Hot hot hot

Yesterday morning I got started VERY early, before the sun was up. I mixed up chicken coop scrapings with straw, old horse manure, spoiled hay, and dirt in the wheelbarrow. I got the tires from the west garden and took them to the east garden where the remaining potato plants are. I put the tires around the potato plants, and filled the tires with my wheelbarrow mix, up tot he top leaves of the potato plants. Then I mixed up my spray and sprayed the east garden.

While I was doing that, DH was expanding the 'rooster coop'. It was too small especially in this heat. So he measured and cut, then I crawled into the rooster yard and snagged the chickens one by one. He had wire-tied some iron fencing together and made a temporary yard for them to stay in while he redid their coop. At first he didn't slide the last piece of fence over the top, but the first rooster fooled him and immediately leaped up and flew out! After a few seconds of screeching and squalling - mostly by the rooster - he went back in and we got the rest of them.

Halfway through the day I stopped and got a bucket of Icy water from the hydrant, and went around refilling everyone's waterers. The chickens were panting. I poured some water over the edge of the temporary yard and the chickens immediately started digging into it for the coolness. Today is supposed to be very hot again - and then we are supposed to get vicious thunderstorms tomorrow that should bring the temps back down to the 70's-80's instead of the 90's for another week. We had sweat rags that we kept soaked in the icy pump water to keep washing our faces with so the salt wouldn't run into our eyes, and draped them over the backs of our necks to help keep us from getting overheated. I drank over two of those BIG screw-top-with-straw bottles of sweet tea.

While I was scraping up the horse poop in the barn, I found where some Japanese beetle had gone to town, laying her larvae everywhere. I scooped them out, separated them from my manure, and put them in the rooster yard. They 'went fool' over that!

While I was in the East garden I went over and stared at my wheat patch. HEY! It ISN'T all grass! There's small green wheat heads showing!! I have wheat!

So now the roosters have a nice A frame coop instead of their small box, and all of the potatoes that were big enough are now "tired". Today I have to get into the west garden and get to work. DH is exhausted from yesterday, and has to go in to town today to get his knees shot up anyway, so he's sitting and resting this AM. I am sunburnt and sore but there is so much to be done. The grasshoppers that Utah is fussing about we are starting to have too - and I predicted them coming here after seeing the population last year.

Gawrsh it's hot.

OK, it's only 79, with about 20% humidity and a 25 mph southerly breeze; but it's HOT, especially when you have to work in it.

I'm doing laundry and working on some ceramics, also decided to make ice cream today. It is smooth and creamy and sitting in the freezer right now. There are little bits of fresh strawberries and bananas in it.I got some beautiful fresh red raspberries too, and cut them up into little pieces. Most of the strawberries and raspberries I cut up and froze, but I have a small bowl of raspberries smashed with sugar in the fridge. I couldn't resist keeping them out, even though I don't have the slightest idea what I will do with them. They are my favorite fruit. I made a big bowl of tuna salad, too; and am thawing chicken and Little Ceasar's cheese bread out for supper. Pondering what I can do with those things, too.

I'm staying inside today; mostly because, after all of the running around we did yesterday, I got sick and had to take some pills and sit very quietly for several hours. I HATE that. So much I needed/wanted to do, and of COURSE I was unable to finish. grrrrrrrrrr.

The chickens are getting bigger and bigger. They really love getting moved about the garden, getting new grass to pick and new bugs to eat every few days. The roosters in the stationary pen are getting big; I pull grass and feed it to them, too. The girl at the feed store said, "Why don't you feed them cracked corn instead of mash?" - because I want the roosters to be as fat as possible, not rangy yard birds, when I butcher them.

The remaining wild mama turkey wandered through the yard yesterday -with eleven chicks in tow. So cute.

Even though it hasn't rained in four days, the soil still is damp down below and the plants are growing beautifully. I'll have to get the tires out and put them around the potatoes soon. Everything's growing, almost everything is working out the way I want... so I hate being sick and miserable, hate having to be careful, hate having to go sit down and rest every little while. There's still so much to do!

More Split than a Tree here

And then, of course, there is that tree.

A major point of contention to past owners, the tree was planted on the other side of the sidewalk, right on village property. It had grown to be a huge maple, spreading wide across the street and front yard. The sidewalk was buckled over the roots, and the folks down the road had sewer problems. Some said it was because of the tree. Previous owners denied it. But what is undeniable is that the tree was not on our property. Facts are facts, not emotion.

Paul and Mike discussed it several months back. Mike told him that it was of no concern to us; that the tree was not ours, not on our property. He said that because, unlike a lot of folks, he doesn't leave that 2 foot wide strip unmowed and neglected. When he is out on the riding lawnmower, he sees no big deal about riding for a minute more to mow that strip, too. No it isn't our problem - but if you want the yard to look even, you should mow everything at the same time. All Mike asked was when they cut it down, that we get it for firewood.





Well, yesterday Paul came over and cut it down. I was at work for the morning, but heard the saws. By the time I came home at noon, the tree was already down. Three neighbor kids, sweet girls and funny - came over to help Paul and his wife Enid load the branches into the town pickup, our pickup, and onto a borrowed trailer. Then their Mom came down too. (This family and ours have the strangest connection - in a town of 177 people, both her hubby and mine have the same first and last names. And her name is - Beth. So we are called "the 'other' Mike Jones' ". )


Two pickup truck hauls and one front-end loader haul later, and the tree was gone - except for the logs that we are moving to the back firewood pile, and the big stump.



The tree had a HUGE center hole rotted out, full of bugs and chewed wood pulp, brown and damp and not lovely at all. It couldn't have even been processed for some lovely maple boards, because the rot was so pervasive. Eventually the tree would have come down, perhaps violently - and who knows what damage it would have caused.
But after it sets up awhile, the wood will make a lovely fire next winter.





Enid suggested that the stump could hold a planter; sure enough, with the deep hole in the center, it could nestle one in there comfortably.

Of course the previous owner is angry; no matter how often she tells herself that she sold the property, she is unable to let go of the fact that she raised her children here and has an emotional connection to it. But this is a VERY small town, and the neighbors don't forget things, other things that happened, nor how her ex sneered at them and told them that now that they had sold their house, all of their taxes were going up, and laughed in their faces. (I was there when he said it.) That and other things I have experienced that have been in diametric opposition to what she and the ex told me, plus the condition of not just the house but the pasture, yard, and the barns, lead me to believe that emotion rather than reason played a big part in why the town has become so friendly and open to us... and why the folks have become more verbal about insults and slights and behavior that they found, if not insulting, at least unacceptable in the past.

I try very hard to be polite and diffuse the situations and comments when they come up. Everyone has their own version of reality. And what happened here in the past is - past. All I can do is make a fresh start with folks whom I am learning to like, and establish that we may be independent - but are not so very different. Some people find it hard to adjust to new situations, they deny them, rail against them, and steep themselves in the bitter tea of regret and resentment.

We are people who look forward; not emotionally, but with reason based on facts and practicalities. Perhaps that is the difference. We could have railed against the unfairness of life that made Mike a cripple, that took so much from us. We could have stayed where we were and moped about, been martyrs and pathetic whiners with no hope, no goals, no plans, and no joy. We could have become that sad old couple down the road who never did anything, any more, except sat and watched TV, shopped endlessly at Wal-Mart, and whined about how evil the world had become; our whole house and life smelling of sorrow and self-pity. Or - we could change our latitude and attitude, and start a new and buoyant, forward looking chapter in our lives. The choice was ours. We made it, irrespective of what others thought or believed about us. We choose to be happy. Like the cutting of the tree, when the rot was pervasive, we chose to take another step into another destiny.

Grey Days and Labor

Still cool and rainy here. A Tornado passed 20 miles south of us on Sunday, and today another one went south as well. The sky has been alternating with bright sun and dark rolling threats all day. This morning I got out on the first hill and finished putting in my juniper windbreak seedlings; 50 now all told. June may seem late for planting but the lows at night are still in the 40s here!

Yesterday hail threatened so I went out and put the month-old Barred Rocks in their coop. Rain they are starting to understand, but I didn't want a surprise hail to knock one of them out! We will have to switch from starter to mash, they are eating so much now that they are out of the brooder and running around! They come to the fence now inquiringly when I come out and sit on the cement block nearby. They want me to pull them some grass; it's like I am the Salad Bar caretaker at the buffet! I am watching them to determine which two roosters will get to be the breeding stock, and which will just be fattened for later. It's getting easier to tell them apart; the one that comes right up to the fence and cocks his eye up at me expectantly, the two who just hate each other and will not only chase each other around the pen but knock each other off of the top of the waterer and feeders. There are two hens that break up their little fights; like little moms or cops! Funny. I don't name them; it makes them easier to eat later.

So I went up on the first hill to put in my windbreak trees. I put them in the wheelbarrow with my SeaRich fertilizer in a lot of water. They were packed in shredded paper and so were stll green and damp. I put in the posthole digger, and a bag of sunflower seeds from the flowers last year - about 5 pounds of seed as well, and a bucket. I seem to take a bucket with me wherever I go now! The ones I planted before - about one-third were parched, windblown, and not doing so well. After I put in the remaining trees, I took the soaked-in-fertilizer shredded paper out of the bottom of the wheelbarrow, and padded the first trees with it, then covered that with the sandy soil. I threw handfuls of the sunflower seeds all over the hill around them. Sure enough, as I finished, the rains came up and started patting the seeds into the soil.

The clover and silage seed that I strewed all over the hill in February is coming up at last; bright green silage, cool green red clover, already with starting 'heads' on top. The 'honeybee' feed clover is already trying to bloom. Wild indigo is everywhere too, and some bright yellow flowers in clumps that I don't recognize, but the leaves are too flat and rounded for leafy spurge.

I don't get to get out in the pasture much; too much to do here down around the house with the garden and chickens starting. So today I wanted to look at an old tree that was laying down in the pasture. When we moved here with the overgrown pasture in the summer, I didn't see it, but with the winter die-off it was there, a grey-black length on the brown and yellowed grasses. So I went up to look at it. I pulled on the closest end, and it broke off. Red Cedar! What a heavenly smell! Not big enough to cut into boards any wider than 2 inches, and only as big around at the root as my two hands spread. I couldn't drag it back to the house today, but may tomorrow. Nothing rots here, just dries out, so the wood freed of the accumulated dirt and bark is just as sweet and fresh as it can be.

This afternoon was stormy and dark, thundery and gloomy. A neighbor dropped by with an old iron gopher trap for us to use. It springs up when tripped and drives two iron hooks into the gopher; doesn't even have to be baited. 'Way cool and 'way organic! LOL Look out you little furry demons...

Nothing Special

No, really, I just don't think that what is going on here is all that special. Except, of course, to me.

Having a 100 year old farmhouse, and 60 acres, and barns and fencing and a corral and pasture and living 150 miles from the closest interstate, closest Wal-Mart, is just not that big a deal. Why should it be? It is what I have always wanted; what DH and I talked about since before we were married. Planting things and watching them grow and produce, raising animals for food - these things I have done on a small scale since I was 10, always wanting a bigger piece of property to do it on, always lamenting the tiny garden spots and tiny chicken yards I had, always wishing for something more. This is what drove me. I wanted nothing special, nothing fancy, nothing overdone, nothing high-end or fancy or 'the latest thing'.

Another thing that drove me was living thru the recession of the late 70's-early 80's. It is HARD to be hungry, hard to weigh the cost and quality of food against things like the light bill and water bill. People thought I was crazy because I collected kerosene lamps, all shapes and sizes. I'd lived briefly in a place with no electricity and no running water, though, and having such things is a comfort to me. Having them filled and sitting on a shelf now is an even greater comfort. Having a basement full of dehydrated food, and a freezer full of vegies and meats and even fresh-frozen yeast rolls, ready for the oven, makes me feel strong and decisive. Shucks, having a basement at all makes me happy! Having a stack of wood drying against the garage in preparation for next winter's storms, that makes the cast iron stove roar and boil the water pan on top, that heats the whole house upstairs and down, makes me smile and feel content.

My friends still ask, but why Nebraska? Well, the West stole my heart 30 years ago. I've lived in San Antonio, Albuquerque, and Lordsburg, NM. The mountains, the dry air, the wonderful and powerful storms - and the absolute lack of humidity - is inspiring. I was born and raised in Charleston, lived south of there for over 20 years, and the oppressive heat and humidity just wears on me. It's hard to explain to people who have never lived anywhere else. I don't like the ocean - and haven't, since I was a little girl, even though I spent my summers on it. I am inspired by mountains and hills - the mountains are just a few short hours away from me now, and the hills and rivers that surround me are breathtaking. I like being outside, working my muscles and my dirt and my animals outside, not sitting inside in the air conditioning like a beaver in its dam, trying to breathe underwater everytime I step outside.

People here are tougher than those city folk and rednecks I left behind - they don't sit on their porches all day talking about hunting and how country they are; they work from see to cain't see, and are blunt and honest and fun to be around. They don't grouse about what they don't have, and work hard for what they do. They don't care what the rest of the country does. They'll visit it on occasion, but have no interest in living there. While the Libertarians I knew back east ran their yips about the failing government and failing economy, and still shopped at the malls and Wal-Mart, and talked about their great plans for when everything fell down - these people here are true survivalists, because they do it every day. Nothing special. Just healthy, hearty, down-to-earth folk, who don't judge you on appearance, or how well you can argue down at the bar about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but on how much work you do.

In short, I moved to where the food is. It just seemed to make sense - to be where guns and hunting are a way of life and not even worth talking about, where only the teenagers collect trophy heads. To be where the cattle outnumber the people. To be where food grows - not in long endless summers, but in short windows of summer, in between snows. To be where the only trucks that come thru are the ones shipping animals and foodstuffs OUT to market, not in. If the trucks stop, the food stays right here. And it is good food, not preservative-laden and quickfix Applebee's, TGI Friday's, Golden Corral, chinese and mexican and indian and thai and all of those other overhyped and undernourishing things. I hadn't seen a radish in years back east, except for a few thinly sliced ones on salad bars. Here they are in abundance; little sweet peppery things that crunch and melt in your mouth. Nothing special; no fancy sauces or inch-thick breading or desperately exotic flavors. Just good tender meat, fresh vegetables, and pies. OMG, the folks 'round here are the most pie-baking people I know!

Yes, this is what I planned for, hoped for, dreamed about, the whole time I walked about in high heels and silk dresses and hobnobbed with the self-impressed. And now that I have it, I plan on using it, enjoying it, caring for it, and loving it. I plan on staying in my jeans and sweats and getting dirty. I'm enjoying mixing up the horse and chicken manure and compost into fertilizer and usable soil. I'm looking forward to my first big brown, free-range eggs that pop out naturally from a clucking hen, proud to produce and showing off. I'm even looking forward to hanging up the roosters, fat and squawking, by their feet and butchering them for the freezer. Because they are mine, and no one - no one - has a claim to them but me. I don't care if the rest of the world falls down, if the rest of the folk 'out there' riot and demand that the gubbermint feed and clothe and house and drug them, I don't care if the folks I left behind yammer endlessly about their preparations to survive a "Brand New World" in their passionate terrors. No matter what happens, I have my land, my seeds, my animals, and my life - just as I always wanted it. Nothing fancy. Nothing Special.

June 1

Well, I FINALLY got all of the vegies in. Some of the potted ones didn't make it, but of course I save seed and added to the rows. I got my first green bean yesterday, with what looks like many more to come!

Back in the east garden, my 'experimental' garden, I am testing to see what I can and can't grow. There are wheat, oats, potatoes, mangel beets (for the chicken feed in winter), pumpkins, watermelon, and spanish peanuts. Each row filled with straw and hay and horse manure, soaked in water, then the seeds or plants added in and covered up.

So many things are putting their little heads up now; radishes, spinach, potatoes, mustard greens and lettuce. The onions are doing well, the garlic isn't up yet. I have to weed in front of the trees and around the strawberries today. The sunflower seed heads I collected will make a nice line of flowers in front of those trees along the driveway. I even got the petunias in the hanging baskets out on the big hanging planter, and the morning glories and sweet peas scattered about. Mulched the hostas at the base of the verandah and the roses around the arbor in front. Even got the planters at the front stoop planted, in salvia, parsley, and chives; the little roses look to be coming back there as well as the marjoram. I'll have to get out and do some serious weeding, and I used a little sevin dust on the pumpkins and watermelon yesterday. I'll need to do that some more today. I'm holding off on the serious bioinsecticide until everything's up and attractive to bugs, and until the bugs really get serious, but the pumpkins needed it yesterday!

Yesterday while walking the dogs, Sasha 'bowed up' at one of the trees and barked. There was a king snake, about 4 feet long, wrapped around the base of the tree. We left him/her alone - they eat gophers and are not poisonous, although they do have a nasty bite. I've also been told that they keep away rattlesnakes; will fight them and kill them. Good. A welcome addition to the garden, in that case! As long as they leave the chickens alone, we are good.

We moved the chickens outside last week; 80 deg temps outside. They quickly took up scratching and picking. They are not in the tractors yet, just a little hut with a fence around it to get them acclimated. They were terrified at first, of course; but soon got the hang of being outside. They are now eating twice as much, of course. I started giving them cracked corn yesterday to get them used to it. The cold front that came thru last night dropped the temps down again to where they are supposed to be; it will be in the 70s during the day and 40s at night again for awhile. But the chickens are getting acclimated. We lost one - she just kind of stopped eating. When I looked at her, she looked malformed, like her breastbone was separated. So one out of 22 is not bad. Our neighbor Phil told his wife that we didn't have room for chickens - but he thought we were going to have 200 or more! People here seem to like to do things in a BIG way! Apparently he thought I was going to run a chicken farm! Nope - chickens are just a little part of what we want to do.

Phil has started bringing over little mechanical things for Mike to work on; the only problem is that he's not coming back to get them yet! LOL His and Pat's sons, Landon and Luke, are working the ranch with Phil, and they leave the house every morning at 5:30 AM.

Mike is worried that I am getting too much sun; I'm not blistering, just turning red. I'll have to start wearing my hats. I am really developing my muscles, especially my arm and leg muscles, and losing some of the winter fat. It feels so good to be outside all day and working away.

We might go to ID at the end of the month for the National Dexter cattle show. My brother there has never seen them - even though there is a Dexter ranch right outside his ID town! We talked about going to the show together, and he might buy a couple of steers to put here til fall for a meat supply. He has money and no pasture, I have pasture and no money! LOL

Working in the yard and gardens for the next two months will take up all of my time and effort. I'll have to show up to work occasionally for some things; like ths AM I have to go in for abt a half-hour and file a State report, and I'll have to go in when the co-op orders come in to separate them for the teachers and have them in neat piles for them to take with them to set their classrooms back up in August. I've told Dean to just dump the stuff in the gym and I'll separate it out. But otherwise I get the summer off! Wish it was a PAID time off, but oh well - stuff happens.