I Spy...

...with my little eye:

three hens
one duck
two horses
one donkey

What a lovely morning view to enjoy out our kitchen window during breakfast yesterday! Of course, the fuzzy spot in the photo makes me think I need to wash all the exterior glass again, but maybe we can just pretend it's a "soft focus" feature ;-)

Spring

With all the spring rain comes the good and the bad. First, the good:

Beautiful Knockout roses! This is the Sunny variety, apparently the only Knockout with fragrance. And, oh, do they smell good! This is just their second season and they are blooming like little champs.

The herbs are also very happy. My perennial types came back with a bang, as evidenced by this sage. I was pinching it back, but the flowers are so pretty and I have plenty of leaves for culinary pursuits, so I've let it bloom out a bit.

The bad:

Fire ant mounds! I treated quite a few last fall, but with 30-40 acres of pasture on three sides of us, it feels like a never-ending battle. I'll think I've gotten them all, and then I discover new hills while mowing (thankfully from the safety of a riding mower this year instead of while walking behind the push mower)! I hate to use a lot of chemicals, but with a non-native, invasive pest such as these, there isn't much alternative. 

M R Ducks

M R ducks.
M R not.
O S A R; C M wangs?
Y I B; M R ducks!

This silly little saying was tickling in the back of my mind while watching our ducklings, but I couldn't quite recall the whole thing. I asked Jeff, and he proceeded to drawl out the entire redneck exchange fluently. That brilliant mind can retain just about anything!

Here's a little video from a week or two ago of the ducks taking their morning bath. They are so amusing!

What I Did on Spring Break

As a stay-at-home wife right now, there isn't really a difference to my job based on Federal holidays and vacations. The cooking and baking still need to be done, the laundry continues to pile up, the animals require tending, the weeds keep growing, etc. But it's fun when Jeff has a break because then we can do those things together!

I'm only partially kidding. Poor Jeff feels like he's had a vacation when he can stay home and do my work with me. That'll teach me to whine and moan about how hard my tasks are sometimes!

We didn't go anywhere special, but we did enjoy Jeff's week off for Spring Break. We hosted a formal dinner party, built a portable pen for the ducklings, installed a new (rain-proof!) mailbox, cleaned and organized the shop, worked on the lawn, and watched several basketball tournament games. Jeff even tried his hand at some baking one afternoon when I wasn't feeling well. With supervision (and just a little hands-on help), he made flatbread and butterhorns! Here's a bit of our week in pictures.

New duckling pen:


Bat discovery while cleaning the shop:


Jeff's baking foray:


Dressing the dining room:

Lucky Duck

Our latest fowl adventure is the incorporation of ducks into our little menagerie. I bought four Pekin ducklings the other week. They are only sold as straight run, so we don't know gender yet. Names are under consideration, so if you have any suggestions (keeping in mind Jeff's "punny" sense of humor), be sure to leave a comment! As Pekins are the white breed best known as the Aflac duck, we are toying with a bevy of insurance company names (which would also be gender neutral)!

Ducks are adorable, but, wow, are they a lot of work! They are ten times as messy as chicks, and it's a constant battle to keep food and water available. They go through a gallon waterer in under a few hours, even when I provide a separate pan of water to play in. They gobble down food like little jackhammers, sending bits of starter feed flying every which way. The heat lamp casts a glow even at dark, so I have to tip-toe around to check on them in the early mornings and evenings, because if they see me they pop their little heads up and start whistling like mad to be feed and watered and bathed. They are wearing me out!

Touching

Jeff's dad was a farmer, so the recent Super Bowl commercial featuring Paul Harvey was a big hit with us.

Pretty Pecans

It's been really busy around here lately, but we have discovered one time-saver. Cracked pecans! I was told last year by the local farmer's coop that our pecans were too small for their cracking machine. They tried to run a few through and it just didn't work. So we gave up and cracked by hand. It is very labor intensive, messy, and a bit painful, so we had bags and bags of pecans that went to waste in the shop over the summer.

This fall, we've had another bountiful crop. I didn't want to pick up all those pecans if they were just going to go bad again, so I spent some time calling around. I found another feed store that has several machines that can handle a range of pecan sizes. So with a hopeful heart, I took in a few buckets to see what they could do. It worked! Eureka! Now I just need to collect recipes to use all these tasty pecans. If you have a dish that uses lots of nuts, please send it along. My deep freezer can only hold so many bags, and I've got to get cracking and consume some of these.

We've been picking up buckets full like this everyday!

Farm Life Hardships

It's a miserable day here. It's freezing and raining and snowing and sleeting. And it's a sad day, because a horse had to be put down.

One of the horse boarders recently acquired a rescue off-the-track thoroughbred. He was a real sweetheart and I had taken to feeding him treats over the fence since he hung out near the house constantly. But adjusting to a new home is always stressful on a horse, and herd dynamics don't make it easy. He was not in the best condition to begin with, and he was picked on by one of the other geldings. He ended up falling down and getting trapped under the fence on our property line last Friday evening (right outside our dining room window, in fact). It was as close to a real "ox in the ditch" situation as I've probably ever encountered.

We enlisted some help and managed to get him up and taken care of, but if this were a movie, that scene would have been foreshadowing a darker moment. I got a knock on the door early this morning by a passing good Samaritan who had seen a horse stuck along the far back fenceline and thought it was ours (the pasture is right beside the house, so it's an easy assumption to make). It was the same horse. I quickly called his owners and ran out to check on him. It wasn't good; he was stuck down and had obviously been struggling for quite some time in the wet, cold mud. After removing the fence, calling in reinforcements, and the eventual arrival of the vet, it was to no avail. There may have been other health conditions complicating matters, but there was nothing anyone could do by then.

He'd only been here a few weeks, but to have this happen so close on the heels of DaVinci's death really hurt. Loss is part of love, but since we've been on the farm, we've had to part with three chickens, a dog, and now a horse. Farm life isn't for the faint of heart.

What a Week

Wow, am I glad this week is over! It's been quite a doozy. After almost burning down the laundry room due to a dryer vent problem a few weeks ago, we thought the worst was over. Turns out, that overheating somehow damaged the dryer (even after replacing the electrical cord, downsizing the breaker, and putting in a new, better dryer vent) and allowed it to short out several days ago. It "went to ground" (whatever that means; the electrician kept repeating this as if it explains everything) and popped light bulbs, caused outlets to stop working, and worst of all, blew out the control boards in both the washer and the dryer. And let me tell you, frontload washers and dryers have very expensive parts.

As if that weren't enough, we had horribly gusty winds Thursday and into last night which took off about 15-20 shingles on the back of the roof. It's mostly where the new addition and roof penetrations are, so we suspect the shingles were weakened by that. But it's going to rain Monday and Tuesday, so we have to get someone out here Sunday.

Then, in the midst of those terrible winds, we almost cooked the chickens. We had placed a heat lamp in the chicken coop to give the girls a little warmth. But the post that the lamp was clipped to got blown down and the lamp scorched the pine shavings. If the lady who boards her horses behind us hadn't seen it smoking, we might have lost the chickens, the coop, and the shop!

To compound our animal concerns, DaVinci has not been eating well for a month but has been guzzling water lately (and experiencing the frequent bladder urges you would associate with that much liquid). After an exam and thorough workup, the vet found that he has a significant hypothyroid condition and wants him on a twice daily medication, probably for the rest of his life! We'll test it out for a month, but we're not ones to subscribe to lifetime drug regimes as a solution.

And to top it off, I've hurt my back and am hobbling around with a forward tilt like an elderly person. I strained my low back muscles carrying several 80 lb sheets of subfloor upstairs for the new closet (with Jeff of course, but somehow hurting myself over 40 lbs doesn't sound as noble). Anyhow, I've started to notice the abundance of dust and dog hair accumulating on the floor, now that my eyesight is directed downward. And just when I'm least capable of getting down there to do anything about it, too! But thankfully it's Friday and the Sabbath and weekend are upon us.

Coop de Jour

Our little "rag top coop" has a new top! (Sorry for the puns; we've been having a lot of fun at the chicken coop's expense.)

One of our last projects before Jeff is back teaching classes full time was updating the coop. It was built badly, un-plumb, out of square, etc. by the previous tenant, but the posts were set in concrete and it had sides and a door. We had fixed the wire mesh several months ago when the chicks needed an outside home, but it still had no roof. We had tarped it for a little protection from the strong winds, sun, and rain, but that was a very temporary fix at best. So using (almost exclusively) scrap materials laying around the farm, Jeff designed and constructed a proper metal roof.

Just a little shot of the joists and roof underside

After all the effort he put in, I'll be reminding the girls daily that it's time they repay him in eggs!

Nothing Much

Not much bloggable the last few days. Still dealing with the stove in the middle of the kitchen floor, so we grilled out on the back patio yesterday and enjoyed the lovely August weather. I would have never thought the adjective "lovely" could modify any Southern summer month, but it's been wonderfully pleasant the last week or so with mid to high 80's and only slight humidity. The open pasture to the west of our farmhouse allows glorious breezes and stunning sunset sight lines, so we whiled away our dinner hour through the twilight.

The nice weather and abundance of rain has been good for the plants. Here is the Cleopatra Canna:

And the wild Passion Flower vine:

And a small sampling of our Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes (and a few random Roma):

Digging Deeper

I hope if any of you have success stories with in-ground pet fences and your dogs, you will share them. Because we just spent an entire day yesterday in the hot sun digging the trench for DaVinci's new electronic barrier and I'm really hoping it works!

We can't install a physical fence for a number of reasons (blocking the drive, the neighbors still need onto our property to get to their barn, too expensive to attractively fence an entire acre, etc.). So we've been planning on this method for a while now. I bought an great system on Craiglist quite a while ago, but we've been too busy to get it in the ground.

The situation was also complicated by the fact that the people who board their horses behind us pulled up the survey stakes and we can't tell where the property lines are anymore. But with the help of a measuring wheel, Jeff's iPhone compass, and our deed description, we marked the corners and plotted a path. Then Jeff spent about five or six hours with an inadequate gas-powered edger trudging through our hardpacked clay soil, blackberry brambles, poison ivy, and overgrown grass. He had to navigate fences, posts, gates, horses, donkey, chickens, cars, and more to accomplish the task. But he set one foot in front of the other and made it happen (in spite of the fact that the rented edger broke down and we had to take it in for servicing).

The next step is crawling around on hands and knees installing 1000 feet of wire. Then planting flags. Then hooking it all up. Then training the dog. Then hoping he doesn't run away in spite of it all.

Little Ditties

Wednesday was jam-packed full! We spent most of the day in the sun, working hard, for which I was rewarded with quite the sunburn on my back. Had I taken the few minutes to ask Jeff to rub in some sunscreen, I wouldn't have had to ask him repeatedly to rub in the aloe vera and place the vinegar compresses later that night! It was one of the worst burns I've had (second only to that teenage experience back in Texas in a swimsuit by the lake for about eight hours with no shade), but definitely the most painful. I had hours of burning, prickling, stabbing sensations that just shot across the skin of my upper back and made sleep impossible. Jeff was wonderful through the whole thing, though, and I survived, redder but wiser.

Since that pain didn't really hit until about seven or eight PM, we had plenty of time earlier in the day for good experiences! We cleaned out the little pump house; sorted, re-arranged, and stored all the storm windows; made plans for a "painting tent" in the shop where I can utilize the paint sprayer to my heart's content; removed the old propane wall heaters in the house; photographed and detailed items for Craigslist postings; made a little portable "playpen" for the baby chicks (who are more like adolescents now!); and mowed, trimmed, and pulled weeds around the property. Oh, and we enjoyed $1 cheeseburgers at our favorite wine bar/restaurant as a little dinner reward. What a day!

Happy chicks in the grass

Jeff got a kick out of Flash's dirt mustache; look carefully at his lower lip!

Flowering Threadlead Coreopsis in front of blossoming Hyacinth Runner Bean; pale yellow and lavender together make me happy!

Mantel Makeover! Hearth when we bought the house

Hearth now

We hope to open up the firebox and install gas logs this fall or winter, but we're happy with one day's little improvement for now!

Bloom Where You're Planted

...or maybe I should revise it to say when. One of the things I was most looking forward to this season was seeing all our bushes and trees and bulbs blooming. It's our first spring in the farmhouse, and I had identified forsythia, spirea, flowering quince, all kinds of narcissus, and a tulip magnolia, among other early bloomers. We've had a rather mild winter overall, and by early February had already experienced 70+ degree sunny weather. It was just beautiful. Every bud was peeping through and just ripe to burst forth. And then they did! And then it froze!

All of the plants are well established so there was no concern over survival. But the tender petals of the tulip magnolia fell victim to the cold snap. We enjoyed about two days of opening flowers, and then they were limp, blackened remnants. But I'm happy to report that a few reluctant buds must have been hiding out and managed to weather the storm. So we may not have a full glorious tree to admire, but we take great pleasure in the strength and beauty of the few solitary blossoms.

Wonderful Wildlife

Spring is arriving, and with it returns the appearance of the animal kingdom. I saw an egret on the pond yesterday:

And Jeff zoomed in on this cute chipmunk outside our kitchen window:

Duck, Duck, Goose

Having ponds just a short distance from each side of the house, we get to enjoy some water fowl from time to time. We are also only a few miles from the Wheeler Wildlife Refuge, which is the wintering grounds to thousands of migratory birds (including some rare species we have seen up close)! But this morning was the first time I had seen this many geese enjoying the water respite. I was out gathering eggs and heard all the honking. What a pretty sight to start the day!