strangeness

I haven't posted in a couple of weeks. I haven't felt like I had much to contribute. I've met so many people growing food, canning jam, even raising livestock. So many people with the time, money, and/or skills to be so much more Permie than I. I began to feel sort of insignificant. I've been reading a lot. I have either the time for reading or time for writing. Both seems impossible. I've been trying to take in more information so that I can grow in this process and so that I can present my readers with something new, something interesting, something other.

So, I finally finished the urban homestead and backyard beekeeping. I've just begun The omnivores dilemma and am so intrigued by the first 30 pages. I am struck by my own personal corn irony. According to the book, the world is basically ruled by corn (just behind oil). There is corn in just about everything we create and we humans, especially Americans, are practically walking cornbread. Funny, then, that as I tore out my lawn and declared myself a farmer in training, I chose 5 rows of corn to represent my transformation. Those rows were tall and graceful, they grabbed the attention of all who walked by. They somehow gave me legitimacy. Or so I thought. I have a few hundred pages still to read and I'm looking forward to whatever change comes about.

I haven't spent much time in the garden. We got so busy that many of the beautiful bell peppers we were going to can became compost. That just added to my self loathing. We made a list of all of the greenish improvements we'd like to make around the house and became SO overwhelmed by the length and cost of our list.

This week, I wandered the garden doing little things, pulling weeds, pruning unrulies, moving the brick path which leads to the chickens. I am trying to remind myself to take it slowly, there's time.

At the same time, I've had a weird week:
One of our little foster kittens died suddenly for no apparent reason. It happens but it's still so sad.
I found a beautiful cat on my way home from work and had to find him a home. One woman said she'd come for him after she finished house sitting for the week. When she finally arrived and saw his beautiful white coat, she decided that he would shed on her furniture too much and went on her way. People bother me. Here's this amazing cat but she doesn't want to have to vacuum? His companionship wasn't valuable enough for her. In the end, he got a great home with a little help from a friend at the shelter. He was here so long though that I was really sad when he left.

I watched I Am Legend this week and immediately freaked out and decided that we need guns in the house and that we need more emergency supplies. So I made another list. This list included a Berkey water purifier, a generator or two, a couple hundred gallons of gasoline and some serious firepower. I'll get into the detail of my list later because the week just kept getting more and more strange....

Yesterday,as my self preservation freak out was dwindling, I got an email from Texas saying that my show chickens had shipped and would be here by 3. I walked over to the Postal Annex and traded them some COD money for a box of chickens. I walked home carrying this cute little box with a handle filled with chickens. I put them into a rabbit cage in the boys room and went to fetch him from school. When he arrived home, he fell in love with his new 4-H project and we gave them the once over. Mites! They have mites. Now, although Dr Dan the chicken man insisted that our hens will get mites, they have not yet and we don't want them to. Sooooo, the boy called our favorite chicken adviser, Catherine, and she said to bathe them and sprinkle them with Sevin dust. And so it was, I bathed and blow dried 3 small chickens. They took it like the champs that they are. Chances are that they've been bathed before. The Male actually enjoyed the blow dry. Then we drove to Lowes (50% less expensive there than my local Ace Hardware) to buy some Sevin. Wow is that stuff toxic!! Instead of the backyard as Catherine suggested, I dusted them in the shower so that there wasn't any risk to the bees. Of course, doing so put anything further down the water line at risk. We have to apply it again in a week and hopefully never again.

After I tended the chickens and fed the neighbors cat, and folded the laundry, and washed the dishes, and scooped the litter boxes, I went to bed. I was startled awake at 5 am by a cockerel still on Texas time. I draped them with a sheet and he began again at 7. He crows every time the puppy cries in his kennel, when the phone rings, when the doorbell rings. I guess he's a little nervous. Hopefully, he'll chill out because we are not allowed roosters in the city. And seriously, how am I to be self sufficient if my livestock can't reproduce???

I am hoping the week gets a little more normal but with Halloween on the horizon, it's unlikely.

The one Pip

There was never another Pip. We are so grateful to have had the one. We would have been so sad if not one had hatched. As it is, we are just heart broken over the many eggs that never hatched. Six of them almost made it but we think our humidity was too low for them to escape their eggs. There were pretty well formed chicks inside but they had huge air pockets. So, we have just the one. She made her hole in the morning and was out around lunch time.

She's so tiny that the boy had to build her a special ramp to get to her water.


We spent $72 on the eggs and $22 on the Marek's vaccine. Little Pip is one expensive chick. She had better be a SHE. We aren't allowed roosters even if they are for a 4-H project. Fingers crossed.

A Pip!

I thought I would be writing this morning about how none of our little eggs were hatching. We began with nearly 30 eggs and each week have candled and eliminated some. We lost two to an accident when removing the egg turner on Monday and finally, there are 11 eggs left in the incubator. It has officially been 21 days and 12 hours. I woke this morning to a little "Peep, Pip pip". It could have been the early morning robins or not, I don't know. What I do know is that I rushed into the bathroom and found one little egg with one little hole with one little beak sticking out. It's one of our Mille Fleur d'Uccles. I quietly went downstairs for breakfast. Mmmm, strawberries, I love this time of year.

About 30 minutes later. I heard a scream upstairs followed by a desperate, "Mom, Pop, come quick!". I would have been worried if I didn't know what the boy had found. We rushed up and there her was, naked, in the bathroom, all teary eyed, showing us that one of his chicks was hatching. He was so excited he cried. He puffed with pride when I told him that he was about to be a Papa. Only one is trying to escape so far and she hasn't done much damage to her shell yet. I'll be checking all day and night. I'm so excited. We're a family full of instant gratification seekers so this waiting is a real challenge for every one of us.

Mr. Science is on it: Jonathan is checking the temp regularly and has figured out how to increase the humidity with a sponge.

I'm waiting and talking about it.

The boy is anxious and quiet about the whole thing.

Oh, and speaking of this time of year: The tomatoes have finally come in. It's tomato sandwiches for lunch and eggs with tomatoes for breakfast, tomatoes on the salad, tomatoes with mayo (Jonathan's fav white trash snack). We lost a lot of plants to the chickens so it's really nice to enjoy at least SOME of them.

The Shape of Community

This weekend I responded to an ad on Craig's List for free Quince fruit. Fruit from my computer?!

I never thought I'd be so dependent upon my computer. I NEVER thought I'd have a laptop stationed on the dining room table 24 hours a day. My husband pointed out that I was surfing Craig's list during dinner recently, I didn't even realize that I was doing it. It's just that the power of the internet is amazing. I am instantly connected to everyone, mostly. I have lived in hippieville for nearly 18 years and have never been so connected to this town and it's people as I am through my slim white Apple.
I have chicken friends through the Chicken Chat Coop.
I have Hippieville friends through Wacco.
I have greater County friends through Craig's List and Freecycle
Jonathan has beekeeping friends through the Bee Forum.
I am learning to make cheese, bake bread, make cocktails all from my dining table.
I have taught others how to make beautiful chocolates and where to drink wine through eGullet.
A friend from the chicken chat was going to come show me how to vaccinate the soon to hatch Bantam Belgians but I looked it up on the internet and now she can save the gas.
I can learn about survival and water use, vegetable growing and jam making. It's an amazing thing to be so very connected to so very much without ever leaving my house.

The downside is that I'm a talker. I think while I speak so if I'm not talking, I'm not working anything out. It's not a great system but it's mine. So, I kinda miss people. Lucky for me, I work in restaurants so I get lot's of people time. I learn tons then too. Sadly, all of my political info lately comes from the bar at the Seafood House. I've been not really home to watch the news or debates. I do hear quite a range of opinions at the bar though.

Anyway, my point is that I wouldn't be half the homesteader I am becoming without my internet community. I would have an eighth of the things in my pantry and I'd have chicken eggs coming out my ears. In these times, when backyard farms are still few and far between, it's nice to find someone 5 miles up the road with Quince to trade on the internet.

Now, what to do with these incredible smelling quince?

Good Trades

Today we traded figs for eggs. We have a fig tree but it's outgrown it's pot and didn't produce very well this year. Jonathan has been craving fig jam and there just happened to be an ad on Craig's List. The poster said she would trade 2 pounds of figs for 1 dozen farm eggs. Our girls have been producing pretty well lately so we had 2 dozen to spare. Somehow, Jonathan only came home with 3 pounds of figs. She obviously didn't weigh them. Nonetheless, we'll have some great jam in a few days and we couldn't have eaten all of those eggs anyway.
I love to barter, it always feels like I'm getting something for free and then doing something nice for someone.

I brought 2 little kittens home from the shelter today. They are only 4 weeks old and will spend the next month or so hanging out with us. They're scared and tiny and desperately need a bath. This is one of the ways we are charitable. We find it feels good to help these poor little critters who are only suffering because people are so stupid. They come to the shelter from all sorts of terrible places, orchards, vineyards, car washes, fast food drive-thrus, gutters, etc. People, please spay and neuter. Thank you.

incubation gambling

Well, we candled the eggs in the incubator again today. All but one of last weeks questionable eggs are headed for the garbage today. We've 13 eggs left in the bator, 7 of which had somebody moving inside. We'll be removing the egg turner on Monday and listening for peeps. Fingers crossed.