Archive for November 2020
Clear Evidence
As autumn dries out the growth across our landscape, all sorts of sights that were once buried in greenery are becoming revealed.
It is clear that our Wyandotte didn’t entirely kick her habit of finding places other than the nest boxes for laying her eggs this year.
Cyndie found these after several obviously old eggs began to appear in unlikely open spaces in the nearby vicinity. It seems as though some critters of the night had discovered the stash and were working on moving them to hiding places of their own choosing.
It’s a good thing we aren’t trying to subsist exclusively on the production of our layers. As always, I like having the chickens for their ability to control flies and ticks. Free-range eggs are a byproduct. Indeed, a precious bonus, but not a requirement we demand of them.
Still, it’s sad to find the bounty we’ve been missing out on that has gone to waste.
Silly chicken.
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Reclaiming Space
Picking up where we left off over a month ago, this past weekend we resumed cutting away at the tangle of growth along the hedge wall of our north property line.
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It’s rewarding work, despite how frustrating it is to deal with so many twisted branches locked together by vines. I am forever baffled by how much resistance the littlest of branches offer against attempts to pull them apart.
Usually, the key is to push them further together in order to reposition the catch points before pulling them apart, but that is counterintuitive to the goal of separating them. The natural inclination is to try pulling harder in the assumption that arm muscle is significantly more powerful than the spindly twig junctions.
Now our perimeter walks around the property with Delilah can follow right beside the old barbed wire fence on that length of our north loop.
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My Reaction
Relief. Thinking about the rest of the world seeing we had chosen someone other than Donald Trump. Imagining the possibility of not being bombarded every single day with some new outrageous thing the President had said or done. A television analyst commented about the prospect of having headspace freed from the daily barrage.
That would be a relief.
There remains a fair amount of trepidation over the fact that 70 million people voted for four more years of what we just endured. Whatever portion of those voters were actual believers of the ruse pushed forth, they don’t just disappear. How many of them will be open to being deprogrammed by actual verifiable facts?
The celebrations that spontaneously erupted after multiple sources called the election for Biden are a natural reaction to everything that the world has endured since the GOP chose the course of their candidate for 2016. For everything that has happened since, is happening now, or will transpire in the days ahead, I believe we see evidence that “you reap what you sow.”
Our beliefs and actions have consequences.
Those who became emboldened to spout unsavory opinions and blatantly espouse racist ideologies should not be surprised to find a backlash against their actions.
In the aftermath of the style of governing of the last four years, all the supporters who now want to distance themselves from responsibility for what transpired are saddled by the fact of being guilty by association. All the members of the Republican party who remained silent while outrageous and unethical words or deeds were unleashed are culpable.
My philosophy is that we need to love them all, but my love for them does not allow for unsupported false accusations to which they may choose to cling.
May truth prevail.
May reality triumph over fantasy.
May wisdom overrule idiocy.
May we survive the interim period between the November election and the January inauguration during this global pandemic.
May things get no worse before they begin to finally get better.
No more mocking. No more bullying. No more hidden tax returns.
I am hoping for some ember of possibility the two political parties will work together to help the people of this country under the new President. Will it be possible to pass meaningful legislation? It will take cooperation.
I love cooperation. I’m hoping for unprecedented amounts of it in the near future and beyond.
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Here Goes
‘Tis the season. The aromas and the flavors of November have arrived inside our house. My ongoing challenge to control gastronomic excess for the good of my hemoglobin A1c and my waistline love-handles intensifies significantly as my childhood favorites show up in amazing succession.
Chex mix and pecan pie appeared this week to start the month with intensity.
I’ve noticed these hold a much greater draw for my cravings than all the scones and hand-pies Cyndie has been baking for the Berry Farm lately. As delicious a treat as those are, I wasn’t exposed to them growing up. That seems to be the key difference in the intensity of the attraction.
Oh, those childhood flavor memories.
Mmm mm good.
Yesterday, at sunset, I was tasked with tending the chickens into the coop because Cyndie wasn’t going to be home from errands until after dark. That’s not usually a big deal, except this time we have the ailing Australorp who had vanished on me.
Earlier in the afternoon, when I looked in on the brood, I found all the young ones romping in the vicinity of the barn. As I cooed at them and chirped my falsetto chicken-dad love-speak, I heard chicken feet running through the leaves in our woods. It was two of the adult hens coming to make sure they weren’t missing out on treats.
Only two hens.
Where was the Australorp? I searched and searched but found no sight of her. Uh oh.
Of course, I assumed the worst. When she didn’t return to the coop at sunset with all the others, I called Cyndie, in case she would know any other places to look. After begrudgingly closing up the coop for the night, I headed up toward the house. Since this was the direction the two hens had come running from earlier, I decided to detour behind the shop garage for one last look.
In the low light of dusk, the black silhouette of our Australorp stood out distinctly against the lighter background or our neighbor’s harvested soybean field. She was standing out in the open all by herself, poor little thing.
I have no idea if she didn’t return because she couldn’t or because she didn’t want to, but she obviously still isn’t well.
She didn’t warm up to my approach, but she didn’t run away, either. As I slowly talked my way closer and closer, she moved enough that I thought maybe I could walk with her back to our land. She got a few feet into the woods before I decided to just pick her up and carry her.
We’ve given her electrolytes with the hydration but didn’t have any antibiotics. Cyndie is heading to the feed store this morning to see what she can find there. We would like to offer our precious hens whatever support we can.
This morning, Cyndie pointed out the fact that this was the bird that survived an encounter with a fox a few months ago. We don’t know what internal injuries she may have dealt with at the time that might compromise her ultimate longevity.
My inclination this morning is that I might take some Chex mix down to share. She won’t have childhood memories of it, but still, it tastes like an elixir of love and life.
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Sick Chicken
We’ve got a sick bird. One of the adult hens, our Australorp. She was losing feathers and then slowly started to lag behind the others in every way. Eventually, we noticed the color was gone from her comb and wattle. Cyndie decided to isolate the hen and made a space in one of the stalls in the barn.
She turned on the heat lamp for the poor girl since there were no other hens around her for warmth.
Since we are enjoying a period of summery warm high temperatures during the daytime this week, Cyndie has been moving the hen outside during the day, either in the brooder or our broody breaker cage, keeping the hen isolated in hopes of protecting the others in case the ailment is contagious.
The primary treatment has been hydration, which the hen has been eager to receive. After a couple of days, the color of her wattle and comb started to improve. Yesterday, the hen appeared to be regaining some appetite. We are hopeful that whatever was ailing her will resolve itself without requiring any additional interventions.
During my commute home from work yesterday afternoon, Cyndie and I were chatting on the phone. She was outside with the chickens at the time and decided to let the Australorp free-range and mingle again. Cyndie offered the birds some treats out of the palm of her hand. She reported the Australorp had wandered off by herself to scratch in the dirt a short distance away.
While we were talking and Cyndie was providing a narration of the antics playing out, she excitedly described an apparent “emergency response drill” that suddenly occurred.
She had been feeding treats with all the chickens around, creating an understandable competition for best access. One of them made a sound and in a blink, the birds all vanished into the trees. Cyndie didn’t notice anything that might have triggered the need to hide.
Then Rocky came out to take advantage of unfettered access to the treats she had been offering.
Cyndie reported it gave the distinct impression the cockerel had triggered the call for everyone to take cover so he could eliminate the competition and have a moment to himself at the treat trough. If that was truly the case, he has my admiration.
Last night, when Cyndie went out to secure the chicken coop for the evening, the Australorp was waiting on the driveway. Guess she wasn’t ready to rejoin the others yet. Cyndie took her back to the barn for another night.
Seems we might need to put some effort into merging her back into the flock when the time is right.
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Lucky Balance
First off, you should know that by simply bringing up this subject, I am totally jinxing the longevity of this latest installation of balanced rocks, however, this one has already outlasted my wildest expectations.
You just never know how long any “sculpture” will last when it comes to the unrehearsed balancing of random stones. This gem is perched on the stump of the most recently dispatched dead pine tree in the yard just beyond the front door of our house.
I was walking past the stump on some unrelated task one day when inspiration struck. I checked the nearby grove of trees for a big enough rock to make a good impression. I needed one that was also small enough that I could still lift it. I rolled it into position, which wasn’t easy at all because as you can see it was not of a rolling shape.
With some serious grunting and an unwise risk to my back, I finessed the beast upwards to the top of the stump. Then I headed to the rocks strewn about the landscaping around the house in search of a suitable size and shape for the upper balance.
It stood up in place with minimal coaxing. Balance was achieved so simply, I figured it might not last very long. Now, over three weeks later, it has survived the heavy snowfall, several days of high winds, a couple nights of significant freeze, and this week, record heat.
I got lucky.
Sometimes, it’s the ones I put in the least effort to accomplish that end up having the greatest longevity.
But not always.
There is one little set of three rocks that I assembled in the woods along our perimeter trail that is collapsed almost every time I walk by.
The difference is subtle to the point of being beyond my level of mastery.
Here’s hoping the ones in our front yard, pictured above, are unaware of what I’ve just written about them.
I am rather fond of seeing how they look from different perspectives as I walk past at all times of the day or night.
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Looking Forward
I am looking forward to the sun setting once and for all on unethical leadership,
on hidden financial arrangements of people in government,
on blatant disinformation and deliberate distortion of reality,
on mocking in any form by someone holding office,
on bullying, period,
on misogyny,
on racism,
white supremacy,
homophobia,
xenophobia,
on holier than thou hypocrisies,
on gaslighting,
on selfish disdain for the real suffering of others,
on the belittling of science and those who hold degreed expertise,
on the denial of climate science and the impact of industrialization,
on juvenile petty behavior,
on misuse of funds, privileges, technologies, information,
on complete disregard for protocols,
on profiteering, scamming, swindling, nepotism and cronyism,
on corruption in any form in the United States government.
Why, why would anyone ever support any of that, let alone all of it in one administration over four short years?
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Drying Firewood
For the record, drying firewood shrinks. I have yet to devise a stacking system that stays upright for a full year of shrinking. First, it starts to lean, and then it pushes against an adjacent stack. Eventually, they tend to topple over into a scrambled pile of split logs. I have resigned myself to simply climbing in there to pile firewood back into an orderly stack, regardless the odds it would probably just tip over again later.
I used to strive to push the stacks back into balance before they tipped over, but now I accept they are going to lean. My odds of causing it to tip over the other direction by pushing it upright are high enough I have forced myself to get over being annoyed with how it looks and just leave it be.
Yesterday, we moved half of a stack of the oldest logs onto the wood rack on our deck for premium proximity to the fireplace. It’s interesting to be handling wood that I stacked two years ago. In that amount of time, some impressive rodent nests get built, probably chipmunks. It would be reasonable to assume the critter activity in the stacks contributes to destabilization.
As I am splitting logs to refill the right side of the woodshed, it occurs to me that I could just toss them all into a big pile and forego the tippy stacks.
Why is that such a difficult decision for me?
- I believe it wastes less space to stack the wood tightly.
- I can better gauge how much firewood there is when it is stacked.
- I can easily tell how long each stack has been drying.
- Stacks appeal to my sense of order.
At the same time, I know from past experience how much we use per winter season, so the volume of a pile filling one half of the woodshed would give us two years. I could stuff a jumbled pile to fill the space to a greater extent than I achieve with individual stacks.
Since I already started a new stack on the right side of the shed yesterday, I’m now thinking about doing a bit of both. I could put down a base layer of individual stacks to cover the space on the right half and then switch to just tossing split pieces on top of those short stacks.
If only I can convince myself to follow through with such a random-looking storage choice.
It would be something of a “can’t beat ’em, join ’em” solution of intentionally tumbled drying firewood.
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Kitty Homed
The result is in. Despite breaking Cyndie’s heart in handing off our little surprise visitor last week, the sweet kitty that peeked in our back door is now happily placed in a new home.
None of our neighbors reported missing a pet and our trusted pet-sitter, Anna, just happened to be looking for a kitty to fulfill the request of a friend. It was a match that fit seamlessly for all parties concerned.
One reply we received from a neighbor gave us pause. She texted, “Is this the first pet you’ve had abandoned on your property?”
We’ve been here eight years now, and this was a first. Her question implies it is something that happens with some regularity in the country. We are happy to have been spared this harsh reality of human behavior thus far.
Our attention is back on fifteen chickens who are busy learning how to deal with the increasingly wintery weather, as well as their own pecking order. We feel lucky to have avoided any real violence from the aggressors, but they do assert their dominance as anticipated. Happily, the young ones are not looking defeated by it in the least. They continue to ever so slowly expand their comfort zone of free-ranging our land.
In this time of the exploding COVID-19 cases, take advantage of the healthy excuse to stay home and hug your pets.
Except for free-ranging chickens. They aren’t so fond of that hugging thing.
Just throw them some scratch or mealworms and they’ll feel truly loved.
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Relative Something 