Archive for the ‘Chronicle’ Category
Orange Spots
The smoke from Canadian forest fires played havoc on both breathing and visibility yesterday. It also led to orange spots on the land.
Cyndie provided these wonderful shots of the way the sunlight looked as it speckled its way through leafy branches to reach the ground below:
I’m up at the lake for the annual “Golf Weekend” hosted by Cyndie’s brothers, Steve and Ben. I don’t golf, but I provide bicycling companionship to any of the guys who opt out of the afternoon tee times to do some trail riding in the woods.
We are hoping for less smoke today, even though it can make interesting design patterns when it filters the sunlight.
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No Sound
Was there a sound made when the large limb of one of our oak trees snapped and tipped to the ground sometime yesterday? Cyndie didn’t hear anything.
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Right now, I’m feeling inclined toward leaving it as it is. The upper portion is well above my lumberjacking abilities. Maybe after all the leaves are down it will become easier to assess the tangle of small trees that were victimized by the crash. I’ll gladly delay a decision on what to do until some time in the future.
Especially if it continues to make no sound.
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Empty Coop
It wasn’t long ago that we were renovating the coop in preparation for housing the two groups of chicks at the same time when we moved them out of their respective brooders.
Now the coop stands empty. On Sunday, my brother and his wife stopped by to pick up the three survivors of the massacre that took out 22 chickens.
The ghost predators that have been taking advantage of us for several months will not find one more chicken dinner here this year. Maybe that will provide incentive for them to move on to some other property.
We will take a year off to mull over the possibility of trying again. At this point, it feels like our methods will need to involve something less than free-ranging given the increasing priority of not experiencing any more losses like we’ve endured this year.
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Happy Grazing
Late yesterday, Cyndie captured some great shots of the horses out on the big field as the sun was low.
Mix was walking around with only one fly sock on.
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It was nice to see Mix out there with the others because she has been lingering back under the overhang for a few days whenever the others wandered out. It’s difficult to gauge her reasons so our concern rises a little bit and we watch for any indication it is health-related.
Maybe she just doesn’t want to venture very far in the heat of the day.
The other possibility might be the low value of grazing that is available during the increasingly troublesome drought.
I wondered if she just didn’t feel like walking that far, so I’m very happy to know there doesn’t appear to be any physical limitation keeping her from moving out there.
I ended the day doing some trimming along the back pasture fence line and by the time I stopped, I didn’t feel like walking any further than necessary.
We are prone to repeating an old phrase around our house with respect to how our feet feel at the end of a long day: “My dogs were barking.”
After getting covered in dog shit shrapnel from the power trimmer upon inadvertently hitting a poo Delilah had previously deposited, I had a strong interest in doing just enough walking to get myself into a shower as fast as possible.
Living a privileged country life isn’t always a glamorous endeavor.
At least our horses maintain a pretty respectable sense of decorum when they are out grazing on the big field by the road.
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Cooking Compost
Does horse manure attract flies?
Yes, it does.
It also cooks at over 160°(F) given the right conditions. Just the right amount of moisture, air, and shape of the pile trigger the microorganisms to go wild. Unfortunately, at that temperature and above, the microbes start to die off and the pile can go inert.
I did a little cooking of my own in the hot sun yesterday, working in front of the hay shed. I’m cutting up old cedar boards ripped off our deck to make a small woodshed for up at the lake place.
I’m creating a kit of cut boards that I can fit in my car for transport up north where the plan is to assemble it in place. It’s a little tricky because I tend to make design decisions as I go on my building projects. I’m wrestling with the mental challenge of envisioning each step in advance and knowing what pieces and precise dimensions I need for each step in the process.
I anticipate the assembly will stretch over several different weekend visits up north. As if we need excuses to spend more time at the lake in the months ahead.
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Got Flies?
Why, yes. Yes, we do. We have so many flies that it makes us want to get chickens to help control the insect population around here.
Oh, wait. Yeah, that.
I had a weird thought about devising a way to put a predator poison around a chicken’s neck in such a way that it wouldn’t bother the chicken but would either take out the predator or teach them that these chickens are no longer desirable prey.
In the meantime, our horses are donning fly masks and leg boots in an attempt to give them a break from the incessant insect harassment.
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Yesterday afternoon I spotted Mix having a little tantrum, running and gyrating to and fro. I suspect something got inside her mask and the poor girl couldn’t just reach up with a hand and remedy the situation. I felt so sorry for her.
I’m not as strong as a horse and nor do I have their keen sense but I do have hands with opposable thumbs.
When we were serving up their afternoon feed, I took the opportunity to use my hands to give Mix a thorough rub down and massage. I imagine after being pestered all day long by little pokes, bites, and tickles, a deep rub with heavy pressure must be a welcome change.
I know I would love that.
I would sure love it if we could have free-ranging chickens and not have them decimated by predators. I suppose it’s time for us to go back to adding fly predators to our property management like we did back when we first got horses and didn’t know a thing about keeping chickens.
We are behind the optimal control by that method as the fly predators feed on the pupa, killing flies before they emerge. They don’t do anything to stop adult flies.
One thing going for us this summer is the drought has reduced conditions that make for more flies, so I guess it could be worse.
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Home Grown
Cyndie’s strawberry patch is still in its infancy but we did get a pretty respectable first crop this year.
Toward the end, I noticed a squirrel had taken quite a liking to being inside the netted perimeter fence. Every time I walked by, the intruder would startle and panic, botching several times in his attempt to climb out before succeeding.
I think Cyndie had picked most of the ripened fruit by the time the squirrel developed its interest.
Eating a perfectly ripened strawberry that was picked from the plant that very day has me wanting to evermore avoid the overly-firm, tasteless version of the fruit available year-round in grocery stores.
There is just no comparison.
Of course, my heightened sensitivity to a problematically short window of ideal ripeness for all fruit plays a big role in determining my level of satisfaction. The duration of time between too green and too ripe for my liking when it comes to bananas is measured in minutes. For oranges and apples, it’s more like days.
Texture plays a big part in influencing my acceptance of most fruits. Growing strawberries at home and serving them shortly after they were picked has spoiled me a little.
I may need to revert to only eating fruit that’s in-season like we used to do before global shipping became an everyday occurrence.
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Really Happening
It’s happening right before our eyes. The changes currently playing out on our planet are no longer just scientific theories. They are actual events. Record high temperatures. Droughts. Wildfires. Floods. Thawing permafrost. Rising sea levels. Shrinking glaciers.
I’ve tried to mentally prepare for the possibility of any of the first four catastrophes directly impacting our property, but the thing we are dealing with currently is only peripherally related to the wildfires burning in Canada just to our north. Our air quality is so bad the Pollution Control Agency is advising we avoid being outside and breathing the smoke particulate matter.
Measurements are reaching record levels for Minnesota.
We should probably hold more meetings to discuss how we can reduce our carbon emissions to net-zero by some future date. [sarcasm]
I asked Cyndie if we have any idea what to do in the case of a wildfire suddenly bearing down on our location. She said we should paint our phone number on the horses.
I’m sure they would be fine with that if we were able to find any paint and get them to stand still during the highly emotional panic that would be occurring as a fire threat is bearing down on our property.
Even though the dramatic stories of lost lives and property in the recent floods in Germany and China and the ongoing Bootleg fire in Oregon depict the trauma at the epicenter of such events, life at home feels strangely distanced.
Our horses are calm. Their grass is dryer than optimum, the flies are a constant nuisance, the temperatures are getting too hot again, and the smoky air makes breathing less fun, but they aren’t ones to complain. I sense they may still be contemplating whether the situation they now find themselves in –living out their days in comfort and safety with us– is for real, or not.
Based on my assessment of the reality of global climate calamities playing out in plain view right now, I can understand any hesitations they might have about the comfort and safety part.
There should be no denying anymore that the ramifications of human activity causing increased concentrations of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere are already playing out.
It really is already happening, whether people collectively acknowledge it, or not.
Every day that I don’t have to drive my fossil-fueled car anywhere is a tiny victory in my effort to reconcile still living with a carbon footprint that reflects how we got into this climate predicament in the first place.
May we all keep looking for individual ways to do something helpful, or simply stop doing things that are hurtful, long before governments and greater society finally get around to enacting more broadly effective changes.
I look forward to that really happening.
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Poignant Reminders
Buffalo Bill’s feathers were always so photogenic. These few still are, though he is now gone.
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Three Survivors
It was hard to avoid the harsh reality of our decimated flock of chickens when we returned to Wintervale yesterday afternoon. It was the first opportunity I was able to spend any time in daylight to finally see some of the areas of lost feathers marking where 22 chickens had been snatched.
As I was cleaning up three days of manure in the paddocks, I spoke out loud to myself when I spotted the distinct feather markings of Buffalo Bill. It looked like he didn’t give in without covering a bit of distance.
The poor horses must have seen this whole attack unfold. I hope they weren’t overly stressed by the incursion happening within their fenced confines. Maybe they were able to recognize only the chickens were being targeted.
We had asked our animal-sitter to keep the three surviving pullets shut in the coop until we returned after the weekend so she wouldn’t have to fret over their vulnerability.
Now we are faced with deciding if we are going to continue that practice or not. It’s sad but neither Cyndie nor I seem to have much will to invest any more hope toward an imagined future for them with us. I hate to think this way, but part of me wonders if it would have been easier if these three didn’t survive.
Cyndie buttoned up the fence boundaries of the coop courtyard in the two places where we had created the openings for those couple of days of free-ranging before the attack. We let the three prisoners out into the fenced space for a few hours.
I wondered if the coyotes were skulking around the edges of our property watching to see what we were doing. The last four times we have lost chickens happened shortly after we had gone back into the house. That can’t be by chance. The predators have to be watching to see when we are out and when we are not.
If I thought it would help, and if we somehow decided to have chickens again in the future, I’d make it a practice to always come back outside and check on things a few minutes after having gone in the house.
I wish we could offer the three survivors some consolation for the trauma they endured. Standing within the fencing with them yesterday, it was easy to see the new anxiety they exhibited over sudden movement and unexpected sounds. They were very jumpy birds.
Maybe these three had honed their emergency response hiding tactics better than all the rest. It’s sad that I had just written about the flocks’ impressive rush for emergency cover a mere two days before the massacre. I suspect that would protect them better against an assault from the air than the packs of fangs coming after them on the ground.
If those three survivors could talk, I wonder what they would have to say about the traumatic events of last Wednesday around dinner time.
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Relative Something 