Denise Domning's Blog, page 8

And now the trees

First a flood update. Yes, the snow has begun to melt and the water is rising in the creek again. I think it reached eight feet yesterday because it overran its banks just below my front barn. That’s the lowest spot on the property, a stretch I share with my neighbors Al and Elana. They’ve worked for years to get their side to look almost lawn-like. This, I might mention, is no mean feat if they started at the same place that my side is in–mostly rock. I’ve spent the last five years or so trying to encourage grass to grow, believing that the more grass I have the less likely a flood is to drop flood fall as it roars past. However, I’m at the end of that particular curve of the creek. A rolling stone may gather no moss, but a rolling stone in a flooded creek ends up on top of the other rocks right there. Ah well, hope springs eternal. I’ll plant more grass seed this year and see if it comes up around the rocks.

My many fruit trees very much appreciated this past wet winter.  The nectarine is showing a bright pink while my earliest apricots are covered in lacy white. The plum buds are that pretty yellow-green color they take on just before they burst while the elderberries are sprouting purple-edged leaves. The apples are still sleeping, the pluot is thinking about budding, the persimmon is leafing, and the jujubes look dead (and will continue to look dead until almost May).

And then there’s my one olive tree.

At one of the first farm-related meetings I attended after moving here I met a man whose address put him on top of the hill above my place. He said he had a whole olive orchard up there. I’ve never been up there so I can’t testify to that. However, my interest was piqued. Although I’m somewhat allergic to olive pollen, I love olives. Moreover, if his land was anything like that at the base of the hill, I figured the hillside where I grow raspberries and an amazing crop of Johnson grass (I keep thinking I need to put the pigs up there) would work for olives. It was just a matter of water.

I don’t have in-ground irrigation on that hillside, only the sprinklers I use for the raspberries. That’s hardly enough water to feed a sapling if you expect it to survive to be a tree, especially when the hillside gets the worst of the summer sun. As an experiment, I bought one small (and cheap) olive from a local nursery. This, of course, turned out to be a not-so-great idea since it takes two trees to make olives. But I dug the hole, carving my way through what is surely basalt, added compost and a dose of mycorrhizae for good measure, then let nature take its course.

That first winter left most most of the little tree dead and I expected the following summer to complete the job. Instead, it made through winter #2, not only still alive but having managed to replace a few of its lost branches. Heartened by its hardiness, the next year I bought five more bare root olives from my go-to organic supplier. From the description in the catalog, I knew they would be small. I just didn’t realize how small. Can we say “twig?”

A lazy fig bush

Up they went during a lull in a winter that went on to pull the rug out from under spring somewhere in March. Those twigs froze out of existence, killing not only them but my make-my-own-olives ambition. But still that original olive leafed out. Knowing I’d never get anything out of it, I left it in the back of my mind, only occasionally noticing that it was still alive, stunted but leafing out.

Now, here it is, year nine. The other day I was up on the hillside, pushing aside dried grasses to see how many of my raspberries are leafing out, when I stopped, startled, by an amazing sight. That olive has tripled in size! It’s almost three feet tall. Well, how about that? Maybe I need to spend a little more money and get it some companions. I think I’ll start with some larger specimens this time.

In the meantime I’m going to prune my two oldest figs, which are pushing six feet tall. I bought them as small bushes–not trees–and they have grown like Topsy, which is to say one is now over six feet tall. Every summer since I planted them they have been lush with leaves but have not given me one, single fruit. This year, I’m resorting to threats. Give up the goods, you guys, or I’m going to dig you up!  No slackers allowed.

Snowed In

It started with posts on Facebook. Folks from my local area were sharing maps of the predicted storm. It looked like a lot of snow was going to come down in a very short period of time. We were going to be snowed in at least one day at the end of the week. For those from snowier realms, you have to understand that it’s not the amount of snow that traps us here. It’s the the lack of snow removal equipment and the fact that we Arizonans have little experience driving in the snow.

All I could do was groan. Why? Because snow melts into water that in turn fills the streams that in turn will once again flood my property.

However, in the spirit of fairness I informed Bear, my 135 pound Kuvasz, that he was in for a treat. In the breed description for the Kuvasz it proclaims that the dogs are “almost impervious to inclement weather” and Bear is exactly that. I didn’t bother to tell the sheep snow was coming. They, like Bear, are also impervious. However, I did warn Tom the Turkey that he and his girls were going to have to spend time in jail even though they hadn’t done anything wrong. That is, other than walk all over our vehicles. The hens make a daily trip up here to visit a French door I have stored under the house. I suspect they see the angled door as shelter and the space between the door and the wall as a safe place to lay eggs, which of course it isn’t. The dogs love to eat turkey eggs.

Then on Tuesday, my cable speed faltered to almost nothing. This doesn’t just affect my internet but also my phone service. I lost caller ID, my voice mail and was limited to a very quick 3 minute conversation before the call simply disconnected.

For most of the modern world this wouldn’t be a problem because most of the modern world has working cell phones. I do not, at least not here at the house. Although there is a spot in one corner of the back bedroom where if you stand very still, you can have a conversation. As for the rest of the property, well, I live at the bottom of a very big bowl surrounded by mountains and mesas, while my farm is dotted with incredibly tall cottonwoods. Beautiful, quiet, and without coverage. Everyone who comes here –either to work or visit– ends up playing out what should have been a Monty Python skit. “Wait, can you hear me now?” Taps the cell phone and moves a few more feet. “How about now?” Races a few more feet. “Now?” That’s when I send them across the road to the pullout although standing alongside the road is pretty noisy, and cold in the snow.

Of course my service appointment was for Thursday. That morning I awoke to a white world. Great big fluffy flakes were drifting gently down, building steadily. Bear was enjoying the cold by sleeping in the open. Moosie was cuddled in his blankets in the dog house. The sheep suggested they needed more alfalfa since they couldn’t find anything to nibble under the white stuff. As for Tom and his girls, they were amusing themselves by watching the mice. I guess if the snow is deeper than you are tall, it’s not a good idea to go out to the ditch to get a drink. This led to a number of accidental mice drownings in the turkey water bowl.

And still the snow came down. There was no one on the road. I got a garbled call on my non-working phone saying that my repair appointment was canceled due to weather. It was rescheduled for today, Monday. Hoo-boy. That meant four days without internet or phone. No checking my sales stats, no tweaking advertising, no wasting time on social media.

This is that moment when you realize you’re a lot more addicted to technology than you thought. Google has become my phone book, my dictionary and my secondary source for historical fact checking. I don’t download the movies I purchase and play on my iPad. Yikes! At least my kindle was loaded with books.

Friday arrived with more snow. I think we might have reached six inches. I worked on the new book. I watched the cats watch the house wrens bop around the porch, cleaning up spilled dog food. Bear did his best to convince Moosie that playing in the snow was more fun than any other game they know. When I went out to feed the sheep and clean dead mice out of the turkey water, I found a flock of bluebirds sitting in the branches of a snowy tree. Beautiful!

By then I knew disconnection from the outside world wasn’t going to kill me. Saturday warmed up from the 20s into the 40s. That signaled the official start of Mud Season. Judging by the depth of Bear’s paw prints, it looks to be a good one this year.

Maybe it was the rise in temperature, but on Sunday I again had spotty cable access although still no reliable phone service. That allowed the new guy in my life to check on important things. He tells me that someone named “Verde River Man” predicts that the 3 or more feet of snow that fell at higher elevations will melt off at a slow, steady and civilized rate.

I breathed a sigh of relief. If Verde River Man is right, that means there won’t be a second 14 foot flood this spring and my new fencing will stand, at least for a while. Now, if only I knew when the cable guy is going to show up. They said they’d call to confirm the appointment.

Flood!

Most of the time I love living next to Oak Creek. The water tumbles merrily in the cool shade of the tall trees as the otters hunt for crayfish. On a hot summer day, I can walk down the creek about a half a mile to where the bank rises about ten feet above my head. It’s basalt here but the stone is ancient and crumbling. Springs seeps out of the cracks and brilliant green moss covers the stone face. Giant tadpoles, the spawn of bullfrogs, swim around my legs while I push through towering cattails. With every step I smell peppermint. (Some early settler must have planted mint along the creek; it’s everywhere.)

But this month has shown me a different face of the creek. Our first flood two weeks ago brought the creek up about nine feet, which was impressive but surprisingly benign. It barely uprooted some of the temporary fencing I keep along the creek so my sheep can graze near the water. Within a day or two, I’d reset the step-in posts and the sheep were leaving their footprints on the thick new layer of silt. I breathed a sigh of relief, grateful to have dodged the bullet.

I breathed too soon. The rain started around Monday, then stayed steady. I gritted my teeth and kept my fingers crossed, only to gag on Wednesday when I saw the USGS (United States Geological Survey) warning predicting 13 feet Thursday night/Friday morning. That put the water level over the top of my middle pasture fencing! I spent the day pulling up all the temporary fence I could, then went to bed praying the government had gotten it wrong.

I woke up at 2 AM on Friday morning and heard the roar. It was bad. Really bad. The USGS was right on. The water crested at 13 feet at 14,000 cubic feet per second.

The water was still over 10 feet at 7 AM when I went out to feed. The whole back of my property had been underwater at some time during the night, the water reaching almost to the turkey barn. The surge had been so powerful it had uprooted six-foot-tall metal “T” posts and torn four-foot-tall mesh horse fencing to pieces. I found mesh fencing tangled into little balls. Several “T” posts had been bent around tree trunks. Gates were metal knots. No fencing was left upright from the huge sycamore at the middle of my property to the far fence which was half gone. That sycamore is also in trouble. It sits at the point where the creek turns and its roots are now hanging in midair. If it falls over the creek, I’ll have a new bridge. If it falls back on the property, I’ll have a new wooden fence of sorts, since it will knock over its nearby sister as it falls.

It wasn’t until the water finally fell below five feet that I realized why my property flooded. Until then, I couldn’t see the opposite side of the creek. A thick line of trees fills that bank and over the course of the flood the water had woven whole trees and giant branches between them until it looks like a wall made of basketry, then coated everything with piles of silt. The opposite bank is now 15 feet taller than my side of the creek. That left the water nowhere else to go except onto my pastures.

And that’s where it will go again next week. The new guy in my life persists in informing me that the USGS is again predicting a flood. Each time he tells me that, I put my fingers in my ears and say, “La-la-la.” I’m taking hope from the locals who assure me this last flood, which is the 4th highest in recent history, won’t be repeated any time soon. I have to believe! My fences are already back up again.

Down, Moosie!

Before I get to the dog part of this story, I thought I’d update you all on my newly completed brooder coop. At last, after sorting through all the many bits and pieces of this and that cluttering my barn, buying as little as possible and when necessary from Restore, the coop is done and the barn is clean. Well, the barn is clean for the moment. My project du jour is in the back barn. Now that I’ve ordered 32 hen chicks, I’m turning the big turkey barn into a nesting area for both the chickens and my three turkeys. The south and central portions of the pole barn will become their fenced roosting area. All of this to outsmart the ravens, something I’m not entirely certain I’m smart enough to do. When that’s complete, I’ll go back to the front barn and begin moving my commercial kitchen equipment from the house to what used to be the barn’s fodder room. Ah, the life of someone suffering from (Non-Attention Deficit) Hyperactive Disorder.

Now onto the dogs. I think I’ve mentioned that Bear, my 135 pound Hungarian Kuvasz suffers from arthritis. Although he was never a dog to come running when called–in fact, he likes to take a few moments after I call to consider if it’s worth his while to respond–last year saw his mobility degenerate to a snail’s pace. He also stopped playing with Moosie. I took him to the vet who reminded me that Bear was then going on seven– almost 50 in human years–and suggested glucosamine, which I tried to no avail. After that I tried CBD oil in various strengths. I upped his fermented foods, tried turmeric, tried garlic. Still no luck. Then while walking up an aisle at the health food store my gaze came to a stop on the Wobenzymes. I’d taken this supplement years ago for my rheumatoid arthritis after the Mayo Clinic politely asked me to take my business elsewhere since they couldn’t help me.

With nothing to lose and hope springing eternal, I took them home and, voila! After two weeks on the supplement, Bear not only recovered his ability to run, he was back to playing with everyone. All the time. Unfortunately. I’d name it a a miracle but he still doesn’t come when called.

Happy that I again had two functioning dogs and didn’t need to face the prospect of buying a puppy to replace one of them, I came out for morning chores yesterday and found Moosie walking on three legs. He had his left front leg held high and his face said he was really hurting. Worried (and grateful it was Sunday as my vet is open on Sundays) I brought him inside and checked his leg. There was nothing embedded in his paw and his bones were all solid. He crawled onto the couch in my writing area and went to sleep, poor thing. That’s when I remembered that my new ranch manager Christina had just taken a course in animal massage. She came by a little later and found the problem.

Moosie’s been climbing trees again. Or rather, my (Non-Attention Deficit) Hyperactive Disorder dog has once again been TRYING to climb trees.

That dog spent too much puppy-time around the cats. In his first year here he noticed one day that the cats all walked along the retaining wall behind my pump house. In the spirit of “I can do better than you,” he jumped onto that narrow wall and followed them. He still walks that wall today. When he saw the cats climbing trees, he also gave it his best shot. His interest in climbing might have faded with time and failure except he discovered that raccoons and squirrels could escape him by climbing trees, and the challenge was on.

This photo is from October of 2017 when he and Bear had treed a bobcat. I watched him go almost six feet up that trunk on sheer willpower…and took him to the vet the next day because he had wrenched his shoulder. That’s what Christina found. Moosie had once again overworked his left shoulder, no doubt trying to climb a tree after some varmint.

Seriously dog, you’re seven now. Stop thinking you can do things as if you were 2! Down, Moosie!

Oh, wait a minute. If I tell him that, he’ll turn around and tell me “Down, Denise!” Then what will we do with all our excess energy? Climb, Moosie. Climb.

 

More Lambs

As of January 31st, my youngest ewes reached ten months of age, and that’s the right number if you want your ewes to give you little lambikins. But in order to have lambs, I need a ram. Ugh. Just ugh.

For those of you who don’t remember my previous experience with rams, here are a few reminders. There was the time that Cinco, my first ram and the father of Mari, butted me in the back and sent me sliding down the hillside. Then there was the time that Cinco butted me in the thighs and knocked me out of the little pink Crocs, which are long gone, mostly because of that incident. I ended up sitting on the ground with Cinco backing up as he aimed for my head.

Then there was the time that Butt-head Cinco hit my 800 pound sow, Miss Piggy, in the hams. Miss Piggy levitated a full foot off the ground— I swear this is true! I was standing next to her when Cinco hit her.— and did a 180 in midair. She returned to earth, teeth bared, then headed full steam toward Cinco. If you haven’t seen hogs running, they are extremely fast considering their weight and short legs. Then again, they’re supposedly related to bears.

Butt-head Cinco might have been, but he wasn’t stupid. He ran for his life and hid for the rest of the day. I was on scene the next day to witness his apology. As Miss Piggy watched him, mouth already half-open and braced to attack, Cinco very gently touched his head to her snout, then backed up. I had no trouble translating. It was clearly, “I screwed up and I promise I will never do that to you again.” And he never did. However, he did hit me one more time. Despite what you might have read about the meat of intact rams being gamy or rank, for the record, Cinco was delicious. Then again, it might just have been sheer satisfaction that made him so tasty.

So here I am with girls ready to be mamas and what happens? I go to my local Home Depot and in the plant section meet this guy who out of the blue mentions his son has a ram. I jumped on the opportunity and, miracle of miracles, the ram just happens to be a Dorper, the same breed as my ewes! (Not that I care about breed–turn your eyes, vegetarians–since these lambs will all find their way into my freezer. ) So I have borrowed his ram for forty-five days, which should be long enough to get the girls in the family way. Thank heavens for serendipity!

I’ll admit I spent the first day watching him like a hawk, waiting for the first attempt at head-butting me. But now that we’re two days into his forty-five day stay, I’m beginning to relax. This is because he’s fat, and Fat Boy is what I’ve been calling him since he arrived.

In his defense his obesity is not his fault. My girls spend their days dancing back and forth across more than two acres of pasture while Fat Boy has been living in a small pen. This poor ram! Try as he might, he can’t keep up with the girls he’s intent on seducing. Yesterday evening, I opened the orchard gate to bring them their evening rations. My girls listen for that sound because they know exactly what it means at that time of night. The gate had barely screeched before they were high-tailing it toward me from the far end of the property. Fat Boy followed, but the gap between male and female just kept widening. When he finally reached the orchard, he took a little sit-down before he started eating.

Not that my girls care that their lover boy is a little on the tubby side. All five ewes were watching intently as he got out of the trailer. Fat Boy turned one panicked circle before he noticed them. Noses were pressed to noses through the fence. After recognizing another of their species, Mari, Milly and Petunia turned their backs on him. Not Tiny or Rosie. Especially Rosie.

As if it had a life of its own, her tail began to wag. You know that saying, “I’ll be there in two shakes of a lamb’s tail?” Let me say that’s a really quick period of time, like nano-seconds. Rosie’s tail was writhing as she walked around this big boy again and again, pressing herself to his side, crooning “Why, hello there, sailor.” I knew her dance of the seven sultry woolen shawls was working when the mock headbutting began. Yep, Rosie will be the first to give birth.

Now, if Fat Boy can just catch up to the other girls, I should have ten babies in five months. As for the ram’s owners, they’re getting the benefit of The Farm’s new Ovine Exercise Camp.

Oh No!

It’s almost 70 degrees outside today! How could spring have arrived so early? Wait. I know better. This is Cornville, where spring behaves more like a coy girl peeking around a corner than a timely German passenger train. This happens every year. We’re taunted by a few beautiful spring-like days only to find ourselves once again trapped in a stretch of dour cold.

But tell that to the bees, who have awakened only to find NO blooming arugula on my property for the first time in years (although the violets are blooming). I’d better make certain the turkey food dish is filled so my trusty and important little apian friends will at least have something to eat. Today I checked on my hillside apple trees. Up until this 70 degree thing today, I was expecting big things from those twenty or so trees. Five of them produced a few apples last year. This was to be the year when all of them put on some fruit and I’d have apples coming out of my ears. Ack, their buds are beginning to swell! I’ll get nothing from them if they blossom then freeze. Worse, I never got around to pruning them!

Not expecting spring to arrive so soon, I put my sheep into my winter garden a few days ago. They were in dire need of something fresh and green, something better for them than alfalfa. I told myself that the kale was three years old and ready to go, and that I was pretty sure the volunteer chard would come back after being eaten down to the ground. The girls were thrilled and made short work of the “good” stuff then started on the stuff I really wanted them to eat: bermuda grass, crabgrass, nutsedge, common mallow, and henbit. They had everything down to right above ground level in three days. That’s when I kicked them out and started raking. I now have six nice composting piles of dried leaves, sheep manure and alfalfa stalks. (My sheep are picky girls and only eat the alfalfa flowers, thank you very much.)

I blame it on the raking, or maybe on raking in the warm sun. Never mind that I know the temperature will dive back down to freezing at least once more before spring officially arrives. Never mind that the new brooder coop isn’t quite finished or that I need to muck out the turkey/chicken coop. Never mind that I will be beginning my next book in two days. The urge to get my hands into the soil is rising with the outside temperature.

Oh no, I have spring fever!

A Brooder Coop

If you remember, oh plucky reader, the last time I got chicks–the Brahmas–was two Januarys ago. For their first two weeks they lived in an old cast iron tub that had dirt in the bottom and was covered with several hardware cloth-filled frames to prevent cat intrusion.  This worked really well. Not only did the cast iron tub have round corners, thus preventing chick death from all of them trying to squish into a square corner (a strange chick behavior), but the heat lamps warmed the cast iron which radiated even more heat back at the chicks. However, with thirty chicks they very quickly outgrew that small space and I soon moved them outside the barn into a thrown together pallet-and-baling-twine built coop inside a chicken run.

This year I decided to skip the tub, mostly because I don’t have it any more, and go straight to the south-facing wall of the barn. That’s right, I’m building myself an actual brooder coop. It’ll be both shed and chicken run, all of it either fenced or walled off from any and all intruders.

Especially Moosie.

I love that dog, but he is a killer and of all the things he really loves to kill birds top the list. Because I have raised birds for almost all of the six years he’s lived here, we’ve come to some really hard-fought agreements.

Agreement #1: I must get all my birds into their coops before twilight. If I fail, if one escapes, he gets to kill them.

This is a hard and fast rule with him. He absolutely doesn’t touch any of my birds as long as the sun is up. But the minute darkness falls, if there’s a free bird, that bird is dead.

Agreement #2: He isn’t allowed to eat baby birds, not ever.

He hates the fact that he’s agreed to this rule, but he’s a dog of his word and he abides by it. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t TRY to eat the babies he happens across. Two years ago, just as I was expecting my first turkey hatchlings, I watched a turkey hen watching something in the grass. She studied whatever it was for a long moment, which caught my attention as that’s pretty un-turkey-like behavior. The moment she turned away, Moosie slithered close to the same spot. Because I happened to be looking I noticed him scoop something up into his mouth. Rather than chew on it, he turned and began to walk slowly and way-too-casually away from me.

The lightbulb went on over my head. “Moosie!” I called in warning.

His shoulders hunched and his walk became a definite slink.

“Drop it!” I commanded at the top of my lungs.

Without slowing, he spat out a perfectly unharmed turkey chick and continued slinking back toward the house. I gathered up the chick, who looked a little dazed, and returned it to its mother, who hadn’t realized she’d given birth.

Agreement #3  If new birds come onto the property and I don’t directly identify them as mine, he kills them.  This means each time full grown birds appear on the farm, I have to point to each one and say “This one is mine, you can’t kill it.” If I miss one, it’s dead.

That brings me to the second purpose for my brooder coop. I also need an isolation coop, a place where I can segregate sick or injured birds, or birds I intend to slaughter, as well as a place to temporarily house full grown birds, should I ever again run into a deal on Craigslist.

Moosie isn’t the only animal that will kill a bird new to the farm. No matter what you read on an egg carton, there is no such thing as a vegetarian chicken. Chickens are small tyrannosaurs and, being tyrannosaurs, they don’t like anyone trespassing on their territory. They will gang up on and kill newcomers given a chance. However, if I keep the same new birds penned in for a week in a place where the existing birds can see them but not reach them, at the end of seven days they won’t be unfamiliar any more and all death threats are lifted. Not that some of the other chickens–even their own kin– won’t turn on them at a later date.

The coop is presently about two-thirds finished and coming together very nicely. I spent part of the day today hot gluing Styrofoam insulation panels for the brooder area. By next week all the brooder walls and door should be in place and ready for chicks.

By the way, I finally decided that this year it’s going to be Plymouth Barred for me, although I think I might go with the Silver Stenciled Barred because…why not?

A New Queen

I once again have seven cats living on the farm, courtesy of the new guy in my life. Molly is a Somali Cat, which means she looks more like a fox than a cat. She’s an old girl, about thirteen, and when I first met her, she wasn’t in the best of health. Of course, I couldn’t resist the challenge of restoring her health, but before her rehabilitation could begin I needed her on the farm. More than that, I had to find a way to integrate her into the existing cat hierarchy. 

The pyramid of feline power, at least in the house, is fairly simple. My piss-and-vinegar calico Waku Oni (very bad Japanese for “Crazy Devil”) has always been queen mainly because she says so. She’s held her crown by keeping the other two house cats — Wendy, a black tortie, and Shy Girl, a gray tortie– off balance. Her strategy is to ambush them as often as possible to the point that they creep carefully down hallways and always slow down before rounding corners.

How in the world was I going to protect poor, frail Molly from Waku?

I started the acclimation by locking Molly in my spare bedroom along with her familiar paraphernalia. That included her special chair, the one she shares with her guy. And there is no doubt about it…he is HER guy. She very grudgingly allows me time with him.  I’m pretty certain she might actually have challenged me to a duel over him except that I’m now feeding her and she loves her new diet.  What’s not to love? She eats anchovies every day. They’re so good that she almost doesn’t mind the fact that I also smear raw milk yogurt onto her paws and back once a day. Almost.

After a week closed in the bedroom, we began opening the door so she could see what awaited her in the rest of the house. That brought the other cats into the hallway, wanting to see what was hiding in that room. Much hissing ensued and Molly would retreat. 

At two weeks, Molly apparently got tired of being a coward. She ventured boldly out of the bedroom and went straight to the living room where the other cats usually spend their day, moving from chair to floor as they follow the sunlight. I followed, ready to referee if necessary.

As Shy Girl saw the intruder, she headed for the door. (She’s “Shy Girl” for a reason.) Wendy looked up, then tucked her head into her body, unwilling to lose her floor cushion and shaft of sunlight. Waku charged, bent on defending her throne. Much to her surprise–and mine–Molly took a warrior’s stance.

That brought Waku up short. She crouched and glared at the Invader. Molly growled. Waku hissed.  Wendy decided it was a good time to visit the outside food bowl.

Waku blinked first and retreated, jumping onto the big green ottoman. Then as Waku watched from above, Molly circled the hassock, her growls growing steadily louder.  Not so much as a tuft of fur flew, but when Molly finished circling that ottoman and made her way back to her room, it was clear that one dynasty had fallen and another had begun. There’s a new queen on the farm, and it isn’t Waku. 

We are now into week four and detente has been achieved. Waku has claimed her last-stand hassock and spends her days sleeping on it, but my bedroom remains hers. Molly still owns the spare bedroom, but now shares the living room with her former nemesis. That’s because her guy’s chair has been moved in there and she hasn’t really got a choice. The other two cats find it expedient to avoid both their old queen and their new one as much as possible. 

However, I’m still worried about Molly. Having conquered one queen-dom, she’s got delusions of grandeur. She met Moosie for the first time the other day. Moosie, being the happy creature that he is, instantly grinned in welcome and started forward to introduce himself, tail wagging. Faster than I thought possible for an old cat, Molly shot toward him, howling in threat. He froze in startled disbelief. Heart pounding, I snatched her up before she could reach him. Although I warned her that threatening Moosie is sheer insanity, I don’t think she was listening. Give her a few more weeks and I think Molly will be queen of the farm.

Turkeys in the Truck

Years ago, when Tom was the only turkey on the farm, he would spend the day staring at himself in the big shiny bumper of my ex-husband’s truck. That was when Tom wasn’t doing his best to be a dog. Every time I saw him doing this, I’d laugh and call out, “Polly want a cracker?” Then he got new hens and became the patriarch of forty (then even more), and his affection for that bumper died.

Or so I thought.  He’s ba-a-ack!

I’ll admit I knew he was bringing his two hens, one of which is definitely on some sort of brain-damaged turkey spectrum, to the house. The new guy in my life discovered turkey footprints in the frost on his hood the other day.  When he mentioned that, I grinned and welcomed him to the farm. At least it was only footprints.

Yesterday, I looked out the window and discovered Tom once again admiring himself in the bumper of my Big, Black Beast. Back and forth, he walked, peering closely at the turkey who kept following him. As he went, he made that purring noise that sounds puny but is actually a fairly dangerous threat. However, he wasn’t poking at his reflection. Then again, he’d never attacked his reflection back when he was all alone. I’d put that up to him being the only turkey around and needing to see something–anything– that looked like him.

Once again, here he was, talking to himself as if he were all alone. I eyed him in confusion. But he has his two hens. Okay, one and a half hens. I’ve more than once seen Tom trying to correct the behavior of that little not-quite-right girl. It doesn’t help. She’s still more likely to run in circles than pay attention to him.

But what about little Red, the granddaughter of my original reddish-tinged hen? Sigh, I miss that hen. I wrote about her years ago, about how she laid more than a dozen and a half eggs, only to have three of her sisters/cousins/aunties steal all her babies. What did she do? She hurried back to the nest and laid another dozen eggs, only to once again have her kinswomen try to steal her babies.  I stole a few back and returned them to her. Among those was her daughter and twin, who went on to have this third-generation red hen. Red #3 is the one who hatched out almost ten babies last summer, only to lose all but one–a little tom who’s now in my freezer–to the ravens. What is it with these Red girls and their babies?

Anyway, Red #3 is solid. She’s quick to clean Tom’s feathers and follow him wherever he goes while I have to rescue Gone Girl, who’s always on the wrong side of the fence.

As Tom purred his way toward the far end of the bumper, Red came around the edge of the truck. She hurried to catch up to her guy, glancing at herself in the bumper with every other step . Then from the pickup bed, Gone Girl looked around the edge of the cab at me. That had me laughing. Apparently, all birds–even farm birds– can’t resist their own their reflections.

I considered driving them off, but reminded myself it’s a farm truck. Bear’s already made certain of that. It’s his fault it’s dented. Besides, they were having too much fun to worry about what sort of presents they might leave me. “Pretty birds!” I called to them and let them be.

 

Snow Day

Bear in his element

Okay, be kind, dear relatives from Duluth. I know you sneer each time I mention it, but I have snow! The big, heavy flakes began drifting downward at 10:30 this morning. I rushed outside to take a picture, only to discover you can’t take pictures of snow, at least not right after the storm starts. But watching the flakes made me want a fire, and hot chocolate. Hey, it’s Arizona. I have to snatch my cold moments when I can get them.

Unfortunately, I’d more than once put off bringing up wood from the lower pasture this past week. I had even commented to myself at dawn this morning that I should take advantage of the (relative) warmth and get to it. Oops. Now, I’d have to make my way down to the creek and up again, doing it without slipping and falling.

As I stared down at the creek and my carefully sorted piles of wood waiting there for me, the snowflakes started coming faster. If I wanted wood I’d better hurry. Just then, my new “ranch manager” Christina opened the door to her Jamboree, startling me. She was supposed to be in Flagstaff until tomorrow. “I didn’t want to get snowed in,” she said as she joined me at the top of the not-yet-icy stairway. Smart girl!

Then, because Christina is a younger model of me, she instantly offered to help me bring up wood. Down we went, carrying my big plastic trash can. The turkeys followed for a bit, wondering what we were doing, then realized their feet were getting cold and turned back. The sheep eyed us from the middle pasture as soft mini-drifts began to pile on their backs. Bear romped joyously around Moosie, then threw himself down on his back to roll in this wonderful cold white stuff that was already nearing an inch in depth. Moosie ignored him, only interested in getting closer to the creek. My lower pasture is presently filled thick green grass, untouched by frost. I fenced in an area for the sheep, who love it, but that leaves plenty of good forage for the deer, who have driven both dogs crazy for the last few nights.

By the time Christina and I were coming up to the house with my wood, my truck was cloaked and our earlier footprints had disappeared. I sent Christina away with a “thank you” bowl of freshly made chicken soup, then once more stood on the porch to watch the snow. There in the distance were three miserable turkeys, standing forlornly in front of the closed door to their coop. As far as they’re concerned it’s better to be caged than have to walk in that cold white stuff.

Knowing they were short of food, I made my cautious way down to the barn only to find a flock of LBB’s (little brown birds) inside. Cheeky little devils were feasting on my expensive organic feed! So that’s why I’m running out of turkey food so quickly. Since I can’t completely close the barn door–that’s how the barn cats come and go–it’s time to get lids for my food bins.

Armed with a flake of alfalfa for the sheep and the turkey food, I put my birds away, then put two buckets of water into the sheep shelter, hoping it stays liquid. When I turned around I found Bear still romping in the snow. He was doing his best to convince a returning Moosie that it was time to play. But his best buddy’s breed description does not include “almost impervious to inclement weather.” Moosie shot past me at a good clip on his way to his dog house. So Bear came bounding toward me, grinning and hopping. That left me no choice but to stand where I was until the joy was out of his massive system. After that, I followed Moosie to the safety of the house.

So, for the moment I’m living in a winter wonderland. I have my fire and I’ll have my hot chocolate once I finish writing this. Who knows? I might even get snowed in! What an interesting way to begin 2019. Happy New Year to you all!