Denise Domning's Blog, page 17

Compost

Yes, that is a picture of dirt. Well, not dirt.  It’s compost, specially made for me by piglets and chickens.  It started out as the contents of the turkey barn. That included manure (better known as poop), straw, turkey food, dirt and, most importantly, water.

The turkey barn roof leaks in a couple spots. These aren’t little leaks. These are “turn on the faucet” leaks.  Every time it rains, water hits the barn roof, channels to these low spots then gushes through the holes onto the barn floor. That would be okay if the barn floor were dirt. Instead, there’s a layer of cement plant conveyer belt, which is made from rubber, covering the dirt (not my first choice). I’m told the belt material comes from the cement plant up on the hill near Jerome. As near as I can tell, every old timer in the area has chunks of this stuff because all the locals have worked at the plant at one point or another.

But rubber on the ground means the water can’t soak through. Instead, it puddles on the rubber and creates a goopy mess that eventually rots. As long as it stays moist it’s a horrible stinky rotten mess. Then, once the weather gets hot enough to suck the moisture out of every living create, that gloppy mess because a crusty mess. Two months ago I confronted the three inches of crust with hoe, shovel and rake. Two days of work left the same three inches of crusty stuff about two feet outside the coop doorway, albeit broken up into shovel-sized pieces.

Oddly, while the birds ignored the stuff when it was in the barn, once it was outside they got interested.  Maybe that’s because it attracted flies. Although it attracted flies when it was inside the coop, too. That could be because this year is the year of the fly. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ve seen one horse fly and a few bottle flies, lots of hover flies, but tons of those in-between sized guys.

So, the birds started working on this stuff, scratching and pecking.  After two months of effort they hadn’t made much of a dent in it. There were still pie-sized chunks of crust that would stink all over again when I irrigated.

Then came the piglets and their mama. With the piglets now old enough to graze, Mama has started taking them to the back pasture where they laze in the shade of the huge cottonwood, root through the soft red clay soil, graze on the thick bermuda near the fence and wallow in the muddy patch I’ve created for them. What a life!

Two weeks ago, when I again irrigated that field, I suddenly had a herd of pigs splashing and chasing in the water. That includes Mama. She’s feeling pretty good these days. Maybe because she’s only a year old herself–did you know a sow can live to be thirty (yikes!)?–she gets just as playful as her babies. While she’s not quite up to a game of tag and doesn’t care to worry sticks or clumps of weeds, she does love to run. And once she gets all 500 pounds of her to moving, she’ll add a quick skip. My sister Stephanie, who returned home on Sunday because I can walk again(!!), got to see her do it the other day. At a dead run, Oinker kicked her back legs out to the side and grunted in pure joy.

Muddy mom and baby pigerators.

The seven of them were still there as the water began to soak into the ground. As had happened in previous irrigation cycles, the crusty stuff immediately began to stink.  And just like that seven snouts were in that layer of rotty moisty turkey food/poop stuff. To each their own, I say.

It became a free-for-all. Piglets turned dirt, hens darted in to steal the worms and grubs. Porcine heads swung to drive them away. That worked for the Brahmas, this year’s chicks. Not so the little black hens. Last year’s babies, a Jungle Fowl/Australorpe hybrid, are pretty unflappable (pun intended). If that ten pound piglet charged, offering a squeaky little grunt as she came, they just circled around and tried the back entrance.

Days. That’s all it took to turn what I’d been thinking of as a toxic dump into rich brown dirt ready to use for potting soil.  Oh my goodness!  It’s enough to make me consider going back into the coop and taking it down to the rubber lining. I love pigerators!

 

Tomatoes!

tomato starts ready to be transplanted

Once again, I lost a day. Monday whizzed by while I was caught in the early 13th Century, researching just how long a Medieval courser can gallop on summer-dried ground.  “Arcane” is my middle name. (Not really, but I’m not about to reveal my middle name to anyone. I hate it.) Oh, and I finally found the “soundtrack” to this new book.  Each one of my books has had its own musical score. Back in the day that meant stacks of cassette tapes (I think I’ve mentioned that I’m old, yes?) which gave way to piles of CDs. These days I do everything digitally.  Saves tons of space and makes it a lot easier to mix and match to create just the right sound. What’s really strange to me is that, although I like everything I listen to even though the genre could be also called “Arcane”, I rarely go back and listen to the same thing once the book is finished.  And no book every has the same “sound”. Go figure.  Or maybe that’s better said as “whatever works,”

So needing a break from my virtual life, and with my foot mending well, I did the one thing I most look forward to every summer. I planted tomatoes. Or rather, I finally transplanted my own tomatoes, the ones I choose to grow.

About two months ago I stopped at my local nursery looking for pansies. They had one six pack left and it was at the counter, along with a six pack of peppers and one of tomatoes. When I said I wanted the pansies, the clerk asked if I wanted the other two packages for free. Like, duh.  Free plants?  I think so!  It turns out that those two packages had lost their identity and were on their way to the garbage. The tomatoes are doing great, the peppers not so much, but neither have yet begun to set so I still don’t know what I’ve got. They’re in the orchard garden, which is presently subject to piglet invasions. I may never know what they are.

MY tomatoes, the ones I love, are San Marzanos. I’ve grown them all–Mortgage Lifters, Cherokee Purple, Amish Paste, Green Zebra, Principessa…the list goes on and on.  The only one that even comes close to the taste of the San Marzano is the Zapoteca, an heirloom Mexican tomato. I know about 99% of you might disagree, but that’s my opinion and I’m sticking to it.

Before I go on, I need to mention that I remember getting fifty or so tomato seeds in a packet. These days, there’s a packet inside the packet which contains exactly twenty of these little life perpetuaters.  Wowsers! These guys have really gotten so precious! I’ve saved tomato seeds in the past. Messy and fussy to prepare them, but worth it if this is the future. That is, if these guys fruit.

I’m pretty certain at least one will, but like that six pack of starts I was given, I have no idea what variety this plant is. It’s a volunteer and appeared in front of my new hugel, which is where I put my transplants. I’m really hoping that it’s a seed from the crop of paste tomatoes I grew in the same area about four years ago. While they weren’t my Italian favs, they were prolific and tasty.  I’ll be watching that one!

As you’ll note from the picture, the chard seeds I tossed all over that pile of wood and dirt have done very well.  Considering the age of those seeds and that I didn’t store them properly (seed heads jammed into a bucket standing in the hallway), and that both the sheep and piglets have grazed these plants, they’re magnificent! And tasty.  Chard, spinach, there’s no difference except you can use the crisp chard rib in place of celery in egg salad. Desperation is often the mother of invention.

So, after scooping about twenty tomatoes of various size from my starter bed–it was my original feed trough for my cows when I milked and has been wonderfully repurposed–I carried the transplants to the hugel, only to discover the volunteer. Into the ground they all went. I added a few purchased few watermelon and cucumber starts–at either end of the hill to avoid cross pollination.  All of them have their feet buried in the shade of established chard plants.

If I don’t get anything else planted this summer, and I may not, I’m happy. Tomatoes!

 

 

Piglet-y Hordes

Oh man, and I thought the sheep were a ravening horde!  They got nothing on piglets.  Today the eight of them decimated my new chard on my new hugel.  When they were done eating greens, they did a little tilling for me, although not quite where I needed it.

The little guys are almost one month old now and boy, have they developed personality.  They chase each other, play tug-of-war with sticks, steal tools, turn circles because they can and wag their tails.  I swear, they’re the strangest looking litter of puppies I’ve ever seen.  Except I think they’re smarter than dogs, at least when it comes to escaping confinement.  This includes squeezing through holes I was previously certain they couldn’t possibly squeeze through.

Their favorite thing to do is break into the turkey coop because the food those stupid birds get is a whole lot better than anything available to them, including Mama’s milk.  Well, except for apricots.

A week or so ago, my earliest producing apricot tree was covered with about twelve dozen amazingly huge, bright orange fruit. That’s a pretty tame harvest for this tree, but this is its “off” year.  On its “on” year, it’s covered with so much fruit–although it’s never been as large or sweet as this year–that I get sick of apricots before they’re gone.  I wasn’t even close to being sick when this year’s harvest disappeared.

Stephanie and her friends. She’s moved on to the peaches.

That’s because my sister Stephanie came to live with me until the foot heels.  She’s been a huge help, even though she doesn’t think she is.  Farming isn’t the sort of job you just step into. There’s so much to remember and things die when you make mistakes.  But Steph’s a trooper and she’s really getting her exercise. It’s hard to avoid exercising when you have to drag hoses all around the property.  Why dragging a hose?  Because I don’t let a little detail like nearby irrigation stop me from planting trees.  If the soil looks like it can support a tree, I shove a tree into that spot.  How I get water to that tree is a matter for later consideration.

Much to my surprise, Stephanie really took to the piglets. Given Miss PIggy’s intimidating size and the fact that Steph hasn’t spent much time around livestock, this wasn’t quite what I expected.  I think her love for the little guys blossomed right after I explained how to feed and water Miss Piggy.  I mentioned that Mama pig really loves apricots and that feeding her said fruit would assure Stephanie of MIss Piggy’s eternal devotion.  Somewhere in there, I think I also mentioned that the piglets weren’t really excited about being touched yet.

The next thing I knew Stephanie was hand-feeding those piglets gooey chunks of ripe apricot. Now, every time I enter the orchard I have eight little guys snuffling at my shoes and pants, hoping I might be that one who provides the treats.

Unfortunately, this breakthrough in piglet fear factor has lead to even more giant leaps for pig-kind. Once the piglets, who are really too smart for their own good, decided that humans weren’t so bad after all, they added to leaps to their bounds.  These include new activities such as “Who cares if Mom follows us?  We should all go laze in the pond for a while” and “If we hide under the chicken coop we can jump out at the sheep.” By the way, there is a ringleader.  It’s little black girl #1, MIss Piggy’s first born.  If there’s running involved, she’s definitely the leader of the pack.

Their newborn independence is driving poor Miss Piggy out of her mind.  She spent a half an hour today trying to find them while they were occupied with chard-eating.  She looked in all the usual places–that pond, the chicken coop, the place where they take their dirt baths, the back of the turkey coop which their mother tore apart because the little guys had gotten stuck in it, the far end of the property where they do whatever it is they do back there. Part of this is because, at five hundred pounds, she’s always late getting to the party.  That’s because she CAN’T wiggle through a gap in the chicken wire or the handy panels that I put on top of the fencing that keeps her contained.  Stephanie’s new job is to add yet more fencing atop the existing layers of fencing.

Given this new shift in piglet behavior over here, my future is looking a little hectic, especially since I’m still limping,  But, as I told myself today, they’re only here for six months.  Surely, I can keep these guys contained for that long.  I mean, it’s just six months.  Right?  RIGHT??  RIGHT???

 

Mea culpa

This is a hard post to write. However, I feel if I don’t write it I’d be painting a false picture of farming life. Last week was a week of death.

First, the ravens have been a scourge this year.  Four or so–a family I assume–have appeared every morning around 10:00 AM to steal turkey eggs and newly hatched poults.  At present, my total baby count is eight when last year I had forty.  Although the girls are returning to their nests to lay again, I won’t have Thanksgiving turkeys this year.  What’s most frustrating about this is there’s nothing I can do to stop the ravens except pen my turkeys, which I can’t do at this point, not when they’re accustomed to free ranging.  Arizona has a $10,000 fine for killing ravens. I’m not sure why.  They sure aren’t endangered, at least not around here.  So, all I can do is wait for my hens to adapt to this new threat and repeat the farmer’s mantra “Next year.”

Gabby Gray photobombing me last year.

As for my hens adapting, last week I lost the hen I most need to help make this transition, Gabby Gray was one of my two oldest hens and the boldest of all the girls.  I have twice watched Gray attack a Black Hawk as it was dropping out of a tree to steal a poult.  She flew right up at it, back beating her wings, and slammed into the hawk, breast to breast.  Given that she was about 50% bigger than the hawk, both times the raptor decided to retreat.

I lost her because Gray was a stubborn old girl who refused to nest inside the fence.  There was no convincing her that the burrow she created deep in the blackberries wasn’t safer than the brooder coop. Nor did penning her into the brooder coop or moving her and her eggs into that pen achieve anything but a hen who abandoned her eggs in her frantic need to escape.

I’m thinking she was taken either by the mountain lion or the bobcat because the dogs went crazy that night.  Ever since he treed the lion, Bear’s been really sensitive to the big cats.  At any rate, I heard both dogs barking down at the far end of the property, about where Gray had her nest.  They went on for almost a half an hour.  Sure enough, when I made my way down there the next day all that was left of her were her wings.

I thought I was going to lose her a few weeks ago after something drove her off her nest and ate all her eggs. Javelina, I assume. She returned to the turkey barn depressed.  Seriously, she could barely walk, her shoulders were humped, her neck was drawn in and she refused to eat.  It was three days before she finished mourning.  And then what did she do?  Went right out to that same spot and started laying eggs all over again.  With no way to keep her safe, not without killing her with kindness, I let her go, knowing that whatever had come for her once would come again and she wouldn’t likely survive.  I’ll miss you, Gabby Gray.

Then Mekko started falling over.

To tell this story I have to go back a few weeks to Cinco’s bad behavior.  I don’t know why I wanted a ram. He’s been nothing but trouble since he got old enough to understand his purpose as a sperm distributor.  Then the lambs were born and, much to my surprise, he became a pretty good dad, watching over his children.  That was, until Mekko hit pubescence.  How did I know that Mekko had become a teenager at only 2 months old?  Because Cinco started mounting him in an effort to dominate.  This behavior was so continuous that Mekko couldn’t graze.  At that point I had two choices: pen Cinco or castrate Mekko a month sooner than I wanted.  Of the two choices, castration seemed the better choice.  After all, it was going to have to be done anyway. And, sure enough, within two days of Mekko’s banding Cinco went back to being a good dad.

But here’s the mea culpa part.  I forgot that I needed to vaccinate Mekko for tetanus at the same time I castrated him.  Tetanus is the one vaccine I wholeheartedly support. (Don’t get me started on the others.)  All of my calves were vaccinated at castration. But then I got sheep and somehow the need for that vaccination didn’t cross species in my pea brain.  My fault.  I didn’t take the time to do the research I needed to do.  Instead, because Toby didn’t have any trouble after his castration, I ASSUMED that was the way it was, not that I’d just gotten lucky.

And then Mekko started falling over.  The other sheep were all very concerned about him.  When I’d get him back up, they’d crowd around to hold him upright.  At first, he was able to go back to grazing.  Because of that I thought he might have eaten Locoweed, which is plentiful on the property, but his eyes were clear.  By the third time I found him down, I was pretty certain I knew what he had and I went into research mode a year later than I should have.

What I discovered hit the guilt button big time.  First, sheep, especially newly castrated lambs, are especially susceptible to tetanus. Second, tetanus is especially plentiful in ground where horses have been kept. And third, the bacteria lives in that ground for up to twenty years after infestation.

Horses have been kept on my pastures until two years ago when my neighbors finally sold their last horse, Hope.

Mea culpa.  I killed Mekko.

I often say that farming is about managing death, not about managing life. But this was one death that shouldn’t have happened.  I won’t make the same mistake again.

 

 

Ouch

It was bound to happen. In all truth, I’ve been living on borrowed time.  I mean, in the last few years I’ve fallen off the walls, tumbled down the hillsides (missed the cactus, thank goodness!), tripped over some serious rocks causing me to somersault, smashed the post driver down on my thigh, and gotten one mean splinter in my foot.  It was five inches long and had been driven all the way under my skin.  I had to wait a month for my body to expel it.

But none of those even slowed me up much.  Thursday evening, my luck hit its expiration date.  I tore my plantar fascia.

I wasn’t doing anything even close to dangerous, just walking across flat ground, carrying Miss Piggy’s evening meal.  The toe of my shoe caught where the grass meets the concrete in front of the barn and my foot came straight upright, kind of like a ballerina on point. I heard the fascia rip.   That was followed by a wave of nausea.  I grabbed the top of the (immensely heavy) rock saw that was on its way into the dumpster–I’ve been cleaning the barn again–to hold myself upright, just in case stars and unconsciousness followed.  They didn’t, a fact for which I’m eternally grateful, but it was instantly clear what had just happened wasn’t a good thing, or anything a bandage and will power were going to affect.

You know what the worst of it was?  That darn thing was almost healed.  I’d gotten to the point where I could walk barefoot without any pain. The only time my foot hurt over the last few weeks was when I spent more than three hours standing up without taking a break.  What the heck?!

Unfortunately, I was alone when it happened and it was feeding time.  There was no help for it.  I found a makeshift crutch and finished my chores, then got it assessed.  My foot is presently held together with fancy tape, which is theoretically helping the two ends of the fascia meld, and I have to use crutches to walk. That’s my interpretation.  The actual edict was that I should completely stay off my foot for six weeks.

Yeah, like that’s going to happen.  But I am dedicated to giving it my best shot, even though this means giving up my gardens for the better part of the growing season.  Poop!

Then again, this may be a blessing in disguise.  If I can’t walk, then I have nothing else to do but put my bee-hind into the chair and finish book #18. That’d certainly be nice. The greater blessing is in the number of my family, friends and neighbors who have offered their help!  Thanks to all of you and special thanks to my neighbors Al and Elana.  They’ve parked their ranger over here for the duration, so when I do have to make a trip down to the back barn it’s mostly an easy ride.

And, even after I tally up all that goodness, there’s still more, yet another silver lining.  It seems that after the fascia tears and heals, it heals at the right length to prevent future bouts of fasciitis.  Six weeks at the computer, finishing a book I desperately need to finish, in trade for a lifetime guarantee of a pain-free right foot? Now that’s a good deal.  I accept.

The other two are smearing up my crutches as I take this.

After all, the novelist in me reminds me that I could torn it while walking down the steep narrow stairway near the pump house, knocking myself silly in the process, then fallen into the ditch while unconscious and drowned.  If that makes me sound a little dark and twisted to you, you should know that most garden-variety novelists, especially mystery writers, are afflicted by this sort of weirdness.  It’s part of the routine chit-chat in our minds.  For what it’s worth, it terrifies me to imagine the sort of thoughts that slip through Stephen King’s mind on a daily basis.

So now that I’ve told all of you that I’m not superwoman (who knew?), I can move onto my piglet update.  Hoky smokes, Bullwinkle! Those little things get cuter every day…and bigger!  My crutches have muddy smears all over their bottom six inches because the piglets are fascinated with them.  A couple are getting pretty bold about coming right up to me, but there’s still no touching. Better still, every day Miss Piggy gets more and more comfortable with people being around them (not so the dogs or sheep–she comes at them fast, with her mouth open). So the payment my helpers are getting is a chance to go into the orchard and get tiny, muddy snout prints on the hems of their jeans.  So far, everyone’s saying that this is a pretty good trade.

Piggie Post

first 2 piglets

She did it. On Tuesday night at 10:41 PM, Miss Piggy delivered the first of her eight babies. The firstborn piglet was small, black with a vivid white stripe around her middle and hit the straw, broke her enclosing sac then gave a massive squeaky gasp. She immediately wriggled her way around her mother’s back feet, past her teats to Miss Piggy’s snout where she crawled over her mother’s nose and worked her way down to the teats. #1 wasn’t as clever as the others because it took her an hour and a half and the birth of #2 before she figured out teats and sucking.

#2 was pink and white with faded black spots, a color arrangement that a friend tells me is called “blue butt”. Like the other piglets–two more Hampshire-looking black and white girls and four more blue butts, 2 boys, 2 girls–this little girl also hit the ground running. My goodness but they’re active little guys for newborns!

But I’m getting ahead of myself. On Tuesday morning, Miss Piggy was waiting for me at her pen gate–very unusual for a critter who doesn’t like to get up before 10 AM. The instant she saw me, she slammed the gate with her head. The message was clear: “Let me out!”

She immediately went to the turkey brooder coop and I sighed. I knew that’s where she wanted to have her piglets and her insistence on getting there at that very moment pretty much told me Tuesday was the day. Of course it was.  Tuesday was the day I’d scheduled to repair/prepare the coop, knowing she wanted to use it. The repairs were vital. Over the course of the past four months the wind has shut that coop door on Miss Piggy at least four times, locking her inside. Not that a closed door was any barrier to her.  No, she simply pulled up whatever chain link panel she chose to use as a door and departed. Two of the walls were completely ravaged.

There was no way I could let her have her babies in an unsecured coop. So, while she made herself at home inside the coop, creating a great big nest of straw, I dragged over those six-foot handy panels and a couple gate choices, then went to the barn for my new go-to building supply: u-bolts. Those things are good for whatever fencing wire doesn’t hold!

In a few hours the broken chain link was no more and the walls were far less vulnerable to snouts. Not that I didn’t see right away that the lower rows of squares on the handy panels, the two rows that are supposedly chicken-proof (ha!), were big enough to let out a piglet. There’s work still to be done, and it needs to be done soon.

As I was rebuilding the pen, Miss Piggy began to pace in agitation. She tossed her food bin, not once but twice. Then she tried to toss her water trough. That one confounded her, mostly because the food-grade plastic trough twisted as she tried to lift one end. I couldn’t help but laugh at that. Even at my age I can remember labor. Sure wished I’d thought to toss a few things way back when. By dusk I was tired and went in for dinner. I figured I had until the next morning before the babies made their appearance and was looking forward to a good night’s sleep. Then I googled that throwing thing. I found an extension publication that told me sows start tossing stuff three to four hours before delivering the first piglet. Another page informed me that sows deliver every 15 minutes after the first piglet appears. Then, an email from a friend suggested there’d be little ones by 5 AM.

After that, I was resigned to me fate.  Since it was now six hours after she’d tossed her troughs, I knew I was going to be up all night. Dressing warmly, I packed my pillow and blankets, a battery-powered light and a stack of towels and drove down to the newly reinforced pen. I wasn’t inside those airy walls for more than ten minutes before the first piglet appeared.

And then the real work began. She grunted, I stroked and reassured. She quivered, shivered and shifted. I stroked, encouraged and reassured. Her eyes were shut as she worked. Out the little ones came, but not at that easy 15 minute interval that would have had me in bed by 2. No, the intervals stretched to an hour and a half.

Then, at around 1:30 AM, she went still on me, barely breathing. Her first three piglets had gotten a hold on that teat situation with those sharp little teeth of theirs and were now happily suckling. Memories of Dixie and Brighty as they dropped to the sudden calcium deficiency of Milk Fever raced through me. Instantly, I reached up and felt the tips of her ears. Cold! Her snout was cold as well.

Certain I was seeing Milk Fever again, I rushed to the truck, drove back to the house and brought down the bolus syringe and the Apple Cider Vinegar. For the next half an hour I bolused (okay, that’s probably not a verb) a water/apple cider vinegar solution into her. She was grunting and shifting again by 2 AM. In the next hour she pushed out two more little guys, bringing the total to five.

By then, we were both exhausted. I told her that she’d gotten the hang of it, that she didn’t need me any more and I was going to bed. She looked up at me. I swear, the expression in her eyes said “Bed! Good idea. I’m going to sleep too.” I left, slept for a few hours and did my usual chores at 5 and checked in on her. I found a sleeping Miss Piggy with the same five babies I’d left her with snuggled against her.

Piglets on parade

That made me worry. If five was all she was going to have, then she should have dropped her placentae. Sows have two, one for each side of her body, each placenta filled with a number of little piglets. But, being so tired at 5 that I felt ill, I returned to bed and woke up at 10 AM. I fixed myself a cup of tea then went down to check on the new mom. Five minutes later, as I sat on a bale of straw watching, she gave up #6. By noon, all eight had made their way into the world and she dropped one placenta. She waited until after 4 PM and the arrival of Diana, the woman who’d helped me with the AI, to drop her second placenta.

Except for that Milk Fever scare and Miss Piggy’s determination to keep to her own delivery schedule, this animal midwifing experience was as easy as when Elsie gave birth to Hannah. All eight of the piglets came out healthy, vigorous and determined to claim a teat. Momma Piggy didn’t once come close to squashing one of them, not even when shifting positions as her labor demanded.

Best of all, sucking up to her for the previous 3 months, 3 weeks, 3 days worked. She has no trouble with me being close to or handling her piglets. She definitely reacts to their frightened squeals, but I can see by the way she watches, that she’s assessing what I’m doing, and not giving way to panic or the urge to attack.

Yep, all is right on the farm today! And OMG are they cute!

Moms and babies

My goodness, is Miss Piggy HUGE! Her belly is so big between her legs that she waddles even worse than she usually does.  She’s also overdue…sort of.  From what my go-to source (Google) tell me, date of insemination isn’t exactly the start date for calculation.  Instead, I can add two to three days to that start date, then give her another three days or so, because she’s a gilt having her first litter.  Apparently, she knows this, because she’s taking her own sweet time.

Before I looked all this up, I was worried that I’d been mistaken and she wasn’t pregnant.  I’ll admit, I eyed those massive hams of hers and considered how many pounds there might be on them.  It’s not to be.  Yesterday, she turned on both the dogs and told them in no uncertain terms they were not allowed near her any more. Dogs, wolves, coyotes.  It seems all four-legged farm moms find canines completely untrustworthy when their babies are due.  My cows did it just before they calved and so did Tiny.  Miss Piggy also let Cinco know he wasn’t welcome near her, but I think that more to do with how he head-butted her when she wasn’t looking six months ago.

Just to reassure myself she was truly pregnant, I went to my back to my go-to source and read up on sows just before they deliver.  Nipples enlarging, check.  Belly drooping, check.  Solid bumps in said belly, check.

Then I scared myself by reading that it’s possible for piglets to get stuck in the birth canal just like calves and lambs.  No matter how much she likes me, there’s something terrifying about the thought of putting my hand inside a 500 pound, laboring hog, one with the capability to crush pecans in a single bite.  With my fingers still safe for the moment, I’ve got them crossed that she’ll do fine. That’s because I read on to discover that pastured sows and gilts have a lot less trouble birthing than sows kept in confinement.  Just like human mothers, walking makes the difference and pastured pigs walk.  Walking cures everything…except my heel.  It’s still better than it was, though.

This morning, she walked the whole back of the property, then once again made her way into the turkey brooder coop.  She laying there now, half-covered in straw and blissfully all alone because she drove out the sheep, who also like that coop.  There was no need to move turkeys, because only one turkey–well, one and half, since a sister-hen decided to join her on those eggs for a while–chose to nest in there this year.  More about that in a moment.  I’m thinking the brooder coop is where Miss Piggy wants to give birth.  Unfortunately, she’s gotten herself stuck in there a couple of times when the wind blew the door shut and any piece of chain link that would give way to that powerful snout of hers has.  There’s no way to keep quick little piglets from leaving mom to go on walkabout whenever they want.

As I was looking at the damage this morning, I realized that I can fix it with those six-foot-long “handy panels” I’ve been using to create temporary enclosures.  She can’t break those.  I know, because she’s tried.  I’ve got a line of those panels separating the orchard into “pig/sheep space” and my garden.  The panels are too tall for the sheep to jump and the pig can’t bend them.  The chickens, however, have figured out how to twist/climb/finagle their bodies into the larger holes two lines above the small ones meant to stop chickens. They’ve been working over the garden area some, but so far their interest has been in bugs and grubs rather than my plants.   I keep telling myself that all I need to do is add a line of chicken wire.  Right.  See last week’s post about “spare time.”

So, about that one turkey in the brooder coop.  She gave me my first poults for the year, a whopping five before she decided she had enough.  She abandoned the other thirty eggs and walked off this morning, then abandoned one of her five, bringing her down to four.

This does not bode well for this year’s hatchlings. And me without a single broody hen to under whom to push those other eggs!  I’ll never forget the little white cochin who hatched out eight poults while going through a broody spell.  I just kept sliding eggs under her and she was pleased as punch to sit on them.  It didn’t even seem to bother her when I absconded with her “baby” after it exited the egg.  She was just enjoying sitting.

Gabby Gray photobombing me last year

Worse, Gabby Gray had a bad year, too.  She’s my original Narrangansett hen and she’s always produced at least twelve hatchlings.  As she has for the past three years, she chose to lay outside the perimeter fence in the wilds of the blackberries, which, for some God-forsaken reason, she believes are safe.  This year, I was proved right.  A week or so ago I noticed she had reappeared on my side of the fence. She looked depressed.  Her wings were hunched up to her neck and her head was bowed.  She walked as if it took all her energy to lift her feet.  And she let me pick her up. That was it.  I was certain she was egg-bound and dying.

Two days later, she perked up and, all of a sudden, she was squatting for the toms again.  Okay, you’ll laugh when I say this, but I think she was mourning her first lost brood.  Once she was past the grief, she figured she’d try it again.  Where did she go?  Back outside the fence into the wilds of the blackberries.

Sigh.  Mothers!  What are you going to do with them?

 

In my spare time

First, a foot update.  Thanks to everyone who made suggestions.  I tried them all and, for future reference, wearing hiking boots was the best remedy until I realized that the problem wasn’t in my foot but in my hips. I’ve started a regular regime of hip stretches and the foot is almost pain-free now.

Bear in his Kuvasz glory!

My next announcement is that Bear will be getting his summer cut tomorrow.  What a relief for both of us! Although he is in his full Kuvasz glory at the moment, I swear that’s about forty pounds of fur which collects at least twenty pounds of dirt every time he steps outside the door.  Where does that dirt end up? On the floor in my house, because the house is cool and he’s not.

My last, and most important announcement is that the new book is going great guns!  I even have a working title, something I’ve never before had for a book. No, I’m not sharing it because I’m pretty certain it won’t remain the title. But, as I always do, I have my premise and that I will share.  It is, drum roll please, “Awakening destroys emptiness.”  As odd as that statement sounds–no mention of characters, plot or genre action–this is the foundation of my book.  Those three words create the linchpin around which all my characters revolve.  It also solves a common problem with many a novel, that of the sagging middle. Keeping all of my characters connected to one overarching theme as defined by that premise creates pacing. The story never sags because the characters are all aiming at the same goal and someone is always in motion.

So now that I’m back to writing full time, I’ve been struggling to find time for my gardens. I can already tell that this book will consume me, destroying my dream of rows and rows of tomatoes, peppers, melons, wheat and beans.  Dang.  Rather than “do it right”, I’m settling for “getting something done is better than doing nothing.” To that end, I’m focusing on sowing the seeds I’ve been saving for the past few years.

My tat-soi have all gone to seed and the pods are ready to be harvested to be saved for next winter.  I need to move quickly before those cute little wrens and lesser goldfinch eat them all.  The turnips I left in the ground are flowering beautifully, so for the first time ever I won’t have to buy turnip seeds for next year. All I have to do is get out there, harvest the long sprays of pods, then pry open those tiny little dry pouches to collect those even tinier little black seeds…

in my spare time.

That hugel I built in front of the orchard is where I dumped the two-year-old chard seed I’d saved in a bucket (seriously, no packaging, on the stem in a bucket that sat in my hallway and collected dust ).  I tossed them all along the top and sides of that mound, telling myself that if just a few came up I’d be happy.  Much to my surprise, I got lots and lots of happy baby chard plants.  There are a few less now after the three little marauder lambs played “Ram of the Mountain” on the mound when they and their parents escaped containment, but still plenty.  I’ve decided to add the old melon and Empress green bean seeds that have been cluttering my seed bins for three years because I didn’t care for their taste. If that piggy girl pops on the 29th, which she very much looks like she’ll do, there’ll be a horde of marauding piglets to eat them.  I might even transplant some of the volunteer sunflowers that are appearing around the hugel’s base for added shade…

in my spare time.

Favas with freckled lettuce in between

Right now I’m harvesting a lot of lettuce, which Miss Piggy and the ravening woolly horde eat because I have so much. Except for the freckled lettuce seed given to me by a friend, those were more old seeds I didn’t expect to germinate. Surprise!  And the fava beans that I’ve been propagating for four years are setting on like crazy. Favas appear to love it here because these guys have lost none of their vigor and everywhere I plant them they definitely improve the soil.  I love these beans, but they’re a little labor-intensive to prepare.  First, strip the beans from their pod, then blanch the loose beans for a minute in boiling water. After that, stand hunched over the kitchen sink, painstakingly squeezing every single bean out of its tough outer skin…

in my spare time.

On the ditch hillside, my elderberries are gorgeously in flower.  My go-to farming magazine, Acres USA, just had an article about elderberries.  Guess what!  I can clone these guys.  Wow! There’ll be elderberry bushes all along that hillside in no time.  And there’s apparently a market for the berries.  All I have to do is collect the tiny little purple things, de-stem them, then freeze or prepare those itty bitty berries into tinctures or jams or any number of other products…

all in my spare time, which I just ran out of so this post is going to have to end.  Back to Chapter Two.  I can’t wait to see what happens next.

The Visit

One of her new outfits

After much schedule juggling my granddaughter Judah finally made it to the farm for a twenty-four hour visit. She’s sixteen, is joining the National Honor Society, and has two part-time jobs.  The first job, working in the kitchen at UCYC in Prescott, actually provides her a little income.  Her second part-time job as an actress feeds her soul.

Judah is a Broadway musical star in the making–and she has what it takes, from the voice, to the acting skill to the determination and discipline necessary to do what must be done to make it.  Since her parents moved her to Prescott, she’s been in Our Town, Annie Jr, Little Women, Cinderella and, most recently, Into the Woods in which she was an ugly stepsister.  She also won the “People’s Choice” award in the PCA’s Young Playwright competition for her hilarious short play entitled He Came to Pick Up Isabella.   She’s definitely a chip off this old writer’s block.  Oh yeah, there’s a joke in there somewhere.

With the years whizzing past–how is it possible that she’s already sixteen?!–and despite all of the busy-ness in her life at the moment, I just wasn’t willing to let this birthday slip by without the requisite “Shopping with Oma” trip.

That this annual event is something I look forward to every year is pretty much an oxymoron for me.  You see, I hate to shop.  I’m the sort of person who enters the store, eyes forward, jaw tight and fists clenched.  I make a beeline for the item I came to buy, snatch it up and return post haste to the checkout counter.  I do not compare prices. I do not consider alternatives.  I do not randomly pull into a shopping center just to see what sort of merchandise a store might carry.  More times than not, I talk myself out of buying something before I ever leave home.

This is likely because I’ve worked for myself for more than twenty years now.  Over lo those many years, I’ve learned that every minute I’m not home is money lost.  (Sometimes, it’s money lost even when I’m at home. I have a crummy boss and I’d fire myself if I thought I could hire a better employee.) Anyway, these days it’s so much easier to shop online.  But even that tries my patience.  If a site makes me click through too many hoops, I’m outta there.  Don’t talk to me, don’t show me videos and don’t slow down my “shopping experience” with your freaking suggestions.  I want what I came for and nothing else.

Given that, I not sure why I enjoy shopping with Judah so much.  Is it because we’re both March Aries? Or perhaps it’s that Judah and I are both Autumns when it comes to colors and can ooh and aah over salmons and kakhis.  Is it because we are both creative types and like the same semi-theatrical styles?  Okay, not so theatrical for me these days as my tastes have definitely settled into jeans and t-shirts, and I think I’m dressed up if there is no manure on my clothes.  But long ago in a galaxy far away I made my own clothes, including Renaissance Faire costumes.

Whatever it is, we mesh.  We did the deed this morning and were both grinning as we left the store only an hour later.  Ah, that’s why it works.  She knows herself well enough to choose only the styles that suit her.  She even likes the items I suggest!  More importantly, there’s no agonizing or dithering.

Yep.  That’s my girl!

This and that

What a week!  I’ve done nothing but herd sheep, dogs, a pig, chicks and the occasional cat.  And I’ve done it with a strained ligament in my foot.  Ouch.  I didn’t do anything in particular to get that strain.  It’s the fault of my shoes.  My feet are unusually narrow and it’s very difficult for me to find footwear.  I suspect I’ve aggravated it because right now I’m walking the length of a football field–back and forth–about 10 times a day, what with feeding the little guy and doing the above mentioned herding. Let me say that writing this post is a welcome rest from walking.

[image error] That’s Peanut on the pipe while Mari and Mekko are feasting on a hackberry.

First, a Peanut update.  He’s growing like a weed!  Although he’s likely to always be on the small side, he’s only a little smaller than his siblings these days.  He and Mekko, his brother, are best buds. Because of that, Mekko has become very friendly with me while Mari continues to keep her distance.  After Peanut finishes his bottle, Mekko comes over to examine yet again this strange contraption.  And, just like all babies used to a more natural milk delivery system, he makes a lip-curling sneer when confronting the plastic nipple.   Then he offers his head in a plea for me to scratch his ears.  Then the two little boys go dancing off across the hillside, playing headbutts and leaps.

These last few nights Peanut and Mekko have been reluctant to part.  That is, until darkness falls and Peanut gets nervous.  I can hear his calls from the house.  “MOM! Where are you?  It’s scary out here!”  Each time, Mekko has tried to follow his little brother as I open the gate for Peanut.  For the record: having one lamb using my house as a bathroom is enough.

Poor Bear!  As I mentioned above, I moved my sheep onto my rocky, thin-soiled hillside a few weeks ago. Pretty much nothing but mesquite, hackberries, judas thorn and other nasty desert vegetation grows on that hillside, but this year’s rains have miraculously encouraged a ton of grass out of the poor dirt. I’ll be dinged if I’m willing to let good grass go to waste. Although the area–the part of my property farthest from the house–is fenced, it’s much more exposed than the rest of my property.  The minute I moved the sheep up there the coyotes noticed. This means Bear needs do his job.  No more of this laying his head on the porch railing and barking at things without opening his eyes.  I expect him to earn his pound of raw meat a day by working…all night long.

I tried confining Moosie on the hillside with him. Dope slap. There’s no penning that dog.  Moosie has found every possible hole (and I’ve noted them so I can fix them).  He’s always in his dog house in the morning.  Well, if he knows how to get out of the fence then he also knows how to get into the fence.  If Bear needs him, Moosie will show up.

I’m hoping we get one more good rainstorm before the heat sets in.  This would give my grass a last growth spurt and the sheep a little longer in that wild area.  They’ve been doing a great job carving out pathways and mowing down everything except the dang foxtails.  (I’ve got to get up there with the weedwhacker.  Right. In my spare time.)  They’ve also had at the poison ivy.  Who knew that sheep could eat poison ivy without consequences? Or at least consequences that I can see.  Of course, Peanut is right in there with them, munching away.  Unfortunately, this means his belly gets covered in the plant oils.  The last two times I’ve had to carry him up the stairs–he just can’t quite grasp the concept of climbing them–I’ve ended up with a poison ivy rash on my forearms.

[image error] Comfrey–so glad I planted it!

Thank God for comfrey!  I planted it just because I wanted to see what it looked like, and how well it grew.  Now, I’m dependent on those somewhat prickly leaves to ease the rash. I pick a few leaves, crush them, then bind them to my arms with sticks-to-itself medical wrapping tape.  Aaah!  Wonderful!

And onto Miss Piggy.  Boy, oh boy, do I have a pregnant pig. Her belly now droops significantly and her nipples are distending.  Everything she does at the moment is done in slow motion.  She gets up to eat breakfasts, retreats to her straw pile where she remains until she’s pink from the sun.  Then, depending on the day, she either makes her way to the wallow in the orchard that I keep moist for her or into the half-empty pond where she has a nice mud bath.  Then it’s time to sleep in the brooder coop.  There, she buries herself in straw again and snoozes the day away, awakening only long enough to eat the egg that my sole Rhode Island Red hen likes to lay right next to her. Talk about convenient!

Five of my turkey hens are down on nests now, leaving eight still laying.  As for the toms, I’ve managed to negotiate a detente.  Like any negotiated settlement, it only works because of a physical barrier.  All of the Toms are too big to squeeze through the gaps in the pipe gate that prevents pigs and sheep from entering the turkey coop door during the day. That makes it easy for me to rotate them.  Tom is allowed out from dawn until noon, after which I carry him to the turkey coop, close the pipe gate and free his sons.  The two boys can then enjoy the adoration of their girls until dusk.  A couple of days ago, I locked Tom into the orchard and let his boys out, just to see if anything had changed.  It hadn’t. The three of them spent hours safely threatening each other through the chain link.  Well, at least it kept them busy.  What’s really surprising to me is that neither of the young toms have come after me now that Tom doesn’t control them. I’ve always said that Tom is passing on his gentle nature and apparently I was speaking the truth.

Last night was the first night that ALL twenty-four of my new chicks used the ramp to enter their new coop at the same time!  Finally!  It was a pain in the foot herding them ’round and ’round that coop, trying to convince them they needed to be inside before sundown so the Mooserator couldn’t get them.  I was please to see that more than half were perched on the roosts this morning when I came to open the coop.  They’re growing up.

Lilacs!

And my last note for this post.  I have lilacs!  My two bushes are still tiny, one more than the other because Derek accidentally weedwhacked it, but both of them have burst into bloom.  I happen to love the smell and look of lilacs.

Yep, a good week despite the hobbling.  Ah well, there’ll be plenty of time to sit when I retire.  Yeah, right. Like that’s ever happening.