Denise Domning's Blog, page 23

Successes! Well, sort of…

First, I get to brag.  My granddaughter Judah won the People’s Choice Award in the Young Playwrights Festival in Prescott yesterday.  Just as I sold the first book I wrote, and won an award for it, she won for the first play she’s ever written, only she’s getting started a little earlier than I did.  Judah is fifteen. Needless to say, Oma was in the audience yesterday.  I started grinning in certainty of a win after the first few words were spoken.  Not only was the writing tight and logical, she put a twist right where a twist needed to be.  The acting was stellar, considering that two of the actors were high school students, and the play was drop dead funny.  She had the audience rolling in the aisles.  As the fifteen minute production rolled to a halt, I leaned over to her mother and said, “I’d hate to be the play that follows her.  She just took the award.”  So she did!  Congratulations again, little chip off the block!

[image error]As for my other successes this week, first Shy Girl.  She’s healing nicely.  That’s the success.  The downside is that she’s healing nicely, which means she’s become a very fast hobbler and one very determined escape artist, even though that splinted leg slides out from beneath her.  The vet commanded me to keep her confined and calm.  Right.  Not happening.  If I keep her closed into the bedroom, she waits under the bed then sprints for the door when I open it, darting between my legs and heading for the nearest, lowest chair in the living room under which to hide.  She likes sitting in my lap as I write, but if I get up to let in some other half-housebroken creature, she’s vaulting through the air for the doorway.  Once outside, she hops from this to that like one of the extreme urban athletes who look like Spiderman as they leap tall buildings in a single bound.  And she knows exactly where to go so I can’t reach her.  Worse yet, she continues to refuse to use the inside litter box.  She wants her usual dirt patch and nothing else will serve.  However, putting her out in that stinking plot–she’s not the only one to use it, but they do confine themselves to that one patch so I’m okay with cleaning and refreshing it from time to time–means letting her out of my grasp.  No touching is allowed while evacuating her bowels or bladder!  Just as she’s burying what she’s just left, she slants a look that says, “Catch me if you can,” and off she goes.  So far I have been able to run her down, but as she continues to improve this may change.  Oh look!  A new Crossfit exercise: three-legged cat wrangling.

The next success is with my sitting turkey hens.  This is the “sort of” part of today’s post.  Right now I have 15 sitting turkey hens on over 200 eggs, as well as two broody Australorp chickens who claimed eight turkey eggs each.  Sounds great, but it’s never good to count your turkeys before they hatch.  Some of the girls are really young and forget that once they start sitting, they really can’t get up.  The success part this report is that ten of these turkey girls are right where they’re supposed to be–in my new coop and the enclosed brooder area!  Every night, I lock the doors that keeps Moosie and the predators at bay.  More importantly, after the poults are born, those coops will be “home”.  Putting them away at night will be much easier than ever before.   Uh-oh.  There goes my exercise routine, especially once Shy Girl loses that splint.

[image error] find the turkey…

I did try moving a couple of the girls that were nesting in the ‘danger zone’.  One went easily into the new brooder area. Then two days later, she decided she didn’t like the place after all and abandoned her eggs.  I rescued Gabby Gray, or kidnapped her and her children if you listen to her side of the story, from outside the fence deep in that blackberry patch.  Now that was a feat.  I clipped branches for more than 15 minutes before I could reach her.  She gave hissing and pecking a good college try, but I was too fast for her.  It’s an easy snatch and grab if you know how to do it.  Catch them around the neck, just beneath their heads, roll them onto their sides and grab their feet.  If you’ve ever wondered how to control a bird, be it a chicken or a hawk, here it is: if you don’t have a bird’s feet, you don’t have the bird.  Once you have them by the feet, you can carry them, heads down, with minimal resistance from the bird.  That’s their prey position and it causes them to go calm and quiet.

[image error] Wonderful!

The next success comes closer to home.  For twenty-nine years, every bouquet the ex brought me had no scent.  About three years ago I asked him why, knowing how much I liked scented flowers, he never chose a perfumed bouquet.  His response was, “I can’t stand the smell.”  There’s your sign, as the red-neck crew would say.  Since I banished him last July I’ve been planting like crazy and my work has paid off.  My roses, lilac and stock are all blooming.   Coming soon are the carnations, freesia and lilies.  Each plant was picked for its strong scent and planted as close to the house as I could get them.  Just now, the air outside my door is filled with a glorious, riotous stink, and I love it.

 

Shy Girl

Over the last few weeks, I was growing increasingly worried about my favorite non-pet cat, Shy Girl. All my non-pets have epithets rather than “real” names.  Shy Girl was born under my bathroom sink three years ago along with Funny Face, Little Girl and Little Boy.  Shy Girl and Funny Face are both gray Tortoiseshells; the other two were gray tabbys.  Their mother must have had some Russian Blue in her, because Shy Girl’s fur is a beautiful plush blue-gray color.  I got their mama from the same place I got my first livestock guardian dog Tango, a goat farm out near Seligman.  When I saw all their pregnant cats, all of those cats doing their jobs as mousers, I begged for one.  They gave me two, bless them. However, Shy Girl’s mama was a clever kitty who made her stealthy way into the house when her time came.  Six weeks later, she disappeared, leaving me with four orphaned kittens.

At the time the only cat living in the house was my piss-and-vinegar calico, Waku Oni.  That’s her real name, not an epithet.  It’s really bad Japanese which may or may not mean Crazy Devil.  She’s named in the same vein as my first calico, Wazuka Oni. That’s slightly better Japanese for Little Devil.  Oni #1 was the only souvenir I brought home after living in Japan for six months.  Before you ask, it was easy getting the first Oni into the country.  The USA and Japan have very accommodating treaty in regard to cats. I’m not sure what our shared policy regarding devils is.

Waku is the last of my cats to have received a real name.  Such names suggest longevity.  That’s not something in great supply for farm cats, not with the mountain lions, bobcats, coyotes, javelina, raccoons, skunks, otters, hawks, eagles and owls around here.  Waku was also supposed to be my final house cat.  I was tired of losing animals into which I’d invested not only emotion but significant veterinary charges.  Once I lost Waku’s brother, I promised myself I’d only have outdoor, working cats from then on.  A few years ago, before the animal rescue policy changed, it was nearly impossible to get barn cats.  I begged for feral cats, but the groups I contacted refused when they learned I expected my cats to work for their livings.  It didn’t matter that I was willing to have these cats and their kittens spayed or neutered, that I would provide specially made boxes to sleep in and offer a steady supply of “just-in-case” dry food.  If these feral cats (cats they were intending to put down because they couldn’t adapt to being pets, I should mention) were going to step one claw outdoors, I couldn’t have them.

For the record, barn cats have a long and storied history that stretches back to the very first human agricultural settlements.  Where there’s cultivated grain, there’s mice and there’s no better way to get rid of mice than a barn full of cats.  More importantly, as a woman I relate to cats.  Dogs form patriarchal packs while cats organize into matriarchal families called, of all things, clowders. I’m certain that name came from that same alcohol-infused meeting where a group of well-born Englishmen decided that a flock of Crows should be called a “Murder” and a flock of ravens was an “Unkindness”, not that ravens flock.  Then again, there’s something lyrical about a “Exaltation” of larks. By the way, an unspayed female cat is called a “queen”.  That’s certainly better than the name given to female dogs.  Why queen?  Because when her children approach her, they bow their heads.  Now you know.

Back to Shy Girl and her siblings.  Shy Girl got her name because she was the most feral of the four orphans.  From her first moment, Funny Face–whose face looked like it was sprayed with gray, cream and white–was sure she owned everyone, including the cows.  The other two were normal kittens, but Shy Girl hid whenever she heard footsteps.  We lost Little Girl first, not to a predator but to a dislocated hip, which happened spontaneously and inside while she was playing with her siblings.  The vet who saw her said the only thing she could do was amputate.  Since a three-legged cat here is a dead cat, we paid for the amputation but let one of the vet techs adopt her.  Little Boy went next, the way most of the male cats here have done.  This place is especially hard on Tom cats, since they tend to wander and the farther they go, the more dangerous it is.

Time passed, and my barn cat population stabilized at eight.  I got the “rescue” discount when I had all of them spayed and neutered at once.  Then two of the boys were adopted.  That left six not exactly feral cats.  Four of them definitely preferred the barn to the house, but Shy Girl and Funny Face gravitated to their birthplace and became instead indoor-outdoor hunters.  I had to catch the rabbit one of them brought in, and let me say that wasn’t easy.

Then, long after I’d gotten far too attached, Shy Girl appeared, dragging her back leg.  It was the same leg that her sister had lost after dislocating her hip.  This time, I saw a different vet who simply (!) ground down her hip socket and the head of her femur, then let her muscles compensate for the missing bone.  Eight days after the surgery, Shy Girl caught a mouse in the basement.  Wow!  That was two years ago now and she doesn’t even limp.

Then a month ago, she showed up with a bite on her jaw.  Just like her hip, she healed beautiful.  But over that period of time, I began to sense as I had with others of my cats that she was saying goodbye.  Sure enough, last week, she didn’t come home and neither did one of my female barn dwellers.  Days passed and I was certain they were both gone.  Then, much to my surprise, the barn cat showed up (she’s either Spots or Dots, I could never decide).  An hour later, Shy Girl dragged herself home with a broken leg and a pair of deep bite marks in either hip.

Off to the vet we went.  She’s still dragging that leg but now it’s because it’s in a splint.  The bite marks have a sort skunk/raccoon/fox size to them.  The vet suggested that she’d escaped whatever had her, then broke her foot after that. And, just as always she’s healing up swiftly and nicely.  The only problem is that she doesn’t use a litter box.  That means I’m having to carry her out to my closest garden (dang it!).

For the record, the only other cat I’ve spent any vet money on over these past two years is Waku.  I guess that makes it official.  Shy Girl is going to need a real name.

 

Inconthievable

And with this title I add to the renown of Princess Bride, the most quoted movie of all time.  (“My name is Inego Montoya…”).  Why am I quoting from a movie released in 1987, you might wonder.

Well, first because it’s a great movie with amazingly quotable lines in it.  The other reason is because my niece Hannah came to visit over her birthday weekend and I discovered a serious flaw in her upbringing.  Despite the fact that her mother’s favorite movie is Princess Bride, Hannah had never seen it.  Neither had the son of my commercial kitchen renter, who also had a birthday this month. For the record, other birthdays this month include my sister-in-law, my renter, two friends and Hannah’s father.  March is the month!

To celebrate the fact that we were all a year older (they happily, me not so much) I bought the movie on Amazon (Amazon has been berry, berry good to me!) and we sat down to watch it on my tiny little iPad. For the record, it’s not often that I miss having a television, but I’m not buying one just to use it once a year. The movie continues to stand the test of time.  I once again lost myself in the doings of Fezzig, Inego, Westley and Buttercup.  The ten-year-old boy loved it.  The fourteen-year-old girl waited until the boy went home and watched it for a second time. When her mother came to reclaim her daughter, I chastised my sister roundly for being remiss in her child’s education.

After my sister and nieces were gone, I started building the new garden.  My neighbors got into the act, too, bringing up an old water tank to use as a planter.  I promised to water it when I water mine.  Al then took his Ranger over to my pullout across the road (yes, that pullout belongs to me and it is not available for school buses or other cars to park in, geez!) and brought back a load of gravel to create drainage in the bottoms of the tanks and my plastic tubs.  The drains and holes were already in place to let the water seep out.  Dirt from my parking area followed.  That sounds sort of iffy except that the area had been a giant compost heap until the ex got frisky and had some scam artist throw down a load of gravel without putting any landscape cloth between the ground and the stones.  Needless to say, it’s nothing but a weed field now.

The roses went in.  On my side there are three pink roses and a Thompson grape, which I hope will crawl across that chain link fence.  Elana also went with roses, a fragrant purple one that is already blooming and a red.  I mulched from the pile of leaves that was created as I cleaned the spring all winter long.  Worms love those leaves, so I know I’ve already inoculated my new planters with plenty of the little earth eaters.

I thought I’d wait until the wind died before laying cardboard only to realize I’d be waiting until June.  Instead, I spread the layer, watering it as I went to make it heavy enough to stay where I put it. The next day I ran to Cottonwood, looking for the guys at Verde Hay. Since the fire, they’ve been hiding out behind Bedrock.  No luck!  I should have called.  I have better results when I pick up the phone and simply schedule a delivery.  But this time I only needed two bales of alfalfa, not worth delivering  And, because I only needed two bales, I decided to stop at the Cornville Mercantile, which is conveniently on my way home from Cottonwood.  Although I don’t know if their alfalfa is GMO–and I suspect they don’t either, since the truckers who haul it don’t usually ask–I don’t like using that alfalfa in a garden.  But this one is intended for flowers, not edibles.  By the way, the fact that I’m building a garden just for flowers had another of my sisters scoffing.  “You?!  Growing something that’s only pretty and not useful?” I believe is what she said.  Okay, so I’ve got a “rep”. Function over form.

It’s not the Frankenfood effect that keeps me away from GMOs, it’s the amount of Roundup that gets sprayed on these crops.  I mean, the whole purpose of creating these man-made seeds is to make chemical companies richer, so it’s no surprise that farmers now spray up to seven times as much Roundup than they used years ago, doing so for all sorts of reasons, the most common being “because they can”.  Adding Roundup to a garden is risky business for the plants just as is adding sewer sludge compost, which even proponents and water-reclamation experts agree may still have chemicals and pharmaceuticals in high enough levels to affect us.  Whaddya gonna do?  Life, it’s a terminal illness.  None of us gets out of it alive.

Anyway, since I’ll only be putting flowers in this garden, I don’t really care about the Roundup levels.  The seeds will sprout if they do, the transplants will make it if they can.  Meanwhile, the garden will be decomposing, the microbes and soil bacteria, protozoa and worms eating their way through the crap, converting it into something safer.  Or, possibly Fungi Perfecti will have finally brought their chemical-consuming mushrooms to market.  I’m on the notification list for that.  They have a mushroom/fungus that is capable of consuming crude oil, turning it into safe compost in one year.  Mushrooms are going to save the world. Or rather, they’ll save humans from the single-minded specialization that’s been going on in Western Science since the end of WWII (to the exclusion of doing good science, I say).  Hello! Holistic is more than a word in the dictionary. It’s the way nature works.

Back at the Cornville Mercantile, the owner had just finished loading a pickup truck with at least a dozen bales of hay.  She looked at my little Focus and asked where she was going to put the bales.  “In the back,” I replied with a grin.  I know I can get exactly two bales into the back of my car. Nothing else along with them, mind you, just two bales.  Home I went with my bales to spread them out over the cardboard.  Then yesterday I borrowed the neighbor’s Ranger and brought up 8 bales of straw from my last delivery.  I was going to add more cubbies to the nesting coop, but it turns out that having the bales lined up along the side of the coop, blocking the view, has brought even more girls into the area to consider the available spots.

By the end of the day yesterday, I’d added my first loads of dirt, only to realize just how long it’s going to take before that large space is ready for planting.  Was I complaining the other day about a lack of exercise?  I’ll be shoveling for at least a week.

But not today.  Today, I’m off to Prescott to take my granddaughter out to lunch for her birthday.  Another March birthday!  Inconthievable!

Tool Time

Funny that I’m titling this after a sit-com that I never watched.  But I did see Tim Allen’s Tool Time routine if not the show it spawned.  And I related!  This is because I have an addiction to good garden tools.

But before I get to waxing poetic over tools, there are a few updates.  First, I have SITTERS!  The hens have begun settling in and brooding eggs.  The date is marked in the calendar so I can keep an eye on them.  Actually, I don’t really need to watch them.  I know that they’ll sit without moving for 21 days.  On day 22 the mama-to-be will leave her nest for a few minutes to grab her first drink and bite to eat in 21 days, then go back to incubating. It’s day 21 when I start counting, picking up the mamas a little to see if they’re hiding newborns.

Second, poor Bear.  He’s had a rough week.  Apparently, his shave was a little too close around his neck.  It seems that as his fur started growing back it got a little itchy just beneath his chin, and he scratched himself a raw spot.  I considered buying him a “Cone of Shame” but I just couldn’t see him racing along the fence line at night wearing such a contraption. The Traumeel ointment helped but he figured out what I was up to when I picked up the tube.  That dog doesn’t move fast for me, not even if I’m offering treats.  But, come at him with something to I’m going to plaster on him and he’s off and running.  Then I remembered the Blue-Cote I used on the cows.  Since he didn’t recognize the spray bottle, I got close enough to coat the raw patch and now own a white and purple dog.  And that’s just fine, since it seems to have done the trick.  He’s not scratching any more.

Since I’ve touched on the subject of “Up”, Moosie has formed an obsession around one particular squirrel, who is very aware of this interest.  The squirrel inhabits the walnuts and apples on my neighbors’ property, safely behind a chain link fence. Ask Moosie where the squirrel is and he scans every one of those treetops, carefully looking at every branch while the squirrel hangs frozen in one spot.  Yesterday morning Moosie was sitting on the porch engrossed in watching his nemesis across the fence.  Apparently, he was so intent that he didn’t hear me coming.  I swear, he went straight up for a foot when I touched his back.

Now back to good garden tools…

Over the last two years, I’ve slowly been investing in good tools because I can’t stand using those cheapie things that bend when they hit the sun-baked clay that passes for dirt around here. My first purchase was a set of hoes from Rogue Hoe.  They’re handmade, in Missouri I think.  The blades are formed from thick steel taken off discarded big machine parts and the handles are good ash.  I use a bench grinder to keep their edges sharp.  Then, two birthdays ago, my son gave me two really expensive pruning saws. OMG!  No chainsaw needed, not for me.  In a minute or less, the larger saw can take down a 2″ diameter sapling.  It takes a little longer to cut through a thicker trunk, but it can be done.  I know.  I’ve done it.  The smaller one makes easy work of the smaller branches that the big saw only mutilates.

Today, I bought myself a birthday present.  That’s right, as of tomorrow I’m no longer “Single and Sixty” but “Single and Sixty-One”.  And, I have to admit, I’ve never been happier.  I wish I’d understood this ten years ago.  As the oldest of six, I’ve spent most of my life caring for others, starting with my siblings, then my own brain-challenged children.  Then, after my younger son was finally self-sufficient, I squandered years I can never get back trying to accommodate the ex.  It’s SO nice not having to please anyone but me.

Those are roses in the pots

Which brings me back to the first of my birthday presents.  I’m getting the other presents tomorrow when I start building my flower garden. So, what did I get myself?

A very high quality (read: really expensive) billhook clipper and an equally fine (read: not quite as expensive) pruner from Raindance Waterworks.  I’d seen them on the wall there last year and started salivating.  By the time I got home, I was so excited about the billhook that I didn’t even unload the groceries before I had it in my hands.  Out to the road I went.  Snap, snap, snap.  Down went the rest of the Russian Olive on the roadside. A few feet later, I finished off that scrubby deciduous whatever-it-is that seems to grow all along Page Springs Road.  I’ve been trying to get rid of that thing for four years!

I strode happily along the upper path, taking down the “Crown of Thorns” twigs that were sprouting from the trunks of the trees I had cut down about 4 years ago.  Snap, snap.  Gone.  I dropped a 3 inch diameter stub of a half-dead mesquite.  I took off those awful walnut branches that I run into every time I decide to climb to the spring box at the end of my property.

By now, I was grinning like a fool.  Down and across the Mason ditch I went.  Dang!  There was a turkey hen on the wrong side of my fence.  I know I’ve mentioned this before, but it bears repeating.  Turkeys are great about flying over the fence to get out, but to a one they forget how to fly when it’s time to come back.  The hen was pacing right at the edge of the ditch, on the other side of the fence from the bridge.  That means she’s laying her eggs in the, gulp, poison ivy.  As safe as that might sound, I’m not betting on it.  Poison ivy doesn’t seem to affect either the dogs or cats, only me.  That means the hen will be vulnerable to that pack of coyotes Bear insisted I come watch with him three nights ago.

I chased her back in through the gate and started across the newly cleared back field and … DANG!  There was Gabby Gray on the Oak Creek side of my perimeter fence.  She was pacing back and forth between the gate and the edge of the blackberry patch.  That’s the same spot she chose to lay her second batch of eggs last year.  Thankfully, back in August she escaped the predator that took her nestmate and ate their eggs.  I thought Gray had better sense than that.

Scolding her for her idiocy, which she let roll off her back like a, well, turkey, I opened the gate.  As I said in an earlier article, Gray and I have a new understanding,  So, unlike the other hens who go the opposite direction when I fiddle with the gates and must be chased back to the opening, Gray waited politely for me to finish my nagging and stand aside.  Then, she walked right past me and joined the rest of the flock, who had come down to see what was going on.

Brambly Hedge for sure

I stood in the open gateway and eyed those blackberries, billhook still in hand.  When I arrived here they were 8 feet deep and made a brambly hedge that spread for at least a hundred yards.  Did that stop me from picking the berries?  No it did not.  Dressed in heavy denim, hiking boots and gloves, I lowered myself into the center of the patch and worked my way out, tripping over trunks, flood-fall and half rotten logs.  Although in the picture it still looks like a jumble, a lot of pruning has happened between then and now.  I love blackberries–in pie, jam (seeds and all), but especially in vinegar.  Two years ago, I got smart and strung electric fence line along the creek edge and put the cows in there.  Not only is there great grass in the area, as well as a lot of mint which the girls seemed to love, they really enjoy eating blackberries leaves.  More importantly, they weren’t at all put out about having to push through great thorny patches to get to what they wanted.

So, in I went, determined to see if I could find where Gray has her nest this time.  Whack, whack, yank, snap.  About fifteen minutes into it, the groceries in the car began to call to me.  Disappointed that all I’d managed to do was clear my path again, making it safe for sandals, I returned to the civilized (ha!) center of the property.

There was no sign of Gray’s nest.  I wonder how much a turkey cam is?  Dang.  I hate when I get attached.

 

 

 

One of these things…

just doesn’t belong here….  Yes, I still sing songs from Sesame Street, even though my baby will be 36 this year.   And that thing that doesn’t belong is named is MOOSIE!

Now, why does Moosie not belong in this picture?  That egg-eating scoundrel!  He’s plundering the turkey nests for tasty human-hand sized, brown polka-dotted treats.

The eggs are coming in fast and furious right now and, bless their little avian hearts, most of the the girls are laying in and around the new nesting area.  I’ve already got a large clutch in the “official” turkey coop, which is really just a large square shed with roosts set too high.  But when Gene was here last Autumn, he moved two of the cross bars down to thigh-level.  The other day I laid old pallets over the these sturdy bars.  Two of the pallets had almost solid tops while one had fairly substantial gaps in it.  That was no good, not with poop bombs raining down from the roosts overhead.  They’d pass through and shower the sitting mom or moms, since turkeys girls seems to like to share incubation. To prevent that, I stretched the ex’s old plastic pickup bed cover over that pallet.  That makes for a good poop stopper but the area under it is a little darker than they like.  We’ll see.  I keep telling them It’s a really nice area with room for THREE hens.  I’ve seen that before–three girls in one.  Sisters!

Along with laying in the roosting coop, the girls are beginning to get serious about the newly created nesting coop.  You can see the front of that area in the Moosie picture.  It’s what used to be the cow stalls.  I even left all the layered, manured straw in place.  Surprisingly, it has the sweet smell of compost rather than that of cow bombs.  So far, that seems to be pretty enticing to soon-to-be moms. Not all of them are using the spaces I created by stacking straw bales.  I have two girls who’ve decided that crinkling tarp is better than sweet straw.  One is using the crease between bales while the other has three eggs in a tarp sling between two bales.  I wonder if it will sag all the way to the ground when she hits the usual 12 to 15 eggs.

I also have some girls going places I hadn’t thought to make off limits, like up into the old hayloft.  That may be because I had a clutch born there last year. I really don’t want to repeat that experience.  It was hair raising going up and down the ladder with food and water.  And then chasing the babies around the platform, trying to catch them and/or keep them from falling over the edges when it was time for them to come down…never again!  Did I mention I’m not that great with heights? So far this girl has only laid one egg.  I think I’ll keep an eye on her and see if that was just a passing thought or if she is really staking a claim.

I have another thing that’s somewhere he doesn’t belong.  But he’s so cold these days!  And a little sunburned too, I think.  That’s right, the big hairy Bear is hairy no longer…fuzzy wuzzy wasn’t fuzzy was he?  (Oh dear, first Sesame Street and now childhood tongue twisters.  It’s definitely one of THOSE days.) So much hair left this time that his collar was too big.  I’ve hung it on the coat rack where it will stay until his fur comes back.  I actually think Bear’s much happier fur-less but he’s not used to getting cold.  He’s been snuggling with Moosie in the dog house at night rather than laying on the cool concrete like he used to do.  This morning when I got up at 3:00 (yes I did–I write on the new book from around 3:00 AM to 7:00 AM then get started on the rest of my day), he was very happy to come inside.  He’s claimed the right-hand chair while Moosie uses the left one.

And now for the last item on my list of things that don’t belong. In this case, it’s things that have been moved to a new spot where they do belong.  Well, sort of.  When we first bought this property the back half of our second lot was buried in wood.  As you can see from this picture it wasn’t just wood, as in a branch or two.  It was massive chunks, huge stumps and deadly widow-makers.  Some of it had arrived via Oak Creek during floods, which bring all sorts of flotsam and jetsam with them.  I’ve been cleaning up odd bits, like shoes, clothing, those little Styrofoam kickboards, bits of canoes, a shed wall, a piece of a refrigerator door, barb wire, chicken wire and who knows what else.  Others were likely trees that had fallen or been cut down, then dragged to that back corner.  Why?  Because there was already 15 tons of wood there. Why not add a bit more?  Well, two days ago I paid a nice man with a really big machine to move that wood.  It’s now on the edge of Oak Creek in a number of separate piles so it can be burned over the course of the summer.  I’ve got some really big bonfires coming up and an amazing new pasture area that’s covered in beautifully composted and rich soil.

Time to buy more pasture seed!  Of course, if I do that I might have to buy sheep to go with it (has anyone ever read If You Give a Mouse a Cookie?).  I’m not sure even the 200 or so turkeys I expect to have in another month and a half can eat that much grass and I don’t own a lawn mower. There’s always a catch, isn’t there?

Farm photo bomber

Thank goodness for Gabby Gray.  Without her, I’d have no reason to laugh around here any more.

Gabby Gray is one of my two oldest hens.  She and Gabby White were actually raised together here on the farm, only to be parted for a while before Gray finally returned.  Gray is a Narragansett–as you can sort of see from the picture she’s gray, black and white, while White is a Royal Palm, mostly white with black trim.  You can see her behind the grayish-brown hen between White and Gray.  I call them both Gabby because when the two of them see me coming, they make their way to me almost faster than Tom, then talk to me.  Yerp-yerp-yerp-CHEurp-rrrwROWrrrrr???

It’s always framed as a question and is usually uttered with them peering up into my face. I think that means, “As glad as we are that you feed us, we have to tell you that you really are the ugliest looking thing we’ve ever seen.  But that’s okay, we feel sorry for you and like you anyway.”

Both Gray and White started their lives here as 2-day-old poults, although they weren’t my birds when they arrived.  Instead, my friends Mike and Gary had purchased ten Narrangansetts for themselves, but didn’t have the space or equipment to take on newborn poults.  So, they added a few Royal Palms to their order as a gift to me, then talked me into raising the babies for them.  That was back when Tom was only 1 year old and still had his matching hen–we’ll just call her No-name.  Shortly after Gray and White arrived via US Post Office, No-name was taken by a coyote while she nested outside of the safe zone.  Up until that point, I really hadn’t thought much about getting more turkeys. Instead, I was just going to take whatever happened with No-name’s eggs.  Obviously, after she died, nothing happened since the eggs weren’t quite ready to hatch and I didn’t have an incubator.

So, a lonely Tom came to live on the porch with the dogs while the new baby turkeys stayed down in the barn in their giant-economy sized, coffin-shaped brooder that the ex built.  It was always touch and go with that thing.  After accusing me of being careless with the babies when I dragged the bulky and enormously heavy brooder with the attaching pen over one poult’s little leg (not on purpose and it was only bruised), he managed to drop one of the hinged doors on another and killed it.  So there :-b  (That’s a tongue sticking out for all of you who don’t “read” emoticon.)

Four months later, the surviving eight Narrangansetts went to live with Mike and Gary, while the surviving six Royal Palms stayed here.  Three turned into Toms and were eaten when they ganged up on Tom one day.  The other three were hens and the next year they produced forty babies between them.  That was back before the big turkey coop was finished, so I ended up with all the moms and babies living under my bedroom which juts out of the side of the house and is held up on stilts.  I do not under any circumstances recommend keeping turkeys anywhere near where you’d like to sleep.  Over the course of that summer/autumn, I managed to convince them to roost on the greenhouse ribs, which was a little quieter.  They only agreed after the Magnolia branch they had originally chosen broke under the weight of 3 hens and the remaining 30-odd half grown poults.  I think more than a couple of the little guys floated away in the ditch when that happened.

Meanwhile, by then Mike and Gary had almost 20 birds, and one mean Thomas.  (They named him Thomas so we didn’t get confused when we talked about our ‘best boys’.)  Their bad boy had fashion sense as well as a temper, and seriously disliked plaids and colorful patterns.  Woe be to anyone who tried to wear them while on that farm!  As their birds got bigger, the flock discovered the garden.  That’s almost an acre of hand-raised, carefully cultivated high-end veggies.  It was when the tomatoes started disappearing under the ravaging horde that I got the call.

“We can’t keep them all,” Mike said.  “They’re destroying the garden.  Can we bring you ten?  You can keep them for us.”

My philosophy is pretty much always “In for a penny, in for a pound”, which loosely translates to “Why not?”  So, I set up an isolation pen where Gabby Gray and two of her sisters plus eight babies were to live for their first week back on the property.  Even with chain link between the two flocks, it was an all out hen-war, the Whites against the Grays, with Tom trying to be a peacemaker by pushing his way between his original hens and the fencing.  One week became two and things still hadn’t improved much, so I figured it was Darwin-time.  Survival of the fittest.  I freed the more aggressive Narrangansetts and, even though there were more Royal Palms, for weeks feathers flew with no advantage gained on either side.  After many a twisted snood and bloodied head, someone came to their senses and declared a truce.  The results were that the Grays still kept to themselves, roosting with their own color, while the Whites strutted around as if they had bragging rights. False bravada!  Even I could see that if Mike had brought just one more Gray, every last White would have been driven into hiding.

Then Thanksgiving came and Mike and Gary took back the young turkeys as meals while I kept the three hens, Gabby Gray among them. As for me, I culled my original flock down to fifteen, a mix of Royal Palms and first generation hybrids of Tom and the Palms.  After a winter of huddling together, the Grays still keeping to their own color, spring came and the miracle happened.  Gabby Gray and Gabby White both wanted the prime nesting spot–at the back of a pile of hale bales by the cow stalls.  Day after day, they laid their eggs in the same spot.  So did one of the Australorp chickens.  Then, with no one willing to give up the spot, they all three chose to sit together on their eggs.  On the days when the two turkey hens would take a break, leaving the smaller chicken in charge, the little black girl would spread her wings and flatten her body trying to cover all of the much larger turkey eggs; it was a lot of work for the single chick she got out of the deal.

The Gabbys were the first to hatch out their eggs and, much to my surprise, neither one of them paid any attention to what color the babies were.  Maybe that’s because there were so many different colors.  Some of the poults were the bright yellow of the Royal Palm, some the brown and gold of the Narrangansetts while most of them were the beautiful mottled golden brown that marked them as Tom-hybrids.  I can already see this year that they intend to do the same thing again, only this time I think they’re inviting me to join them.

I think that’s the point of the urgent conversations they direct toward me.  I’m now in their special club.  Although White follows me as I go about my turkey-related chores, Gabby Gray has become really bold about trying to persuade me.  A couple of days ago I was sitting on the far barn’s concrete footing, my back to the fencing that encloses the new nesting area.  Gray came up next to me and yerped for a while.  When she’d said it all, she pushed behind me, her wing against my back.  Not even Tom does that.

Uncertain how she might react–and lordy, I know what she can do with that beak!–I reached out and stroked her back.  She stood perfectly still and enjoyed it until I finally got up.  Then I took out my phone, intending to take a picture of the new nesting area.  But, the minute the phone with its bright orange case was out, there Gray was, asking me what I was doing.  I pointed and clicked.  Farm-Bomb!

By the way, here’s that new, highly suggested nesting area…and I do have turkeys laying eggs there!

WATER!

Okay, not quite.  But in another hour or so, water will once again be flowing beneath my house to my pump house, then refilling the tank that I’ve learned over the last week has enough sediment that it shuts off the pumps at 1500 gallons.  Let me just say that the last ten days have given me a taste of what it would be like to live in a world where water is rationed.  I actually had to buy 2000 gallons of water.  If I hadn’t, well let’s just say I wouldn’t be too pleasant smelling at the moment.

Until now, I’ve lived my whole life, except for the few months that my first ex-husband and I rented a little cottage on a farm, in cities where the tap is turned and water comes out without any awareness of where that H2O might be coming from.  Or, for that matter, what might be in that all-important liquid.  Nor did I ever once consider how it got from where it started to my tap.

Not any more.  This pump up/pump down week has been a true learning experience.  First, I learned that I really don’t mind crawling through spiderwebs.  I do, however, mind spiders crawling on me.  I made that discovery while cleaning the spring reservoir in front of the pump house.  I’ll admit to having a moment of wondering what I’d do if somehow the ladder disappeared and I was stuck in the depths until someone came along to find me.  If someone came along…. That’s the curse of being a novelist.  There’s always a story.

Next, I learned that a 5000 gallon tank isn’t a 5000 gallon tank if it’s filled with 1000 gallons of sediment and your pump stops pumping at 1500 gallons.  For the record, the tank has an electrode that shuts off the pumps and pressure tanks when the water tank reaches just above 500 gallons, or so the writing on the wall (literally…it’s written on the pump house wall–see the picture) says.  That means when I thought I had 5000 gallons in storage, plus an additional 3000 in the back up tank, I really only had 3500 in the big tank.  And, only 3000 of that was usable.  So before the spring ditch shut down, I had calculated on 500 gallons per day house usage taking us all the way through the ten days.  Bless them, all of the souls who now come and go from this place managed to maintain that usage.

What I didn’t know is that even though the sand filters, which filter the water coming from the spring before it enters the storage tank, were shut down and no longer backwashing, both the arsenic filter and the charcoal filters were backwashing away.  The day the tank went dry was the day I listened to the charcoal filter go on and watched it dump–I’m not kidding, I watched the sight glass–500 gallons of water.  Now, that might not be its usual backwash, but I don’t know because I haven’t yet found the paperwork about the filter.  Perhaps with the pressure dying, the floodgates opened and water poured out of it just because.  Whatever.  That is, however, when I knew I was in trouble, big time.  With no clue who to call about water delivery, I went to my friend Google and made calls from Prescott to Flagstaff.  To no avail.  At the same time, I was calling pump repair people.  That’s because my sight glass showed 1500 gallons, not the 640 gallons that should have been the shutdown point.  Hence, I thought something mechanical had failed.

By then, my life-saving neighbors had allowed me to stretch a line of hoses between one of their well-supplied spigots and the 3000 gallon back up tank.  I was running water into the tank on an hour on/hour off schedule.  So, when Nate from Northern Arizona Pump (thanks so much for coming out!) appeared in the pump house to check on why there was no pressure I was almost at the point of triggering that electrode and turning everything back on again.  (Note to Nate: I found your screwdriver. It was outside the pump house.  I’ll drop it by someday.)

Then, come to find out, Northern Arizona Pump delivers water.  Unfortunately, they couldn’t get it to me for about 36 hours, so it was time to fill pots.  And I did.  I filled pots, stainless steel milk pails, turkey waterers, you name it, I filled it.

Before the truck arrived, they were concerned about getting to the tank and filling it.  I just laughed and had them park their truck (wow, it didn’t look like a tanker at all!) on Page Springs Road above the tank.  I showed them the hole in the fence, but they figured out how to get their hose under the fence.  Once it dropped into the big green tank, gravity did the rest.  Because I have the valve open between them, the water finds its own level and fills both tanks.

And, despite that, I still didn’t make it to the moment of spring water returning to The Farm on Oak Creek.  Two hours ago, I ran out of water again as that &*#%$ charcoal filter began to dump a substance more precious than gold out the backside of the pump house.  So, once more I dragged hoses into place.  It didn’t take long to fill the tank enough the charge the pressure tanks so I could fill the teapot.  (Hey, there are priorities in life, right?)

So here’s what I learned, and what needs to happen before next year’s shut down.  First, I need the big tank cleaned; the smaller tank is just a few years old still clean inside.  I know, I looked.  Then, I need to have the pump house seriously looked at with an eye to upgrading what needs to be upgraded and setting backwash times to the minimum necessary AND I need to know how much water is spilled in each process.  After that, I need to buy another 3000 gallon tank.  At least!  If the ditch is going to be kept off for 10 days every spring, I need to know I have 1000 gallons a day in storage. If I want to grow anything during that period, then I need even more storage than that.

Lastly, I need to have the piping torn out between the far side of my pump house to the southern edge of my property.  It’s too small and degrading because it’s ancient, or so I’m told.  More to the point, there’s a beautiful, 50-foot-tall walnut tree sitting just outside my pump house wall, right next to the line that goes from the tank into the pump house, on its way to the house proper.  There’s another tree just like it about 100 feet farther on.  Guess where they’re getting their water? Holy Smokes!  If they break the pipe, which they may be doing at this very moment, I’d really be in trouble!  Who knows how long I’d be without water if that happens?

oyster mushrooms

Wait!  If I have to lose that shade, then I’m going to make use of the debris.  When the tree service takes them out, I’ll plug the stumps for mushrooms.  Think that won’t work here in Arizona?  Wrong.  Look what I found today!  That’s a gorgeous oyster mushroom cluster on the cottonwood log that I plugged with oyster mushroom spawn two years ago.  I can’t believe I found it before the turkeys did!

 

 

The Wind in the Willow

No, no, no.  This can’t be happening.  Not on February 22nd.  It’s too early!

It’s also too early for my apricots and plums to be blooming out.  The apples have a little more sense and are holding tight to their buds.  The peaches, now they’re wishy-washy.  A few little blossoms are peeking out, but there’s been no serious blooming…yet.  The only good thing about this bloomin’ event is that the bees have left the turkey food for the flowers.  The awful thing about seeing those beautiful and slightly stinky flowers (especially the apricots) is the wind.

The Wind in the Willow (ha!)

The wind isn’t supposed to start pushing me around like this until mid-March. I tell you, I won’t survive it if the next two months stay this windy.  By April, I’ve developed a constant headache from all the blowing.  After I’m outside for a while, I feel irritable, my skin feels like it’s crawling.  This is NOT how spring is supposed to feel.  I want my gentle zephyrs, warm breezes and sweetly perfumed air.

Actually, there’s pretty good evidence that hot, dry winds, such as we have here in Arizona, actually do affect both your mood and your health. In fact, persistent wind conditions may contribute to folks committing suicide or having accidents.  One explanation for this has been that on windy days the air becomes positively ionized.  That means all those the tumbling C02 and nitrogen molecules (is that N2? Can’t be NO2…) bump into each other and the collision knocks off electrons.  These little bits of matter then go bouncing around as positive ions until they find a new home on other molecules that already have their full complement of electrons.  That transmorgifies those atoms’ charge to negative. (Oh, dear. I can see how this is going to shake out.  It’s a day for children’s books.)

Of course, early on the only folks saying that positive ions were bad for us were the folks selling negative ionizers.  But after years of pooh-poohing (Tut, tut, looks like rain–don’t I wish!) the possibility that the wind could actually affect human health, the tide turned.  It turns out that it’s not my imagination that time spent outside on a gusty March day, when the positively ionized air is whipping down the hills and screaming along Oak Creek, leaves me feeling fatigued.  The human body reacts to the buffeting of the wind by increasing dopamine, the stress hormone. That probably won’t bother you if you’re especially hale and hearty, but those of us with a more delicate autonomic nervous system feel it.

The apricots are covered!

You know, that’s not what bothers me most about this early wind.  Look at these apricots!  Dang it.  Two years ago, the wind blew every single apple blossom off the two oldsters in the orchard.  Not one apple that year!  And I was so looking forward to apricots. Once the fruit starts coming in, I don’t bother cooking.  I just eat off my trees.

And finally, just because I started with the wind in my willow tree, I’m going to include the picture of the muskrat from last week.  Hello, Ratty!  He needs a little coat and a nice walking stick, though.

Spring-time

The first daffodil of spring!

Ack!  It’s that time again.  No, not the time of year when daffodils bloom (at least where the turkeys haven’t eaten the buds before they open) and everything comes back to life, including an amazing number of Boxelder Bugs.  There are so many in my back someday-to-be-pasture or piggery that I collide with them, or rather, they collide with me.  Too bad the chickens and turkeys don’t like them.  I suspect the bugs do more than stink when bitten or swallowed

No, it’s time for the Page Spring Ditch to be shut down for maintenance.  Our ditch doesn’t go down for the tolerable 7 days as does the Mason Ditch, which runs through the center of my property.  Ours is down for 10 nail-biting days.  That’s 10 whole days that I have no water coming in and only 8 thousand gallons in storage.  Unlike the other 12 properties that use Page Springs water and have wells, it’s not just my irrigation water.  I drink it!

Ack, ack!  Can I manage on 800 gallons a day without running dry?  I’m not sure.  This year, I have a renter living in the house and a renter using in the kitchen.  I’ve already talked to both of them about being conservative and all.

Why is our ditch off 3 days longer than the other one?  I suspect the de facto ditch boss wants two full weekends to get his cleaning done.  Ah well, I’ll manage somehow.  The worst of it is that I’m house number 11 on the list.  On that last day the 10 houses upstream are taking every drop as they prepare for the shutdown.  I have to wait with bated breath to see if I’ll be able to collect my full 8000 gallons.

This will be the first year since I moved up here that there’s going to be a ditch meeting.  You can bet I’m going to mention to the others that I do drink this water and to please leave me enough that last day so I have enough to make it through the extended and artificial drought.

As for repair work, I’m fortunate not to have to do too much.  Sam Frey, who owned this house before me, was fond of telling folks that he had more money than God.  That meant he could afford to install really nice buried piping that channels the spring from one end of the acreage to the other.  Unlike a number of the other folks who play host to Page Springs via an open dirt ditch, the water passes under my house unseen.  Being me, that’s sort of disappointing.  How cool would it be to have my own personal stream dancing along under my porch?  On the plus side, the only maintenance I need to do this year is to find a way to protect the now-exposed pipe that passes under metal bridge #1, located at the upper center of the property.  Metal bridge #2 crosses the Mason Ditch at the far end of the property.

Both bridges are necessities, but especially bridge #1.  It is strong enough to withstand the force of monsoon season rainwater that torrents down the hillsides above me, through the gully that starts at the top of the property, then under (and over, actually) the bridge, until the cataract shoots into the Mason Ditch with enough force to send it tumbling out of its banks.  I’m certain that when Sam first installed the spring pipe it was all at least 6 feet under ground.  As you can see from the picture, the pipe remains 6 feet below ground level…the ground’s just gone missing.  You can see the base of the bridge above it. I’m going to have to get going on a plan for doing something about this, and soon.  There’s only 4 days left before the water’s off.

Lastly, I have to add a sad note here.  I’m really missing the cows.  I hadn’t realized how much humor they supplied to my life.  Nothing funny happens around here any more.  Sigh. Maybe I really will have to get pigs.

 

 

Turkey Love

this is a muskrat

As I wrote that title my head immediately went to the old song by Captain and Tennille “Muskrat Love”, which, if my younger readers haven’t heard it, is a very odd song.  I mean, seriously.   Who writes a song about muskrats in the first place, much less about muskrat affection? The answer to that question is Willis Alan Ramsey, by the way.   Not that the little critters aren’t cute and all, but they’re rodents while the word “musk” in their name tells you that they stink on top of that.  Just in case you’re never heard the song, here’s a link to a youtube version and, in case you’ve never seen a muskrat, a picture of the little water rodent.

Now onto Tom and his irresistible charms.

Spring is sprung, even though the nighttime temperatures over the last week have still been dropping below 30.  There’s something just plain wrong about walking outside at dawn in 28 degree weather.  Or maybe it’s the result of my many years as a Phoenician revealing itself.  My heat-thinned blood just has bulked up enough to enjoy the cold.

How do I know that spring is here to stay?  Three things.  First, I saw a ladybug crawling in the garden.  As happy as I am to see them return, I can only sigh at what that means.  The aphid cycle begins again.

Second, the bees have awakened out of the massive hive at the top of the even more massive cottonwood at the back of my property.  The “oldster”–what the freebie Dutch newspaper I got while I lived in Holland called the ancient local trees in their weekly column; go figure, a column about local trees–is so big that it would take four people with arms outstretched to encircle it.  The bees found their way into a very large dying branch near the middle of the canopy, where I’m sure they’d been for more than 20 years when we moved in. The branch broke four years ago, taking a chunk of the hive with it when it fell.  The beekeeper who came to deal with the bees said it was the third largest hive he’d seen in all his years dealing with Apis Mellifera. He estimated at least 60,000 bees and was pretty certain they weren’t Africanized, thank goodness. Once the bees were destroyed (that made me sad but was unavoidable given the situation and hive size), we burnt the log that had been their home.  The smell of hot honey filled the house for days after that.  It was another week before I noticed that there were still plenty of bees coming and going out of the ragged hole in the broken branch.  Suffice it to say that I have no shortage of pollinators here.

Anyway, spring begins when the bees wake up and come out to eat the chicken and turkey food.  All the bird kibble I’ve ever purchased is made with a sweetener, and apparently no matter what sugary substance is used it attracts the hungry insects.  And, even more importantly, all my birds know NOT to interfere with the eating bees.  As I documented early this year (remember that poor turkey hen with the swollen head?) the birds are affected by both insect stings and bites.  One of my hens once found a centipede a few years back.  How she knew that this particular bug was poisonous, I don’t know, but she was both efficient and cautious about the way she dispatched it.  She tossed the thing high in the air, stabbed at it as it hit the ground, then grabbed it and tossed it again before it had a chance to raise its pinchers.  It took a few tosses before she killed it.  She then had to play keep away with her coop-mates to prevent them from stealing it from her before she gobbled it down.

As for me, I don’t worry about bees. I’m a slow breather, which is the clue to dealing with bees or so that beekeeper told me.  The less carbon dioxide they sense, the less the bees react to you.  Panic causes you to breathe fast, exhaling more CO2.  Bees don’t panic me.  Moreover, I think they recognize me, because they let me pick them up out of the turkey food and send them on their way.  Or maybe that sweetener just leaves them with a mellow sugar high.

The last sign of spring is turkey hens circling Tom, waiting for their turn under the big boy.  It’s an estrogen frenzy I tell you.  Okay, I’m not sure turkey hens have estrogen, but you get the idea.  During this period, the hens spread their feathers like Tom and dance around each other as they battle for their place in the copulation line.  And, like the younger (jake) turkeys do as they fight, even sisters from the same brood will try to swallow each others’ heads.  They stretch their jaws wide and put their whole mouth around the other hen’s skull.  They get so fixated on their fighting that I can walk up on them and pull them apart before they realize I’m there.

As for Tom, he gets the benefit of their sudden interest in them.  They clean his feathers for him, plucking off bits of this and that.  They’ll even clean his beak.  He happily opens his mouth for them.  Kissing, maybe?

Then one eager girl approaches Tom.  Pressing her side against him, she circles him.  Meanwhile, his feet begin to move as he taps his toes in his mating dance. This can go on for ten minutes or so.  When she’s ready, her snood, that weird little bump on top of their beak that in Tom’s case can expand until it looks like he’s wearing a nightcrawler (I’ve had to pull it out of his mouth a time or two after he’s eaten too fast and half-swallowed it), will flush and extend until it hangs down the side of her beak.  I figure that’s works on Tom the same way pouty Angelina Jolie lips work for some human males.

At last, she squats and it’s Tom’s turn to circle.  ‘Round and ’round he goes, stopping to offer another step or two of his dance.  I suspect this is to make sure the squatting girl doesn’t lose interest as his circling can last another ten minutes or so.

When they’re both finally done with the dancing, Tom climbs onto her back.  If he gets his balance right away–something that doesn’t always happen, resulting in more circling–she swings her tail to the side, he drops his and it’s all over in two seconds.  This is a species that understand the importance of foreplay but wastes no time with the deed itself!

A few girls checking out my suggestion for nesting

Now, here’s the part that has me scratching my head and hurrying to finish my “suggested” nesting area for the hens.  Last year, the girls were in no hurry to get their eggs laid.  The soonest anyone was sitting on eggs was April 1, because the eggs began hatching on the 28th. It seems to me that the mating dances are happening earlier this year.  Holy Smokes!  If they start laying in the next week or so, I’ll have poults by mid-March.  That means even bigger toms for Thanksgiving…and more mouths to feed for longer.  Yikes!