Late spring thing

Yesterday we took Mr. Cairo to another Bark in the Park at Turner Field. It was wonderful, just like last year. Actually, the weather was significantly nicer this time around--breezy and 75 instead of glaring and 95. But it's hard to ever, ever, complain in a baseball stadium full of happy dogs and happy dog owners.

Here's a joyful photo of me and Cairo. I'm making an effort to have my picture taken more often, because it recently occurred to me that my aversion to the business end of a camera has meant that there are precious few pics of me as an adult in existence! I am here. I exist. Voila. :-)



The big news around here is that the s.o. and I purchased a dishwasher as my early birthday present. It is a portable that will be able to be converted into a built-in when we remodel the kitchen. I love it so much that I have practically built a religion around it. The other day the s.o. walked into the kitchen to find me sitting on the floor with Gracie (who is a little spooked by the big white cube that makes watery noises), murmuring into her ear, "Do you know what that machine does, Gracie? That machine makes mama happy."

Now the s.o. jokes that if he really wants to freak me out, all he would have to do is wheel it into another room and hide it somewhere.

Better!

This is what I now see when I look upward in my office:



Kind of "tropical getaway," isn't it? The wallpaper in the frames is from the dining room of my grandparents' house. I stripped it off and saved it when we sold the property.

The Christmas lights are there just because I like Christmas lights. They have nostalgic holiday associations, certainly, but they also remind me of the sort of funky little outdoor eating places I love best--Shady Grove in Austin, Texas, comes to mind.

I don't know if it'll improve my ability to work, but it certainly looks good to me.

Devastation

We didn't hear a thing during the night. The dogs didn't bark. The geese didn't honk. But this was what I saw when I stepped outside Sunday morning:




Total and complete catastrophe. The PVC turkey pen was smashed--the pipes weren't disconnected, they were splintered. Something even pushed its body straight through the chicken wire. And somehow, something popped the door latch on the wooden pen and got into it, too.

At first it didn't sink in, because it was too terrible to contemplate. Four turkeys missing, presumed dragged away and eaten. A tom dead in the pen. Four birds mauled so badly--wings broken, lungs full of fluid, tails torn off, chest muscles exposed--that they had to be put down. Two hens traumatized but mobile, one staggering like a drunkard and one with flaps of skin open on her back.

And, miraculously, one tom with a bloodied face, standing in the middle of the yard. He warbled quietly and took cautious steps toward me. I went to get some scratch grain and led him into the fallow section of the garden.

We don't know if it was stray dogs or coyotes. There are both in the neighborhood. We're furious, made even more furious by the fact that we have no one specific to be angry at. We called animal control, as if that'll do any good. (They've ignored us before, and they'll probably ignore us again.)

I went to L2's to borrow some extra electric fence wire, and I ended up sobbing on her shoulder. She cried too. She was our poultry watcher when we were on vacation, and she had taken a special shine to our turkeys.

Turkeys are so sweet and guileless and friendly, and we are supposed to be protecting them from things like this. But we had tractored turkeys for two years with no incidents--not even any threats. This came out of nowhere, and we can hardly believe how complete the devastation is.



Now everyone is behind a double perimeter of electric fencing. We still can't sleep, but at least it will help deter a second visit.

The tom has been named Lucky and will be a pet. We feel that somehow it would be wrong to eat him for Thanksgiving dinner after all he's been through. He seems to understand that we are the good guys, and he comes to the fence and calls for us when we are near the garden.

Everyone please cross your fingers for the two hens--terramycin may help, but then again, it may not.

Hello world

I'm connected to the internet WIRELESSLY, using my NEW COMPUTER!!!! Sweet, sweet, sweet. More to come, as soon as I play with it for a while. Oh, and get some arugula and mizuna planted...

What's goin' on

• After years of making do with a percolator, we bought a new drip coffeemaker. It is programmable, so it can make coffee all by itself and have it waiting for me when I get up in the morning. Needless to say, this represents a huge jump in Quality of Life.

• The s.o. completed an outdoor chickenwire-and-netting aviary for Chicken House #2--a porch-covered vestibule area that will later lead to a number of separate pens--and today the young chickens and turkeys ventured into the great outdoors for the first time. Bravery is definitely breed-specific: Barred Rocks were the first out the door, followed by Red Star boys (remember them--the padding in the shipment? they are nice guys and we will be rather sorry to eat them, but there's nothing that can be done, because we all know the problems associated with Too Many Roosters), then Speckled Sussexes. Cornish boys were curious, but very flighty and scaredy. Ameraucanas were so docile that they would stay outside if placed there, but they took no initiative. Brahmas, Langshans, and Mille Fleur banties wanted nothing to do with the strangeness, and only ventured out after everyone else had been happily pecking grass for quite a while.

• We are harvesting the first Sungold tomatoes. There is a small Lemon cucumber on the vine, and green beans are starting to roll in in quantity.

• My back is getting better.

• My chores--the ones I can do with a delicate back, at least--have recently been made more interesting by heavy use of podcastable language lessons. I'm taking three languages at once, something my mom did one semester in college. "It won't screw you up," she reassured me. Which is a good thing, because I am enjoying all three. The Mandarin is the best by far, and I have actually plunked down money for a basic yearly subscription so I can download the pdfs. That same company also offers Spanish, but I wasn't crazy about the hosts, so I went with this one instead. It's clear and sensible, and kind of quirkily fun because it's taught by Scots. (I hope I'm not picking up an odd accent.) Lastly, I'm doing French. I already read it pretty well, but I speak it quite badly, so I'm using this for review and reinforcement. I recommend podcast language lessons to anyone; they're great for keeping your mind busy when your body has to do the dishes.

• We have bees again, magically. A while ago our hive swarmed, and half the bees absconded to the top of a 60-foot pine tree, from which we were unable to recover them. We watched the remaining bees closely and were horrified that no brood appeared--they seemed to have been unsuccessful in raising a new queen. The colony began, predictably, to die out. And then...inexplicably...there was a healthy hive again, full of young fuzzy bees that are now busily pollinating the garden. We are extremely puzzled, but have decided not to look a gift bee in the proboscis.

• Lately I am all about this recipe, made with shrimp instead of avocado. I love avocado, but trust me when I say shrimp rocks all over it in this particular instance. I suppose one could use both. Hmm.

In other news...

The geese spent most of the day out in their yard yesterday, happily crunching grass and gargling water. They seem to have no desire to re-test the electric fence. I'm about to go put them out again. I'm sure the turkeys appreciate the relative cleanness of their living quarters without their big clumsy friends in the room.

The s.o. took the old ragged plastic off the greenhouse and weed-whacked a good percentage of the garden paths. The garden looks much more impressive now that the intentional plants are taller than the unintentional ones. Foolishly, pridefully, I wish that J and her sister and her nephew could have seen it the way it is now, instead of the way it was on Wednesday when they visited! Don't mind our squalor, people. Nothing to see here. Heh.

Tomorrow is my birthday. I don't feel 37, although actually, when I think about it, I have no idea what 37 feels like. So maybe I do feel 37. All I know is, in general I am very happy and I feel lucky to lead the life I lead! Hugs and kisses to the s.o., the dogs, and our families and friends for bringing so much joy. It's been a good year and (weather aside) I think it'll be another good one.

Ha!

We have a new laser printer.

I have just printed out The Georgia Egg Law and Supporting Regulations, a 25-page document I will need for my egg candling and grading course tomorrow. Cross your fingers for me--I hope to be a legal egg seller in time for Saturday's market!

Work in progress

This is Chicken House #2 after two days of work! I helped with the measuring and leveling--and apparently got it within a sixteenth of an inch (!). Then yesterday our friend S. helped the s.o. with the framing. The s.o. says there's about two more days of work to do.

As with Chicken House #1, this one has a floor fully lined with hardware cloth to prevent any pests chewing their way in. The right-hand portion (the part furthest away in the pic) will be a brooder house, and then the main part will be for adult chickens, with doors out into two pasture pens. The windows and door and a lot of the lumber were salvaged; the door is the thing you see leaning against the back wall.

Very, very excited. New chicks are coming soon!

Almost like grownups

Aaaaaaaaah! So happy!

We just bought this dining room set from a friend in town. We are absolutely in love with it. It's the warmth it brings to the room that I find especially pleasing. And I love its curvy sleekness.

I think it's from the 1940s--anyone know enough about furniture to say for sure? (The image pops to full size if you need to see it more closely.) The banquette and china cabinet have very cool tortoiseshell Bakelite discs on their handles. The table has something we've never seen before: a self-storing leaf that can be swung up from underneath when you pull the two halves of the table apart.

It still has the tags on the back from when it was delivered by train to its original owner! It was manufactured by the Lenoir Furniture Company in North Carolina and sold through Sears Roebuck.

Hey, Mom? We'd like to host Thanksgiving again this year...now that we have a table and everything. :-)

New digs

Yesterday we finally repatriated the chicks--okay, pullets--that we had been raising in our attic brooder area since my stepsister gave them to us at Thanksgiving. We had been wanting to move them outdoors (for what I think are probably pretty obvious reasons--phew!), but we weren't sure how they would manage in the winter weather. One answer would have been to finish the second chicken house we have planned for spring, but we just hadn't had time to get started.

So the s.o. and I were brainstorming.

"What about that old bathroom vanity?"

"Let's look at it. Oh, it's perfect! But it's pretty small. They'd need to have space to roam during the daytime. And would it be secure enough?"

"I could build more onto it."

"Then we almost might as well build the whole chicken house."

"Hmm."

"Hey, wait. What if we put it in the greenhouse and chickenwired off an area for them to peck around?"

We looked at each other and grinned. Perfect! And it would also solve the problem of the weeds I had carelessly allowed to grow in the half of the greenhouse I wasn't currently using--it would be instant pasture. Granted, I'd be giving up a lot of space for my early crops, but then again, it's been so warm that I guess I might as well plant my first round of peas outdoors anyway. And it goes without saying that the chicken manure will enrich the soil for the future.

So out they went, with a brooder light for extra security on chilly nights. They stood around for a while in confusion, then quickly started doing Chicken Things.





If anyone can remember seeing a chickens-in-the-greenhouse arrangement on someone's blog, please tell me. I'm almost certain I saw it online somewhere.

In other news, my second winter rye poultry pasture is growing like gangbusters. The grown-up chickens can't wait to get in there.

Cozy

Ahhhhhhh.

The s.o. has tacked up thick, semitranslucent greenhouse plastic over the back porch's screened windows. This will not only keep the north wind from screaming through our sievelike kitchen door, but it will give us a place to start plenty of seedlings as we head into spring. (Am I the only one who is positively itching to start seedlings? For now I will have to content myself with planting experimental winter peas in the hoophouse.)

The only odd thing is walking out onto the porch and encountering milky whiteness instead of a view of the back yard. But it is a small price to pay for a cozier, less-expensive-to-heat house.

Sometime in 2007 we aspire to replace that kitchen door, too. Ever upward!

NKOTB

They're at the "ugly" stage (three and a half or four weeks, I think), but they're still cute despite their scraggly pinfeathers!

The s.o. is planning to build a new, larger two-part henhouse for our grownup chickens. We will then convert our existing one into a brooder house, where we can raise new generations to adulthood. These gals will go in there when they get too big for the attic. Then they'll move up to the big henhouse to make room for our spring chicks.

Have I mentioned that we love chickens? They are just a joy to have around.

If anyone's looking for the Thanksgiving menu, it's here.