Christmas Thunder

Woke up this morning to a huge bang, couldn’t wrap my mind around the sound for a moment. It was thunder, on Dec 27 with 2 foot on snow on the ground. Now we have rain, pouring at times, what a mess. Ah, Michigan. I want the snow to melt off the driveway and walkway but the road is becoming a river, and will probably be a skating rink tomorrow.

I think about the weather, trying to remember it from when I was a kid. I don’t think I remember thunderstorms in the winter and from my recollection lots of snow on Christmas was not common, usually we just had a dusting to an inch or so. However we did seem to have more snow later in winter than we normally have now, but this year may be more like the old winters.

This is the time to reminisce about the good old days. I grew up in the fifties and sixties. I had a large family and Christmas was always fun. We didn’t get tons of expensive stuff but we always had presents. How my Mom and Dad did it I will never know. I tried to remember my favorite Christmas gift of all time but I really can’t think of anything truly memorable. I always asked for a pony or horse but never got one. I did get lots of Breyer plastic horses as I grew up.

Our current Christmas tradition is to drive down to my moms on Christmas eve, have a potluck type meal there then be at home by ourselves Christmas day and have our kids visit at different times in the following days. I used to love being at my Moms for Christmas but the growing families have stretched that tradition to the limit. My parents added an addition to the house just so they could host large gatherings but we have out grown the addition. Thirty some people were there - many bratty kids included. The noise and confusion are horrendous. A kids table was set up but the kids just went wherever they chose and pretty much did what ever they chose, including pushing older people out of the way.

I don’t know if it’s this generation as a whole or just the way some of my relatives raise kids but today’s kids have no respect for anyone. I know I was mischievous and a bit odd as a child but I would never have pushed an older person out of the way, taken their seat, took all the tomatoes in the bowl, told an aunt to shut up, told my mom to shut up or hit my father, some of the behavior I witnessed. Bring back spanking I say.

I do have to say that my own granddaughters are well behaved, polite and helpful and I am not being prejudicial here. I have to commend my son and daughter in law for the way they have raised them. Of course they have been raised in a stable family with two parents, something most of the other kids in that mess haven’t experienced. Most of the older nieces and nephews are also polite and well behaved and I had a couple of pleasant conversations with them. It’s the fourth generation that’s been ruined.

We really need to rent a hall next year, especially if families continue to expand. Poor mom needs to have more time to talk to everyone and not be burdened with a big mess. I am a big proponent of tradition but sometimes they need to change. Ah Christmas, sometimes I wish I could just close my eyes and have it all done with.

Winter, Bah Humbug

I so know why the ancient people in the northern hemisphere celebrated the winter solstice, the longest night- shortest day of the year. It meant that now the days start getting longer- hurray! There will still be a lot of dark days but they are getting longer- no matter how slowly. Lets just get this part of the year over with and gone.

This has been the worst December that I can remember for snow fall and cold. Global warming - bring it on, I’ll take it. I am wading through snow to my waist here to do chores, you get a path made and the wind blows a drift back across it. My knees and hips are killing me. We paid a guy to plow our drive and the next day the wind drifted the snow across it deep enough it was to my knees.

We live in Michigan, I should be used to the snow, right? Let’s just say we have been spoiled the last few years, both by lesser amounts of snow and a neighbor who shoveled our path to the barn with a little 4- wheeler thing- its too narrow between the fence and where our cars are parked for a big plow. The neighbor is gone now. We have a snow thrower- but it wasn’t used in several years and Steve couldn’t get it started this fall. It has a pull start that makes it very hard for either of us to use too.

The road in front of our house was plowed, but it drifted over too. We live near a corner and its worse on the North- South road - pick ups and 4 wheels are getting stuck there. Wind chills make the temps feel way below zero- not a fit day for anyone. As soon as they plow the roads I’ll have to pay to have the drive plowed again. And it looks like we are going to get another round of messy weather tomorrow and Christmas Eve. Looks like the family Christmas get together may not happen for us. It’s an hour and a half drive. I no longer take big driving risks.

My little horses haven’t made many trips outside the barn- the snow is up to their bellies. The tom turkey stands just out side the chicken door but I don’t think anything else ventures out. The poor duck at least has the shelter I made him but that is where the worst drifts are between the barn and the pond gate and I have a hard time getting food to him.

Last night I crawled through a back bedroom window to get into the back yard. The dog door had so much snow piled up against it the door wouldn’t open. All the gates to the yard had huge drifts in front of them and I would have had to wade through tons of snow to get back to where their door is. Outside the window snow was to my waist but it was a much shorter trip. I cleared the snow away in front of their door and a small area for them to potty in. Then I scrambled in a very undignified manner back through the window. We have no door that opens into the back yard but that is going to change this spring!

I just keep thinking that in 3 months it won’t seem so bad, when we get the spring equinox and maybe we will get lucky and get a January thaw- of course we will probably all drown then! And we will be getting stuck in the mud instead of the snow!

winter is here

It’s definitely winter around here. The wind is howling, temperatures are in the 20’s and snow is on the ground. It’s sunny but miserable out. I don’t like winter- at least when it’s cold enough to freeze the hose to the barn. I hate carrying water to the barn, emptying frozen buckets and trying to keep the poor animals warm. I also hate having to put on 6 layers of clothes and being too bulky to walk.

The old white duck has finally came up to the shelter I made for him by the gate to the pond. I though I would give him a few days to get used to being there then I would go and catch him. But now I can’t get the gate open there. By the time I scraped away enough snow he will be long gone. I just keep putting food and water over the fence.

Even the turkeys have given up sleeping on the barn roof . I know it’s got to be boring for the chickens and turkeys to spend most of their day inside, our inside coop isn’t that big. I did see the turkeys outside for a little while on Friday. They came over the pen fence and were sunning in front of the white barn door. Today I threw a bunch of hay I swept off the floor in front of the hay stack in their coop for them to scratch through.

There’s always one hen who doesn’t want to stay with the rest. I have a new Henny- Penny now. She is always in the front of the barn, she goes over the outside pen walls and comes around into the main barn. She will run in the coop when I open the door to throw treats in but that’s it. She eats cat food with the cats and helps herself to any chicken feed or horse feed that spills. She has been laying in a corner by the hay. When I am in the barn she follows me around clucking just like Henny did. Henny re-incarnated I guess.

We put up the Christmas tree. It’s on a small table to raise it off the floor and so far, no doggie problems. They did steal some decorations out of the boxes while the tree was being decorated but have left the tree alone. They all just want to sit on someone’s lap and cuddle. Some prefer my lap, others prefer Steve’s. When we are both sitting in the living room its doggie heaven. When I am in here writing they fight over who sits on Steve.

Last Monday when I went to the barn, Sarah, one of the kennel dogs was carrying something in her mouth. I though it was a rat, then I saw the eyes. It was a tiny little screech owl. I was quite upset. I can’t imagine her killing an owl in her kennel. There isn’t any food in the outside run for either a mouse or a owl to want. The window to the barn loft is right over her kennel run. I am thinking maybe the owl flew into the window pane and fell into her pen. I got to look at it closely, I have never seen a tiny owl like that and I didn’t know we had them around here. I have seen Great Horned Owls when I have been out at night, those are huge in comparison to the screech owl. It was about the size of a pigeon.

The bird feeder has been quite busy the last couple of days. I have noticed a change in visitors there, even since summer. Of course some flew south but I haven’t been seeing any of the big woodpeckers, just the Downy’s . And we are going through a lot less suet. That seems odd. And I have been seeing a lot more Blue Jays, which were scarce for a while and less Chick a dees. I haven’t seen Evening Grosbecks either. I wonder what caused the change.

Oh, I long for spring. And it isn’t even Christmas yet.

Softer farm post

We don’t have any snow falling yet but we are waiting for a major winter storm to begin here in Michigan. Steve was scheduled to have a colonoscopy tomorrow afternoon in Saginaw, which is an hour’s drive in good weather. Before he downed those lovely little pills that would empty him out we decided to cancel. He got to eat today. I just don’t think I want to be driving tomorrow.

My son Jeremy and his family were up on Thanksgiving. We cooked our lovely big turkey - she was almost 30 lbs and Jeremy had to help me get it out of the pan. I had rubbed her with butter that I had seeped fresh sage and garlic in and it tasted wonderful. Steve couldn’t eat any red meat this weekend so he has had plenty of turkey. Of course we had all the other good trimmings to go with the home grown bird. God was gracious to allow us this lovely meal with the family.

I had another homegrown item on the table too. A beautiful yellow rose from the tree rose Sunsprite, that I am overwintering on the porch. It smells so wonderful. If this one doesn’t make it through the winter I will certainly buy another one. My tuberous begonias are still blooming on the porch as are the lantanas and geraniums.

The sun shone here yesterday, a gift from nature and God before the storm. I cleaned out the horse stall and built a shelter for the duck out by where I have been feeding him. I can’t get him to come into the pasture up by the barn this year. He seems to be sheltering on the north bank of the pond in the bushes. I worry that he will be able to get through deep snow back to this side but there is nothing I can do. Maybe if he does he will use the shelter I made and stay on this side.

I must say I have much to be grateful for this year. My first published book, enough money to pay our bills, enough health to live comfortably.
I'm prepared for the snow so let it come!

Man Trampled to death at Walmart

I have to comment on a news happening. I haven't seen or heard any big newspapers or channels commenting on this in the last couple days. A man was trampled to death in a Walmart by shoppers trying to get into the store for a good deal. Or shall I say greedy animals trying to get into a store? Having worked in retail and having seen some of this mentality I can’t say I am surprised. I’m surprised that it hasn’t happened before. I used to have nightmares about a fire breaking out in the store and customers refusing to leave until someone rang up their sales. I have no doubt it would happen.

In the Kmart that I worked in we had a gentleman have a heart attack in an aisle. He was laying on the floor with some of us trying to help him and people kept trying to go around us with their shopping carts. I got up and closed off the aisle, only to have people complain about having to go around.

During one of our famous blue light specials another worker and I came from the stockroom with a flatbed of wrapping paper they were advertising and were attacked by a crowd at the door. My friend was actually knocked down but I managed to help her up. We stood back and let them rip the boxes open with their bare hands, the paper was gone in seconds and people were entering the stockroom looking for more. I refused to help with those super specials after that.

What really ticks me is that the shooting at another store in California is still getting news coverage but the Walmart death, which I think is far more disturbing, has vanished from the news. I have no doubt that Walmarts ability to control vast advertising markets has something to do with that. The news channels don’t want to anger them.

Is it Walmarts fault? To some extent, yes. They have the right to advertise sales, that’s a good thing for everyone. But when you see huge crowds building up outside the store hours before opening you better do some quick security planning. I think maybe all cities should ban crowds from assembling outside stores like this unless the store agrees to hire off duty armed policemen to control them. A couple of snarling police dogs at the entrance of that store may have kept the other animals in line. But then you have pushing from behind etc. so maybe the crowds should just be dispersed.

Certainly when they break through the door and trample people to death they shouldn’t be rewarded by allowing them to have the items they were after. Walmart actually allowed those animals to purchase things before they closed the store- when the police got there and demanded they close. I bet some people left bragging that they “ Had to kill someone to get this!” How horrible! If I was an employee at that store I would have refused to wait on anyone that pushed through those doors and probably would have went home.

To make matters worse that store actually re-opened the same afternoon. What poorly paid Walmart employee had to wash the blood off the floor? A horrific death occurred and yet money making prevailed, the store couldn’t be closed for a day to let other employees get over their shock and to show some respect for the employee who died in the line of duty. They should have closed and paid employees for the day. It’s a sad day when people are so afraid of losing a low paying job that they would actually go to work that day.

Even though it was caught on security cameras police say they will have a hard time charging anyone. Bull. Take everyone who paid by check or credit card from the time the incident happened to the time the police closed the store and charge them with at least accessory to murder. If they weren’t repelled enough to leave after what happened then they are more than likely the ones who didn’t care about stomping on a man on the ground. They have cameras at the check outs too, so ID all those who thought a life was worth getting a good deal.

During the chaos Walmart probably lost as much money to shoplifters as they would have if they immediately shut down all cash registers. Were they afraid for their lives? Then maybe its time to re-think security for these events. No parking lot line ups for more than ten minutes before opening. Actually close the lots off and chase out anyone walking into the lot before that. When the lots are opened people have to park and get out so it would disperse some of the crowd. Armed guards at the door might be another idea. Give some of the local police officers overtime pay [ paid by the store] to stand at the entrance and control crowds.

If this kind of melee happens again maybe its time to charge the store with something- inciting a riot? Believe me, these stores love to create excitement, people fighting over what they perceive are scarce items make other people anxious to grab things too. It’s about money- about sales figures. So it is up to them to make sure that no one gets hurt in the process, particularly the employees.

I am also angry at the liberal news media who have backed off this story. They should be chastising all the idiots out there who are willing to take a life to get a good deal on some gadget they probably don’t need anyway. Idiots who are too afraid of their own kids who can’t tell them “we can’t afford that”. Morons who value things over anyone’s life. The liberal media are probably kowtowing to Walmart when it tells them it wants this out of the news. After all aren’t we supposed to be promoting spending to help the economy?

This is one reason I never, ever shop on the Friday after Thanksgiving. The deals aren’t worth watching people turn into animals. Black Friday sure lives up to its name.

Abandoned pets

Well the farm has a new resident. Hopefully, a temporary one. A woman brought a rabbit into our office this week that she found in her yard. It walked right up to her and wanted to be picked up. It’s a tortoise shell Rex rabbit, that means its gray and orange mottled, with short plush fur. He is very tame and was obviously a pet.

The woman put the rabbit in her pole barn, loose on the floor, while she asked neighbors if they lost it. After a few days it became obvious no one was going to claim it and her beagles were circling the barn and howling. So she brought it to the Extension office.

I tried to get everyone else to take it home but to no avail. I used to raise rabbits and show them but I soon remembered why I decided to get rid of all my rabbits. I am very allergic to them. I forgot how allergic I was getting- it was about ten years ago- but my body remembered like it was yesterday. Soon my eyes were red, itchy and swollen, stupid me was cuddling the bunny several times as it sat in a box by my desk. I drove home with it and luckily Steve had found one of our old cages and set it up for him in the barn so all I had to do was pop him in it.

He seems fairly happy there- he was too hot in the office, but every time I go near him he wants me to pet him and I can’t. My eyes start itching even when I feed him. He needs a new home quick. I am too soft hearted. I think I will call him Riley.

People are dropping animals off all over, a sign of bad economy. They think a farm will take them in or like in the case of the rabbit, that they will be able to just take care of themselves. But farms can’t take everyone’s pets in, and pet animals don’t do well in the wild, with the exception of cats maybe. Even a lot of cats die trying to adjust to wild conditions. I saw a Siamese cat sitting by the road in a very remote location. It may have come from a nearby home although I couldn’t see any homes nearby, but my guess it was dumped. After a few days they will seldom let you catch them. This one ran off as soon as I stopped.

People need to be responsible and take their pets to a shelter and surrender them or have them put down humanely if they can’t keep them. You have to admit you can’t care for them and it’s hard. It’s harder than just leaving them or turning them loose but when you get a pet it’s your responsibility to do the hard things too. Besides it’s illegal and cruel to abandon them.

I know that when people lose their homes or hard times come the pets become a lesser concern to some, but there are organizations and shelters that will help. Don’t kid yourself that a farm wants your pet or that country homes will let it hang around. And they won’t learn to take care of their self in the wild either. Man up and do the right thing. And for God’s sake if things look shaky for you don’t get new pets or let yours breed.

I wish I could help all the homeless animals but I am realistic enough to know my limits. I can’t take in any more dogs for example. I don’t want more cats but they seem to find us. We feed what comes along. The bunny is ok because we had the cage and the barn space and he doesn’t eat much but he needs a home somewhere else too. I might consider other farm animals if they were tame, but that’s my limit.

nearly winter

My book is published! You can find it on Amazon - The Complete Idiots Guide to Country Living- It's getting good reviews too.


It’s a cold and wet November day, rather mild in the 50’s but just miserable. I just came back from the barn, feeding time. It was getting dark and the hen turkeys were all inside, but the stupid tom was sitting on the ridge of the barn roof in the rain. Ain’t that just like a male? Next week on Thursday evening the big white hen goes to see the butcher. It’s the closest appointment I could get to Thanksgiving. She will have to sit in the frig for a week or maybe I will freeze her - I don’t know.

I have stopped letting the horses out into the larger pasture. It’s not much good anymore and the weather has been nasty. They are getting all the hay they can eat. I haven’t been able to walk Charlie as much as he needs. He’s getting big, I let the brow band out on his halter but we may need to buy him a bigger one soon. I was able to contact our horse farm neighbor to get farrier information. She is going to send him over to our place on Monday when he comes to hers.

It’s my granddaughters 13th birthday on Sunday. She’s having a big family party. I told her I would bake the cake and asked her how she wanted it to be decorated. She wants pink and white. Of course everything is red and green now - but I did manage to find some pink decorations. The cake will be cherry chip. It’s amazing how fast time flies. Our oldest granddaughter will be 17 in January. The thought that I could be a great grandmother in a few years scares me. My next oldest sister has yet to have her first grandchild, although a younger sister has quite a few young grandchildren.

Deer firearm season starts tomorrow here. The gunshots have been going off around here for weeks, now it will be legal. We saw all the “hunters” in the grocery store today loading up on beer and canned chili. I hope they kill a lot of them, we sure need herd reduction around here.

I still have petunias blooming in the old grill up by the barn. Some sweet alyssum and snapdragons are blooming under the oak tree. The grass is still very green in the yard. I like global warming so far. We are supposed to get snow here in a couple of days though.
I need some winter weather so I can buckle down and write my nest book.

Saginaw valley

I had to drive through the beautiful Saginaw valley here in Michigan last week as I drove my husband to the VA hospital in Saginaw for his regular check up. I love seeing all the German –Dutch farms along the way, brick or white clapboard farm homes, big red barns with green roofs, often with hex signs or the farmers name on them, and always neat and tidy. Along this route you seldom see the type of farms with collapsing barns and hundreds of pieces of rusting machinery in the yard.

Sugar beets are being harvested now and we passed a piling station with huge flat topped mountains of beets. It’s strange to think that sweet white sugar comes from those huge brown ugly lumps. Sugar smells awful when it’s being refined too, sort of a burning sugar smell crossed with cooking cabbage smell. We have a refinery near us in Caro and this time of year the smell hangs over the town.

The farms in the Saginaw valley produce a variety of things from sugar beets to corn. Corn harvest is just starting around here. Winter wheat has already been planted and is coming up.

We had some light snow last night and some of it actually stuck long enough for me to see it as I went out to do chores in the barn. I need to get out and finish cleaning up my garden, composting the corn stalks and picking that last pumpkin. Its sunny today and the next few days aren’t supposed to be too bad but I think winter is closing in.

I had to rescue a hen this morning. We have one who won’t stay in the pen with the rest of the hens, she’s always out with the turkeys. This morning she had managed to get into a fenced off area where we keep junk- rolls of old fence, metal panels, timbers etc. This area is sort of a buffer area between the dog yard and the pasture in back of the barn. There is a metal panel 4 foot high along the bottom at the pasture side with 3 foot of wire at the top of that. The panel keeps the dogs from spending all day barking at the horses or chickens when they are let out.

Somehow this bird had managed to get over seven feet of fence into that space. The dogs could see her and they were going nuts. She tried to fly back over when she saw me but couldn’t make it. I had to go around through 3 gates to get her, carefully working my way through old junk once inside. Not a good way to start the morning. Once she was safe I returned to the barn to see I had left the door open to the hay storage area and Lily and Charley were in there happily munching away- they had found the mother load.

I am trying to teach Charley to lead. He does not like being told what to do at all. He’s little enough I can handle him but he can be a real stinker. We went for a short walk through the pasture today but all he wanted to do was rear and buck. The wind makes him frisky and it makes me cold and willing to quit early.

Tina, our youngest Jack Russell terrier also had an adventure. We bought her a new collar, hot pink, because her old collar had gotten too small and she had been running around for weeks without one. First time we put it on she ran outside and came back inside with it in her mouth to play with- too loose. So Steve added another hole.

Yesterday while I was at work he noticed Tina wasn’t with the other dogs. It was sleeting outside and everyone else was inside. He started to go take a nap then decided he’d better check outside. There was Tina, hanging from the fence. She is a fence climber and her new collar had snagged on a bit of protruding wire, leaving her dangling- her hind feet were just able to touch ground. If she had struggled much and twisted the collar it may have been all over for her. Steve rescued her, a little cold and wet but not harmed otherwise. Needless to say the collar is off again. Thank goodness Steve had a bit of intuition there- he’s not usually the one to act on a hunch.

And so go the adventures of the farm.

Fine weather and horses

It’s a lovely day here in Michigan for Columbus Day. The trees are getting more colorful by the minute. It has been sunny and mild although that is supposed to end today. We still haven’t had a killer frost, if this is global warming I am pleased with it. I picked two tomatoes yesterday, the roses are blooming like crazy and the zinnias and marigolds are still going strong, as well as the hibiscus in front and the buddleia. The moonvine and the impatiens browned a little and quit blooming from the light frost but damage to the rest of things has been slight.

I have had some horsie fun. Last weekend little Charlie colicked. I came in the barn at supper time and found him rolling violently on the stall floor. I called the vet out and tried to keep him upright until he came. He was little enough I could sit on a chair and hold him across my lap but the struggling killed my back. The vet managed to get a pain shot in him and then tried to get some mineral oil down him but didn’t have a tube small enough so we held him and gave him syringes full of mineral oil. All night I checked on him every two hours. He was just standing in a corner with his belly contracting up and down and I was sure he would either need surgery or die. But when I went out after breakfast I could see his tail end was oily and he was feeling better. He must have passed his blockage.

I wormed him and Lily two days later and so far everything has seemed to be fine. Vet thought it might be worms, he said it’s common in foals to colic from worms. Horses have such delicate digestive systems.

My granddaughters came up the next day and Desiree, the youngest, loved brushing Lily and helping me work the burrs out of her mane. Lily is very good with kids. Desiree also got a thrill out of going in the hen house to collect eggs. We took them inside and washed them and then she got to arrange them in a carton to take home. Brianna went for a walk with her dad instead. I asked them to get me some red sumach off the far pasture fence because I wanted to do some art with it and my legs were bothering me too much to go get it myself.

All the horse fun and visitors must have lowered my immune system because on Tuesday I came down with a killer cold, the first I have had in a while. I was feeling very poorly through some of this gorgeous weather so I am glad I was feeling better the last couple days.

Lily had really eaten down all the grass in the small pen so we opened up the east pasture which curves around the pond to her and she is in horse heaven. It’s a nice pasture lined with trees on both sides but there is a bad spot in the fence up by the orchard that I worry about. Lily has the habit of going under instead of over fences and there is loose field fence along there. I fixed part of it today and hopefully she has enough to eat that she won’t be tempted to go anywhere. Last night she came in the barn to get her grain and then she and Charlie just went to sleep in the corner of the stall. It’s the first time I think I have seen her just rest. She is usually looking for something to eat. Since she has been out all day we haven’t fed her much hay but I worry she is getting fat off the grass. I don’t know how people keep these mini horses from getting fat.
I have been letting the chickens out to roam the pasture nearly every afternoon too. The turkeys are getting out all the time again and they have taken to roosting up on the top of the barn or house at night. I worry about them coming down inside the dog pen, even though they are big birds the dogs could really rip them up. One was sitting on the top of one of the kennels this morning, luckily he flew off before a dog noticed him. They come in the front of the barn now looking for cat food which could get them in trouble too.

Speaking of turkeys it’s almost time to get the big white one butchered. She is huge. I am going to have a hard time carrying a cage with her in it. I need to call and make the appointment. It’s harder to butcher when you have just one meat bird and its really tame, but that’s all these big white ones are good for. The bourbon reds and the blue slate we are going to keep and try to breed, if the dogs or an owl don’t get them.

Well this is Michigan after all. Beautiful today, blizzard tomorrow, you just never know. I better get out and enjoy it.

And Wall Street falls

Granny’s advice is serious today.

How does the old song go- “somebody told me Wall Street fell but I was so poor I couldn’t tell”. I have been able to be oddly calm in the face of the frenzied chaos that has been occurring in the financial world. We have just a little money in the bank and it’s been a long time since we had any stocks and bonds to worry about. It does affect my Dad- he had some money in managed pension accounts – but he owns his house and one other house and he and Mom can live on their Social Security without any great strain.

What a shame it is that retirees will bear so much of the burden of this disaster. They don’t have time to wait for a market recovery. I bet they wish the money was in a mattress instead of the stock market or at least a bank. We all learned from this.

While Steve and I survive on very little, we do survive. I guess that’s one time having a Social Security disability check is actually a benefit to the lifestyle. Who would have thought it? I have been hoping to get another book contract to ease our budget a bit and that might be slow in coming because of the financial mess but we can say we are better off than we were a year ago. Life is strange. I am so glad that the disability claim was settled when it was- if we were going through it now the news of the economy might have really put us over the edge.

I know what it feels like to go to bed scared that soon you won’t have a home. I have used food stamps and commodity foods. I feel for the people who are scared to death right now but it will get better. People are going to have to re-adjust their thinking about what a good living is all about.

We were all living on future earnings- there was a time when we did that too. Then Steve got sick. Everything changed rapidly. Never count on what you assume will be there someday. Live on what you have today.

Stop talking about a handout for those who were “taken advantage of” by big credit crooks offering adjustable rate mortgages – usually the handout promoter says mortgages made after 2002. Lots of people were smart enough to buy a home they could afford, with a conventional mortgage and they too are having problems making mortgage payments. They may have bought the house 20 years ago. But if you lost your job and can’t find a new one you are in as much trouble as the dreamer, who believed he was entitled to the house he wanted today and would find a way to pay for it tomorrow. Help everybody who is struggling.

Drop all interest rates to 4 % and give amnesty to all overdue mortgages. Put the unpaid months on the end of the loan. Adjust the loan principal to more correctly reflect the homes current value. If they can’t afford the new lower payment, then let the mortgage holder give the bank the title to the home and walk away without damage to their credit.

One thing not to invest in should be stocks for cell phones and cable TV corporations. People need to take those out of their budgets right away. Put up a TV antenna, watch local channels for free. Carry your cell for 911 calls only- they will work for that after you cancel the contract. The amount you save on those two things might give you enough to pay the mortgage.

new horse

I am a horse owner again. I went out and bought a mini-horse mare and her two month old colt. Lily is a nice little six year old sorrel mare and Charlie is her bouncing sorrel baby. At least I think he will be sorrel. I have all this pasture full of knee high grass and I can’t put her out in it and leave her because she was being kept in a paddock without any grass since the foal was born. It would make her founder. So Steve and I made a small pen just outside the stall in the back of the barn and pulled all the grass out of it. It was last weekend, when we had 5 inches of rain – we worked on and off in the rain.

Lily and son have a nice 10 by 12 box stall that opens to a roughly 12 x 20 pen outside.[ The picture is of Lily in her previous home.] I have been putting her out in the pasture for a short period at a time, which they both love. Twice Lily has managed to get out of the pen into the pasture, the lure of green grass is so strong. Once was in the afternoon and I know she wasn’t out more than 2 hours. The second time was at night and I have no idea how long she was out but she is fine.

She eats like a horse- she went through a bale of hay in about 5 days- with very little waste. She isn’t thin- even nursing she is well padded. I don’t want her to get too fat, mini horses look awful with big pot bellies and then they founder easily. I would like to get her out on the pasture more though, Charlie loves racing around and rolling in the grass. And hay is so expensive, we bought it at the feed store and it cost $7.00 for the bale. I have to check with the neighbors to see who has hay for sale. At least she will be easy on the grain – 2 cups twice a day- the bag should last for a while.

I am going to have to mail order a halter for Charlie. You can’t find a mini-foal halter very easily in stores. He is quite friendly and loves to be scratched but is already giving me a bit of a hassle when I try to bring them back into the barn. He follows Lily to the gate then runs off. It takes a lot of coaxing to get him inside.

When I let them out in the morning I have been letting the hens out in the pasture too. The horses don’t seem to mind them, although Lily chases cats. The turkeys look so funny out in the grass. They have been flying out of the pen for some time but they like to go where the hens are going. They roost outside every night on the top rail of the pen. Steve tried to put some chicken wire there yesterday because we are afraid they will get hurt out in the yard but they got out anyway- one was on the barn roof calling its head off this morning.

Tomatoes are about gone but pears and apples are getting ripe. We have some runty grapes too. I need to dig up the potatoes to see what’s there. Cucumbers succumbed to downy mildew. No pickles there. I did make a few pints of tomato sauce but the tomatoes really struggled with the fungal diseases this year. Our pumpkins are small and green. I doubt they will mature. I need to harvest some sage. My moon flower is finally blooming- we haven’t had frost yet although it has come close a few times. Got to get the porch ready to bring in my plants. The zinnias and morning glories are looking good. The ornamental kale is coloring up but I doubt we get to see much of it as the turkeys have found it. They seem to like big leaved plants. They eat a lot of comfrey and that’s fine by me.

We have had a very green summer. This last 5 inches of rain will make the plants and soil moist going into dormancy. Since the ground was pretty dry before it started the flooding around here was minimal. I am just glad the rain wasn’t snow we would have been buried. Summer has been fairly mild too, the way I like it. I hope fall is long and mild.

Early September

The sun is shining at least for a while today. We had the remnants of hurricane Gustav yesterday and the remnants of hurricane Hannah are supposed to be here tonight. The almanac has some interesting things to say about heating and cooling cycles as they relate to sunspot activity and they seem to think we are heading into another cooler period and winter will be cooler than normal.

We are having water problems. When you live in the country that’s one of the things you deal with – your water supply. We had a new pressure tank put on last fall but they didn’t change the pump- now it seems some little box thing on the pump is going- the pump stops working when it sits overnight and Steve has to go down there and give it a thump- then it turns on. I guess that means a repair bill soon. You never realize how important water is until you don’t have free use of it.

And I spent about two hours this morning trying to repair the kitchen floor after one of our lovely dogs tore a piece of the vinyl up right in the middle of the room. There had been a small tear there that had been repaired and glued down, some dog found that to be interesting and enlarged the tear and removed a small piece. You never know what dog you want to get rid of until you catch them eating your floor.

I was grumping about how awful and boring the presidential race was until the new GOP vice presidential candidate was announced. I really like Sarah Palin, 100 times better than O”Bama. Now those who are just enamored of making history can vote for her instead of a conceited, power hungry, half black guy. I too wonder how she is going to manage all the family things with the high powered job, but if she thinks she can do it, I say go for it. We would never ask a man the questions we ask her about family.

Some women can and do manage beautifully. She knows better than anyone else what she is capable of doing and it’s a once in a life time chance a woman would be a fool not to take. She is smart, feisty, conservative and experienced. I hope the two of them, McCain and Palin win. McCain has devoted his life to serving this country and this is probably the last chance he has to become president. He will run it at least as well as O’Bama, probably better.

O’Bama needs to go back to work and actually get some experience and decide what side he is on, take some stands even if they aren’t popular, show he knows how to lead etc. Maybe he can try later although personally I think a man who has written two memoirs at this stage of his life when he really hasn’t accomplished much is a bit too set on himself. I think he feels superior to most of us, a cut better than the average person and he wants to be president just to add to his memoirs. The presidency of the Untied States isn’t just another game to be won so you can boast about it.

Let’s move on- hey, these are my memoirs here. The hens are laying well now. So well I am giving away eggs. Eggs and tomatoes. My vines may look awful now but they are still ripening fruit and the tomatoes taste great. I don’t really have enough to can but I make a little sauce. I will really miss fresh tomatoes when I can no longer have them, store tomatoes taste totally different. Our corn is done but we are enjoying corn from other local growers. I just bought some Michigan apples and a watermelon too.

Gardening Granny’s advice here is not about politics. It’s to get out to your local farmers market if you don’t have a garden and see what real food tastes like. And take the time to make something from scratch just once anyway, whether it’s a pie, salsa or bread. Eat like you were dying!

cool days

It’s a gorgeous morning, sunny and cool here. The only thing wrong with late summer – fall mornings is that they are so wet- the dew drenches everything. Just walking to the barn left my pant legs soaked and the grass is short. Golden rod is blooming, which signals the end of summer. The buddleia is looking nice too. I have seen the biggest, fattest hummingbirds I have ever seen this year hanging around them. I think they are stocking up to migrate but I have never seen them this fat.

Our hens are laying quite well now although the eggs are a little small still. I picked up 5 by 9 am and I know more hens were laying. The turkeys were out as usual. Turkeys look so pre-historic to me. The bourbon red crosses I have are very pretty but they fly very well too. I must have the white ones butchered soon. Raising my own meat doesn’t seem as easy anymore.

Squirrels are back on the property. The mean little red ones too. I saw cedar seeds had been munched on the other day and today the first thing I heard when I got up was a crabby squirrel scolding something. There are some acorns and walnuts this year although I don’t know if the crop on either will be huge. I think what killed or drove them off this spring was a lack of food, there were few nuts last fall. It’s just as well because the population needed thinning.

I walked around the pond last evening and scared up the little night heron that always seems to be around this time of year. The pastures are thigh high except where Steve has mowed a path through. I always think of what could be eating that grass, even though my desire to have large animals around is tempered by knowing that winter feed is expensive and caring for animals in winter is a lot of hard work. Still some nice pasture raised beef would be real tasty. Steve kind of wants to do pigs again, you can get them raised in one season and butcher them before winter.

We still have three of the mixed cocker puppies left to find homes for. They are the biggest cry babies of any puppies we have ever raised. If one gets the slightest put down from a big dog or gets its toes stepped on it screams bloody murder and the other two join in like they are all being killed. They seem friendly enough and we are giving them more attention to try and work out the silly screaming business but boy, they can use their lungs. They seem to be joined telepathically or something, when one is injured or scared they all start screaming. Buddy and Tina, as the next youngest, seem to enjoy provoking screams, which they can sometimes do just by running up to one of the crybabies. They are as big as Tina, but then when she was six weeks old she was wrestling puppies twice her size and winning.

I wish this type of weather could stay around all year. I love cool nights and sunny, not too hot, low humidity days. The sky in late summer is so deep blue, and if rains have been good as they have been for us this year, everything is so lush. But I always get this lazy, hazy feeling in fall, the days are perfect for work but I don’t want to do it. I do want to store food like a little squirrel and cooking and baking seem more inviting. I guess I am preparing for winter- I am one of those people who are affected by seasonal depression – I want to sleep through winter. When the days get shorter my energy does too. I guess this type of hoard food and conserve energy instinct was good for my ancestors, so I'll live with it.

county fair

Well I am recovering from a week at the county fair- The Eastern Michigan fair to be exact. When I was a girl in 4-H I loved being at the fair- we got to go for a few hours every day to care for our animals but we seldom got to stay the day, because we lived close to the fairgrounds.

I still like the fair but a week of it at my age is a little much. The Master Gardeners in our county have a whole 100 by 60 foot building to develop into an exhibit, which I am in charge of. This year we had some wonderful exhibits, including a moon garden that you had to walk through a darkened corner to see under black lights and a scary poisonous plants garden plus other wonderful gardens. It takes over three days to set all this up so we start early. Then I have to be there each day to open the building and I stay until evening volunteers come in to watch the exhibit until closing. I stay the last day from 10 am to 10 pm. Then we clean up on a Sunday- clean up takes only a few hours thankfully- it’s amazing how fast it comes down.

I had lots of fair food, tastes good going down but keeps you awake later. I also had lots of noise, heat and walking on cement floors. This year we also had an elderly lady run her car into our building, luckily no one was hurt, a hail storm, try listening to that under a metal pole barn roof, and a young girl have a seizure in our building just after I opened one morning. The first few days were almost unbearably hot and humid but the weather cooled down a bit later in the week. Last Sunday when we were packing up it was chilly and a cold rain that looked almost like snow was falling.

The worst thing about all this fair time is I seem to lose all sense of what is happening at home. My routine is gone and it always seems like the animals and the weeds grow like crazy while I’m away. I came home with a new yellow tree rose and a couple new herb plants- and I need to plant out some of the plants I grew in pots for the fair.

While I was gone our new hens started laying and we don’t have nest boxes up yet. I picked up 6 nice brown eggs today of various colors and sizes. No more store bought eggs I guess. The heritage turkeys are flying out of the pen and they ate the back half of each head of cabbage in the garden. They fly right back into the pen if you start toward them. Steve enlarged the inside pen and we are going to get those nest boxes up. Once the hens are laying reliably inside I think I will allow them some free range time outside their pen.

My sweet corn is ripening! It is so good. The bad news is that my tomatoes are succumbing to the disease that is sweeping our area. It blackens the vines and kills them after a few days. I was of the opinion that it was late blight, but our ag agent for vegetables thinks its something else. We sent some samples in to the lab.

I gave the puppies we have here their shots and wormed them today. Three are going to be sold on Sunday to members of the same family. Then we have an ad coming out for the rest. After this litter is gone we are going to gut and remodel that room and get a door to the back yard put in. Three of my female dogs are in heat but we are not going to have any litters for a while. This is the first time Gus, the Jack Russell stud, hasn’t broken out of his kennel when females are in heat. I guess the new kennels, or maybe the neutering- worked!

chicken chaser

We had thunderstorms just before dawn, about an inch and a quarter of rain. When I looked out the kitchen window the white ‘Casa Blanca’ lilies were stained yellow from their pollen washing down on them. I love these big tall lilies with their huge fragrant flowers. I have several types, pinks and reds but the ‘Casa Blanca’s’ are my favorite, although I do love the lily ‘Silk Road’.

When I got to the barn this morning I had to chase down the 3 heritage turkeys, my new banty rooster and one of the hens. They had flown over the sides of their indoor space in the barn again, even though Steve went in there yesterday and added chicken wire up to the rafters. They squeezed through the space between rafters. For some reason the hen was the hardest to corral today, these Issa Brown hens are usually real tame.

I bought a little black and white Banty rooster at the stockyard Monday because I missed hearing a rooster in the morning. It doesn’t sound like a farm without a rooster crowing. I looked at some huge fluffy Blue Brahma roosters but settled on a small one so he isn’t too hard on the hens. With all the hens to chose from and him being much smaller they shouldn’t develop bare backs where the rooster jumps them.

The hertitage turkeys seem to be all hens too. I was hoping to keep a pair around to lay and hatch their own eggs. They are very pretty, two are Bourbon Reds and one is a small breasted Bronze. Maybe I can find a tom at the stockyard before fall. The white turkey, also a hen is about big enough to butcher. We will take her down to our friend in the next town for that adventure. I am trying to decide whether or not to have her smoked. Smoked turkey is delightful.

The mallard ducks have all disappeared now. I came upon one in the sheep pasture last week and it flew off. That was the last I saw of them. Poor white duck is still alone.

Our tomatoes are beginning to ripen. We had sweet corn from a stand outside the stockyards Monday and it was delicious. But my own corn is tasseling and it won’t be long now before we get some of it. We have just the 15 by 5 bed of it this year but the box is full of stalks so we will get a few good meals of it.

I hate cities

I called my parents this week to learn that someone had been killed one door down, right next to my son’s house. A passerby saw the guy lying in the doorway about 11 am in a pool of blood and called police. According to the police he had been there a couple hours. No one had noticed. This is in the city I grew up in, a neighborhood where it used to be safe and now isn’t very safe. I doubt I could ever get my parents to move, and my son lives right next door, in my grandfather’s old house. They didn’t know the dead guy- he and another guy had just recently moved in, but they said there seemed to be a lot of drinking and loud fights. It is amazing to me that he could lay there for two hours in broad daylight only about 30 feet from the road, which is busy, and no one notice.

In the city everyone adverts their eyes and tries not to see things. And when some of them do see things they pretend they don’t so they don’t have to get involved. Had that happened on my less than busy country road, that close to the road where it could be seen plainly, I doubt he would have been there 2 hours before someone stopped to help. Not just call 911- actually help or try to.

There are at least two houses on Mom’s street where drugs are sold and everyone knows it. My son had a Tom Tom Navigator thing stolen out of his locked work van while it was parked right up against my Mom and Dads house- they share the driveway. He says it was probably someone who needed money for drugs, like that excuses it. He's learned not to take it personal he said. Someone stole his tackle box out of his personal van and left the contents strewn all over the street. A neighbor walking the dog found it and thought it might be his stuff so he got that back. Someone even jumped over the back fence and stole a bag of pop bottles while they were in the process of cleaning up after a fourth of July party. Now that’s pathetic.

I have fond memories of that street. It was once the edge of town, where my grandfathers raised chickens and rabbits and there were acres of empty land to play on. Now I hate going there. It’s about a half mile from where they built one of those mega malls and traffic is terrible. The roads are rougher than our dirt road, full of pot holes, and that’s not an exaggeration. They don’t plow their side street in the winter any more- our road gets plowed in a few days.

Despite the fact that my son got a ticket for parking on his own lawn overnight, there is junk everywhere. The houses are old and small and except for a few old timers like my parents still hanging in there, they are mostly cheap rental units now. My parents and my son keep a neat yard with gardens and a couple of the older neighbors also, but the rest of the street looks like a ghetto. It’s a poor neighborhood now, in a poor city, [ poor financially and poorly run, that is the hub of a very rich county

I think when my parents are gone my son will also move. I don’t know what his rent arrangements are exactly but I know that the houses will probably need to be sold. If they aren’t gone before them, I am sure the other older neighbors will move out soon after my parents are gone. Then I won’t need to visit the street and see the ruin. With any luck I won’t need to even visit the city again.

I hate the smell of it as we drive into it. I hate the noise and congestion. My grandparents would never have lived in these conditions. My dad says he will live in the house he built until he dies. He will keep grandpas house too, I’m sure. My mother did sell her moms house, which was on the other side of Mom and Dads and the people who bought it turned it into an ugly two story with a bare yard and two mean dogs. It doesn’t resemble the pretty small home my grandmother had with its elaborate gardens.

One of my sisters still lives in the city too. Her neighborhood is just as bad. The rest of us had sense enough to get out. I hope and pray I never have to move back into one of these ugly cities.

It's hot, dogs and turkeys

I don’t know why it is but hot and humid days just make me want to hole up some where until they are over. I can take a little heat if its not too humid but the combination really gets to me. And it has been miserable here the last 5 or 6 days. The plants love it though. The lilies are gorgeous right now.

I had to get up early today so I could run the little Jack Russell pup Tina to the vet. Late Friday night she and the rest of the dogs were playing wildly after it cooled off a bit and she started yelping and hid. I thought she got bit and checked her over but couldn’t find anything. She screamed every time one of her legs was touched. I didn’t see much swelling and couldn’t feel a break so I let it go, assuming she would feel better the next morning. But she laid around all Saturday and Sunday with the one hind leg in a funny position and crying whenever someone touched it.

So I got up early to get her to the vet, our country vet waits in his office for appointments or walk-ins for a short while after 8:30 am then he goes off to farm calls, does surgery or goes home. We caught him and he thought an x-ray was in order. In order to keep her still during the x-ray, he knocked her out. I held her while she dozed off and he ran out to let a plumber into a rental house he owned.

When he came back we did the first x-ray. His machine is really old. While waiting for the x-ray to develop, I decided to cuddle her to make her more comfortable than laying on a cold table. Bad move, she peed all over me, still out cold. The x-ray was too dark and we had to do another one. And wait, me with a wet shirt now. I saw a flea on her and killed it. Our dogs do not have fleas, she must have picked it up off the table. I hope I got the only one. Lucky for Tina the x-ray showed no break or dislocation. So a hundred dollars later I learn she has a bad bruise and now maybe fleas.

Not only did I spend $100. on a dog today I got bit on my left arm by one of my lovely dogs this morning trying to break up a fight. These girls are cranky in the hot weather too. The fight started right beside me in bed, over who would be between me and Steve, the coveted position.

And I had to shoo turkeys home again this morning too. Last week I opened up the pen for the little mallard ducks I raised and told them to go find the pond. They had all their feathers and they sure make a mess of a pen. By evening two had disappeared, although I can’t see them on the pond. Our old white duck came up to eat where the last mallard was, and I thought it would follow him but it just hung around the back door of the barn where its pen is. It started coming in the barn through the hole for the cats and then it found the pen where I had moved the heritage turkeys. They had spent their first few weeks together in the brooder.

Duck encouraged turkeys to fly up over their pen walls and the first day I came out they were all just inside the barn door. I recaptured the turkeys, I thought maybe something had just spooked them. Second night duck led them out through the cat door. I had to chase them around outside that morning. I closed a connecting door between two parts of the barn so they couldn’t get out the back or the duck in by them. Duck circled around outside until he came to the pen where the bigger turkeys and the hens were. Turkeys somehow knew he was there. This am the two lighter colored turkeys were sitting on the 52 inch high rail of their pen and the one who looks like a wild turkey had flown over the inside divider between the hens and other turkeys, went through their door to the outside pen and was sitting next to his friend the duck. I shooed the other two back into their pen.

I don’t want the duck in the hen pen because it’s a wild mallard and should be free and because I don’t want the mess he will make with the water. I can’t catch him now or I would take it down to the pond, which is only about 50 feet away but down an incline and hidden to a duck anyway, by tall grass. The dark turkey will probably be all right with the hens and big turkey. Unless he flies out of there to be with the duck. So much fun down on the farm.

flower power

Bristly Locust in June

Hawks and Hay

It’s been beautiful the last few days. So glad I live in the country. If I was still back in the city I would be watching people wash their cars instead of watching horses graze. And listening to boom boxes, crying kids and sirens instead of birds singing. This Fourth of July we have new neighbors and there was no noisy illegal fireworks going off. We stayed home to leisurely mornings and work when we wanted.

We woke this morning to the smell of fresh cut hay drifting in the windows. The farmers all around us aren’t resting, they are using this spell of warm sunny weather to get second cutting in. It has been hard to find a few dry days in a row to get hay done. The alfalfa field just SE of us was in full bloom. I got some pretty pictures made of it. Hay prices may be high again this fall. I hear it’s still over $4.00 a bale at auction.

The wheat fields up the road are turning golden. A sign of summer maturing, it’s pretty but I want summer to go a little slower, at least now while the weather is comfortable. My tune may change in August when it’s hot and muggy.

We have a large hawk that has a fledgling in our woods. I think it’s a Red Shouldered Hawk. I surprised Mom by the pond and she flew off with something large. Later when I was walking by the backside of the pond I found a large rabbit with its guts torn out. I sat quietly behind the barn with my binoculars locating the screaming Mom in one tree and screeching baby in another. He or she is as big as mom. She sits somewhere, often where I can’t see her and does that hawk scream and baby just keeps up that screeching begging. I think she is trying to get it to hunt. I have seen them swoop around together. Usually however if mom spots me she shuts up and hides. Baby just keeps screeching. The noise goes on almost all day and while it’s fascinating to watch, the noise can get annoying. It moves from tree to tree sometimes it’s fairly close and sometimes farther out.

I have been watching other bird babies at the feeder. The Orioles have several young ones coming with them to eat jelly. Baby Red Winged Blackbirds are trying to learn how to perch on the suet feeder. Baby doves are on the ground and will almost let you step on them. How they don’t get eaten by cats is a miracle. There is a whole flock of baby pheasants that I see on the road, but they don’t come by the feeder.

The flowers are great right now too, both in the garden and in the field. Now that there are no sheep in the pasture it’s covered with daisies and wild sweet peas and other wild flowers. I have beautiful lilies and roses in bloom. I hope summer continues to be kind.

dog games

It was raining all morning just lightly, good for the plants. We got up and were so glad that our son came up and re-roofed the porch yesterday. It was a toss up for us because both days were supposed to be rainy. He and a friend decided to come up Saturday and do the best they could. Although the skies looked threatening for a long time the rain held off until long after they left in the evening. New roof and it got tested right away.

Our weather has fallen into a kind of tropical pattern with thunderstorms almost every afternoon or evening and hot humid weather earlier in the day. Today we had the cool rainy weather early and now it’s sunny and steamy. We have been blessed that none of the storms here have been bad; the bad ones go above and below us. And there has been some wild weather this year in my corner of Michigan. Huge hailstones, wind, tornadoes, torrential rains and lots of lightning have hit close by.

My tomatoes have quarter sized fruit and my corn just may be knee high by the fourth of July. We have been eating leaf lettuce, although that’s better when there are tomatoes to go with it. It’s been hard keeping up with the weeds but everything is looking nice in the gardens. My landscape roses are blooming and some daylilies. Evening primroses and dayflowers are nice right now.

I just came in from fence fixing again. We have 15 dogs on this farm, yes that’s right 15, and 14 of them generally stay within their boundaries, either their kennels or the large fenced yard. We have 8 foot fence around the yard with a board at the bottom and boards on the inside to discourage diggers. In the back of the yard, where the fence shares a boundary with the east pasture and there is a view of the back of the barn we erected a secondary fence 10 foot from the first fence also 8 feet high.

Despite this Ginger, our small red Jack Russell – Yorkie mix manages to escape pretty much at her pleasure. This wouldn’t be quite as bad except when she escapes she likes to kill small things, like kittens right now. Two days ago she jumped to the top of a rail 4 foot off the ground, walked down it to a spot where the top half of the fence wasn’t tightly hooked to the bottom fence and squeezed through. Then yesterday before the guys arrived for the roof she managed to get through both fences in the back by climbing one and digging under the second after squeezing between some privacy type fencing that’s there and the newer wire fence.

I, of course don’t see her do this, I go out and look for signs. She never tries to escape when she knows anyone will see her. The other dogs usually tell on her by barking wildly if they see her getting out. For a while her son Buddy was following her, but he is too heavy to climb well and most of her recent escapes have involved climbing. When ever we hear a certain kind of frantic barking we run to check on Ginger.

Our house dogs have a doggie door that they come and go from into the fenced yard. Ginger has always been a house dog but we are at our wits end. Next weekend weather permitting, we are going to rebuild the whole east boundary fence. It just seems like we are spending a lot of time on one little dog’s mischief. She is the dickens to catch once she gets out. She won’t come to you until she is tired. Her sole aim is to get to the kittens or ducklings or chickens or what ever she can grab. Her eyes light up and she seems to be having loads of fun, but it isn’t fun for us or whatever she is chasing.

In the old days a dog like this would have been destroyed. But she is so cute and loving to family and so smart I could never do that. I am afraid to find a new home for her because I would worry that she would get out and be lost. She is also great at darting through doors between your legs.

I have had the bad experience twice of finding homes for older dogs and having them run off soon after they got to the new home. In both cases I spent days trying to catch the lost dog with a lot of sleepless nights and anxiety. One of the dogs, a female named Peanut was gone for over a week in cold weather and when we found her was semi-conscious and near death. I nursed her back to health and she is still at our home, although her health has never been great after that experience.

The other was a six month old male, who took off on the elderly couple I placed him with by slipping a collar. He was hanging around their farm but wouldn’t let them near him. He had seemed happy with them when he left. I couldn’t coax him back either, although I saw him several times on their farm and spent hours sitting on the wet ground trying to convince him to come to me. Dogs get funny when they are scared and lost and sometimes even avoid those they know.

We ended up catching him by setting a live trap baited with hotdog. Once back inside the couple’s home he was again his loving, happy self. They decided they still wanted to keep him. They brought him back once to visit, and 3 years later he is a spoiled and well loved pet and now has the freedom of the farm.

Back to Ginger, if you are reading this and thinking she should be obedience trained- well she is. Inside or in the yard she will do anything I tell her. She completely ignores every bit of training when she gets loose. I know she gets bored. But she has a large area to run in and several dogs to wrestle with and lots to watch around her. They get to run in the pond area every so often, which is an even larger fenced area with tall grass, and water to splash in. Most of the dogs love that, Ginger just goes around looking for a way out.

It may be the attention thing, none of these dogs ever thinks they get enough attention. But mostly I think she is smart and has the hunting terrier instinct in her so strong she can’t help herself. It’s like working a puzzle to get out and then there’s that addicting thrill of the chase. The worse thing is that she is learning that when the other dogs “tell” on her the fun is cut short. So she is sneaking away when the rest are quietly lying at our feet and even the kennel dogs aren’t watching, for more fun before someone realizes she’s gone.

So we are playing this game of chess. I move then she moves. When I am through here in the office I will let her out of the room she is shut in and see how long it takes before she is loose. Sometimes days go by before she figures something out. Then we start all over.

bits and pieces

I just came back from a run to the little store in the little country town we live next to for the Sunday paper from a big city a hundred miles away. Once in a while I like to get caught up on world news. One of the little houses in town had two old motorcycles with side cars and two life size models of soldiers, fully dressed in uniforms one sitting on the bike the other standing. There were helmets and other gear on the bikes. A street sign said “Paris 60 miles”. This must have cost a few bucks. It’s Fathers Day not Memorial day so it seems a bit odd, but maybe his father died in WWII.

I guess people must think its odd that I have two half tires hanging from posts by the driveway, painted iris blue and filled with pink and white impatiens. Geez – redneck all the way.

I walked around the pond this morning looking for a snake. I have seen this really unusual snake – about 3 foot long but slender, dark brown on top and golden yellow underneath. I had seen a smaller one just like it early in the spring by my flower bed under the oak- which is also where the big one was. I tried to look it up and the only Michigan snake that came near it was the Copperbelly water snake, which is endangered and not known to be in this part of Michigan.

I talked to a friend at the Nature center and she directed me to a herpetologist at MSU. He though it unlikely but couldn’t tell me what kind of snake it could be either. He wants me to take a picture of it- and catch it to do so if I can. Of course I haven’t seen it since. Steve saw it or one like it down by the pond though. If it’s the Copperbelly they like to eat frogs, which we have plenty of. I am not afraid of snakes and would catch it if I could. I got a good look at this one because it just froze and let me look at it. I wish I had thought to catch it then. I know garter snakes and rat snakes fairly well and most common snakes and this was none of them.

While walking around the pond I found another mystery, a big white egg floating in the water. It was the size of a chicken egg, but we don’t have any layers right now and the nearest other chickens are a half mile away and penned up. The egg had a hole in it like it hatched or was opened to be eaten. I haven’t seen any ducks on the pond except for our poor solitary white male, who lost his male friend two weeks ago. I guess it could be a wild duck or turkey egg that a coon carried there, although I have seen no signs of coon either.

Some of the wild cat’s kittens are missing, but they could have just moved them farther from the barn. Coons and fox will eat eggs and baby kittens. We have kittens everywhere so a few missing are not a problem. I counted 20 last week, different sizes and colors. I found one dead by the back barn door but it didn’t look like anything got it.

All the cocker pups are sold but we got the little Jack Russell pup we sold back. Bessie the cocker mix is due any hour now but that will be the last litter we will have for a good while.

The sweet corn is up and the tomatoes are growing like crazy. The hot wet weather is great for plants and weeds. I just got finished weeding the big flower bed out and now I need to get back to the rest. I am going to mulch the veggies as soon as I can. The tomatoes I had in the house are lanky but they are flowering. I’m trying to find the best way to support them, some are still in pots.

We got part of the new fence up around the pond yesterday before it got too hot. Soon the dogs will be able to have a good run out there again, unless too may baby kittens are out there. More storms are predicted this afternoon, possibly severe. This has been an active weather week although we have been lucky not to get much damage or lose power.

Its June

Today I took the long way back from the post office just to see the beautiful countryside. The dogwood is blooming and the air is full of the scent from blooming autumn olive. That stuff is so invasive but it does smell good. The bees love it which may be another reason to tolerate it to some extent, because bees are getting so scarce. Autumn Olive can take over a pasture in no time at all if it isn’t grazed. Sheep and goats love to eat it, horses and cows will eat it when it’s young. The red berries it makes in the fall are attractive and they are higher in lycopene than tomatoes. They can be made into jelly that’s very pretty- but it doesn’t have much taste. I’ve tried making it.

Speaking of sheep, ours are gone. We sold them including Taco, who went to a pet home. It is dry this spring and our pasture wasn’t supporting them well. Hay was up to $7.00 a bale. First cutting of hay is being made this week around here, but with the weather so dry it will probably be grabbed up at a good price. My husband made the point that we could be doing a lot of home improvements or I could be buying a lot of plants for the $100-$150.00 dollars a month we were spending on sheep. They kept getting out and destroying trees and shrubs and we need to fix many of the pasture fences.

I always feel bad when I send animals off but we just weren’t using the sheep like we planned, which was to make some lambburger for the dogs. I can’t justify spending that much on pasture pets. Now the grass is growing longer, but I have already started planting new young trees in the north pasture- I am going to make it my arboretum.

One of our old ducks died. They had started their walk- abouts looking for girls this spring- two old bachelor ducks trolling the neighbor’s ponds. But he died in our pond- from what I don’t know- maybe just age- they were 8 years old at least. The remaining duck is very lonely. However I was given some baby mallards whose mom was hit on the road and when they are a bit bigger they will go out on the pond.

I bough some more baby turkeys, a cross between Bourbon Reds and Blue Slates, heritage breeds, and put them with the ducks. It helped the mallards find the food better. They all sleep in a little pile together. Our other baby chicks are quite large now and have the run of the inside coop. In about two weeks I will let them go outside. The white turkeys we bought with them developed leg problems, probably genetic, and are in various stages of lameness. They still eat well so maybe we will be able to eat them soon.

We sold all the cocker pups but two. The little Jack Russell puppy also went to a new home. I gave a cocker puppy to my sister, hope that works out, sometimes these family things don’t. We could have used the money from her but its nice to be able to see one of your babies from time to time. We have one more litter to go this summer and then I hope its over with puppies for a while. All the males but the cocker have been neutered.

There are probably 15 kittens in and around the barn. They are all getting around a bit now and I am so afraid the dogs will get them. They are so cute when they are tiny but then they turn into pesty cats. At our place many of them become victims of our dogs, coyotes or owls. I guess its population control.

I have finally had some time to work on the gardens. We built three large raised beds for the vegetable garden. One is 12 x 5 feet and is planted to sweet corn. The others are 4 by 8 feet and I have planted tomatoes, lettuce, onions, a pepper and potatoes so far. I plan to add cukes and a pumpkin or two. We also have a raised bed up by the propane tank that I planted a few cabbage plants and some carrots in.

I covered the paths between the beds with old roofing from the barn addition we tore down. Recycle, reuse. If we get some rain, maybe the garden will grow. Our May was very dry about an inch and a half below normal rain fall totals. I am hoping it will rain tomorrow as predicted.

I have started working on the flower beds finally, what a mess. I still haven’t bought all the annuals etc, I want but I intend to finish that this week. I work on the guideline- get what you have planted before you buy more! There’s kind of a lull in flowers here right now, Dames Rocket and alliums are about all that’s in bloom.

The Orioles and the other birds are going to take what money I saved from selling the sheep. They are going through a suet cake every other day and a jar of jelly a week plus sunflower seed. I hear baby birds everywhere. But I sure love to hear Mr. Oriole sing!

DNA Tests and spring

A note again on the polygamy- stolen children thing. They now believe a 30 something year old woman made the distress call. Yet they continue to pursue separating the children from their families. They are doing DNA testing- at an incredible cost to the taxpayers I may add, on all the children. So who cares who fathered who if there is no abuse? Prove or at least have a good suspicion of abuse then DNA test those children only.

Too bad we can't order DNA testing of all the acquaintences of the 15 year old with a child on welfare who claims she doesn't know who the father is. We might find some abuse there or at least a father who needs to pay child support.

DNA testing and results take time- its not like crime shows on TV. There are many important crimes waiting to be solved because of a DNA testing backlog across the country. I cannot believe we or Texas anyway, is still proceeding with this witch hunt.

On a lighter note

Our beautiful string of almost summer like weather has ended. It’s nice in away but it has made many things flower that now may be injured by the coming cold. I almost welcome cooler weather as the warm muggy stuff makes the hard spring work not as appealing.

I have a new granddaughter, probably the last grand child. Shaan had Alicia Grace just a month before her 40th birthday. It is her second child, the older one is 15, and she had her tubes tied. Alicia is beautiful, healthy, and normal and the first child for her proud papa. It takes brave parents to begin raising a child when they are 40, if I had done that I would have a teenager at home now and I don’t think I could handle it. Except if it was a teen age boy he sure could be a help right now. Whoops that’s sexist. Any teen could be a help right now. Our grandkids are all too far away to help us.

I was worming cocker spaniel puppies today 5 little black girls and one blond girl and one blond boy. The black ones are so much alike it’s hard to tell them apart. One we call Dora the explorer has managed to climb over every barrier we have made between the puppy room and the living room that her mom could still jump over.

I have tried to distinguish her from the rest so when they all become equally active I will be able to identify the smart one. But so far it’s been hard. A ribbon was promptly removed by her sisters. The inside of her ears is too black for a marker to show. Trimming some hair on her foot doesn’t make enough of a marker. I am thinking about trying to find a white marker.

Hay has gone up to $7.00 a bale at the feed store. The grass is growing but the problem is the sheep eat it as soon as it grows. We had to mow the yard yesterday, it is a shame that the sheep can’t eat it. The east pasture still hasn’t had the fence fixed, we are stuck on getting the new dog kennel done. That has proved to be a nightmare. Putting up the kit kennels is bad enough but tearing up the old stuff is worse.

I love spring but it seems to pass in a whirl wind of activity. I am so busy it’s a wonder I have time to blog. I keep saying that once all the projects are done I’ll have a spring where I can just poke around in the flower beds. I don’t know if that will ever happen but its nice to imagine.

Rumors lead to stealing children

I am so annoyed by this raid at the so called polygamy compound and going on line to read many citizens comments on news stories. Most people are assumming that all sorts of things went on there that they have no proof of. All kinds of wild stories with no supporting evidence are floating around. In a few stories they talk of an informant feeding a sheriff information for four years. If this informant couldn't find anything in four years that would call for a raid why should a phone call suddanly bring one on?

So far no one can find the teen girl who supposedly made the call and a similar call to another police department in another state really makes you wonder. The man the "girl" claims raped her hasn't been to Texas since 1977. The calls also come around the time of the anniversity of the Branch Davidian cult raid. Makes you wonder- or should.

It's also mentioned in the news stories that some women weren't at the compound when their children were stolen. Obviously they are allowed to come and go and are not prisoners. Also medical records were seized, which means outside medical care was probably obtained. Yet there was no complaints from residents before or just cause from medical evidence to justify action previously.

Over 400 children were forcibly removed from their homes in a traumatic manner. There is talk of putting them in foster care- if they can find enough homes. Many of the mothers went with the children but their side of the story isn't being allowed to be heard. Instead we hear all sorts of things that supposedly are going on in this compound- without any proof any of them are.

I saw clean, neatly dressed women and children in spring colors, hair nicely done, looking well fed. Not a single boy with his underwear hanging out or a girl with her belly button showing. Their homes appeared neat and comfortable.

Pregnant teens are not new in this society. Look in any low income living area and you will find many young teen girls who are having sex with men who treat them like dirt, who are often gang raped or beaten into gangs and who expect to raise their children alone, like their mothers and grandmothers before them. You could say this is a "cult" or at least a way of life. Yet we don't raid these places to remove children from their mothers to protect them, even though many calls to law enforcement from the area have probably been made. If we do take children out of a home in these neighborhoods we take only those who are being abused or neglected, not all the neighbors kids too.

It should be easy to examine the children removed from this Texas compound and find signs of abuse. Signs of physical and sexual abuse are identifiable. The parents of those children should be charged. At least the children of the pregnant teens were being cared for by their fathers, not the government in this situation- at least they were.

Polygamy is a crime and possibly we should arrest those men and women who practice it. I say possibly because we allow Muslims from other countries to bring more than one wife into this country, live with them and become US citizens. Is one religions polygamy more legal than anothers? It is "said" that many Muslim girls are still forced to marry at a young age, even in the US and that many Muslims quietly practice polygamy here. Yet I don't see authorities raiding Muslim neighborhoods and rounding up Muslim children on the suspicion of what might be happening.

We can't raid homes and take children because of rumors of what might be happening. And just because one young woman in that compound was being mistreated by one man doesn't mean that all the children and women were being mistreated, that they all were in plural marriages or all were unhappy. Polygamy in itself does not equal abuse of women and children.

Punish those who do abuse children but don't punish children because of their religion. Yanking those children from their world and separating them from their families, and putting them into god knows what kind of foster care is also abuse.

Remember if we allow this to happen to these people it will happen to us next.

Well let’s start with the weather. Doesn’t everything start with weather? Here in Michigan we had 70 degrees yesterday after which came severe weather. We had 2 inches of rain in about 36 hours. Everything is soaked but the good news is that the pond is filling up and the grass is getting green. The crocus and iris reticulata are blooming. However it is supposed to snow tonight. Welcome to spring in Michigan. It won’t stick, but the cold isn’t welcome.

The sheep are starting to get a little grass. Thank God because hay at 6 dollars a bale is hard on the budget. If the weather holds we should be done buying it in a week or two. Taco the bottle lamb has finally became part of the sheep herd. He has a girlfriend, one of his cousins. I have even quit giving him a bottle and he is eating hay, like a sheep should. I still sneak him some animal cookies everyday.

We had a new baby lamb born about 2 weeks ago. It is another Hereford marked one but I still don’t know whether it’s a boy or girl. Susan surprised us with two Jack Russell puppies, we knew she got bred but she never looked pg. One died, but the other little female is doing fine. The cocker pups are eating well and trying to get out of their pen constantly. One little female is the most successful, then she waddles over to me and wags her little stub tail wanting to be picked up.

We had Gus the stud Jack Russell neutered but it didn’t stop him from tearing open his kennel again and then into Crickets kennel a week later. The vet says we may still have puppies from this, sperm still lives in the reproductive tract a while. We have left him with Cricket, we have new kennels to put together for the outside dogs, but the weather and time haven’t allowed us to get them done yet.

We had a young couple stop by the farm looking for scrap metal. He was out of work and they were cleaning up yards etc for metal to sell. I showed them the back of the barn were we had a tangled mess of old wire pens and told them they could have that. Then we looked at the shed tacked onto the back side of the barn that was collapsing. We didn’t feed the sheep from the barn this winter because I didn’t think that mess would hold up all winter and would fall on them or make getting feed to them hard.

Anyway they agreed to tear it all down and stack the good lumber if I gave them my old car. In one day while I was at work they ripped it all down, sorted and stacked everything and hauled a bunch of it away or burned it. This was a big shed, 20 by 12, that we had built with pallets, (yes pallets), about 12 years ago. Had we put a better roof on it, it might have lasted longer. I had to burn some more of the old pallets the next day and then they came and removed the rest. There is still some rusty fence here and a pile of old roofing but the change is immense.

The barn possum was a casualty though. He was hiding in some wood when it got thrown in the fire. The back side of the barn cats were all a little spooked but I fixed them some new beds just inside the back door of the main barn and they are settling in.

Next we tackled the fence between the dog yard and the sheep pasture. The dogs have been terrible this spring getting out under the old chain link. The wood posts we had were rotted and the bottom gave too much, they could dig a little then push the bottom and lift it up to go under. Steve freaks out when they get out when I am gone, they won’t let him catch them and he can’t move fast enough. I had tons of cinder blocks and boards along the bottom but nothing worked for long, they just found another spot.

So last Sunday we replaced it all with 5 foot high welded wire on metal posts. It was the first big day long project we had done in a good while and we were both exhausted. I put a board all along the bottom that I nailed to the fence, laying on my belly in the pasture. The next day I had to fix a spot where Ginger got through but it’s been fine since. We still have to replace the walk gate and re-work the drive gate but we are almost done with that. Then it’s on to replacing the fence along the back of the barn, and rebuilding the dog kennels. And the east pasture needs the fence along the woods repaired and up by the orchard.

I want to take some of the old lumber and make raised garden beds for vegetables, all the flower beds need cleaning out and I have baby chicks arriving Tuesday to get ready for. We need to make a new trellis for the grapes and move them as they are in too much shade now. And then of course there is the porch/laundry room roof that needs to be torn off and replaced, my son says he will be up around the first week of May to do that. When that’s done I want to put up a 6 foot wide deck on the east side to make it easier for Steve to get in the back door. I think we can do that. What I need is several strong grandchildren to use as labor but they are too far away!

It amazes me what changes this house and farm have been through in the 13 years we have been here. And what changes we have been through ourselves. When we moved here Steve was capable of doing things like putting up sheds from pallets, and getting in and out of the house on his own. I seemed to have a lot more energy and physical strength too. I just keep thinking that when certain things are done everything else will be easier, but the work just never seems to end. I love spring but it is such a busy time!

It’s a cold and blustery day in Michigan. Easter and spring arrive close together this year, both are symbolic of new beginnings. Unfortunately with Easter so early this year it’s not going to be very great weather. I am a little apprehensive about warmer weather this year; hopefully we won’t get a lot of storms.

Taco the lamb is being trained to a new life in the barn. I have been taking him out in the morning and leaving him there for the day. I put him where the hay was in the barn and he has a deep cozy bed plus I leave a door to the back of the barn open so he can go out in the east pasture if he wants. He still doesn’t want anything to do with the other sheep and when I put him with them he runs to a far corner and stays there. When the weather does warm up I will be putting him with them though.

We have 7 new baby cocker pups, 5 black, 2 blonde, 6 are female which is strange. Everyone that calls will want males. I had the tails docked last week and I hate that. But if you don’t do it people try to get it done later and some won’t buy a cocker with a tail.

The puppies have to be in our bedroom as we are out of spare rooms until Taco is gone. There is one that is very noisy and fussy all night, but she seems plump and sleek, just a fussy one. I wanted to squash her last night though. All of the rest of the puppies were sleeping but she was fussing and I got up twice to move her closer to mom, which seems to be what she wants.

I am so ready to garden and get things done outside. Last Friday the temperature was in the 50’s and it was sunny and I spent a bit of time outside cleaning out the old car. Sunshine does improve my mood I wish I could get more of it. Things are slow poking through the ground this year. Not much is happening in the garden. I want to get some chickens again; the price of eggs is terrible. I can order chicks and I still may, but it takes 5 months before they start laying at least. I’m going to look for some hens at the market.

Here’s some advice from gardening granny. Get outside whenever you can and enjoy the good weather. Sunshine sets your biological clock to good times. And plant a vegetable garden this year, the price of food is only going to go up. If you do plant a garden and have excess food donate it to a local soup kitchen or food pantry, they will love it. Hard times are coming.

new car

So here’s the news. I have a new car, well new to me. It’s only six years old which beats driving cars over 20 years old. It’s a Blazer, sort of a cross between a truck and a car, easy for Steve to crawl up in. It’s only a 2 door and has less cargo space than the van or maybe even the trunk on that old chevy but it runs! Strange how I seem to end up with chevies, even though I am not looking for one, just a good deal.

New cars have all those bells and whistles that I am not used to. The second day I had it I locked myself out by messing up something in the security system- it wouldn’t let me start the engine. Now I am afraid to use the remote unlock button thingy. It has a remote start but I am really afraid to use that. The radio gets louder as you go faster, can you believe that!

We were going to drive down to my moms since we hadn’t been there since Thanksgiving and she was going to bake a cake for Steve’s birthday, but I ended up having to stay home and work on finishing my book. I messed up on the deadline, It was the last Monday in Feb, I thought it was March 15 for some reason. Well it is all turned in now, hopefully nothing to do until writer review.

The lamb is still here but he will be gone soon, someway, somehow. He pulled a frying pan of grease off the stove the other night, luckily it had cooled. The dogs quickly cleaned up the floor but it could have been a disaster. I took him out to the barn with me yesterday but he panicked when I locked him in a stall and kept trying to jump out so I took him back inside.

Gingers puppies have all been sold, even though it took a while because the weather was so bad. Honey the cocker is due any day, probably Sunday when we have said we will be going to my moms.

Michigan weather sucks. Yesterday it was 50 degrees and raining. The snow started to melt and then today it is below freezing again although we did get some sun. So everything is a sheet of ice. I got my car stuck when I moved it to let Steve get his out. And we are supposed to be getting more snow tonight, ugh.

I guess global warming affects the bottoming out temperature, the lowest temperature you get because it sure hasn’t made winter any shorter. And we have had nearly the record for snowfall since records were kept all ready this year. Even if it’s mild enough to be outside you can’t walk because of deep snow or ice. Maybe the glaciers are reforming here instead of at the poles.

The other problem is that a lot of us animal owners were praying for an early spring because hay is hard to find and very expensive. We are down to 2 bales of what we bought in the fall and we bought two bales for 6.25 each today which will feed for another week here. I don’t think anyone will deliver just a small load to us when they can sell all they have in big loads so we are stuck paying high prices at the feed store.

I have cabin fever real bad. I need to get outside, away from computers and people and dogs. Hurry spring!

It has been interesting weather around here, first snowstorms and then thunderstorms. It’s so wet, mushy and cloudy I’d almost rather have it cold and sunny. In the middle of the night I heard the water pump running and running, the hose to the barn had unfrozen and the valve was open and the backyard is now a lake. Not great. I hate February, I’m glad it’s a short month.

I was doing some research on line about the satellite that is going to fall later this month and I came upon some interesting stuff. It’s amazing how when you go on line first you find one thing that has a link to another thing and then another thing etc. Anyway from that search I did learn that the satellite was launched a few years ago, didn’t work and has a tank of rocket fuel on board that could cause a problem when it re-enters the atmosphere.

However there is not a whole lot of concern because they think it will break up and the chances are nothing will fall on inhabited earth spaces because so much of the earth is uninhabited. That was the little bit of info that intrigued me and when you think about it it’s pretty amazing. There are what,- 5 billion people, in this world. 70 % of the world is covered in oceans and of the remaining land space only about half has any dense population so yes only 15% of the world is closely inhabited, leaving 85% of the world for the satellite pieces to fall on. That doesn’t help much when it’s your house it hits.

I think I read once that even without using the inhospitable places there would be 2 acres of land for every soul on earth. So why do we crowd together so badly? Once again it has something to do with politics and money. Many people will never even own the tiny shack they live in. There is enough food in the world to feed every man, woman and child a full 2,000 calories a day but millions are starving- because of greed and politics.
Man is mans worse enemy.

On the lighter side of things a new species of humming bird described as cobalt blue and ruby colored was found in South America. It’s interesting that new species of birds and animals continue to be found, maybe because only 15% of the world is inhabited! This hummingbird has a pretty good population in numbers but a limited home range.

And get this. Scientists have found that the chirping noise hummingbirds make when they dive comes not from their throats but from their tail feathers. The feathers have a notch that makes the noise. They dive when fighting and courting and do those little buggers ever fight.

There is so much you can learn when news skimming on line. I wish I had more time to scan the good stuff like science findings and research reports.

On the home front I am learning that I want to get rid of my sheep. They have been jumping the fence around the pond- 4 feet high- and eating the bark off trees. Before I realized it I think they may have killed a beautiful spruce we planted when we first moved in here that was about 20 feet high by girdling it. We shall see in the spring. I think I fixed the spot they were jumping over and I also surrounded the trees with wire but those devils will probably find a way to leap over and get back to the trees. They could have girdled poplars- we want to get rid of them, but no – they go for the nice stuff.

They are not hungry- all of them are still heavy and they get grain and hay twice a day. I think they are just bored. Well they are about to be turned into lambburger for the dogs to eat. Including the house monster.

I want to replace the sheep with some cute mini horses or maybe donkeys. Just for pets. Even the big horses were less trouble than these Barbados sheep. I’m hoping I can rescue some and give them a good life.

Gingers puppies are ready to go to new homes this week. They are so cute but so noisy and messy. I think Bessie may be pregnant but I hope the rest are not. We tried to breed Honey the cocker, but our stud, Bubba didn’t seem real interested for some reason. We are going to get our stud Jack Russell neutered soon, as we cannot keep him in his kennel when anyone is in heat. He has went through chain link and heavy corn crib wire by bending them until they break. He has climbed 10 foot fences and ripped open solid wood doors. That is why we have puppies on Gus’s schedule not ours. I am just tired of it. Our Jack females are getting older so we just won’t breed.