A Lame Attempt

I owe 'thanks' to so many, and have been so lame about giving it, and just want to list a few here in case I get crushed by someone's tombstone today and never have a chance.

1. Thank you, Burb, for the CD and the HP 7 book on CD. Your friendship, which extends into taking the time to actually mail something (!), means a lot to me. I do appreciate it.

2. Thank you, Ted, for driving out to Missouri to surprise me on my birthday! I never even wrote about it in my blog! (Partly because I don't care so much about mine or anyone else's birthdays.) But isn't that a cool thing to do? Ted told my husband and he told Stevie, and they were both so hush hush that, when Ted pulled up in the driveway, I caught a glimpse of his truck out of the corner of my eye and thought, "That looks like Ted's truck." A few seconds later, my mind feverishly worked out that yeah, duh, that IS Ted's truck! It was an amazing gesture, and I loved our visit. And, he brought FOUR pies, and quickly became a very popular guy around these parts.

3. Thank you, Sharon, for the "settling in" gift and for continuing to send pictures of your kids and a little package of goodies that my kids adore, each and every holiday. I'm beyond impressed that you manage that. Every time I think about calling you, it's a bad time for me or for you. Dear reader, Sharon has FOUR children under the age of six, and a job, and a house, and she manages to take a themed photograph, with appropriately festive children, and a goody envelope, for every holiday. It's amazing, and she is amazing, and, Sharon, I thank you.

By the way, these are in no particular order!

4. Thank you, Mom, for taking the time and shouldering the expense of coming out here to visit. You are no trouble, the kids--even the little one!--get excited about it, and it's wonderful to have you here.

I've got to get back to it. Best of Missouri Life festival this weekend, which means lots of last minute prep, my Chamber job starts tomorrow, I have two lambs to bottle feed right now, and I've just got to get going.

Oh--and thank you, Burb, for unknowingly getting me to do this.

A Portrait of Chaos

I'm sitting in a kitchen chair, gulping down oatmeal straight from the bowl. I'm holding Marky on my lap, crying, because he wanted to go outside and ended up pinching his hand on the door.

Stevie is struggling to double-tie his shoestring. He has money to spend on today's field trip, ten dollars, but can't find his little money pouch so that he could keep it safe in his pocket. His eyes lit up when I gave him the ten. But then I said "but I want change." "How much?" "Nine dollars." Wait a beat...just kidding.

Still sitting, just two minutes for breakfast. A quick survey of my surroundings--rubberbands and straw share space on the (filthy!) floor with scraps of food from the last several meals. The white area rug--what the hell was I thinking?--is scuffed with dirt. Hovering over it, 8 flats of leggy seeds struggle for light from the south-facing, still-trimless French doors. In fact, there is no trim on any door, and no baseboards, either. Oh well--we've only lived here 11 months.

The straw, strewn about a cluster of kitchen chairs, a large tote 1/2-filled with Kevin's winter clothes (the other 1/2 is strewn on the bedroom floor), and the soft lingering odor, are the leftovers from the two bottle-fed lambs that Mr. Heifer brought over last night. He's on his way to a 'destination wedding' in Cancun. These two little lambs have been on the bottle for a week and he can't just leave them! So he brought them to us. They'll stay in the barn during the day, but I brought them in last night because the critter who is getting our chickens dug a very noticeable hole in the hay right where the lambs--who are about the same size and weight as an adult chicken--would be sleeping. And I'm not losing another lamb! So I packed the large plastic dog bed that Mr. Heifer transported them over in with newspapers and straw and put them in the dining area. They drink sheep formula from actual baby bottles, about every 4 hours, their tiny tails wagging, wagging, wagging. It's hard to get cuter than that. But they do kinda smell up the joint.

The kitchen sink is full of dishes soaking in yesterday's cold, grey dishwater. There is detritus on every surface. In front of me and the crying toddler, a large pile of clothes awaits either the garage sale bag (I'm dreaming) or the winter clothes tote. In the living room, crumbs litter my pretty rug, and my black coffee table is scuffed and dull. To my side, sorta unwanted mail piles precariously, unsorted and unsightly, rendering that little square of counter space completely unusable for setting down purses and briefcases ("And what do you do sir." "I'm unemployed."). So we set them on the kitchen table, which looks like it hasn't been wiped down in a month of Sundays.

Do you have those moments where you see yourself and your environment in another's eyes? A bit of an out-of-body experience? I had a moment like that, sitting there in the chair, seeing my house and my life as others might see it. Yikes. If I said I didn't sometimes long for a bigger house with slightly more enclosed spaces to divide! and CONQUER!, I would be lying. There is this, though--Kevin sleeps on the couch all the time now. I'm getting very used to having my own bed, my own room, my own door to close (even though it's enclosing a bit of a mess right now). When we do build a house, I'm seriously considering a room of my own.

A Real Farmer Now

Technically, I'm really not. But I did put my whole hand into a sheep's vagina this morning. April had already given birth to one lamb--apparently healthy. Two hours later, she had still not given birth to the other one? two? even though she had been actively pushing for over 1/2 hour.

I gotta say--I called it, reader. Last night, April was in the horse shed, all by herself, while the other four were out grazing. "Hmmmm." I watched her for a few minutes, and saw her little sheep body tense up as if she was trying to defecate. "I bet April's going to give birth tonight."

This morning at 7 a.m., she hadn't given birth, but she was still by herself. I was leading Evil Horse Tina across the field to give her her grain. When she saw April in the horse shed, she bolted in there, chased her for a second, and then turned around and kicked at her!! Luckily, she missed, but I did throw the bucket of grain at Tina for being such an asshole. It missed. On purpose. But it was close. Stupid horse.

In order to keep April safe and comfortable, I herded her across the field to the sheep shed, 1/2 of which had been turned into an ineffective chicken coop the day before (ineffective because Kevin hadn't reinforced the bottom edges of the coop, and a raccoon or something crawled in and got a Leghorn--the second chicken in TWO days! This is really my fault, because I didn't think to check to see if it had been reinforced.). The other 1/2 of the shed was padded with fresh straw, awaiting new mommies, and April immediately went in and gave birth sometime in the next 45 minutes. I discovered the new lamb at 8 a.m., when I decided to check one more time before heading to work.

At nearly 10 a.m., after having gone back inside, changed into my overalls, grabbed a bottle of colostrum for the baby and a bucket of warm water to clean April's udder with, cleaned her udders, tried to help the lamb attach to the misshapen teats, gone back in to grab some toast and warm up a towel to dry off the lamb with (because Canada decided to send yet another ice-cold wind down this way, and April was still trying to give birth and wasn't able to offer the lamb her mothering all) and after two hours of watching this drama unfold, I called Mr. Heifer--"Is it time to call the vet?" Yes, was his reply, or I'd have a dead ewe on my hands. I called the vet, and he told me that he could either come out there, or walk me through it. And--oh yeah--she probably should've had them out by now.

"Walk me through it."

As we were talking, it looked as if April had the second one nearly out. It looked like she was trying to give birth to a dark crystal ball. No, baby sheep probably shouldn't look like that! It looked kinda like the lamb was attempting to come out rib-first. That was bad enough, but I was mostly hoping it wasn't her uterus. Seeing as how I was alone (with my cell phone in my overall pocket, though), I figured it would be tricky to hold the uterus up out of the straw, keep the ewe still, and make sure the lamb was getting fed until the vet got there.

You see, last night I just finished a book called "Hit By A Farm: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Barn". It's a memoir about two women--one a writer, the OTHER the farmer--who start raising sheep for a living. In the book, the non-farmer talks about the nightmare sheep-birth scenarios she read about, and that information was actually useful to me as I watched poor April grunt and groan, twist her neck at all angles, trying to push something, anything out of her old body. The preferred scenario is a little lamb 'dive' out of the birth canal--head on the front feet, and those three body parts out first. The back legs can come out first, too. The trick is to get out all the gangly parts without any one gangly part getting caught up on the pelvic bone, leading to a lamb stuck in the birth canal, leading to death by suffocation for the lamb, and perhaps to death by yuckiness for the ewe.

If the front legs are coming out and the head is not on them, you should lube up (the vet said dishwashing soap is fine--thank goodness I use the 'vagina-friendly' kind!), stick your hand in there, find the head, yank it around, and . . . pull. In the book I just read, the author makes a joke about the all the intravaginal manipulations that might be called for. My favorite was something like "find the front feet and tie a string around them" (to differentiate them from the back feet). Whhhaaaa???? The author said these books made ewe vaginas sound like roomy places where you might pause to knit a sweater while assisting with the birth. I can assure you, dear reader...they are not.

The second one came out. I helped pull the membrane off, and April licked its face, which is supposed to clear the mucus so it can breathe, but no breath came. In the book, the author talked about a similar lamb that looked every bit of dead and then, suddenly, took a breath! I gave the lamb a little time; I even jiggled it a tiny, tiny bit when I was getting the membrane off, the equivalent of smacking an infant on the butt to make it cry. Didn't work. I don't think I've ever encountered anything as floppy as a stillborn lamb. Urgh! I waited too long!

I called the vet back. "The second one is dead, but there are hooves coming out."

"Are they front hooves or back hooves?"

"I have no idea! I'm hoping for back."

"If you're ok with doing this, lube up, reach in, and feel around. If there's a head, you need to try to bring it around in line with the hooves. You may have to push the hooves back in (can you feel me here, mothers? I can feel me here.). If they're back hooves, you'll feel the tail. In that case, you can go ahead and pull."

"Should I pull...hard?"

"Try not to jerk, but you may have to pull pretty hard!"

Off the phone, lubed up, I stood behind April. I placed my left hand on her back and inserted my right to the right of the hooves. All the way in. It feels...like a bunch of really slimy bones...not sure why I needed dishwashing liquid...all is slime...not feeling a head...grab hold of back? front? ankles and pull. Thankfully, April decided to push now, and with a nice, smooth pull number 3 and the placenta slip out into the morning sun. Number 3 lamb is completely encased in membrane and placenta. Gotta get it out of there. There's an opening at the feet--grab the back! feet, lift it up, and pull the muckety muck--with veins and arteries running through it!--off the lamb. Mama licks its face, but no movement.

Call Mr. Heifer. Call the vet. "Two more lambs, both dead."

I place the dead lambs on an old towel and walk what feels like 10 pounds of dead lamb (poor mom!) to the back of the pasture and heave them over the fence. Mr. Heifer walked me through collecting colostrum and milk--"should be easy--she has a big handle to hold onto!" Imagine a 16 year-old girl, thin, perky, with milk-filled breasts that jut to the sky. No problems feeding that infant! Now imagine a 90-year old from a tropical place where women go topless, in the sun, and have 14 children. Can you picture the breasts? I'm dealing with the 90-year old.

I grab a large glass, a measuring bowl with a lid, another rag and a clean bucket of warm water. I grab April's big teat (gently), clean it off, and attempt three times to milk it. No luck. I'm annoying her. The lamb is able to grab onto the other, smaller teat, but I fear she's not getting anything out of it. Irrationally, probably, but I'm not getting anything, so why would she?

Now it's nearly 11 a.m. I've got a lot of stuff to do today! But I'll tell you, dear reader, I don't care about any of it. If I could stay in this pasture all day, I would. If I had my land and the money to put up fences and build the proper shelter (all BEFORE I get the animals, for a change), I would fill up a pasture with sheep and cows and chickens and a few goats and a guard llama and never sit in an office ever again. I now know what I want to do with the rest of my life! And I've just signed up to do something else. I fear my new focus is ducking out of this as quickly as possible (by "quickly" I mean years, unfortunately), and getting to the land. The land! Land and animals. That's what I want.

The Wrong Week to Stop Sniffing Glue--Again

I think I've used that title before. If so, I hope you forgive me, dear reader.

What a week this has been. I've gone into detail on various issues with various people, and will refrain from doing so here. I do, after all, have to work at some point on this rainy (thank goodness--come on grass!) Friday morning.

Monday: Good day. I think. I can hardly remember. Now I can! I made a to-do list. A big one. And I actually clicked it all off! So, busy but good. Fulfilling.

Tuesday: Rollercoaster. Went to put up a fence to keep Olive and the now-deceased Pimento safe from That Damn Horse. After an hour and fifteen minutes wrapping electrical tape around poles, because Kevin didn't bring home the plastic ties that I asked him for ("Do I not even fucking RATE?! I asked him to do ONE thing, blech, blech, blech!!"), I let Olive and daughter out of the pen and bloop! Through the gate they go. Go to two different stores to get ties at 7:30. They are closed. Trouble catching the sheep. F.U.M.I.N.G.

Go to accountants to sign tax forms. Getting a $12,000 refund from our war-criminal fed government. $12,000. Happier now!

I get to the shop and get a call from the president of the Chamber. I got the job. I am the new Executive Director of the Chamber of Commerce. Mixed feelings. Still, the possibilities for doing really good things--and combining two warring entities--are endless. And I'll have a MUCH better office! Right now I reside in the worst-possible-shade-of-lavendar painted basement of city hall, with makeshift government furnishings and no natural light. At the Chamber, I'll have my very own office at the end of a short hallway, with a window, in the restored RR depot.

Wednesday: Fine, productive. Then I tell my father-in-law about the pasture rotation plan given to me earlier by an extension agent. Plan involves splitting the 10-acre pasture in two, and then having temporary paddocks (read--more fence. But movable fence--not permanent, cut-the-pasture-into-tiny-chunks fencing). His resentment boilth over. Seems like he's been politely lying to me when I've asked him "so...you still ok with these animals? this fence?" and saying "yeah" when he really meant "nope". Scolded on about it not being a pasture but, rather, a "riding area" for Little Cousin and her awful, too-dangerous-to-ride-so-she-hasn't-ridden-it-since-fall-and-doesn't-need-25-fucking-acres-to-criss-cross-anyway Damn Horse.

It was bad. He is a soft-spoken man, incredibly good with the kids, very grandfatherly. But when I said, "I really need to know whether or not it's OK for me to have my animals and whether or not I can rotate the pasture to make sure that they have grass to eat and all the other advantages, blah, blah, blah because I spent $2,500 on that fence and I was about to spend even more", he didn't react well. In fact, he was irritated and defensive immediately after I told him what the extension agent had said.

Instead of hearing "I don't want to spend more money on fencing if you don't want the animals here, and I am willing to give them up to keep the peace" which is what I meant (and thought I said pretty clearly), he heard "I spent $2,500 on this fence, so you have to do what I want or I'll pitch a big ol' fit."

Why he would come to that conclusion--the worst possible conclusion--I don't know. That's a little worrisome in itself. What do these people think I am? He parried with "Well we spent $60,000 on that house and I could be getting over $400 a month in rent and our only obligation was giving you a place to live, not a dozen animals and a bunch of fence!" Pointedly. And pissed.

Ouch.

Although he later took it back, apologized, and said that he had misunderstood me and, like humans do, was reaching for ammo to counter me with, it still stung. (Talk about bringing an Uzi to a switchblade fight.) We didn't ask them to fix up the carriage house. If you've been reading this blog for awhile, you might remember that we didn't WANT to live there and were shopping for cheap houses prior to them OFFERING to fix up the house. But we needed their help with a down payment, and they wanted their grandkids close (no mention of them in his tirade about how he could be clearing a mighty $400 month!) It sucks being at someone else's mercy.

Because I'm not going into details (ha.), I'll tell you that as of last night this whole thing is resolved. My mother-in-law told him that they should do anything they can to accommodate my animals--she likes them, she's sure her dad would've loved it that there were cattle back on this land, and I'm sure she likes being the grandparents that have a 'farm'--it's a fun place for kids. Not today, of course, but usually.... And he talked with Little Cousin's dad, and he's fine with everything, too. No surprise there.

And they both see that I love it. In fact, dear reader, I'm beginning to think that I could raise cows and sheep for a living. I talk a lot about increasing opportunities for small-scale farmers and niche-beef producers and the like...why not me? No one else in the immediate vicinity is doing it. And I love it. I really do. It brings me a lot of joy. I'll write about that another time. So you can imagine how upset I was. More upset than I've been in a very long time. But sometimes it takes a falling out like that to get to the truth. Which leads me to another Life Lesson:

When you have to be in a relationship with someone for a long time, always--ALWAYS!--choose being honest over being polite.

Thursday: Had dinner with f-i-l. See above. Another busy day, but not quite as productive.

Friday: So far, so weird. Sheep (see below), the news about the job is spreading, stressed vibes at City Hall (other people, not me), and I'm not getting things done that I really need to do.

BUT...my mom is coming to town tomorrow! The weather is supposed to be great the whole time she is here, and I'll be able to dig my garden beds and maybe even plant some stuff.

I'm looking forward to a better end to this crazy-ass week.

A Red Sun Rises...

It was the earthquake that woke me up. Around 4:38, my bed starts to mildly vibrate, and something (my window?) was rattling. As if a big construction truck went rumbling right outside the house, but with no noise. I figured it was an earthquake--did the big one hit at New Madrid? Is the Mississippi flowing backward this morning?

Even though it was probably too early to tell, I headed to the living room to see if Kevin felt it (he was asleep, but I woke him up to tell him! Wasn't that nice?) and turn on the TV--at 4:40 a.m.--to see if a news crew had teleported to the scene 1 minute after shakedown. They hadn't!

I went back to bed and couldn't sleep. I gave up at 5:30 and headed out to the pasture to check on everybody. After letting the chickens out, I went out to the white blobs lolling around by the horse trailer. And there was one less white blob than there should be. One less tiny blob.

Roused now, Olive started baaah-ing for her little lamb. And no answer came. So I trekked over to the sheep shed, thinking maybe baby got separated and that place was familiar. Olive followed me all the way. No lamb. So I start squinting in the pre-dawn darkness, looking for a little pile of white. Despite my attempts to construct a fence that would hold Olive and Pimento (oh, Pimento!) and keep Pimento safe from Tina's murderous hooves, Olive got out. 'Oh well', I thought, 'What will be will be.'

No little stomped blob, either. Gotta be predators.

In my robe and muck boots, weathering a killing mist, I set off into the pasture, down around the pond, peering over the earth's little heaves looking for Pimento. An owl seems too small to get a lamb, but maybe not. I hadn't heard the coyotes for weeks, but Kevin later told me that he heard them a few days ago. Well, there ya go.

Feed the horses, check water, give May a little scratch behind the ears, head inside. Now it's 6:08. Sure enough, it was an earthquake--5.2, 150 miles east of St. Louis. Three-hundred miles away! And it shakes my bed. Wow.

After lounging around for a bit, I head back outside about 6:50. Sun's up, now, and I'll take another gander. Perhaps Pimento is just lost, curled up somewhere out-of-range of her mother's constant, heartbreaking bleating. Count the sheep--1-2-3-4...where the hell is May?

Check the horse shed. 5 sheep now. (There should be 7, but I've resigned myself to 6.) Head back to the sheep shed, see a little white through the crack in the corner. Is May in there having her lambs?! The vet was just out in my pasture yesterday, and he said it looked like all my old ewes were going to have triplets! He also used May, my sweet old ewe, as the model for how to get a sheep on its back so hooves can be trimmed. Poor May! I know how it feels to be very pregnant and have to bend over for something.

May has had a harder time than usual getting to her feet. She's been the last one to the trough for awhile, but this last week she's given up on making the trek. Or, if she does, the alfalfa is already gone.

I peek in the sheep shed and there she is. Dead. She went into the sheep shed, laid down in the clean straw, put her head on the 4X4 at the bottom of the wall, and died. Sweet little May.

Unfortunately, she died at some point within the last 45 minutes. But I don't know how long ago. In her belly, she had 1, 2, 3? lambs? Could I have performed a harsh C-section and gotten them out?

First a chicken. Then Pimento. Now May and her lost lambs.

It's a sad farm today.

Lulu After Midnight

1:38 a.m. Wake up, go potty.

1:39 a.m. Put on glasses. Go upstairs to drag zombie son out of bed to get him to the toilet. You see, Stevie is still in pull-ups at night. (We've tried.) But when we ran out of pull-ups this last time, we decided to make another effort to get him up in the night to pee. This night, he had peed a little bit. I hooked my arms under his armpits and got him to the potty. He shook off his pants and I got him another pair of underwear. He found his way back to bed like a parched desert wanderer finds his way to a glass of water. Dry this morning! We'll get there.

1:42 Put on polypro shirt and pajama bottoms. Pull on muck boots and a coat. Head outside.

1:44 Check on chickens. We lost one to a mystery predator the night before because they were just roosting in the open barn. Chickens are pretty sluggish when they're roosting and it wouldn't be tough to catch one. Kevin made them a little cage to sleep in. Earlier, I had plucked each chicken off her roost spot (told you it was easy) and let her loose in the cage. They weren't happy to be taken off their big girl perches to spend the night hunkered down in the straw, but it beats the alternative. I blocked the door with hay bales, and Kevin blocked the door into their sleeping quarters with pallets framing a Hav-a-Heart trap. So...at 1:44...all eight chickens are accounted for, and the trap is empty.

1:46 Head to the pasture to check on Olive and little Pimento. 'Who the hell is pimento?' you say? Our first little lamb! Here's how it all went down:

Yesterday morning, Kevin bursts into the house and says "You have a lamb!" Quickquick I get outside on this miserably cold day and find it--huddled in the corner of the sheep shed, covered with birth stuff and shivering in the mud, surrounded by Olive and the two rams. I pick it up and stuff it inside my coat to keep it warm. Then I go hunting for runaway mom. Thinking it had to be one of the old ewes, as Olive was too young for motherhood and didn't even look pregnant, I walked up to each one and lifted tails, looking for any evidence that one of them had just given birth.

Nothing. I double-checked. Only April appeared to have anything going on--was that a spot of the same yellowish goo that was on the lamb? Has to be April. So I start to slowly corner her, all the while holding onto the lamb in my coat--aaaah. It just peed on my pjs--got her! Reach over, grab one of her oversized teats and...she runs away. Corner her again. Grab for the teat, off she goes.

"Hey, Stevie! Will you please take this lamb into the barn and put her under the brooder lamp and keep her company?"

Stevie gently takes this wet, muddy lamb without a second thought and does exactly what I ask him to do. Good kid.

Meanwhile, I get ahold of April again. (By the way, I had grabbed a big plastic cup before coming outside. Kevin is at the local farm store, buying sheep milk replacer, powdered colostrum, and a bottle.) I straddle her shoulders, facing her rump. Leaning over, I grab ahold of that one dirty teat and try to remember all those shows where someone is teaching someone else how to milk a cow: squeeze at the top, and roll the squeeze down.

But nothing is happening. Her teat is cold and dry. And kinda dirty.

Why am I trying to milk her anyway? Because the three old ewes that are spending their retirement years on my pasture have misshapen teats that no lamb will be able to grab onto. They can have babies, but the lambs will have to be bottle fed. Still, the vet said that if I can milk them--at least of their colostrum--the little lambs will be much better for it. So there I was, straddling a sheep, trying to squeeze nourishment from her uncaring breast. Where's the love, April?

Meanwhile, Kevin makes it home with the supplies and mixes up a batch of all-species 'dried bovine colostrum'. I go into the barn and fetch the lamb, thinking I'll feed her in the house. Kevin meets me halfway and I hold her in my coat while Kevin tries to shove the bottle in its mouth and feed her without drowning her. We manage to get some liquid into her and I'm on my way into the house. Kevin is grabbing a big planting pot and some straw to fix her up with a bed in the house. Then Stevie comes in.

"Olive is the mom."

"How do you know?"

"Because the umbilical cord is coming out of her!"

Olive is the mom. Olive was pregnant?! My little baby sheep is old enough to be a mommy? Like all teen moms, Olive carried it well--I just thought she was enjoying the green grass! Her udder didn't even show, let alone look swollen and ready to feed a lamb. I DID wonder why she was wearing all those oversized sweatshirts....

Poor Olive! There she was, around her baby, and I took her baby away! When I rushed out to the sheep shed, there she was, walking around it and baaah-ing for her lost babe. I put the lamb down and whew!--mother and child reunion.

We sprang into action. Luckily, I had just bought a few bales of straw a couple of days prior (for the chickens and the garden). I spread out a bale onto the damp, muddy ground inside the shed. Kevin got more pallets and fashioned a half wall along the front to keep sheepy mom and baby in and everyone else out. I brought Olive some water, two kinds of hay, and some alfalfa pellets. She and baby laid down and didn't move much for a couple of hours. Then it happened.

Olive got up, gave a couple of pushes, and out came the afterbirth. Immediately, then, baby hops up and starts nursing. Yay.

1:46 Olive and Pimento are fine. Pimento is nursing! Lucky little lamb managed to snag the one mom who could actually nurse.

1:48 Counting sheep, shining the flashlight into the dark corners of the horse shed to make sure there are no abandoned lambs around. Shine it down by the woods, too, to let any opportunistic predators know that, yes, I'm here, and, yes, I'll kill you if you come near.

1:53 Back to bed. Go over this post in my head. Ahhhhh. Sleep.

Animals and Elvis

I'm listening to an Elvis song on our local classic country station (remember--I only listen for the local news). It's just a terrible, 1950s sap-fest of a song: "We-el I love you, I need you, with alllllll myyyyyyy heeeeaaaaarrrrrt!" with all those little 'hiccups' and the "aaaaahhhhhh aaaaaahhhhhh" backup singers. What the hell happened to Elvis anyway? He used to rock. I would never ever call him the King, but he was there toward the very beginning, and he had a good rockabilly sound. And then? Crap movies and Vegas. And people worship this guy!

Last night I had to drink half a glass of water when I wasn't thirsty just to save one of those orange ladybugs from drowning in it. It didn't drown. I chastised it for a second, telling it to be more careful, and it hung out on my nightstand all night. This morning it was still there. It's a "blustery" day around here, according to the weather people, so if I was that bug, I'd curl up under my copious bedding accoutrements.

How else have I been a hero to animals lately?

Well, we moved the chickens out to the barn the other day. They are not secure from predators, but have been just fine the last week and have ventured outside to walk in the sun and hunt worms. They're happy. And I like to think that, if a predator did come in, they would have plenty of places to scatter as they are not confined in a coop. I think their gravest threat is either area cats or that hawk who lives in the surrounding woods. But they stay pretty close to the barn.

Anyhoo, I went into the barn the day I returned from NY. The chickens ran away from me (chickens!) and I noticed that one was dragging her leg behind her. "Oh NO!" I thought. Predators! On closer inspection, I see that it's nothing more than a small string, tightly wrapped around her foot and TIED ("How the hell did you tie and KNOT this thing?!") around one of her toes. Where's the other end of the string?

In another chicken's stomach.

That's right. Two chickens were connected by a thread, by the foot and craw.

So I caught Ms. Foot (one of the hobbits--Pippin, no doubt) and found it was fairly easy to catch Ms. Stomach (Gimli? Mistaking the string for salted pork?) because she was tethered. So now I have a scared bird in each hand, traipsing through the barn looking for the kitchen knife I use to cut the string on my hay bales.

I place Ms. Stomach on the ledge of the manure wagon. She tried to jump, of course, which wouldn't have felt too good for either bird. I scolded her...and it worked! Something told this chicken to just sit there. Did she grasp the seriousness of the situation? Yes, apparently.

Well, my kitchen knife is plenty sharp to cut baling string, but can't handle a cotton string 1/2 the diameter because I was unable to give it a sharp jerk like I do with the baling string because I'm trying to cut a string that has a fleshy chicken foot attached.

I finally had to give up (!?), pick up both terrified-but-remarkably-well-behaved chickens and go to the other side of the barn to fish out the scissors that must be in Little Cousin's horse stuff because I had been told that, when I was gone, one of the chickens had swallowed a string (same bird?!) and Auntie had to cut it off close to her beak because she couldn't pull it out. So there's something over there to cut with.

I found the bandage scissors--not ideal, but sharper--and managed to free the first bird. Took her back to her mates and easily caught Ms. Stomach. By that time, Auntie and Little Cousin showed up and were pretty surprised to see yet another Barred Rock with a length of string protruding from her mouth.

"Well, chickens are pretty dumb. But they're really cute."

I held the birdy, Auntie cut the string when it wouldn't come out (chicken digestive systems are strictly no-exit-from-the-entrance affairs), and chicken seemed a little stunned. She just sat there a bit, "ggggrrrrrrrr" ing softly.

I don't know if she passed the string or if it's still in there, slowly wrapping up her guts. But all five Barred Rocks are doing fine, so by process of elimination....

This weekend we're going to turn the small windbreak shed we made for the sheep into a coop. Then the chickens will have a spacious, much more predator-proof home and can poop in the pasture instead of all over the barn. It's good to have chickens again!

This brings my tally to 2 boys, 1 horse, 2 cows, 6 sheep (and they appear very pregnant and have a definite waddle), and 9 chickens.

Friday afternoon

Man, how boring are my posts going to get?!

I had my interview last night with the Chamber. I was laid back because I have nothing to lose, and the interview was pretty fun. The salary being bandied about was $15,000. That, added to the just-over-$12,000 from tourism, adds up to a pathetic $27,000 for a VERY full-time job. They asked, "Is that (the salary) a killer?" I said, "It might be."

My house is a pig-sty of a chicken coop. Once that's cleaned, it will be time to pack and head to New York again. But I'm totally ready this time.

Gotta go home and unload the groceries. Woo! I bet you young/childless/unmarried peeps are wishin' you were me right now! Let me tell ya. Did I mention that I was out of shape and deeply in debt? Oh YEAH! Par-tay.

By the way, I had cable at the hotel and watched just a few minutes of MTV's Spring Break. Is it my imagination, or do those kids get more stupid, more grotesquely hideous, every year? The broadcast certainly does. I just don't get it. I really, really don't. I can't think about it anymore.

Oh, and I read a great book the other day! It was Howard Zinn's "A People's History of American Empire" in graphic novel. I got it because I was demo-ing the graphic novel and I thought it was a great example of how graphic novels are really exploding. And what a read--two hundred odd years of atrocities committed in the name of the American flag. Over and over and over and over and over and over. What a bunch of assholes we've been. I mean, I knew that already, but this one shook my patriotism to the bones. Any wavering I've ever entertained in my otherwise strict anti-war policy, such as when I think about madmen like Adolf and what it took to stop him, well, it's all over now. Can I say I'm a strident pacifist? It's looking that way. I'm not actively anti-war, so I can't fully commit. I'm getting there. I am ashamed that I don't go around with peace symbol t-shirts and bumper stickers on my car, with a big "END THE WAR NOW!" placard about my neck. Is there any good excuse for that? Not really. No.

Anyway, it's a good book. Check it out!

And I watched a biopic of William Wilberforce the other night called "Amazing Grace". He's the British MP who fought to abolish the British slave trade, and "Amazing Grace", the song, was written by another British MP who was captain of a slave ship (lost, blind) until he finally came to his moral senses (can see, found). Not the best movie by any stretch, but a good example of what you can accomplish when you have the guts to put it all out there, damn the consequences.

I'm going now. See ya, readah!

Tuesday afternoon

Great! I was just writing an informational title and now that song is in my head. It's not a bad song, just a little melancholy.

Quick update:
I'm back from New York. The presentation went really well and I made a few good changes for next week's. So that's done. I'll fly back to New York this Sunday and do it all over again.

I'm on track in the tourism office, but my to do list is long. Very long.

I'm interviewing for the Chamber job tomorrow night and I need to get some ideas down on paper and get my 'talking points' all sharpened. Last night when I got home from my trip, I was freaking out and thinking that there's no way in hell I can work full-time again. Why? Because the chickens are STILL in the kitchen and, at this point, they could take on abnormally-large crows and kick their asses. Their dust is everywhere, and I swept just before I left. One of them is a little bit sick, and that sickness could be cured by space and sunlight.

Also, the house was sorta clean but much messier than I left it. The meat I thawed for Kevin to incorporate into simple spaghetti or meatloaf was in the fridge, untouched and slowly rotting. And I looked around and thought, "Shit. If I go to work full-time, and Kevin continues to completely disregard the family and consumer sciences in favor of working all the time, I'm going to have to figure out another way to get the cleaning, shopping, cooking, appointments, animal care, and gardening done."

And we all know there is no cure for that, save for giving up all sleep. And I love to sleep. (aaaahhhhh...bed.)

But then we talked about all that. I'll get through the interview. If they can meet my terms and nothing else comes up that turns me off, I'll take it. At least until we can pay off our credit card debt and my school loan. (Two years? Maybe?) After that, we'll re-assess.

Taken on its own, the job offers a lot of opportunities.

I'll tell you more about them some other time, but I'm thinking of the opportunity to create an agritourism industry in these here parts, get young people (I kinda hate the word "youth" as in "involve our youth") involved in various entrepreneur activities--even establish that youth (ugh!) co-op that I talked about. On and on. This is supposed to be a quick update. I need to go home and make some meatloaf. Oh yeah, and I want to give a rundown on the big sustainable agriculture conference I attended last week. Way cool. I even met a guy from Ohio U. Not only were we the same age, but we are friends with all--and I mean all--of the same people! He gave me updates on very old friends, roommates, landlords, and boyfriends. It was awesome. He started the paw paw festival and you Ohio people should go: http://www.ohiopawpawfest.com/

Bye!