Wow, I don’t know where the month of January went. Last week was a full one for me. I worked the sale barn on Wednesday and the PO on Friday and today. Evelyne and I went shopping one afternoon and the next thing you know the week is over. Evelyne and Rick left for Texas this morning. Fortunately the weather is supposed to be nice while they are gone. That is a good thing since I will be working 3 days at the PO as well as the sale barn. Pam also wants me to work more hours at the restaurant (3-4 days a week). Monday after Reeser’s return from TX we have to go to Colby to pick up USDA commodities. Whatever happened to my planned retirement?? Rusty fell into the stock tank last week. He was walking on the ice in it apparently. He still didn’t get wet down to his skin as his curly cashmere coat is so thick. It did take two days for him to completely dry off. Coop order cycle opens again tomorrow. If all goes well we should have quite a bit of salad green, Evelyne cooked up several new batches of jelly, the herb rubs are mixed and packaged and the chickens are laying eggs again so we should be all set to fill orders. One of the days I worked at the PO was a training day to learn a new rural route. I fear that may learning that may have been a mistake. I really don’t want to work there more than 3-4 days a month and after foolishly agreeing to help them out in this bind I think I have opened myself up to being expected to work way more than that. Oh well, at least today was a nice day to be out driving around delivering mail.

A Cat's Lot in Life

A DAILY MORSEL “Cats' hearing apparatus is built to allow the human voice to easily go in one ear and out the other.” Stephen Baker

Sometimes I wonder if it goes in ANY ear. There were numerous cats in the house with me today. It was b-r-r-r-r- cold outside. The water for the animals froze nearly as fast as we filled their bowls. The cats were quite comfortable sleeping around the wood burning stove. What a life. In my next life I want to be a cat who owns a master like me.

Prairie House Pied Piper

What a hilarious sight! I looked out my kitchen window earlier and saw Evelyne dressed in her red coat heading toward the chicken pen with something in her hands. I think she was carrying cartons for eggs, but I couldn't tell for sure. Whatever she had must have been intriguing to the animals. Pied Piper has nothing on her. She was followed by 3 turkeys, 6 chickens, 4 cats and a guinea bringing up the rear. I laughed out loud. Sorry, I didn't have the camera handy.

Winter???

The weather here this week has been phenomenal. It has reached highs in the 60s all week. Tomorrow we will return to winter with highs in the low 30s. Ah, but it was a pleasant respite. I used up a half hour of my lifetime this morning just watching the turkeys. One hen is definitely the leader. The Tom is very subservient to her. She finds the food, she protects them from perceived dangers and she is the biggest bully. The guineas are no longer allowed to go into two of their favorite feeding plotsas she has claimed them for the turkeys. The cats give the turkeys plenty of room as well. After watching them closely this morning, I can see why. They have beaks that could obviously do some serious damage. They eat carrion among other things and they are well built for tearing into meat. They have claws on their toes which are nearly big enough to qualify as talons. Their wings could easily beat a small creature to death. The white domestic turkeys raised for the Thanksgiving tables are really stupid animals with no survivor instincts. Our turkeys are at the other end of the spectrum. I'm thinking turkeys and cockroaches may be the only things left on earth at the end. (And then the turkeys will eat the cockroaches.) The plants in the greenhouse are growing well with the exception of the spinach which has become infested with aphids. I don't know how the bugs got in there. It is too early in the season to be able to order ladybugs to exterminate them so we had to resort to diatomatious earth. It is messy, but about 85% effective. So far none of the other greens have been affected, so we still have salad to eat. Yummy. We transplanted the tomatoes Evelyne started in her new Christmas present yesterday...all 72 of them. They all look like they are doing well. I sure hope lots of people want to buy tomato plants this spring or we will have some huge jungle of tomatoes growing in our back yard! She then planted basil seeds in her planting dome so we won't need to buy those plants this year either. All the warm weather has given me a serious case of spring fever. I'm ready to go play in the yard. Since it is too early on the calendar for that to happen, I'll leave you with this thought: "Worrying is like a rocking chair, it gives you something to do but doesn't get you anywhere."

Big Things with Wings (Encore)

8/29/2004 You may remember the incident a couple of years ago with the possum. This tops that. Our guinea fowl were making a real racket just before dawn. I crawled out of bed in my night shirt, went to the door and yelled for them to shut up. Usually that will end the racket. This time it didn't. So I put on my sandals which were beside the door and went outside. Then I hear a real ruckus coming from the chicken house. Unarmed and stupidly fearless I opened the chicken house door only to have the biggest pair of wings I have EVER seen fly past my eyes as my exposed toes stumble over a dead chicken on the floor. Oh, Crap. My eyes have adjusted to the near dawn light and I can tell this is a bird to be reckoned with as he flies into the chicken wire enclosing the chicken house. My first thought was, "I wonder where Rick put my 22 rifle?" then, realizing that the walls on the east side are metal I knew it didn't matter because I couldn't use it anyway. Okay, here is a broom handle which was previously a perch for chickens-now a weapon, I hope. The bird is now hanging upside down on the chicken wire so I whack it in the head. He looks at me with those big owl eyes and hisses. The broom handle is way too small for this job. I go out of the chicken house and into the goat pen, fumbling in the breaking light to find the log we use for cracking through ice in the winter. Go back into the chicken house hoping the stupid bird has found its way out the door by now. No such luck. He is hanging from wire on the opposite wall. I go back outside the house thinking "If I had a knife I could just stab the stupid thing through the wire." No knife. Back inside I pick up the log once again and toss it on the bird. He falls to the ground, still staring back at me. I pick up another small board and hit him with that. No effect. Now a brick. No effect...especially since it didn't land anywhere close to him. Pick up the broomstick again. Whack him a couple of times. His wing is outstretched-possibly broken and he is lying on the ground still staring at me. There is no way I'm touching this bird. Back out into the morning twilight I go to retrieve a large yellow bucket. Bringing the bucket into the chicken house, I drop it over the bird and slide bucket and bird out into the pen and off to get ready for the farmers' market goes Jo. That afternoon we moved the bucket (still upside down) into the shade of the barn. As we moved the bucket his tail stuck out the bottom edge. When we stopped moving the bucket, the tail moved back under the bucket. Obviously he is not dead. Not willing to be exposed to this creature again, we called the wildlife people. By the time they got there the owl had been under the bucket long enough to recover and it's wing was not broken. The game warden took the bucket off and the owl flew away. It has not been back in the chicken house and we haven't had anymore dead chickens. He may have been the one who stole my Patches cat however. I hope he learned his lesson. Don't mess with Prairie House! Post Script: A month or so after this was written we found a dead owl who had nearly decapitated himself on the electric pole guy wire. We shed no tears.

I don't like Denver

I went to Denver in Sunday to have dinner with Earl before I left on my trip to Nevada on Monday. We were going to a Chinese Buffet and the quickest way to get there was to drive I-225. It was masquerading as a parking lot on Sunday afternoon. I am really uncomfortable when that happens as I have been previously involved in two major crashes as a result of traffic on the interstate including the one which broke my neck. It was a good reminder of why I moved to Kansas. We did make it to the restaurant in one piece and enjoyed a nice dinner. After that I went to Jan’s house to unload my car which was full of things for the Coop’s Annual meeting and some bags of clothing for Goodwill. I was staying with Jan because my flight out left earlier in the morning than Earl is usually out of bed and I didn’t want to disturb him. I checked the weather reports before I left Kansas and Denver was supposed to get a “Skiff” of snow on Monday afternoon. I woke up on Monday morning at 5AM to 2 inches of the white stuff on the ground. By the time I got ready to leave the house at 6AM the snow was 3 inches deep. Obviously I misinterpreted the meaning of “skiff” and “afternoon”. Driving to the airport was a major stress maker as the electricity was out in several neighborhoods and the stop lights weren’t working. A 20 minute drive took me nearly an hour. Another reminder of why I don’t live in Denver and commute to work anymore. Saint Francis, Kansas may not have all the shopping and entertainment available in the major metropolis, but it sure is a lot better place to live than Denver.

Just a Little Field Mouse (Encore)

The cats are loving the warmer weather and getting back outside and into the rodent killing mode. Another BIG pack rat bit the dust last night (no boo-hoo there). Patches caught a little field mouse and decided as a Grandmother that her daughter wasn't doing a good job of teaching her off-spring to hunt. She came to the door crying to be let in (not an uncommon event; they think I have nothing better to do than play doorman). Unfortunately, I didn't notice she had a tail hanging out of her mouth as she entered. No problem, it undoubtedly is dead. She dropped it on the floor for Ditto and it took off, as did my sister Evelyne who does not do well with rodents of any kind-indoors or out. The mouse ran under a table and hid. Ditto walked around the table a couple of times, couldn't find it, grabbed his little fake catnip mouse and ran off into the kitchen with his prize. We probably should have called him Dodo instead of Ditto. Not to worry however, as Blockhead is watching as the scene unfolds. He knows where the mouse went and goes after it. All the while I am trying to find an implement with which to kill it so it can be removed from the house and Evelyne is already out the door. Ditto sees Blockhead playing with it and having so much fun he has to check it out. He races in, grabs it from Blockhead's grasp, firmly clenches it in his teeth and growls his warning that it is HIS. I pick him up, put him and the rodent out the door, Evelyne comes back in the door and life goes on as usual. This is such a fun place to live.

Little Things

Sometimes it doesn't take much to make me happy. Yesterday the plumber finally showed up to install my new sink. It looks nice.

That made me happy. Evelyne already has tomatoes coming up in the new plant starting kit she got for Christmas. That made me happy. The chickens are laying more eggs again. That makes me very happy.

The sun is shining brightly today. That makes me happy.

See, it really doesn't take much to make me happy.

Then again, some days it doesn't seem to take much to make me unhappy either, but we won't go into that. Hope today is one of your Happy Days. Aunt Jo

A new partner for Lucky Duck

We are getting a new drake! He probably won't arrive at Prairie House for several days. He isn't the same kind as our Lucky Duck (the only one we have left), but at least he is a duck. Bad Goose just isn't her type, although he does try to court her. Our hope is to have some little ducklings to add to our menagerie. They are so cute when they are little. I tried to trade Bad Goose for the drake. Instead, I was offered another goose in exchange for Lucky Duck. No thanks. After some additional discussion, we are getting the drake and keeping BG and NOT getting another goose. In exchange, some of the ducklings will go back to the place their daddy came from. (That is IF we get any ducklings!) The turkeys are still doing their part to entertain us. The cats are very vigilant when the turkeys are nearby. Both hens and the tom are still growing and we are wondering how large they will end up being. Research I have done indicates that it is unlikely we will get any little ones from them. I hope that is incorrect. Stay tuned...I'll let you know how that turns out. Golden boy is in the dog house. He snuck into the greenhouse, which is his favorite place these days, and didn't come out when I did. While we were away buying supplies he unplanted the seeds I planted last weekend. Bad kitty! Bad kitty! Yesterday afternoon was spent replanting seeds. At least he didn't knock off anything that was already sprouted and growing well. We actually have salad greens available for sale on HPFC this month as well as cilantro, parsley, rosemary, marjoram, thyme and sage. The peppers and tomatoes that got frosted and pruned all the way back are now starting to grow again. It will be interesting to see how long it will take them to bloom again. Evelyne got a really nifty seed starting unit as a Christmas present. It has the heat mat with the planting tray and dome. WooHoo. We had been talking about getting one of those. She already planted tomato seeds in it! The chickens are starting to lay eggs again. That's a good sign that winter is going to be over before too many more weeks have gone by. That makes me very happy. Hope you have found something to make you happy today as well. Aunt Jo

Stupid weather

Today is instant ice cream headache cold here. Delivering mail was a real chore with winds gusting to 40 MPH. Tough to hang on to slippery mail with frozen fingers and biting winds. It was made even worse by the fact that yesterday I was outside without a coat enjoying sunshine in 60 degree weather. That idea of moving to Bali where it is always comfortably warm but never hot, clothing is optional and they like Reubenesque women gets more attractive every day!

Oh, I wish I hadn't done that!

You know how we often do things in spite of that little voice which says "Don't do that." And then it comes back and bites us. I admit, I got bit today. I was moving a tire and wheel over to the water tank so the goats could stand on it and it would be easier for them to get a drink. I knew I should take the time to go get a wagon to move it, but I figured I could just stand it up and roll it there. I did really good at rolling it. It didn't fall over or get away from me. I felt pretty smug. I decided it was close enough and started to lay it down. But it wasn't close enough and it fell on my toe. That really smarted! But it felt OK by the time I got through with the chores and left the pen. A bit later I had the feeling that the seam in my sock was rubbing against the seam of my shoe. So I changed my socks. It still felt funny. So I changed my shoes. Then I remembered the tire incident. And now my toe is really swollen and black and blue. I think it is broken, but I'm not going to go to the doctor for it. That would only result in being told to take pain relievers and try to stay off of it plus a huge bill for their wisdom. The true wisdom of this story is: When the mind tells you something, it is a good idea to listen.