Brooder and Greenhouse Greens

Wendigo and I worked to clean out the chick brooder and set it up for our next shipment of babies.  This time, six of the chicks are going to live with a friend so her daughter can experience the joy of raising little fluff balls.  Another six chicks are destined for a friend once they are able to live without a heat source.  Because the hatchery will only mail chicks during the winter in a box of twenty-five, we combined our order and I filled out the rest with more of those red ranger meat birds.  We are all anxiously awaiting the email that says the chicks are on their way.  

Always before, I used a heat lamp to keep the chicks warm.  This time, I invested in an artificial hen chick warmer.  It's like a hot plate on legs, that the chicks lay under.  As the chicks get taller, I can adjust the leg height.  I plugged it in to make sure it works, and it never felt that hot to me, although I didn't have it on very long.  I'm excited to see if it works because the worst part of raising chicks is dealing with the heat lamp, which is a fire hazard and frequently blows the bulb when the chicks rattle it.  

The greenhouse is ready to be planted.  I bought some lettuce, pea, and other green plant seeds that I think will grow well in the cool spring weather. 

Does this look like a salad green called corn salad?  I've never grown it before, but I planted some seeds last fall and now there is a row of these small green plants.  I guess I'll have to eat them and see!  

Some of the red lettuce plants survived the freeze. 

And a few green lettuce plants too. 

I pulled weeds from the onion bed.  I think it's time for a lettuce, corn salad, and chive dinner!  

Which Oak?

Earlier this week Jamie and I spent some time working in west Kentucky mapping the boundaries of wetlands.  

Some of the wetland boundaries were easy to see, as they were dominated by a tall reed called Phragmites austraulis, which is considered a noxious and invasive plant.   This reed is very aggressive, and sends out long runners that can reach as much as thirty feet in a single year.  Where this plant gets a foothold, it's nearly impossible to control.  

Navigating through reeds that are nearly twelve feet tall was a challenge, but Jamie would put his back to it and push a path through the stems.  We tried to stay on the beaver trails when we could.  

The wetlands that weren't open and sunny reed beds, were dominated by trees.  Mostly common species like red maple, green ash, sweet gum, and river birch, but occasionally we would find oak trees, like this one.  What kind of oak is it?  

The leaves that we could find on the ground under the trees were jagged on the margin, like a chestnut tree, but chestnuts don't grow in wetlands.  

The cups on the acorns were large.  The bark was a light color, and seemed flaky.  

I think there are nearly eighty species of oak tree in the United States, but thankfully my Trees and Shrubs of Kentucky book only lists nineteen types of oak, and based on the description I think the trees we were seeing were swamp chestnut oak (Quercus michauxii). 

When I look on the USDA plant database website, and zoom in on the range map for swamp chestnut oak, I can see that the green counties of occurrence are clustered in western Kentucky.  So, we were in the right part of the state, the photo of the leaf looks right, the description of the bark "light gray and scaly" fits our observations, the habitat "wet flats, and other moist ground" is spot on, and we saw lots of sweet gum trees in the area, which is listed in the book as an associate species.  Bingo.  It's a swamp chestnut oak!  

The Yard Light

Flying at Night, by Ted Kooser, 1939

Above us, stars.  Beneath us, constellations.

Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies

like a snowflake falling on water.  Below us, 

some farmer, feeling the chill of that distant death, 

snaps on his yard light, drawing his sheds and barn

back into the little system of his care.

All night, the cities, like shimmering novas, 

tug with bright streets at lonely lights like

his.  

Baby Goat Bump

A friend of mine talks about getting goats someday.  Her kids - human kids - would like to get goats right now, because they think goats would be fun pets.  Especially if they were the little goats like my River Brothers.  We talk about goats often, and I can never decide if I recommend goats as pets.  Obviously, I like having goats myself, but I wouldn't recommend anyone take on goats unless they understood what they were getting themselves into.  Goats want to reproduce!  

I'm not sure how you could have females goats as pets when they go through hormonal cycles every twenty days or so.  They cry and swish their tails and just aren't satisfied with life when they are in heat, and it lasts several days.  The neighbors would be irritated by the noise, I'm sure.  If you let them breed they take a break by being pregnant and then nursing.  Male goats, like Little Buck, have hormonal challenges too, and might not make good pets if they go around peeing on their chins, stinking up the place, and challenging the mailman to a fight.  

Probably the best bet for pet goats would be wethers, which are castrated boys.  My wethers are very friendly, but it's sort of a rambunctious head rubbing on my boots and jumping on my clothes kind of friendliness.  The girl goats seem much more calmly affectionate and sensible.  So really, pregnant or nursing females are the best kind of goat pet, but that means you have to breed them, and that's not so easy unless you have a male too.  Then you end up like me with a whole herd! 

I asked Brandon if he would recommend goats as pets and he gave an emphatic no.  He said goats are livestock, not pets, and only if you enjoy the challenges of animal husbandry should you take on goats.  Animal husbandry implies breeding, right?  

Peaches should be pregnant and due to deliver next month.  The baby should be held on the right side of her body.  Is that a baby bump?  The left side is a food baby. 

In this picture from above, the food baby looks like it sticks out just as far as the baby bump.  The last time she was pregnant I couldn't tell, but maybe I'm getting a little better at judging this time.  Or maybe she has a bigger baby bump because she has more than one in there!  Two or three is common in goats.  Oh my.  

Little Noobi could be pregnant too, and due in May.  I don't see a baby bump, but it's a bit early.  It's wild to know that our baby goat might have a baby of her own!    

Our Future is Mud

The weather geeks at work have been talking about some statistics for our city.  The normal rainfall for our town is forty-seven inches.  In 2018 we got nearly seventy-two inches!  That's twenty-five extra inches of rain!  No wonder the garden was such a challenge last year.  Here's some weather data for our city:  

A friend was complaining about his backyard, and saying that the foot traffic from his two dogs has destroyed his grass this winter, he has to mop the floor every day, wash the dogs, he's gone through three bales of straw, and that he's probably going to have to re-sod the whole thing in the spring.  I pointed out to him that many of the top ten wettest years have happened relatively recently.  In fact, six of ten years have happened in our lifetime, so it seems to me he needs to plan for the mud of the future.  If the trend is for more and more rainfall, maybe a grassy back yard for his dogs isn't the answer.  Our future is mud, so we better start making plans for it.  

Here are the paving stones that Brandon plopped down in a desperate attempt to get our feet out of the mud last winter.  They are sinking into the earth!  The chickens don't mind muddy feet, but I would like to re-design our pathways with better spacing and with something under the stones, like gravel, that will keep them out of the mud.  I'll try to remember the mud this summer when it's a good time to rethink the path.  

If it's not very cold, the donkeys will stand in the rain instead of inside their shelter.  Their hair dries into little curls that feel crusty when they dry, like they used too much hair gel. 

The places they walk have no more grass, just mud. 

They have been living in the smallest fence for weeks now, and they have eaten almost all of the vegetation, despite the hay I give them twice a day.  I decided it was better to sacrifice this small pasture to them this winter than to let them destroy the bigger pasture where the goats live. The goats don't like to get their feet wet, so they stay out of the mud and in the barn when it's wet.  The donkeys are so hard on the ground that I can't imagine the damage a cow could do on this clay soil.  Actually, I can imagine it because I drive past my neighbors cow pastures every day and watch the muddy rivulets of water flow from the over grazed pastures into the creek.  Not so good for water quality.  Sometimes the cows are up to their knees in mud, clustered around the wet hummocks of hay that remain from the round bales that are given to them.   

I was doing fine with the mud until my muck boots sprung a few leaks.  Now I get a muddy toe, which isn't so good for my socks.  Walking in mud to carry hay and food for the animals is like resistance training, right?  All my steps should count for double since the earth is anchoring me down with each sucking step.  

Sobering Math

We butchered six of the red ranger hens that I've been growing for the past sixteen weeks.  The photo above is not one of my birds.  It's an organic chicken from Kroger, all prepped and ready to bake in the oven.  I took it's picture so I could text it to Brandon, who I knew was stuck at work with an empty belly.  Something to look forward to!  

These are the birds that I grew, all cut up, bagged, and resting on a shelf in the refrigerator.  They were nice healthy looking birds, although not as plump as the Kroger chicken, probably because they are a different breed.  The Kroger chicken said it was USDA organic, and weighed five pounds and cost ten dollars.  When I told Brandon that I thought I had fifteen dollars worth of organic chicken feed in each of my birds, plus we had to do the work of raising and butchering them ourselves, he said, "That's some sobering math."  Is it?  

Yes, there has to be some other reason to raise chickens the way I do than finances and efficiency.  If I grew my own feed, or had a source to buy organic feed in bulk, maybe I could compete with Kroger prices.  I'm hoping that the taste of my birds will be worth some of the extra cost.  I do value knowing that my birds had happy chicken lives.  There must be enough entertainment value for me to make up the rest, because I'm getting ready to order my next batch of chicks! 

This is my flock running ahead of me toward the garden gate. They know that when I get to the gate, I will finally spread the food that I'm carrying, although they won't get too far ahead just in case I drop some on the way.   

I spread the food in the garden, around the still standing tomato cages, so that the chickens will scratch up the garden soil as they search for their pellets.  It's working pretty well.  They have cleared out nearly half of the space, and only the tough clumps of grass remain.  How do I calculate garden tillage power in my sober chicken math?  

They Wrestle

Brandon is the reason we have our giant Wendigo dog.  He met a great Pyrenees dog once, and wanted one ever since.  I think a giant fuzzy dog with a massive head is as close as he could get to realizing his childhood wish to befriend a bear.  

When the fox was killing our chickens, Brandon is the one who tracked down someone with great Pyrenees puppies for sale, and made the long drive to bring her home.   

Wendigo was the last puppy of the litter - the runt. 

When I took her for a visit to the vet last year, she weighed one hundred and nine pounds!  

She will be three years old in August, so I doubt she will get any bigger.  I have to watch how much I feed her, because she loves to eat and tends to get too fat. 

She's a sweet clown of a dog, and loves nothing more than having her bid drooly face cuddled.  With Brandon, the hugs and pets usually lead to a wrestling match. 

Wrestling with her usually ends when she excitedly swings her giant paws like a boxer with claws and makes contact with something tender, like his face. 

Brandon doesn't seem to mind how many times he gets a muddy paw in the face.  They love to wrestle!  

Remembering the Beach

It must be these cold and grey February days that has me reminiscing about our summer beach camping odyssey.   If you remember, I wrote about our first camping trip to Huntington Beach in 2016, when Wendigo was just a puppy and it was my nieces first trip to the ocean.  I also wrote about our 2017 camping trip, way down at Tybee Island in Georgia, when we hiked on islands and kayaked with dolphins.  For our 2018 vacation we were back at Huntington Beach in South Carolina, enjoying the ocean, the sand, and the swampy natural campground at the state park.  

We descended on the campground with two campers, four bicycles, and multiple tents, taking up three campsites for all eleven of us.  We had a beautiful oak tree for shade, and a nice low lying camp spot that filled with water when it rained.   The shallow pond made for a pretty reflection of the tree when the sun would shine after the rain.  It also made for muddy feet.  

Just look at the kids, all dressed for the beach but standing under umbrellas watching our campsite fill!  My nieces were nine and eleven, so not quite teenagers yet, although the elder was wielding her new smart phone.  Their parents didn't come this year, so they traveled and tented with Tamara and I and had their first camping experience where they had to contend with a long drive, adverse weather, mud, sand, sand fleas, relatives, and mosquitoes without mom and dad.  There was a little homesickness, but thankfully not many tears, and they made friends with some of the kids at the campground who were fun to ride the waves with or travel around the campground by bike collecting tadpoles.  A pen pal was made.  

It was nice to have cute amphibians to share our campsite with.  We saw alligators in the nearby marsh, plus storks and pink spoonbills.  

Jamie fished and used a throwing net, so we got an up close look at a tiny shark and some pretty ocean fish and crabs.  

We set up a folding tent on the beach, with sandbags on the legs to keep it from blowing away.  We brought camp chairs and coolers, and a shovel with buckets for sculpting sand castles.  We claimed our spot on the beach each day, and munched Doritos to recover from all the sand sculpting, swimming, kite flying, fishing, and sun bathing.  Grandpa bought everyone boogie boards to ride the waves.  

We were deeply immersed in all of that, when the elder niece asked, "When are we going to do something fun?" HA!  What would be fun?  "A movie, or something."  

So, Jamie, Ashley, and I bravely went with the girls right into the Myrtle Beach tourist area, and we shopped, ate pizza at a restaurant, and splurged for expensive beverages and even a ride on a roller coaster! 

We like to look back on the camping trip and remember all the challenges - the rain, the bugs, the mud, but I think that is one of the great things about camping.  All those physical experiences, especially the uncomfortable ones, make a long lasting impression.  I'll never forget that camping trip, and I'm already dreaming about our next trip! 

Click the movie below, if you would like to see the rest of our vacation photos.