October 31, 2011

I swept the barn this morning – was before 8 when I went out to feed the animals. Ducks, Snoopie, the rooster, the chickens, and the horses. The bees have sugar left from last Friday. When it got cold Saturday they stopped feeding.

The animals don’t have the weather channel – they have to contend by instinct and not by the forecast. Snoops has a long, shaggy coat that puffs out to trap body heat in this cold. So do the horses. Their coats begin to grow out in early August and then continue to get thicker and longer until the spring equinox. The rooster was funny today– his feathers were frosted like the grass, but he didn’t seem to mind at all as he was crowing and strutting around as if it were any other day.

But I was cold. My fingers were growing numb by the minute as I swept the stable floor. And then that cold burn feeling began to creep into my knuckles. I kept moving and did my best to ignore it. I should have worn some gloves. Every few minutes I stopped and went over to Lou and stroked his shoulder, allowing my hands to steal some of the warmth from his coat. He didn’t seem to mind, but he was curious if there was going to be a ginger snap treat appearing anytime soon. That’s pretty much all that Lou seems to think about – treats. He tried to angle his head a bit sideways to adjust his sight with his good eye to see if there was anything in my hand ..“no Louie, I’m just pettin’ you”. Then he lowered his head into the tangled mound of hay at his feet. He couldn’t care less about my numbed hands, or that he was keeping me warm. Good ol Lou. As long as there is hay at his feet, he doesn't have a care in the world.

As I swept I relived and thought more about Saturday afternoon. With the northeast storm, cold air blew in and pushed aside the fall temperatures. We lost about 20 degrees in a few winds late in the day. We found Zip’s circling in his stall, kicking, biting at his stomach, heaving for breathes. Looked like colic, which is when the horse’s digestive system gets blocked and if not treated, can be fatal. It’s a horse owner’s nightmare. Trust me. It can be caused by a lot of things, and one of those things is a sudden change of weather. It’s hard to believe that an animal so big, fast and strong can be so sensitive.

Kath came in to make an emergency call to the vet, and I headed out to the stable. By then Zip was laying down…there was no rhythm to his breathing. His eyes were glassed over, and trending up and back towards his eyelids. He let me stroke him, and every so often lifted his head up to lick my fingers, just to fall back onto the floor, struggling to get enough breathe. I thought it was over. He was laying with his mouth slightly open, eyes rolled up searching for help. It was hard to bear. Hard to be so helpless. I just stroked him.

It seemed like hours, but was only minutes. Without describing it, the blockage loosened. Slowly. The vet called back. Dr. Beth thought that from our description and what was happening that it was gas colic and would be over in a half hour, but if not, she’d be coming by. Gas colic usually takes care of itself.  She was treating a colic’ed horse south of us, and had another to see after that. Zip’s was third in line, but was now on his feet. She’d call later to see if he was getting better.

Once Zip got up we haltered him and put him on a lead. Kath and I took turns walking him back and forth in the back field…walking helps to keep things inside him moving. In an hour he was back to being Zip, with eyes brightened, breathing regular, alert, and strong on his lead. Dr. Beth was happy to hear it, and gave us a minimalist feeding schedule for the next few days to get his digestive system back on track.

As I swept I kept looking over to Zip, who was sifting through his meager ration of hay. As cold as I was I just wanted to stay around and stay near him and the others. You just never know.

October 21, 2011

Stuttered starts are what I call the posts I‘ve started, but for some reason or other, veered off the thought path and never finished the journey, so to speak….here’s a sampling:

It seems that I have been so busy lately that I don’t know what to do first, and so I end up doing everything last…

*****

I have always believed that some forms of mental illness, such as melancholy, can at times be a good thing. Lately, I have been witnessing a building current in the mi culture that understands and appreciates some forms of mi as “mental sk’illness”. Examples of this emerging thought is the TED talk given by Joshua Walters about the very fine line between being crazy and being creative, and Nassir Ghaemi’s book, “A First Rate Madness”,  that argues how mental illness was a trait and asset of great leaders such as Lincoln, King, and Churchill. Not all mi’s are the seeds of greatness. Some are seriously deliberating. However, due to the social stigmas surrounding mi’s, any silver lining will be tarnished.

*****

“I don’t care if it rains or freezes….

 I think there is little difference between tv infomercial hosts and tv evangelicals.  Each is selling a prescription to make our lives happy, easier and more fulfilled. They tell us that there are things we need that we do not yet have. Each brings forth a parade of witnesses to verify the claims they make. There is always a before and after piece. Each asks us for money - vacuums and hair loss salves cost pretty much the same as salvation. And there is always a disclaimer somewhere at the bottom of the screen explaining that results may vary, some are not typical.

 … long as I got my  plastic Jesus”

*****

I have never watched Oprah, or Dr. Phil for that matter. I did watch Glenn Beck once. But only once.  I turned off the TV for days after that.

*****

Sometimes I really scare myself…I was thinking of what to do last Saturday night and the first thing that popped into my head  was to clean out the stalls a bit early  so I could go wander around Tractor Supply to see what’s new and then afterwards go to Applebee’s for dinner... Uh oh!

*****

Peggy asked why most people are wholly and instinctively compassionate towards animals in preference to people…

Maybe it’s because what Louie has taught me. Louie doesn’t care how I dress, how much money I have, who my friends are, what my race is, if I am Quaker or Muslim, what kind of car I drive, about the books I read, if I have a job or not, if I am gay, who my favorite football team is, what my politics are…he just doesn’t care.

What he does care about – and it is the only thing – is if he can trust me. Trust is the core of our relationship and it goes both ways. For example, I trust him to take care of me when we ride, and he trusts me not to lead him into any trouble. The only thing in our relationship that is conditional is that trust – nothing else matters.

That to me is the difference. With people, there are too many conditions. And conditions block trust. I think that those few and rare persons who can get around this are the ones who are truly compassionate toward others. And the rest of us…?

The rest of us need to get on the back of a horse more often.

October 8, 2011

Saturday afternoon I looked across the yard and saw a cluster of bees on one of my hives. In the summer this is usual – bees bearding on the outside of the hive because they are not needed inside to cool the hive, or there’s just too many bees to fit inside when all the forager bees return by evening. But in the fall this doesn’t happen. So I was curious. I thought that maybe the hive was being robbed by another hive for its honey reserves, and these were guard bees or some others forced out. So I walked over to see just what was going on.

The clusters were drones- male bees. In the fall, the drones are pushed out of the hive because they are no longer needed for survival. Drones don’t forage, don’t build comb, don’t feed larvae, don’t do much of anything except for one thing. Each day the drones fly out to wherever drones instinctively go, waiting to mate with a virgin queen. That is, of course, if a virgin queen comes by. If and when a drone mates, it dies. In the fall, when the mating season ends, the worker bees push the drones out of the hive – there is no reason to feed them if they have no purpose and no reason to waste honey on them that will be needed by the workers and the queen during the winter. Its the bee economics of survival.

I never saw drones pushed out and clustered before, though it probably is a normal late season occurrence. In the past I have witnessed just a few drones being wrestled out by worker bees and then not allowed back into the hive by the guard bees. But on this hive there were two full clusters of drones…pushed out to starve and die. The worker bees were massed, guarding the entrance.

Drones to the left and top , guard bees to the right.

Closer view of drones with two worker bees to the right.

September 29, 2011

Pictures, in no particular order...just what I took today

 

 

September 17, 2001

It took me four years and a lost count of bee stings, but I finally bottled my first quart of  honey! Thought that I would share it with you in pictures!

I started this hive in 2009 with a nuc of 3000 bees. I estimate that it has close to 30,000 or more now. These gals made the honey!

Close up of the comb with capped honey on top and uncapped on the bottom.

The stainless steel extractor...it spins the frames, forcing the honey from the combs. The honey collects in the bottom of the tank, flows out the spout, into the pan.

View of frames loaded into the extractor.

Honey coming out of the spout after spinning, going through a filter and into the pan.

 Filtering the honey through cheese cloth and into the jar.

I set out the extracted combs and the bees cleaned up all that was left!

September 10, 2011

It all ended with a cold slice of thin, salty pizza on Sunday night…

Giuseppe’s was the only place we found open Sunday after Irene had passed. Sal only had pizza - no pasta, soup, salad, etc, or anything else from his hundred item menu.  I think the reason was that he was the only person there, and making pizza was enough work for one person. Anyone else who worked there probably had not yet returned from where ever they may have evacuated to, or they were just plain exhausted from the whole weekend and figured they’d just stay home. I wouldn’t be one to blame them. Pizza was fine with me.

I had left a small suburb of Philadelphia earlier in the day, detouring around swelling creeks and flooded roads on my way home. There had been reports of nine, ten, and even thirteen inches of rain in south western New Jersey, and the water was collecting in low areas and filling streams and ponds and any other place where it could run down hill to. Parking lots, fields, yards, orchards….anywhere it could go.

I had never been through a hurricane before, and had never been told to evacuate. Evacuation wasn’t politely suggested – it was Mandatory. The first call was from the Cape May County Emergency Management Office on Thursday evening telling us we needed to evacuate within 48 hours. Then the Township called with the same message. On Friday the Township called again.  Finally, the Electric Company called to say that we would most likely not have electrical power during the storm, or the week thereafter. I had never been told that I must leave my home before. It’s an uneasy feeling. We don’t have a house full of “things”, and don’t care too much about “things”, so losing stuff wasn’t a thought. Uneasiness was about leaving the animals.

We don’t have a trailer. And one cannot just pack a goat, two ducks, three cats, twenty-four chickens, six bee hives, and three horses along with water, feed, hay, litter, and supplies into the back seat of a Subaru. And even if it could be done, who would want or be able to take us all in. Can you imagine checking us in at the Best Western? Do you think that the Super Eight would leave the light on? Or just imagine bringing them all to my mother –in –law’s….. “bring those chickens right in, put the goat in the guest room, the ducks in the bath, and the horses can stay in my room. Let the cats roam the house and put the bees in the dining room for now. I have guest towels out if any of them need a shower! Dinner will be ready at six!” There’s no legal or illegal drug that could ever make that happen…

It was raining Thursday since the afternoon. A front was passing through. In the rain Allen, Kath and I began preparations. We started putting away everything outside that could be hurled by a wind, packing everything in the garage. Chairs, pool nets, the hammock, our farm signs, garbage cans, wind chimes, garbage cans, and all the kinds of things that don’t look like a lot or that go un noticed scattered around the yard, but then become a huge mountain when gathered up in one place that caused us to gasp. When we finished with the yard, Kath and I headed to the stable.

That’s where the work really was. If we had to leave the animals, then we needed to make a safe fortress for them.

In the rain, I cut up plywood to cover all the windows. It wasn’t a smart thing to run a skill saw out in the rain, but choice is not always there. We covered every window. Kath held a flashlight while I hammered in the cloudy wet darkness. We took off all the outside stall doors so that they wouldn’t swing in the wind and hurt any of the horses, and also so they wouldn’t swing shut and trap them inside. We wanted to make sure the horses could be free to go in and out as their instinct led them. We set out extra 25 gallon buckets so that, even with rain, there would be plenty of fresh water. I took a shovel and out in the paddocks I cleared out the drainage ways.

Then we turned to the tack room – this is where we decided to put Snoops. Since a goat will at least try to eat anything once, everything had to be taken out and moved to the house. Saddles, bridles, blankets, flysheets, supplies, buckets, bug spray, garden stuff, all the feed, and so on and so on. We filled the bed of the truck and put it all in the family room. And the mountain made us gasp…

The rain stopped about 9:00 so Allen and I headed to the hay farm where we buy our hay. Mr. Bixby would wait for us and help us load. We figured we’d better stock up a bit in case we couldn’t get back there after the storm for whatever might happen. As we went south to the hay farm, there was an unbroken stream of traffic heading north. People were evacuating. This really was real….it was sinking in.

I spent Friday morning at work helping with the preparations there. When evacuation orders for Somers Point were announced, we hurried before we’d be forced to close.

I returned to the farm Friday afternoon – backed up in the traffic behind thousands of persons leaving their homes. A twenty minute drive took over an hour. Along the way, convenience stores, grocery stores, gas stations, restaurants, drug stores, hardware stores, etc, were closed. Some of these businesses I had never seen closed – these convenience stores, restaurants, and gas stations stay open even on Christmas Day. It was sunny and about 78 degrees – a perfect day. And more than 36 hours before the storm was forecast to hit. That feeling of uneasiness swelled.

There was not much else to do to prep Friday. I let the horses out in the pasture and took Snoop with me out to check the garden. I didn’t let the chickens free range though, ‘cause I would need to put them in the coop later.

I didn’t really have a plan for the bees. Obviously they can’t be moved inside. The best I could think of was to stack bricks and concrete blocks on their covers so they didn’t blow open. I thought of strapping the supers together but figured that if the wind did push them over, they’d still separate. I’d just have to hope for the best.

The ducks…well ducks can handle the elements – we put food and water in their duck house and left the door open so they could use their instincts about going in or out.

That night we took Snoop out to the tack room. She settled right in. We figured that being able to hear the horses would be calming to her, and I believe she knew she was not alone. We closed the chickens in their roosting shed with plenty of food and water. We’d done all we could do.

Allen and I left that morning with the three cats, heading out for a suburb of Philadelphia to stay with Kath’s niece. Kath stayed back, gave each horse and Snoop a full bale of hay, and left for the hospital where she was required to work and stay until the hurricane was past. We were all hoping to be back within 36 hours.

And we were.

Mr. Bixby, who rode out the storm, stopped and checked the farm very early Sunday morning and called saying the horses were in the pasture and all was quiet. Kath was released from work about noon and found everyone ok. There was a bit of flooding in the   back part of our property, and the garden plants had been shredded by driving rains. A few branches were scattered around. But all the animals and bees were safe. And they all seemed calm and happy. The bees were active and flying in with pollen.

The worst of the storm occurred inland where flooding caused damage in some areas. It seemed that we had the expanding eye over us for such a while that our rain total was only four and a half inches, rather than ten to thirteen. The winds had gusted, but hadn’t  been sustained. 

It seemed a lot for practically nothing that could have been something… we were lucky.

Sal's pizza was fine with me.

August 15, 2011

Allen found and caught a young blacksnake in the hay barn on Saturday and brought the little guy over to the house to show Griffin, who was here volunteering with his parents. Like most Saturday afternoons, Griffin had a pretty good day here picking vegetables, checking on the chickens, finding bugs and wild flowers, swimming, petting the cats and horses, feeding Snoops, touching a snake, and helping Allen change the farm truck’s battery. I wish I had all that energy. I think I used to have some of that energy a while back before the years crept up behind me and hit me over the head! Even so, what’s cool is that this kid reopens and renews all the things that I find myself taking for granted. Griffin rekindles all the wonder that I had stopped wondering about. Even the wonder of snakes.