Blogging Sabbatical

Early Thursday morning my husband woke me with the words every wife dreads:  "You have to take me to the hospital now."  We threw on our clothes and he laid in the back seat of the car as I drove through the darkness, following the blessed blue H signs which I knew would take me to Lynchburg General Hospital.  When we pulled up to the door of the ER I ran inside to tell them I thought my husband was having a heart attack.  They came out with a wheelchair and met him walking inside.  "You're an idiot!"  I screamed.  I turned to the nurse with the wheelchair.  "He's an idiot!"  I screamed at the poor nurse.  I just wanted to make sure that everyone understood in advance that my husband was an idiot. 

Within 5 minutes he was under the care of at least ten people, one of whom was doing chest compressions.  Within 10 minutes he was in the Cath Lab, getting a stent put in to open up the 100% occlusion of his main heart artery.  Within the hour we began to understand that our lives had changed forever. 

My husband will be coming home from the hospital soon to begin his recovery.  This is a silly word because he will never truly recover.  There is damage done that cannot be undone.  But we will sort out the new course of our lives and we will go on because that's what we do.  Never give up.  Never surrender. 

Good Enough Farm is alive and well.  The chickens and the ducks are sleeping in the coop.  The garden is green and tall.  But the heart needs some healing and some rest. 

Take care, Dear Reader, until the cows come home. 

Wellingtons

This damp, chilly Spring has made me hyper-aware of boots.  Not your common ladies boot or your unisex cowboy boot.  No, it is Wellingtons that I am speaking of:  Rubber Boots.  Wellies.  Topboots.  Billy-boots.  Gumbies. 

I see them everywhere.  Just the other day I was watching "When Eight Bells Toll", a spy movie from the early 1970's featuring Anthony Hopkins as a spy exploring nefarious goings-on in Torbay.  He was walking down a country road and I saw, quite clearly, that he was wearing wellies.  "You would never see," I said, "James Bond wearing wellies."  Just remember how awful it was when Bond wore sweatpants in "Never Say Never Again."  But I was overwhelmed with rather amorous feelings for our wellington-sporting spy friend.  "It must," I said, "be the boots."

This unexpected fixation for these rubberous foot fixtures continued into DCI Banks when a whole fleet of policemen and detectives descended into a quarry with wellies on.  I realized then that the whole of England, and perhaps Ireland, Scotland and Wales, travel about with gumbies in their trunks--or more properly, boots in the boot of their car.  Makes more sense now, doesn't it?

I confess, this obsession will only end with the purchase of a new pair of wellies for myself.  After all, it seems I am the last animal on the planet to not have a decent pair.

Stalking The Wild Egg

My hens have always been predictable in their egg laying habits.  Either in the coop or under the coop.  This made collecting eggs a rather simple chore.

No more.

Since the Golden Comets have started laying there is no knowing where the eggs will be laid.  Devoted Readers will recall the one hen who flew into the garden area and under the back steps to lay her eggs underneath an old car door.  Trimming everyone's wings brought that to a halt and I thought that I had been victorious in my constant attempts to outwit my animals.

I was wrong.

Lately the eggs had ceased to appear, as if by magic, in the coop.  I thought that it was because I had merged the Big Flock and the Little Flock or that the duck was upsetting the layers.  I made excuses for them.  "When things settle down everything will be fine."

Poor, deluded fool.

Today I went out to get a sock that I had found in the driveway--no, I don't know why it was there and why I didn't bring it inside when I found it but instead put it in a lawn chair--and found one of the little chicks running around outside the fence in the Big Bad Woods.  I managed to catch her and as I did I noticed out of the corner of my eye An Egg.  It was on the proper side of the fence, at least, on the far side of the New Metal Shed.

I carried the chicken around to it's designated area and let it go.  Now that I was there I found not just one egg, but within a hop, skip and a jump of that first sighted egg, nine of it's companions.  "You silly hens!" I said to no one in particular and gathered them up into my skirt just like old farm wives do in the movies.  I took them inside and put them into the sink and added water so that I could check them for freshness.  I got to wondering if there were more hidden eggs so I went back out.

There, underneath the tarp we had thrown over the shed before we got the roof finished, was another clutch of eggs--sixteen this time.  I filled my skirt with them as well and made a thorough search of the entire chicken yard.  I found one stray egg laying out in the open behind the coop, all dirty and suspicious looking.  I shall not be shocked if that one floats but rather the other way around.

I can see now that these young Comets are headstrong and flighty girls who will need some strict guidance.  I may have to lock them up for a few days just to teach them that proper hens lay their eggs in the Designated Egg Laying Area.  Either that or I may be forced to construct a device similar to that which rudebeast.com has depicted:

Spring Cleaning and The Shed

I have oft lamented the lack of storage in my house and yard.  And when I get storage, like the cabinet that I just refinished, I don't know what to put in it.  I was actually on the verge of tears last week because I had stuff that was driving me crazy but I didn't know where to put it.  But I shall shed tears over stuff no more! 

We had gotten an unexpected tax refund (I found an error on a three year old return and refiled, not really expecting to get the money) and we took the money and bought a metal shed.  Although the construction of it was challenging and frustrating at times, all in all it was not horrible and we now have a tool shed you can stand in! 

We constructed the shed on a raised OSB deck which I have waterproofed.

Now I just have to figure out how to hang some peg board and that 'table' will be clear in no time. 

Now that the old goat shed/tool shed had been emptied, I transformed it into the new Duck House.  Ronny had shot a hole in one of our buckets--don't ask me why because I don't know--and so I put a screw through the hole and attached it to the wall for their feeder.  I got a 10 gallon galvanized pail at Carson's for their water bucket and then put them inside.  I'll keep them in there for a day or so until they understand that that's their new place of residence.  One of them has a bit of a wheeze, which I noticed yesterday, and it's altogether for the best that they are isolated temporarily.

If you could only hear the complaints!

Now that the ducks were moved out, the little chicks graduated to mingling with the upper classmen.  Just as the sophomores pick on the froshies, there was just a bit of tolerant jostling and then everybody seemed to settle down.  

They're actually mixing together pretty well

Two of my Tetra Tints and one of the Red Sex Links, which I suspect is another way of saying Golden Comet

They just think they're something else! 

I am so happy to have all the tools out in the shed and not cluttering up my house!  Now I just need to figure out what to put in all the extra space I have...

April is the cruelest month....

April, it seems, is National Poetry Month.  I was a fan of poetry in my youth;  Of rhyming verses heavy with meanings just out of reach.  Now that I am older I am more fond of those that say what they mean.  What use is there of word pictures no clearer than an old mirror, speckled so with age that one cannot see their own reflection?

I present the pithy "To make a prairie" by Emily Dickinson:


To make a prairie, it takes a clover and one bee,-
One clover, and a bee, 
And reverie.
The reverie alone will do
If bees are few.  

Something in the rhythm of those words brings to mind Robert Frost's reading of this poem:

I prefer Frost to Whitman--Frost seems to me to speak of simple things, but there are larger meanings in them.  There is a poem of his about a bonfire, yet once read there is so much more--

The Bonfire

“OH, let’s go up the hill and scare ourselves,
As reckless as the best of them to-night,
By setting fire to all the brush we piled
With pitchy hands to wait for rain or snow.
Oh, let’s not wait for rain to make it safe.
The pile is ours: we dragged it bough on bough
Down dark converging paths between the pines.
Let’s not care what we do with it to-night.
Divide it? No! But burn it as one pile
The way we piled it. And let’s be the talk
Of people brought to windows by a light
Thrown from somewhere against their wall-paper.
Rouse them all, both the free and not so free
With saying what they’d like to do to us
For what they’d better wait till we have done.
Let’s all but bring to life this old volcano,
If that is what the mountain ever was—
And scare ourselves. Let wild fire loose we will….”

“And scare you too?” the children said together.

“Why wouldn’t it scare me to have a fire
Begin in smudge with ropy smoke and know
That still, if I repent, I may recall it,
But in a moment not: a little spurt
Of burning fatness, and then nothing but
The fire itself can put it out, and that
By burning out, and before it burns out
It will have roared first and mixed sparks with stars,
And sweeping round it with a flaming sword,
Made the dim trees stand back in wider circle—
Done so much and I know not how much more
I mean it shall not do if I can bind it.
Well if it doesn’t with its draft bring on
A wind to blow in earnest from some quarter,
As once it did with me upon an April.
The breezes were so spent with winter blowing
They seemed to fail the bluebirds under them
Short of the perch their languid flight was toward;
And my flame made a pinnacle to heaven
As I walked once round it in possession.
But the wind out of doors—you know the saying.
There came a gust. You used to think the trees
Made wind by fanning since you never knew
It blow but that you saw the trees in motion.
Something or someone watching made that gust.
It put the flame tip-down and dabbed the grass
Of over-winter with the least tip-touch
Your tongue gives salt or sugar in your hand.
The place it reached to blackened instantly.
The black was all there was by day-light,
That and the merest curl of cigarette smoke—
And a flame slender as the hepaticas,
Blood-root, and violets so soon to be now.
But the black spread like black death on the ground,
And I think the sky darkened with a cloud
Like winter and evening coming on together.
There were enough things to be thought of then.
Where the field stretches toward the north
And setting sun to Hyla brook, I gave it
To flames without twice thinking, where it verges
Upon the road, to flames too, though in fear
They might find fuel there, in withered brake,
Grass its full length, old silver golden-rod,
And alder and grape vine entanglement,
To leap the dusty deadline. For my own
I took what front there was beside. I knelt
And thrust hands in and held my face away.
Fight such a fire by rubbing not by beating.
A board is the best weapon if you have it.
I had my coat. And oh, I knew, I knew,
And said out loud, I couldn’t bide the smother
And heat so close in; but the thought of all
The woods and town on fire by me, and all
The town turned out to fight for me—that held me.
I trusted the brook barrier, but feared
The road would fail; and on that side the fire
Died not without a noise of crackling wood—
Of something more than tinder-grass and weed—
That brought me to my feet to hold it back
By leaning back myself, as if the reins
Were round my neck and I was at the plough.
I won! But I’m sure no one ever spread
Another color over a tenth the space
That I spread coal-black over in the time
It took me. Neighbors coming home from town
Couldn’t believe that so much black had come there
While they had backs turned, that it hadn’t been there
When they had passed an hour or so before
Going the other way and they not seen it.
They looked about for someone to have done it.
But there was no one. I was somewhere wondering
Where all my weariness had gone and why
I walked so light on air in heavy shoes
In spite of a scorched Fourth-of-July feeling.
Why wouldn’t I be scared remembering that?”

“If it scares you, what will it do to us?”

“Scare you. But if you shrink from being scared,
What would you say to war if it should come?
That’s what for reasons I should like to know—
If you can comfort me by any answer.”

“Oh, but war’s not for children—it’s for men.”

“Now we are digging almost down to China.
My dears, my dears, you thought that—we all thought it.
So your mistake was ours. Haven’t you heard, though,
About the ships where war has found them out
At sea, about the towns where war has come
Through opening clouds at night with droning speed
Further o’erhead than all but stars and angels,—
And children in the ships and in the towns?
Haven’t you heard what we have lived to learn?
Nothing so new—something we had forgotten:
War is for everyone, for children too.
I wasn’t going to tell you and I mustn’t.
The best way is to come up hill with me
And have our fire and laugh and be afraid.” 

I ask you, Dear Reader, to always make room in your life for poetry, whether that which is written with pen and ink or that which is written in the creation around us.  I leave you then with "Valentine for Ernest Mann" by a poet new to me, Naomi Shihab Nye:

You can't order a poem like you order a taco.
Walk up to the counter, say, I'll take two
and expect it to be handed back to you
on a shiny plate.

Still, I like your spirit.
Anyone who says, Here's my address,
write me a poem, deserves something in reply.
So I'll tell you a secret instead:
poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes,
they are sleeping. They are shadows
drifting across our ceilings the moment
before we wake up. What we have to do
is live in a way that lets us find them.

Once I knew a man who gave his wife
two skunks for a valentine.
He couldn't understand why she was crying.
'I thought they had such beautiful eyes.'
And he was serious. He was a serious man
who lived in a serious way. Nothing was ugly
just because the world said so. He really
liked those skunks. So, he re-invented them
as valentines and they became beautiful.
At least, to him. And the poems that had been
hiding
in the eyes of skunks for centuries
crawled out and curled up at his feet.
Maybe if we re-invent whatever our lives give us,
we find poems. Check your garage, the odd sock
in your drawer, the person you almost like, but
not quite.
And let me know.

Godzilla vs. Mothra

I am Godzilla.  That's just the way it is.  I run this homestead and I don't take any lip from the animals that I own.  I demand respect.  Unfortunately, Mr. Rooster feels the same way.  Thus, with increasing frequency, he is determined to put me in my place.  Um, sorry, Mr. Rooster.  Not happening. 

Last night I went out to tuck the girls into bed about 7 PM.  All the hens went happily into the coop.  Mr. Rooster had other ideas.  He decided to charge me and so I 'charged back' with a chicken stick.  This just upset him and he kind of went nutso.  I was seriously frightened and did what any self-respecting homesteader would do in the same situation:  I walloped him but good with the termite ridden branch I was using.  The branch, of course, broke, but so, it appeared, did Mr. Rooster.  He went head over heels and kind of flopped around like a dying chicken. 

"I've killed him!  I've killed him!  OH NO!,"  I shrieked inside my head.  I began to approach his twitching body and he hopped up ready for a second go.  We tangoed around a tree, played hippity-hop by the tool shed and then he went over to the little door in the coop and climbed the step and stood there.  One beady chicken eye on me.  "I,"  I said to him with stubborn recklessness, "am not moving.  YOU are moving.  YOU are crazy and your days are numbered, you stupid rooster." 

Although I previously believed that Mr. Rooster only spoke chicken, I may now have to revise that belief.  He had just stepped inside the coop and I thought victory was mine, but out he came!  I took two steps back and then me and the stick prodded him into the area in front of the coop.  We danced around a little.  We discussed my control-freak tendencies.  We chatted about his macho attitude.  We threw down our gloves, stomped on them and called it quits when he finally consented to go into the house.  I slammed that door behind him and shot the bolt. 

Whew! 

Now, there are all kinds of advice on the interwebs about how to handle an aggressive rooster.  Some people say that you need to pick him up and hold him until he calms down.  Yeah, me and what army?  If I got that close I would have claw marks up and down my face.  Others say you need to grab him when he's roosting and hold him upside down for about 10 minutes to readjust his thinking.  That's a better strategy, but I'd have to be fast or I'd be in big trouble.  Some people say you need to separate him from his ladies for a few nights, but again, how am I supposed to accomplish that? 

There are even people who claim that I have made the mistake on interacting with Mr. Rooster as if I were another rooster and I need to stop doing that.  Well, I'd like to but he keeps treating me like I'm another rooster and he doesn't seem inclined to listen to reason.  As far as he's concerned, I'm challenging his Alpha position and he doesn't like it.  I totally get how he feels.  Cuz I am the Alpha and he's challenging my position and I don't like it. 



Following the advice of some 'chicken experts', I went out this morning and filled all the outside water buckets and took care of the little chicks and the ducks before I bothered with the grown chickens.  The thought process is that I am a threat to the flock with my big buckets and my fast movements.  I opened the little door on the coop and was out the gate before anybody came out.  Mr.  Rooster seemed fine--came out, mated with a couple of his ladies right off the bat just like he normally does, scratched around and called his girls to 'come and get it'.  No signs of last night at all. 

The problem isn't solved.  I need to walk around the yard doing chores without being defensive or worried about his little rooster brain taking offense at my actions.  I originally got him in hopes that he would breed with my ladies and I would hatch out their fertile eggs for my own self-replicating flock.  I still don't have an incubator and so I've never accomplished that goal.  It's time for me to go ahead and lay out the cash for an incubator, hatch out some eggs, train up a replacement Roo that isn't aggressive toward me and put Solomon T. on ice. 

Or, as I read somewhere, "You need to get yourself some potatoes, carrots and onions."  Sounds about right. 

Star Trek and Chickens

I have tried and tried to set up this post with some explanation, some place-setting, if you will, so that is does not seem like I just swooped down and placed a gorilla in your lap with no explanation.  I first started with the account of clipping the chickens wings and how the only one I missed was Anti-Squeaky.  It flopped.  Next I started with a deep history of my love for Star Trek.  Awkward.  Then I tried to reference a previous post about how everything is connected to Star Trek.  Painful.  So, without further ado, here is a gorilla.  In your lap.  Enjoy.

I have a chicken.  Her name is Anti-Squeaky.  She used to have a 'sister' who was Squeaky.  They were 'negatives' of each other:  That is, Squeaky (who we had first) was a Gold Ameracauna with black feathers and Anti-Squeaky (who came along two years later) is a Black Ameracauna with Gold Feathers.  Got it?  Good. 

Now, the truth is that I named her Anti-Squeaky because of Star Trek. 

Let me explain.  *Nerd Alert! Nerd Alert!*

In the episode "The Alternative Factor", our intrepid crew encounters a strange man named Lazarus who is engaged in battle with his counterpart from another universe.  A dimensional corridor between the Matter and Anti-Matter Universes is the setting for a struggle between the Mad Lazarus and the Sane Lazarus.  

Wikipedia states succinctly:  "If Lazarus and his anti-self manage to contact each other within either physical universe, they would destroy each other, and annihilate both universes."  In the end, the Enterprise assists in the matter (it's a joke! matter, anti-matter, get it?) by destroying the "portal", trapping both Lazurus' in the corridor where they will struggle for eternity.  *sniff*

Having this episode imprinted upon the impressionable soil of my childish mind, when confronted with mirror opposites of the same chicken, I could not resist dubbing the second, darker fowl "Anti-Squeaky."  My only relief is that neither layer proved to be an insane universe-destroying pullet.

There you have it.  Chickens.  Star Trek.  Connected.  Like Kevin Bacon only with fewer degrees of separation.  Mmmmm, bacon....