Late October

Wow it’s late October, how time flies! The leaves all fell off the front walnut and catalpa trees in one swoop Sunday morning. We had temperatures down to the mid 20’s the night before and I got up to a rain of leaves, sliding through the crisp, sunny morning light. I drove into town to buy a newspaper and just had to stop and take a picture of the beautiful red and gold leaves under the big sugar maple near the north end of town. I also got a really neat shot of a big black cat sitting in front of a bunch of Halloween decorations. How cute is that!

Speaking of cats, our barn cats are all dying of some weird disease. The big odd marbled tom died today. He had his hindquarters paralyzed for a day or two before he died. He was able to eat and drink so I don’t worry about rabies. From a high of 16 or so cats the past winter we are down to 2 adults and 3 kittens that were born this year. The little black and white visitor cat still shows up from time to time and I saw a strange orange cat out there one night so we won’t run out of cats. I will miss the marble tom. He showed up here as a half grown cat and was pretty friendly. Everyone remarked on how odd he looked, he was a marbled or swirled tiger, but he was also very tall and had slanted eyes.

The cats had some sort of respiratory disease first. Most were so wild you couldn’t help them in any way. Then I thought that was over and the others just started dying. We only had one litter of kittens born this year from one of the really wild cats- the mother of most of them around here- and she seems immune to everything. I guess nature takes care of over population in her own way. You like to have a couple cats around the barn but too many gets to be a problem too. I don’t miss buying a 20 lb. bag of cat food each week or stepping in cat mess everywhere. I think one of the 3 kittens left is a female, but they don’t look all that healthy either. I’m sure the population will rebound in a year or two.

Honey’s puppies are getting big - big and messy. They seem very healthy, thank god. They seem to be a friendly bunch, only one shows a bit of shyness. They get their shots next week then we try to sell them. I am debating whether to let people with kids come in our house. It’s hard enough to get kids to pick a puppy and deal with a packed room of people and puppies but now those kids may be carrying swine flu. I think we will have a no kids policy this year. Parents are the ones that care for the dog anyway; they should be the one to pick it. They bring 4 or 5 kids, each picks a puppy they like, and then they all sit around and argue for 2 hours about which one to choose.

This week and the next we are familiarizing the pups with the rest of the house, the other dogs and different flooring etc. If it’s nice we will get them outside in a pen on the grass. Cockers are big on running off to explore and unlike the terriers they all go in a different direction. Usually the weather is still nice enough this time of year for them to go out on sunny days but I’m not sure about this year.

We have been picking and putting up a lot of apples this year. The small tree in the backyard gave us a 5 gal. bucket of big fat yellow apples and the tree in back of the barn gave us 2 - 5 gal buckets of small but very tasty green and red apples. They almost taste like Honey Crisp- maybe they are. All of my trees were labeled wrong- the big yellow apples were supposed to be Granny Smiths. I think we have another bucket left to pick on that tree in back of the barn. I have been making and freezing apple pie filling and we put some plain cut apples in the freezer too. It takes forever to peel them. The horses and chickens are enjoying all the peels and cores. I was only able to freeze about 3 quarts of tomato sauce this year so the apples are filling the freezer instead.

I have been moving plants around in the house. I always bring in more than I have space in front of windows for. My office here that I write in has a window that faces north, with a dog door right below it that lets in lots of cold air. I had Steve build a box around the dog door so that maybe I can put some plants in the window above it and they won’t freeze. It has a flap on one end and now the opening faces away from my desk: the cold air won’t blow directly on me while I’m writing and the dogs are running in and out.

We have been winterizing like crazy. Steve covered our bedroom windows that face northwest with a heavy old afghan to keep out drafts. I don’t think plants will grow at all in that room. I have packed the living room and kitchen windows with plants and my unheated porch is full too. When the pups are gone we are re-modeling the other bedroom so I don’t want to put anything in there. I still have to bring in my rosemary pots and tree rose, at least to the porch. One day I will have a greenhouse.

End of summer

It’s the last day of summer. We have had a spell of nice warm and sunny days and cool nights, but it has been very dry. For the first time this summer the grass stopped growing and began to scrunch up. I had to water several times. But last night we got a good soaker, very much needed. I hope we get more later today. It’s a bit muggy and warm this afternoon. I was thinking of cooking chili- thought it would be cool and damp - but I am re-considering.

Tomato’s are still giving me some fruit, the ones in the tomato”bed” anyway. The ones up by the house are dead from late blight. I made some sauce this weekend and froze it. We finally got to taste the variety Lemmony - a yellow tomato- it was all right, nothing special. Our favorite has definitely been Cherokee Purple, it’s ugly but tastes great.

I notice that the Morning Glories are staying open all day now. It must be because the plant wants to optimize its chances for pollination and the bees aren’t out in the cool dew wet or frosty mornings. We have two light frosts but annual flowers are still going strong for the most part. I have got to start bringing in the houseplants and things I want to save this weekend. The landscape roses are blooming and the Sweet Autumn clematis and my lovely swamp sunflowers, but not many other perennials.

My beasts Charlie and Lily got out of the pasture last Tuesday while I was at work. They rolled under the fence it seems. Steve tried to catch Charlie, then Lily got out and they both ran across the street, up the horse farm road and under one of their fences. When I got home they were sharing the pasture with a mare I believe Charlie was interested in, but that he could walk under. I thought since they went under the fence to get in they might come out that way but I guess the fence must have given them a good poke as they went under and they were having none of that, although Lily seemed like she wanted to get out and come home.

They were right across the street but the gate to that paddock was way up by the horse farm’s arena, a good walk. I had to roll under the fence, put leads on both of them and lead them to the gate with the big mare in the paddock periodically rushing us and my two practically pulling my arms out of the socket. Lily went through- no trouble- but Charlie planted his feet and refused. It took forever to inch him along, then I had a long walk home with them both.

The east pasture has now got a hot wire all around it, when the deer don’t break it on the way to the apple trees. Charlie and Lily are now being locked up there when I am not home and at night, even though the grass is pretty much gone. We fixed the spot they went under on the west and they get to wander over there during the day when I am home.
I was outside last night feeling up Charlie’s balls- sounds worse than it is- and he still hasn’t dropped both. He can’t be gelded until they are down and I hope that comes soon. I actually offered to give him away in the Master Gardener newsletter last week but I had only one call and they changed their mind after I honestly told them about him.

They only thing bad about leaving all the gates open so the horse can find the maximum grass is that the turkeys follow the horses over to the west were the dogs can see them. They stand over there making their weird loud calling noise and it drives the dog’s nuts. Next they will be getting out to go after the turkeys.

Speaking of dogs, Honey’s babies are growing like crazy. She spends more time out of the box and wants to come and go from the room. But Ginger sneaks in and gets in with the puppies. She has been caught trying to steal one a couple times. She doesn’t seem to hurt them but I am worried it might happen if a fight breaks out between her and Honey or one of the other dogs gets it. Soon they will be too big for Ginger to carry and that may help. It’s hard to say if she wants the pup because she’s feeling motherly or if she thinks of it like a personal toy. Ginger has always hoarded toys.

Well that’s life on the farm right now.

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.

It’s Sunday and it’s another cool and gloomy day. I have been immersed in a battle with tomato diseases, both at work trying to give out informed advice and at home trying to save my own plants. My beautiful tomato bed seems very sparse now, I have removed tons of diseased leaves and stems. There is lots of ripening fruit still, but I wonder how long I can keep them going. It seems there are several diseases attacking tomato plants, I believe mine have septoria leaf spot. Besides removing diseased leaves I have been spraying with neem oil- although not as often as I should have I guess - or the neem oil doesn’t work. The experts recommend daconil- but I just can’t see growing tomatoes at home if you have to spray them as much as a commercial grower.

I guess you have to choose any more. Have home grown tomatoes by spraying them with chemicals or lose all your work just as they start to ripen. I don’t want to hear the junk about healthy soil and compost tea. Sorry, while those are great they don’t stop fungal disease. Every year I listen to the organic gurus spouting about compost tea and making your soil healthy. I want to see their tomato gardens this year. Some of the organic remedies, like the copper sprays, have higher toxicity than daconil. And the trial results I see on the New Ag network and elsewhere don’t give very good reports on all the organic products.

I think my raised bed soil is pretty healthy, my plants looked great and were loaded with fruit. They are off the ground and mulched. I rotate where I plant them each year. I have 12 different varieties of tomato and yes, some do better than others fighting off fungus but all have it to some degree. I have plants in pots and plants away from the one big tomato bed in another raised bed. Every plant has some degree of fungal disease.

I did get some very good tomatoes off the Cherokee Purple plant I planted. They are so yummy I just sat and ate them by themselves. They are quite ugly fruits and hard to tell when ripe- the turkeys had sampled one and that made me guess they were ready. The Early Girls are ok, as are the Celebrity. Celebrity is supposed to be disease resistant but this year my Celebrity is one of the hardest hit with disease. I have some Birkstone Orange, John Baer and Limmony about ready to pick.

I am starting to get cucumbers. The Alibi cuke we planted in the experimental garden and I planted here have proved resistant to powdery mildew and are very prolific. We are picking lots of Dragon’s Tongue beans from the experimental garden and the soup kitchens say they are great. We are overwhelmed with patty pan squash and we only planted a few plants in the experimental garden. We had more squash than the soup kitchen wanted or the seniors in our building.

I dug about 20 pounds of red and white potatoes from our 4 x 10 raised bed last night. We have been harvesting them several times a week for a month now too. The vines were getting fungal disease and naturally dying back and I decided to get them out before the tubers were affected. We now have all sizes from tiny reds to big whites. I also dug out some nice big white onions, the best onions we have grown in years.

Our sweet corn has been good too. The larger eared yellow I planted later is about ready to harvest. We have been eating the smaller early white corn for the last few weeks. I am no longer able to get any strawberries because the turkeys discovered them and patrol the beds each day. The apples are starting to color and they seem to look pretty good, even without spraying. They are still very sour though.

Horses were moved back to the east pasture to give the west pasture a rest. They were breaking down fences over there again too. Trying to keep them out of the pond area but Charlie kept going over the fence. Some of our hens are going broody on us, which is rare with Isa Browns, our egg production has really dropped.

Honey, the cocker, is going to have pups early next month. That was a bit of a surprise as I didn’t think she and Bubba mated - even though I put them together twice- he didn’t seem real interested. Guess he fooled me. She is going to be groomed tomorrow to get her coat cut close before she gives birth. We haven’t had pups here in about 18 months so maybe it won’t be too bad. I do love playing with pups but they are so messy. And the money will come in handy to buy propane before real cold weather, if they sell well in this economy.

county fair

I just returned from a looong week at the Eastern Michigan Fair. I am responsible for overseeing the Lapeer County Master Gardener building, where the wonderful volunteers put up a variety of displays and conduct a silent auction and bake sale to raise money for their awards banquet. This year we held a photo contest too.

Our exhibit had a compost display, complete with homemade bins and a worm composting display, we had a garden of tranquility, a victory garden, a medicinal herb garden set up to look like an old doctors office and a rain garden with a display of rain barrels also. Volunteers spent hundreds of hours growing the plants and making the displays.

Our problem in this beautiful building is lack of exposure. All of the buildings holding inside exhibits are at one end of the fairgrounds and all the rides and animals are at the other. Guess which way people tend to go? This year the weather was pretty good until the last day- when it literally rained inches of water on to the fairground. Later that night strong storms blew through and made a mess of the fairgrounds.

I do like the fair for a day or two, but this week long thing is pretty tiring. I really feel for the parents who camp through the whole fair so their kids can show animals. What a long week that must be. On the last day a horse barrel race was still going on through pouring rain and parents were sitting there at ringside drenched to the bone.

People watching is kind of fun. You get to see all kinds at the fair. Some visit us specifically, others just wander through. I talk to a lot of people about gardening and about pets, their lives, you name it. You also get to eat fair food, which is greasy and fattening but so good.

One thing I do not like at fairs is a “birthing” exhibit, which our fair decided to have this year. Farm animals do not like to give birth in front of crowds. It is very stressful to them. Most manage to give birth at night or in the very early morning anyway because they have the ability to delay labor a bit until things are calm. On the farm the animals separate themselves from other animals and people to give birth if they can.

The newborn young are subjected to too much petting, noise and stress at these fairs. They are poked, prodded to get up, blinded by flashing photo lights, and fed inappropriate things. They are often separated from their moms, especially calves, so the moms won’t hurt someone trying to protect them. Yes, I know dairy calves are taken away from mom and often hauled to auctions right away but it doesn’t make it right. Baby chicks hatching behind glass maybe, but leave the other animals home to give birth and through the first week or so of life. Our state fair has vet students on hand to watch the animals but at the small fairs it’s usually 4-H or FFA kids. When things go wrong they may not know what to do.

I don’t know why the Humane Society, with all the things they complain about, doesn’t complain about this. I feel it’s cruel and inhumane to exhibit animals in the last days of pregnancy and also to exhibit newborns.I don't think county fairs need to have birthing exhibits or state fairs either.

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.