Denise Domning's Blog, page 13

Addiction

I might have written this post once before, but it bears repeating.  My name is Denise, and I’m an addict.  And what, you might ask, am I addicted to?

Plants.

This time of year is the worst for managing my addiction.  How can I resist when the peach trees are blooming, the plums are coming out all over the place, and the grass is greening up?  No matter that I’ve been arguing with myself about how much work putting in plants requires and that I may be moving in the future. I told myself that I wasn’t putting in a garden this year, that I’d  just take it easy for once. It isn’t working. I NEED to get my hands dirty.

I’ve managed to resist until today, when I was returning from Sedona and grocery shopping. My route home takes me on 89A going toward Cottonwood. As I reached the turnoff for Page Springs Road, I could almost see the nursery. That’s when the voice in my head started whispering.

You don’t have to buy anything. You can just look. Only 5 short miles or so.  Not so far. (That is, if you don’t count the extra miles it takes to backtrack to home.)

I admit it.  I took a fall. Instead of turning, I drove straight on to the nursery, arguing with myself all the way.  No more trees!  Absolutely no more trees.  Flowers maybe, but, really, veggies would be best. They’re easy. That is, if the gophers don’t get them all.

By the time I reached the nursery I’d made a pact with myself. Whatever I bought had to be on sale and obviously healthy. Much to my relief they had veggie six packs on sale for $.99.  Not only were they on sale, but all the plants were over-grown, which was why they were on sale, and there were at least two plants in each of the six cups of the pack. I chose chard, kale, mesclun lettuce mix, and one other lettuce mix that includes an oak leaf variety that always does well here.

Whew. I got out of there having spent only seven dollars and change. That was enough to satisfy my craving and give me the strength to avoid turning toward Cottonwood and Home Depot. This time of year, Home Depot almost always has bare root roses on sale for a dollar or two. Double whew.

I have to admit an addiction to plants is much better than my original addiction, which was to fabric. I grew up sewing and for many years made much of my own clothing. However, that did not mean I saved any money in doing so. You see, I was completely incapable of ignoring a “good bargain” when it came to fabric.  Each yard offered up endless possibilities, and each possibility fed my deep-seated craving to do something creative with my hands. At last, I realized I would never recover from that addiction, so I gave up my sewing machine and immediately formed a new habit around plants.

At least I can eat the results of this habit, or so I tell myself each time I come home with seedlings. So as of now the clock in running. Unlike the fabric, this addiction is around living things. Because of that I have a rule that I must get these plants into the ground within 24 hours of purchase.

Time to go turn some earth.

 

Welcome Spring!

What a gorgeous spring day it was today.  Not quite as nice as the weekend, which was the PERFECT. What could be better than twenty-four hours of sweet gentle spring rain?

Although the clouds lingered, making me wish for more rain, today it warmed up to more than 80 degrees. That made it humid, the heat teasing up both worms and moisture from the ground, and making every bud on every tree swell. The Cottonwood branches appear a fuzzy yellow-green as their leaf buds drop their husks. Those husks are sticky little things. One of the ram lambs was wearing a few in his wool this morning.

The fruit trees have also taken notice of the change of season. Three of my peaches are putting on a show, as are a few of my Satsuma plums. Two are among my newest trees, planted only last year. Wouldn’t it be something if they set on this year?

a tiny hyacinth

Oh wait. I’m most likely not going to be here to pick the fruit, am I? Ah well. I’m still thrilled they’re doing so well. I’m equally thrilled to see blooms on one of my oldest trees, another Satsuma in the orchard.  That poor tree was down to one living branch when I arrived.  It’s now flourishing, having added several feet in height and more than twenty strong branches.

Other flowers are bursting out all over the place. The day lilies have clearly established themselves. I think they’ve at least doubled their number. The irises are recovering. I had to replant them after the piggy girls dug them out of their original bed. Also last year, I split my one hyacinth bulb. It was a gift from someone. Like all bulbs, they grow like garlic, forming cloves. I spread the hyacinth cloves all over my upper garden. Perhaps I should have waited another year.  Each new plant is tiny with only a couple of bells on each stem.

I’m enjoying my first daffodil bloom, or at least the first one to fully flower.  There was an earlier bud. Unfortunately, it ended up in a sheep gullet.  And here I thought daffodils were toxic. Perhaps they are but they don’t affect sheep.  I’ve seen the sheep nibbling at the poison ivy without any reaction.

The saying might be that violets are shy, but that isn’t true here. Although it took me two summers to get them established, since then they have proved bold little things. I adore them. As far as I’m concerned they could spread until they were the only plant on the property.  Given enough time, I think that might happen.

It’s not just the plants that increasing their numbers. I may have mentioned that back in October, just two months after her latest lambs were born, Tiny started kicking off her little guys, refusing to them nurse. I thought she was weaning them. She wasn’t. For three days she offered herself to Cinco, then, when she was certain she was pregnant I suppose, she went right back to nursing her lambs. It’s the first time I actually documented when she got herself pregnant.  As for her boys, she didn’t finally wean them until mid-January.

At any rate, I counted the weeks and marked late March as her due date.  Sure enough, her udder, which had only recently started to flatten, is now filling again. All the signs are there. She’ll produce lambs right on time.

Much to my surprise, Mari is also pregnant. She’s such a quiet little thing, I never noticed her going into heat. I love that she’s pregnant mostly because it means that her leg has healed, something I wasn’t certain would ever happen. At the moment she looks like she’s swallowed a watermelon that lodged sideways in her belly. It’s a cute look on her, and, if her mother is any example, that means she’s not due until mid-April. It looks like I’m going to have a serious flock soon.

And of course the turkey hens are feeling the need to nest as well. I’m grateful that none of them have looked to the blackberry wilds outside the fence. These girls are young and they want to stay close to home. However, the ravens have taken note. Two of them have been showing up every morning. Since there aren’t any turkey eggs to steal yet, they’ve settled for taking the chicken eggs instead.

Imagine a string of really nasty curse words here. Ah well, chances are that I’ll have neither fruit nor fowl from the farm this year. Happy Spring!

 

Back to Work

The farm is on the market, the house is so clean you really could eat off my floor, and my neighbors keep stopping by to tell me that the grounds look immaculate. This leads me to wonder just how bad it was before the clean-up started. Yikes.  At any rate, the point of this is that there’s nothing left to keep me from returning to the computer and my present work-in-progress.  Not even my foot, which is healing nicely, thank you all.

So today I opened the file for “The Final Toll”…and was immediately distracted by the reality that there were things I hadn’t completed with my previous book.  But at least I did something other than sweep floors and rake up manure.

Even though I wasn’t writing over these past few months, I was definitely thinking about writing.  As it turned out, I learned something really important about the mystery genre.  I didn’t learn it from a class, or seminar, or webinar, or any other “nar.” I learned it from watching BritBox, an Amazon subscription channel.

Once again and for the record, I don’t own a television.  Instead, when I want to watch something I fire up my iPad, which I can carry with me as I move from room to room. One of the reasons I don’t have a television is that I’m incapable of sitting still long enough to watch a complete episode of anything. I’m on the move at the first commercial, cleaning, folding, sweeping, whatever. The iPad is perfect for me. I perch it on the dresser or counter and listen while I work.

These last two months my background noise has been a stream of British television sleuths, most of them taken from successful British mystery novel series.  I guess I’ve been trying to maintain the mindset of a mystery writer while off-duty.

I started with the classics, Miss Marple and Poirot. By Season 4 I was picking holes in the mysteries, noting red herrings that weren’t explained, clues that were ignored, and inconsistencies in Poirot’s character–he goes on a cruise to Greece or Egypt (it wasn’t really said) one season and hates sea travel the next.  Or maybe he hates sea travel because of his experience on that cruise in the first season. Before you Agatha Christie lovers muster for the attack, I’ll remind you that these were her books remade for television.  I’ve actually never read an Agatha Christie novel–I don’t like to read in a genre that I write–so I can’t say if this is her fault or the TV writer’s adaptation.

After that, I stumbled upon Endeavor, which, it turned out, was the precursor to another series, Inspector Morse.  Endeavor is set in the late 50s/early 60s and the sleuth is a quirky, opera-loving, Oxford-educated Inspector in the Oxford police force. At the same time I discovered another precursor series, Tennison, which is Helen Mirren’s character in Prime Suspect as whatever it is they call female constables. Like Endeavor, it’s set in the 60s/early 70s, which may explain why both of these caught my eye. The 60s and 70s were my salad days, as it were.

I liked the precursors more than the originals. I’ve heard people rave about Prime Suspect and Inspector Morse, but both of them left me unsatisfied. That they did actually kept me watching. I was into Season Three of both series when I suddenly remembered John D MacDonald’s Travis McGee novels. Those books were my introduction to the concept of a red shirt, that nameless Enterprise crewman in security detail you know is going to be dead by the end of the episode. In the case of MacDonald’s hero Travis, it was his latest girlfriend who became fodder for one of his enemies or some serial killer.

That had me giggling each time I watched Morse make a move on the woman du jour, knowing she was either going to die or turn out to be the murderer. And that took me back to Angela Landsbury as Jessica Fletcher. I swear Cabot Cove had the highest murder rate in the nation, and frankly Jessica is the line between the dots.  I still think she did most of those murders and framed the one she accused.

The same sort of thing was happening with Helen Mirren’s Jane Tennison and her potential mates, only hers always left in a huff because she put her career over him, something none of Travis’s girls ever thought to do. And the times they are a changin’!

That revelation ended my interest in both series. That said, I did note that today’s morés allow both Endeavor and the new Jane Tennison to be far more vulnerable than their originals, and that was interesting in itself.  There were a few cozy Cabot Cove-esque series, the most enjoyable being The Coroner, set somewhere on the coast of Devon I think. After that, I moved onto a new-to-me series A Touch of Frost, about DI Jack Frost.

I’ve made it through Season 3 when I realized it bored me. Why? There are no red shirts in this series. That had me pondering again. I mean, what’s not to like about a graying, middle class police inspector who knows all the town miscreants by their first names?

What I realized is why I’m writing this today as I return to creating another mystery novel of my own. None of these sleuths, not even Agatha Christie’s, grow over the course of their experiences. Because they don’t change, because they continue to make the same personal mistakes again and again, they lose my respect.

Huh, I really am writing again. Now if only the farm would sell so I can resettle. For aesthetic reasons my desk is now next to the chest freezer in the corner of what should be the new kitchen. I don’t like writing in the corner.  Sigh.

 

The Other Foot

Before I get started, I’m here to report that it seems I now have semi-domesticated ducks.  This morning when I reached the turkey coop to release Tom and his girls, the boldest pair of ducks was sitting outside the coop waiting to be fed. I was so sorry I didn’t have my phone with me. They both stood there, their heads cocked as if to say, “So, throw us some of those seeds already.”  This afternoon, they were waiting outside the coop again.  I gave up trying to get a photo because every time I lift the phone they quickly back away. Must be the phone’s orange case that sets them off. But I will get it soon. They’ve got the whole feeding thing figured out. In fact, two days ago when it was so dishearteningly cold out at coop-opening time, they were the only birds I fed.  Both the turkeys and the chickens in their mobile house refused to come out. The chickens stayed inside until well after 8 AM, which is about when the sun rises over the surrounding hills. By then the frost-covered sheep–I really don’t understand why they sit outside when they have a nice sheltered area–and the ducks had cleaned up the small amount of scratch that I leave outside the turkey coop. Oh yeah, I’m officially a duck-feeder.

Now to that foot issue. Last Wednesday, while crossing the pasture in the dark to close the chicken coop door I broke my left foot. For the record, it was seven months ago that I tore my right foot’s plantars fascia. This time, I stepped in a hole, my foot twisted to an awkward angle and there was a ear-rattling “snap”, which led to my statement of record for such events: “That didn’t sound good.”

An instant later the pain followed.  Oh yeah, that wasn’t good at all.

Of course, I was in the middle of the darkened and very cold field, nowhere I wanted to stay. So I hobbled back to the house, climbing the driveway instead of the stairs.  By the time I was inside my foot was swollen to the point that my shoe was too tight.

Five minutes later, I was sitting on my bed, examining the damage. Both sides of my ankle were swollen, my toes were stiff,  and there was an unwelcome circular swelling about the size of a half-dollar on the top of my foot. I touched it and I felt the shift of the bone beneath it–the outer metatarsal. (I knew that Physical Anthropology course I took in college would come in handy one day!) Given the snap, the swelling, and the shift of the bone, I was pretty sure I had fractured it.

Well double dang. It was late (for me), I was tired, and treating this meant racing down to Urgent Care to sit in the waiting room for who-knows-how long, submit to x-rays, be given prescriptions for medicines I can’t take, and then dragging my careless self back home to grab a couple hours of sleep before dawn when I would have to make my way across that same pasture on crutches to release the critters.

For years, ever since the Mayo Clinic politely asked me to leave their premises because I couldn’t tolerate any of the prescriptions they tried to give me, I’ve been on the alternative medicine track. I’ve used a number of different modalities for all sorts of illnesses, most especially to treat my Rheumatoid Arthritis. But I haven’t broken a bone, well other than stubbing my little toe, since I was five or so and broke my collarbone while accidentally bouncing off a bed.

It was time to proof the pudding as it were. After all, the worst that could happen is that it would be more painful than I could tolerate in the morning and I’d find some doctor to see. So out came the Arnica gel.

Why Arnica? Because it’s my go-to herbal remedy for bruising, swelling and such like. That, and John Wayne recommends it. Apparently there’s a John Wayne movie in which he shouts, “Get the Arnica,” after someone has broken something. On top of the Arnica I added my favorite peppermint-infused, willow-bark filled pain killing goop. It’s so potent that after applying you need to wash your hands for as long as it takes to sing “Happy Birthday” three times.

It was a restless night. My foot was throbbing and I kept wishing I had some sort of comfrey salve for the bone. Unfortunately, I hadn’t saved any of the leaves from my comfrey plant before winter set on. I did have some roots in a bucket in the barn. I’d dug up the plant back in December, giving some of the roots to a friend, putting a few back in the ground, while saving the rest for planting at my new place.

[image error] My comfrey plant last summer

Come morning, my foot was pretty sore, but not nearly as painful as I thought it should be. That was positive. Then, when I came out to make tea, I discovered a miracle. In the kitchen, I glanced at the selection of herbal goodies that my new friend Susan, The Verde Gardener, had shared with me on Tuesday when she came for tea. There was a tin of a comfrey-based salve!

I opened the tin (thank you Susan for using a screw-top tin!) and smeared a copious amount on my foot. My whole body sighed in relief. Not only did it have comfrey in it, but St. John’s wort, which turns out to be a very effective pain killer.

In the past six days I’ve used up that tin and started in on another one. Today, the swelling is almost gone. The bruising, which should have been horrible, never quite flowered–although it does trace the outline of my shoe. There’s still swelling on the spot where I felt the break, but it’s not nearly as tender.

I’m continuing to be very careful while walking and am resting my foot as much as possible. I’ll admit to being pretty tired by the end of the day but I’ve been sleeping incredibly well. I wonder if that’s the St. John’s wort. At any rate, I’m pretty pleased with this adventure in an alternative universe.

 

Cold Day, Wool Socks

What a change.  January brought days in the 80s but now that it’s late February we’re enjoying a stretch of cold, wet weather. Today, the wind is howling, the sky is heavy with thick dark clouds, and it smells like snow.

I wrote that, only to wonder what I mean by “smells like snow.” After a moment’s consideration, I decided it’s not really a smell. Instead, it’s a sort of melding of the cold and the wet. It must be something I decided on when I was a child and lived in Minnesota.

Although the day is cold, my feet are warm, because I’m wearing wool socks. Brand new-to-me wool socks. And I have my friend Laurie to thank for them.

Back in the warmth of January I discovered that I had managed to wear holes in all but three pairs of my wool socks. For the record, one of those three isn’t exactly a pair–close, but not a true match. I was fine with that. Three pair are enough to make it through  Spring, Summer, and Autumn, during which I will most likely be shod in my usual Birkenstocks–they come in narrow sizes. Come November, I’ll do the usual and buy eight more pairs of socks to take me through the next Winter and this time I would wear slippers in the house instead of the wool socks, which is how I wore them out.

Back to Laurie and the socks. I’m not sure how the subject of stockings came up, but it did.

“You wear wool socks?” Laurie asked in surprise.

“Only all winter,” I told her. “They aren’t just warm, they take up the excess space in my winter shoes.”

That made her laugh. “Well, that solves the problem of what I’m going to do with all the wool socks I own. I bought them for skiing and hiking in the snow, but I’m not doing that any more. I was thinking about donating them. Guess I’m giving them to you.”

I thanked her profusely, then we went on with our conversation, and I forgot about the socks. They appeared last week in a gift bag. You know you’re old when wool socks in a gift bag can make your heart go pitter-pat. They’re great!  Nice and thick and, unlike my socks, none of them are the same. (I tend to buy 3 of a kind of everything.  It’s just easier.)

So, my feet are warm thanks to Laurie and, of course, I’m not wearing my slippers. The only thing that would make this more perfect was if there were a fire in the fireplace. Unfortunately I’ve done such a good job cleaning up that I no longer know where the matches are and what little firewood I had left has been moved…somewhere. Dang it.

But the place looks really good now that the Great Clean Up is at last complete. With nothing more to be done, it’s time to get back to work on the mystery again–one that set on a cold, blustery, drizzly November day. Makes me shiver to think about it.

Flooring!

When my ex-husband and I bought this place back in July of 2010, we were told that Sam, the previous owner, had upgraded the house from a tiny, tar paper shack to a ~2500 square foot McMansion for his mistress.  Apparently, he and his wife had one of those “agreements”.  As it turned out, that remodel was another instance where the man decides what his woman wants and does it for her without asking then is disappointed when it turns out she didn’t want it.

Not that I came blame her, but it seems the woman in this case wanted Rodeo Drive, not Cornville.  The truth was that Sam loved this place, using the basement to store his precious antique Jaguar cars as he turned the house into a beloved retreat for him.  That required redecorating in high-end 1980’s style including leather couches, Ethan Allen bedroom sets, expensive Berber carpeting– metallic flowered wallpaper in almost every room.

By the way, we bought the house “as is”. That meant we not only got the leather couches and the bedroom sets, but collages that included school photos kids, Sam’s clothes and shoes in the closets, and a barn filled to the roof with all his collected junk.

Back in 2010 I was still suffering with severe allergies, something that living out here in the country has pretty much ended. Because of that the first thing we did was pull up that carpeting. If you don’t know, carpeting the worst thing for anyone with allergies. With every step, your shoes add pollen, molds, and nasty chemicals to the ground-in dirt that fills the fibers. No amount of vacuuming or cleaning every helps. For me, it was better to live with an exposed plywood sub-floor than breathe in that dangerous stew.

It wasn’t until 2014 that the as-yet incomplete remodel got far enough to install some new flooring.  I chose cork and I’ll tell you now, I’d chose it again in a heartbeat.  It’s anti-fungal, anti-microbial, anti-bacterial, soft on the feet and absorbs water without damage.  I love it!

However I never completed the flooring, because I had really hoped to install a new doorway in that second master bathroom and to flip the stairway to provide more floor space for what was to become the new living room. Then last week, reality hit. I wasn’t going to be the one to make those changes and it was time to finish the floor. God bless my brother-in-law Courtney Lawyer. He showed up on Friday afternoon with his little table saw and his flooring tools. He took the bathroom and I took the stairway.

For the record I’ve never laid snap-together flooring. Tile, yes. Linoleum, yes. Anything that requires a table saw, no.  But you know me. If there’s a youtube video, I can learn it.  Hah!

As it turned out, the treads were a breeze. The pieces for them required no special cuts except for the length. It was the risers that had me scratching my head. It took scrap pieces to bring the new risers even with the lip of the tread. After I figured that out, I built templates for the pieces I needed. Then it was time to face the table saw.

I stood in front of it, remembering that my first father-in-law had cut off two of his fingers using one. Never mind, that I have used a massive tile saw. There was just something daunting about that spinning blade and how close to it my hands were going to be.  But Courtney had his own job to do and I had to do mine.  Suffice it to say I still have all ten fingers.

By Sunday morning we were both exhausted and sore. We agree. We’re too old to do these sorts of jobs. But neither of us were finished. It was do or die, and we did it. Just minutes before Courtney had to leave, I nailed in the last pieces and the stairs were done.

For the first time in seven and a half years, I have finished floors. How wonderful is that!

Lamb St-oup

Before I throw myself into this week’s post, I have to kvetch over the recent full moon. I know everyone was going on about it being this blue-blood-full-eclipse moon, but why didn’t someone warn me what that meant? Here I was, figuring this was a full moon like all the other full moons I suffer through, what with the coyotes showing up and Bear barking all night.

This was not that sort of moon. The insomnia started the night before the official full moon. That night I woke up about every hour to listen to Bear as he commented on everything. I figured that was no big deal. I’d be exhausted for the next night and sleep through.

Not. Somewhere around mid-afternoon, a switch flicked inside me and the electricity started to flow. I didn’t bother getting into bed until after 10:00 PM. Sleep wasn’t just elusive, it simply didn’t exist. I lay there, listening to Bear barking. Somewhere around 4 AM I started having weirdly funny psychedelic hallucinations. The amusement made up for the sleeplessness. Dawn came, I got up and did a full day’s work, still waiting for that switch to shift from “on” to “off,” which it finally did around 7 PM.

Whew. Thank heavens, I’ll be dead and buried before another of those moons shows up again.

Because I don’t have pigs these days, nothing funny happens around here unless Peanut falls off a bridge. Since he didn’t do that this week, I thought I’d share my newly-honed recipe for Lamb Soup/Stew. The difference between the two is if I want stew, I dredge the lamb chunks in flour and brown them before throwing them into the crock pot. Today I made soup because I was lazy.

I grew up in a family where our meals had little variation. Part of that was my father’s ulcer, which, it now turns out, had nothing to do with the food he was eating or the stress he was under. The rest of it is that my mother was an uninspired cook. Lamb never once appeared on our table, turkey showed up only for Thanksgiving, fish came in the guise of fish sticks, my mother’s sardine-and-peanut butter sandwiches, and my father’s pickled herring. We ate chicken (baked, never fried), ground beef as hamburgers or the dreaded hot dish–a dish that combines ground beef, tomatoes and a bag of frozen mixed vegetables. There was an occasional roast.

My first experience with lamb was at a restaurant, where I tried lamb chops with mint jelly. Tasty, but then I discovered Gyros and Shawarma, which I liked even better. Then, probably fifteen years ago, I bought a lamb from a local rancher who raised sheep and fell in love. How had I lived so long without eating leg of lamb, or lamb shoulder chops?

That’s what spurred me into raising sheep–I wanted my own lamb meat–and when I got it, the roof blew off my expectations of what lamb was supposed to taste like. I was about halfway through packaging that first carcass when I realized I’d forgotten to take something out for dinner. I grabbed a good-sized handful of meat scraps and threw them into my trusty crock pot with nothing but water and salt. I figured I’d finish up the soup on the stove after I was done.

By the time I was cleaning up the kitchen the amazing rich smell of grass-fed lamb had filled the whole house. I fished out a chunk of meat from the crock pot, stuck it in my mouth (and burned my tongue), and nearly collapsed, the taste was so amazing. That night, I ate lamb cooked in nothing but water directly from the crock pot and thought I was in heaven.

With each successive batch I’ve gotten a little more creative and the taste just gets better. I finally have a recipe worth sharing.

Lamp Stew/Soup

1 pound lamb in chunks
1 quart turkey or chicken bone broth
3 quarts water
1 small onion, cut in chunks
1 bay leaf
1/2 tbsp coarse sea salt
1 tea strainer filled with 12 peppercorns
1 good-sized sprig of rosemary or 4 sprigs of thyme (depending on what you like)
2 good-sized cloves garlic
2 carrots, chopped
2 celery stalks, chopped
7 small turnips from the garden (or 1 fist-sized one from the grocery store), plus the greens
1/2 cup uncooked barley

Just before bedtime, put the lamb in the crock pot. (If you want stew, dredge the lamb in a flour mix–flour, salt, pepper, powdered onion, powdered garlic–and saute in lamb fat or lard or olive oil before putting it in the crock pot.) Add broth, water, onion, bay leaf, sea salt, and peppercorns, set the pot on “low” and go to bed. Add more water in the morning if necessary, then add the remaining ingredients. Cook on low until it smells so good you can’t resist and have to have a bowl (usually around 4 hours.) Eat it all before anyone else has a chance at it.

Enjoy!

 

Peanut’s Big Adventure

Thank you, Audubon Society

First, the bluebirds are back!  Every year for the past six, a flock of Western Bluebirds have visited the farm.  They may have been coming for longer, but six years ago one of my cats brought me a sample bird and I realized they were here. I saw them again yesterday. It was a flock of about ten. They were busy cleaning up where I’d tossed scratch for the chickens. When they realized I was watching them, they flew through the chain link fence that surrounds the orchard.

Ah-HAH! That’s why my chicken food has been disappearing so rapidly. The little beggars have been helping themselves. Well, anything that keeps those flashes of blue and red on the farm. Now on to Peanut.

As you may remember Peanut has gone from sweet little lambikin to full-on, head-butting ram. Although he’s not nearly as aggressive as Cinco was–that is, if you’re me–he is pretty much challenging everyone else.  Thank heavens that at almost a year old he’s only about half the size of Cinco, if you don’t count his side rolls of fat.  I put his pudginess up to the fact he didn’t get enough colostrum.  But being obese means he doesn’t get much steam up before he hits you.

Since Cinco’s move from field to freezer, Peanut has become the ‘ram-of-the-flock.’  This means that Tiny, as the matriarch-ewe, goes first, followed by her two new boys, followed by Peanut’s sister Mari, then Peanut brings up the rear.  This works very well almost all of the time because, being obese and all, Peanut can’t keep up with those more fit. This morning, it all went wrong for him.

I’ve recently run netted fencing between my exterior fence and Oak Creek, enclosing my prettiest piece of former cow pasture. It’s full of Johnson grass, blackberries, saplings, and nutsedge, as well as a thick layer of tasty dried leaves–sheep potato chips. As tasty as that is for my flock, the sheep really don’t like being out there.  It’s strange and I’m certain it smells of predators. Thus to get them there I need to resort to treats. This morning that treat was chicken food.  After the chickens, turkeys, and bluebirds are finished going through their pans of food, what remains is basically dust. But sheep have lips and they like tasty dust. So after opening the gate to their new pasture and throwing in a token bit of alfalfa, I took the chicken food pan, which all the sheep recognize from their frequent attempts to break into the turkey coop, to the base of the barren hillside where they’ve been reluctantly staying.

They were instantly at the gateway, ready to eat. There was much jostling as I opened the gate, which is made of my favorite building material (handy panels). Tiny pushed her way out onto the bridge followed by one of her new boys. As near as I can reconstruct, Peanut wasn’t willing to take last place when chicken food dust was involved. Thus he pushed past Mari and did his best to push past boy #2 as that ram lamb started through the narrow gap between the two panels and onto the bridge.

The water is hip deep here

I heard the splash but didn’t dare stop. I needed Tiny to be in the pasture. If she balks, they all balk.  I made it past the gate, put down the pan of food dust, and turned back toward the bridge over the ditch just as Boy #2 entered the pasture. Behind the handy panels, Mari was crying. Somehow, in their jostling Peanut and his brother had managed to push the two panels closed behind them. Peanut was nowhere to be seen, although I did hear more splashing. That’s when I realized Peanut had fallen in the ditch and was swimming.

First, although I can’t speak for other flocks, I’m positive that none of my sheep like getting their feet wet. Second, the ditch is deeper than Peanut is tall in that area. Certain that my former pet and now unwanted ram was drowning, I raced back to the bridge. Just as I got close, Peanut reached the bank on the wrong side–my neighbor’s side–of the bridge. Up he went, right through the thick stand of Western Poison Ivy until he reached the thick stand of nutsedge at the path that cuts along the hill right there. Although dripping wet, his feet were buried in nutsedge and Peanut was looking pretty pleased with himself. He had survived his swim and was being rewarded by fresh, green grass.

I, on the other hand, was gritting my teeth. I need a Border Collie. Sheep are not known for their compliance, especially when you have to remove them from food they like.

A wet Peanut

I left him where he was and got Mari into the pasture with her mom and siblings. Then, up the hillside I went to the new gate that my neighbor so nicely installed. It’s a vestibule with gates at either end. I opened both gates and called to Peanut. He ignored me. Not wanting to walk all the way back to the barn for more treats, I cajoled then tried to push him in the direction of the gate. He lowered his head in threat. He was staying and that was that.

Just then and much to my surprise rescue showed up. Moosie came up to join us. He wanted to know what we were doing and why Peanut gets to go to the neighbor’s property when he can’t.

As far as Peanut is concerned, Moosie, who cleaned him just after birth, is his people.Fortunately for me, Moosie does respond to commands. I let him walk past Peanut, then called him back. Just like that, instinct clicked on and Peanut followed his flock. Good dog, Moosie!

Once back on home soil and still dripping wet from his unexpected swim in the ditch, Peanut then realized where his real flock was and ran to join them. I closed the gate on him with a sigh of relief, then I ran for the house. While poison ivy doesn’t affect a wool-coated sheep, it does affect me and I had touched Peanut. I could already feel the burn on my arms and hands. I hit the bathroom, pulled out my precious cake of Burt’s Bees Poison Ivy soap, and washed. Ah, immediate relief. I love that stuff.

I wonder how long it will be before I can touch Peanut again.

 

 

 

 

 

Dandy Ducks

It appears from this title that I am on a “D-D” kick.  Perhaps this is apropos as my initials are “D.D.”  Over the years a few people have tried to call me Deedee, but I’m really not a Deedee.  I am Denise, named for a villainess in a Frank Yerby novel. (Hmm, do you think that steered me into authoring historical novels?)  My father tried to soften the somewhat awkward name by calling me Den-den. No one else was ever allowed to call me that. It’s even worse than Deedee. Enough about me. Let’s talk ducks.

I have wanted to raise ducks for years.  If you, my plucky readers recall, I took on three of a friend’s Rouen ducks in 2016 (back when I didn’t know the difference between Welsh Harlequins and Rouen ducks). It did not go well. Both drakes disappeared and the hen went back to Su’s house to become an owl meal. I thought both drakes were dead, but that may not be the case.

About two weeks ago a drake and a hen appeared in my pond. The difference between Rouen ducks and Mallards is pretty subtle, but these guys made it instantly clear that they knew what a farmyard was.  When my turkey hens took umbrage at their presence–parading up and down the edge of the pond, their feathers spread in threat–the two ducks floated calmly to the middle of the pond as if to say, “Yeah, right. Come and get us, if you dare!” Then they waited until the turkeys lost interest, came out of the water and began to look for the seeds I’d earlier tossed to my flock.  These ducks know dogs and recognize the possibility of human-carried buckets. They’re cautious but not afraid. Oh yeah, someone once owned these ducks, or at least one of them. Could this be one of Su’s drakes, bringing his wild girl home during the hungry season?

Whether Su’s or someone else’s lost ducks, these two swiftly figured out my routine and began to show up just before feeding time. They wait in the pond, watching me in expectation. If the turkey pressure is too high, they float down the ditch to wait behind the turkey barn. Their hope is so charming that they now get what they want. These days, I add a few more handfuls to my scratch bucket just for them.

Feeding them has required Moosie work. For a full week, every time he and I walked past them, I’d point them out and say, “Those are my ducks, Moosie. You cannot kill them.” He pouted for a few days, but appears to have accepted my edict. Now, Bear on the other hand, is not nearly as trainable but neither is he as lethal. No, my big beautiful boy is just looking for some fun and these newcomers don’t know just what a big pushover he is. So, when he sees them, he bounces at them, hoping to startle them. It’s his favorite prank to pull on the farm fowl.

Sigh. I miss Gabby Gray. Bear tried that on her and got a face full of angry turkey. Even at his size, that’s intimidating. Ask the Black Hawk.

After more than a week of encouraging these ducks, there was a strange development. One day, the pair showed up with another hen. The next day, they came with another drake. Day three and there were now two pairs waiting to be fed.

Huh! They were so certain of me that they were inviting their friends to join them.  Then on day four there were three couples. Hoky smokes, Bullwinkle!

These new couples are clearly wild ducks and aren’t nearly as comfortable with me and my dogs, but they deftly handle the turkey threat by moving into the ditch until the hens give up. As soon as the bigger birds have moved on they return to look for the seeds the chickens and turkeys missed.

What a pretty picture they make as a flock!  As far as I’m concerned, the smorgasbord is open when it comes to dandy ducks.

 

 

 

Danger Deer

Once again, I’ve managed to work my way through another week of barn cleaning. OMG! Whole counters are bare. How awesome is that? Another few days and I’m going to call the “great clean out” done.

The process of moving things around has become a voyage of discovery, and that means more than learning just how much packrat poop was in the barn. There was this set of incredibly heavy circular metal things. For no reason I could name, I was certain I knew what they were although I didn’t actually recognize them. Then I ran across the plans for building a waterwheel. It turns out these two metal disks were the waterwheel hubs.

Putting in a waterwheel to generate electricity off the ditch water was an early project for the farm that never came to fruition. A shame, that. The calculations based on the speed of the current suggests that a single undershot wheel (a wheel where the water runs under the wheel rather than over it) could generate 24 kilowatts of electricity a day. Now that I’ve had the pump house rebuilt and the place gobbles up less electricity, that one waterwheel could power the house and barn with something left over to sell back to APS. I’ve set them aside as a “just in case” for the new owners.

Whew. Now all I have to do is rehome or discard the odd bits of this and that remaining outside the barn.

Having spent much of the last few weeks outside with the barn door open has led to a yet another startling discovery. Danger deer populate the hillside across the road. How do I know this? Because at least once a day the dogs race for the fence line facing the road, stand at point–usually without barking–and watch fiercely. The hair on the back of Bear’s neck actually rises. This is an impressive sight at the moment as he is in full fur right now. I swear that adds an additional twenty pounds to his already overwhelming weight.

Because they weren’t barking, I ignored them at first. Then I got curious and started joining them at the fence. I quickly discovered I didn’t have a good enough sense of smell to actually find whatever it was they were watching. Then one day as the three of us were standing at the gate staring at the scrubby bushes and trees that cover on the hillsice, I caught a flash of white.

Man, am I blind! That herd of deer was walking on the lowest path closest to the road. There were seven of them, six does and a buck with a fairly impressive set of antlers.

As I watched, one of the does turned to look at me. That’s when both dogs started barking. Protecting me, you might think, but I’m pretty sure not. I doubt either of those boys think I need their protection. No, they simply deem those deer dangerous, one of the many types of critters to be warned to stay away.

I was really surprised to see deer this time of year. Until this winter, I’ve only ever seen them in the summer. They’d make their way down to the shade and water of Oak Creek, escaping the heat on House Mountain and bring the mountain lion with them, who immediately decided on turkey for dinner. I suspect the deer have been coming down now because, until the rainstorm last week, we hadn’t had rain for 124 days or some awful number like that.

I’m happy to have the deer in my back yard, especially since I know they’ll never try to cross the fence or get into my orchards or gardens. Why should they? Just outside my back fence is some of my best pasture, created back when I had cows, and thick stands of blackberries.

Since spotting them, their progress up that hillside has become daily entertainment. The dogs race for the fence, I follow and do my best to find deer I can’t see, phone in hand to take a picture that I never take. No doubt the deer see me because inevitably the boys begin to bark.

Dang those danger deer!