Denise Domning's Blog, page 16

Eclipse and Elderberry

So, I’m sitting at my desk watching the day steadily darken with the eclipse. Unfortunately, there’s nothing to see. Here in Arizona, the place famous for 360 days of sunshine a year, it’s cloudy. That fact is likely to save my eyes. I can just imagine myself shooting a glance skyward without thinking.  Yep, with only four chapters left in the book, it’s safer for me to stay inside.

Onto the elderberries.  A few years back someone mentioned to me that elderberries were the new big “thing.” Not only was I told that the berries cure just about everything and that livestock love the foliage, but the flowers can be made into bitters. If you’re not British, I’ll explain. This is a sour, bitter or bittersweet liquor made from plants or some part thereof.  More importantly, bitters are something you add to cocktails, such as an Old Fashioned. Yum.

All of that sounded great. But being a Westerner, pretty much born and raised, I was unfamiliar with what elderberry plants looked like–apparently they grow everywhere in the Midwest and East Coast–so I only bought six to start. I put them between my West-facing bedroom window and the pump house, thinking they might cover that uninteresting view.  Now, almost six years later, they have just about done the trick. I have a ten foot tall airy hedge that looks gorgeous when in bloom and attracts just about every berry-eating bird in the area. And even with that much bird pressure, the hedge is still covered with berries this time of year.

(Here comes the sun, dit-en-doo-da-da, here comes the sun and I say it’s all right…)

However, as with all claims I discovered that 1) I was going to have to harvest all those flowers and process all those berries, and 2) the livestock were less than impressed with the foliage. Always a downside, sigh. So what did I do?

Elderberries in bloom on the hillside

I bought twenty more tiny plants, of course.  I bought them because I love that elderberries grow like weeds, form pretty hedges and are generally low maintenance. More than anything my hillsides need trees and bushes. Over the many years of neglect, those hillsides have become quack grass heaven. If you don’t know what quack grass is, consider yourself fortunate. It’s one of those hardy “edge” plants, one that thrives on the edge of nutrition. It spreads both by rhizome and by seed.  And it doesn’t mind the blistering sun. So every hillside I have that lacks trees is covered in quack grass.  The only way I’ve discovered to permanently remove it is pigs. Quack grass rhizomes are a tasty treat.  However, I’m not yet ready to put my piggy girls onto the hillsides when there’s no way to guarantee they won’t slip and slide into the ditch and be carried downstream to my neighbor’s house.

Those twenty newer elderberry bushes–okay, a few less than the twenty originals because I got crazy with the weedwhacker and accidentally killed a few–have done better than survived. They’ve tolerated the blistering Western sun, over 100 degree temperatures, my forgetful watering and a hillside that I’m certain is deficit in nutrition to grow into four to six foot tall bushes. They’ve not only spread their seeds, adding more elderberry plants to my hillside, which I’m certain I’ll accidentally weedwhack as well, they’re beginning to drive out the quack grass.

Much to the pleasure of the nutsedge (which the pigs also like) and mullein. It’s always something.

Recently my friend Laurie stopped by for a glass of wine on the porch.  Standing at the railing, she looked down at the hillside and asked, “Is that elderberry?” When I said yes, the herbalist replied with an excited “I’m making tincture!”

Cool!  At last, something was going to happen with those berries famous for their healthfulness. By the way, they got their name “elder berries” because they are, or were at one time, the premier healing berry in the botanical world.

Half done cutting Quack Grass

She wanted to wait until they dried on their heads. I warned that the birds would get them all, so we settled on harvesting yesterday. Then she asked the most appropriate question. “So how do I get to them?”

Oh, that. There are paths on my hillsides.  I carved them with my trusty Rogue Hoe.  You just can’t see the paths because they’re hidden in the quack grass. So before she stopped by yesterday, I went out with my hedge trimmer and started cutting my way through the six foot tall stands of grasses. Then I started sneezing. Then I started itching. Once again I’d forgotten that I’m allergic to quack grass.  That always happens on the first quack grass harvest of the year. But by the time she got here, she could walk to where most of the berries were.

Laurie and the berries

We filled a paper grocery bag with berries in less than half an hour, surprising me.  She sampled sorrel for the first time, surprising her. Did I mention I threw French sorrel seeds on that hillside too? It’s actually outperforming the fennel that I threw out at the same time, and it grows really well under the native walnut tree, always a plus. What do I do with all the sorrel? I watch it grow and work on the next chapter.

As we harvested, she talked about making the tincture, which I didn’t know was supposed to be done on a full or new moon. That’s when the subject of today’s eclipse came up. We decided she should definitely tincture those powerful berries in the added power of the eclipse. Had to be good, right? After all, it’s elderberries and an eclipse. I can’t wait to see the magic at work!

 

Free Water?

When I say “free water” I do not mean the stuff that’s been falling from the skies so copiously of late.  Although that free water is really nice and has saved me much time dragging hoses and running sprinklers this summer, the free water I’m talking about is the water that comes from the spring, my drinking water.  Having that sort of free water is the kind of thing that makes real estate agents sing. They might tell me things like “You will have more water than you know what to do with” and “You’ll have water forever.”

And yes, that’s actually, sort of, true. Page Springs, which is the source of my water, runs all day, every day, and produces almost 15 million gallons a day. (Yes, this is Arizona.) According to a geologist with whom I spoke, the spring will do this in perpetuity. Doesn’t that sound amazing?

But like any other real estate claim, this one needed to be taken with a great big grain of salt and a few arsenic filters. Take, for example, the fact that I am not on any water delivery system and I have to maintain my own water treatment and delivery plant, which includes a sand filter, a charcoal filter, a pair of arsenic filters, a paper mud-collecting filter, and two UV lights.  I don’t do well with chlorine.

Water that technically doesn’t cost me anything has turned out to be pretty costly, and it cost me again yesterday. This time the cost wasn’t in equipment but in time and effort.

Sunday is my chore day and right in the middle of cleaning the chicken coop I took a detour to bring some fallen apples and branches to the sheep who are unhappily grazing on my wild hillside right now.

That was my resolution to last week’s Cinco attack, to move them up onto that hillside where he’s fenced away from everyone, including me. Actually, it’s perfect for them right now because of all the free water that’s been falling from the skies. The blackberries have gone crazy.  The alder trees have branches reaching to the ground–they love the alder leaves.  The grass is coming in fresh and green. However perfect for them does not equate to them loving the hillside. There’s been lots of complaining, mostly because they can’t get to the pig food.  Dorper sheep are supposed to gain 100% of their weight on grass but no one asked them what they prefer, and it’s definitely pig food.

Bear isn’t really thrilled about their move either. Because they’re fenced into that area, making it dog-inaccessible, he’s had to spend his nights with them instead of on the porch.  I tried putting Moosie over there with him, but Moose knows every gap and hole, and just makes his way back to the porch.  I let that go, figuring if he knows how to get out, he also knows how to get in. If Bear needs him, he’ll show up.

Bear tried to complain the other night when the rain started to come down. I considered showing him the picture I took of him sitting in the rain two weeks ago. Mr. Almost Impervious to Inclement Weather hasn’t a leg to stand on when it comes to complaining about the weather. That’s especially true at the moment as his fur has almost grown out.  Time for another buzz cut.

Anyway, back to my “free” water. So on this detour I came across an unexpected lake, right at the pump house foundation. Crap! I immediately returned to the barn and gathered up shovels, a pick axe and my pvc plumbing bucket. This is how I organize for chores. I have a bucket filled with fencing repair tools, one for plumbing tools, etc. The idea is to keep me from having to walk back the length of a football field to the front barn for that one tool I needed and forgot. It’s a good idea, but it rarely works out that way.

Once back at the pump house, I turned off spring pump, closed the valves to the paper filter, turned off the pressure pump (which means I instantly have no water in the house), closed the valves to and from the water tank, then started digging in absolutely saturated soil.

Silly me.  That’ll teach me to say out loud that I really needed to do something physical after being stuck in my chair at the computer all week. I’ll be careful to mind my tongue next weekend.

I did have warning that this was coming, but didn’t realize what my pressure pump, which speaks in icons, was trying to tell me. Back on Friday my pressure pump indicated that I had a leak. I went through the jungle of piping, checking valve handles.  All of them were where they were supposed to be. I went through the house and checked every faucet and toilet. No leaks there.  Now, on Sunday, it was obvious that whatever the pressure pump was trying to tell me was leaking was right below the pump house.

The first place I went to check was to the pipe that my neighbor and I had kluged together a year and a half ago. Very surprisingly our rubber coupling continues to hold water. It’s on my list to dig out that whole area and remove the defunct sprinkler pipes, then reset that pipe, which carries water from the tank back into the pump house to go through all the treatments before hitting the house.

Following the water, I finally found the culprit.  The walnut tree next to the pump house (Who let that grow there some twenty-odd years ago, huh?) had sent a root into a pvc coupling on a pipe that ran right by its trunk before turning to enter the pump house. Or so I thought that was where that pipe went.

With my handy-dandy bucket at the ready, I sat in the mud and cut out the broken coupling.  Water dribbled steadily from the pipe. Well, that had me scratching my head. Still, I walked back down to the barn and got a length of 1.5 inch pvc pipe, all three of my 1.5 inch couplings and headed back up to the pump house. Water was still dribbling from that pipe.

The last thing I wanted to do was cut and paste in pvc while the water was still running, so I called for my neighbor Al. He came with his wife Elana, whose job is to supervise and see that neither Al nor I killed ourselves. We discussed the water for awhile, then he went back to his place and came back with a screw-on coupling as well as a rubber coupling similar to the one we’d used on our previous fix.

We started with the pvc screw-on coupling and fit it into place, then I went through the pump house turning everything back on. I wasn’t until I hit the “on” button for the pressure pump that I realized why the water hadn’t stopped dribbling from that pipe. All of a sudden I could hear water rushing through our newly fixed pipe.  That line didn’t go into the pump house, it was bringing water out of the pump house and sending it into the house. That dribble was my house draining back to the pump house. What?!  Why would you put the out-pipe on the far side of the pump house?  Go figure.

We three all stood and watched the new coupling. It was holding, so we congratulated ourselves on a job well done, and they went home for lunch.  I stayed a little longer, just in case. Which turned out to be a good thing because about five minutes later the screw-on coupling popped.  So, I turned everything back off again, and undid the coupling.  Because I had everything I needed, I now cut out the old pipe, which proved to be very brittle, and started building the new piece I wanted to insert.  When it came time to put it together, I suddenly discovered I didn’t quite have the arm strength to get it in place.  So, back I walked to my neighbor’s house, this time asking if I could have that rubber coupling. Elana found it for me and back I walked to my house (at least another two football field lengths) and started to put that coupling in place. I had it almost screwed on when Al appeared. We watched together as I turned all the pumps and valves back to the “on” position.

Battle of the Bulge

It didn’t make five minutes before the pressure in the pipe had water squirting everywhere. Now it was Al’s turn.  He took my insert piece, cut it in half, coupled/glued the two pieces to the existing pipe ends. They fit so the two cut ends butted together. After that, he powered on the rubber coupling to hold those two ends together. After screwing it in place, we turned all the equipment back on and…Voila! It held. It bulged but it held.  Just in case, Al added another hose clamp to the center of the coupling. And once again we congratulated ourselves on a job well done.

Maybe?

It lasted until this morning.  The bulge ended up pushing one of the pipe ends out of alignment. This time Al came back with the perfect coupling (I hope). We dug again for a little bit, he cut, he fitted, I pushed pipes this way and that, until, once again…Voila! The fix is holding.

I am not filling in the hole for a week, just in case. Maybe, if I leave it all open for a bit and leave my plumbing bucket in the pump house, I’ll be motivated to cut away all that old piping and fix the other line while everything’s exposed.

Free water, my Aunt Fanny.

 

Li’l Pink Crocs

Get ready for it. This post is about one woman’s obsession to find a pair of shoes that fit and what failing in that quest cost her.

Peanut and Cinco

Cinco got me two days ago. It’s not the first time he’s head butted me and it won’t be the last time. In Cinco’s defense I know he’s head butting out of sheer instinct. There’s not a mean bone in his body. Presenting him with the opportunity to hit you is like putting cake in front of the piggy girls. It’s just gonna happen. Ninety-nine percent of the time, he doesn’t hit hard enough to leave a bruise and he’s never once landed a second hit—although he’s drawn back as if he might be considering it. That said, if he wanted to, he could kill me. He could certainly break bones even at his somewhat small, eighty-odd pounds. When I had him sheared, the shearer complained that he was all muscle.

This time wouldn’t have been any worse than the rest if I had been alert to what was happening with Tiny and if I hadn’t been wearing my (not so) little pink Crocs.

Until this spring, I hadn’t been a Croc fan, not when they first appeared, not when jewelry for them appeared and not even when they came out in brightly colored patterns. I’m usually a sucker for anything brightly colored. What put these odd looking plastic shoes in the treasured spot beside my door was the combination of being hot pink and only $2.00 on sale at Tractor Supply.

You know your life has changed when you stop shopping for shoes at Nordstrom’s and instead eye the sale rack at Tractor Supply. Frankly, I have as good a chance of finding a pair of shoes that fit at a farm supply store as I do at the big “N”. Unlike some people, who walk into a shoe store and browse styles, colors, heel height, etc., I walk up to the nearest clerk and say “Eight and a half, double A.” At which point they either respond with, “Ooh, so sorry” or, in the case of Nordstrom’s, bring me the 2 or 3 pairs that might fit me, take ’em or leave ’em.

There was a time about 15 years ago when I could find Amalfi flats that fit perfectly and came in black AND brown for a mere $200 a pair. I bought 2 pairs and wore them constantly for the next three years, by which time they were pretty ragged. Sigh.

Oh, I suppose I could find trainers or hikers that I might be able to lace tightly enough that they wouldn’t slosh and slide. But I have a problem with lace-up shoes. I’m ambidextrous. This means I have no right/left dominance. That translates to “the ball hits me in the head before I remember which hand I catch with” and the fact that I cannot tie my shoes. I apparently learned to tie using the wrong hand first. Don’t ask me which one I’m supposed to use first because I don’t know. My knots, sometimes even when double-knotted, won’t stay closed. In the almost sixty years I’ve spent trying to correct this situation, I have continued to fail miserably. So when at all possible I avoid laced shoes.

At any rate, I brought home these Crocs just as winter set in and put them aside, thinking I might try them in the spring. Then, one fine March morning when it was mucky but too warm for my muck boots, I slipped my feet into those Crocs and flip-flopped and slid around in them as I did my morning chores. When I was done, I hosed them off.

Oooh, that was nice. And, much to my surprise, my bare feet didn’t react to whatever the heck plastic they’re made out of. Strange materials are real problem for me with my even stranger allergies.

Then I had that problem with my Plantar’s Fascia and instantly the Crocs became the only shoes that didn’t cause pain. Well, pain from wearing the shoe. There was the pain of sliding out of the shoe and finding a burr, or losing a Croc in the mud as I was walking along and having to hobble around as I tried to rinse it off and return it to my foot. Or, as happened the other day, tumbling to the ground when one of them slid off my foot as Cinco caught me in the back of the knee.

Now, that was a wake up call. The very last place I want to be is on the ground with my back to him. Because my li’l pink Croc went flying as he hit me, leaving me with no traction, that’s where I ended up.

So as I found myself scrambling around on the ground to face Cinco (he knows I’ll hit him in return and it’s a deterrent; I am Alpha, here me roar!), Peanut came to my rescue. He put himself between me and his father. Peanut is now taller than his sister Mari, but still slight and lamb-like. He didn’t get his dad’s horns, which Cinco isn’t supposed to have in the first place. Instead, Peanut got a pair of scurs. Those are pointed little afterthoughts of horns that Peanut’s Hampshire DNA insists should be the real deal.

Cinco is rapidly developing a real respect for those scurs. About two weeks ago, he backed up, aiming at me. I called him a butt-head and threatened him verbally with violence, then rested my closed fist on his forehead. You know, my usual routine. Touching my fist to his head mimics the way he and the other sheep greet each other, head to head. Although it doesn’t always work as well as a stick, he settles down often enough with it that I try it first.

Instantly, Peanut pushed himself between me and Cinco, and slammed his head into his father’s shoulder. Twice. That bony scur connected with Cinco’s shoulder hard enough that he has just now stopped limping.

Two days ago, with my protector lamb guarding my back, I got onto my feet, reclaimed my Croc and went on with my day. By that evening I realized that Tiny was in heat. That explains why Cinco has been particularly aggressive lately. That doesn’t mean I’ve stopped considering turning him into dog food and keeping Peanut as my ram. After all, I’m raising sheep for meat (and lawn mowers, in which case I need about twenty of them), not furthering a pedigree.

But what am I going to do about shoes I can trust? I need something comfortable and narrow enough that my feet don’t slide in them. They can’t have laces because that just frustrates me. I mean, who wants to be reminded that they failed kindergarten? That pretty much leaves me buying a pair of custom-made shoes for beaucoup bucks to wear while walking in the mud and manure.

Maybe I’ll just get heel straps for the Crocs.

A Wet Season

So, today is Sunday and not Monday. Usually Sundays are my chore day. That translates to my “day off”, which means I spend the day doing laundry, cleaning cat boxes, washing everyone’s feeders and waterers, cleaning chicken coops and mowing or weed-whacking. I usually enjoy the day because it means I’m not sitting in front of a computer. That, and there’s something fulfilling about restoring some sort of order where there’s been nothing but chaos for the previous six days.

But after last night’s noisy storm (I put a blanket beside the bed for Moosie and that kept him off my head), it’s raining today. A slow, steady, dry-ground-satisfying rain. As always happens on days like these, the clouds have lowered over the top of House Mountain, which I can usually see when I’m at my computer. Gentle gray tendrils of mist trail down the side of that old volcano, filling the creases and folds. The massive cottonwoods between me and the mountain are glistening and an impossible green. At least, where there aren’t ragged scars where the trees have been wind-pruned.

Since I really don’t much like working outside in the rain–I dislike having to wear a raincoat when it’s warm and I don’t like trying to see through rain-speckled glasses—here I am at the computer, doing Monday’s work so I can do Sunday’s work tomorrow.

It was just beginning to dribble at dawn this morning when I went out to release my critters. I always watch the ground as I leave the turkey coop and start for the alley where the sheep spend their night. This area, near the sycamore tree that the wind pruned to half its bulk last week, is “Sand Burr City”. Between the sheep, who eat the green parts of that plant before the burrs burst out, and my aggressive mowing last year, I thought I’d done better than decimate those nasty things. Apparently not.

I hate those plants. If you happen to get a burr stuck to you, you can end up spending ten minutes trying to remove it from various fingers. I watched Bear take one out of his fur the other day (it’s time to shave him again) then spend a good three minutes trying to get it off his tongue. Just as I came to help, he managed to toss his head just right and off it went.

At any rate, I had my rain-speckled glasses aimed at my rubber-croc-covered toes as I walked to avoid the burrs and I came across this little wood chip. In case you can’t tell from the image, it’s only about six inches long. When you see something like this, all by itself right there in the grass, you have to acknowledge that’s it’s been a pretty wet season.

I’m not the only one who has mushrooms showing up. My neighbor’s cottonwood stump burst out with huge, beautiful, fluted white native Oyster mushrooms last week. I haven’t looked recently, but I’m guessing I have Oysters as well on my standing stump. I can no longer see the fallen log that I plugged with my purchased Oyster spore. Those tasty guys were a pretty golden color. I can’t see that log because it’s completely overrun by blackberries. If you remember, this winter I cut back the blackberries on that hillside all the way to the ground. Right now, it looks like I never touched them. They’re easily four feet high and there are blackberries on some of these new canes.

Ah, the miracle of water from the sky.

(PS Now that I’ve finished this, I don’t have anything else to do. I think I’ll go build a chicken coop under a dry roof.)

Storm Damage

Yesterday afternoon, we had the storm of the summer.  I hope.  I swear the wind hit a hundred miles an hour.  It blew in from the east. At least that’s where it came from where I am. The mountains around me change things. Almost immediately, chairs went flying west across the porch. So did the grill and everything on the table.

Because the storm came in so early I wasn’t ready for it.  I usually try to get all my critters, except the chickens, who insist on not entering their coop before precisely sunset, put away and fed just in case the storm lasts beyond feeding time. But at three no one was ready to penned up.  At least the sheep were grazing in the fenced orchard. The pigs ended up trapped in the pasture by the front barn when the wind blew the gate shut between them and their shelter.  That’s what they get for spending most of the day yesterday trying to figure out how to lift the fencing around the chard garden as well as working to open the gate that leads to the barn and their food.

At the first rumble of thunder Moosie was inside. That was a good move on his part. As I was carrying buckets of food to the back barn, the lightning was flashing above me almost continuously. The thunder rolled and rolled. The wind blew like crazy.

And then the heavenly bathtubs emptied all at once. The sheep, who are no dummies, immediately crammed themselves into the tiny shelter in the orchard. I keep telling myself that I need to build that into a real shelter, one big enough for both pigs and sheep. After yesterday, I’ve added that near the top of the ever-growing list of chores to do when the book is finished.

A Bear in the rain

Once I had food in the back barn, I hurried to the house only to have my power go out.  Much to my surprise, it was on again in ten minutes. How nice!

By then Moosie was hiding in my bedroom.  Meanwhile, Bear was on the exposed corner of the porch doing his Kuvasz thing.  The Kuvasz is almost impervious to inclement weather. I think he was enjoying the rain as much as the pigs, who were doing a crazy rain dance.  They raced in circles around the pasture, checking out the closed gate, bouncing on each other, racing back to cram into what was once the coop for my new chicks and is now the place where pigs have knocked things down.

Still cleaner than they were

Not certain if they were frantic or bouncing with joy, I braved the deluge and opened the orchard gate for them. Definitely joy.  They continued to splash in the water and bounce.  About fifteen minutes later they were very clean. They’re actually quite attractive when they’re not crusted with mud.

By 4:30 the rain had slacked off some and I walked the property, checking for places where fallen branches had taken down the fence. Well, at least all my fencing was still where it should be.

Sigh. In the next month I’m going to get to practice with the chain saw. A lot. The only whole tree that fell was a birch on the ditch. Because a wild grape had wound into it, when it fell it took not only the grape but came down on top of small hackberry. And it knocked my charming, turkey tail mushroom-encrusted log bridge out of place. That had to come out anyway.  As for the rest of the property, huge branches–cottonwood, walnut, sycamore, ash and alder–are everywhere.

The pigs and sheep have happily been dining on fresh leaves all day.  The turkeys are concentrating on re-oiling their feathers. They should have come when I called! I told them that crouching under bushes and in the tall grass doesn’t really help when the rain is coming down in sheets. They all look pretty ratty.  I’ve added a picture of Miss Jean Broody and one of her adopted turkey poults. It seems the poult was a little cold today, what with the temperature a full forty degrees cooler than yesterday. I think he would really have liked his now too-small mother to sit on him. Because he’s gotten too big for her to do that, he settled for tucking his head into his mother’s feathers. Now that’s love.

Although I haven’t yet looked at the chain saws, I have been out doing some repair work. The pig shelter at the back of the orchard, the previous version of which was literally “Gone with the Wind” yesterday, has been rebuilt. I’ve moved the sheep up onto the hillside where they not only have plenty of leaves and blackberries to munch but a much nicer and roomier shelter available to them. The back barn is already stocked with food.

I’ve done all that because I hear the storm is coming back for Round Two. Well, there’s nothing nicer than rain-washed hair and every plant on my property happily drenched.  I’m going to leave that orchard gate open one more time and see if the pigs will be doing their rain dance again.

 

Predators

It’s been quite a couple of weeks for predators out here.  This is because something large–the mountain lion, I assume–killed something equally as large between my fence and the creek.  (Of course, the mystery writer in me spun a completely different story. Morbid is now my middle name.)

As for what that big thing was, I’m assuming it was a mule deer. I’ve seen them all summer walking outside the fence, eyeing my pastures. The deer fascinate my turkeys. Most of them are old enough to remember the cows and the cow poop they so enjoyed scratching through. Every time they see a deer behind the fence they run down to greet them, almost as if they’re inviting them in. It’s been interesting to watch, the whole flock running for the fence, then walking alongside the deer as they make their way to where they cross the creek behind my front barn.

But as you can imagine the smell of something as large as a deer decomposing out there has been awful.  I considered going out to see what it was, then realized it would take a week to cut through the brambles, saplings and grapevine that has taken over the area. And what if I came across a scavenger–one that might consider me a snack–while I was at it? That was the end of that idea. May whatever it is rest in peace.

I’ve got just one word for all this: YUCK.

Needless to say that terrible smell has attracted every predator in the area.  My friend Jacquie called to find out if I was seeing the bobcat that was taking her chickens. I hadn’t, but I’m guessing its been here.  So have the coyotes, night after night. There are mornings when the stink of javelina tangles with the rot.  And skunk.  Of course, I’m sure the lion has been back, having herself a snack on decaying meat.

And let’s not forget the circling vultures. They’re driving the turkey mamas crazy.

I often tell people that Benjamin Franklin suggested that the turkey be our national bird. He was outvoted and we ended up with the eagle (a scavenger, by the way, despite all that noble hype).  The reason Mr. Franklin suggested the turkey was because the nubby skin that cover Tom’s head and neck–his caruncle–changes color all day long, depending on his mood, from red to white to blue.  A walking advertisement for our flag.  No eagle does that.

And forget “eagle-eyed”.  The turkeys have eagles beat there too.  The hens make a distinctive humming sound when they identify a potential but distant winged predator.  They’ll all stand still, one eye cocked toward the sky, humming to each other as they confirm whether its worth running for the barn or if they should drop to sit on their babies. Or, as I just witnessed this morning, fly up to attack the stooping black hawk.

Me, I have to look and look and look until I finally what they’re watching. Usually, it’s a single mote of dark color against the vast sky. Turkey-eyed I am not.

This morning is the first one since whatever it is that died no longer reeks. The rains must have hurried things along. When I finish this book I’m going to take that week and hack my way through the foliage to find out what it was.  Here’s hoping the mystery writer is wrong.

 

 

Monsoon Season

India isn’t the only place where Monsoons are a given. Northern Arizona has its own rainy season and it started with a bang last Friday. Well, not a bang as much as multiple crashes of thunder.

This is not Moosie’s favorite time of year.  It didn’t always bother him.  I remember two years ago sitting on the porch watching the lightning and the rain with Moosie quietly by my side.

Then last year happened.  If you recall (I do), my heat pump was struck by lightning and destroyed. This happened while I was watching the storm from the porch, which is only about 20 feet from where the lightning hit.  Of course, the dogs were also on the porch with me, while the sheep were grazing right below me. There was a massive crash/bang as the bolt hit accompanied instantaneously with a crack of thunder that lifted me out of my chair, lifted the dogs off the porch floor and brought the (then 3) sheep straight up off the ground in grazing position, then back down to earth again without changing position as they continued grazing.

That was it for Moosie. He hasn’t been the same since and Sunday night only made it worse.  The clouds rolled in at midday, which is the good sign there will be rain.  If the clouds can’t make it over the mountains surrounding my house by noon, the storm simply circles around me. I watch everyone else getting drenched while I suffer the humidity and heat without any hope of relief.

By Sunday evening there was still no rain although it was clear there would be. I had gone to bed at my usual way-early hour and was blissfully asleep when it started. By 11 PM it was so loud that it woke me.  I went out to check on Moosie and, sure enough, he was waiting at the door, panting.  I let him in and he followed me into the bedroom. Usually, its enough for him to sleep by the side of the bed.  Not Sunday night.  He not only crawled onto the bed, he tried to lay on top of my head. I’ve always said that that dog is mostly cat. Since its not possible for me to sleep with an 80 pound dog on my head and since sleep is critical for me, I eventually had to lock him out of the bedroom. He slept next to the door.

Meanwhile, Bear was on the porch barking at whatever as the lightning strikes fell along with the rain. Good dog.

Sunday is also my cleaning day. I wash all the feeders, waterers and clean the coops.  Hoping for rain, I mucked out the turkey barn, piling all that you-know-what on top of that growing compost area that the birds are creating for me. I was so glad I had.  There was enough rain to saturate everything and Monday morning the roto-chickens were hard at work tilling for bugs.  I let the piglets, who seem to have survived the weekend’s sturm und drang without too much trauma, out of the orchard to give them a hand.

Speaking of the little girls, I once again lost a fortune on Youtube because of my inability to carry a camera. Since Mama’s demise, the piggy girls have been much friendlier, even making up to Moosie who dearly wants them to play with him.  Unfortunately, they don’t speak dog and haven’t figured out what he’s promising them with all that sideways hopping.  Mostly, the girls are fascinated by the sheep. Now that their mother isn’t driving off the ovine crew, they’ve had a chance to get close to their fellow four-footers. Every day the girls bury their snouts into the sheep’s wool and snuffle, examine parts that I don’t think Cinco ought to let piglets near given their sharp little teeth, and make general offers of sharing the shady area in the back barn with their co-grazers.

Given this new rapport, I let the sheep into the orchard with the piglets on Thursday to clean up some of the fallen fruit. I came out a while later to find all the sheep resting on the ground, happily regurgitating said fruit and chewing their cud. One of the black piglets had braced herself on Peanut’s back and was ever-so-gently running his ear through her mouth.  As she did that, he tilted his head toward her as if to say, “That’s nice. Don’t quit.”  Sigh.  When will I learn? (I’m guessing never at this point.)

Finally, to celebrate the onset of the Monsoon season, I had my first power outage with Friday night’s storm–no rain, just steamy darkness–and of course, the outage fried something in the heat pump.  Fortunately, I guess, it fried in the “on” position, meaning I’m using the breaker to turn my A/C on and off.  Considering the alternative and the fact that it’s still under warranty, I can’t complain.

Welcome Monsoon!

 

A Difficult Decision

For anyone uncomfortable with the idea of animals being slaughtered for meat, you may want to skip this post.  I promise there will be nothing graphic, just a difficult description and a little sadness.

I slaughtered Miss Piggy today.  It wasn’t an easy choice, but it was Miss Piggy herself who pushed the issue. About two weeks ago, during that heat wave, she got a little grumpy. She actually came at me with her mouth open.  It was the first time I’ve ever felt the least bit uncomfortable around her.  I wasn’t frightened although maybe I should have been. As it turns outs, she weighed in well over 500 pounds, probably closer to 800.

Her behavior was so surprising that it took me back for a bit.  Yeah, the heat was making me grumpy too, but that didn’t really explain her warning stance toward me. Then I realized that she’d done the math.

I once heard an interview on NPR with a man who ran a pig sanctuary, a place that took in those “pet” potbellied pigs when they got too big to be pets anymore. He had a pretty good explanation for how pigs think, one that I’ve used since:  “Cats have staff, dogs have masters, but a pig thinks everyone is a pig.”

This is what happened to Miss Piggy.  She looked around the farm and saw that Tiny had her two little sheep/pigs, that the turkey hens had their useless little poult/pigs and that I had NO pigs.  This, in her mind, had made her head pig.

Although she never again came at me aggressively, each day after that she made it clear that I no longer had the right to tell her what to do.  In fact, if I did try to scold her, which I have done in the past and to which she had responded submissively, her new response was a harsh series of grunts that clearly said “You don’t have the right to tell me what to do.”  And then she’d go off a do whatever it was I’d just told her not to do.

Then I did the math.  On top of becoming unpredictable, she was costing me more than $14 a day to feed.  That pretty much left me no choice.

So with the help of Jim and Sharon Kraft, who will be paid in pork, she met her end this morning.  Jim did the deed. Thank goodness he’d done his research. He discovered that hogs fed with milk or milk products have very strong bones. I’d already learned this with Boinker earlier this year. So Jim planned appropriately and she was gone in less than a minute. I will freely admit to crying over it, but it was one minute in a lifetime of nothing but pleasure.  And, she finished a whole quart of strawberry ice cream before she went.

After that, we started working, Jim and I on her carcass and Sharon carrying the pieces into the kitchen. Neither Jim nor I had ever processed a hog carcass. He’d done elk, I’d watched as the lamb and Boinker were processed.  But there’s no time like when you’re facing a massive carcass to learn how to do what . Why start small when you can go for the big stuff right away?

It took us three hours during which we learned just how long the gut cut needs to be and that you should tie the feet to the gambrel just in case. The primal cuts are now in multiple refrigerators cooling now. Tomorrow I’ll start reducing them.  She’ll be mostly ground or cubed pork with bones going to the dogs.

Her babies don’t seem to be missing her.  I’ve been down and fed them apricots. I tried giving them plums, but they were clear–they do not like them, Sam I am.

As for me, as hard as it was, I know I made the right decision.  And I’m thrilled I was able to give her a spectacular life here before this moment came.

 

 

The Prime of Miss Jean Broody

Miss Jean Broody and her brood

Don’t ask me why the title of that movie (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie) came into my mind as I looked at the little black hen sitting on nine turkey eggs.  It just did. From that moment on, she became Miss Jean Broody to me.

Unlike the original Miss Brodie, there’s no manipulation in this hen’s heart. She’s a mother through and through. Her first brood was a single chicken egg that she laid among thirty-some turkey eggs.  She had joined the two turkey hens that were already sitting on those eggs. Neither turkey seemed to mind the help of a chicken half their size. It was pretty funny watching Miss Broody try to spread herself across all those eggs while the two turkey girls were getting a bite to eat.  Her little egg hatched (a rooster, of course) as did most of the turkey eggs.  (That was prior to the raven invasion that’s cost me this year’s hatchlings.)  Miss Broody did adopt one of the little turkey poults, raising her alongside her guy.  That was the first of my Tur-ckens.

Then two years ago, just after I’d slaughtered that nasty little jungle fowl/Astralorp mix rooster, I found Miss Broody in an unused trough, sitting on eight eggs.  Since I wasn’t certain when she laid or how long she’d been sitting, I let her stay on them.  Three roosters (gone now) and five hens! Her five girls are still laying for me.

Last year, she tried again to co-sit with a turkey–I’m guessing it was the hen she raised, but I don’t really know that for certain. Once again, she adopted a little poult out of those hatchlings, and I once again had a turkey determined to hang out in the chicken coop.  Both of them went with the great slaughter last November.

Although Miss Broody is now five years old and no longer laying eggs, her broody gene just won’t let her rest.  She started in May, co-sitting with another turkey hen.  Twice, something disturbed their nest, stealing eggs.  I could smell skunk.  By the way, Moosie smelled like skunk three days ago–well, he still smells like skunk, so I’m hopeful that he finally caught the varmint.  Although Miss Broody did her best, the last couple rotted under her.  And, still, she didn’t leave the nest.

A few days later that same stinky varmint went after my “red” turkey hen.  She’s a strawberry blonde, that one, and because she looks different, the other hens aren’t kind to her.  They either steal her eggs by pushing her off her nest and taking her place, or they steal her babies after they’re hatched.  This batch was her second for the year.  One of the other moms had stolen her first two poults, including the only one that looks Narragansett this year.  Red found another spot, well away from where her tormentors hang out, only to have the skunk attack and steal a few eggs.  That upset her so much she didn’t return to the nest. For the record, she is now co-parenting her stolen children.

That’s when I took a hand in it.  I know Red is a good producer and usually hatches out most of her eggs.  So, I gathered up her eggs and put them in the barn near Miss Broody, then left her to consider them.  She did better than consider. She made herself right at home, and now she earned her rightful reward.

Five of her nine eggs have already hatched and all the babies are doing well. Number six is working on breaking free of the shell, but may not make it. Hatching is a touch-and-go sort of experience and any helping from the audience only screws it up.  Number seven is beginning to peck from the inside.  Wouldn’t that be something if she managed to hatch all nine?

And as for Miss Broody, she couldn’t be prouder or happier.  Never mind that little Australorp babies are black with yellow stripes and these much bigger guys are all yellow.  She hasn’t stopped talking to her adopted children, leading the older ones around the turkey coop, showing them the waterers and pointing out places to peck for food.  Good mama!

I’m going to have to talk to those turkey girls.  It’s really bad when an old Astralorp can out-hatch them on eggs that aren’t her own. Yep, Miss Jean Broody is definitely in her prime.

 

Heat Wave

Surprise!  It’s Arizona in the summertime. Okay, technically it’s not summer yet, and won’t be until 8:24 pm tonight when we hit the summer solstice (according to Google). And, this is Northern Arizona, which should be cooler than the Valley of the Sun.  However, it was 107 degrees today.  That’s hotter than we usually get this early in the season.  More to the point, I’m surrounded by three streams. The hotter the day, the steamier it gets around here.  I swear it was near 50% humidity on my property.

This does not bode well for the rest of the summer.  Help me! I’m melting!

My biggest concern is keeping the animals comfortable.  The dogs did fine.  They chose to laze inside with the AC running.  So did the cats that have attached themselves to the house: Waku, Wendy, Fat Girl and Shy Girl. Fuzzy tried to talk me into letting him in with the girls, but he’s not housebroken and every time he’s inside something gets peed on.  I had to tell him no, so he went down below the porch where it stays about twenty degrees cooler than anywhere in the sun.  The barn cats are wherever they go to stay cool, and they have lots of choices. Spots and Socks, Fuzzy’s sisters are most likely down by the creek. I’ve seen them in shady damp spots, watching the water roll past them.

The turkeys and chickens seem to have no trouble with the heat, but then they stay in the shade and near the ditch where there’s cool mud. Because there’s so much vegetation on the property, sticking to the shade doesn’t seem to stop them from getting enough to eat. There are plenty of worms in the damp areas and they’ve been grazing on my blackberries along the ditch bank. They aren’t the only ones. The blackberries are leafless to just above the highest the sheep can reach.

Speaking of the sheep, they’re Dorpers, which is Afrikaans (and Dutch) for “Villagers”.  They were bred to be drought tolerant and heat resistant. Still, I kept checking on them. At midday, they were out in the middle of the field, wool and all, grazing as if it weren’t blazingly hot. Although they have access to plenty of water all over the property, they prefer their bucket.  I guess they know where it is, so they check there first.  At any rate, I kept filling that bucket and they kept emptying it.

A side note about Peanut.  He has caught up to and outgrown his sister Mari. Both he and Mari are about two thirds the size of their parents. Peanut has also become my determined and/or jealous protector. Every time Cinco comes up behind me with evil intent (ready to headbutt), Peanut puts himself between his father and me. This doesn’t seem to upset Cinco, who immediately settles down and asks for chin scratches. The two of them are pretty much constant companions.

Peanut did the same thing for Josiah, my grandson, who was visiting this weekend. Cinco simply must challenge tall men. This may be because Derek is well over six foot and has pretty much cowed (sheeped?) Cinco.  Although Josiah is only thirteen, he’s pushing six two, with at least four more inches to go.  Cinco couldn’t resist. But each time he tried, there was Peanut, begging for head scratches from Josiah.

By the way, Josiah is the reason I’m late writing this post. He left on Monday and I played catch up after a weekend of movie watching.  Wonder Woman, two strong thumbs up; Rogue One, one very strong thumbs down, one meh (after I convinced Josiah that the plot was, like, completely missing, he admitted that he loved it because he loves Star Wars); Batman vs Superman, only worth watching if you skip all of the movie up to the part where Wonder Woman appears–talk about a movie missing motivation and plot! And Amazon made me buy the stupid thing; In the Heart of the Sea, two very very strong thumbs up, especially after the whale got away.

Back to my critters.  Miss Piggy and her babies were the ones I worried most about in the heat.  But I flooded the back field for them, created a bog near one of the valves, made sure the pond was filled, and so far they’ve used them all.  They did all learn to drink from the hose today, though.  The water comes from the spring channel and is cool and fresh. Miss Piggy has done the hose thing before, but today her six little girls watched in excitement. Then, one by one, they each had to try it. There was a lot of snorting as they got water into their snouts, but they figured it out and were ready for seconds and thirds.  I can’t blame them. It doesn’t take long for the water in their pan to heat up to nearly hot tea temperature.

Right now, it’s six thirty and only the chickens are still out.  The temperature has dropped to a balmy 96 degrees. The clouds that cut the sun late in the afternoon, but raised the humidity, have dissipated and the humidity has dropped, thank goodness.

I think it’s porch wine time, but tonight I’m taking the fan outside with me.