Preparing for Onions and Travel

This is the bag of onions from our last harvest.  They were grown in my plastic green house and then allow to dry out under a piece of burlap.  They have been patiently waiting in the pantry ever since.  It's past time to plant them so they can provide a new crop of onions. 

As I walk to the greenhouse door with my bag of onions, the whole flock of chickens and guineas follows me.  The flock was recently attacked by a couple of dogs.  Over a three day period the dogs killed four hens and mauled Turkey and a couple others before I was able to get my hands on one of them and give him over to animal control.  The owners found their dog at the animal shelter and called to offer payment for our lost birds.  We didn't ask for money, but warned them that our neighbor is a good shot and is on the look out as he lost some birds to the dogs too.   The lady at the animal shelter said that it's common that once a dog learns where to go to chase livestock they will keep coming back, and end up being shot by a farmer.    

Poor Turkey was badly bruised after the dog attack, so Brandon and I butchered her and made over fifteen pounds of turkey sausage and six quarts of stock! 

February is the month I like to plant seeds in the greenhouse, and start some plants to later be transplanted to the summer garden.  I'm having some trouble getting started this year - I'm feeling behind on the garden already!  The time and energy that could be directed toward the garden is probably being used up planning for our upcoming international travel.  Exciting!  After much consideration we've finally committed to a Big Trip, purchased our non-refundable tickets and hotel, and are preparing to travel for over thirty hours to the Republic of Georgia - way over in the Caucasus mountains, on the edge of the Black Sea, right between Russia and Turkey.  Whoa.  

In terms of miles, Japan is the farthest I've been from home, but that was over thirty years ago, when I was nine years old.  This trip will be the farthest from home I've ever been as an adult.  Brandon and I will have five days in Tbilisi, the capital city, and we're looking forward to this new adventure.  We've readied our carry on bags and neck pillows, and are considering the weather and our wardrobe.  We also have to plan for someone else to keep all our critters in food and water while we are away.   

After tidying the greenhouse, I decided to put the flock to work preparing a seed bed before I plant.  I propped the door open and coaxed the flock inside by sprinkling sunflower seeds in the straw.  They worked diligently for the rest of the day, and did a wonderful job spreading the straw and scratching up weeds.  No more excuses Rain, get out there and plant those onions!  

Rambling Story of Recent Things, and Then it Snowed

 Rufus has such a good kissy face!  I have some photos to share, of recent things. 

We harvested green beans.  Lots and lots of green beans.  My parents came, and we gathered round the bean harvest, and picked all the little beans from their shells so we can save them to plant next year.  The focus of the 2019 summer garden was green beans and sweet potatoes.  I did my best to harvest and eat the beans as they ripened, so by the time the last of the beans were ready to save for seeds, we were glad to take a break from stringing!  If I plant all those seeds next year, we will be covered up in green beans.  

Would you like to admire Turkey?  She's grown into a giant bird, who coos softly, and squeaks loudly for food.  She's a champion pear eater, and sleeps on the top perch with the chickens. 

Brandon and I dressed as our future selves for our Halloween costume this year.  We sprayed our hair white and grey, emphasized our wrinkles, and added age spots.  We also nearly caused a fender bender while taking selfies in the car!

We joked that the best part of going to a party at the age of one hundred and three is that we could wear our most comfortable sweaters and no one thinks it's unacceptable to take a nap during the party! 

Somehow, despite his busy schedule, Brandon managed to squeeze in enough moments to build an addition to our barn.  

 

It's a an extension of the roof line, that perfectly shelters the tractor.  I was happy to move the tractor out of the hay hoop barn, to make room for my hay bales.  Now the tractor is nearer the electricity, which is good in case we need to plug it in to warm up, should we need to use it this winter.  

Wendigo was galloping around and hurt her knee.  Her good knee.  So now she has one bad-ish knee, and one pretty bad knee, and she hobbles.  It's no wonder I tweaked my back trying to lift her into the car for a visit to the vet - she weighed in at one hundred and three pounds!  The vet took scans and said that her hips are a little bad, which probably puts pressure on her knees. She likely has tears in her ACL tendons.  Wendigo's only consolation for her limited mobility is that the pain medicine goes down easiest when embedded in hot dogs.  She doesn't mind a twice daily dose of hot dog one bit.    

The main route away from home was flooded one day last week.  I turned around to try the other route...

and it was flooded too!  It's an odd feeling to be trapped at home, but nice to have an excuse to stay home from work. 

It was past time to harvest the sweet potatoes.  The vines were so pretty all summer, but I was unconvinced there would be real potatoes under the ground.  I was wrong!  

It took me about five digging sessions, but I finally made my way through the entire bed.  I didn't have to dig too deep, as most of the potatoes were in the top layer of loose organic garden soil, and not into the clay subsoil.  Even still, it was a lot of work and I couldn't help but dream of the giant bin of organic sweet potatoes at the grocery, all clean of dirt and harvested by someone else!  Especially when I would carefully excavate a giant whopper of a potato only to turn it over and find that some type of rodent had gnawed all the way through it!  Grrrr!  

 

Even though we shared about a third of the harvest with the voles, the other two thirds make an impressive display on the dining room table.  

My root cellaring book says to cure the potatoes for ten to fourteen days at eighty-five degrees and ninety percent humidity.  Yeah, right.  Who has a sauna fit for potato curing?  To store them after they are cured, the book says they need a relatively warm and dry root cellar, or they do well wrapped in newspaper and stored in an unheated room.   All the potatoes in the bowl have chewed places, or were damaged during harvest.  I've been cleaning them up and baking them.

Brandon prefers that I cut off the chew marks from the voles. So picky!  Ha!  Even uncured, they are delicious.  Maybe they were worth all that effort to dig, after all. 

We did all that stuff, bean harvesting, Halloween partying, barn building, dog toting, flooding, and potato digging, and then it snowed.  Nice.  

Jammed Up at the Trough

I laughed yesterday at the jam-up at he food trough, and took some photos to show you the commotion.  I poured sunflower seeds mixed with beet root pellets in the food trough for the girl goats, and Turkey and the chickens got in on the action.  

I spread food on the ground for the all the birds too, but Turkey knows that she doesn't have to hunt for pieces in the grass if she heads for the goats food, and stuffs her beak as fast as she can.  Her excited calls and squeaks as she fills her crop draw the attention of the chickens.  

It makes for a crowded scene as the goats nibble their treats.  The chickens are good about grabbing a quick bite and getting out of the way, but poor Turkey gets so greedy she doesn't retreat and sometimes gets her neck trapped between the bars on the food trough and a goat head.  She turns red and struggles, but frees herself before I need to intervene.  

The goats are unconcerned about the comfort of a turkey, and eat fast to make sure they get as much as possible.  The bars on the top of the trough prevent any one goat from defending the whole trough by swinging their heads back and forth and blocking each other from the food.  

The baby goats steal a nibble here and there, but don't really fight for the food like the big goats will. 

Peaches stuffs her jaws then comes up for some air.  Other goat heads and bird beaks quickly take her place. 

When she is ready for another bite, she squeezes her face back into the bowl, displacing snouts and beaks with the force of her appetite.  Even though both of her daughters have horns, she still wins all battles of will, and reclaims her spot in the trough.  

Wendigo, if left on her own, will growl and snap at the goats and chickens until she gets all the food on one side of the trough, and Turkey gets the other side.  The poor goats stand out of her reach and stare mournfully at the food.  I don't know why a dog wants to eat seeds and beet pulp though. Maybe she thinks it's going to be delicious because everyone else is so excited to have it they pile up in a feeding frenzy!  

She's a Turkey

I think Turkey is a girl.  She's probably a breed called the broad breasted white turkey, one of the most common types of meat turkeys - like we are used to eating for Thanksgiving.  

Her foot is still a little swollen, but this week she started roosting on the perch under the chickens instead of sleeping on the coop floor.  I let her out with the rest of the birds now, and she lounges in the shade and eats things from the grass.  She's very docile, and unafraid of me.  Unlike the chickens, she isn't afraid of the hose, and sticks her beak right in the fresh water as I fill the bowl.  

She's shaking dirt from her feathers in this photo, and I thought it was cool that her head and tail stay so still that they are in focus, but her back feathers swish so fast they blur. 

She makes a pretty whistle that sounds like, "tweep, tweep" when she is excited for food. 

This white hen isn't grumpy, she just looks that way!

White hen, white dog.  

Can you see the tiny baby chick beak peaking out from under the wing?  One of my hens sat on five eggs, but only one hatched.  I put the hen and her chick in the brooder box inside my barn to keep them safe from predators and the other chickens.  I have to work up the courage to reach into the box each time I change their water, because she puffs her feathers and attacks me when she thinks I'm threatening her chick.  

Our neighbors are out of town, and Brandon has been checking on their flock of chickens while they are gone.  Yesterday evening he came back without the eggs because each nest box had a hen sitting on the piles of eggs.  He wanted to know what to do.  When I told him he better move the hen and collect the eggs, he said I had to come with him because the hens might peck him!  Ha! Who's a chicken, huh?    We collected six dozen eggs - wow!  

Hay, Paint, and Turkey

You've probably noticed, but it's been raining.  Nearly every day this whole month, which has put all the hay makers and crop planters behind schedule.  There's hardly any hay from last year to be had from anyone.  We made it through the winter by buying hay that was left over from the year before last, from Joe, but a big percentage of the hay in those round bales is moldy and ruined from sitting outside for an entire year.  We were lucky to get it though, because many cows in Kentucky starved last winter because of lack of good hay.  I'm afraid this year may be even worse if we can't get a few days in row without rain.  

After we returned from our trip to NYC, we had nearly three days of no rain, so Brandon cut a small field of grass, and raked it up for me to feed to the goats and donkeys.  A neighbor stopped by to offer to cut the rest of our hay in exchange for two thirds of the harvest.  At first we said no, we need all our hay, which we do, but as the weather hasn't cooperated, and Brandon has more art trips lined up, we changed our mind and made a deal.  We tried hard to talk the hay man into a fifty-fifty split, but he insisted it wasn't worth his time, fuel, and labor costs if he couldn't get at least two thirds.  I'm hoping with his big equipment he can get it all harvested at once if the forecast will cooperate.  A third of the hay might be better than none.  

The hay man said he would make small square bales instead of big round ones, which are easier to use, but he said he hopes to sell each of his bales for six dollars each.  Yikes!  I have a feeling I'm going to be buying my own hay back unless we can get a good second harvest later this summer and collect it ourselves.  Poor Brandon agonized over deciding to let the hay man harvest our hay.  Brandon loves to mow, rake, and harvest our hay, so giving that chore over to someone else isn't a relief to him.  Our good neighbor let the hay man come one year and was not satisfied with his entitled attitude to his property, and still complains about it years after.  When Brandon confessed that we had made a deal with the hay man, our good neighbor warned, "It's hard to quit with that guy once you get started with him."  What does that mean?  

While our small batch of hay was drying in the sun, I took advantage of the nice weather and did some much needed painting.  The raw wood on my crib and chicken coop got a coat of nice grey paint that was given to us by a friend.  The giant bucket of paint said "garage door" on the side.  Now my coop matches their house!  

Painting with a flock of chickens milling around isn't ideal.  I had to keep my paint pan covered to prevent curious beaks, and they insisted on kicking up dirt and old hay onto the newly painted surfaces.  But, now the wood is protected by several coats of paint, and the chickens don't mind if the paint has an interesting texture.  

I also painted the outhouse door and lid to the outhouse potty.  There's still paint left, so I might be able to paint the mobile coop too, if I can find the time when the sun will shine.  

The mobile coop houses my young meat birds and Turkey.  The turkey has a sore foot.  I'm not sure what happened, but its foot swelled up and it couldn't run away from the guineas, who chase it and pull its tail.  I've been letting the chickens out in the morning and making Turkey stay in the coop during the day.  It looked so pitiful I was sure it wasn't going to live, but after a few days of peaceful rest, it's standing again and asking to be let out of solitary confinement.  Maybe it will be okay after all.  

The Beginning of Turkey Problems

Brandon and I were relaxing in the hot tub last night, recovering from a mad rush to plant seventeen prickly rose bushes dug up from a friends yard, when we noticed that the dog was interested in something in the dark lawn.  What is that white thing?  It was Turkey!  Sleeping on the ground in the middle of the back yard.  In my bathrobe and flip flops, I captured Turkey and carried it to the coop and locked the door.  I hope this isn't the beginning of Turkey problems.  Until now, Turkey has put itself back to bed with the chickens each night.   Carrying a turkey is harder than carrying a chicken.  Not only is it bigger and heavier, but it's legs are strong and when it kicks, it's nails are sharp enough to scratch through a bathrobe.  

Have you noticed how many bloggers have stopped blogging?  Maybe this is an old fashioned sort of story sharing compared to tweetering and instagramering.  Or maybe the bloggers I like to read can only tell so many stories about their donkeys before they start to feel like they are repeating themselves.  I feel that sometimes, like my stories are cyclic like the seasons.  

But each new baby goat is unique!  Like Nibs, learning to eat grass with his mother.  I've noticed that the baby goats sample the vegetation straight from their mothers mouth.  If they see one of the other goats eating something, then they want some too.  I think they are learning.  

This is Nibs with his head stuck in the fence.  The kind of fencing we used has smaller holes near the bottom, and bigger holes near the top, and its advertised as goat fencing.  It works to keep little goats from sticking their heads through to eat grass near the bottom, but it didn't stop Nibs from jumping up and sticking his head through the top so he could get closer to me.  Thankfully I was there to help him thread those little horns back through.  I hope he learned not to do that, because I'm nervous now to come home and find that he's been stuck out in the sun, hanging from his horns.  

In the Crib, Out of the Rain

I'm not sure this photo can accurately portray the sense of calm and organization I get when I enter the corn crib now.  I've finally sifted through the layers of stuff stashed away in here, moved all the old carpet rolls and stacks of lumber I've been hoarding, and raked up a giant pile of mouse generated debris.  Whew!  It feels good to know what's in here, and to make sure all my junk precious possessions are accessible.  

We are fortunate that this property came with enough outbuildings that Brandon and I could each claim one for our ourselves, and still have enough shared space that we don't feel put out by each others objects.  We don't always agree about what's important to hang on to, so having a space of my own to fill as I like is liberating.  Yes, Brandon, I do need an electric towel warmer, a busted bird feeder, a stack of cat litter pails, a broken patio heater, and a fireplace mantel!  Duh.  As an artist, he's an object lover too, but now that I have my very own building, my treasures don't overlap with his junk treasures.  If good fences make good neighbors, then separate junk piles treasure troves must make for happy marriages.  

My crib isn't rain proof during a big storm, since there are gaps in the walls, but it is a nice place to escape a normal rain.  When I'm there, the door is open and my chicken friends can wander in out of the rain too.   

Please, just make yourself at home.  

Cogburn, I think you look more awesome by the day!

The turkey and the guineas don't seem to the mind the rain.  

The chickens seek shelter in the coop, in the barn with the tractor, or under the trailer full of metal scraps we've been collecting as we clean up around the farm.  

I like to refer to this collection of metal as the tetanus pile.  We've tried to cordon off the tetanus pile by placing it between the tractor barn and the big trailer, and leaned some pieces of fencing that a friend gave in front of it, just to make sure any visiting kids can't easily climb on it.  A big pile of rusty metal with chickens perched on it is classic hillbilly, right? 

To celebrate the crib clean up, I opened a bottle of persimmon wine that was bottled in 2011.  I can't believe my wine is that old!  Where does the time go?  I remember collecting the persimmons from Brandon's uncles tree, and it doesn't seem like that was five whole years ago.  The wine tastes as good as it ever did - which isn't exactly a compliment.  Cheers, turkey!