redneck for sure

Well its official, we are rednecks.  We just had a satellite dish put up in the front yard, right by the driveway and road.  You see I have been waiting for high speed internet connection for a while and our phone company sent around a notice saying it was now available.  There was this really good deal on combining phone service, high speed and satellite TV, it worked out to be less than we are now paying for the phone and dial up connection.  So we said yes.

 Yesterday, Sunday, the guy was supposed to arrive and put up the satellite dish between noon and 5pm.  He arrived about 5:30, when it was full dark outside.   Immediately he began grumbling about all the trees around the house.  I apologized but no one said anything about trees being a problem when I called to order the dish.    We haven’t had satellite TV in about 6 years and that dish went on the roof.  The installer said his company used  another satellite and the roof location wasn’t any good.

 He was a tall skinny guy with a foreign accent.  He said he never saw a house with so many trees around it.  Really?  Our house has some mature trees on the south and west but we aren’t really in the woods.  I said it was ok if he couldn’t install the dish, we’d just get the internet and phone.  Oh no, he said, I drove all the way out here-( another sore spot with him was that we lived so far in the boonies)- and I am going to get paid for this job. 

 He looked around with his flashlight and asked if he could cut some tree branches.  I said sure.  He proceeded to get a 20 foot extension ladder out of his truck and climb the tree with a hand saw and a light clipped to his hat.  I was afraid I’d have a heart attack.  The ladder was placed so that it was nearly straight up and down, and he would climb way up it - nearly to the top, hang on with one hand and saw away.  Large limbs fell, some hitting the ladder on the way down.  He actually bounced the ladder to move it a couple times.

 I stayed out in the cold and dark watching him because I was afraid he’d fall and impale himself on the sawed off limbs below him.  He acted annoyed when I would gasp or say be careful.  He sawed away on two different trees for about 45 minutes.  Then he came down, cut them up a little and piled them by the driveway.  He was efficient, I must say.

 Next he had to dig a hole for the pole, mix cement and then trench the line to the house, which wasn’t far.  He had to drill a hole into the house run the wires in and hook up the TV.  When he found out we had a second, old TV in the bedroom (from Steve of course) he insisted on installing a double unit and hooking that one up too.  Its free he said,( it better be)  and there’s no sense not using the second one.  We haven’t used that TV since TV went digital. 

 At about ten pm he was finally ready to leave.  I was exhausted.  He did do an excellent neat job.  I gave him a dozen of our fresh eggs and he was very appreciative.  He said there was no charge for the extra work.  All that work for an installation fee of $34.99.  I hope he gets paid more than that.   So we now have satellite TV which pleases Steve no end.  And I wasted an hour or so this am watching Animal planet. 

 Next week the guy comes to install the computer modem.  I wonder if we should plan on that taking 5 hours too?

Getting ready for winter

Winter coming always inspires some crazy hoarding thing in me; it has to be an ancient instinct.  I want my cupboards and hayloft full.   I start buying groceries to pack the pantry, butchering for the freezer, canning and baking with frenzy.   Now we have been stranded in winter for a few days, unable to get out, but we have never been anything near starving because of it.  Just the eggs our chickens produce each day would feed us-until their feed ran out anyway.

 We bought hay this week and were lucky to find decent hay at a good price just down the road from us.  Our barn is very full now with just little paths to let Steve get his wheelchair around.  We used to put the hay up in the loft of the barn where there is plenty of room, but it’s quite a chore lifting it up there without a hay elevator and neither of us is able to do it anymore.  And I as the only one who can get up the loft steps and throw it down can barely make the climb up those steep steps anymore.  So we stack the hay in the front of the barn, where it makes everything very crowded until the stacks get eaten down a bit.  Lily and Chance are working on that part.

The little wild kittens love it though. They have moved out of their groundhog hole under the propane tank into holes between the bales of hay.  They sure do give me a start when they pop out of there though.  They are getting big- they look good and healthy from all the cat food we are feeding them.  But they are still as wild as can be and run when they see us.

 Steve just went out in his electric chair because the rain stopped and we heard there will be high winds as the day clears off.  We are putting a plastic roof and walls over the outside chicken run to give them more room this winter and he’s worried the wind may sail off some of what he’s started.   However there isn’t much he can do about it I think.  The turkeys saw him coming and followed him all the way to the gate, squawking and yelling at him for food, trailing after his electric chair.  They are getting big and I am wondering how I am going to catch them for butchering in December.  They still won’t roost in the barn at night and go high up in the pine tree where I can’t reach them.

 So far we haven’t had a day when the hoses to the barn have been frozen all day.  I hate hauling water in buckets.  I dread the day when we will have to lock the chickens and ducks in and bring the horses over to the north pasture where we can feed and water them from the barn.  They use the back part of the barn as a run in shelter and we only have to shovel one path to the barn to feed everyone.

 

This weekend looks like it will be cold but sunny and hopefully we’ll get the major job- enclosing the chicken run done.  We still have house storm windows to put on and I need to cover some of the main barn windows with plastic again and well - there is still a ton of things to do before real winter sets in.  I hope it gives us a while longer.

Early November can you believe it?

Today is my son’s birthday.  When he was born 37 years ago it was a cold, snowy day and a few days later we had a big snowstorm.    This year it was mild and sunny and no snowstorms are on the horizon.  It’s hard to believe its November.  Most of the leaves are now gone, but the grass is green and I still have roses in bloom.

 I picked two 5 gallon buckets of apples off the last tree with apples remaining.  Some of them aren’t ripe yet but this tree ripens so late that many of the apples freeze on the tree before they are ripe.  So I pick them, some on the upper south side of the tree are ripe and the rest make good horse treats.  

 The apples are little because I don’t thin them and they have scab, but they make good applesauce, pies and apple butter.  My husband wants me to make some apple butter this weekend.  I will probably pick some more and sort them first.  The chickens have been standing on the fence rail next to the tree and picking their own apples so I threw them a few also.  And I gave my canaries inside a slice also.

 The apple tree is by our pond and the autumn olive bushes around the pond were full of robins migrating south and stopping to eat the red berries the bushes are loaded with.   They were singing and calling and it sounded like spring.  Our ducks finally found the pond- it is only about 50 feet from the pasture they roam in- and the 15 remaining ducks were all swimming around happily.   Momma duck and poppa duck knew about the pond but for a while no ducks went to the pond for some reason.    They stayed up in the pasture and played in the kiddy pool and their water dishes.

 It may have been that the buzzards finally migrated south and stopped soaring over the pond.  We had some turkey buzzards nest in our woods and a big group of them were always around.  They don’t normally take live prey but birds are conditioned to feel unsafe with big birds gliding overhead.  In the pasture they watched the buzzards warily and there were plenty of things to hide under.   On the pond they may have felt too exposed.  They don’t mind the big blue heron though - he was down there with them.

 Whatever the reason I sure appreciate the cleaner water dishes with less mud around them, ducks are so messy.  But they are fun to watch.

October day

It’s very hard for me to sit in my office and write on a mid October day when the sun is shining and the temperature is reasonably mild.  I know that there will be few of these days left.  But duty calls and a writer has to have some self discipline.  But I promise to get outside later in the afternoon when it will be even nicer I hope.

 We had some excitement at 6 am this morning.  I was lying in bed and kept smelling this odd smell, I knew the smell but couldn’t place it.  It almost smelt like paint and since I could hear one of the dogs scrambling around I decided to get up and see if they had spilled something. 

 
I found Ginger standing in my big variegated leaved geranium plant and she and some of the other dogs were looking up at the shelf filled with plants higher in the window.  The crushed geranium was what I smelled.  I couldn’t see anything but Steve got up and poked at some of the plants and bam- a tree rat ( red squirrel) jumped out.  He didn’t stand a chance once he hit the floor and at least three dogs pounced on him.   That’s one down.   How it got inside I don’t know.

 Those darn things are in the attic, on the enclosed porch and a few other places in the house I guess.  They are getting in the attic someway probably through a hole under the eaves somewhere but we can’t find it.  Rat poison doesn’t seem to kill them and we can’t get into the attic easily enough to set traps up there.  I am seriously thinking about getting all the walnut trees around the house cut down.   I think that’s what attracts them to our yard.  And all the nuts on the ground are a big nuisance as well.

 I was hoping that the stray cat that has her babies in the woodchuck hole under the propane tank would kill some of them.  She sure does a number on the birds at the feeder.  But she must not be able to catch them or at least enough of them.

 Mama duck, that one that’s produced 25 babies so far this year was sitting in a lower chicken nest this morning.  All of her last bunch of babies were under the nest boxes waiting for her.  I told her to go ahead and lay there it would make it easy to collect the eggs since we do not need any more baby ducks this year.

 I am seeing tons of buzzards this fall, they’ve been around all summer but I think they are here much later in the fall than usual.  Maybe they are adapting to global warming or to the fact that there are so many dead deer by the roads all year round.  I think a group of them nest in our woods.

The wind has been so strong the last few days that the redbud tree I wrote about just a few days ago has lost almost all its leaves, as have most of the trees around here.  I can see the neighbors houses now, a sign its nearly winter.

Gold in the air

The redbud tree has turned to a blaze of gold outside my office window.  It’s about the only colorful tree I can see from here.  Our woods don’t exactly put on a fall display.  Most of the outer edge is poplar and their leaves are already gone.  One rusty brown tree is an oak and there is some green from pines.  On the west side of the property there are sumacs and even a maple along with walnut and oak so the color is a bit better.  But the one thing I rather regret is not planning for more fall color.

 It’s mid October and we still haven’t had a killing frost.  My tomatoes are still green although I will soon be pulling them green leaves or not.  The fruit had to be brought inside to ripen on the windowsill but we had bacon and tomato sandwiches for breakfast.  I picked apples from the tree by our west pasture today.  They are scabby because I didn’t spray this year but are good sized and will make a great apple cake later today.  

 The horses have been getting lots of windfall apples.  I actually have to pick them up so Lily doesn’t get too many.  The trees in the north pasture by the pond are loaded with apples but they aren’t quite as ripe and they are a lot smaller.  The deer have gotten most of the pears as usual.  The pears are on the east, and aren’t fenced, not that a fence bothers most deer.

 We put a roof on the new small chicken run this weekend and have started building a roof for the larger run.  I expect to go into the winter with nearly 50 birds and need more space enclosed than last winter.  I have a lot more birds than that now but Steve insists a great many of them be sold or butchered before winter.  Feed bills are really adding up.  I traded 3 turkey babies for 2 canaries, now we are down to 10 turkeys and up to 5 canaries.   I gave a friend 2 of the youngest batch of ducks and we are down to 21 ducks.  I was able to give away one of the frizzle roosters- down to 6 bantams. 

We still have 16 laying hens and 2 large roosters.  We also have 7 guinea hens.  I’d get rid of some of the guineas but they are so hard to sex and hard to catch that I think they’ll stick around.  The larger ducks are flying everywhere now- coming into the yard and garden to eat and roosting on the barn roof.  They are hard to part with- at least to butcher - as they are so pretty.  But ducks are very messy in the winter inside and I think the original pair and maybe 3 more are about all we need to really explode the population next year.

 If it was up to me and I could afford it I’d keep all the turkeys.  Momma turkey still has her four brown babies out in the front; I do have to figure out how to get them back with the other birds before winter.  I thought they were going to be typical bronze color but it now looks if they may be a chocolate color.  They are pretty and tamer than the 3 bourbon red ones left in the chicken yard.   But there are 3 toms so at least 2 must go.  The bourbons are 2 hens and a tom.

 The bourbon red hen turkey never hatched the last batch of eggs she was sitting on.  I feel bad she never got to raise any babies. Early on she hatched some chickens but we took them away from her.  But she is thin and needs to take a break from sitting.  If any more eggs are laid around here from turkeys or ducks they will be picked up and fed to the dogs or cats.  No more babies until spring.

Fall chicks

Part of me welcomes the rainy days of fall in Michigan.  The pond fills up a bit before winter, the trees get well watered, there’s one more flush of good grass in the pasture and if the weather is poor I don’t feel guilty sitting inside writing or reading.   And wet weather makes you appreciate all those nice days in fall where the air is crisp and the sun feels good.   Those are the days when you feel you must be outside because there won’t be many nice days left before winter sets in.

 I have a turkey hen sitting in back of the barn in a bower of weeds, which as fall progresses has given her less and less of a cover from rain or sun.  I found a large foam board sign that farmers use to advertise a variety of grain that they planted and set it like a tent over her.  It gives her a measure of cover and so far it hasn’t blown away.   She should hatch those eggs in a week or so- and then I worry about the chicks running through wet grass- but hey- she choose the time to sit. 

The batch of chicks that the other hen turkey hatched around 6 weeks ago are doing well.  The ones I put in the brooder are now in the pasture in back of the barn.  They were continually getting out of the pen they were in so I turned them loose and they seem much happier.  The four that were left with mom are doing as well or better than them.   They are very tame and when they see or hear me come out of the house they come running, begging me to throw them bread. 

 
I don’t like it that their mom frequently leads them into the road.  I think they are picking up walnuts and acorns that have been crushed by cars.  But the brown babies look like the road and I am so afraid they’ll get hit.  Plus they look almost exactly like wild turkeys and I am also afraid someone will kill mom.   But there is no penning them now and this was an experiment that I need to see through.  She seems to be doing a pretty good job raising them.    

 At night the family roosts high in a pine tree.  And they run under trees or into deep grass if they see a large bird overhead.  I wish mom would take them into the barn when it rains; instead they stand under the catalpa tree with its big leaves.  Mom will spread her wings and the babies crowd under but she gets pretty wet sometimes.  There are several better places where they could take cover also.

 The six I took away from her are fascinated by the family on the other side of the fence and occasionally they fly over the fence.  But they don’t mingle - at least not yet and there seems to be no real recognition of the relationship.   These babies seem to still be learning the ropes of outside life.  They could go back inside the barn to their old pen at any time but they don’t.  I am still trying to find out where they are roosting at night.

 Mama muscovy duck hatched her brood of ten ducklings at the beginning of September.  For the first 3 weeks we kept them in a large pen in the back of the barn with mom.  They had a large doghouse in there and mom faithfully rounded them up each night and went inside.  The babies were getting out all the time so once again we opened the gate and let them into the pasture.  I was afraid mom would take them to the pond and they would get lost but so far so good.  They do get nailed occasionally by a bigger duck or chicken but they quickly learned to be nimble and quick.  They are so much fun to watch as they cheerfully run around under the feet of the bigger birds, chasing bugs, snatching bread crumbs or playing in puddles.   Momma duck brings them inside the chicken coop each night, back to where she hatched them under the chicken nests.  She also herds them inside if it rains.  Maybe ducks are smarter than turkeys.

 The bigger ducks are so pretty right now.  We did butcher two males as we have so many.  We had never tasted muscovy duck before.  I roasted it and it was very good actually.  Like most people say, it did taste a lot like beef and it wasn’t greasy.  It was a bit tough and hard to slice off the bone.  Our birds do a lot of walking, flying and swimming.  I would like to sell a few more but if nothing else we can eat them. 

 My group of frizzle roosters has been fighting terribly.  We had to remove one.  It’s a shame they all turned out to be roosters- except maybe one- they are so pretty but I can’t keep all of them if they are going to fight. 

 The only surviving Ameraucana cross hen from the raccoon massacre has turned out to be a small, light golden laced bird I named Goldie.  She is very feral and her eggs are brown and small.  She is hiding them beneath an old piece of wood in our junk area.  She never comes in the barn that I know of, and doesn’t associate much with the other chickens.  The young rooster hangs with her a bit.

 The garden is pretty well gone now.  We did get some tomatoes this week but the cold weather that we expect in a few days should be the end of them.  It wasn’t a bad tomato year- I only sprayed fungicide once- but I wasn’t real happy with it either.  The corn was a big disappointment.  I hope the weather will allow me to get some horse manure on the gardens this fall.

 Momma turkey and brown chicks.

 Young Muscovy ducks.

Frizzle roosters.

Don't abandon your pets

Well this has been a strange week.  At work someone found a small kitten under the cars in the parking lot and brought it into our office.  We all couldn’t take a kitten home but we made it comfortable by feeding it and providing a litter box.  It was playing around the office and the boss thought it was cute and said maybe it could be an office cat.  But then a client came in and started talking about her 17 year old cat dying and we introduced her to the kitten.  Love at first sight and the kitten went home with her.

That was Tuesday.  Thursday I came home from work and a little dog ran up to meet me when I got out of the car.  Problem is it wasn’t any of my dogs.   It was chasing poor Frizzle my little yard rooster and I was worried that it would get my baby turkeys out in the yard.    I tied it up - no collar but he was a friendly little thing and after dinner we drove around the neighborhood asking people if they lost a dog.  No luck.

My instinct is that he’s a drop off.  Steve said he was outside a half hour before I came home and it wasn’t around then.    The dog is a little black and tan, wire coated thing, maybe a schnauzer-rat terrier mix.  Very loving, but a whole male, so he can’t come inside.  I didn’t see any fleas; he’s real thin but looks healthy.  I put him in the kennel outside with Sarah.  Sarah is really old but still active Jack Russell who has always been an outside dog.  She has a really large outside and inside run.  She loves male dogs, she’s a big flirt.  She can’t get pregnant and they are about the same size. 

I decided to name him Justin Bieber for now.  He’s not really happy outside but only cries for a short time after he sees me.   He wants to snuggle under my arm constantly.  He’s a little big for a lap dog, but not a big dog, just long legged and gangly.  We have called all the vets and put notices up at the stores but my bet is that an owner won’t be found.  I can’t keep a whole male here as some of my girls aren’t fixed and I can’t afford to neuter someone else’s dog.  So we’ll be looking for a home for him.

Then this morning- Saturday- I started outside to go do chores and stepped on a cat. It was lying on our porch steps in the sun, half dead from starvation I think.  The poor thing was skin and hair.  She probably didn’t weigh 5 pounds and was a large cat.  It was an adult female gray domestic shorthair, also with no collar.   I fed her of course and I thought she was going to settle down on the porch but later I saw her walking down the road.  She had a scrape on her back - I wonder if she was locked up somewhere and finally escaped and is trying to go home.  She ate well here so maybe I helped her.

I keep wondering if the two are connected, the dog and cat, someone’s pets that they dropped off.   Or maybe left behind in a house and finally escaped.  I just don’t understand people, there are so many places they could take unwanted animals and to think that dropping them off at someone’s house is the right thing to do is so stupid.  People- just because we are a farm don’t mean we want your unwanted pets!  And yes- one more does matter!    Dropping animals off in the country is about the dumbest, most inhumane thing you can do.  And it’s illegal too.