February 13, 2010

It’s been said that “you never quite know someone until you have lived with them”. That’s how I am beginning to feel about the chickens who I have given a temporary residence to in the stable midway until the weather breaks and I can rebuild their coop. I thought I knew my chickens, but….

These gals are driving me a bit up the wall, and I think that poor old Zips is ready for therapy or Xanax if not both! And Louie and Patrick are not too far behind us.

Before the storm and the chickens, the stable was a quiet, settling place where I could go to unwind. I could go there and lean up to any stall door and whisper to one of the horses and hear a breath in return. Or, as I often did, sit down next to a bale of hay and Snoop would rub up against me and give me one of those goat looks that said I was ok in her book. I knew I could always go out to the stable and find peace in this restless world.

But now the stable is the restless world, with nineteen clucking chickens – who never stop clucking! When they are free ranging, chickens are industrious and quiet, scratching and searching for bugs and worms and yummy slug sliders. But now these gals aren’t out free ranging and busy. Instead, they are inside and bored so they just talk and talk and talk. They never stop! Never!

Then they just can’t sit still. They just can’t go roost on a bale of hay. Noooooo! To roost, they gotta “fly” up onto the wheelbarrow, the blanket racks, door handles, water buckets, my shoulder, my head... One gal managed to balance her self on the towel bar on Zippy’s stall door. As she faced the midway, her tail feathers stuck through the stall bars and caught Zippy’s eye. Well, ya know that Zip has two swirls on his head (I will explain that in a later post) and he couldn’t resist plucking out a few of those feathers with his teeth. Needless to say, he seemingly felt a bit of "farm justice" for having been kept awake every night this week by the non stop clucking!

As much as I love the girls – if I didn’t, they’d have been Happy Meal nuggets long ago – I still can’t wait until I get their coop repaired and get them out of the stable. They aren’t the easiest girls to live with! The horses and I want our peace and quiet back, and anyway, Xanax is way too expensive and way too hard to get, especially in horse doses!

February 7, 2010

We spent most of today digging out – we shoveled off the deck and made a trail for Snoops so that she could come out of her cage and join us. Even with my loader, it took about three hours to get the lane cleared the whole way to the street. Kath cleaned off the cars, and that took over an hour.

After a break, we made our way out to the stable. We cleared the areas in front of the outside stall doors so that we could get the horses out and let them play. Then another hour to clear a path and make a clearing for a place to empty the muck from the stalls. The snow is too deep to make the 100 yard trip to the compost pile!

When we let out the horses, they just started playing! Louie broke into a classic Standardbred pace and raced around the paddock, kicking and playing, dipping his mouth in the snow, gulping it up. Round and round he went.


Zippy was next. I expected him to do the same as Louie, so I was totally surprised when he went prancing out for about ten feet, then bent down on his front knees, and rolled! And when Patrick took off out of his stall, he did the same! After that, Pat and Zip chased and nipped and sparred with each other – all horseplay!

Rose came by to get some pictures, and after a while of watching the horses, we turned to the chickens. I cut the net to get into the collapsed coop and pulled the shed door open. I grabbed chickens one at a time, handing them over to Rose and Kath who took them back to the stable, which will have to serve as their home until winter breaks and I can get the coop repaired. In the stable, they will have plenty of space and will not be hawk bait.


Tonight, the weather people are forecasting that another snow storm will be here by Wednesday, with maybe another significant accumulation. I guess we will just have to wait and see!

February 6, 2010

5:30am woke up to a wind gust that shook the house, so got out of bed. Cold air is pushing through the door jams, so I built a fire, waiting for light so that I could check on the animals.

7:00am went out – looks like 2’ snow outside the door. Waded out and fed Snoop, who seems not to be bothered by snowy weather. Looked across the field to see that the chicken coop collapsed – the weight of wet snow weighed down the netting to the point that it snapped the support beams and came down. Shed intact. Waded through 2-3’ drifts out to the stable to feed and water horses. Horses are calm and safe. I cleaned up their stalls best I could, and fed and watered them. Could get a better look at the chicken coop from the stable – is in very bad shape – netting torn, boards broken, etc. will wait a few hours until Kath gets up to wade out there to check and feed the chickens – worried that it could collapse even more and I don’t want that to happen without help if I need it. Wade back to the house and make a second check on Snoop – my foot prints from the walk out, almost 2’ deep, are filled back up with the blowing snow in less than the half hour it took to return from the stable. Tried to shake the snow off the netting that covers the duck pen, but so wet and thick it won’t fall through. I expect the net to rip, or cause the pen to collapse before all is over. A quick glance at the bee hives shows that they are snow covered, but no apparent damage.

8:00am snow and wind continues. The wind is getting steadier and stronger from the north east, stressing the trees even more. The snow does not shake off the branches, but sticks to them and accumulates, bending them down in contorted, white skeletal shapes. Somehow, small songbirds overcome the wind and perch at the feeder on the back deck.

8:30am there is calm so I take advantage to venture back out to check on the animals. I take a knife with me and use it to cut holes in the netting over the duck cage so that I can reach up through it to push off the snow, hoping to prevent more damage to the frame supports. I figure that it will be easier to re-sew the netting than rebuild the cage. While there, I open up Dukes box and feed him and give him water. Turning to go back out to the stables, I look in at Snoops, who seems content to be curled up in her “dog house”, sheltered from it all. It is an effort, but not overwhelming, to wade out to the stable, but I get there and the horses are all calm and happy as they can be closed in. I can tell they are a bit bored, but I am trading their boredom for their safety. I look out the stable window to the mess that was a chicken coop. Zip nudges me to the side to take a look too. That’s my next job to see if I can squeeze in through the broken boards and ripped netting to the shed. To get there, I find the snow even deeper in the paddock – up to and above my knees. I get there though, and squeeze through and get to the shed door. The girls are safe, have food and water, and a nest for egg laying. But they are clucking and nervous – instinct tells them things are not right. The coop is destroyed – the netting is ripped down, 4x4 supports leaned over , support spans snapped…I will have to begin from scratch and rebuild it. But that will be sometime in the future, after the snow melts. Meanwhile, I will either have to rig up some kind of pen to protect them from the hawks, or move them in with Duke. I will decide that tomorrow when I can really assess the damage and what I can salvage. On the way back, I make a new trail, as once again, my trail coming out has been refilled by the new snow.

11:30am Looking outside and checking the radar we are in a sliver of relief from the snow, but not the winds, which are growing stronger and steadier each hour. It looks as though there will be a heavy band of snow upon us in the next hour. Looking out the house windows, the east yard is littered with tree branches and the coop has caved in even more as the snow adds weight to what was standing. From the front window facing north, branches of the fir tree that begin over ten feet up are bent to the point that there tips are touching the ground. The wind continues to push the snow across the open areas, creating white swirling clouds that twist and turn before smashing into the tree line out back.

1:00pm went back out to check on the horses and Snoopie. I will check the duck and chickens later this afternoon on my next trip out. The storm is beginning to ramp back up – a cold steady wind slinging a fusillade of pelleted snow sideways from the north. Snoops is ok, but I need to clear away a drift at her cage door to get inside where she stays curled up and warm in her house. I gave her a few peanuts as a treat and headed back out to the stable. The snow is deeper, and a huge drift guards the back doors of the stable. I push through and check on the horses. Louie was napping and I woke him with my voice, while Zip and Patrick gave me a chorus of deep throaty whinnies as a hello. They were fine. Its warm in the stable – its amazing how much heat these guys can give off – its at least 35 degrees in the stable compared to the low 20’s outside. I give them each another flake of hay and retrace my steps back to the house…

4:00pm still snowing, but flakes this time, rather than the pellets. Snow just keeps getting deeper and each trip takes more effort to wade through it than before! Made what I hope to be the last time out to check on the animals. All are ok – even got four eggs from the chickens. When we were checking on the horses Patrick pushed his way out of the stall and through the stable door to what he at first thought was great freedom… until he stepped into the three foot drift outside. He just stopped, up to his fat belly in snow, and began pawing the snow to find the ground, looking back at me as if I had played some prank with his green grass. In seconds he turned back, having decided that the stable was not such a bad place to be after all. The song birds are crowded on the feeder getting what they can before dark. The storm is expected to last a few more hours and then taper off. I will deal with shoveling out tomorrow, but for now, I’m calling it a day.

January 27, 2010

It’s official!

Yesterday I got my first bee sting of the year- that’s right! On January 26! She got me good too, driving her stinger into the soft part of my left little finger, a bit below the knuckle! I was able to out maneuver all her friends by quickly walking away and brushing off the few that caught up to me.

The last few days around here have been sunny and unseasonably warm with temperatures in the low 50’s which is about 10 to 12 degrees higher that the historical norm. With the warm-up, some of the honey bees of each hive have gotten active – they are cleaning the hive of dead bees, wrestling weak bees out of the hive, and taking short flights. All in all, each hive has had about 20- 30 bees outside at a time. Compared to the thousands in the colony, this is not a lot, but it is a lot when the bees are supposed to be all balled up in the hive.

Beekeepers here worry about such activity because, they say, if the bees are active, they will use up their winter stores faster and then they may not have enough to last them until spring when the flowers begin to bloom.

I was able to save a frame of honey from the hive that was lost to mites (which I took apart and cleaned up two weeks ago), and I thought that on this warm afternoon, I’d very quickly check in on the “log” hive, and drop in this frame of honey.

I took off the top cover, and then gently tilted up the inner cover and moved it over to reveal the empty slot where the frame would go. I looked across the top of the frames and saw quite a few bees on the top bars about three frames down, so I lifted the inner cover a bit more for a better look. The bees were fat and looked pretty healthy. I lifted a little bit more to get enough room to slide in the new frame.

That’s when a few of the fat bees lifted off the top bars to get a better look at me! So I dropped in the new frame, and lowered the inner cover. But I was a millisecond too late, or they were a millisecond too quick. Either way, they got an extra frame of honey and I got a sting and driven off. I waited a few minutes for the bees to settle down before going back to put on the top cover, which I did without another fight.

I felt good about the log hive after this was all said and done. The bees looked healthy and acted healthy. It seemed that most were in the “ball” between frames, and there were plenty of stores left to get them through. And now they had an extra frame of honey for insurance. I am rooting for this colony – it’s the one that was saved from a tree that was cut down and soaked with wasp spray.

These gals are definitely survivors…

January 25, 2010

Kath and I just returned from the Maryland Horse Expo held in Timonium, MD. It is a four day event held at the MD State Fairgrounds and features some of the country’s best horse training experts who give demonstrations all day long in almost every horse discipline that one can imagine. There is also a “trade show” where one can find anything to buy – anything from a “ten horse” horse trailer to a sparkling trinket that juices up a halter.

I bought a rock for $5. And I bought it for Louie. Actually it is a rock, mined in Utah that is mostly salt but also contains about 35 other trace minerals that a body needs. It replaces the man made “salt lick”, that is far from natural. The rock is placed in the stall, fed free choice, which means that when the horse wants it and chooses to lick it, its there. I thought it was pretty cool to buy a rock for Lou to eat. Lou thinks its cool too – he gave it a few huge licks this afternoon…

Kath bought Patrick a new halter that has his name engraved on the nose band. And I finished up by buying Zippy an “itching brush” which I can scratch all his favorite spots with, like his back. It seems that everyone likes their presents.

We were able to meet a few trainers, and I even got asked to come out of the bleachers to help with a demonstration and get my fifteen minutes of horseshow fame. The trainer, John Lyons, pulled me and four other caballeros from the crowd to come into the round pen and try together to push his horse’s hip against the direction he was reining him. This was to demonstrate how the horse could obey the touch of the rein against our combined physical force. The rein won all three times! I wasn’t as impressed with the reining as I was that the horse didn’t try to kick us all in the head! Hear that Louie?! Patrick?! Zippy?!

But the thing I really learned from Mr. Lyons was not so much about horse training. He was talking about how one trainer may train a horse this way and another may train a horse that way, yet he was not going to judge who was right or wrong. To judge would be egotistical he said. Things aren’t right or wrong, but instead, they are simply different….

I wish that I could always look at things that way – as things being different rather than as right or wrong. I wonder what the world would be like if we all could look at things from that perspective. More forgiving? More tolerant? Peaceful? I think we’d all get along better.

It is interesting how we find the things we need by free choice. The examples and the words we need are always there if and when we choose to see or hear them…they are even there at a horse clinic, in a plain place called the “Cow Palace”.

Leaving Maryland I carried away things that I could use to make my horses better horses, and an idea that could make me a better me…

January 16, 2010

There’s just something about a few warm days in the middle of winter to renew spirits around the farm. It’s most evident in the horses, but all the animals seem to be charged with extra energy and lifted moods!

Yesterday got to 54 degrees and we let the horses out in the side pasture that we had over seeded late last summer, which now supports a pretty good cover of ryes and clovers. They were out there bucking and romping together before settling down to graze on the dormant grasses. Louie was maybe the most excited – he was “pacing” in a trot here and there, and sort of acting like a colt. I decided to get his lead and walk him around the yard and back field so he could graze and I could spend time with him, so I went back to the stable for his halter and lead.

When he saw me coming back towards the pasture with his lead in hand, he came running towards me from over a hundred yards out, head high, tail flagging, and did a four legged sideways sliding stop at the gate, finishing with brightened eyes and a whiny! It was as if he was saying “did you see what I just did!?!” His motions were beautiful and athletic. The sun and warm temperatures must have soothed the inflammation in his arthritic joints and released his pent up energy! He was all full of it and ready to go! And a lot of his energy transferred right into me…

Lou and I spent the rest of the late afternoon in the yard, moving from one patch of grass to another. We wound our way up through the bare branched apple trees that seemed to be reaching out to us with crooked fingers, and then over to the bee hive where the grass still had some green in it. We wandered back and forth along the fence line, and over near the house. Lou grazed while I shared my thoughts with him…and every once in a while he’d pick up his head and lean towards me quizzically as if he wanted to answer “yeah, I understand”, or “that’s pretty stupid!”, just as honestly as any other friend would answer.

Today I am re-living those moments from yesterday afternoon – it was just so great to see Lou so energized, and to have the chance to share so much time and so many glances with him…

January 10 2010

Some stories you just can’t make up…

Living on a farm, we get a lot of field mice that make their homes in the stable, hay barn, chicken coop and garage, living off the various animal feeds and stored seed. We never did mind it when the mice would only take a bit here and there, because we don’t mind sharing a bit, but when the mice began to take everything they could, leaving us nothing, we changed our minds.

Kath and I set off to the animal shelter and adopted two cats that the people there said were unadoptable cause they bit and clawed people, making them perfect specimens to roam the barn and put some meaningful balance into the ‘mice give and take’ problem.

We set the cats up in the tack room as their new home, and let them roam as they saw fit, which was mostly at night. They did their job, and did it very well through the summer and into the fall. By that time, we had a new balance of more cats than mice.

But then it began getting close to winter and Kath got to worrying that the cats would get too cold in the barn. So, she brought them in the house. One wouldn’t come in the house on her own so I was dispatched with a burlap bag to catch it with and bring it in! And so I did. I do what my wife tells me. It saves trips to the hospital.

At first, Kath was only going to bring them in for a few hours to warm up. The next day it was for only going to be for the night. That turned into every night. Then nights turned into days, and days turned into… well they are house cats now, and I have to catch them with a burlap bag to get them outside.

Fast forward a year and it is summer. (Actually it is last summer.) In the garage the pasture and buckwheat seed I store there have become an eternal Thanksgiving Day for the 43 living generations of field mice who are casually multiplying there.

So Kath gets a bright idea. She waits for a few mice to crawl over the lip of one of the seed bags, reaches in and catches two, then places them in a small glass aquarium. Then she brings them in the house. Why? “So the cats can watch them!” and then “Later I will let them go a few miles up the road”.

“Later” did not come soon enough, as one mouse escaped from the aquarium Alcatraz and made a dash for freedom and safety under the recliner. Of course, the cats didn’t miss the sprint, but being fat and out of shape, they collapsed winded at the side of the recliner, realizing that their only chance at closing on this opportunity was to wait and paw at the chair. And meow. All day long. And I mean all day long…

It was then that the realization hit me like Victor trap!

We’ve come full circle! Two years ago, we were bringing barn cats to the mice, and now we are bringing the barn mice to the cats…..

Like I said, you can’t make this stuff up.