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. 

Hibernation Technology

Of course, the most crucial technology for an enjoyable hibernation season is a combination of our two oldest human inventions - fire and the domestic cat lap-warmer.  I feel we have perfected our winter hibernation experience with the addition of a few relatively modern technologies.  

The electric blanket on the sofa is nice, but even more exiting is our movie projector and a record player. 

The silver box on the left is the movie projector, and the brown case on the right is my new record player, from Santa Clause.  It also has a blue tooth function, radio, CD player, and even a tape deck!  I've been hinting that I would like a record player, but it took me a while to get Brandon on board.  He may have even referred to the idea of a record player as hipster nonsense!  I like to shop at antique and junk stores, and there are always lots of old records for sale.  We are exploring some music we rarely hear, and now we are hooked!  

The movie projector lives on a stand with wheels so it can be rolled into position.  The giant screen for projecting the movie lives mounted near the ceiling, behind the beam of our room divider. 

Our space is a bit small for such a large screen, so we have to recline the red chair so the screen can unroll.  The projector has it's own speakers, but it only plays DVD's.  It's best to use the movie projector after the sun has gone down, so the image isn't diluted by sunlight through the windows.  This makes the early sunsets of winter ideal for movie watching.  

We've been enjoying the entire series of All Creatures Great and Small, the BBC show based on the books by veterinarian James Harriot.  Sometimes at the end of a long day we settle in near the fire for our show, with a hot beverage and laps full of sleeping cats, and sigh with contentment.  Ah, the wonders of technology!   

Walking in the Cold

I'm happy to report that the our little farmstead came through the single digit temperatures of the past few days without a hitch.  We didn't even get frozen water pipes in the kitchen, which I think we owe to the straw bales that we placed around the foundation of the house.  Our to-do list includes chinking the stone foundation to block the breeze under this old house, but since we didn't get to that item on the list last summer, we accepted the expense and hill-billy ambiance of nearly twenty straw bales lining the east and west sides of the house.  Come spring, we can spread the wet straw in the garden.  

When we have a package delivered, we usually find it resting atop the straw bale by the door.  Sometimes we find the packages in the seat of whatever vehicle is unlocked and near the house.  Sometimes on the wood pile, and sometimes on yard furniture or in the barn.  Thankfully, Wendigo has passed the chewing phase and most packages are found unmolested by giant canine teeth.  

Do you remember the climbing tree?  It's a giant live eastern red cedar tree that lays horizontal over the small creek in our tiny forest.  It's fun to walk across, and not to far to the ground if you slip. 

Brandon and I stopped to admire our snags on our walk in the cold.  Our little woods run in a thin line along the eastern boundary of our property, and were once dominated by mature green ash trees.  The invasion of the emerald ash borer killed most of them, so the forest is full of dead standing trees.  

These snags are good wildlife habitat, and the snags with loose bark might even shelter bats.  When they fall, they become our firewood.  We estimate that we have enough dead ash trees to keep us heated for at least ten years.  The under-story of small maples, hackberry, and cedar trees is getting taller every year, so even when the dead ash trees have all been burned in our stove, the forest will not be bare.   

We measured the length of the trail we walk around the farm, and I think it's seven tenths of a mile.  The trail goes round all the pastures and hay fields, so we get to greet the animals and see the prints of wildlife in the snow. 

One of our favorite spots on the trail is the northeast corner, where we placed a couple of chairs.  I like the waving amber stalks of the broomsedge along the trail near the chairs.   

Wendigo knows to be near for this part of our walk, because there's a good chance we will sit for a puppy cuddle while we let the sun shine on our faces. 

As I walked out of the house this morning to do my chores, Wendigo came up for a good morning hug and I quickly found out that she must have had a close encounter with a skunk last night!  She is so stinky and rubbed herself all over my barn coat.  It's too cold for a doggy bath, I think, so I guess she will just have to wear off the smell.  I hope she doesn't rub it all on me!  

Little Buck and Chewing Cubes

Little Buck finally has a respectable beard!  He also has a yellow cast to his white face and beard hair because he has some unsavory habits (but excellent aim and bladder control!).  He is still his usual sweet self, despite those pesky hormones. 

He had a distinct odor during the fall rut when I kept the boys separate from the girls, but now that all the does have calmed down and the herd is reunited for warmth, I don't notice an offensive smell.  I was hesitant to own a buck because so many people on the interweb cautioned about the stink and the weird male behavior.   Maybe it's because he is still a young buck, but so far he isn't mean or even very loud.  When the girls where having their cycles and bawling like idiots, Little Buck only made little goat grunts that sounded like a baby goat in distress.  This seemed to irritate Peaches, but wasn't a bother to the rest of us.  

Tractor Supply sells these big bags of alfalfa and oat cubes in the horse supply section.  I bought a bag to see if the animals would like them as a treat.  

The cubes look like compressed blocks of green vegetation.  

They are very dense and the goats have a bit of trouble chewing them unless I break them into little flakes.  

Can you see the new sliding door that Brandon built for the goat stall?  It's the new yellow plywood.  This door slides closed so I can block the wind and lock the goats in their stall.  On these cold days I've been leaving just enough of a gap in the door so they can squeeze through.  I know fresh air is important, but I think my little barn is a bit drafty and the openings face the wind.   

The donkeys love the cubes, and will take a big hunk and chew, and chew, and chew.  They chew so much they get green slobber on their lips.  

How to illustrate the wind with photography?  We have a strong wind, and photos just don't communicate the presence of the wind.  I made the short movie below of the donkeys chewing their green cubes in the wind.  You can see their fur blowing and hear the rattle of the wind in the microphone.  Enjoy a few minutes of donkey chewing in the wind zen!