Denise Domning's Blog, page 9

Christmas Eve

It’s almost Christmas on the farm and that means…nothing. I don’t decorate, not inside, not with indoor cats. A Christmas tree is nothing but a challenge to a cat. They race to the top, then challenge each other to see who can knock off the most ornaments. Put a pine bough and a sprig of evergreen Pyracantha (otherwise known as Fire Thorn–I hate the stuff but it refuses to die) on the mantelpiece and ten minutes later there are pine needles all over the floor and the bright red Pyracantha berries have become toys. Meanwhile, I step on the thorny branch and rediscover why this plant is called “fire thorn.”

So no decorations. And no food–no Spritz cookies, no Fattigman Bakkels or Julekage–Norwegian Christmas favorites from back when I had youngsters and lived closer to family. In case you’re wondering, I never developed a taste for Lutefisk and I’ve replaced Lefse with tortillas. My Mexican-born neighbor and I agree that the best way to eat fresh flour tortillas is spread with butter and sugar, then rolled up tight. Instead, this year I have one goal and only one goal–to start the new year with a de-cluttered house.

To understand why this is important to me, you have to know that I spent my life moving, first with my parents, then through two marriages. It got to the point that if I moved boxes more than three times and never opened them in between moves, I gave the unopened boxes away to charity. All that house shifting has turned me into a minimalist. I mean, what if tomorrow aliens invade and I have to take off for the border? Two big black garbage bags and I have everything I need. Somehow, this past year has resulted in at least two more black garbage bags worth of stuff appearing in my house.

The work began last week with cleaning the fridge. Then I re-canned the last of my jalapeno jelly into small, gift-sized jars. (Guess what my friends are getting for Christmas?) I’ve sorted through my precious wool socks and thrown away the ones with holes in the heels, because I refuse to darn. Worn sweaters? Gone! Shoes I wore last year and now have spiders living in their toes? Gone!

The last Hubbard squash that’s been on the deck since August? Almost not processed.

I remembered why I hadn’t processed it yet when I went out to bring it inside. Oh my goodness! It weighed at least 25 pounds.

Once I wrangled this behemoth into the house, I dropped it into the sink then eyeballed the oven. No way was it going to fit into the oven whole. I was going to have to cut it in half.

After washing it, I brought out my sharpest, heaviest knife. Whap! The blade bounced off the skin. Whap, whap, whap! I managed to make a small dent. Using the dent as a starting point I pushed the tip of the knife through the rind. It almost reached the meat.

That’s when the new guy in my life came to observe my efforts. He suggested we throw it down the stairs and see if that might break it. As that didn’t sound very appetizing to me, I suggested going down to the barn for a sawsall. By then I had worked that dent into a pretty good-sized steam vent. Because I didn’t want to walk all the way down to the barn just to cut a squash, I once again eyeballed the oven. What if?

Putting the rack on the lowest rung, I set my sheet pan on the rack. Back at the sink, I hoisted the squash in my arms, then wrangled it from the sink to the oven. Grunting, I dropped it onto the pan. One last little shove and it was suddenly and perfectly wedged firmly between the broiler element and the pan.

While I was doing that said new guy had found directions for cutting a Hubbard squash on the Web. The cook suggested a controlled drop from your waist to the floor in the hopes of cracking the squash. In the next line, the recipe writer added, “dropping the squash is easier than using a sawsall.” So there you go. I now know how to properly cut a 25 pound squash.

Since I had no intention of wrangling that thing back out of the oven, I set the temperature to 400 degrees. An hour and half later my knife slid easily through that once-hard rind and into the squash. For the record, cooking a squash does not change its initial weight. Grunting, I wrangled the pan onto the stove top, then stepped back and watched as the skin split. The squash meat fell away from the sides and dropped into a beautiful golden-orange pile. I’ll be spending the next half hour or so digging out the seeds, but it’s another chore done. Yay!

Once the soup is made, I think I’ll wash the windows. Merry Christmas everyone!

 

Egg Dreams

Now, onto my persistent egg dreams. For the first time in seven years I have no chickens and no fresh eggs except for those I buy from my local farm buddies. Having to bridge the gap between those I buy locally with the occasional store-bought dozen is causing me serious stress. Each time I reach for a carton of eggs in the supermarket, I cringe. They just aren’t the same!

How could I have even imagined I could go without chickens for a year? It’s not possible. That’s driven me into dreaming of the day when I again chase chickens into their coop at night. It’s hopeless. I’ve even started to (virtually) flip through hatchery catalogs, perusing the many different breeds of chickens available.

For all of you gardeners out there, this is very much like slavering over seed varieties. I see one breed that I love, then flip to the next breed and change my mind. Or worse, think I want them both–or all.

That’s something I’m pretty committed NOT to doing. The wisest thing I’ve learned since getting my first three chickens is that you should buy a different breed of chicken each year so you always know how old they are. Otherwise, you end up slaughtering your best layer instead of her grandmother.

So what breed of chicken calls to me this year? I know I’m not going back to the Brahmas.  As sweet-natured as they were, they were too big.  I think chickens must be like dogs, the larger breeds (like Bear) aging faster than the little breeds because those Brahmas looked like ancient hens after they came out of the plucker. Over the years I’ve had quite the assortment, birds that lay white eggs, birds that lay blue eggs, brown egg layers and even a hybrid that laid khaki green eggs. There’ve been Buckeyes, Astralorpes, Ameraucanas, Barred Rocks, Rhode Island Reds, Speckled Sussex, Orpingtons, and that nasty Jungle Fowl/Astralorpe rooster that killed my best laying hen. He didn’t last an hour after he did that, but his sisters turned out to be really good egg layers.

I’m sure I don’t want Bantams. Their eggs are too small and with a Blackhawk nesting in the corner of the property, they’d be gone in a season. And I don’t want those foolish Polish things with the feathers in their eyes, nor do I want the Turken. Although the one Turken hen I had was very nice, I just couldn’t get used to that naked neck. (This is coming from someone who thinks turkeys are beautiful.) The Orpingtons were broody, the Rhode Island Reds pretty aggressive with the other birds. The one Speckled Sussex rooster I had was calm and mild-mannered.

I’d love to do the Buckeyes again. Talk about steady and easy! They’re good in the heat and good in the cold, and they have the added benefit of looking a lot like baby Eagles as they’re fledging, which I thought was pretty cool. On top of that, they’re the only breed developed by a woman. The only problem I have is the hatchery I use doesn’t raise them and I won’t buy from a private grower again. Talk about difficult!

Oh, this is just too hard. Someone told me the Welsummers are great but a breed called the Bielefelder just caught my eye. It’s about the size of a Rhode Island Red: “This fairly new breed is making a huge splash in the poultry world with their dark, chocolate-colored brown eggs, large size, and docile temperament.”

Chocolate brown eggs. I’ve never had those before. Hmm. Back to flipping those virtual pages.

Tiny’s Shadow

The conversion of Lonely Girl from pig to sheep is now complete, at least in her mind and much to Tiny’s complete aggravation. That aggravation is complicated not just by Tiny’s certainty that Lonely Girl isn’t a sheep, but because the pig (She-ig? P-eep?) treats her the way Lonely Girl and her porcine sisters treated June the Cow.

If Tiny is walking, Lonely Girl is right up next to her, making sweet little “I love you” grunts. If Tiny is grazing, Lonely Girl is grazing beside her. If Tiny stays still too long, Lonely Girl tries to nibble on the back of her leg the way she nibbled on June’s vestigial toenails.

That is absolutely more than Tiny, who has been incredibly patient, can tolerate. At that point she backs up, head down, then rams Lonely Girl in the neck. She’s figured out that it’s useless to hit that big black girl in the head. This correctional attack only manages to drive the pig a few steps back, at which point LG once again begins wooing the matriarch of my flock, trying to convince the head ewe that she’s just another sheep.

Lonely Girl was so set on convincing the sheep she’s one of them, she even turned her back on her pig food in favor of grazing. The six of them have not only worked the middle pastures but moved onto the upper, wild hillsides, where they’ve done a great job eating leaves and snarfing up the still-green blackberry leaves.  The Mason Ditch is off, so they’ll spend a good part of the day walking along the rocky bottom of the ditch (very good for their hooves), cleaning up the lush and still green grasses that cover the ditch banks.

That LG stopped eating her pig food worried me at first, even though I watched her turn rocks in the ditch bottom to snack on crayfish, or dig into the soft, leafy soil on the hillside to enjoy worms and grubs. She’s easily 350 pounds now. How could she be getting enough calories, what with the cold nights and the grasses dried and browned? But even if I walked out with her feed bucket, she refused to leave her new herd for a meal. If I tried to lock her into her feeding area and the sheep wandered off, she panicked.

Then it happened. I came out at lunchtime, hoping to coax LG into the orchard for at least a bite or two. Instead, I found the whole herd/flock already in the orchard waiting for me. I opened the fence to LG’s feeding area, expecting to fight off sheep. Instead, the ewes stayed on the ground, chewing their cud, as my massive gilt casually made her way through the gate. When the big black girl was done with her meal, the sheep got up and off they went to graze until sunset.

Having worked this miracle of cross-species communication, LG has now set her sites on getting her new sisters to join her in the shelter for the night. Every evening she informs the sheep there’s plenty of room and wouldn’t it be nice if they all cuddled? I think that’s hoping for one miracle too many. None of the sheep are willing to get THAT close to her even if it means they’re covered in frost in the morning, something they don’t seem to mind.

All of this leaves me wondering if the sheep will miss Lonely Girl when she’s gone, which will be soon. Probably not. Sheep are opportunists. They’ll be sleeping in that shelter in a heartbeat. But I’ll miss her.

I continue to toy with the idea of a year with no livestock other than the sheep and Tom and his girls. But who will I teach to drink from the hose? Who will skip happily across the fields?  Who will flop down at my side, eyes closed, and wait for me to rub her belly? More to the point, who’s going to make me laugh? Guess the ovine girls are going to need a ram. I need lambs!

 

6 Sheep

This is an update on Lonely Girl. My last little (okay, not so little) piggy girl got tired of constantly complaining about being alone somewhere around the middle of last week. Once she realized that complaining wasn’t going to bring back her sisters, Lonely Girl took a look around and reconsidered her options. There weren’t many. If she wanted company, the only things available were three turkeys and the five ewes who always appeared around pig feeding time. (This, as I’ve mentioned before, is because my sheep love pig food.) That’s when Lonely Girl decided that four legs and a soft nose were close enough to pig physiology. If she couldn’t get her sisters back, then she was going to be a sheep.

Now Tiny and her daughters and granddaughter weren’t really down with this. That’s mostly likely because among Lonely Girl’s irrepressible piggy behaviors are biting at hind quarters and swinging an impervious skull when challenged. But the harder the sheep tried to escape their new, persistent big black shadow, the more determined Lonely Girl became that these sheep were her new herd. It was ‘insinuate herself into their little flock, or bust!’

I’m not certain she would have succeeded if not for the Mason Ditch going dry. A dry ditch is a big deal here on the farm because the receding waters reveal an amazing variety of tasty foods. Last year, my chickens spent the whole shutdown cleaning up crayfish. The cats and the eagles catch the fish marooned under my front bridge. Pigs also love the crayfish, but will happily turn the rocks and nibble on the weeds (ditchweed?) they expose. As for the sheep, they work their way up and down the dry bed consuming the lush grass they can’t otherwise reach without getting their hooves wet. Sheep are squeamish about wet toes.

So there my sheep were, torn between escaping the pig or grazing on lush green grass. Grazing won. So as Lonely Girl came to graze alongside them, they set their legs and held their ground. And much to her credit, Lonely Girl settled down with them, minding her head and her own business. That first day I went down to check on them around noon. They had lined up nicely, each clearing up her own segment of bank.

On Day Two of the shutdown, Lonely Girl, who loves to linger in bed until mid-morning, emerged around 9 AM to discover she’d been left behind by her new herd/flock. Being a pig whose eyes are covered by her floppy ears, she couldn’t see that the sheep had made their way to the back of the property. When I realized what had happened I went down to rescue her. The instant she saw me she was at my heels, complaining again about being alone. I walked her back to the sheep. When she saw them, she grunted in pleasure and immediately took her place in that grazing line. By Day Three, the pig had decided to become an early riser. She even refused her pig food in preference for the sheep and their grass-consuming habits.

Today took a new turn. I put out pig food–just in case–but Lonely Girl again turned her back on that mill-produced stuff in favor of her new girls. That’s when Tiny, crafty creature that she is, recognized an opportunity. At midday I came out to discover that Lonely Girl had knocked open the gate to her feeding area, invited the sheep in, then had gone to lay in the sun against the orchard fence while her replacement siblings took their time eating up every last crumb of pig food. There wasn’t a complaining grunt or a massive swinging porcine head to be seen, just pleased critters. Talk about buying love with food!

Tomorrow, I’m going to have five sick sheep and one very content-with-herself cross-species pig/sheep girl. Ah well, at least she’s quiet.

Lonely Girl

Lonely girl trying to make friends with the sheep.

It’s that time of year and four out of my five piggies are now gone. That leaves me with one lonely girl, who faces the same fate as her siblings later this week. But for the moment, she’s by herself for the first time in her life.

It hasn’t been easy for her to make the transition to “only pig,” and let me say that she’s told me repeatedly just how awful it is. I know I haven’t had that many pigs over these last years–the total being fifteen–but none of them were as verbal as this hog. This girl can grunt faster than an AK47 shoots. The minute she catches a glimpse of me coming toward her she starts a rapid fire “hunk-hunk-hunking.” She continues making this low, grumbly noise the whole time we’re together.

Although it sounds almost aggressive, it isn’t. It can’t be, not when she keeps on talking while I scratch her ears, her back, and eventually, her belly. She chatters away like this while we’re walking across the field, while I’m feeding her, while she grazes in my garden, which I’ve allowed her to enter because there’s still some beautiful grass in there. So far, she hasn’t tried the chard or the kale.

She’s just a prattling piggy, and now that she doesn’t have any sisters left, she’s perfectly willing to include me in the conversation. I think that’s because neither the sheep nor the turkeys have any interest in joining her in conversation. She doesn’t want to talk to the dogs. This full moon has been a rough one. The ditch is off and coyotes are circling the property, which means Bear has barked all night long for the last three nights. Apparently, Miss Pig-Manners is punishing them for disturbing her sleep.

Knowing she’s lonely, I’ve done my best to comfort her in the time-honored fashion given to mothers. I feed her. It started with the leftover homemade yeast rolls from Thanksgiving. (I so don’t need to be eating bread!) She’s quite the dainty eater, refusing to bite the bread and instead waiting for me to break it into small pieces, which she nibbles carefully. There was one piece of pumpkin (well, actually hubbard squash) pie left, so I took it down to her. That won me a bit of quiet. She snuffled it for a moment, then ate in with delicate little bites that were carefully savored. I swear she puts my manners to shame.

On Saturday I won the treat lottery when I got my hands on a bag of “compost” from Natural Grocers in Sedona. What they call compost is the contents of the produce department’s trash can and includes both trimmings and rejects. I came home with about 50 pounds of squash, apples, pears, one persimmon, lots of lettuce, celery, carrot tops, and tomatoes. Lonely Girl “hunk-hunked” between bites and battles with the sheep over the fruit.

Yes, each one of my ovine girls did their best to intimidate a 350 pound hog, but then we all know that sheep are the brightest bulbs in the pack. However, what they lack in brain power, they more than make up for in determination and a thick skull. I giggled as each one took a turn at lowering her head to headbutt the pig three times their size. I’ve said this before but it bears repeating. Dorper Sheep are meant to be raised to weight on nothing but grass, but no one ever asked them if that was their dietary preference. My sheep would much rather eat chicken food, pig food, fruit, lettuce, and roses. (Ack! They once again got up here and trimmed my roses for me!)

Competition aside, no one was left disappointed when all was said and done, and there was nothing left except the tomatoes. What does it say about us pasta sauce lovers that nothing here wants to eat tomatoes, not even the turkeys?

As for me, I’m going to miss the lonely girl once she’s gone. It’s sure going to be quiet around here without her.

 

A Bit of Joy

Thank goodness for tenants and my piggy girls. If not for them, my continuing spate of catastrophes would have been hard to tolerate. This last week I discovered a crack in the water pipe leading to the house. How did I discover it? I was working in my kitchen when all of a sudden I had no water pressure. This was instantly followed by a long string of really bad words and a quick walk to the pump house.

On the way I passed my new tenant, who lives in her RV near the water tanks. I said hello to Christina, then mentioned that I was looking for a water leak. “Oh,” she replies, “I noticed a wet spot right over–oh.” We stopped together to view the bubbling pond at the edge of the pump house. No need for further explanation.

Certain the break was in the pipes I had fixed the summer before last, I brought a few spades from under the porch and we launched into a cold and muddy excavation. MIracle of miracles! It wasn’t my repair, a fact for which I was very grateful. Always good to know I did a good job on something. This break was in a different pipe, the one going into the house. The walnut tree next to the pump house that the previous owner allowed to get huge had broken through a coupling.

I mentally chanted out another round of really bad words. This was at least an hour and a half of work, if I could find everything I needed to fix it in the barn, and the water was off to the house when I was supposed to be going out to dinner in half an hour. That’s when Christina won herself her place on the farm. The moment she heard about my plans for that night, she snatched my spade from me and insisted on taking care of the whole mess.

The next morning the water was back on and the pipe was fixed with two rubber couplings held fast to the pipe with metal sleeves. Wow! When did they invent those? All I can say is that whoever came up with it deserves a Nobel prize. Someday, when I have nothing else to do, I’m going to dig out all my other patches and replace the couplings with these.

After waiting a couple of days to make sure the couplings held, I waited until the afternoon when it had warmed up to rebury the pipe. The hole was about half full by the time I ran out of dirt. At that point I had two choices. Either I took the wheelbarrow down to the far pasture for more dirt or I sat on the retaining wall in the sun and watched the pigs. I chose the pigs.

I’d only brought them back up to the orchard that morning and they were enjoying the change in scenery. Two of them were sunbathing on the grass while girl #3 had found a shallow spot at the edge of in the pond. She was flopping from side to side, doing her best to coat herself with mud. Her wrassling had disturbed the pair of ducks who have made themselves at home in my water feature. I suspect these are the same ducks that came to stay last winter. But of course, this piggy girl had never before seen swimming birds. She gave a grunt that sounded for all the world like a large question mark, and took a few tentative steps into the water toward the paddling birds. Back the ducks floated. Piggy girl retreated into her muddy spot. Out the ducks came. Before long she was pacing back and forth along the bank, driving the ducks from side to side. I swear she was giggling as she did it.

That caught the attention of the other two, who came to see why she was doing this. Grunting and barking to each other, they discussed this strange set of birds. Then one of them noticed the irrigation pipe I use to fill the pond. She backed up and used her snout to roll it toward the water’s edge. Half of it dropped into the water and the ducks disappeared into the thick stand of cattails. They waited a moment, then two of them wandered back to their chosen sunny spot.

The remaining girl started to turn away then decided the pipe would look much better if it were completely in the water. She gave it a little shove with her snout. The pipe sank, burbling loudly as it descended into water and settled into the sticky, bentonite-clay silt from which I may never retrieve it. I swear that as she heard that sound a massive exclamation point appeared above her equally massive head. She put her snout in the water and began to blow bubbles.

Just what I needed–a good giggle and a little bit of joy.

 

Really?!

“Really?!” I said, my head tilted up to the gorgeous blue sky on Thursday morning. I was limping again, having tweaked a tendon even though I don’t recall stepping wrong. I was standing near the pig shelter. Stretched out in front of me was my favorite piggy girl, the one who showed belly every time I got close. She was on her side, looking miserable and making pitiful little grunts.

The previous day this big girl hadn’t joined the usual feeding frenzy and had instead waited before she got up. Rather than following her sisters into the pasture, she went to lay in the sun near the pond. When she hadn’t moved by noon I got worried. I tested for a temperature. She didn’t have one. Just in case, I shoved some elderberry goop down her throat, which she definitely didn’t appreciate. After that, I stood back and watched, not liking the fact that she hadn’t had anything to eat or drink during the day.

It was almost dark before she got up to return to the shelter. That’s when I saw the limp. I breathed in relief, now sure I knew what had happened. One of her sisters had swung a massive head (they’re at about 300 pounds now) and hit her in the shoulder.

Although that explained her limp, it didn’t explain her lack of appetite. If there’s one thing pigs do no matter what, it’s eat. Sure that all she needed was some encouragement and an easy meal, I stuck a bowl under her nose the next morning. She turned her head to the side. By 10:00 AM she hadn’t left the shelter or touched her food. That’s when I knew I had no choice. She was suffering and that’s something I don’t allow.

However, that didn’t stop me from addressing the Powers That Be with my not-so-rhetorical question. It hadn’t been enough to lose a cow and a calf on Tuesday? Now, ready it or not, I had to say good-bye to another of my animals.

Farming is always about managing death, not life. I’ve known that from very early on in my life here on the farm. And although the piggy girls were always intended to fill a freezer, albeit after a very nice life spent grazing grass under a warm Arizona sun, it was still a “straw” moment.

Come December I’ll be down to five sheep, Tom, one turkey hen to be his mate, and that hen’s sole surviving son. The New Year is always a good time to reassess. I’ll keep you posted.

 

Sadness

Saturday evening, June gave me the spotted heifer I wanted so much. My first inkling that all was not going to go well was when I saw Little Iris’s hooves appear. Usually, calf hooves are aligned, hoof to hoof, knee to knee. Iris’s first hoof appeared by itself, and her second hoof appeared near the knee of her extended leg. More importantly, her hooves were way too large for a newborn calf. June, it seems, was indeed overdue. The cost of holding onto her calf for so long was a big baby.

This alignment suggested the baby’s shoulder was caught in the birth canal. I worked with June until we got the baby turned and straightened. By then I could see Iris’s nose. Her nose was as out-sized as her hooves. June gave a great big heave-ho and pushed out a calf who was as long and taller than Bear. Mama crooned to her new baby as she licked her clean (helped by Moosie, of course). I watched as part of the placenta appeared, then dropped. Despite a few small tears, everything looked positive, so I crossed my fingers, knowing the next hours were crucial.

Then Iris found her feet and I realized June had given birth to a calf that was too tall to reach her mother’s teats. Of course by now June’s udder was beyond swollen. But nature has a way of taking care of these issues and either Iris would figure out she needed to kneel, or I’d help her to learn how to kneel.

Saturday night was spent keeping an eye on the girls. June took almost ten gallons of warm apple cider vinegar water and Sunday morning they both looked good, except Iris wasn’t yet on her mother. That was still okay. Calves have 24 hours of reserves in them and I kept a close watch, waiting for it to come together.

Then at 10 am, June went down with Milk Fever. Treatments were given, including a Calcium Glucanate IV, and hope rebounded when June got back on her feet. However, as the vet watched her walk, he identified nerve damage in June’s left leg, no doubt caused by giving birth to what was essentially a three-week-old calf. By then Iris was really needing her mother’s colostrum. That left me no choice but to milk June a little and fill a bottle, even though I knew this might exacerbate her Milk Fever.

That’s when I discovered the mastitis. Whether this was caused by June sitting for too long on her swollen udder or it was a chronic problem she brought with her is anyone’s guess. But it was the moment that I knew this wasn’t going to end well.

Although June fought hard, mastitis, nerve damage, Milk Fever and the possibility of internal injuries was more than she could handle. She died Tuesday morning. By Tuesday evening, little Iris was at Tres Hermanas Ranch where they have a nurse cow named Sugar, who’ll take on a pretty little orphan.

I’m grateful that June came into my life, with her crazy games and her dancing, and I thank her for producing the prettiest calf I’ve ever seen. But now it’s time me to reevaluate where I am here on the farm and what comes next.

Another disappointing week

So here I am, another week older and I still don’t have a new calf (or milk) and I haven’t finished that #$%^@ book! That said, the book is much closer to being finished than it was a week ago because I finally figured out whodunit. (Praise be! I had myself completely fooled.)

June is also much closer to delivering.  Poor thing is completely miserable. She spends most of her day lying down. Yesterday I watched her try to stand up. She rocked on her front legs three times before that back end even left the ground. The size of her udder suggests she’d going to be a four-gallon-a-day girl. That’s good for me and cheese making.

the little dots are baby spiders

However, this is another expectant mother on the property who did complete her mission. That Lynx spider now has hundreds of little babies popping out of her egg sack, which you may recall she moved onto my parsley plant. I can’t say they’re adorable, but they are certainly welcome additions to my garden. Speaking of spiders, I ran into another impressive specimen the other day. I think she was a very large yellow garden spider, which Wikipedia named Agriope Aurantia. Her web was almost two feet across and had a very distinctive zigzag line near the center. I’m sorry I didn’t get her picture, because her legs were covered in the most cheerful yellow and green stripes. Before I got to my phone her web was accidentally destroyed during a rush of yard work.

Speaking of plants (we weren’t but let’s do), several years ago I got dinged in a review for one of my mysteries by someone who said unequivocally that flowers that bloom in the spring won’t sprout or re-bloom later in the year.  For the record, I once again protest that this simply isn’t true. This year proves my point. The combination of lots of rain and a string of warm days after a longer string of cold days has resulted in a huge sprout-out of plants in my pastures that don’t usually grow this time of year. That includes cow peas and chicory. My violets, usually spring-only bloomers, are putting on a beautifully scented show. The scarlet runner beans were on death’s door, but are now regrowing and offering up their pretty red blossoms. I’ve got to figure out why those things bloom so well but never give me any beans. My squash plants, which should be giving up the ghost, are instead setting on new squash like crazy. (Yes, I know the new squash won’t make it to ripe.) So are the tomatoes. Even my fig trees have suddenly exploded with a  new batch of figs.

Shy Girl hunting

This warm spell has been a bonus for my piggy girls. I brought them back up to the orchard pasture so they can again swim in the pond. Look out, you tasty little green froggies with golden eyes!  The pigs aren’t the only ones interested in those frogs. Shy Girl, my remaining Gray Torty, has taken to sitting on a log out in the water to chase those little frogs. She came in wet the other day. I’m guessing that log isn’t as stable as she thought and she was swimming with pigs. She did not appreciate my laughter.

And, there you go. Yet another disappointing, calf-less week on the farm. The only positive is that coyotes circle the property every night hoping to get lucky and that keeps the dogs busy. All that running has been good for Bear’s middle-aged spread. I might have to join him in running the fence line if I don’t finish that book soon. But the way I’ve got it figured is that somehow June and I are inextricably tied, each of us waiting for the other to deliver the goods. So, it’s back to Chapter Nineteen for me.

 

Nothing ever changes here

You can probably guess what that means. Yep. The book’s not done and the cow is still pregnant. Okay, I’ll admit that we’re both WAY closer to producing something. I’m thrilled that I have finally resolved who the murderer is. Boy, was I fooled!

I put off writing this post for as long as I could in the hope that June might just produce that calf so I had something to write about. She completely disappointed me…again. So what else is new? However, it is now clear that she will deliver by the full moon, which is Wednesday. But that’s too late for this week’s post and it left me scrambling. I settled for a general update.

The piggy girls are officially large. The sweetest one–the one who always flops down on her side for belly rubs–let me wrap her in a tape measure. I was surprised that she came in at 200 pounds. It’s their short legs that make them look smaller than they are. If they’re 200 pounds now, they’ll likely be leaving the farm around the end of November.

My seven-year-old Tom is beginning to look his age. I noticed the other day that he either can’t or won’t open his eyes all the way any more. That makes me wonder if he might be going blind. He’s also taken to napping at midday out in the middle of the field if it’s sunny. The only thing that really gets him moving is Bear, who likes to run right through the flock just because he can. At least I know Tom’s heart is healthy. He raced all the way across the middle pastures, chasing Bear the other day. Not that the dog noticed.

Speaking of the dogs, my porch smells like dead things once again. At least Moosie left the skunk somewhere else this time. He’s tangled with another raccoon recently–I can tell by the scabs on his nose–but this one got away. How do I know? Because Moosie keeps walking up and down the ditch looking for it. When he didn’t find it on my property, he swam under the bridge that marks the boundary between the farm and my neighbor’s property. Luckily, I saw him go and called him back. I gave him quite the talking-to. Moosie doesn’t wear a collar. He can’t, because Bear considers his collar a handle and carries him by it (half-strangling him). Although he’s micro-chipped, if he escapes the farm, he’s likely to end up in the pound or worse, tangle with something he shouldn’t, like a Javelina.

It looks like I’ll spend the winter without chickens and eggs. As much as I like the disposition of these Brahmas, they simply don’t lay after the Equinox. And for some reason, they’re also moulting, something chickens don’t usually do this late in the year. While they’re moulting, they don’t lay. Right now, I’m lucky to get one egg a day. That has sealed their fate. I see 20 chickens in my freezer around the same time as the pigs leave. Next year, I’ll buy Buckeyes to replace them. Now those were work-chickens. The Buckeye breed was developed by a woman from Ohio, hence “Buckeye.”  They are a good-sized brown bird and tolerate both hot and freezing temperatures, and are pretty much trouble-free, or at least they were for me over the three years that I had them. I’m planning to raise my chicks in my new chicken tractor/house, but only if I can figure out a June-proof door. I’m thinking metal conduit this time for the frame.

Thunderheads rising over House Mountain

That pretty pink-and-green spider I wrote about is a Lynx spider. She’s proved to be a very attentive mother. After I looked at her once too often, she moved her egg sack from the beebalm to a parsley plant in the same garden. The sack is looking pretty dingy after all the rain. Having learned that the Lynx spider is a mighty hunter, I’m hoping Mama stays were she is. I could use some help on pest patrol in that garden.

Once again, clouds are gathering and rain threatens. I can’t complain, not when all my fruit trees are so happy and I have cute little frogs living in all the puddles. However, I am sick of wearing my muck boots. The leaves began to turn in earnest this week, which makes the sheep happy. They hoover them up, eating them as if they were potato chips. They’ve also spent a lot of time on the hillside eating the yet-green elderberry leaves. That’s a little strange because they refuse to touch those leaves any other time of the year. Autumn must cause some chemical change in the foliage. Or maybe the sheep are bolstering their immune system for the winter with elderberry’s healthy properties. Now that my little girls are seven month old, I’m thinking of buying four or five little ram lambs. That would not only provide meat, but I could let one grow up to make more babies when the time is right. For the record, I won’t keep another ram. I’m done being head-butted.

And there you go. That’s the full farm update. Like I said, nothing ever changes around here until it does.