Archive for July 2021
Morning Discoveries
As we came around the bend of the back pasture perimeter and walked past the chicken coop, the early sunlight revealed a surprising number of little webs in the grass toward the barn.
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Was there a recent hatch? This wasn’t a normal everyday sight in our experience. These little funnel webs, likely the work of a grass spider, each are the work of separate spiders.
This is the same grass that I gladly lay down on to stare at the clouds or hang out with our animals. Gives me second thoughts about doing so.
Maybe the chickens will find the spiders to be a delicacy. Our birds made an early appearance to the compost area this morning but seemed much more enthralled with the untended cover area around the edges than with the piles themselves.
They must be almost overwhelmed with such an amazing amount of choices for their scavenging compared to the scoured and cracking dry dirt that remains in their fenced courtyard space around the coop now. They look almost confused over whether they should nibble on the green leaves at head height everywhere around them or scratch the ground and hunt for movement or just chomp on the clouds of flying insects hovering around manure.
Both the chickens and I couldn’t be happier with the current state of free-ranging life they are discovering this morning.
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They’re Free!
We opened the fencing of the coop courtyards to the big wide world yesterday and the chickens slowly, but surely, began expanding their perimeter. It started with an initial surge seeking the wealth of green grass just beyond the fencing.
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They have completely decimated the grounds of their confinement. Scorched earth. It made the growth surrounding them appear incredibly lush and particularly enticing. Eventually, they calmed down a bit and began scratching and leaping after the bugs that come along with the healthy greenery suddenly available.
While I was sitting with them, the initial sounds of a cockerel learning to crow arose from within the coop. The only thing I know for sure is that it wasn’t our long-ago identified Buffalo Bill, as he was out with me. The birds have become difficult to tell apart and with twenty-five in constant motion, hard to count.
I couldn’t tell who was missing.
This morning, a group of them discovered the mother lode.
As I shaped the three compost piles yesterday to maximize the processing, it occurred to me that my control over the piles was about to end. From past experience, I know that the chickens are able to destroy the structures I build up faster than I can maintain them.
It’s a minuscule gripe, as they are busy doing precisely what I want them around to do: control flies. I can live with the mess.
Now begins the ongoing challenge of our birds avoiding the random daytime threats of marauding predators. We can keep them safe in their coop at night, but we don’t have control over all of the critters that occasionally switch their hunting from the dark of night to broad daylight.
They are free, but for the game of life and death, it’s game on from here on out.
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Winning Cups
I watched the NHL Tampa Bay Lightning win the Stanley Cup by defeating the Montreal Canadians on Wednesday night. The television broadcast included some post-game celebrations and interviews with winning players. It included the typical reaction of, “I don’t have words to describe the feeling.”
The mostly bearded and predominantly burly men were hugging with passion and obviously over the moon with joy.
They won the Stanley Cup.
“We worked so hard for this.”
Yeah, I’m sure they did. Surviving a season of games and all the playoffs in the NHL is quite a feat. It’s in the realm of racing a bicycle for 21 days in France or climbing in the death zone to reach the top of Everest.
Heroic efforts like those bring the ultimate rewards that participants struggle to describe.
On Thursday morning, while I was grunting and sweating through my daily exercises for core strength, the thought occurred to me that I work really hard on this but I don’t get a cup.
The rest of us work really hard at our jobs every day. We labor through getting errands done, bills paid, mouths fed. We sweat and ache, we race, we problem solve, we fix broken things, and do the laundry. Sometimes it feels like there is not enough air to breathe.
But we don’t suddenly win and then take a few months off. No trophies, no podiums, no mountain tops. Day after day we get up and fight our battles without an end in sight.
Maybe that is why I like to watch sports. I live vicariously through the athletic accomplishments of others. This line of thinking has given me a new understanding of the people who buy lottery tickets. It becomes their shot at winning the cup. Otherwise, it’s just the daily grind with no end in sight.
I work hard. I’d kinda like to have a Stanley Cup moment like those guys.
Wouldn’t we all?
Now get back to work. It’s another day of doing what all the rest of us do every day.
We can watch trophy celebrations on tv later.
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Guessing Game
With our fields all freshly cut for hay, we have been inviting the horses out to graze in the pasture again. They have shown much less interest than I expected to see. I think they know how dry it all is and find it no better than what is available closer to the water and their preferred territory inside the paddocks.
Last night, Cyndie and I walked out into the back pasture to see if they would join us. Mia eventually made her way into the round pen.
Swings and Mix followed along after a bit, Swings stepping inside and Mix choosing to circle around outside.
Light chose to stay back under the overhang until much later. After we had exited the pasture and moved our focus to the chickens, Light showed up to graze just inside the pasture, parallel to the coop.
Can you tell the difference between the older Buffalo Gals and the younger Rockettes?
It’s difficult to tell unless we focus on the breed. Of course, with the mixed results of the chicks we hatched that Rocky the New Hampshire Red fertilized, the breeds are not entirely obvious. It’s still not obvious which of the Rockettes are roosters in hiding.
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Those two faces are looking much more rooster-like than the rest of the young ones, but they aren’t visibly bigger yet and their legs don’t stand out as distinctly thicker/longer.
With 25 birds constantly in motion, it’s hard to keep track of which one is which. I’m pretty sure I’ve counted the same one twice every time I’ve tried since we merged the two groups. Until the size becomes obvious or they grow rooster tails, it’s pretty much a guessing game about the ultimate outcome of our hatched chicks.
One thing is for sure, though. None of them look like chicks anymore.
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Returned Home
Traffic from the holiday weekend added about 40-minutes to our drive home from the lake. The usual intersections that tend to cause backups were significantly more backed up due to the increased volume. Other than those choke points, we rolled along reasonably well.
The highlight sight when we reached our driveway was the view of our fields freshly cut and dotted with multiple round bales of hay. We’d gone from telling our renter that the fields wouldn’t be available because we planned to let the horses graze them, to asking him to do us the favor of cutting them because the horses didn’t eat as much grass as anticipated.
The chickens have grown enough over the weekend that an unknowing eye wouldn’t be able to see a difference in age. At the same time, I am not ready to claim it obvious which of the Rockettes are going to be roosters.
Upon our return, I finally was able to unpack my travel gear from the bike trip, the weekend memorial for Cyndie’s dad, and the following weekend of 4th of July events. I am ready to be home for more than just a brief visit.
I still feel as though I have yet to process the joys of bicycling and camping with fellow adventurers back in the middle of June, let alone the whirlwind of happenings since.
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I met some wonderful new people who richly enhanced cherished moments when I was able to reconnect with precious riding friends from previous years. It was a little disorienting to depart the ride a couple of days early, but I am clinging to my memories of the notable times I shared conversation with several special people and the many laughs with groups of others achieved before I had to make my early exit.
One particular extended climb stands out for me among the many we faced because it forced me to stop partway to take a break and shortly thereafter had me walking my bike at the steepest incline. I’m afraid I no longer have the lung capacity to feed the needs of my leg muscles to endure hill-climbing like I used to.
Luckily, cleaning up horse manure in our paddocks doesn’t involve hill-climbing of any significance. I can do that all day, and after being away for another weekend, there is about a day’s worth available for the scooping. I am at another transition point where it is very possible the bike will be hung up for the rest of the summer while my time pursuits will be focused on projects on our property and up at the lake that don’t require pedaling.
One thing I’d like to accomplish is to convert some of the old deck boards into a small covered firewood storage rack for the lake place. I’m looking forward to being home again for a few weeks and resuming the rhythms of my usual routine. Hopefully, it can lead to time for a little extra-curricular carpentry.
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Endless Critters
Get a gun, they said. You should have a gun. But I like not having a gun. We made it for nine years on our rural property without owning a gun. Then the great raccoon boom of 2021 happened. We enlisted the services of a pest control company that happily started collecting the masked bandits in cages for us.
Sometimes, two at a time in a single cage.
Each time I would check our trail camera, there were always more roaming around after the captured ones were trapped. When the count reached ten and Cyndie told me we were paying a hefty fee for each animal removed, my aversion to spending money like there was a leak in our financial pipes put a dent in my resistance to owning a tool that can kill.
Researching humane ways to euthanize raccoons brings repeated pleas about NOT drowning them. Number one choice is a CO2 chamber. I’m not likely to build such a contraption. There is also the injection method that a veterinarian can provide, but that doesn’t solve the problem of dollars flying out of our pockets.
Shooting them is an accepted method that would involve a more controlled initial expense.
My dream of shooing away the raccoons with miscellaneous aversion tactics was far inferior to the draw of our chicken coop and all the messes of spilled chicken feed and captive birds within.
If there hadn’t been such a prolific baby boom of raccoons this year, we might have gotten along like we always did before. Meanwhile, a few nights ago the packs of coyotes were making a heck of a lot of howling racket in our woods. Our plan to open the courtyards of the coop up to allow the first days of free-ranging next week is driving a new perspective about weapon ownership.
Maybe I need to do a better job of befriending the local guys who like to hunt coyotes. I suppose if I knew how to shoot a gun it would give me some cred.
I’ve got another day to ponder the situation. Today is the 4th-of-July game day for the association of families at our Wildwood lake place. There are water balloons to be filled, watermelon to cut, Bats vs. Mice T-Shirts to distribute, water sports to be played, sunscreen to be applied, a feast of foods to be prepared, and endless frivolity and laughter to unleash.
Dealing with critters will have to wait another day.
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Alive
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morning
at the lake
quiet
filtered sunlight
leaves
green
trees
woods
calm
energy
peace
tranquility
love
family
awaken
heartbeat
spark
breakfast
stories
eventually
opportunity
arrives
life
comes
alive
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Early Start
Like a couple of young newlyweds, Cyndie and I got an early start to the holiday weekend and hustled north to the lake by ourselves a day before the massive crowds that will follow. A stop at Coop’s Pizza for our favorite choice in Hayward, then some authentic ice cream decadence at West’s Dairy for dessert, and we were in full lake-place weekend mode before ever reaching the “cabin.”
For the record, I splurged with one scoop each of Coconut Magic Bar and Chunky Musky.
There was some reminiscing about dining at Coop’s on our honeymoon almost 40-years ago, back when it was located in a former gas station on Highway 63. Cyndie burned her lip so bad when hot cheese pulled off the crust that she blistered.
After we unloaded the car, we topped off our night with access to satellite television Tour de France coverage rerunning the stage of day 6 and another Mark Cavendish sprint to the stage victory. We were happy as clams.
It has been longer than I can recall that we have been up at the lake two weekends in a row. This could get to be a habit. Thank goodness we have found a willing animal sitter in Anna, a student at UW River Falls.
It feels particularly summery, which is just as it should now that we are into July. Obviously, we don’t live in the southern hemisphere.
Watching the professional cyclists racing after having just spent some extended time on my bike tour along the Mississippi River in Minnesota provides a valuable perspective. Their accomplishments are so much more amazing than they make them appear.
I hope they get to have ice cream at the end of their daily races.
I visited a couple of Dairy Queens after my days of biking.
It was an early start to foiling my goals of eating less sugar than my addiction longs for. I can attest that doing so wreaks havoc on my attempts to control the brain’s tendency to crave sweetness full time.
Good thing my healthy routine will be able to resume as soon as this weekend is over. My summer brain is starting to think I should have ice cream every day.
I’m afraid the rest of my body takes exception to that kind of thinking.
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Relative Something 