April 10, 2011

I know that I haven’t written anything for a few weeks now….although there is a lot going on, there is really not enough of one thing to make a “topic”. This spring is just bits and pieces. But I will try to weave them all together here.

Last Wednesday and Thursday kicked off the first volunteer day for the CSA. Mark came by on Wed to help me re erect my fencing. I made the field larger this spring so I had to start all over with fencing it off. Stacey also dropped by Wed , and helped weed the lettuces. She’ll be helping as she can, and will also be interning at another CSA in the next county over.

On Thursday Paulie came down from NYC and Esther came over and we spent a lot of time catching up on things while we weeded the garlic beds. Later we mulched the beds over with salt hay. Karen couldn’t make it – she was away in Italy, probably drinking wine at a Tuscany b&b at the time….

I am off to a good start though. In the house and under a grow light I have a good crop of tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant started. In the hoop house I’ve started leeks, cabbage, chard, bok choi, scallions, cilantro, and thyme. I am also trying to root fig cuttings in hopes of a tree or two down the road. In the field I have onions and garlic, and recently seeded kale and beets. I have a bed of lettuce and another of arugula. The strawberries are just beginning to push new green leaves, and new raspberry canes are patiently inching up from the ground.

The first purple martin showed yesterday – a sure sign of spring and summer to come. The bluebirds have begun nesting in the boxes, stealing straw and any shedded horse hair they can scavenge from the stable. They will also swoop into the chicken coop for fallen feathers. At the end of each year I always pull the old nests from the boxes and wonder at all the stuff they find to make nests.

We also have some deer every day in the yard – three does and one buck. The buck always comes out by himself. He is just beginning to grow new antlers. Right now he has two emerging bumps on his head. The does don’t mind me too much…when I go out to the stable they alert, but if I “click”’ at them, they relax and keep on eating the backyard grass. The buck though, immediately jumps back into the woods.

I put Snoops on a diet so to loose her extra winter fat. She had a little too much winter fat goin’ on and was looking like a bloated 747. She’s lost some - I have been cutting her grain down and increasing her time on grass now that we have grass again. I told her that she needs to get her “bikini body” back for summer…

And the rooster and I have come to an agreement that if he goes after me I go after him….good thing we don’t have neighbors to watch me chasing a rooster around the field in retaliation – they’d have me committed to the looney bin. He’s only tried to spur me three times, and each time I block him with my foot, then chase him! I don’t try to catch him, but just let him know that he is my prey. Of course, he has never gone after Kath, of which I am constantly reminded. It must be me. But I am sure that one of these days he’ll try to see what she’s made of too. It’s just a matter of time before I look out the window and see her chasing the rooster about the field!

Bees are good. I lost the hive that was struggling going into winter. I had expected to – it had weakened out for some reason and although I tried to build it up, there just were not enough bees to make enough honey to feed itself through the winter. It died out in February. My other hive made it – its now three years old. And my son’s hive made it too. I am hearing lately that the average local hive losses this winter was anywhere from 30 -50%. Its not a good number. Overall, bees are in trouble.

Kath and I have been riding the hippos every week. Zippy is fully recovered from his foot problems, and we think that the herbal pain relief medicine we gave him has made him feel better – he is a lot less “touchy” and much calmer and even affectionate. Pat’s teeth are good as new. He has no more problems chewing, and Zip will tell you that he can bite pretty well. Zip has Patrick bite marks all over his butt from the two playing. And Lou is Lou, clopping along on his big feet and munching on grass. A while ago, Rose, who originally boardered Zip here, said that Lou’s mouth was “one big suction cup”. She described him well! He’s always suckin up something!

And that’s about all I’ve got to tell about for now. Those are all the bits and pieces of what’s been going on.

March 22, 2011

And then came the breaking news…anymore it seems that all news is breaking news…we are sending tomahawks into the guts of Libya. And there is a raging golden fist with a crushed toy USA airplane as a response. War. Why is that breaking news anymore? Seems it’s all we do anymore. We send missiles and kids wherever there is oil…

I spent most of yesterday in the garden, or what I call my field. Over the years my planting space has increased from a few hundred square feet for feeding two, to an acre feeding 20 or more people now. I’ve gone from growing a row of beans and a few tomatoes to…well, to a lot more – now I am growing plants that I had not heard of, and had never thought of as food that I’d like.…but its all good, all very good.

Mostly I added gypsum, or calcium, to the soil, and then began spreading the compost I had made last year. From last weeks rain, the soil is still a bit soft for the tractor, so it makes it slow going to bring in the compost. My ground is low – it makes it a bit too soft in the shoulder seasons, but perfect in the summer for growing. The tractor gets bogged down here and there. I got about half way done with the compost. The plan is to till it in as soon as I am done getting it spread. That will all happen with the weather.

Nine days ago there was an earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Rescuers are pulling survivors alive from the rubble. Nothing but miracles.

Our buff rock chicken is getting broody again. Broody means that she wants to stay on the nest and hatch the eggs. Every year she does this. She’s the only chicken we ever had that gets broody. Now that we have a rooster I think maybe she will be able to hatch some chicks. I am thinking of putting eggs from other chickens under her too, so that the chances of her sitting on fertilized eggs will be good.  It’d be pretty cool to have our own little ones, rather than buying them.

I am reading a book about the 1886 Chicago Haymarket Riot/ Massacre/ Affair. When police began to break up a peaceful outdoor, public union meeting, someone (still unknown) threw a bomb into the crowd. The police began shooting and many, many gatherers were shot and wounded. Eight police died, pretty much from their own friendly fire. In the aftermath, six unionist/ socialist/ anarchists went to trial for murder – eventually four were hung, one committed suicide before he was to be hung, and the others sentence was commuted to life by the governor. It was never proven who threw the bomb – a union member, a policeman, a Pinkerton?  Yet only because these men were organizers, they were tried by default. Then hung. They were asking for an eight hour work day….

Ten years earlier, in 1876, an eight hour workday had been voted into law in Illinois. They were only asking for what was already the law.

 “And I've been on the pinball,l and I no longer know it all…Got a call from a good friend, come on down for the weekend, didn't know if I could spare the time”

                                                                                                            - Brian Protheroe

I found a pair of scissors today under a mat of dead grass in the garden. I guess either I or someone else had laid them down and never picked them back up. As I lifted them out of the grass I could hear all the voices of last summer and taste the air…

March 6, 2011

This week I became angry at God.

I’ve never been that before. It was a new emotion for me. I wasn’t too comfortable with my anger, but it was honest.

I was seated in the back of St. Joes, the same church where I was married. I was there for a funeral mass. And as I sat through the ceremonies and prayers and communion, my sadness took change

A young guy, mid thirties, had died of a heart attack – a guy who ran, biked, surfed, coached sports – no couch potato, but a healthy guy. A healthy guy that shouldn’t have died. He had just come back from a bike ride with his kids…

He was survived by his wife, who works where I do, and his two young children. It just didn’t seem like something God would do. Take a young man from his family like that. The wife had spent the last few years beating breast cancer. And now this. And looking at the two kids – in shock, lost, devastated. I grew mad at God. I lowered my head and told God so

And that’s how I explained my feelings to people that day when we talked about the service or the family. Or how the wife was doing…it had made me mad at God

But was it ok to be mad at God? One of my friends said it was ok….all relationships have anger at times, differences, sometimes its good, just as long as it doesn’t go so far that it cant be turned back. Opposing pressure holds thing in place

Other things were going on this week too…a friend was in the hospital, another friend groping in the dark, and a couple I care about going through a very trying experience of loss- I was worried for all of them. There were other things going on too. All of it seemed so unfair and so unreasonable

But the only thing I know, knew to do, was to pray, and pray some more, and pray harder to a God with whom I disagreed. I prayed to God for all of them more each day, and more each night. I never prayed so much before this. And I haven’t stopped. I am still praying and praying. For the family, my friends, the couple….

….it’s as if the anger became a hand pulling me closer

and closer still

I just now realized it

February 26, 2011

For a while now I have been shedding the plastic bag habit, replacing it with a strongly growing preference for reusable bags. It just doesn’t make much sense to use a thin plastic bag to carry something once and then let it sit in a landfill for eternity, tying up forever the natural resources used to make and distribute them. Besides that, they litter roads, landscapes, and forests. Many times these plastic bags hurt and/or kill animals and sea life that get tangled in them. None of this is good.

Although I have to admit that I am not perfect, I am really trying to make an honest, personal effort not to use them.

In keeping with my goal, this year I ordered reusable bags for the CSA. The last two years we used plastic bags, or better said, we re-used plastic bags. Members would give me plastic bags that they had and I would use them and re-use them a number of times to distribute shares. At least these bags where worn out before most hit the landfill, but I realize that it is still wasteful. But other reasons appeared too…

What really changed me was a day not long ago when I was cleaning the stalls and the chickens began cackling in fear, running in confused directions. I hurriedly ran out of the stable expecting to see a hawk or fox with a chicken, but what I saw completely took me by surprise. Somehow one of the chickens got its foot tangled in a plastic bag that had blown off the street. The chicken was panicked, which in turn panicked the whole flock. We caught the chicken, and took the bag from its foot…the thing was exhausted from fear…

Looking around the farm, I see more that bothers me. Along the perimeters, plastic bags are tangled in the branches of the privet and scrub windbreaks …it’s just plastic litter everywhere. Paper litter is bad enough, but at least it decomposes – plastic stays.

With all that said, I’ll let a few pictures conclude this post:

Enough said!

February 19, 2011

Early last week Dr. Beth (Hirsch) came out and took a look at Patrick. She gave him a shot of sleepy juice and ratcheted open his great maw with a speculum, grabbed his tongue with her left hand and pulled it to the side, and then with her head lamp on, she followed its shaft of light with her other hand to the empty slots where his teeth had been. She worked loose the plaster and gauze packing that had served to protect the sockets, and pulled them out. She felt these areas to gauge the healing and searched for signs of infection…

Dr. Beth found everything to be normal – healed! Patrick is ready to go again, and according to all four vets who have worked with him, without the pain of these shifting teeth and the chronic low grade gum infection, he has to be feeling a lot better. We think he is – his eyes are brighter and he holds his head higher now.

One of the more interesting things that I learned about horse behavior from all this is a horses ability to hide pain. Dr. Orsini told us that if a horse, or any other animal for that matter, shows pain or injury, it advertises itself as an easy prey. So an animal will instinctively hide its injuries as a survival tactic…makes sense, as even we as humans do the same in our social situations….

It’s been a long year with horses – starting off with Louie’s cornea scrape last spring, then Zipp’s founder late last summer, and finally Patrick’s teeth. They say bad things come in threes…I am looking forward to it all being over!

February 12, 2011

Its 8 and I’m listening to Alexi Murdoch …“All My Days”, and some other of his work. The guy is pretty good. Fingered guitar backing lyrics that are down to earth and describe a life being lived. It’s music that he never intended writing to make him millions of dollars. It’s pure. It’s the stuff that makes me think…his music brings pushed back emotions up to the surface to be explored once again…

I wish I could write like that. I wish I could write poetry like Rilke, or books like Dos Passos or Steinbeck…maybe some day something half decent will spill out of me. Not necessarily a book, but just something. I’d be happy with just a few lines…

I’ve been thinking…
What would take you to the streets? My friend Chris asked me this question in the context of the events in Egypt. What would move you to risk all you have, may it be even so very little, to throw yourself at an uncertain change? I have taken part in simple demonstrations before – the last was called “Eyes Wide Open” where I helped to place shoes on the lawn at Independence Mall in Philadelphia. Each pair of shoes represented a civilian life ended during the Iraq invasion. In the news these deaths were dehumanized by calling these beings “collateral damage”. There were thousands of pairs of shoes. We also placed a pair of combat boots for every US soldier killed. Back then, only 361 had died. The number is now 4436 dead (and 32973 persons wounded). Who knows how many Iraqi civilians are dead by now…how many children? Collateral damage isn’t counted.

Yet, this is not really what Chris meant. He didn’t mean a passive means of expression. He meant “What would make you become disobedient?” For myself, I really don’t know. Guess I am lucky that so far I haven’t had to make that decision – but there are so many others who have had to. It takes a lot of guts to risk your life, and to do it without any certainty.

I can’t Google any news these days without having a story about Lady Gaga, Lindsey Lohan, or about some kid named Justin Beiber pop up. Am I only one of a few who doesn’t care about pop culture? It rather bores me with its seen it all before predictability powered on with sideshow like marketing campaigns. I was having a conversation with another friend and we decided we felt the same way, but neither of us was sure if it is because we are older and grumpy or because we are aged enough to recognize that what is cycling back “new” is just the “old” repackaged…shock doesn’t shock us any longer, or at least not how it did before. And in the end, a lot of it is just wind – never here to stay. They will have left nothing that mattered much.

Just some advice for everyone – people who do not have good hand-eye coordination should not use hammers….I’m still bleeding from where I struck myself on the wing of skin between my thumb and forefinger this morning….that was dumb.

Guess I am ready for spring and some warmer sun. I’m sitting inside thinking of too many things and thinking too much of those things…and I am sure its beginning to show…but I am not really thinking of dumb things or things that you would send me to therapy for. Yet.

One last thing. Did you know that Oreo cookies are vegan?

Ingredients: SUGAR, ENRICHED FLOUR (WHEAT FLOUR, NIACIN, REDUCED IRON, THIAMINE MONONITRATE [VITAMIN B1], RIBOFLAVIN [VITAMIN B2], FOLIC ACID), HIGH OLEIC CANOLA OIL AND/OR PALM OIL AND/OR CANOLA OIL, COCOA (PROCESSED WITH ALKALI), HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, BAKING SODA, CORNSTARCH, SALT, SOY LECITHIN (EMULSIFIER), VANILLIN-AN ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR, CHOCOLATE.

I didn’t say they were healthy….

Now I‘m ready for therapy.

February 1, 2011

Yesterday was a long day, but a good day, that ended well. It was not just the end of one day, but it was the end of three months of worrying, debating, and wondering about what to do for Patrick who had a few different diagnoses and treatment ideas regarding two broken molars that were causing mouth infections and problems chewing his hay, grass and grain. The poor horse had no idea,,,

A while ago, maybe 9 months ago, Patrick had some trouble chewing his hay. This is usually nothing to be alarmed about – it usually means that a horse’s teeth need “floating”. A horses back teeth, or molars, are for grinding food, and to do this both the upper and lower sets need to be flat to meet together. Overtime, the molars wear unevenly and no longer match up, so the food doesn’t get ground up enough for it to be swallowed. Floating is done to correct this- a long handled rasp /file is used to file the teeth flat again. We have the horses floated on a regular basis, so this was a bit odd that Patrick was having trouble chewing, but not necessarily uncommon or alarming.

Our vet came out and when she floated his teeth that really weren’t bad at all, she found two gaps in his back jaw where molars should be. These gaps were packed with hay, and packed high enough that his teeth could no longer touch – it caused a space between his lowers and uppers. The vet removed all this packed up hay. She had no idea why these gaps were there – had teeth fallen out, were they broken, and why – whatever it was it isn’t normal. Our vet wasn’t real comfortable with those gaps, but together we decided that we’d see how it went from there before getting too excited. Sorta a wait and see.

Things went really well – Patrick contentedly chewed away every day…until about three months ago when just like that! he began spitting out wads of unchewed hay again. This time it wasn’t a wad now and then, but he spit out almost every mouthful. This time the vet brought the x-ray machine to the stable to get a better look to see what was happening. She suspected that those questionable molars were the problem and she was going right after them.

After about a three hour examination, a whole bunch of x-rays, and all the other stuff a vet does, she diagnosed that two of his molars, directly opposite on his uppers, had broken, reason unknown, causing infection and hay to pack so high he could not chew. A really powerful anti-biotic was prescribed for his infection, but the jury was out on what needed to be done with the teeth. Did he have a disease that caused this, should they simply be pulled, or would they need to be surgically removed, and what to do if the infection reached his sinus cavity where it was an awful procedure of drilling a hole through his cheek to drip in antibiotics to suppress it. There was also a concern of cancer. Our vet decided she’d share her concerns and preliminary diagnosis with colleagues before making any recommendations.

After over a week’s time, she shared her research with us – that Patrick most likely did not have cancer, but would need those teeth to come out to fix his chewing and stop infections. The question was if those teeth could be pulled in our barn, or if surgery would be required. The vet recommended we take Patrick to New Bolton to get better x-rays and to have an equine dental expert look at him…maybe it’d mean a bit of sedation to pull those teeth, or that Patrick would need to be knocked out, put on a table, and have oral surgery. And oh, the difference would be somewhere between $800 and $5-6000, not including getting him there or the follow up examinations…

To make a long story short, over the next few months we had re examinations with the vet and a local equine dentist of sorts, and discussions with the people at New Bolton and our horse owner friends to explore surgery alternatives and any forthcoming sliver of hope that things could be left alone. After weighing it all out, we decided we’d take Patrick to New Bolton and hope for the best in diagnosis and treatment. We just wanted to do right by Patrick, and we’d just have to grit our teeth and charge into “no mans land”.

And it wasn’t just that easy – first we would need a trailer and to teach Patrick to load. So we borrowed a trailer and spent two weeks practicing with Patrick, tempting him in with apples and carrots until he more or less would sometimes go in! We also had to rewire the truck so we could hook up the trailer lights…taking a horse somewhere is not like having your dog jump in the backseat of the car, or stuffing “Fluffy” in a cat carrier! We don’t take our horses anywhere so it was a whole new experience for all of us. We also got some “horsie xanex” from the vet to calm Patrick for the ride…unfortunately the vet had none for Kath or I.

When we arrived at New Bolton, Patrick was admitted and Kath and I went to the waiting room to wait out the diagnosis. New Bolton is run by the Penn University School of Veterinary, and is the same place that treated the racehorse Barbaro after he broke his leg. It’s a huge place that can treat large and small size animals of every kind. And they do it well. I was just amazed at the place- and I only saw the large animal hospital, which is hardly the whole of it.

After two hours, Drs. Foster and Orsini, along with another vet and three vet students came out to tell us their diagnosis and treatment alternatives…the teeth are broken, weakened due to poor nutrition when Patrick was a colt and his teeth were forming. They had to come out or we could risk losing Patrick to a sinus infection. The good news is that the teeth were essentially dead, and could be pulled without the surgery…they could do thepulling under drip sedation later in the day if we wanted. We decided to go for it…

At 4:30 in the afternoon, the Drs came out after they had finished the procedure…each had blood splattered on their scrubs, and Dr. Foster had some dotted on his face…but it all went well. Patrick was fine, still in happy land, and could go home. Each of the three vets took turns in the extraction, as horse teeth aren’t easy to pull. They were tired…it’s a lot of physical work. But they were happy. I realized that they had helped our mutt-like backyard horse with just as much care and concern as they had treated Barbaro. I could tell why these people are great – these people just care.

Now all we had to do was to get Patrick home, driving through the rush hour traffic.

Kath and I are glad this is all over – Patrick is fine and we don’t have to worry every day anymore. We know we have a great vet, and that there are some unbelievable people at New Bolton that can fix almost anything…

It was easy to sleep last night. Its one thing less to worry about.