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.