Lazy, hazy days of summer

The song calls it the lazy hazy days of summer but I think here that time refers more to the lazy hazy days of early fall, although I guess technically it is still summer. You couldn’t ask for better weather, the sky is crystal blue, the deep clear blue of fall. It’s warm enough to be comfortable - near 80 - especially with a nice breeze and low humidity. The nights are cool and comfortable and in the morning we either have heavy dew or like this morning, fog.

A high pressure system is responsible for this lovely weather and I think that’s where the lazy comes in, you just want to sit around and bask in the sun because you know it won’t be nice like this for ever and the high air pressure makes you drowsy. Maybe people are a bit more relaxed right now too, although that might only apply to those of us who don’t have kids going back to school Tuesday. I sure hope most of you were smart enough to get the school shopping done early so you could enjoy this last summer holiday.

The trees are starting to turn, every year people remark on how early the leaves are turning and they certainly can’t turn colors early every year, but think about it, when have you ever heard people say “Wow- the trees are late turning color this year?” The fields are turning purple and gold - purple asters and goldenrod. I have been going out snapping pictures of weeds and wildflowers for my examiner articles - you can see them here but I can’t help snapping fall landscapes as I go.

We had puppies born this weekend, the first babies on the farm this year other than the wild kittens. Honey our cocker had seven pretty babies. Three are black like dad and 4 are light - either blond or red like Honey. They all appear healthy and happy, no obvious runts. I spent one of these beautiful days locked up with her, being her midwife. Honey does not do birthing gracefully. She thinks the pressure she’s feeling means she has to go to the bathroom and she wants to go outside. Even locked up in the spare room she has to get out of the box and squat over paper each time a pup is born and I have to be there to catch it and make sure she cleans it, otherwise she goes back to the box with the rest and leaves it on the floor. And she takes up to an hour between pups - which makes for a long day. This is her fourth and last litter. I am going to neuter Bubba and we won’t have to worry about any surprise puppies, he’s the last whole male dog on the farm.

I still haven’t been able to get my little brat horse Charlie gelded. He still has only one testicle down. We moved them over to the east pasture because the west was pretty eaten down and I don’t like them over there when the walnut leaves and nuts start falling. But the east side fence is the oldest on the farm I think, and last weekend Charlie broke through the road side of the fence when some riders came down the road and Lily followed him.

When I went outside because of the riders yelling, Charlie and Lily were running around the group of riders, tails up just as pretty as you please, showing them how much fun it was to run free as the wind - which did not make the riders happy. I was able to catch Lily with a bucket of food, of course, and Charlie came back to her in just a few minutes. The two rascals had to be locked in the barn overnight and then we had to spend most of the week on and off - fixing the fence and eventually running a hot wire around it. They are now back to full pasture on the east although I am keeping a wary eye on them.

All of this expense and time makes me seriously doubt whether I need horses, especially Charlie. Since we spend so much time fixing things I barely have time to handle them and while they are cute - the fun is wearing a bit thin. If Charlie were a larger horse I know he would be gone by now as he would be too dangerous. Steve wants me to sell him and get another mare for Lily’s friend. But baby bad boy horses need someone who cares about them too and he’s likely to get sent from one place to the next. If he ever gets gelded maybe he will calm down. Age will help too. I just hope Lily doesn’t get bred by him before he is gelded. We haven’t been able to separate them - he finds a way to get to her no matter what we do. He just turned a year old so maybe we are still safe.

If I could afford it I’d send him to someone to train. But it’s hard enough to afford hoof trimming, hay and gelding costs. So I should get my act together and just do it- right? (The training, not the gelding part.) Make him the poster boy for mini horse studs or mini horse geldings. A good Charlie horse instead of a pain in the butt Charlie horse. Ok, it’s a resolution- I’ll report on my progress here.

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!

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!

September is here

Well it is September now, lets have that nice fall weather please. My Mom and dad were up to our place for the first time this year. Not much was in bloom in the garden, although I do have some impressive hardy hibiscus in the front of the house. They have these huge, dinner plate sized flowers of crimson red or bright pink. Very showy. They love moisture and are doing very well where they are because that us where we diverted the water from the kitchen sink. I chose to write about them this week in my garden site at www.gardenandhearth.com/plant-guides.htm

Mom and Dad and Steve and I had a pleasant talk while we watched the birds in the front yard and the friendly kitten tried to talk mom and dad into taking her home. We didn’t barb-b-que, just had some nice sandwiches and potato salad. I like to get mom to talk about relatives and the old days. There’s lot to learn about family ties. I feel bad for Steve sometimes as his mom and dad are both dead and his family doesn’t seem to keep in touch very well. And that reminds me that his brothers new address is now lost, as the big puppy carried the address book I keep out into the yard and Steve mowed it into a thousand pieces.

The new puppies are all doing well, although I did have one more dog incident this week. All my fault too, I was having a senior moment or something. I give Hazel, our old Border collie mix a pheno-barb tablet each night because she has seizures. She will only eat it in a piece of hotdog and we have an evening ritual at the house of giving everyone a piece of hotdog or two, right before bed. So I prepared Hazels piece with the pill in it and then I handed it to Bessie, who eagerly gulped it down of course. Bessie is the mother of the 6 pups and right away I was concerned that the pill would hurt her or the pups. So I called poison control- which by the way seems to have gone to a foreign country for its service-and they told me to feed her a large meal then give her 2 tablespoons of hydrogen peroxide to make her vomit. She had just finished her bed time nursing mom meal of chicken and rice, so I measured out the hydrogen peroxide and surprisingly enough she took it without fighting me, although I had to give it to her in 3 syringes. Then she just sat there for a few minutes, just when I thought it wasn’t going to work the fun began. Poor Bessie, she heaved for quite a while. But the next day everyone was fine and I sure learned a lesson.

I am waiting for a fall crop of lambs I believe I am going to get. Our Barbados sheep are not seasonal breeders and will breed back after giving birth if the ram is with them. I have had double lambings in other years especially if the first set is born early or is lost. Two of my girls had their lambs die when we had that really cold below zero spell last February. I think they are pg but I also think the white ewe that had one lamb is too. They are all as fat as butterballs, even the rams, so it is hard to say, but my hunch is the 3 girls are going to lamb again. Which is good because it will keep them from having spring lambs too early next year too. I think they should lamb fairly soon, but it’s just a guess.

We need to sell off or butcher the two young rams as they are beginning to fight and fight with their dad too. They are quite handsome both of them and have a good set of horns already. I haven’t been able to afford an ad to sell them, but I probably can’t afford the butcher fee either. They sure would make good lambburger for the dogs. Barbados lambs can go longer without castration before butchering and still have the meat taste good, but they need to go soon. I can’t afford to feed that many of them this winter as the cost of hay is going to be out of sight. Thank God the rain came and got the pasture greened up again so we didn’t need to keep buying hay this summer. There is quite a bit of good eating out there for them right now.

I won ten dollars on the lottery last week. Let’s hope that is a sign that the money will soon start rolling in here and we can get caught up on everything. At least August is over and we survived one more month.

Go away August- weather and puppies

February and August, those two months are the ones I can’t wait to end every year. At least February is a short one. August just drags on forever. In March you know winter is almost over and the days are getting longer. In August you know the heat and humidity is almost over. We have had a long miserable week, and last night was a scary one with tornados popping up every where in Michigan, including 6 miles from us. But thank God we have not had some of the even worse weather other parts of the country have had. Grass is getting green again and we can now burn the trash. The sheep are finding stuff to eat in the pasture. Rain is good but I could skip the heat.

Dogs are driving me nuts too. Aug. 12 we had two litters born, one with 6 puppies and one with just one. On Aug. 19 after going through two days of off again, on again labor, Susan, one of our Jack Russells had a single puppy, too large for her, and born dead.

After we took it from her she got in the box with Sadie who had the other single pup. I thought ok, two mommies. But when Sadie left for a minute Susan would not let her back in the box. Sadie is a calm mom and she wasn’t too upset for a while, it gave her time to sit on Daddy’s lap. But after a few hours she wanted her puppy back and a fight broke out. We got Susan out of the box but she was frantic for a puppy. She was looking everywhere, whining and crying. It was near bed time and I wanted to get a good nights sleep having been up with Susan a good part of the previous night. So I had an idea. I moved Sadie and her single baby to the bathroom and then I went to Bessie who had the litter of 6 and stole a puppy that looked similar to Sadie’s and gave him to Susan, whose bed was in our room, so I could hear if anything went wrong. She didn’t have a speck of trouble accepting him, she was desperate for a pup of any sort. Bessie seemed to be ok with her remaining 5 pups in the spare room. But in the middle of the night Sadie came and got in bed with me. I remember sleepily muttering, “go back to your puppy“. She did after a while, but it was too late. When we got up in the morning no puppy was in the box with Sadie. A short search located him in Bessie’s bed with her pups, but he was dead, a single puncture wound at the back of the head. I thought I would hear if anything happened, but I was wrong I guess. Bessie obviously can count, and expected to have 6 pups in her bed. I didn’t understand why she had killed it though.

We carefully kept the bedroom door shut, where Susan was doting on her foster pup. Sadie mourned only briefly, she went back to being princess dog with little fuss. Bessie gave no indication she was still looking for her 6th pup. But a few days later, when I came home from work, one of the “glad to see ya mom fights” broke out as I walked in the door. Steve had been in the room with Susan and he rushed out to help me break up the fight, leaving the door open behind him. Susan came flying out to join in the fray. While everyone else was involved in the fight, Bessie saw her opportunity and rushed in and grabbed her pup and started running back to her bed with him. I yelled and Steve grabbed at her and the pup was dropped. I scooped him up and he was bleeding. Luckily he had only a small wound in the chest area. He was screaming his head off though, poor scared thing. Bessie went to her bed, Susan became frantic so I put the pup back in her bed. He cried for a long time and I was worried I had killed another one with my meddling, but he seems to have healed without any problems. I think Bessie gets nervous when she is carrying a pup and bites down too hard. It just amazed me that after 3 days she still remembered and was plotting to get her puppy back. She waited until everyone was occupied then went for it. I thought any mom with 6 pups wouldn’t really miss one, but that’s not the case I guess. We are really watching the door now and Susan is starting to relax a little too. I hope to put them back together when they start eating, it’s not good to raise one pup alone once they start interacting with each other. Susan should be easier to convince that it’s time to relinquish foster care by then. Isn’t it amazing what animals do think and feel?

So by this time in September we will probably have crisp days and cool nights, maybe even a frost to kill the bugs. And the puppies will be starting to eat and play and almost ready to go to new homes. Hurry August and just get it over!