Archive for April 2017
Startling Behavior
Legacy gave us quite a scare on Saturday. Just as Cyndie and I were trying to finish all projects in order to get cleaned up for a wedding in the cities, Legacy began to behave uncharacteristically out of sorts. I was out among the herd, scooping manure, when I caught him repeatedly banging his nose against a board on the wall of the barn beneath the overhang.
Not having ever seen him do such a thing, I wandered over to check on him. I offered to scratch his nose, in case an itch was making him do this. He didn’t seem annoyed or relieved by my effort. Then he started pawing the ground, digging in strongly.
Cyndie came out of the barn a few moments later, to see what the banging was about. I reported my findings. She recognized his behavior right away as a sign he was agitated about something. Luckily, we were able to get a quick second opinion from George and Anneliese in a fleeting moment before they were to leave.
Legacy’s breathing was noticeably elevated and we thought he felt a little warm. Anneliese listened for gut sounds and noted good activity. They said the situation deserved a call to the vet and advised we put a halter on him so we could walk him and keep him from lying down.
Walking a horse that doesn’t want to walk is not high on my list of things I like to do. Cyndie was trying to reach a vet late on a Saturday afternoon. It quickly became apparent that our odds of making it to that wedding in the cities were getting worse by the minute.
Those minutes while waiting for the answering service to reach the vet and for the vet to finally call us back can be rather stressful. They also tend to last what feels like an eternity. Meanwhile, Legacy was growing increasingly agitated.
After listening to our description of symptoms, the vet suggested we administer an anti-inflammatory. She was an hour out. Legacy was beginning to drain thick snot from his nose as Cyndie prepared to get him to accept a dose of medication.
I busied myself with tending the pile of composting manure while Cyndie alternately walked and soothed Legs. Before we knew it, our herd leader was calming back to his old self. When the vet arrived, she immediately commented that his ears looked good.
If I were to simplify the story, we cured him.
Whatever was causing his pain, most likely colic –a common digestive disorder– the relief of an anti-inflammatory may have relaxed him enough to get his system readjusted and back to normal. The vet took vital signs and collected a blood sample to check for infection.
We had to quarantine Legacy to one side of the paddock and not allow him anything to eat. The key sign of progress was when Cyndie found poo piles Sunday morning. Worst outcome averted.
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Mud Happens
It’s that time of year. One good reason we want woodchips for our trails is the mudfest we are faced with in low areas and avenues where ground water makes its way down to these lower areas.
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There is a trick to getting the woodchips, though. You need to get to the piles of branches without getting stuck in the mud!
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The ground looked innocuous enough, subtly covered with turf. Beneath that facade of grass hid a soft soup of mushy mud that pulled the tractor tires ever-deeper with each attempt to move either forward or back.
Ultimately, Cyndie and I outsmarted the soft soil with precisely placed scraps of wood fence posts behind the tires while I manipulated the loader bucket to push the tractor backwards.
I think it’s going to take a long time to replace the divots along that stretch. It’s going to need to wait until the mud gets a lot less soupy for real repairs to take hold.
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Some Progress
I’m pretty sure I mentioned that the cleanup from our late winter tree trimming was going to be such an extensive project it would take the full summer to accomplish. I think that under-estimates the size of the project. One reason is the number of downed branches that were in our woods before we added to it with the trimming.
As we start the process of collecting branches from the trimming, it leads to a seemingly unending supply of other downed wood that also deserves to come out. We spent most of the morning yesterday cleaning out the section of woods where I had pulled down the three leaning widow-makers last summer.
This created monstrous new piles on the edge of the trail.
After lunch, I brought out the tractor and chipper to get down to business. We started in the back yard where the smaller maple tree branches were in three reasonable piles. With so much to do, I probably was trying to go too fast. Not paying enough attention to the exit chute, I was still feeding branches in after a plug had formed.
The spinning blades of the chipper will continue to pulverize the wood into dust. The dust finds any opening to escape and a cloud starts to form around the machine. That part finally got my attention. Oops.
After a significant delay to open the unit up and remove the plug and scraps wrapped around the spindle, we got back into the groove and made reasonable progress. By the end of the day, we hadn’t made it around to the two newest piles we stacked in the morning, but we converted one of the oldest piles in the woods into a mini-mountain of chips.
As much as I’d like to have our entire property done all at once, I’m working to accept the partial progress as good enough. Getting the chips spread along the trail helps to serve as a nice reward that soothes my angst in the mean time.
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Doesn’t Compute
I don’t get it. How is it that a dog will eat vomit, feces of other animals, entrails, dog food, and a mummified carcass of a cat that was buried in manure that had been spread on a neighbor’s farm, but she refuses to ingest her prescribed antibiotic meds because they taste bad?
It doesn’t compute for me.
Cyndie tried hiding it in chicken, hamburger, peanut butter, cheese, cat food, all of which Delilah rejected with emphasis. Ultimately, Cyndie succeeded by slipping it inside a pasta noodle that was then covered by some other enticement.
Wednesday night was another difficult one, and by the middle of the day yesterday, Cyndie needed to take Delilah to the vet. She was getting dehydrated. They verified that some bacteria appears to have knocked her digestive system completely out of whack.
Treatment included re-hydration and meds that taste bad. Really? Did somebody there actually taste them to find out? What the heck could taste bad to a dog? Apparently, antibiotic pills.
Meanwhile, the chickens appear to be perfectly healthy and Legacy is taking full advantage of the black mud in the paddock to practice looking like a cow.
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I was all prepared to discover that one or more of our new chicks weren’t able to survive the barely controlled environment of the brooder that we set up in the barn. Each passing day that first week was a grand success, with the chicks growing more robust and looking increasingly comfortable and confident.
It has me thinking that it feels as though the very likely —if not inevitable— scenario of losing a bird to some illness or predator grows more significant with each passing day as well. The longer time they spend with us, the harder it will be on us to lose them, I’m sure.
So, the stakes on taking good care of our chickens go up every day. The more success we have, the more important it becomes that we continue to succeed. At least until the first loss occurs. After we have to deal with that reality of raising chickens a few times, I expect we’ll figure out a way to cope. It seems like all the people we have heard from or read about who raise chickens have gotten to a place of acceptance with the harsh reality of such losses.
It’s a reality that I can comprehend, which contrasts directly with the incomprehensible thought that anything could taste bad to a dog, after the things I have seen them eat.
That just doesn’t compute.
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Animal Care
Caring for our animals is a lot like caring for children, except they will never grow to become self-sufficient and eventually move out and have a life of their own. Do I sound tired?
You know that part of my life where I go off on bike rides because I find time to embark on such a frivolous pursuit? It happens a lot less often after we decided to have pets that require so much care. Luckily, humans tend to fall in love with animals almost as much as they do with their own children, so it ends up being a labor of love.
Of course, when you love people and pets, it is tough to watch them suffer illness. Even though it took almost three days for her to reveal symptoms, Cyndie thinks that Delilah’s current problems have a high likelihood of being the result of her activity while roaming loose on the neighboring properties last Saturday.
Tuesday afternoon, when I got home from work, Cyndie reported two interesting morsels of news: 1) She found the fully intact and well-preserved remains of the infamous goldfish when cleaning debris from our landscape pond. Surreptitiously deposited back in May of 2016, it was only spotted two times over the course of it’s time here. 2) Delilah was suffering from severe diarrhea.
Seconds after they followed me into the house, Delilah vomited on the old Hays family farm rug in the porch. When Cyndie went down to the barn to tend to the horses, she left Delilah in the house to rest. A few minutes later, Delilah came to the chair I was sitting in and looked at me.
I hustled to get her leash and get out the door. She practically pulled me across the driveway and down the slope into the trees and leaves where she experienced the worst canine diarrhea I had ever witnessed. Our doggie was seriously ill with some gastrointestinal disruption.
Tuesday night was one of constant sleep interruptions, and Cyndie described yesterday as producing gradually reducing symptoms. Delilah ate some rice with chicken broth. I took her for a walk after work and saw what we hope was one of the last gasps of an attempt to release the pressure of mostly virtual diarrhea.
I marveled at Delilah’s ability to proceed with the remainder of the walk in her usual mode of inspired curiosity at the world of scents. It was as if the disaster that I just watched playing out in her digestive system had never occurred.
It made the role of loving witness to her suffering that much easier to bear.
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Most Satisfying
Every time I use our wood chipper, I grow more enamored with the machine and what it does for us. For me, it has become the most satisfying repeated task of property management that we undertake.
It is relatively easy to set up, makes good use of our otherwise under-utilized diesel tractor, and it makes quick work of the chipping. I love the way it transforms an unsightly nuisance of constantly accumulating dead (or recently pruned) branches into a precious resource of wood chips. We will never have enough.
We use the chips around plants in the gardens and landscaping, as well as a covering for our many trails. That is, we hope to cover the trails. Right now, we have a lot more trails in need than we have wood chips to cover.
If we could find a way to create a few more hours in a day, we certainly have no shortage of branches to chip…
And it would be a most satisfying additional few hours, indeed.
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Trail’s Open
I have been waiting for the ground to thaw in order to clear the remaining sections of the downed tree laying across my new trail, but other things have commanded my attention. Each day, the project was on my agenda, but something else got first priority.
On Saturday, after I dragged my butt home from the bike ride, I refueled with some lunch with Cyndie. Rallying our energies after the midday meal, we set out to tackle separate chores. She was going to brush the horses, and I wanted to chainsaw a downed tree in our woods so I could continue chipping branches in that area. I also wanted to do some manure management and then take on the tree across the trail.
Cyndie suggested it sounded like I might be setting my goals a little high, especially after how drained I was when I got home.
She was dead on.
I barely summoned enough energy to finish chainsawing that downed tree. I was running on fumes as I lumbered around cleaning up and putting things away. Before calling it a day and heading in, I checked with Cyndie at the barn and offered to go get Delilah and take her for a walk.
Delilah had been on a “time out” inside all afternoon after running away from Cyndie into the woods while I was on my bike ride.
The dog and I headed out along my new trail. As we approached the downed tree, Delilah went around to the right and I hopped over toward the left. I landed on a piece that suddenly shifted. The ground had thawed enough to free the wood from its grip!
I couldn’t resist. The opportunity gave me renewed energy, so I hooked Delilah’s leash to a small tree and went to work on it. One after another the pieces of the tree came out of the ground and I was able to push them off the trail.
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I moved everything except the little piece that I determined was actually the stump of a small tree right in the way. That would require more attention than I was ready to give in that moment.
On Sunday, Mary and Tim stopped by for a short visit and on our way back from checking out our new chicks, I took them over to see my big accomplishment on the trail.
As I was telling them the story of that remaining stump, I kicked at it to demonstrate how solid it was.
It moved.
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Turned out it had just been frozen solid all along.
It was a little embarrassing, but that emotion was quickly overridden by the thrill of being able to simply move the obstruction aside.
The trail is now open for business.
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Labyrinth Love
Did you know there is a World Labyrinth Day? Maybe you didn’t even know there was such a thing as a Labyrinth Society. Well, there is, and Cyndie knows all about both. She has been a powerful force in guiding the creation of our precious Rowcliffe Forest Garden Labyrinth at Wintervale, and now she is sharing it with the world of labyrinth lovers around the globe.
Over the weekend she added our site to the Labyrinth Society’s locator database. You can look us up here.
In addition, Cyndie has written an article for Minnesota Women’s Press that was published in their April issue, to express the transformative power of walking the path of a labyrinth. If you follow that link to read her article, don’t be alarmed by the “Edina” address in her bio-line. She offered her parent’s address to align with their Minnesota focus, and that is the one they preferred. It’s not fake news, just an alternate fact.
At the end of that article, there is a paragraph describing World Labyrinth day. We are planning to participate in the “Walk as One at 1pm” wave of peace around the globe by inviting guests to join us at our labyrinth.
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If you are interested in joining us on May 6th, make sure to let us know in advance, so we can be properly prepared.
In the off-hand situation we get an overwhelming number of participants, I’ll just have Cyndie pull out the portable labyrinth she made with canvas and duct tape. I don’t recall if I posted a picture of the finished product already, but here it is on the day she and her LaLas (Labyrinth Ladies; see her article) finished it in the sanctuary of a church.
Come share the love of labyrinths and join in a global wave of peace. It will be transformative!
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Inaugural Ride
The ol’ legs, they ain’t what they used to be. It almost feels like I’ve gotten older than I’ve ever been before. Yesterday, I got out on the bike for my inaugural ride of the season. I do love winter, but there is no way a person can’t fall for a day in spring that sprouts with a blue sky, calm winds, and warm temps.
It was an opportunity that I needed to grab to get my cycling season underway. My annual bike trip in the middle of June is only two and a half months away and I need to break in a new saddle. Plus, I have committed to hosting a warm-up ride in the countryside around Wintervale in May.
I need to scout a route that will be suitable in length and challenge. Yesterday proved to be a chance to both break in my butt and start the process of establishing a route. I did well in both accounts. For the route, when I say that I did well, I mean that I found several roads that will not be candidates for the warm-up ride.
Things started well enough, as I headed out on roads I was familiar with. The superb weather and the idyllic landscapes were as good as could possibly be. As the miles mounted, I recognized the energy in my legs waning. As I approached the road that I was hoping to use for my turn west toward home again, I found gravel.
Ugh. This was my last chance before reaching a state road that was not so bike friendly. So I turned off the pavement. Luckily, this was an old unpaved road, so the surface was hard-packed almost as smooth as asphalt.
I could live with that. After a couple of more turns, I was getting really ready to reach home, thinking that it would have been nice if I’d tucked an energy bar into my jersey pocket.
I was looking for 610th, a road that I knew previously was gravel, but thought I’d seen new pavement in the last couple of years. As I turned onto it, there was a fleeting moment of hope, because the first 50 yards was pavement. The gravel that followed was nothing like the hard-packed old roads I’d traversed earlier.
This stuff seemed like it might have just been laid down this spring. It was the worst of class 5 gravel that offered absolutely no smooth tire tracks and left my rear tire slipping if I stood up to pedal. At the first incline, I had to throw in the towel and dismount.
I walked my bike up the loose gravel road as my tired legs complained about the change. Too tired to walk and too tired to ride is a good sign I’d used up pretty much all the strength reserves my old legs had to offer.
Those roads will definitely not be on the route we will be taking in May.
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Brilliant Chickens
Our chicks are growing up almost as fast as the days of the week that fly by in a blink. Ever since that first day when Cyndie taught them how to find a drink of water in our brooder, they have piled on one new accomplishment after another. Sometimes it is a result of them copying each other, and sometimes it is through our gentle instruction.
In order to raise them to be comfortable with our presence and willing to have us handle them, we spent some extended time picking them up and whispering sweet nothings in their direction yesterday. Cyndie spent much of that visit searching for unique markings that will help identify individuals for naming purposes.
I think we should get to know their personalities better, so they can show us what names they deserve. My idea for using favorite chicken recipes was summarily denied, but I still may succeed in getting one of the yellow ones named Parmesan.
We think that the classical music we have on all night long for them is working well to feed their rapidly growing brains with intricacies and emotional depth. They have demonstrated such quick ability to grasp everything we introduce that we are confident we have the makings of brilliance in this flock.
It’s almost like they knew to perch on that stick I put in the brooder before I even finished setting it in place. Now I am working on finding just the right gnarly branches from our brush piles that I can use to carve little chess pieces. With 10 chicks, I’m debating with myself over the need for more than one board. They obviously learn well enough by observing each other, I think they can get the game down by watching a match played by their brood-mates.
Cyndie is busy creating flash cards with images of ticks, flies, and bugs, as well as piles of manure to be scratched apart in a “green means go” motif. The back sides will have a red theme and include threats like the hawks and eagles overhead, fox, raccoon, coyote, the neighbor’s dogs, and yes, even Delilah.
Our chickens are going to be brilliant.
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Relative Something 