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By Annette, on March 22nd, 2012% Once upon a time we had three chicks that grew into happy, fat chickens. One flew the coop, never to be seen again. One was killed by an unknown four-legged assailant. The last one, Henrietta, chattered and ran around the yard, living her carefree life, happy enough to peck and scratch and eat treats we brought out for her. Over the past few days, we noticed a change in her: she wasn’t running for treats, and mostly she was sitting under the palmettos or under the rack in the coop, not wandering the yard. Yesterday, she was panting and not moving much at all. Mom and I were out looking at the girls (since we added more chickens to keep her company the past two years) and a storm blew up. I gathered her up from under the palmettos since she wasn’t moving to get out of the storm and took her into the coop, then out of there to the back porch into a box lined with a towel. We knew she was on the way out, so we made her comfortable and kept an eye on her. Last night, she finally stopped breathing and this morning I buried her out on the edge of the property where I’ve buried two other chickens.
So long, Henrietta. You were definitely the favored one amongst the girls.
By Annette, on February 25th, 2012% The bulk of my day has been spent sitting with my laptop, working away, watching various shows on Animal Planet involving cute baby animals. Not a terrible way to spend the day, even with the occasional interruption from someone who wants to know why a brand spanking new domain isn’t visible everywhere on the web, or someone who wants to know why we’re still charging her for a hosting account (that’s still active on the servers) instead of magically knowing that she allowed her domain to lapse so it’s no longer visible. Yes, lady, we always know which of the bazillion domains in the network are active or not at any given moment.
By Annette, on February 21st, 2012% The pool? Just the top of the outside trash can, covered in pollen and dirt. What’s odd is that there are no marks of a reposition to jump off – apparently he (she?) just took off from this position.
By Annette, on February 1st, 2012% you had treats.
By Annette, on January 29th, 2012% From time to time, you just have to have some help in the office. This is especially important when doing something as essential as setting up new servers. When that happens, I know just who to call on for assistance.
By Annette, on January 27th, 2012% Sometimes I wonder about these things, especially when we get an egg that is huge compared to normal eggs. The five normal eggs weigh about 2 3/8 ounces each. The whopper weighs in at 3 5/8 ounces. We’ve gotten several double yolkers since we’ve had chickens, and this one will likely be another – or perhaps a triple. That would be something to see.
By Annette, on January 26th, 2012% 
Mason and his new puppy above. My sleepy puppy here.
By Annette, on January 23rd, 2012% I’ve been working on Mt. Mulch in the rear garden. Mt. Mulch is the truck full of mulch that we had someone deposit on the grounds in order to mulch in the paths in the various gardens and around the trees. The first load, which was up front, I had some help to finish off from family. This time, it’s only me hacking away at it. It’s good exercise, really, but it takes a toll on your traps, from squeezing together armfuls of it to toss into the wheelbarrow. Why pick it up by hand? Have you ever tried using a shovel on a big pile of mulch? That’s a one way ticket to exhaustion and sore everything (and lots of cursing). It’s faster to do it by hand. The only downside is that while the top of the pile is dry, it’s wet under that layer, making it a chore to carve out a chunk to move to the barrow.
Goal: six barrows a day loaded, dumped, and spread, in order to get the back garden finished. That’s about the limit my morning shake gives me in terms of calories/energy, but it works out well since I can generally get one eight foot long section mulched at about an inch per barrow load- which in turn gives me one full row done on the long side of the garden. It’s a lot of mulch, but I only have four rows left, plus the large non-row area where there is currently nothing but which I’m considering for containers. I should be able to finish the mulching of the back area this week and then move on to the berries on the easterly fenceline to get those done.
After the daily loads, it was dog shaving time, something I did in bare feet on the front porch instead of getting dog hair in my boots and socks. They’re so cute with their cuts, but I suspect they were pooped after the excitement/stress of it all.
Tomorrow: more mulching. More flats to go under the lights. More something else. There’s always something else.
By Annette, on January 6th, 2012%
By Annette, on December 29th, 2011% Bad blogger, bad! No posting on a regular basis, what is wrong with you?
Nothing wrong, just incredibly busy around here. Our season has lasted well into the winter, and we’re still harvesting peppers. The tomatoes that showed some promise going into fall succumbed to massive worm damage, so once again this year, like last, no tomatoes (although for wildly different reasons, given that last year it was a cancer of a different sort).
There’s a monarch butterfly chrysalis attached to the upended cooler by my garage, which is right near the butterfly bush I planted for the other monarch caterpillars that graced us with their presence before moving on to whatever secret place they chose to attach themselves. I’m hoping to capture it as it emerges, whenever that happens to be, and I have the plant cam set up on it.
My dreams have been invaded by images of paintings I’ve never seen hanging in galleries I’ve never visited (or heard of). My subconscious is probably trying to tell me something.
My puppy had to have the top part of one of his (non weight-bearing) toes amputated because he tore the nailbed right away from the bone on a ball-fetching excursion. It’s sad to me that he was in pain, but good that he’ll heal just fine and he’ll be right back to his duties.
The bees have been ordered, and should ship to us in May. We’ll be able to put these things to good use.
Most of this will be gone from the new barn when spring arrives, as they’ll be set up as homes for the three packages of bees (and queens) we’ll be receiving. Everyone is pretty excited about this, including me, and I’m looking forward to spring even more than usual.
Seeds for the new year were ordered and have arrived (mostly), and the next two weeks will be seed starting time in the small barn, under the lights – which I need to rerig for the pulley system I came up with to make things easier to wrangle under them. As with years past, we’ll be attempting a good variety of tomatoes to see what we like, or is we can just get any to maturity and get a harvest. This year will be better planned than previous years, to be sure.
The garlic went into the frames in late October, and is doing wonderfully thus far. By my estimate, I planted out over 2000 individual cloves this year, which will give us plenty to use and some to save as seed for next year’s planting season, I expect. I’m hoping that we’ll be able to sell some as well, since this is not the usual garlic found in grocery stores.
Here’s hoping the new year will be better than the previous years. Be sage, be happy.
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2012 Harvest Totals Eggs: 703
Vegetables:
Cucumber: 6 3/4 oz
Bean, green snap: 20#
Peas (shelling): 1# 12 3/8 oz
Peppers (bell, all colors): 7# 1 7/8 oz
Herbs:
Dill: 8 oz
Marjoram: 5/8 oz
Oregano: 3/8 oz
Rosemary: 7 1/2 oz
Thyme: 6 oz
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