Blog Posts from the Edge

Day 7 of my captivity:

Hand, foot & mouth disease has invaded our once peaceable kingdom, and during a 9-day forced togetherness fest they call spring break, no less. We've yet to experience this elusive "Spring" phenomenon, and there most certainly hasn't been any sort of break. I'm confident that I'm rapidly approaching a mental break. Does that count?

Sick, bored, itchy children abound. Planned excursions to the out-of-doors have been scrapped due to inhospitable weather conditions and a highly communicable virus. We grow steadily more weary of one another's company with each passing hour.

Worse still, living conditions are deteriorating rapidly. The inmates children insist on being fed DAILY, pushing the very limits of my once generous sense of hospitality. Dishes are accumulating faster than they can be dealt with, and other routine tasks are being neglected as well. An increasing amount of my time is being consumed re-directing children to find something to do and otherwise manually dislodging them from "my grill". Surely madness lies around the next corner?

I pray you, send reinforcements as soon as can be managed. Earplugs, chocolate, fortified liquor and calamine lotion by the gallon are our most immediate needs. Some sort of force field that separates the children from my person by at least 5 feet would be most welcome, but I am uncertain as to whether or not such technology yet exists. In lieu of that, perhaps a remote control mute button, or a spell that renders me temporarily deaf? Anything helps.

We have a minimum of 3 more days of incarceration togetherness before the large, yellow, multi-passenger transports return to whisk my charges away to their institutions of learning. May their journey be swift and unhindered, delivering not only my bedraggled younglings to their destination, but delivering me from a slow, soul-crushing episode of cabin fever as well.

Three more days, three more days, three more days.....

The Difference Between Success and Failure...

...is a dishcloth. Well, it was for me, anyway.

Ten days ago I started an incubator full of eggs that the hens had laid in weird little hidey holes here and there in their yard. Whenever I find an egg "out of bounds", whether it be just one or a whole clutch, I always either compost them or incubate them. The last thing I want one of our friends or customers to crack open is an egg that has already started down the path to chickenhood. Been there. *shivers*

So, though we didn't need this brood of babies, we figured that we might as well incubate them, what with Spring coming, supposedly, and maybe sell a few, keep a few. 'Twas not to be.

I started the incubator in our back room, which is unheated. It is the same place that I start all of my seeds on their heat mats and under grow lights. It's basically like a greenhouse that is connected to my spare room.

Well, the seeds don't mind the cool so much, but my poor little incubator just could not get up to temp. I upped it by little smidges each day, trying to get to the magic 99.5 degrees, but never going higher than 90. I maxed out the "increase" switch without ever reaching temperature. I knew that this wasn't great, but what else could I do to increase the heat?

I considered a heating pad. Nah, For one thing it had auto shutoff, so the temp wouldn't stabilize anyway, and for another, I was too scared that it would go bananas and somehow burn my house down. For a lack of better ideas, I threw a kitchen towel over the top of the incubator, hoping that that little 1/32" thickness of cloth would insulate my little foam box just enough to hit the 99.5 degree mark. Boy did I underestimate that towel!

I checked the eggs later that evening, and upon removing the top of the incubator was greeted with a hot blast of sulphery/chicken poopy smelling air. OH NO.

The temp on the thermometer was at 120 degrees! 101 degrees is theoretically enough to kill a chicken embryo. There was no doubt, these little eggies were toast.

I removed them from the incubator with a great deal of care, lest I drop one or smack a few together and create a noxious cloud of superfunk. Bill carried them ever-so-carefully to the compost bin, and I was left with a smelly, empty, fireball-hot incubator. :(

And so I'm bummed. Poor eggs. The only potential silver lining here is that only about 1/4 of the eggs that I candled had shown any signs of development at any point anyway, so many of them may have been duds from the start. Maybe they weren't fertile in the first place? That would be hard to imagine with the way King Kong has been, err... "patronizing" his ladies lately. Maybe they got too cold out in the chicken yard before they were found? We've had a lot of weird cold snaps since mid-January, jammed in right next to beautiful sunny days. It's the devil's potpourri, this Winter weather of ours. Or maybe, I just straight up murdered 42 potential little fluff balls with my kitchen towel and a heaping helping of stupid.

Next time, I'll preheat the incubator to find the perfect temp before adding my eggy babies. And yes, I will be using my kitchen towel turned insulation WITH EXTREME CAUTION.

Has your food been "slimed"?

Photos and videos of a substance ominously named "pink slime" have been making the rounds on social networks and in headlines for a few months now. Most of these videos depict a bright pink colored paste that is comprised of mechanically separated meat. Sometimes it's chicken, sometimes beef, pork or turkey, but it is all destined for processed food products, some of which might end up in you or, more likely, your kids' bellies.

Don't believe it? I don't want to either, but here it is, the grisly truth:



If you or your family are eating processed foods that contain this gunk, you are not only eating "cuts" of meat that aren't fit for most dog foods, but you're also consuming a product that has been "cleaned" (aka - soaked in) ammonium hydroxide.

This aspect of the meat processing protocol is obviously not something that fast food restaurants or the USDA think that you need to know about, because they consider it a process, not an ingredient. Are they asking us to believe that no trace of the ammonia remains in the meat after it has been marinated in the stuff? Seriously?

Apparently so, because the USDA has not required any special labeling for processed meat products that have been treated thusly, and it is estimated that up to 70% of the ground beef on the market has been processed this way. The beef and chicken products in your child's school lunch have almost certainly been through this process and the people who choose to purchase this chemical drenched food on behalf of you and your kids have the nerve to refer to it as "safe" and "wholesome". !!!

Why would they put caustic chemicals in your food? Because the folks in charge of food safety at the USDA have decided that the minuscule chance that there could be E. coli or Salmonella contamination in your meat products necessitates carpet-bombing it with caustic sterilizers. If meat is raised, slaughtered and handled with care and common sense cleanliness practices instead of living it's life knee deep in sewage in a CAFO and then cranked through a rendering plant, the odds of it ever needing such extreme treatments are virtually none. Fear has brought us here, but isn't this "food" what we should be afraid of?

My very favorite food crusader, Jamie Oliver, breaks it down in the video below. Please watch, and better yet - show it to your kids. I'm very conscious of the food my kids eat, but watching this has made me want to redouble my efforts to keep these "foods" out of my kids' mouths and bellies.



I became a farmer in part to ensure that I knew exactly what was going into my family's mouths. Obviously, not everyone can take that route. The steps that anyone can take to avoid and reject this notion of food are these-

Stay informed! Read labels, ask hard questions. You have every right to know the story behind your food.

Advocate! Let the people who are making these food choices on behalf of us all know that these are unacceptable practices. Make your preference for truly wholesome, recognizable food known!

Reject! Refuse to eat or serve foods made with these highly processed ingredients. For me, this will mean packing my kids' lunches everyday. A great pass/fail test for food - if your Grandma wouldn't recognize the ingredients, don't eat it!

Slip-Sliding Away

I fell down twice today while doing critter chores. I'm in my mid-30's, if I haven't outgrown my clumsiness yet, I think it's safe to consider myself officially, permanently gravitationally-challenged. Maybe my next move is to take preventative measures like wearing a helmet at all times, or sewing a hemorrhoid donut pillow into my chore pants?

All I know right now is this - two wipeouts in the mud and all of the animals tucked in for the night means that pajama/cocktail hour has arrived and that soon, all shall be right with the world again. :)

Annnnd back to the bums-bums...

I seriously had thought, nay, prayed, that my days of wrestling kids & critters for the sheer joy of getting to wipe their butts for them were over.

They're not.

We have a couple of pasty-vented babies in the brood, and they are none too pleased with my minstrations, whereas I, of course, am having the time of my life.

If you've got a morbidly curious streak, check out A Posse Ad Esse's entry on dealing with messy bird bums.

And now I must go, and return to my decadent lifestyle. Attempt to contain your jealousy.

It's a trap!

...a fruit fly trap, that is.



It may look like I'm setting out the good stuff for the bugs (that's what they're supposed to think - bwaha!), but it's actually just a bit of apple cider vinegar in the bottle.

You can buy fruit fly traps for around five to seven bucks that are basically the same setup, or you can just put about a nickel's worth of ACV in a container that has either a neck or steeply sloped sides (impeding escape) and the greedy little buggers will flock to it and drown. I know it's mean, and I don't like killing anything, but between the plague of gnats and crane flies that have engulfed us this year, Mama had enough.

I still don't have a great tip for ridding your home of crane flies, though my chickens have gleefully taken up the cause, chasing them down and snapping them up out of the lawn. I also usually find at least one freshly drowned in my scentsy wax-warmer every morning, so there's that...

For the Morbidly Curious Only - A firsthand view of goat puberty

Brace yourselves, you've been warned!

We presently have 5 yearling goats on our little farm, a set of triplets and a set of twins. Buckley & Barley are our boys, and Hop, Oreo & Valentina (Teeny) are our girls.

The boys live apart from their mothers and sisters these days, because beginning about a month ago, the bucklings entered their first rut.

Buckley was the first to fall. He found creative ways to escape the pen he shared with his half-brother, and would immediately zoom straight up to visit the ladies (at this time, the doelings were still co-habitating with their Mamas). He couldn't figure out how to get into the pen, so he just paced and loafed around in turns, never stepping more than a few feet away from his paramours, all of whom but one, Chardonnay, are related to him by blood. Blood, schmud. Buck was not about to be dissuaded from courting them, one and all.

Then it was Barley's turn, my sweet, sweet baby boy Barley. I delivered him and warmed him while Chardonnay was still laboring to birth Hop, and our connection was sealed. I know I've said it before, but Barley is seriously more dog than goat, and I have an irrational love for the little bugger. He sits in my lap. He eats my clothes and licks my shins and boots (only my shins and boots - I dunno what's up with that) and gives me nuzzles and soft snorts. I could've hugged him all day. <3

But those days are gone (tears!) because now he is a stinky, horny mess, just like his brother. Oh Lord, the things my eyes have seen!

Warning! It's about to get REAL. If you have a touchy-tummy, I bid you look away now!

I'd been warned about how awful and stinky that buck goats get, but I took it in stride. I have bad sinuses - I can't smell anything! This will be cake, CAKE I TELL YOU.

The smell is the least of it.

The reason that the boys smell so horribly funky is twofold -

1 - They have scent glands near their horns that produce a "musk" that make the nanny goats weak in the knees. I personally don't get it, but male fragrances in general are not my thing. This musk is apparently their answer to Axe body spray, and I enjoy it just as much, which is to say, not at all.

2 - And this is the one that kills me. They pee on their own face. This is the part of the story of bucks that knocks most people out - initially. Yes, they're that limber, and yes, they apparently think that it makes them more attractive to the gals to have a dingy-yellow, toilet-scented face. I can't even pet my baby-boos now or I have to have a bio hazard-style decontamination shower to get the super funk off of me. :(

So there is the funk, explained. Now, the behavior. Hold onto your hats.

If you were impressed by the fact that the boys can manage to bend just so to wiz on their own faces, wait 'til you hear what else they can and do do in that same position. OFTEN.

Yup, I told you it was nasty. The uncastrated male goat is completely capable of self-fellation. AND BOY ARE THEY FANS OF IT. :(

How does this work exactly? Well, let me give you a quick upshot on goat anatomy. The buck's penis retracts like a dog's or a horses, so most of the time you are really only seeing the "sheath". When the buck is frisky, the business comes out. I'd estimate that the penises of my 8 months old (50ish pound) bucklings are about 6+ inches long, and roughly the girth of a pencil or a sharpie. Therefore, the boys can either "get down" while standing up, if they're limber enough, or lay down on their side and do the deed. It is a horrifying sight.

The other thing that I've been seeing a lot of is when the boys are just going about their business, and apparently a oil drum full of testosterone hits their bloodstream all at once. They get an erection, their muscles all tense, and they make the most bizarre teeny little groans and "O" faces. Oh God is it nasty. Wild eyes, quivering lips - YUCK.

These sweet babies have turned into the most base, guttural humping machines that I've ever seen. It is upsetting on many levels.

The doelings' behavior, thank God, is no where near as dramatic or x-rated. They mostly just bawl 24/7. I'd really rather that they had had a whole year and a half to grow before their first breeding, but as the boys have made more than one jailbreak during this rut, that ship may very well have already sailed. I don't think that Hop is pregnant though, because she is acting like she's in heat for the past two days, "vocalizing" (begging for nooky via MEEEEEHHHHHH! every 30 seconds) a lot and is a great deal more affectionate than normal. Hmmm...

I suspect that the big girls, Chardonnay, Frtizen and Blue could be knocked up too, because their behavior (the whining, etc.) has settled down, and I haven't seen any physical signs of heat since last month. Although we did want to breed them this fall, we were hoping to wait until at least October, so that the kids would come in March instead of February, like last year. I'd also like to have engineered who was bred to who, not mating mother to son, for instance, but that too could be out the window. Oy, oy, oy. The things I do for cheese!

I hope that I haven't caused you to fear or dislike goats, or to fear or dislike reading this blog, for that matter. I only wanted to share my "unique" perspective on the whole shebang, the good bad and uggggg-ly that this urban farmer business entails. There's only so much you can get from the books. ;)

P.S. - Spell check really didn't like "fellation" or "uncastrated". I daresay my spell check is one classy lady. ;)

Be Poo to Your School (My 200th Post!)

I'm not a PTA Mom. Does that surprise you? Yeah, it doesn't really surprise anyone. I love my kids' school and volunteer there regularly, but I'm just not leadership material. I fall asleep in meetings, I'm bad at making tough decisions and I don't do politics, on any scale.

And so I look for other ways to contribute. This year I will not only be working at our school's annual plant sale, I'll be contributing goods for the sale. You know, seedlings, flowers, veggie starts, animal poop... did I lose you on that last one?

I'd been sort of marinating on this idea for a while now, but I hesitated to throw it out there, lest I sound like a complete yokel-dork. I mustered up the courage to ask the garden gals if they would be interested in my poo (words that I never thought I'd hear myself say, I assure you), and was very enthusiastically received by them. It was a nice feeling, knowing that I am not the only granola poo-coveter in town. You've heard me go on about it before, but allow me to remind you that critter poo, bunny poop in particular is magic. It's dry, it doesn't burn your plants, it has very little odor and the bunnies make it like it's going out of style.

Which is why, come Friday night, My friend Melinda and I will be filling and attempting to "jazz up" little bags of bunny, goat and chicken poop for sale on Saturday. I'm trying to think of some snappy wording for the bags. I've heard people refer to rabbit poop as "Bunny Marbles" or "Cocoa Puffs", but I'm looking for something more exciting and original. All Natural Doo Drops? Compost Thunder? Or in the case if goat poop, which looks exactly like a whole coffee bean, Magic Beans? Crappaccino?

I can't wait to see if my critter poo sells like hotcakes or just gets completely ignored. I certainly hope it goes well, lest I have to carry my unsold doodles back home in shame. It'd really be something if my doo revenue was enough to score something cool for the school gardens. You see that peach tree over there? Bought and paid for with goat turds, my friend!

Yes indeed, I may never be PTA Treasurer material, but I betcha a pitchfork that folks will remember the crazy crap peddling lady for years to come. And thus my legacy to the children of Olympia begins.

We have a Farrrmerrr doon!

Sorry for the radio silence, I've been laid up this past week with a rousing case of dysentery that I can blame on either an incompetent food service worker or my chickens, the mystery remains.

The culprit was Campylobacter, and let me tell you, a week with this evil little bug in your belly is a fast and effective method for weight loss! And headaches, muscle pain, scorching fever... and lots of other little goodies who's descriptions I will spare you.

The lesson to be taken away from this little tango with toxins is -

A) Handle your food safely. Campylobacter bacteria, according to several sources I've read recently, can be found in upwards of 70% of grocery store chicken samples. So it's there already, and it's your job to kill it by cooking your meat thoroughly and by cleaning your kitchen surfaces and utensils adequately. Campylobacter is actually killed fairly easily, particularly by our stomach acid. But in folks like me, who take acid-reducing medication, the castle doors have essentially been flung wide open to receive the invaders.

B) Handle your livestock carefully. Most populations of live chickens (and other animals - cats, dogs, cattle, etc.) carry Campylobacter in their gut, and are asymptomatic. So even if they're not sick, they can still get you sick. We're pretty intense hand washers over here, but it only takes a few little bacteria to take you out.

I half-suspect that my infection came from caring for a sick little chick (who died of a bloody flux) in my home. I'm a softy. I couldn't leave her outside all by her poor lonesome to die, so we brought her in in a laundry basket and attempted to ply her with fresh grass and electrolyte-infused water to bring her back around to health, but it didn't work. Somewhere during the process, I must have inhaled or swallowed a bacteria, and that was that.

Here we are a week later, and I'm still recovering. The muscle pain, headache and cramps were like nothing I've ever felt before in my life! The doc told me that the toxins were in my blood, muscles and even the tissue surrounding my brain, which is why they had to give me a blue whale-sized dose of dilaudid to knock me out.

I'd long known that the perils of farming are many, but hadn't thought to include among them bacterial assassination attempts. I always figured that when something happened to me, it'd be more like me chopping off a toe with an ax, or having my nose broken by a flying goat hoof, but I guess you can't plan these things. All in good time, all in good time....

Buckets of Fonzy

Today my friend, Simcha, over at Turkish Cooking, Everyday has posted a recipe for a Turkish liver dish, Ciğer Kavurma. She prefaces her recipe with a story of a childhood memory of having to choke down some Liver & Gravy, and disliking it completely ever since. But being cajoled and force fed something that you find horrifyingly repulsive is sort of the universal childhood experience; a right of passage, if you will. We all bear the scars. Simcha says that she has come to terms with liver and actually likes it prepared in a particular way now. I cannot say the same. Here is the story of my first and last taste of liver.

My sister and I were staying with our Aunt & Uncle, on their small farm. Being suburban kids, this was a rather novel experience for us. They had chickens, horses and cattle. As little girls, we were used to every "pet" having a name, and were shocked to find that no one had bothered to name any of the cows. We put our heads together and came up with Laverne & Shirley for the ladies, and Fonzy for the bull. Thinking back, I can remember my Aunt being like, "Ok, but....", but we, oblivious to the eventual fate of the moo-moos, became somewhat attached - albeit from a distance.

Bulls aren't known for their gentlemanly behavior, and Fonzy expedited his exit when he took it upon himself to try and gore my cousin's beloved horse to death. I can't recall if the horns hit the mark, but I do remember that the horse got knocked into a whole mess of barbed wire, hard. Fonzy had just put himself on the fast track to freezer camp.

Memories can be tricky - I'm honestly not sure if I'm remembering this 100% correctly or if my experience has been influenced by repeated viewings of Napoleon Dynamite, but as I recall, our school bus was just rolling up to drop us at the driveway, in full view of the pasture, when the shot was fired.

Trauma, tears and worry for poor, widowed Laverne & Shirley followed in tidal waves of 7-year old emotion.

It was either later that same day, or perhaps the next that the real butchering began. Bits were here and there. There were multiple 5-gallon buckets in the kitchen filled with various guts and whatnot. It was horrifying.

In stark contrast to the scene in the kitchen was the smell wafting out from the stove top as my Aunt made dinner. I remember that the aroma of whatever it was she was cooking was so good. Like pot roast or chicken soup, something warm and homey, the perfect balm to my emotional afternoon. I was starving!

When dinner was served up, it was liver and onions. It looked pretty sketchy, but the tasty smell and a few stern looks shot my way by my Aunt and Uncle compelled me to tuck right in. From the very second that that first bite hit my tongue, liver and I were done for good.

I honestly don't recall the taste. It may have been incredible. All I can remember is the texture in my mouth, and flashing back to pictures of the buckets in the kitchen. Buckets of Fonzy. Even if I could have got past the weird, creepy texture of the liver, the psychological trauma probably would have been enough to stop me eating it anyway. I put my fork down and sat their trying my damnedest to swallow that bite. I got it down but simply could not take another. I was threatened, bribed, and finally, warned that I'd be spending my entire night at the table in front of that rapidly cooling plate of Fonzy if I didn't just buck up and eat it already.

I spent the rest of the evening at the table, as did my sister.

Guess what was for breakfast the next morning?

My Aunt & Uncle were old school like that. I don't recall whether or not we went without breakfast of any kind, but I can tell you for sure that neither one of us ate that stone-cold, day old liver. I can only imagine that later that day I must have attacked my school lunch like a demented piranha, grateful for my fake mashed potatoes and instant gravy like I'd never been before.

And that is why I just say no to liver. It's the texture, the idea, the mental associations, all of it. I can't eat it in any form - pate, fois gras, no way, no how. That is my general approach to all organ meats really. It's not snobbery, it's the mental & textural issues that I can't overcome. Given the choice, I'd rather eat my napkin.

The Battle Hymn of the Chicken Mother

Today my mood/health pendulum has swung back in the direction of blehh. I'm having another one of my sleep-a-thon weeks, and my dag-gum sinuses are back at it again. I feel very guilty on days like these when I am a total sniffling, snorting couch potato, even knowing that my fatigue is legit, because I feel like I'm not giving 100% to my family, critters, friends and other commitments. I baled on being an usher at Junior Programs today, now that, my friends, is lazy.

But laziness and fatigue don't win the day altogether. When I reflect on what I get done around here, even on a sick day, well, I don't feel so bad. Here's what I did today -

6:30 - Wake up, shower
6:55 - Wake kiddos
7:00 - Loaf on the couch half asleep, directing children to eat their breakfast and get a move on.
7:30 - Additional child badgering. Seriously, who takes 30 minutes to eat a piece of toast?
7:40 - Send kids out for critter patrol, start preparing goat rations.
8:00 - Go chip frozen goat water. Attempt to top off goat water, only to find that the hoses have all frozen overnight. Bring a 5-gallon bucket into the shower to fill with warm water.
8:05 - Carry 40 pounds of sloshing water a few hundred yards through semi-frozen mud to very thirsty goats.
8:20 - Kids finish getting ready for school as I bellow reminders to pack library books and brush teeth.
8:30 - Drive kids to school.
8:40 - Fall asleep on the couch while Facebooking. :(
10:30 - Wake up in a panic remembering that I'm supposed to be at Jr Programs in an hour. Decide to beg out, since I feel like I've been kicked in the face by an elephant, and could go for another nap.
11:00 - Finally give up on 2nd nap out of guilt for not having done laundry or gone to give my critters a proper visit yet today. Grrr...
11:10 - Bring snacks to the goaties and get my snuggles, bring bread and lettuce to the hens (who are locked in the run do to high hawk activity) and am greeted with soft clucks and much flapping.
Noon - Start laundry that I should have done yesterday. Oops.
Noon 'til 2ish - Drifting throughout the house doing weird little odds and ends that I'd never really think about as "chores", per say, like misting my shiitake mushroom patch, sterilizing the syringes for Chardy's antibiotic shots, digging up all of the books and dvd's that need to be returned to the library (Seriously - with the late fees I pay, they could build a wing of the library in our family's name.), taking out something for dinner, composing a grocery list, etc., etc.

Not too bad for a lazy day! It sure as heck helps to have a very supportive husband, kids who are old enough to dress themselves and tell time, a pizza man on speed dial and a lot of very supportive friends and family. They carry through my physical/emotional funks until I can get myself sorted out again.

So next time you get frustrated with yourself for not being on top of your game, take a minute to really think through what you've done with your day. We do more than we realize, even when we're not 100%. And it's worth remembering that acclaim and perfection aren't really what mothering is about. I'll take my loving, imperfect, spunky lovebugs over uptight, overachieving, high strung superstars any day. I am a Chicken Mom. I fawn over my babies, but don't hold them so close that they can't experience the world for themselves. I try to make the best nest that I can for them, but encourage them to also seek their own adventures, often against my own better judgement. I let them know that I love and accept them a million different ways, and they do the same for me. I'm allowed lazy days on the couch, because of the people and support systems that I am surrounded with, two of whom I gave birth to. They take me as I am and I them, or we all try to at least. They are growing up to be good people with good hearts and love and empathy to spare, and imperfect me and my underachieving ways had a hand in that. Take that, Tiger Mom.

The Queen Goes to Town

Our sweet Gertie girl is going in for her first ever vet visit tomorrow. For the past week or so, she's had a wheezy cough that comes in little fits. At least I think that it's a cough. The girls say it's hiccups and Bill initially thought that it was a sneezing fit. Whatever it is, it's not going away, and it can't be good.

Like I normally do when I'm blindsided by something weird, I googled the bejeebus out of "goat coughing". Most sites say that it is likely lungworm (EWWW!), but we wormed Gert & the boys just a month and a half ago, so I'm not too sure about that being a the culprit. Other sites say that it can be a bacterial infection that requires antibiotics like erythromycin. I'm not overly keen on the idea of throwing antibiotics at every little sneeze and cough, but when you see a creature in your care suffering, you do what you've got to do. I would gladly give her the meds to make her well again, but with our girl being in the family way, and so early in her pregnancy, well, I'm hesitant.

And so, the Gertinator is going to take a little ride into town with us tomorrow to see the doc. I'm not sure how I'm going to get her there. Dare I let a goat loose in the back of my station wagon?

Assuming that we get there in one piece, I'm hoping that the doc might be able to confirm Gert's pregnancy & dates for us, just to be sure. At this point, according to my voodoo math, Gertie is due to deliver on May 8th.

So here's hoping that we'll all make it to the vet and back safe and sound (and without hoof-shaped bruises on our foreheads) and that our sweet Herd Queen is restored to health lickety-split. Viva la Reina Gertrude!

Stuck in Funkytown

You know what it feels like to be in a funk for a while, before realizing that you've been in a funk for a while, and even after becoming cognizant of your funky disposition still find yourself unable to bust out of said funk? Well, that's where I am. Uhg.

For one thing, I have horrifically bad sinuses that have been whooping on me for the last two months, sucking the energy right out of me. Come November, I'll be having a surgery to square them away, which I am simultaneously dreading and looking very much forward to.

But that's not the whole story. I'm not sure if I've even sorted out the whole story. All I know for sure is that I'm in valley right now and I could really go for a peak. I have this gorgeous new land that would love my attention/mowing/pruning, but I seriously cannot work up the gumption to go out and do a darned thing. My mojo, she is M.I.A.

I've often wondered if I have a touch of the Seasonal Affective Disorder, but this seems rather early in the season for that to be hitting already. And I like Fall, I really do, so what the heck?

Help a sister out. What do you do to bust out of a funk?

You win some, You lose some

That statement is particularly true of home brewing and wine making. Our homegrown cider seems to be fermenting well.


Note it's promising "krausen" as Billy, the beer snob would doubtless have me point out. ;)

Let's just hope that it keeps on keeping on and doesn't go funky. We unfortunately lost an entire 5-gallon batch of cider last year to some sort of mystery contaminant and had to compost the whole thing. Talk about heartbreak! I feel pretty confident that we will not face that same problem with this batch though, since we not only washed and dried our apples well, but also used a steam juicer rather than a fruit press to juice them, effectively pasteurizing the juice and hopefully, hopefully killing all the bad guys before adding our little yeasty friends.

So, we have 2 1/2 gallons of apple cider, 3 gallons of dandelion wine, 24 bottles of grape wine, 1 gallon of rose hip wine and 1/2 gallon of apricot schnapps to the good. Alas, we lost the blackberry wine this week.

It, like the others, had been somewhat neglected during our move. Somewhere along the way, something funky snuck in and messed it up. My first clue was a bit of white mold in the airlock. Though most of the home brewing websites that I googled said that a little mold in the airlock was no big deal, I'm not really one to gamble with food poisoning and/or going blind. So of course, I had Billy smell it. Our eventual conclusion was that it had probably turned to vinegar, which would have been fine if I could have been sure that it was safe to use. I wasn't, so it too ended up on the compost pile.

Drink up, little wormies!

Acrobatic Slugs?

Has anyone else witnessed this bizarre phenomena?




This dude was not only just hanging there on a string (ew) of his slime (ew!), he was blowing around in the wind and the stuff was bouncing like a bungee cord! I have seen this twice in my yard so far this year, once hanging from the wisteria, and once from a paper birch. I knew that the slugs were out to get me but wow - paratroopers?

Adventures with Poo

Poor little Rocky had a wicked case of pasted vent this morning. Pasted vent a.k.a. clogged butt, is a very serious and frequently deadly condition in chicks. If the babies can't pass poo, they continue to feel "full" and won't eat or drink, usually resulting in death in a day or two. Luckily, we seem to have caught this in time. This is Rocky's latest trial, preceded by his trouble hatching and his having dried membrane stuck to his feathers which made it harder for him to walk well for the better part of his first day here on earth.


Rocky, in the foreground, on the day the he hatched, with Ruthie.

Much to Rocky's dismay, I had to trim his bum-bum feathers and tidy things up with a q-tip. The indignity of it all has him rather traumatized at the moment, and he is now passed out in a corner with several of his siblings piled on top and around him, standing guard against further attacks from the butt-cleaning lady.

Spring Fever, where are you?

If you've ever read this blog before, you are no doubt used to my complaining about the weather. Well, I'm at it again, brace yourself.

Like a lot of folks in the Northwest, I get a touch of the ol' Seasonal Affective Disorder around this time each year when the weather isn't winter-winter weather anymore - falling snow and white-dusted evergreen trees - but instead it's BLAH winter; cold, soggy with overnight frosts spaced just far enough apart that you start to think Maybe I can plant out my... ZAP! Think again, says Mother Nature. Bwahaha!

Recklessly hopeful in spite of knowing better, I've gone ahead and planted a few things out, namely peas from seeds and starts, and a few red kale from starts. I've also started some greens indoors under my grow lights. They're up and growing well. They have faith that spring is coming. Maybe if I crawl underneath the grow lights myself and bask in their twitchy, faux sunshine, I too will wake up hopeful and energized for a new season.

In the mean time, it's all the coffee I can imbibe, vitamin supplements out the ying-yang and sheer stubbornness that are keeping me going through this gloomy, seemingly endless Winter, trudging slowly on toward Spring.

Kicking the Habit

As a step toward feeling better and NOT as a New Year's resolution, I have decided to try and dial-back sugar consumption in our household. It is going so-so.

On the upside, I have discovered stevia. It has already replaced the teaspoon of sugar in my coffee, with none of the tummy-burning side effects of some of the other "alternative" sweeteners that I've tried. It's a small win, but I'll take what I can get.

On the downside, I am still firmly in the grip of an intense sugar jones, and am probably not a lot of fun to be around at the moment. The kids are also not taking things so well. After our Voodoo Doughnut binge (the blame for which lands squarely on Anthony Bourdain), the withdrawl has been unpleasant. I know, that just like exercise, the first few days to a week are the painful part, after which you start feeling benefits and eventually end up feeling better than ever. It's the getting there that's not so fun.

Next on my list of healthful adventures - the making and drinking of green smoothies. I'm not expecting them to be received with open arms, but we're going to give it an honest go. This is going to be an interesting week around here...

Freaky Egg

When I went out to lock the hens up tonight, I checked the nest box just for good measure, and this freaky mess is what I found -



Amelia hadn't laid for 2 days previous to this. By the way - the shell is basically non-existent. It felt like a warmish water balloon. Ew...

So, my questions now are -

a) Should I be concerned about Amelia's health?

b) Can I eat this egg?

c) Do I even WANT to eat this egg? (At the moment - NO.)

Help!

Attack of the Fruit Flies

One of the few downsides to having a nearly nonstop stream of fresh fruits and vegetables in your kitchen is the appearance of the very persistent fruit fly. Try as I might to take the compost out daily, the fruit flies always seem to find a way to hang on. Our recently adopted hobby of winemaking has not helped. I see fruit flies buzzing around the airlocks on our jugs of wine, presumably drowning their sorrow over their inability to reach the sweet, sweet wine itself, and instead huffing up the powerful fermentation gasses that are regularly belched out via the airlock.

In essence, our kitchen is now an extremely popular fruit fly singles bar.

I have tried good old fashioned fly paper, with some success, and gave one of these traps a whirl, with decent results, but the surest way to catch them still seems to be leaving my cup of coffee unattended for 5 minutes. I tip my cup up to take a drink, and if I'm lucky, notice that I have a passenger in my coffee just in time to abort the sip. If I didn't already have it in for these guys, that'd do it. Not cool, flies, not cool.