Life is More Simple in the Country

It's not more simple.  We just make it look easy.  But trust me, it's not.  We earn that hot shower at the end of the day, and trust me, that Select Comfort mattress is heaven on Earth, and sleep comes fast and hard.

It's been two solid months since I've been able to find the time to sit down and blog about the station.  The silly thing is, I can't really place my finger on WHAT I was doing, or what I accomplished over those two months, but it has been non-stop.

Being pampered by the Chicken King

The calendar was filled with the normal daily chores that are found in any household and augmented by the chores of an acreage that is racing the clock, ending one season and beginning another.  The approach of Fall was heralded by dropping of The Boy at The University. So while academically we were in Fall mode, Mother Nature was still burning the summertime oil.  It was hot, miserably humid, a lack of rain, which sent the pollen and dust counts sky high, and I was down one farm hand.

The chickens constantly reminded me that I was doing everything wrong, but as long as they had water and got their fill of tasty treats and spent the day out on long walks, I seemed to be forgiven for not being The Boy.  After all, the sun was warm and the bugs were plentiful. If you're a chicken, that's pretty much all you need to make you happy.

The chore chart on the laundry room black board seemed to grow instead of shrink.  For every chore we erased, we came up with two more that needed added. Even the tiniest chore takes time, most are mediocre, like swapping the winter and spring clothes in your closet.  Others are necessities, and require either perfect weather or more than one person to accomplish.

Painting the posts on the barn and house need warm and dry weather, but can be done by one person.  Done.

Doc playing the Pied Piper in place of the Chicken King

Replanting new trees and shrubs can be done alone, but need to be done early enough to get some rain to start a strong root system or you'll be hauling water to feed them.

Orchard Clean-up

Closing up the chicken coop for the frigid winter months, needs done after it's done being hot, but before the chill starts in.  It also requires a windless day, or 12 foot panels become wings that batter the carrier.

Posts on the barn are painted and the coop is closed up for the
Winter.

September was full of these little odd jobs and a few side trips.  Merriweather decided this would be a romantic time to go broody, so we obliged and gave her 6 eggs from a friend's farm an hour away.  She would be hatching 6 Icelandic eggs.  She's a great broody hen and spent the next 2 weeks terrifying the rest of the coop with her moody antics until I moved her to the broody coop to hatch in peace and quiet.  I think I actually heard a cheer from the main coop that day.

I treated myself to a day painting out on the last weekend of September.

It was cold and windy, and the minute pirate bugs made being outside miserable.  Not only do they bite but they landed in, and blew into the paintings, making little "snow" angels as they struggled to remove themselves from the artwork.  When I took a break for lunch and came home, I was warmed by the sight of 6 tiny, fluffy, baby vikings.  We just call them the hoard.

Baby Icelandics

The hoard outgrew the broody coop in a week and Doc and I moved them to the barn, where they spent their days playing in the dirt and tormenting their mother and the rest of the flock.  Nights in the 20s, forced us to move them into the warmer, insulated workshop were they spend their days tormenting their mother and us.  They are growing like mad, and I THINK we have three cockerels and three pullets.  It is so hard to tell at this age.

The hoard is taking over, which is I guess what hoards do best.

October is when the real work began.  Harvest in the region was about to go into full swing.  A few more weeks of dry weather and the hills would be filled with the hum of combines and grain trucks. The days were warm.  The skies were crystal blue, and the fields were a raw umber until they blazed with gold in the sunset.

The beginning of the third week of October marked the shift of the seasons.  The winds began to howl.  Days of high winds brought dry air from the south gusts repeatedly hit 45-50 mph for an entire day.  The wind was warm, but it drove dust and pollen, making being outside like being in a sandblaster.  The next day it was as if the state took a deep, calming breath to relax.  The air was warm and still, and it gave everyone a chance to repair and pick up after the windstorm.  The state exhaled the next day.  Winds greater than the previous storm spent the day blowing from the North this time.  While the major storm only lasted one day, winds in the 30s lasted the next week, and with it - cold temperatures and rain.

Snow on the Pumpkin

The pressure to finish chores was palpable. It was a race, and the last echo from the starter's pistol was fading away, and I was standing on the starting line stunned.  Just as the leaves were changing from their Summer wardrobe to their glorious Fall attire, the winds stripped them bare. Gone.  It was all gone.  Fall lasted two days, and I missed it!  It was fast and furious.  It reminds me of the kitchen scene in A Christmas Story when the Bumpass dogs tear through the house, destroy the kitchen, eat the much anticipated Christmas turkey, and break down the back door.  I felt like Ralphie, standing in the kitchen doorway, lamenting on the lack of future Turkey deliciousness.   Sigh.

Measurable snow on Halloween.

I rallied by going apple picking.  After all I still needed to make gallons of applesauce and apple butter.  During the picking, I realized it was the first time in 18 years that I had gone picking without my little apple buddy.  On the upside, the apple products turned out delicious.

Amazing meal of cream cheese and homemade apple butter
on a toasted bagel.

Wykin, Blykin, and Nod grew like weeds and started taking their place in the flock.  I decided I didn't need TWO cockerels from this generation, so I watched the boys carefully and decided who needed to find a new home.  It was a tough decision.  In the end, it was Wykin who moved 12 miles up the road to his own flock of Red Star hens.

Wykin with his new flock.  When I left, he was already dancing for his new ladies.  

Nod is now called Wookie for the loud growling noise he makes.  Blykin is now princess as she looks like Princess Leia in her flowing white pant suit.  Wookie is dancing for the flock and his stomping on the ladies is driving Andy crazy!  We are still waiting for Leia's first egg.

Wookie overseeing hay moving.

We still haven't managed to get a fence up around the pasture, so there are no large critters to report about.  All the guys that do fencing are busy with harvest, and after harvest comes deer season.  I hope to hear from someone after that!  I've done the math for the supplies I need to build the stalls in the barn, but have yet to order them.  I can always work in the barn in not so nice weather, so those chores weren't even on the winter prep chore list.  With the sun setting before 5pm, all chores are up to me during the day, and I'm only one person.

Ellie caught in the cookie jar.

Donder shocked us with this GIANT 110 gram whopper!
That's a standard size playing card.  Yes, it was a double yolk.

The children's book I'm writing is plugging along.  For a while, I was making it to a quiet library chair (with access to a Starbucks) once a week, using a day that was going to be too cold or too windy to get chores done at home.  It turns out I really cannot work on this book at home.  There are too many other things that need done, or steal my time and attention.  What started out as a picture book evolved into a short story, and has now mutated into a grade 2-4 chapter book.

So there you have it.  It's not that I didn't post for Fall 2017.  We simply didn't have one!

Boing! Spring has SPRUNG.

Living in Nebraska, on the edge of the Great Plains, I have learned the true meaning of Spring has Sprung, also why it's called SPRING.  It's because the darn season bounces back and forth between Winter and Summer faster and more often than a Tigger on a Sugar and Caffeine bender.

We have bounced from 80' days to 32' days; blazingly sunny to dim, dark, and gloomy; thunderstorms to freezing rain to snow (sometimes in the same day).  The one constant has been the incessant, relentless, howling winds.  Diaries from homesteaders tell tales of people going insane due to the endless whistling and roaring of the winds.  It is amazing how trying on your nerves the low frequency sound of wind through trees, fence lines, and over the prairie grass is.

This time of year we are also bone dry.  The ground is dry.  The vegetation, either somewhat in hibernation or dead from a long winter, is acres upon acres of kindling.  The air is dry, with Relative humidity as low as 17%.  Couple all of that with a brisk wind and you have the makings of one humdinger of a fire season.

Farmers, Ranchers, and Land Managers here (and in other large open states) use fire to control weeds, invasive plant species, and to return valuable carbon back to the grassland.  Remember, it used to burn unchecked by mother nature all the time, before we decided we didn't like our homes, and villages burned out every year.  The fires are planned, regulated, and safety precautions are strictly followed.  Of course there is always the unpredictable fire, caused by a wayward cigarette.  But for the most part, they are controlled, unless they're not.  When they do get going, they are HUGE, the plumes can be seen for miles and miles, and at night, the prairielands can glow an eerie red.  Yesterday, I counted 14 different fires along the horizon surrounding our acreage.

The FUN thing about all this wind is the ability to go fly a kite!  You can't fly a kite, REALLY fly a kite in the city, but out here, there's nothing in your way.  The past week, we had city family from out of state visiting, and I bought each of the kids a kite. ( Remember how easy it used to be to find kites and kite STRING? - HA! Try it now.)  The kids had a great time.  I even caught my mom out there playing!  Of course we had to wait for the winds to DIE DOWN to 20 mph to fly the kites.  Once the winds hit 25, 30, and 40 mph, they had to come in.  I didn't want them to end up in South Dakota!

Another fun event this time of year with all of the dry weather is Virga.  Virga is precipitation that forms in a moist layer of the atmosphere.  When it builds up to a weight sufficient for it to fall to the earth, it gleefully begins its journey towards earth.  Normally it would make it, and we would call it rain, or snow, or freezing rain.  However, when the precipitation falls towards earth and hits a layer of dryer air, it evaporates.  This can happen hundreds of feet above the surface or I've seen it a mere 10 feet off the ground. 

I am always amazed by it and really enough watching the shape shifting ballet of moisture.  This week, we had the extra bonus of having brilliant sunshine at just the right angle to a Virga shower, which resulted in a VIRGABOW.

Acreage Update

With Spring comes the endless chores, which I welcome.  Those that know me, know I cannot sit still.  And when I do, I do not do it well. 

Even with the challenge of the winds, the garden has been cleaned out.  Now I need to figure out which crops go where and set the frames back down.  April 20th I will plant the onion sets, and the potatoes.

We also decided to expand the orchard.  We added 11 more trees and 100 feet in length.  We added redbud trees on the very end between the orchard and road.  They will not only provide western shade (someday) in summer to the fruit trees, but will act as a visual screen to the view beyond.  As for the fruit trees, we added, granny smith, montmorecy cherries, candy crisp apples, cameo apples, cherry plums, rainier cherries, and  stayman winesap apples.  Someday, we might get apples to eat!

The dragons are back.  Well Killdeer birds really.  But we call them rock birds and they lay fabulously camouflaged eggs in our rock beds every year.  The eggs look like they belong to a dragon.  The adult birds have a piercing cry, a great scheme to get you away from their eggs, and the ability to completely disappear in the landscape.  I think they're from another dimension or planet, but that's neither here nor there.

Broody Daisy Update

Today is day 21, hatching day!  Well the AVERAGE hatching day.  We do have action, tomorrow should greet us with at least one puff butt.  This is Meriweather's one contribution to the nest.  The other blue eggs are cream legbars. There is one olive egg, and four black Maran eggs.



We have also decided that we will not let Daisy be broody again.  It's not that she isn't doing a GREAT job sitting.  She is.  The problem is, that's ALL she does.  She doesn't have the brains to get up even ONCE a day to eat, drink and relieve herself.  She will go about her business IF we pull her out, but ONLY if we pull her out.  So no second family for her.

Other Chicken News

Meet Noodle and Nugget.  They are both Ameraucana chicks and are being raised for the Lincoln Children's Zoo.  After they live here quarantined from all other animals, and fully feather out, they will be delivered to the zoo to be raised and trained by the Zoo Crew Kids.  They will then be used to educate visitors and school children about chickens.  They follow in the footsteps of their big sister Lucy, a black Maran, that we raised and donated last year.

Just look at those giant poofy cheeks!

Giant poofy cheeks turn into great big bushy beards!

Until next time!

Doc Here...
Caryl described all that as though these were distinct events at Dunrovin.  No, the chickens decided to help with the orchard expansion.( Caryl ~ known as the construction and approval crew.)  Step 1 is breaking the sod and removing it from where the tree goes.  Then we dig the hole in the clay soil for the tree.  Once we got past step 1, the girls helped.  They helped themselves to the yummy earthworms racing for cover.  For all the scratching they did, they only dug down about an eighth of an inch.  The remaining 11 7/8" was up to us. (Caryl-like all good supervisors, they taught and stepped back and watched us do the remaining work, got bored, and wandered off to have a chat around the water cooler.)



 

Thursday update

One hatch- Dorcas- mom is Merriweather,  dad is zap. She will be an olive egger. 5 more eggs are pipped that we can see.

The Repeat Offender

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Yup.  That's our Daisy again.  She's a habitual broody.  She is now officially a hen, but just barely.  It seems she's gone broody every 3 months since the day she hatched.

 

I made a promise to the flock that the first one to go broody at the end of March or beginning of April would be allowed to hatch the newest additions to the flock.  Meriwether is my proven broody.  She's a sweet, patient hen, and a good and caring mother.  Daisy is unproven in this field.  She is persistent though, I'll give her credit for that.

 

Yes, I DO have an incubator.  In fact, the last hatching ended on Monday. Tuesday we caught Daisy sitting all day in a nest box, flattened out, growling and hissing like a vampire being shown the dawn.  I much prefer my own chicks be hatched and raised by a broody.  She hatches, knows when there's a bad egg, raises the chicks, shows them how to hunt, and integrates them into the flock. DEAL!

 

A quick text to a fellow poultry breeder down the road and I was headed home with 4 maran eggs, 4 cream leg bar eggs, and 2 quarts of ice cream. (I had to stop at the pizza place, it's right there! I'm pretty sure it's the law.).

 

Sure, I could have thrown my own fertile eggs under Daisy, but this go around, I'm adding a little genetic diversity to the flock.  I need another Maran rooster.  Zap is tired keeping up with all the henfolk, racing from one end of the acreage to another when the flock splits up.  Using one of his offspring as another rooster could end up being a genetic crap shoot down the road.  So new blood it is.

 

I also added an Olive egg, which should yield an even DARKER laying olive egg hen, and a Meriwether egg, which will give me a generation 1 olive egg bird, hopefully with its mom's sweet nature.

 

I set the eggs in a carton, in a bag over night.  This will allow any air cells that jiggled loose in the trip to settle and the bag will hold the humidity in.  (We're in fire season and the RH is hovering at 20%)

 

First thing in the morning when I let the flock out, I was please to see that Daisy was still ensconced in her box, pretending to be invisible, but ready to rip my hand off should I see through her disguise.  She was sitting in the bottom center box, which is a heavily used box.  I placed all the marked eggs into the upper right box, and pulled her from her toasty place. 

Usually this is where my broody hens hop back in to the egg filled nest.  Daisy took this as her morning alarm clock, stretched, and BOLTED out the door!  This is usually what she does when she is just PLAYING at broody. She will then play all day and sleep in the next box at night, like it's a Holiday Inn Spa.

 

I immediately became worried that this was another of her fake outs.  While I pondered the fate of the newly placed eggs: cake, cookies, or omelet, I heard a spine chilling growl and saw Zap try to approach Daisy.  She inflated to over twice her size, put her wings out and let out another growl.  Zap backed off and chased Lucy around the coop instead.

 

Daisy blessed the yard with one of those famous broody poops, started eating like a madwoman and then raced back into the run.  She then ate a ridiculous amount of feed and then filled up at the water trough.  Regaining her composure, she waddled up the ramp and stood in the doorway where she preened, and preened, and preened until EVERY feather was just right.

 

I picked her up and showed her the box full of eggs and she settled right in to her lumpy mattress. 

About an hour later, I went out to kick the web camera again, and found Daisy back in her bottom center box.  Well, if that's where she wants to be, then that's the spot.  I handed her each egg one by one, while she tucked them under her in their proper place.  And that's where she sits.

 

Later, when she is more attached to her job, we'll move her to the broody house. We decided to reassign the little City Bitty Coop as such.  It gives the broody hens a quiet place to spend the day without being bothered, or sat upon, by other hens.  After the chicks are a couple of days old, she'll come out with them and start playing with the rest of the flock.  Eventually, she'll return with them to the main coop, like they were always there.

 

 

In 21 more days, we should have a little parade of fluff butts.