Passenger fatigue

I would really like to know why a day spent sitting in a car as a passenger makes a person so much more tired at the end of the day than a day spent actually working at manual labor. After a nine hour car ride, we had a few brief moments to go to our room to freshen up before tonight's conference meetings started. That bed looked mighty tempting. I was hoping to have some spare moments to spend with my nephew and niece who live in Lubbock, but spare moments are at a premium. Tomorrow's schedule starts at 7AM and lasts until around 4PM when we will be off in the car again to go to Nazareth, TX for a dinner meeting. An overnight stay in a B&B there and we will be off again the next morning headed to Rocky Ford, CO. Thursday night we have a Board Meeting for High Plains Food Coop and Friday morning a producer workshop is scheduled in Rocky Ford. I will be back home again Friday night. I don't think I'll be leaving the farm for a while after that! Home Sweet Home.

Oh Boy! Bees!

I'm so excited. I'm going to get a couple of hives of bees again. I haven't had a hive of bees since I lived in Aurora, which is a story unto itself. The bees I had in Aurora were so gentle I could take their honey without needing the beekeepers suit. I hope these are the same way. They are being imported from Colorado via Mark, the same gentleman who gave us our original goat, Ginger (who is due to have kids on the 7th of March...watch for that update). My next project is to peruse the beekeeping supply sites to decide which kind of apparatus I will use to house the new pollen spreading, honey producing residents of Prairie House. What fun! On a sadder note, one of our does had kits last night. Of course, she chose the coldest night of the season to have them and unfortunately she couldn't keep them warm and they didn't survive. We will let her try again in a month or so. On Sunday we will put eggs in the incubator. They should begin hatching at the start of Spring Break for the grandchildren. If any of the parents allow the grandkids to visit, they will hopefully have a chance to observe as the little creatures struggle to free themselves from the shell. It takes a long time for a chick to hatch, dry, get on its feet and look so cute. With crocus blooming, tulips and daffodils peeking their little leaves out of the ground and babies coming, it must be close to spring. I am so ready this year! Hope you are doing well, regardless of what the season might be. Love, Aunt Jo

Simple instructions for making lard

Rendering Lard is not all that difficult, it just takes some work. Step #1. Buy a couple of pigs in April or May. Step #2. Rebuild and tighten the fence you thought would hold pigs. Rebuild and tighten again. Step #3. Give the pigs a couple of bags of feed (or several) until the garden comes in. Step #4. Give them every extra squash, green bean, or other leftover edible from the garden, even the vines and peels. All your food scraps and anything else you can find. Step #5. In about October when frost comes, confine you pigs to a raised pen so they can no longer eat their poop and feed them straight shelled corn, as much as they will eat. For about two months. Step #6. Kill the hogs. This is an all day job for 5-7 normal people or a morning job for two old farmers. Step #7. Set aside all fat while cutting up your pieces of meat. You will have loin (Pork chops), hams, shoulders, fatback, middling, a couple of roasts, ribs and trim to make sausage. Step #8. After salting all the joints, fatback and middlings (or sending them for bacon) trimming the sausage to make it lean, putting the loin aside to be sliced later and wrapping and freezing the tenderloin and liver; then cut all the fat with the lean cut out (or your lard will go rancid) into 1/2 inch cubes and put it in a large wash pot. Build a small fire to get it started and cook until it comes clear. Do not scorch or allow to cool. Step #9. Dip from the wash pot through a new cheese cloth and strainer into new lard stands. Put lids on and use to raise your cholesterol to a decent level. See, that is not so hard. Thanks to Bill Dunlap of Lightwood Gatepost Land and Cattle Co. Lakeview, NC for this wisdom. AND Thanks to the wisdom God gave the girls at Prairie House for NOT ALLOWING PIGS here. Blessings to all who know how or have done this. Love, Aunt Jo

Random thought

"Worrying is like a rocking chair, it gives you something to do but doesn't get you anywhere." Joe Heinen DC

Unless you are a cat in a room full of rocking chairs...then there may be a good reason to worry.

Things that go s-s-s-s-s-s in the night (Encore)

9/10/2004 The latest incident here at Prairie House was enough to make me reconsider the wisdom of leaving the noise, crowds, pollution, traffic and expenses of big city life behind. The kittens (still haven't given those little stinkers away) were playing with a brown paper bag tonight and making enough noise while doing so to wake me from sleep. I went to the living room to see what they were into and found they had apparently knocked over an aerosol can and gotten the button stuck as I could hear the compressed air escaping from it. Before I moved the paper bags to get to the can I noticed it sounded more like someone on a respirator than the hissing of a spray can. This does not sound good. I have no gas pipes in that part of the house, or water pipes either so it isn't a leak. No longer the stupidly fearless woman who took on the owl, I picked up a large umbrella which was standing in the corner and used it to move the papers. I can see no aerosol can or anything else there, but the respiration noise continues. Moving the umbrella around under a coffee table size piece of furniture in the corner I disrupt the noise. This can't be good. I go to the bedroom and put on long pants and a pair of hiking boots, come back to the living room and the sound is still there. Its source turns out to be a snake of some kind. Just what you want to find in your living room at 12:30am. Next problem: How do I get rid of it? The vacuum sweeper was standing nearby so I wheeled it into the area and shoved it under the furniture. Nasty creature attacked the appliance. Obviously need another plan of attack. Broom? Maneuvered it out into the open with the broom handle. Damn cats just stand around with their hackles raised watching this whole incident. No help from them. If my heart ever finally slows to a normal rate I must remember to cut down their rations. The creature has no rattles and appears to be a bull snake. I don't like those things, but when I come across them outside I generally let them go their own way. Not the case in the house. I whacked it repeatedly with the broom handle as it slithered (fortunately) toward the door until it was no longer moving. Grabbed the umbrella with the big poker on the end and lifted the stunned (but I'm sure not dead--nothing scary ever dies simply around here) snake and opened the screen door and tossed him outside on the porch where he laid upside down still not moving. I feel things crawling all over me now. It was a medium sized snake, not nearly as large as the one who lived in the orchard (although I would have sworn when it was slithering that it must have been about 10 feet long). As I sit here I ponder how it got into the house. In a box of vegetables I brought in from somewhere else? Slithered in before I had the screen door installed when people (grand nieces and nephews notoriously) failed to close the front door? Where has it been until tonight? Are there more of them? So as you can see, sleep is not in my immediate future. But I guess I'll try to get some sleep...hopefully all the creatures in the bedroom will be invited ones. Stay well, be happy. Love, Aunt Jo By the way, the snake was not on the porch the following morning. I don't know if it slithered away on its own power or if something came and helped it out of the area.

Stock Tank or Swimming Pool

Karl Kat went for a swim this morning. I don't think he intended to, but he did. He came to the porch drenched and dripping. It was not a pretty site. I had been wondering who would be the next to fall through the ice into the stock tank. Rusty's quick dunk a while back didn't seem to do any permanent damage. Hopefully the same will apply to Karl. His coat is not nearly so thick and curly, and the water DID get down to his skin, unlike Rusty. I brought him into the house and dried him off some with a fluffy towel. It was only about 25 degrees outside when he fell in. I'm glad it was him and not me.

It must be nearly spring.

Spring and the time for babies must be just around the corner. The duck give us her first egg of the season yesterday. We have two hens who think they would like to be mothers. It is a lot cheaper and often more successful to have them hatch the eggs than to put the eggs in the incubator, but then the chicks are not as tame as the hand raised ones. Its a quandary. Maybe we'll do some of both.

We had already planned to set some in the incubator so they would be hatching around the time of the kids spring break. The kids are always fascinated by that.

Unfortunately, we may be having some kittens again around April Fool's Day. Chester was after Juliet before we realized she was even coming in to season. If she does have kittens, I sure hope there are some people at the May flea market who will want to take a kitten home for free!

Ginger should have her kids the first weekend in March. Hopefully she will only have TWO this time!

Flying Fowl

Our birds are one of the most entertaining things about Prairie House. We have one guinea who must have brain damage or is in some other way retarded. He can fly, but apparently he isn't smart enough to figure out how or why flight happens. He will get inside a fence and run the fence row squawking and squawking, complaining he can't get out. It just never occurs to him to fly over. Last night I actually had to open a gate so he could get out of the area he was certain he was stuck in. Then he couldn't figure out if he should go into the chicken house with all the others or just what he should do. Then he decides he can fly and propels himself right into the wall because he can hear the others inside calling him. He is a Pied Guinea, which is a cross between a Pearl and a White. They are somewhat rare. I can see why. The turkeys, on the other hand, are very strong fliers. Not graceful, but powerful. They have become fascinated with the satellite dish I have on the roof for my internet. It makes quite a racket in the house when they fly up there. They do not fly direct to their final destination. They make stops on the way. At night before they go to roost they first fly up to the top of the rabbit cages, then onto the awning on the bus, then on to the roof, and finally up into the tree. They roost about 20 feet off the ground and it is humorous to watch them land on the branch. The first one to roost gets quite the amusement park ride when the next one lands. The Tom is always to last to get on the branch and I am amazed it doesn't break because it bounces quite a ways when he lands on it. Apparently our ducks can fly as well. Yesterday they decided their pool in their area of the yard wasn't big enough. I went out to see what Bad Goose was fussing about and he was standing at the edge of the pen complaining because the two ducks were in the BIG pool in the other yard having a wonderful time swimming. Fortunately, all our creatures respond to us and getting them back into their own assigned space was not a difficult task. (Sorry, no story of me falling in the mud while chasing the critters will appear in today's blog.)

Winter?

The weather here has been phenomenal, truly amazing. It has been sunny and warm for almost a week. The only problem with this is that the calendar says winter isn't over. I'm not sure if it will be harder on the plants or on the people when the winter temperatures return.

Spring can't be far off, however, because we have crocus blooming now.

(That white stuff isn't snow, it is shredded paper for mulch.) Tulips and daffodils are peaking their leaves out of the ground as well. I hope they don't get nipped.

Lucky Duck's New Beau

Remember back in early January when Lucky Duck got a new mate? Well here he is.

I think he is a handsome dude. She still thinks she likes Bad Goose best. Silly duck.

The good thing about spoiling pets

When I came home from work yesterday I found the door open on one of the rabbit cages and the rabbit missing. The cats were all outside for the day which didn't bode well for the bunny. I walked around looking for bunny remains or bunny fur or even, hopefully, a live bunny. I wandered all over the place and finally came full circle and back to where I started. No Rabbit. Then I decided that even though we have blocked off the bus so nothing can get under it, I would look there. Lo and behold! The bunny was just sitting by a log near the bus. I walked up to it as it looked at me and thought, "This should be easy, she is tame." But whenever I got to within a couple of feet from her, she hopped away. An AH-HA moment came when I remembered that Evelyne feeds them homemade bunny cookies every morning. I got a cookie and approached the bunny. Cautiously, she approached me. As she grabbed for the cookie, I grabbed for her and like magic, she was back in her cage. I guess it is a good thing that my sister spoils our creatures. The other bunnies were happy too, because they got treats in the afternoon. It wouldn't have been fair to just give her one.