubbing. In fact, one of them lost so much fluff around its vent, that I was afraid to put her back into the brooder with the rest of the "girls" for fear that she'd be pecked. So she's been in a box in the stone room on a desktop under a lamp. She likes to stick her head out of the hand-hole to peek at my children. She'll probably be the only tame one, since the others freak in unison for all feeding, watering, bedding changes, etc. Tending this many birds is a pain. They make a big mess.

Snakes

When we moved here, I was pretty wary of snakes. I made sure my oldest children knew the differences between venomous and non-venemous snakes. I showed them many pictures of copperheads and timber rattlers. And they were instructed to do things like step onto a log and then down, instead of over a log when in the woods, etc. (I didn't want them to surprise a snake and get bit.) I require them to wear tall rubber boots when they are out in the hay field or in the woods, or down on the dam where the snakes like to sun.

So far, we have only seen non-venemous snakes, and a handful of snake skins. We had a giant rat snake coiled around a gutter on the house once, a snake skin hanging from a hole in the stone siding of the house, a snake skin in the loft of the hay barn, snakes sunning on the patio, a snake in the garage, snakes lurking under the paddle boat and slipping into the water when we move it. I've even run over snakes, inadvertently. In fact, I've run over two this week! This is because the roads here are so narrow, the sides overgrown, and the snakes so long that they cover much of the road. 

This morning, when returning from delivering groceries to the elderly with my two oldest, my son cried out as we made our way slowly up our loooong gravel driveway. "There was a snake in that bush!" he said. So I backed up and we got a good look. I'm pretty sure, due to the fact that it was primarily black with regular faint yellow patches, long, and not a pit viper, that it was a black rat snake.  What do you think?

Screen Porch Sanctuary

Life is full, and messy, and chaotic, and stressful theses days. And yet I do not often write in detail about the baby, the kids, my husband's start-up, home education, land maintenance, house work, etc. Recipes, although I seem to cook incessantly, I have only posted a few times. Tutorials and whatnot have barely been touched. Instead a good number of my posts are a sort of introspective meditation. It's odd isn't it? 

I apologize to you for the lack of real insight into my life, for the absence of most of the nitty gritty. You get instead these glimpses of things which I wish to savor, need to process, or feel compelled to record, as if to prove that they are indeed real or really happened. I guess it's often a bit of indulgent escapism here on Blogger. So be it. My life, while full and fruitful, is perhaps tedious and tiresome to most anyway. 

Tonight my husband is gone- again, or maybe- as usual. He left at three in the morning yesterday for New York, followed by Texas. (Yes, I saw him off.) My parents left this morning. They came for a short-notice visit last Thursday evening. My kids are all in their beds now, and I am stealing a few minutes in the screened-in porch. 

A rabbit is busily nibbling grass near the board fence as I type. My oldest son has been repairing a section of it, and he is disappointed that I did not get more fence posts for him today. Goldfinches are twittering and warring in the crabapple branches near me. They were brought hither by the feeder which my oldest daughter hung. The other feeder she made was quickly destroyed by a hungry raccoon. A mockingbird is singing his evening serenade. He sits in the copse of trees that my husband just mowed around this past weekend with the flail mower attachment on his tractor, encircling it in a swath of short grass and dry clippings. 

A catbird is mewing. Bats and swallows are swooping and darting above the hay, catching insects. I see their soaring silhouettes against the patch of sky above the tree line and then they disappear again. A horse is nickering. A cow is lowing. Tree frogs and spring peepers are calling. Dusk is falling.

Last night, sitting up late with my parents, chatting, I saw the first lightning bugs of the season. Perhaps I will see several more in few minutes. We also heard coyotes in the distance. I wonder if I will hear their haunting howls tonight. If I do, it won't be from the porch. I'll be inside soon, tackling dishes, laundry, the messy table and surrounding floor. If my stamina holds up, I'll be correcting school work and writing more lesson plans too. I'll be registering my oldest for sailing and robotics. I'll be answering e-mail and checking Facebook. I'll be planning a gift for someone. I'll be watering the plants. Then I'll be stumbling to bed. But for now, it's stillness and silence in the sanctuary of my screened in porch.

Butterflies and Bluebells

It's morel season again. 

I came across some in the grass near the house. 

I picked them hurriedly, before my son mowed. 

I even found them in the gravel! 

Then I figured that I should follow my own advice (in reverse) 

and venture over to the "bluebell pasture" 

to see if the Virginia bluebells were blooming. 

I had not been to it since Annie's burial. 

Luckily for me, my toddler condescended to be strapped into the jogging stroller.

We did a little "off-roading" for a while.
I took my camera and even snapped a few photos 

while he played with a pinwheel in the strong spring wind.

Not only were the bluebells blooming magnificently and bobbing in the breeze, 

but many butterflies were flitting among them from flower to flower. 

They danced with each other in rising spirals. It was mildly "magical". 

My young son's quietness is proof! He was also mesmerized.

Can you spot the three butterflies on the move in this photo?

How blessed I am!

Annie-dote

Annie near the outer stall door

Last Tuesday when I went out to the barn to close up the goats, they did not greet me with eager bleats or a rush to the fence as usual. Most of the pasture is behind the barn, and the weather had gotten cold again that day, so I went into the barn and expected to hear them in there. There were no hooves pawing eagerly at the stall door. Worried that something was wrong, I peeked through the bars above the wooden part of the door. Lily stood silently at attention in the middle of the stall looking intently at me. There was no sign of Annie. My heart sank.

I pulled the latch over, pushed the sliding door open, and stepped inside. I glanced out the open door on the opposite wall of the stall and I immediately saw her. On the ground, in the gate opening of the cross fencing, Annie lay on her side, motionless. I knew. I didn't even have to walk over. She didn't lay with her head on the ground like that when resting. Annie had died, died of old age. (She was at least 16 years old, maybe as many as 18, and 10-12 years old is considered old for a goat.)

the darkness I dug in

 I stood there in grief. Lily bleated at me, calling me away from my thoughts. She seemed confused. Mechanically I gave her half of a scoop of feed. She sniffed at it. She walked to the door and looked out. She walked back to her food bin and nudged it. I closed the outer stall door. I checked the water, gave Lily some absentminded scratches and pats. She started to eat half-heartedly. I left her to it and closed her in for the night.

I had just tucked the kids in bed before coming out, and they were not yet asleep. And of course my husband was gone for the evening. He had taken my eldest boy to an engineering activity followed by a science fair at a regional institute of technology. I sighed and gave him a call so as to give them advanced warning. Then I went in, checked on the kids to make sure they were settling, gathered a battery operated lantern, a shovel, and some work gloves. I thanked God that the ground had recently thawed.

a picture of the pasture of bluebells where Annie is buried
(taken last year)

Darkness had fallen. After finally figuring how to switch on the mercury vapor light above the large, sliding barn door, I began my vigil. I did not want to leave Annie out overnight. The bobcats, coyotes, coons, 'possums, foxes, weasels, etc. might get at her. So I picked a likely spot in the "bluebell pasture," put my lantern on a fencepost, and started digging. 

It was cold, the upper 20's. My breath made little clouds of condensation before my face. It was still. The trees only rustled slightly. The cold turn had slowed the call of the spring peepers. Their usually energetic tintinnabulation was simply a thin chirping and not the boisterous trilling of the night before. It was as if they were passing the news on. "Annie.... died...  Good... bye... dead... goat... dead... Annie... Annie... Annie... Annie..."

My oldest with Annie about 8 yrs. ago

I began to dig. The grass roots crunched as the blade of the shovel sliced through the turf. The clay was waterlogged and heavy from snow melt and spring rains. My boots squished and squelched on the surface of the soil as I stepped. I jumped on the shovel top over and over again in order to drive it into the earth. I waggled the long handle, pushing it first this way and that in order to drive the metal surface into the gooey ground. Again and again I shook and scraped off spadeful after sticky spadeful. Occasionally I whacked the shovel on the nearby fencepost to remove a particularly stubborn scoop, and the thud echoed resoundingly in the surrounding woods. The pile of soil grew, but the hole seemed to fill itself in like an excavation at the beach that slowly seeps full of sand again. 

my oldest with Annie about 3 yrs. ago

My husband called to let me know they had left and would be home in another 45 minutes. After I disconnected, I stood for a moment in the twilight of lamplight, leaning on the shovel handle, steeped in sorrow, staring at the now shallow grave. The arches of my feet were beginning to hurt from standing on the top edge of the shovel over and over again in my thin rubber boots. My left forearm was a bit sore. 

I thought about how four of my children did not remember a time before we had Annie. I wondered how my oldest son was taking her death as he drove home with my husband. He was my only child who might remember purchasing her. And he had been feeding her and letting her in and out for me quite a bit since the baby had been born. I sighed and looked up. A large, orange, full moon had risen as I dug. It peeked through the trees at about shoulder height, a reminder of the beauty of our seemingly cruel world, a sign that life goes on.

I trekked back to the house to check on the children again. They lay in silence. Accompanied only by my soft footfalls in the damp grass, I returned in silence to the grave, sidetracking past the cold, still form that lay in the grass, staring at me with unseeing eyes. 

digging help

A few short weeks before my uncle had died. As I dug, I thought of his grave, of the photo collage I had made to display at the luncheon afterwards, photos that seemed such an insufficient tribute to the life of a man. I thought of the advancing age of my parents, of the upcoming 40th birthday of my mate. I thought of the small, white casket of my oldest daughter and how long it had been since we last visited her burial site. I wondered if I would have to bury any other children, if my spouse would out-live me. I meditated on the bittersweet fleetingness of life as the fibrous roots of trees broke beneath my shovel like old bones.

Eventually my husband returned. By the stripes of light that his headlights made as they shone through the board fence, I watched him finish the digging. Soon he thought the hole was big enough. We lifted Annie gently into a wheelbarrow and he rolled it over to the hollowed out earth. Against my protests, he tipped up the wheelbarrow and she slipped into the grave with a soft thud. And there she lay, as she so often did, upright, with her legs tucked under her. Only this time she was nestled in an earthen bed instead of the bed of straw or hay or pasture grass that she usually lay upon. 

Annie plowing through some of the snow this winter

We took turns to scoop the clods of clay and piles of earth over her lifeless form. We chit chatted as nonchalantly as possible. Talk turned to tractors because if I had piled the earth on the other side of the hole, he could have pushed it back into the grave with our tractor and we wouldn't have had to continue to shovel. And if he had a new tractor with a front-end loader, he could have lifted Annie that way. I tried to conceal my annoyance from him. He'd been obsessed with tractor shopping for some time. It was an investment that made no financial sense to me. And I didn't want to talk about tractors.

I knew he wasn't trying to be critical of my grave digging. He probably missed Annie more than I did. He had been her primary caretaker, after all.  He was probably only distracting himself from the unpleasantness, from his loss. It's something he has a habit of doing, indulging in avoidance.

My temperament doesn't shy away from such things. In fact, I brood a bit and dwell on them. I am sure that this, in turn, annoys him. In fact, I took solace in digging a grave for her by hand. There was some consolation in the fact that I lifted her gently. It was less harsh that she was buried slowly, shovelful by shovelful, in a way that hurt me in more ways than one, and not in one fell swoop. It was something concrete to do that allowed me to face and work through the experience of death.

Annie had made it through this long, snowy winter only to die in the spring! I had worried every time my husband travelled about what I would do if she died, me busy with kids and all, and the ground frozen. But she seemed to be doing alright throughout the winter, although she moved more slowly and seemed a bit hard of hearing.

But when the weather warmed, she took a turn for the worse. One of her front teeth fell out, and her eyes seemed to lose a bit of their luster. She took a longer time to come to the fence to greet whomever was outside, and she didn't call out as much as she used to. So we babied her- fed her oatmeal and molasses, checked on her several times a day, fed her by hand. She seemed to feel better, and eventually tried to steal the goat feed from her stall mate instead of being grateful for the warm oats. So we went back to supplementing her grass and hay with goat feed, and got a little lax about checking on her for a couple days, as it was Holy Week and we were all very busy.

In the end, I suppose Providence provided. My son was spared from having to find her. My husband was not on a week-long business trip. The ground had thawed. She was able to lie down and breathe her last in the soft, spring grass. And we were able to bury her without the children having to be aware of or part of the morbid job.

my youngest daughter with Annie about 5 yrs. ago

She was such a part of our lives for so long. I remember a cold winter when she tolerantly let the chickens roost on her back for warmth like a living down comforter. She had a penchant for rose bushes and raspberry plants. She liked to take walks with people around the pasture. She never once jumped up on or butted anyone. The only aggression she ever showed was toward a stray kitten that gave her no peace. She'd nibble a bit of whatever you offered her, even if she didn't like it or wasn't hungry, just to keep you near her. She loved to sleep outside on nice nights (before we moved to the wilds and wouldn't let her anymore.) She came running to the fence whenever we went outside or pulled into the drive. She let the children pat her clumsily and drape her in garlands of clover chain. And if she really liked you, she'd lick you like a friendly dog. 

my youngest daughter with Annie about 1 yr. ago

My husband needs an antidote for the loss of our Annie Goat. When I mentioned the fact that our remaining goat was a herd animal in need of companionship and that the breeder we purchased her from so long ago had no goats for sale this spring, instead of thinking of selling Lily or giving her away, he's started contemplating the purchase of a pony as a companion animal for her! My oldest daughter is very excited by this possibility and is lobbying heavily. My oldest boy, who once offered to tend the stray horse (Horsin' Around, Gift Horse, Sorry Charlie, Charlie, et al. , Horse Trading, and The Horse Saga) if he became a permanent fixture here, has no interest in replacing Annie with a pony. It's only been a week, and he isn't ready to move on to ponies yet. I agree with him whole heartedly, although for more practical reasons.