We spoil our dog and cats, but they still serve a purpose on the farm. Read about our Chesapeake Bay Retriever and our dumpster cats. Start at the bottom of the page to read our adventures in order.
Have you ever wondered how far out your pet roams during the day and at
night?
Thanks to a cat named Mr Lee it is
now possible to track your animal on a plug and play level.
The low end gizmo records up
to 30 hours of prowling and needs to be downloaded via USB cable. 44
dollars.
The high end version transmits live data through GMS cel phone
technology.
125 dollars.
Both interface with Google
maps and claim to be easy to use.
I could see this being handy
for goats and sheep or just about any level of livestock bigger than a
chicken.
It would be interesting to
see where Lucy spends her time, but I predict Huckleberry's map would
only consist of him going from the couch to the chair to his basket
with multiple trips to his food dish.
"Lucy,
where did you find a brand new tennis
ball?" I asked our frugivorous dog, catching sight of a yellowish
sphere in her mouth. She dropped...the first peach from our kitchen
window peach tree.
Then promptly gulped it down, pit and all.
I had smelled the scent
of ripe fruit wafting from the tree as I walked
past earlier that morning, but I was so sure the peaches weren't
ripe. You see, I had planted a Loring peach in that spot three
years ago --- a
yellow-fruited variety with a nice red blush on the skin. And the
fruits on my tree were steadfastly pale yellow with white flesh. But Lucy likes her fruit
ripe, so I went back to check again. Sure
enough, the peaches were just barely starting to ripen, even though the
flesh was pale as can be. What's the statute of limitations on
complaining about being given the wrong tree variety?
The trouble is, I adore
yellow peaches, while white peaches are
considerably lower on the totem pole --- like the difference between
strawberries and blackberries. Luckily, I have another peach tree
out back that's one year younger but already gave me four little
peaches with great flavor and bright orange flesh. By next year,
I should be glutted with yellow peaches. But what to do in the
meantime? Perhaps I need to check out some recipes for peach
leather? Now's your chance to shower us with your favorite peach
recipes.
Our homemade chicken
waterer is perfect
for chicken tractors --- it never spills on uneven terrain.
They're still on the cross
country journey and have visited about 90 farming types.
I'm looking forward to
reading their book about these travels which now has a working title of
"Stewards: Stories and Perspectives From American Farmers".
Although I'm a vegetable
conneisseur, I don't have enough experience to tell the difference
between mediocre meat and awesome meat. This is where Huckleberry
comes in handy.
When I take a piece of
meat out of the supermarket wrapper, Huckleberry naps on the
couch. I can even open a can of tuna, and our spoiled cat will
barely twitch his nose. But when I bring in freshly slaughtered
chickens, he comes running to the kitchen where he meows (in vain) for
a treat.
After its two
day grace period, I
roasted up one of Tuesday's chickens yesterday and Huckleberry was
suddenly ready to help out with anything, no, really, anything. Meow! (Yes, this time I did
give him a tidbit of meat to nibble on.)
To my untrained taste
buds, the 16 week old Dark Cornish roosters are less flavorful
than the 12 week old roosters, falling on the taste gradient somewhere
between a storebought, organic, uncooked chicken and a storebought
rotisserie chicken. But to Huckleberry's nose (and mouth), our
homegrown chickens are ten times better than either. I suspect
Huckleberry is sniffing out the superior nutrition, which makes me even
more inclined to keep experimenting with a good way to raise our own
meat.
The handle is obviously made
to tuck into another bucket to prevent stickage.
I need to take more time and
listen to my tools more often...I wonder what other obvious secrets
will be imparted my way if I can just listen a little harder?
Each bag of
insulators comes
with enough nails, but I prefer using drywall screws because it makes
adjustments easier after you've got it all together.
I think we've finally found a product that will help Lucy figure out
that she's not allowed to steal food scraps from the chicken pasture.
Just minutes after the new
chick made it back to mamma Lucy went sniffing around the fresh
chick trail. It didn't take her long to follow it to the chicken
pasture. I just happen to be watching when she got too close to the Zereba K9 lawn and garden
electric fence controller. The backward leap she made seemed to
break a few laws of doggie physics.
It's easy to set up. Just wrap each end of the perimeter wire onto the
wing nut at the bottom. It uses something called direct discharge
technology which eliminates the need for a grounding rod. With a
maximum range of 1500 feet the K9
electric charger makes an excellent solution to keeping unwanted
pets out of sensitive areas. Expect to pay about 25 bucks for the unit
and maybe another 20 to 200 depending on how long of a perimeter you're
protecting and the quality and quantity of the fence posts used.
The
drink dispenser I salvaged the spigot from for the garden
cart worm bin is now doing duty as a waterproof enclosure for the
new K9 electric fence charger.
These units somehow get their
grounding from the electric line, which is a change from other chargers.
Putting a strand
of electric wire across the gate bottom would make getting in and
out of the pasture a small hassle.
After several days of basking
in the sun the solar fence box seems to have a weak battery, which
means our next step will be to spring for the 40 dollar electric fence
charger.
This nose high strand of
electric fence wire will help to keep Lucy out and any other stray
critters that might be a potential threat when she takes her random
naps.
Since the spring mowing and
future fence building is starting to crunch our time I think I'm
leaning more towards that nose high stretch of electric fence wire as a
new method of keeping her out.
With any luck Lucy will get
the message right away and reclaim her title as best dog in the galaxy.
I just noticed this back door
to the chicken
pasture Lucy installed
recently and growled at her while I stitched it back together.
We could double down on
securing the bottom edge with some additional fastening, or hook up the
electric fence charger and run a strand at nose height all along the
perimeter.
Another option would be to
stop giving the pastured chickens any scraps and divert that nutrition
to the chicken
tractors or worm bin.
None of these choices work
for me because they avoid the root problem of Lucy's failure to
recognize that all food scraps belong to us and she needs special
permission to access even a banana peel. It may seem like a tall order
to train a dog to fight the urge to eat something yummy, but I've seen
it happen before and feel that Lucy is serious about doing her part in
being a team player.
We just need to discover
where the communication is breaking down and put some extra effort in
explaining this critical lesson.
Some
days, my life lacks coherence and is simply an unending string of awed
discoveries. Here's Monday in a nutshell....
I woke to the sound of
rushing water --- the floodplain is submerged.
A scuffle in the hallway
--- Huckleberry caught a mouse.
Blueberry
bushes are coated in hundreds of flowers, some starting to open.
Seven male toads
beckon lovers from our mushroom soaking kiddie pool.
Tiny fuzzball peaches
are swelling fast, now bigger than my thumbnail.
Stir-fry for dinner ---
dozens of Egyptian onions, some overwintered carrots and parsnips, and
shiitakes sodden from three plus inches of rain. The first lightning bugs
danced in the dark.
The
first mowing of the year is always the hardest on our farm. The
stump locations are long forgotten, and this year our chipping
experiment left
branches strewn around in unlikely spots. Adding to the mess,
Lucy's firewood fetish results in hunks of wood hidden here and there
in the high grass where she dragged them, chewed for a while, then
wandered off to do doggie things. Basically, there's a lot of
picking up to be done before we can safely run the mower over our
"lawn."
Luckily, the grass comes
into production at different times on different parts of the
farm. The north side of the garden always starts growing first
since it gets the best winter sun, and I've mowed that area twice
already. In contrast, the south side of the yard is shaded by the
hill and only started growing a week or two again. I'd been
ignoring that area, but by Monday morning the weeds were clearly
getting out of control, so Mark and I tag-teamed it --- I picked up
debris while he pushed the mower. Our farm suddenly looks almost
manicured!
Clean up your chicken coop
with a homemade chicken
waterer that never
spills or fills with poop.
It seems like old
chimney bricks have hundreds of uses.
I wedged these together
between the 2 gate posts of the chicken pasture in an effort to discourage Lucy from trying to
dig her way under in order to help herself to any future scraps that
might get tossed that way.
Luckily she fully understands
that chickens themselves are off limits. It's just the delicious food
scraps that bring out the bad girl in her.
These new goat gloves claim
to be 67 percent better than cow leather, which will be worth the
additional 50 percent to the price if they actually last that much
longer.
The design and construction
indicate an improvement, but time will tell if a goat really is
tougher than a cow.
Last
year, a couple of friends teamed up and bought us a dozen beautiful blueberry
plants in honor of
our wedding. We were sorely unprepared, so we only managed to
whack down box-elders and open up the canopy, then roll the logs out of
the way and plant the bushes in new ground. This oversight caused
a lot of problems since I couldn't really get the lawnmower around the
logs, and by the middle of the summer, our blueberry patch had turned
into a weed patch. Luckily, the blueberries survived the neglect,
and I promised them a more weeded existence this year.
We
spent the morning Wednesday clearing up the tree carcasses in the
blueberry patch to make this year's mowing much easier. Mark's
hard work with the chainsaw netted us half a cord of
firewood, now drying in the woodshed, and my branch piles are growing
too. Our chipper rental date is tentatively set for
this weekend, but Lucy didn't want to wait --- she did her part to
increase the farm's wood chip supply while we cleared the brush.
We're finishing up our series
on homemade chicken feed over on our chicken blog
this week.
My
sister has been doing a lot of thinking and writing about the impact of
routine in her life, and that got me thinking about my own
routines. The first half hour of my "work day" is always the same
--- walking
Lucy and then taking care of the chickens.
Although I rarely write
about it here, the morning chores are a very important part of the
Walden Effect. They clear my head and give me time to think
through any thorny issues that need my attention.
Saturday, I brought the
new camcorder along to document my journey. I hope you enjoy
seeing a glimpse of my daily life rather than finding it boring --- if
the latter, take heart that the video is less than two minutes long.
Lucy's worst trait is her tendency to dig up
garden beds, diving in and sending dirt and vegetables flying in every
direction. Usually, I berate her and grumble under my breath
about darn dogs, but lately I've had a change of heart. I've been
reading about how damaging mice and voles can be in the winter,
girdling young fruit trees. Granted, this guy that I found in the
snow near one of Lucy's manaical digging sprees is a shrew (meaning
that it eats insects and earthworms instead of plants), but I often
find dead rodents left in her wake as well. I wonder if she does
more good than harm with her digging episodes?
Merry Christmas! If you didn't get
what you wanted under the tree, why not treat yourself to a poop-free automatic
chicken waterer?
By Saturday afternoon,
the snow was a bit mushy on the bottom layers. Trees began to
shake themselves like wet dogs, tossing off their mantle of wet snow
and turning back up to face the sky. The cracks of falling limbs
and trees slowed and finally stopped, and Sunday morning I decided it
was time to explore our world.
I
borrowed Mark's knee-high over-boots, put on damp jeans over dry fleece
pants, and headed out to see what the outside world looked like.
I had to cross the downed power line, which I had skittishly steered
clear of for the last day even though it was coated in snow and Lucy,
Huckleberry, and a deer had all trotted across with no problems.
This time I was determined, though. So I tucked Lucy's leash over
her back and took a running leap across the white snake of wire hidden
under the snow.
Nothing happened.
Lucy, of course, trotted
over the wire behind me and waited for me to pick back up her
leash. We trudged down the driveway, past dozens of fallen tree
limbs. Some trees had ripped their whole root masses up out of
the wet soil and toppled over, making me laugh that I'd thought a
little leaf raking would do any damage to the forest compared to this
catastrophe.
The cars were, luckily,
branch-free, but the driveway between our parking area and the public
road hadn't fared so well. I counted seven full grown trees
toppled across the driveway and when I reached the main road, I knew we
would be stuck on the farm for a while. Two trees had collapsed
across the asphalt within sight and the road was unplowed. I
began to suspect that the electric company's estimate of giving us back
our power by Sunday was a pipe dream.
Our
first full day without power brought us back to basics: animals, water,
food, and shelter. The animals, luckily, weren't too hard.
Huckleberry and Strider came bounding up to the trailer through snow
over their heads (nearly a foot deep now, but finally slacking off) and
Lucy pranced and played in the drifts.
The chicken tractors
were completely covered, and one had half-collapsed under the weight of
the snow. I brushed the tops clear and saw hungry hens eager for
their breakfast...once I'd shoveled out the tractor so they wouldn't
get their feet wet.
Without electricity, the
fan on our exterior wood furnace doesn't run, which means that most of
that heat dissipates into the great outdoors. Mark first rigged
an ingenious setup using a DC fan and the golf cart's battery banks,
but the plastic fan quickly melted out of whack and stopped running.
At this point, I gave up and curled myself under a sleeping bag on the
sofa with Huckleberry and a book. But Mark wasn't deterred.
He dusted off the generator, and soon we were back in business!
Lights, power, action! Heat! Even electricity to top off
the cold level in our fridge and freezer and keep our food safe.
Luckily, we had drinking water stored up, but food was going to be
difficult since we cook on an electric stove. It took most of the
next day for me to figure out how to cook in and on the wood stove,
ending up with food that wasn't charred at one end and cold at the
other. But at least we had the basics we need to keep the farm
rolling along.
This home made cat door uses a low budget and clever way of taking a
picture just before the cat reaches the door to enter. If the picture
shows anything in your cats mouth like a mouse the computer tells the
door not to let him in. Same thing is true if a skunk or other animal
tries to get in. If he's all by himself the computer grants permission
and unlocks the door. You can also use this system to keep track of how
many times your cat goes in and out, complete with a fancy program that
will send a picture to your cell phone every time an event happens.
Our cats have always kept their hunting prizes outside, and Lucy does a
great job of keeping other small animals out of the yard, so we won't
be going to this extreme. Quantumpictures is working on a self
contained unit that will be available from their website in the near
future.
The refrigerator
root cellar fell back to 2nd place on the list to get things done
here due to the puddles finally drying up near the new
building project. I managed to finish the final row for the
foundation today, which makes it look like the beginnings of a real
building now.
This post is part of our Building a Storage Building from Scratch
series.
Read all of the entries:
We're
home, safe and sound! Two purring cats, an ecstatic dog, three
tractors of happy chickens. Deer damage in the garden --- I will
consider it a tithe to the earth for our stunning cruise
adventure. Plenty of orders for our homemade chicken
waterer ---
yay! The earth smells of damp leaves and the creek is middlin'
high.
We'll be more talkative later. For now, I'm just glad to be home!
We started to have some trouble back in the
summer with one of the Plymouth Rock hens laying her egg on the ground, which
made it easy to miss and pull the tractor over it, creating a
scrambled egg in the yard.
It seems like a golf ball is close enough to an egg to fool even our
smart Plymouth Rocks. No broken eggs since we installed the fake at a
price well under a buck depending on where you get your sporting
supplies from.
If you listen closely you can hear the very distinct sound of Lucy's
tail hitting the seat of her golf cart, which is one of my personal top
10 favorite sounds of all time.
It's really nice of her to let us use it whenever we need to haul
anything or anybody back to the trailer.
We've learned a lot about
animals this year too. Strider joined our
menagerie and has since become an indispensible purrer. Now
that our pet count has reached three, we've gotten a bit more serious
about bad behavior. Last year, it seemed like Lucy picked a
couple of garden beds and lay on them every day or so, crushing all of
the vegetables there. Huckleberry would also pick favorite beds
and tear up young seedlings in the loose soil.
This year, we've pretty much nipped that behavior in the bud.
When I see the first signs of pet damage in the garden, I loosely stack
branches on the bed to keep all animals out. The branch technique
seems to be 100% effective, and branches can be safely removed once the
veggies get tall enough to make a scratchy bed.
We've also added two new types of livestock to our farm this year --- earthworms
and honeybees.
We're still learning how to make the best use of them, but I'm thrilled
to learn that both are relatively easy and that honeybees aren't
scary. Probably by this time next year, I'll have something more
to say about bees and worms.
This post is part of our Third Year of Homesteading lunchtime series.
Read all of the entries:
Of
course, Lucy isn't a saint. She's been known to carry off tools
and spread the contents of trash bags all across the yard. She
used to tear up the garden pretty badly too, running across raised beds
and choosing a few as favorite napping spots.
Dogs aren't large
picture thinkers the way we are --- I'm pretty sure
that I could train her not to chew on a tool, but I'd have to train her
on every tool we own to really get the point across. Similarly,
Mark
trained her not to go in the front door of the barn...but then caught
her trotting through the back door because all she got out of the
training was
"don't go through the front door" not "don't go in the barn."
In cases like this,
we've figured out that it's better to train
ourselves rather than train the dog. How hard is it to keep trash
in the barn and gloves in the house? We also developed
main paths
in the garden based
on Lucy's regular routes, and when necessary put
branches on the beds she was obsessed with to physically keep her
off. In our early days on the farm, I yelled at Lucy a lot.
Now, we've trained her and she's trained us and we're like a happy
married couple.
This post is part of our Training a Farm Dog lunchtime series.
Read all of the entries:
Walking
your dog is really most of what it takes to create a good farm dog, but
we did put in the time to teach Lucy four basic commands --- sit, stay,
come, and no. There are lots of books and websites that will tell
you how to get those few commands into your dog's head, but once you've
got her used to looking at you as the pack leader, it's pretty simple
to train her.
It's nearly as simple to
train your dog to do things against her nature --- like leaving cats
and chickens alone rather than eating them for dinner. When we
brought home our first chickens, Lucy was extremely excited and I think
she might have killed a chicken immediately if we'd let her.
Instead, we took her for a long walk to calm her down and remind her
who was in charge, then we made her sit and stay beside the chicken
tractor. Every time the first bit of predator instinct kicked
in
and Lucy started getting excited about the chickens, we said "no" very
firmly. After about 15 minutes of this, she understood.
Now,
when chickens accidentally get out of their tractors, Lucy has been
known to try to help us herd them back in.
When introducing your
dog to "prey" animals, you should always have a way to enforce your
commands. Your dog should be on a leash so that she can't lunge
forward and grab the chicken. If you play your cards right, your
dog will catch on very quickly and you'll be able to take the leash off
and trust her alone with your livestock in short order.
This post is part of our Training a Farm Dog lunchtime series.
Read all of the entries:
Now,
I have to admit that you won't see instant results the first time you
walk your dog correctly. When we got Lucy, she'd been tied up for
months on end and she was wild. I could barely hold her leash as
she galloped up the driveway --- no way I was going to be able to get
her to walk beside or behind me.
So, we bought a couple
of tools to get Lucy to pay attention to us (and to wear down a bit of
her boundless energy!) The one dog-lovers are least likely to
approve of is the Gentle
Leader.
No, this isn't a muzzle --- your dog can open her mouth just
fine. The Gentle Leader is a lot like the harness on a horse ---
it allows you to steer a large, powerful animal by turning its head
rather than by trying to make the whole animal go where you want it
to. The Gentle Leader also puts pressure on top of your dog's
nose if she tries to pull. This simulates the way a pack leader
will put its mouth around a follower dog's nose if the follower
misbehaves, and both the pack leader's mouth and the Gentle Leader's
pressure cue your dog to calm down and listen.
We also bought Lucy a doggie
backpack
and weighed it down with water bottles and gravel. Carrying the
backpack gave her quite a workout, even when walking at human
speed. I think that without the backpack, we would have had to
walk Lucy for a couple of hours a day in the beginning when she was
blowing off her leftover steam from being tied up.
Both the Gentle Leader
and the doggie backpack did their job admirably, but after a few months
Lucy had learned that we were in charge. We slowly stopped using
them --- after all, both were just tools to get our dog's attention.
This post is part of our Training a Farm Dog lunchtime series.
Read all of the entries:
We based our extremely simple dog training
regimen on Cesar Millan's book Cesar's
Way: The Natural, Everyday Guide to Understanding and Correcting Common
Dog Problems.
The entire book can be broken down into a couple of paragraphs ---
Cesar argues that dogs are naturally pack animals with one leader and a
lot of followers. Rather than training your dog lots of fancy
tricks to get her to do what you want, you only need to make her
understand that you are the pack leader. Then be sure that your
pet also gets plenty of exercise and you'll have a well-behaved dog.
Cesar solves both the pack leader and exercise problem with one simple
answer --- walk your dog. Sounds simple, but most people
(including us before we read the book) do it all wrong. When you
walk your dog correctly, she should be walking at your side or behind
you --- you're in charge of determining where you're going and how fast
you're going. The dog shouldn't be stopping to sniff and pee
unless you decide to stop and let the dog sniff and pee. The goal
is to get the dog used to following your lead and looking to you for
directions.
Cesar recommends that your dog should have an
hour of exercise a
day. We are a bit more lax than that --- I generally walk Lucy in
the morning for about 20 minutes and Mark generally walks her in the
evening for about 20 minutes. If she were cooped up indoors all
day, though, rather than able to run around on the farm, we'd probably
have to walk her longer.
Food is also an integral element in the walk. Rather than giving
your dog meals as if it were his or her due, you should start feeding
your dog after the walk. When I come back from walking Lucy in
the morning, I take off her leash and tell her to sit and stay at the
door. She waits for a couple of minutes as I go in the house and
get her breakfast, and she stays seated until I've put the food in
front
of her. This is yet one more way to make sure that Lucy knows
that I'm in charge of the food and that she has to be calm and obedient
in order to get any.
The walk is an important ongoing piece of training for your dog.
When one of us isn't feeling well and we just toss her a bowl of food
without a walk, Lucy is far more likely to misbehave the next
day. When we're out of town for a few days and she doesn't have
any walks, she's a bit wild when we return. I like to think that
walking Lucy is like keeping an eye on our relationship. Strong
human relationships are based on constant negotiations, and your
relationship
with your dog is no different.
This post is part of our Training a Farm Dog lunchtime series.
Read all of the entries:
After
television watching, our number one pet peeve with American society is
probably dog care. Most dogs we meet are neurotic and/or out of
control. We're not saying that Lucy is the best dog in the world
(well, Mark might say that....), but she is a pleasure to be around and
makes life on the farm easier.
Lucy keeps predators out of the yard, sits patiently as we eat outside,
doesn't hurt our cats and chickens, and only gnaws on gloves now and
then. This week's lunchtime series is a brief look at quick and
dirty techniques you can use to turn your pampered pet into a working
member of the farm without any inhumane treatment or expensive dog
obedience courses. Chances are your dog will end up happier too.
This post is part of our Training a Farm Dog lunchtime series.
Read all of the entries:
Time to put together the 4 supers I picked up yesterday.
I wonder if some Gorilla
glue might work as a quicker substitute to the old fashioned tiny
nails that sometimes cause a crack in the wood when being hammered in?
I tried to find something like this in the pet
department of the big store I was in last week and struck out.
It's just a compilation of 5 scrap pieces of wood and a folded over
flap of screen material. A notch on the right side with a dab of glue
seems to be enough to anchor it to the screen frame. I hope our cats
are smart enough to adapt to a proper pet entrance which can be easily
closed down at night by shutting the window.
Eventually,
every homesteader will be faced with the thorny issue of
livestock. Chances are that your homesteading dreams included
lots of animals giving you fresh milk, eggs, and meat. The
reality,
though, is that animals can use up your time so quickly that you're
working for them instead of vice versa.
My first piece of advice for new homesteaders is to make a distinction
between pets and livestock. Use your own judgement on the pet
front --- we love our cats and dog and believe that the time we put
into them is totally worth it for our own mental stability. We don't even pretend that
our pets pull their weight on the farm with their limited
mouse-catching and deer-chasing abilities. But we also know that having
more than our current two cats and one dog would be too much for us to
handle.
In
the world of livestock, as I mentioned earlier I do recommend that all
homesteaders start out with a worm bin. Most homesteaders will
also be able to handle a few chickens either their first or second
year, especially if they are careful to start small. If you are
big
honey eaters the way we are, I would recommend getting honeybees around year two
or three, once you're established and have a bit of time to devote to
their care.
What
about bigger animals? We divide larger livestock into three main
categories --- draft animals, dairy animals, and meat animals.
Due to
our own failed experience with mules, I recommend that unless you've
had experience with draft animals in the past and have at least an hour
a day to devote to them, you save draft animals for later (if
ever.) To me, dairy animals are in the same boat --- you need to
be willing to be tied down twice a day for the rest of your life.
(With just our pets, chickens, bees, and worms, we can go out of town
for a few days without needing to find a farm-sitter.)
If you want to branch out beyond worms, bees, and chickens, I
would start with meat animals. Even so, I wouldn't consider
embarking on the project unless I had a good pasture and a place to
store hay for the winter. Small meat animals like poultry and
rabbits might fit into year three or four of your ten year plan, but I
suspect that larger animals would be closer to year nine or ten.
Of course, as with all parts of your homesteading plan, you should
decide what's most important for you. If all you've ever dreamed
about is having a milk cow, then by all means move it up to year two
and put off the garden until year four. After all, the best part
of a homestead is the way it allows you to choose your own
adventure. Don't forget to have fun!
This post is part of our Starting Out on the Homestead lunchtime
series.
Read all of the entries:
I've had this 18 volt Black and Decker
Firestorm drill for over 4 years now and it's still as strong and
dependable as the first day I got it.
Its taken some serious drops and bangs over the years ...proving itself
in the heavy duty tool league at a price well below the heavier brands.
I've worn out one battery so far...but still have 2 more that provide
more than a day's worth of work at an impressive charge time.
We added anti-deer
machine#5 to the upper garden to cover a another weak point in our
perimeter. I had to use the cat bowl to get a more full dinging sound.
Sorry, Huckleberry....
Just found out today from a neighbor that a large black
panther* has been spotted less than a mile from us. Maybe this shield of
noise will send a signal to this new player in the woods to stay away
from us and our chickens?
*"Panther" is the local word for Mountain Lion. Although Mountain Lions are usually light brown, the half dozen sightings we've heard of locally in the last two years have all been of large, black cats.
We finally solved the deer in
the garden problem, and the solution was so elegant we gave it a new
website. Check out our deer
deterrent website for free plans!
We found a Chopper1 axe at a yard sale
today for just 10 bucks.
Bob Kolonia invented it back in 1975. What makes it unique is the
rotating levers on each side of the axe's head. The levers swing out,
directing the downward chopping force outward and exploding the log
apart from the inside. His website has a nice animation that
explains the process better. Ours is missing one of the return springs
and pin that holds the spring. I'm sure I can rig something up before
winter sets in. Stay tuned to see how well this baby chops wood
compared to our Super
Splitter.
It's amazing how much
beauty is out there on the internet --- the photo above was created by "3
cameras, 3 speedlights, one reflector, one water-proofed studio."
My nude models, in contrast, were much less entertaining. I call
this
set of photos "Weekend Sloth", for obvious reasons:
The new Skil
drill got a workout the other day when I needed to make a hole
through some cedar posts.
I was surprised to see just how much more leverage the side handle
gives you.
The 1/2 inch chuck allows for the bigger size bits and the extra 7.0
amp motor provides more than enough power. There's a nice rubber holder
near the handle to hold the chuck key and the speed is adjustable
depending on how hard you squeeze the trigger.
In
the United States, the dog days of summer traditionally last from July
3 to August 11. These are supposed to be the hottest and driest
days of the year "when the seas boiled, wine turned sour, dogs
grew mad, and all creatures became languid."
This year, the dog days
entered with a sniffle. Cloudy skies all week have meant
blissfully cool weather, but I did hear the first dog day cicadas begin
their summer chorus. As Mark mentioned, we started to irrigate
Friday, and yesterday I had to lower our pump slightly in the well
since the groundwater had dropped. The ancient Greeks
sacrificed a brown dog at the beginning of the dog days to plead for
cooler weather, but there's no need to worry --- Lucy is safe with us.
We almost had to bring the sprinklers out this
week, but a few good rounds of natural rain made everybody in the
garden happy.
Hopefully the rain will continue to be reliable.
A couple of sprinklers mounted on metal fence posts worked well for us
last year. The extra height increased the distance a bit and made it
easy to reposition.
The water comes directly from a pump in the creek, so the pressure is
enough to handle three sprinklers, but two seem to work best.
I've heard people say bee keeping is easier than a cat and harder than
a dog. Whoever started that saying probably never had a cat tear a hole
in their kitchen screen.
The mulch machine is out of commission for a
while due to a bent blade.
Heavy vibration and noise are a clear indicator of an out of balanced
blade.
Some people might be tempted to whack it with a sledge hammer and force
it back into shape. This will cause a weakening of the metal and might
break in two under stress, which would be very dangerous for the person
pushing it and anything else nearby.
A good dog is very important on the farm, and
Lucy is definitely a good dog. But she does have a few bad
traits. A couple of nights a month, she goes on a barking jag and
it's extremely difficult to stop her. I pull the covers over my
head, turn on the fan, and remind myself that folks in the city have to
deal with noise every night.
I think I discovered the solution, though, yesterday while listening to
Science Friday.
A dog expert explained that when a dog is barking like this ---
"Woof woof! pause Woof woof! pause" --- she's saying, "Pack
leader! Come over here and check this out!"
My response --- "Lucy! Shut up!" --- sounds to her just like
"Woof woof! pause Woof woof!" Which makes her think that I've
joined with her in calling for a pack leader, and that she should
definitely keep barking.
Instead, the dog expert suggested that I call her over and thank her
for barking and ask her to settle down. That is supposed to make
her realize that the pack leader has come out and checked on the
problem and deemed it no threat. I'm looking forward to giving it
a shot!
Three more packages of bees are safely tucked away in
their new boxes. We paid 2 dollars extra and had the queens marked with
a little green dot on this batch, which seems to be worth it for the
peace of mind you get knowing for sure she's alive and kicking.
Since I've started learning about bees I find myself
paying closer attention to what's in bloom and wondering if it's enough
to keep our hive of worker bees busy.
You can barely see it in the picture, but the yellow wild flowers to the right
are Golden Ragwort, which started blooming last week around here, and
can be expected to produce pollen for about 3 weeks.
We had blizzard like conditions at the Wetknee farm that kept me
working indoors most of today. I discovered a bounty of royalty free music on
the internet that will work in nicely with the video project I'm
editing. It's easy to download MP3 formats, and the introductory
descriptions make searching for specific music speedy and efficient.
Finally someone has made a weatherproof time
lapse digital camera. It can take a picture every hour for a few
months before the batteries need to be replaced, or you can adjust the
interval from 5 seconds to 24 hours.
It gives a whole new meaning to that favorite past time of watching the
grass grow. Now you can watch the same grass grow over and over.
Sometimes the latch mechanism that holds a
hood down can get sticky, not allowing it to close all the way.
The easy fix is to use a screw driver to activate each of the two
springs while dropping a few drips of oil where the metal moves. It's
also a good idea to lubricate each end of the control cable.
Open and close the hood several times to let the oil work its way back
into the grooves.
This picture illustrates how our little creek has grown up to be a
mighty river in the last couple of days. With a bit of luck we'll mount
a salvage operation tomorrow morning to reclaim a rather large wooden
beam that seems to have floated our way and lodged itself nicely
against a Box Elder tree by the footbridge.
Today was one of those farm days where an
emergency crops up and you have to spend all day treading water just to
catch back up. Overnight, Strider had climbed 30 feet up a box
elder to escape the dogs, and he refused to come down.
I tried coaxing him from our seven foot ladder, to no avail. Next
try was throwing a rope over the branch and hoisting up a bucket with
tuna in the bottom in the vain hope that he might be tempted to jump in
and be gently lowered to the ground. Hah!
We figured that if we made him a ramp, he might be willing to walk down
a gentler incline. But by this time (after lunch), he had
hunkered down and wasn't willing to try to walk down our carefully
rigged up ramp. Read more....
I finished covering the top area with flashing and completed the carpet
enclosure for the main sleeping roost. Got some barks of approval from
Lucy and her friend Curly. They recommended I make an over sized access
door and I'm glad they did. Now we have a big enough opening to stand
inside the tractor once it's open.
At this pace I should have it ready for a chicken test drive sometime
tomorrow afternoon.
Monday was so warm that if I lay down in front
of the Egytian onion bed and looked through the green toward the sky, I
could almost believe it was summer. The chickens --- who have
been craving every iota of sun for the last few months --- begged me to
turn their tractors around so that they'd have shade. Lucy and
her doggie buddy (who's visiting for the week) slipped up into the cool
at the edge of the hillside.
Meanwhile, I chained myself to the computer for four hours, then could
bear it no more. Many people are greedy for more money, but I'm
greedy for more time in the outdoors --- once I've paid the bills, I'm
far more likely to be found in the garden than hammering down someone's
door in search of more clients. After all, don't I get more
enjoyment out of an hour in the sun than I would out of working an hour
and then taking us out to dinner or some other frivolity? I
prepared more garden beds to be planted today and pondered the careful
balance we walk between enough time and enough money.
Today was a good day for working outside and
building the first stage of our newest chicken tractor or chicken ark
if you live in the United Kingdom.
I feel it's important to build the nest box first once you have the
frame together. Place it at least a foot above the ground with a big
enough hatch for easy egg access.
I've found that the more comfortable and closed in your nest box is the
less your hens are likely to lay an egg on the ground.
The TC1840H
garden cart has taken some heavy use this firewood season, and an
important welded spot near the front worked its way loose. Since the
steering bracket is just below the frame I decided to secure
the troubled spot through both pieces to add some additional strength.
It was easy to drill the four holes, although it might be neater to
space them apart just a wee bit more to avoid the washer crowding seen
here in the picture.
Lucy was eager to be the first to test out the new repair, and then she
promptly asked for her evening walk.
Yesterday's heavy rains gave the footbridge its first serious threat
since last week's attempt at shoring up the base with fence posts and
concrete.
It seems to be holding fine with no shifting or additional erosion.
I'm in the process of researching different designs to hopefully
discover a low budget answer to a wider and taller bridge complete with
handrails and stability.
A sizable chunk of winter melted off today revealing some familiar
colors.
I got the picture to the left by inverting the panoramic feature on the
Fuji
Finepix S1000fd.
Someone mentioned that it was Charles Dickens' birthday today, which
should be celebrated by drinking a warm cup of tea or hot chocolate
with someone and sharing which one of his characters you identify with
most and why.
It was a slow Saturday on the farm today. We
try to make time for rest and relaxation on the weekends if at all
possible. The photo above was taken just before sunset today out by a
curve in the driveway with the Fuji
S1000 fd, which is only getting more valuable to me as I delve
deeper into it's many cool features. If you're in the market for a
digital camera in the 150-200 dollar range you might want to give it
a look.
I know you're probably sick
and tired of hearing about the cats by now. But --- look!
No hissing, no sulking, just plain old snuggling.
There was some licking going on too. And even a bit of tentative
play. Now, if Huckleberry will just learn that playing doesn't
involve biting through Strider's jugular. And if Strider learns
not to eat my breakfast out of my hand....
We've been making a bit of progress this week
on the cat front. In fact, Huckleberry has decided he wants to
play with Strider --- the whole point of a new kitten!
Unfortunately for all concerned, Strider seems to speak another
language and just ignores Huckleberry's advances.
I'm hoping that the little cat will eventually start to feel a little
bit less traumatized --- he'll sit with me and purr, but at the first
sudden noise he leaps off my lap to run and hide under the futon.
He's terrified of Lucy and, when put outside, runs in a tail down slink
for the old house to hide.
On the other hand, those high end ear meds seem to have whacked out
most of Huckleberry's ear mites. I still see a tiny bit of
scratching, so I'm going to give him the second dose Monday. I
can't believe I let him scratch his ears until they bled for over a
year, trying one after another over-the-counter meds, and never thought
to take him to a vet!
Dog or goat...which is more useful on
a farm? Lee Johnson, Topeka, Kansas
That's a tough question. If you want a loyal friend that will almost
always be there watching your back and ready to lend a helping paw, then
a dog might be your best choice.
A goat can come in handy when you want to clear some land, or if you
need someone to drink a beer with, but they can be a real handful when
they get hungry and bored.
With the golf cart not working the old yellow TC1840H
steel yard cart has been getting a serious work out these past few
weeks helping with firewood gathering.
It seems about twice as easy to pull if you catch the ground while it's
still frozen.
Time for a quick state
of the farm report:
Cat status: Two feet apart from each other and fifteen feet away from
me. No hissing!
Chicken status: Pullets are laying well. Old girls are barely
laying and may soon be destined for the pot.
Garden status: A deer snuck past our predator eyes just before the new
year and ate up the last of our greens. So the only fresh things
we're eating out of our garden at the moment is Egyptian onions.
Luckily, our freezer is still two thirds full, so our weekly grocery
bill is pretty low. I'm already starting to think of spring
planting --- just a month until I can put in peas!
Water trench: I gave up on the trench because it hurt my carpal tunnel
too much, but Mark's been digging away at it. As you can see,
he's making major progress!
Weather: Gray. I dream of sunshine....
Creek: Coming back down.
Freelance work: Tricking in nicely.
Book I'm supposed to be writing: I'm actually writing it! Whipped
off the rest of chapter two last week.
Saturday --- time for Strider to come play
with the big cat. I carry him inside through the rain and
instantly both cats are terrified of each other. Huckleberry
hisses and flees to the top of the north futon. Strider meows
mournfully and flees to hide under the south futon.
I lie between them, reading about dragons and sailors. But the
cats' war wears me out, and I slide into sleep. I wake to more
standoff, and eventually I put Strider back out in the barn and coddle
Huckleberry back into his usual slug-like state.
Sunday morning. The creek has risen again and is lapping up
against the bottom of the footbridge. Huckleberry won't come to
breakfast, so I bring Strider inside again and he settles into the nook
between my arms and book.
I feel guilty, the way I've felt all week --- as if I'm sneaking off to
tryst with a lover behind Huckleberry's back. So I go out into
the wet and holler his name. "Huckleberry, Huckle-BER-ry!"
Eventually, as Mark and I start to chop wood, he shows up, wet and
unwilling. He won't raise his back to my stroking hand, and once
he runs inside and sees Strider he instantly runs back out.
Over lunch, I lock Strider in the bathroom and pet Huckleberry.
Strider moans, seeming to throw his voice down the hall, but eventually
Huckleberry subsides. That afternoon, as I cuddle up with the
last 150 pages of a 1800 page trilogy which has leaked into my life
over the last week and a half, Strider falls soundly asleep beside my
head and Huckleberry eventually leaps up to lie carefully at my feet.
The peace lasts only twenty minutes until --- with only ten pages
remaining and my hero and heroine still at odds --- Strider loses
control of his bowels and poops on the floor. Who ever said it
was easy sorting out the differences between two cats? Only in
fantasy worlds do massive differences resolve in the last ten pages
leaving everyone to live happily ever after.
Today was a day that begs one to surrender to
the forces of nature.
The creek was transformed overnight into a mighty river that seemed to
be making up for lost time in its haste to get where it's going.
Lucy likes to monitor the shoreline during heavy activity like this.
She knows it will eventually yield something interesting enough to chew
on and maybe bring back to us for closer inspection.
The vet says Strider has a four degree
temperature and is eight months old. For $86, we came home with
dewormer, antibiotics, and a more impressive ear mite medicine for
Huckleberry whose ear mites have been resisting all over the counter
meds for months. The two haven't met, and won't until Strider
fights off his upper respiratory infection. For now, he's holed
up in a cozy nook in the barn.
The trip to the vet went pretty smoothly, all things considered.
Strider was a bit of a wiggler at first, but soon settled in and didn't
make any sudden moves amid a waiting room full of canines. The
only small problem was a bit of projectile pooping on the walk back to
the barn at the end of the day --- Strider really did try to warn me by
wriggling and meowing, but I held on tight thinking that he wanted to
get down and get lost in the floodplain. As a last resort, he
pooped into midair, barely soiling my coat. I dropped him in a
hurry to let him finish, just as Lucy came barreling down over the hill
to greet us. Mark tackled Lucy while Strider fled into the cave
created by an upturned root mass, to be slowly wheedled out again with
honeyed tones. Back in the safety of his barn, he ate and drank
ravenously before settling down to pur on my lap.
I have to admit that his manners are impeccable, all things
considered. Yesterday, I talked about trying to give him to my
brother. Today I know he's here to stay.
Huckleberry is about to get a new friend as
you may have read in the previous post.
I thought I would post this picture in an attempt to show him he was
here first and we are not trying to replace him with the new cat, but
to maybe add a bit of feline companionship to his already full and rich
life of napping, meowing, eating, and reading on the couch with Anna.
Yesterday, I jokingly told Mark that I'd gone
to the dump (the source of our current cat) and found another cat, who
I was now hiding in the barn. No, no --- I changed my mind ---
I'd stolen sweet little Bonnie from Mark's mom and had her hidden in
the barn. We both laughed and thought no more about it.
But this morning as I started to move the chicken tractors through
winter mud, I heard a plaintive meow come from the barn. I'd just
left Huckleberry sleeping soundly on the sofa, but I thought it was
possible he'd slipped out of the house and gotten his dainty paws wet
or been chased by Lucy. So I told the chickens to wait on me and
went to check the noise out.
Cowering behind our array of boxes and cast off belongings
was...Bonnie??? The little cat had most of her markings, a white
vest and white paws on an otherwise black fur coat. But this
little cat was smaller and oh so skinny when I finally tempted it to
let me pick it up. It was also a boy, just the same size
Huckleberry was when I found him --- reaching that gawky adolescent
stage where people tend to drop them off. (Later, Mark found a
towel on the road a mile from our house, one that hadn't been there
yesterday, confirming our belief that the little cat got dumped.)
Just two weeks ago, Mark's mom asked us if we wanted another cat.
And without even checking with each other Mark and I both said
"No!" Huckleberry's a handful all by himself. And yet ---
if a cat walks a mile through the woods to find us, can we really tell
it that we're going to renege on the contract humanity made with cats a
few thousand years ago? The truth is, I'm a sucker for
strays. Looks like we'll be taking the new cat to the vet
tomorrow, and if it gets a clean bill of health introducing it to
Huckleberry soon after. I guess I should be a little more careful
what I joke about!
Here's a picture of Lucy with our footbridge in the background where
the creek has a curve in it. The panoramic nature of the photo is
thanks to the Fuji
Finepix S1000fd. It has a pretty neat built in feature that allows you to
stitch three pictures into one long image.
After you take the first
shot you save it in the memory and the next frame has about a fifth of
the last image in a ghost like form that allows you to line up the
picture exactly where you need it.
This is a picture of hen number 6. Hen number
5 if you ask Anna. She's at the bottom of the pecking order and had to
be isolated because it was just too sad watching her getting picked on
by the other hens.
Now she gets to roam free on most days, adding a certain flare to the
place that makes me feel like I'm on the set of a movie and she's been
added at the last minute for additional atmosphere for whatever new and
wild scene is coming up next.
2008 was filled with a generous portion of good and happy scenes that
make me feel confident I'm exactly where I need to be and doing exactly
what I need to be doing. I offer everyone reading this a warm and
happy toast for good tidings in 2009.
The Gorilla glue bond was not quite strong
enough to hold up against the heavy pounding a few weeks of wood
splitting will tend to put it through. The wiggle is back, and parts of
the bond are breaking away from the handle.
The maul has not flown off the handle yet, and as long as it gets the
job done we will most likely continue to put it through the many paces
of log splitage.
Lucy is often on hand for wood chopping, waiting for just the right
piece to snatch up and carry off for safe keeping. We can never seem to
get that kind of enthusiasm out of Huckleberry.
We're
home from a wonderful visit with Mark's family in Ohio. As usual, I'm
thrilled to be home, even though coming home to the farm is never easy.
We carefully picked warm nights to be gone, but we didn't
think to check whether the warmth also equated to rain. It did. When we
got home with two big boxes of frozen food, we found that the creek was
nearly up to the footbridge --- definitely too high to drive the golf
cart across. So instead we filled backpacks and braved the footbridge,
slipping and sliding all the way home.
Luckily, everything else
seems to have gone according to plan. The
chickens still had plenty of water in their Avian Aqua Misers, though
one set had scratched up the earth under their tractor into a mass of
mud. Huckleberry seems to have caught a cold, sniffling and whining
around the house, but after half a can of tuna he curled up to go to
sleep. Lucy ran out to meet us, overjoyed as always by her adventures.
I was supposed to have a
meeting this morning --- the good lord willin' an' the creek don't
rise. But the creek did
rise and the doppler radar called for much more rain to come, so I
called to say I was afraid to leave home for fear of getting flooded
out.
While chatting to the folks I was supposed to meet with, I learned that
the creek which folks talk about rising was originally meant to refer
to the Creek Indians. Which would make the phrase grammatically
correct after all --- I always thought the "don't" in the sentence was
just
Appalachianese.
Anyhow, Lucy and I wandered down to the uncapitalized creek to perform
a stick test on its depth. Someday I want to install a long stick
with graduated markings in the creek so I'll know the actual depth of
the creek water, but for now I stick to a more quick and dirty stick
test. I throw the stick across the creek and see how well Lucy
does as she bounds after it. Today, Lucy showed me up for a wimp
--- she could walk almost all the way across. Still, I'm always
glad to be flooded in, letting nature win the battle for once.
First, the real point of this
post --- congratulations to Andrea from Ohio, winner of our
giveaway! Now I will proceed to talk at length about the
weather....
Which is snow! A beautiful, though thin, sheet of fluffy
white. This morning Lucy romped about while I noticed deer and
squirrel tracks.
Huckleberry and the hens, on the other hand, have taken the snow as a
personal offense. As I moved the chicken tractors this morning,
our girls huddled on the patch of unsnowy ground until the last minute,
unlike their usual rush-for-the-front as new greenery comes into
view. Cold feet for them this morning!
Huckleberry is an indoors-outdoors cat, but
yesterday he decided that he was most decidedly an indoors cat.
When Mark and I came home from a day spent visiting, we were a bit
surprised to find Huckleberry curled up on the futon. Surely I'd
put him out before leaving the house that morning --- but maybe he'd
slipped back past us as we were leaving? He seemed quite content
to be inside away from the cold weather, so I didn't think any more
about it.
Until a few hours later, that is, when I put him out for the night and
snuggled up in bed with a book. Just as my book sucked me in,
little feet came padding down the hallway and Huckleberry announced his
presence with a pleased "Meow!"
What in the world? I
shot out of bed and did a little exploring, quickly discovering the new
"cat door." While we'd been gone all day, Huckleberry had
deviously ripped the air hose to the outdoor wood furnace out of the
wall, creating a massive hole through which he could easily prance into
the house. Thanks a lot, Huckleberry! This morning, I
discovered that scientists
are right --- cold hands make cold hearts. Between
Huckleberry's cat door letting in frigid air, the golf cart having
frozen into the mud overnight so that we couldn't get the tires to roll
and collect the wood Mark had cut at the other end of the property, and
the chainsaw's gas having somehow frozen solid so that we couldn't cut
any closer wood, I was cold and irritable. Luckily for me, Mark
solved all of our problems, even managing to start a fire out of wet
kindling on a cold day. As the interior temperature tops 60 F, my
heart has begun to thaw.
For future reference, the best way to feed
chicken or turkey feet to your dogs is whole and raw.
Unfortunately, the turkey feet I got a week and a half ago came with
instructions to cook them for a long time until the meat fell off the
bones. So I did, using up all of the propane in our outdoor
cooker's tank then finishing the feet on our kitchen stove where they
stunk up the entire house.
Once cooked, turkey feet turn into a gelatinous mass which will stay on
your hands until scrubbed extensively with scads of soap and hot
water. I gave up on trying to pick the meat off the bones after
about five minutes and threw it all back in the pot to cook some
more. Eventually, I strained off the liquid to add to Lucy's dog
food, wasting all of the meat, skin, and bones. Next time I'll
know better!
Still, Lucy adored her dog food, and I was thrilled to have finally
taken the time to make a week's worth so that I won't have to feed her
dry when I'm too busy to make up a batch. It would have made two
weeks' worth, though, if I'd stuck to raw! So be forewarned!
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