I know I haven’t posted much on this blog lately but I’ve been busy with the launch of my latest book- Raising Chickens for Dummies. It’s a great book if I say so myself and it has all the newest and best information on chickens and it’s written so everyone can understand it. Don’t let the For Dummies part scare you- even smart, chicken savvy people will like this book.

It was agonizing sometimes writing the book. I wanted to say soooo much and space was limited. As it was they had to take out some pictures to make room for the writing.

My co-author for the book was Rob Ludlow, who owns the neat web site Backyardchickens.com. If you like chickens you’ll want to check out this site. Here’s a link
If you want to buy the book here’s the spot to go.

And if you read the book and like it go to Amazon and give it a star rating. Ask your local library if they’ll buy a copy also.

A Charlie - horse

Oh, Charlie the mini horse is appropriately named. He is a major pain to me right now. I tried to get him gelded but since both testicles are not down the vet wouldn’t do it. Today I was taking a break from writing and I went out by the pond to look for the big, beautiful dragon flies that have been out there. Usually this time of day the horses aren’t out by the pond, but today they saw me and came running. I don’t like to mess with Charlie out there so I quickly went back through the gate to the pasture in back of the barn. I heard a kitten crying over by the junk pile where the wild kittens live and I couldn’t figure out why.

About the time I discovered a tiny new born kitten on the ground Charlie jumps the fence- or rather crawls over it. He comes running for me with the idea of having some fun with me. He couldn’t step on the kitten because it was behind some wire but the chickens had also noticed me and they had came over. I was afraid they would pick at the tiny kitten and I wanted to cover it with something. Charlie was dancing around me trying to nip me and rearing up on me. I had to give him a good whack with the cover to a kitty litter pan that I picked up to put over the kitten and then it only deterred him for a minute. I tried to grab him by the halter but he is getting too heavy for me to control well that way and I didn’t have a lead nearby. I got the cover over the kitten and retreated into the barn. He then started chasing chickens around. I left him there to get back to his mom on his own.

I am going to put a lead on him tonight and give him a good manners lesson. I know he is being a normal brat boy horse but I am just glad he’s small. Steve wants to get rid of him, but I think it’s a phase just like all young animals go through. After he’s gelded maybe he’ll settle down. Poor baby boy horses get moved around a lot in life. I wanted to give him a good, permanent home but I don’t like dealing with male horses.

I really worry about Lily having a foal. If she does it will be nearly impossible to separate him from her. She’ll have to be locked in the barn or he will. I just wish I knew whether she was going to foal, she’s as big as a barrel but then she never stops eating either. She is still very active. And the other worry is that he will breed her before he’s gelded, if she isn’t pg. I need to work on fences he can’t go through too. Electric don’t seem to work with him.

Ah, well such is life with animals.

It has been an interesting week. A snapping turtle the size of a dinner plate stopped by the back door to lay her eggs, swallows have taken over the horse stall in back of the barn, the cherries and strawberries are getting ripe and Charlie couldn't get gelded because he has only one "ball" dropped.

My beautiful new roses are blooming along with the old ones. I am particularily impressed with the coral color or soft orange maybe, of the rose Carefree Celebration. Daylillies are beginning to bloom too. My oriental lilies are 8 foot tall already probably because of all the rain. I bought some stakes for them but the buds are still small so they won't need it yet.

Michael Jackson died. Everyone made fun of him while he was alive but now that he's dead everybody acts like he was some kind of beloved icon, which he wasn't. He was a weird little man, possibly a pervert and I didn't even think his singing was that good. His poor kids- at least now they may have a chance to be in a normal household and as time goes by maybe they will forget how odd he was. Once again drugs were probably his downfall and a doctor may have helped his addiction.

Every family seems to have its odd one, doesn't it? (Although in my family we may all be odd.) Every family could probably have a story written about it. Warning - family- I may someday write all about you!

Father's day

My mom and dad leave on a trip to Missouri this week to see one of my sisters girls get married. One of my sisters is going with them but Dad won’t let her drive. I worry about them, he’s almost 80. But he's a stubborn old guy and he'll do what he wants to do.

On Fathers day I have to say this. I have one of the best fathers there is. He never complains, (unless someone tries to keep him from doing what he wants to do, like shoveling snow), he was good to us kids growing up and we always knew he loved us. He didn’t drink or go out with the guys, didn’t smoke and went to church every Sunday. He waits on mom hand and foot and even though mom can be a bit difficult at times he always tries to please her. He helps around the house and helps the neighbors out too. He still plays with the little ones, crawling around on the floor, reading to them and playing games. Kids always loved my dad even though he doesn’t put up with bad behavior.

My dad had the same job all his life from the time he got out of the army. It wasn’t a glamorous job, he was a shipping and receiving manager at a Sears store. I know there were times, especially in later years as Sears fortunes went up and down, that he greatly disliked his job, but he always gave 100% and he stuck it out until retirement age. My mom was a stay at home mom- raising six kids you almost have to be, she never learned to drive. Dad made that paycheck stretch, he was good at fixing things and he never spent money on himself. He does spend a little on things he wants now, although he doesn’t have a lot of “wants.”

We went camping and fishing and on Sunday drives. And we went to church every Sunday and sat in the same pew. My dad built us playhouses and rabbit cages and fixed our bikes. He lived in a house with 6 women and only one son, a son that went to war at age 17. My brother came home safely but then he moved far away- to Australia, leaving dad in the world of women, although he does have 5 fine sons- in- laws. And each of his daughters had one son so he has 5 grandsons,( along with 6 granddaughters.)

I watched my dad cry over his father as we made the difficult decision to put him in a nursing home when his Alzheimer’s became too much for everyone to deal with. He had built his house next to his dads and had lived beside him all his life. Now he stopped every day after work to shave and feed his father where he mercifully only lasted a few months. My dad then took care of his mom, who continued living next door until she was well into her 90’s, active and alert until a stroke caused her to fall and break a hip. He then made the daily trip to visit her in her nursing home, although she didn’t always know him.

One of the things my dad always wanted to do was learn to fly, he never got the chance, and for that I am truly sorry. It makes me conscious of the fact that if there are things you want to do - do them!

I always know I can go to my dad with my problems and he’ll listen and try to help. I can’t imagine life without him, even though I have begun to prepare for it. How sad it is that just as we begin to appreciate how wonderful and wise our parents are, that they leave us. I just hope my dad has 20 more good years, where he’s active and happy.

Trip through the valley

We took another one of those trips to Saginaw VA today. It is an overcast day, with the sun occasionally breaking through, not terribly hot but muggy. The flat fields in the Saginaw valley look like they got planted a bit sooner than some around here and the crops are coming up. I particularly noticed two things today as we passed old the old German- Dutch farms. One was the beautiful clematis that many had in bloom. Even small plants seemed to be blooming and unlike the common purple Jackamani variety I have blooming, these seemed to be mostly a large pink flowered variety. It was like they had passed starts of that vine from person to person. Maybe they had or maybe it’s an old variety that the German- Dutch farmers preferred. Many yards had few other flowers but they had a pink clematis climbing something. Peonies were in bloom too and those were common sights around the old farms.

The second thing I noticed today was that many of the old farm houses had very narrow porches, porches where you could sit in a straight chair against the house wall and rest your feet on the porch rail. Some of the porches curved around 2 or more sides of the house, some were just across the front. I guess this was economy of building, why make a porch any wider than a place to sit? This too must be some kind of custom from the homelands.

I love the big old barns, on most of these places they are well kept and painted either red or green with white trim. There are lots of small buildings around these old farms too, I can recognize the typical chicken house but many of the buildings I can’t place a use for. I would love to have a wealth of small buildings like these, perfect for a couple pigs or a few turkeys or separating big chickens from young chickens- which may be the uses the buildings were built for. My husband laughs at my interest in barns and out buildings. He says it’s a good thing I don’t have a lot of them as I would fill them with animals.

I do love the ride through the Saginaw valley on a nice day. The terrain is so flat you can see for miles. Then as you travel east to the Kingston area the terrain gets to be rolling hills, closer to where we live. There are heavily wooded areas, ponds and farms with more livestock than crops, mostly beef cattle. But if you keep going east toward Sandusky you get back to the flat, level crop lands. A trip across the thumb with all its interesting points, and roads with telling names like French Line, English Road and Germania. Everyone should take such a trip from time to time, from the Saginaw Bay to Port Sanilac.

Locust trees

I had someone bring me a tree sample for identification. The piece had tiny white pea-like flowers in drooping clusters with the most delightful scent. The small round leaves made me think locust- as well as the flowers and when looking it up I found I was right - it was a Black Locust, considered by the author of the reference I consulted to be a “weedy tree” but I really liked it. The young guy who brought the piece in said the tree stood in an empty field and was quite huge. He wanted to get a young plant or seeds from it. I want one now too. Someone should make a perfume from that scent. On the way home from work I actually noticed two of the trees in yards, because of the white flowers. You would think a native tree that grows in poor soil as this one is supposed to do would be found in more places. It gets to 60 foot high and has rough interesting bark .

Our Bristly Locust is blooming right now, it’s flowers are larger but pea-like also and a pretty shade of pink. It has bristles up and down the stem and weedy does describe it. It makes small trees but spreads through runners and soon takes over a spot. We allow it to grow along the east side of our property by the road. It doesn’t have that nice smell but it is pretty this time of year.

We have had quite cool weather but I have taken the chance and planted out my tomatoes. I did something different this year and real redneck re-cycling- orientated. We had the box springs from a double bed in the spare bedroom we were going to throw out. It had a nice wood frame so I pulled it outside, took off the cloth on top and the layer of batting and excelsior under it and laid the frame over one of my raised beds, propped up by black plastic pots on each corner so it stands about 18 inches off the ground. I took the matt of batting and excelsior and laid it on the soil under the frame and cut holes through it to plant the tomatoes. I want the tomatoes to grow up through the frame of wood and wire springs and spread out over the top, off the ground. We will see what happens. It will be easy to throw a cloth over if frost threatens too, although it’s June and we shouldn’t be having frost! I am going to get a picture of it and post it here soon.

I saw the wild little kittens last night. There are at least 5 of them. We have 5 female cats on the farm and normally by this time we would have tons of kittens but this is the only litter we have had. Not that I’m complaining, its just strange. These will be real wild, I did pick one up because its little eyes were glued shut and it didn’t see me coming. It hissed like crazy but didn’t fight too hard. They are about 5 weeks old I think. It was nice and plump and besides its little eyes looked healthy. I pulled the eyelids open and put it in the feed dish where it started eating. The others snuck out after I went up to the barn and sat down. There are a lot of mostly white ones, our cats tend to be mostly white or black although we do have two striped ones now.

They say that the color of the feral cats in your area can give you clues as to where the original settlers of the area came from, as the color of the feral cats reverts back to the original stock after a while and different ethnic groups preferred different colored cats. I think the black and white / gray and white ones like ours were supposed to be Dutch, which could be, German- Dutch people did settle this area early on and the Amish are German derived. There are a lot of cats marked like ours in town too.

Today Charlie will get his first hoof trimming. This should be fun. Hopefully neither I nor the gal coming to do it will get hurt nor will he. This girl is a friend of a neighbor and hopefully she knows what she is doing. I could not find anyone who wanted to come out here just to do two mini- horses without charging an arm and a leg. I tied Charlie up to a post the other night to try and get a piece of wire out of his tail and he managed to break the post and take off dragging it which scared me to death. He stopped though when he got to where Lily was and I was able to walk up and unsnap the lead. It was hitting his legs and belly and I was afraid he would kill himself. The post was rotten- that should teach me a lesson.- Maybe him too, hope he doesn’t freak out being tied today.

Planting time and fat horses

It’s planting time and no matter how I try I always have more things to do than time to do them. Today after some office work I got outside just in time to get half my corn planted before it started storming. Steve made and filled a nice new 5 x 10 raised bed for corn. It doesn’t seem like much but we had plenty of corn last year from a bed that size.

I have got onions, potatoes and lettuce up and growing. I made a trip to a packed greenhouse last Saturday and picked up some new plants, one of them is quite intriguing its got large, wine red trumpet shaped flowers on a trailing vine and is called LoFos, which is short for some long Latin name. I guess it has been popular in Europe for a few years and is called Trailing Gloxina there. I got my mom and daughter in law each one too.

I got some petunias because I can’t resist some of the gorgeous colors they have even though it’s hard to find a place for them here. And I bought more lavender because some of my plants didn’t make it through the winter and a single pepper and some cinnamon basil. My sage is finally getting some new green so it did make it through the winter and the pineapple mint is also coming back- although it’s hard to kill mint. I also bought a couple new perennials. I spend way too much on plants.

A Master Gardener friend brought me some of his “trilliums” which he said his woods were full of. They turned out to be mayapples instead, but that’s ok - they look great in one of my shaded gardens and the silky white flowers scanned well for my scan art pictures. It was great weather for transplanting stuff too.

My horses Charlie and Lily took a little trip last Saturday morning. They pushed the gate out at the bottom and walked up the road in time for breakfast at the big horse farm. The neighbors were kind enough to lead them home and put them back in the pasture without waking us. I was quite puzzled in the morning though, because the gate was all bent up but the horses were inside with both latches on. I spotted a mini manure pile next to my hosta which I knew wasn’t there the night before and then I did some sleuthing and found the tiny hoof prints going up the road. I guessed they had been out - Lily wasn’t that hungry, another clue, but couldn’t figure out who had put them back without us hearing, dogs didn’t even wake up. The neighbor rode over on Monday and told me about it.

I am trying to decide if Lily is PG or just fat. If she is pregnant she would have at least a month before she foaled. If she’s just fat I got to try and get her to lose weight. In a day or so I’ll post some pictures of fat Lily so you can be the judge. I didn’t want to say anything to my husband because this happened before when we got our Shetland pony Tinker, I thought she was pregnant and made him put up more fence so she could be alone and it turned out she wasn’t pregnant. He thinks I’m nuts. But Lily was with two males, a mini jack donkey and a mini stallion or at least close to them and the man who sold her to me said something about separating her from the rest of the horses because she was always trying to protect Charlie. I got her when Charlie was two months old, which would have given her at least two heat periods before I got her. Charlie was born July 19 and mares come into heat about ten days after foaling, gestation is 11 months more or less, so that leaves about a month before its possible for her to foal.

The tree frogs are really noisy tonight. It’s amazing how big a sound their little bodies can make. They like this warmer wet weather. I guess I’ll take a walk outside as the rain has let up, and get carried away by mosquitoes.