It's times like this...

...when raising guppies sounds like the pinnacle of my ability.  I was not able to overcome the head cold/flu/plague so had to cancel all fun activities for the weekend.  Ratz.  After a sleepless night of coughing and hacking, tossing and turning, I did shuffle out to get some OTC relief, along with a prescription for Pepper.  Thank you, NyQuil.  I also am very glad I had the foresight to can up a heap of turkey rice soup, as that is what I have been living on.  Once again, preparation comes in handy.

I darted out (at 1 mph) on Sunday to pick up my chicks from Farmer Nina - warding her off and feeling like Typhoid Mary.  Her husband was home and as he stuck out his hand to shake mine, he caught the labored breathing and loud wheezing and quickly drew it back.  I was not offended.

I managed to get the 9 chicklets - straight run, so it will be interesting to see the M/F ratio.  I have noticed that the LLF Female Mojo is wearing a bit thin.  But she did not charge me for all of them, using a general ratio of male to female.  She will also take the males back.  We will see how it goes.  The rooster/dad is a lavender Orpington, although I am not sure what the hens/moms are.  I am liking the idea of chicken mutts. 

All my big plans of barn cleaning went out the door without looking back.  I missed the birthday party and had to hear about it by phone.  Double Ratz.  I cannot believe that next weekend is Easter already - I have lots to do!  I am the official egg-dyer and need to make the potatoes and wrestle with the Last Ham.  I am not sure what to do with it - it's 16+ lbs and very salty.  Unfortunately, the owner of the pigs has a high tolerance (nay, LOVE) for anything salty, but this is over the limit of most taste buds.  I am thinking about soaking it in water rinses - what do you all think?  Will I have to heat it while soaking?  If so, I doubt if I would have time to a) work full time and b) bring this behemoth to a boil once, let alone three times.  If I had Saturday to mess with it, I might be able to do it, but that is the day we're celebrating.  Nertz.  All you culinary wizards out there - any ideas???

Tap, tap, tap, tap.

That is the sound of my little toes - beating a frustrated rhythm as I wait for the snow to melt and my garden to emerge.  When They predicted rain yesterday, I was so hopeful!  Until the rain turned out to be the big, white, fluffy kind.  Sigh.

I have plans to start my rhubarb seeds this weekend, since I might go mad if I don't start something...but it is too early to start anything else.  The way this spring is inching in, I won't be able to get out there and dig until June.  Maybe this is the Universe's way of warming me up for Minniesoda life, right Mama Pea?

I had a bunch of fun things planned for tomorrow, but woke up with a massive head cold (I ignored all the warning signs and didn't head it off) this morning and had to cancel most of it.  The only thing left on the agenda is my neighbor's 80th birthday party.  That should be tame enough not to send me into a tail spin.  Then Sunday I pick up my chicks from N (and squeeze in a few more minutes of snorgling).  I had hoped to get a start on barn cleaning, but we will see if my head holds up.  Or if I can hold up my head.

Not much else is going on.  I continue to monitor the wiener dog - he injured his back over a week ago and has been on meds and house arrest.  Those little doxies - with spines like suspension bridges.  He has been pretty good about it, but yesterday brought a new wrinkle:  he is having trouble with a front paw in that it knuckles over and he tends to drag it a bit.  I called my vet yesterday, who was out of town so I got his partner.  Or, rather, I got the receptionist who was the go-between, keeping me on hold forever.  This did not impress me whatsoever.  Apparently, my vet called in this morning because I have had three calls from the office - two from techs and one from 'herself'.  I am still not impressed.  But I have to think of the little laddie.

I decided to spare you and not include pictures - most especially of the chicken yard where, as the glacier slowly recedes, a vast amount of 'dog bombs' are emerging.  Let's see, three dogs times twice a day, times 603 days......  Time to dust off the hazmat suit.

Creative Genius or Soap as Art.

In amongst all the 'challenges' of the past few weeks, I managed to squeeze in some Squee Time.  A friend had a bounce of newborn Nigerian Dwarf kids on her farm (I invented that term) and invited me out to visit.  Oy.  We walked around, each snorgling a tiny goat cranium (such a delicious, wonderful smell) and soaking up the endorphins, or whatever they generate, the effect of which fills you with such a sense of bliss and well-being.  After a half hour of this much-needed therapy, I reluctantly put down my little bundle of joy and followed her into the house to check on her latest hatch.

This particular friend is one in a million.  Once she embraces something, there is nothing held back.  The full force of her sizable creative genius is directed at the embraced.  She raises the most adorable and perfect ND goats.  She researches and carefully incubates beautiful chickens.  And the soap.  OMG, the soap.  As we were headed to the brooder room, we passed by the soap cabinet.  Where I slammed on the brakes.

I follow her farm on Facebook, so I have been aware of her soap making progress.  She finally got her shop up and running but, MyAuntJemima!  I had not seen them in person.  I don't know whether to lather it up or frame it!  She is making soap that is a landscape, for Nat's Sake. 

Vitamin Z - It has a citrus scent - heavenly!

I left that afternoon with a precious cargo of soap and my name on 11 chicks to be picked up this coming Sunday.  Unfortunately, I also left without a baby goat.  She thoroughly checked my pockets.

Time.

I had been thinking about time recently - and how I used to be so diligent about wearing a watch.  I think it was also a matter of fashion (yes, I once actually thought about what I was wearing and how it fit into the larger world around me).  At one point I owned six watches!  Now?  I almost never wear one.  It got so frustrating to have the batteries wear down and then have to go in search of someone who would replace them. 

While I was musing away about time and watches, I received an email from someone at invaluable, an online auction house.  He wanted to know if I would be interested in joining in their 'watch' project, posting on my blog about watches.  Whoa.  While I don't, as a rule, do any link-ups with commercial sites, this was sort of, well, serendipitous.  So, I am going to do my usual randomness on watches.  I'm not sure this is what they had in mind (they have lots and lots of very nice watches), but once I get going, there's no reining me in.

My first watch was covered in fake pearl, to match the pearl-studded snap buttons on my pink and green plaid Western cowgirl shirt.  If I could have found fake pearl cowgirl boots, holster and six guns, I would have lived in them.  It was all about the style back then - when I was 9.  I was very careful with that watch and managed to keep it until my second adult move, when the box in which it was carefully packed was stolen.

Aside here - I moved often in my life.  And I moved myself 98% of the time.  Almost every move cost me a box.  Apparently, there were nefarious forces at work.  Even when I moved to the Netherlands, customs managed to 'forget' to put one of my boxes back in the container.  That is how I ended up with a china service for 8 with no dinner plates.

After that, I gradually accumulated six watches - a gold Omega watch, a silver watch, a watch with a fake black alligator skin band, two Swatch watches, and an old wind-up watch that I found in the bottom of a box of buttons I got for a dollar at an estate sale.  I was at the peak of my fashion-ness.  That was also the era in which I wore pink platform shoes with sparkles in the three-inch soles.  And hot pants.  It didn't get more fashionable than that.   How things have changed....

When I worked in the City, my boss wore a Rolex and so did his wife.  He was always buying her lovely gifts - emerald earrings from Tiffany's, 18th Century oil paintings of dogs from Christie's of London (he'd come in early in the morning, bid over the phone, then leave me a message telling me to work out how to get the paintings from London to the City.)  I got to toddle over to the Rolex cleaning suite, hand over her watch and wait in the darkened, plushy waiting room until I was summoned over to collect it.  To me?  It looked like a watch.  A very nice watch, but a watch just the same. 

And, honestly, how much do we need our watches to do for us?  Take our pulse, track our mileage, weigh our protein, assist us with our speed-dating?  I will wear a watch if I have to keep track of time.  Otherwise, time is rather a fuzzy thing.  I am constantly guessing what time it is (most often, wrongly).  I have two (working) watches now.  One is an Orient - a self-winding watch.  The other is a watch that clips to a belt loop, so I can look down and check how far behind I am.... 

The timepiece that I rely on the most, however, is my inner clock.  It routinely wakes me up between 3:55 to 4:14 AM.  Sometimes it runs fast, sometimes slow.  But at least I don't lose it...

Due Diligence.

One would think that I, legal office worker that I am, would be familiar with that term.  And use it.  Not so.  No matter how old I have gotten, I cannot seem to whip myself into shape.  It will be the undoing of me.

After a winter of record-breaking non-egg-laying, I realized that I need to spruce up the gene pool in the coop.  It's been challenging for the hens - stuck inside for days with (possibly) four roosters, Arctic temperatures, limited sunlight, three feet of snow.  While I can truly empathize (except for the roosters), they continue to vacuum up the feed without providing means to pay for it.  I was trying to get a handle on the various ages of my hens and there is quite a large range - towards the geriatric side.  I have three hens that are over 5 years old.  I have another 6-8 that are around 3.  I have 6 that are 1-2.  I have one that has a perennial sour crop (it's like a monoboob - I refer to her as Mae).  I have too many roosters. 

Last fall, I read an article in Mother Earth News about Icelandic chickens.  This got me all fired up, so I tracked down a breeder who was within a reasonable driving distance.  Because this breed is limited and being carefully brought along, I had to get on a waiting list for chicks.  I made it just in time, as she had more customers than expected chicks.  As I hummed along, all smug in the knowledge that I would have a new influx of egg-layers that were rare and hearty, I happened to read a post on their Facebook page.  I was dismayed.  Here is why:

Icelandic Characteristics / Characteristics I am Looking For:

Feral / Docile
Average egg layers / above average egg layers
Hysterical / Non-hysterical
Insist on flying / Will stay in the yard
No better than average in winter climes / Better than average in winter climes

I am sure that those breeders of Icies just thrill to the wildness of them.  They are also, most likely, people who don't have a big predator problem, are home more than they are away, are very involved in their flock minutia.  I am not they.  However, as I paid for the privilege of being on this waiting list, I will give it a go - with about half the number of chicks that I originally had hoped to buy.  And I will have everything crossed that I don't end up with mostly roosters.  For, while they all say that Icies are an egg/meat breed, they seem to be fairly small, on average.  I fear it's another case of whipping things up into a precious breed frenzy.  I am so susceptible to that whole business - the frenzy stuff.

It has been back to the drawing board for me.  I have not had good luck in trying to help an endangered breed and get the type of hen that I want.  Last year was the year of the Langshan.  They certainly are a large and beautiful chicken, but they are the most flighty birds I have ever had to deal with.  They also make up half of my rooster problem.  I am torn between putting them in the freezer and trying to find someone who wants to use them for other purposes - they are a stunning bird.  I think I may just hit the local feed store and get some Barred Rocks and whatever other normal breeds they have. 

What are your favorite breeds and why?  I am open to any and all suggestions!

Onward and Upward.

Well, it's been an interesting week or so.  I figure that I've run through of all the bad stuff early, so that I can look with my rosy-pink-Pollyanna-glasses at the rest of the year. 

I am chomping at the bit to get out in my garden.  Unfortunately, I still can't see it.  But the volume of snow has gone down noticeably and I am thankful that the weather hasn't taken a sharp turn towards warming.  As much as I long to run my toes through the grass (or mud, for that matter), I don't want to face a flooding problem. I am starting to see the tops of buckets and patches of ground around trees, so things are headed in the right direction.

I've also started a list of spring repairs.  Be still my quavering heart!  I'm up to three pages and I am not finished!!  Gates came apart, fences need mending, there's a hole in the hoop house cover, ice dams wreaked havoc on my chicken yard fence/gate.  A lot of the back deck needs replacing.  The front of the coop needs a major overhaul.  I HAVE to finish the run-in shed.  Etc.  I'm not sure how to best attack the lot of it, but I think I will use the same strategy that I use in approaching my make-up each morning (minimal at best, but I do have to shore up a bit for the office crowd).  One eye at a time.  Or, in this case, one section at a time. I know that there is a precious little period where the ground is too soggy to start on the garden.  That is when I will pounce!  (snort)  First up are the gates and fences.  Then it's poop patrol (for all hooved and pawed residents).  Then coop-cleaning.  That's as far as I've gotten.  Of course, given that I have one day a week to do most of it, that may be as far as I get.  I also want to start more of my own plants this year - on time.  Last year I was a little over-eager and started them too soon.  Too many were so leggy they didn't do well or make it at all.  It's not easy being patient.

******

Every year I celebrate St. Patrick's Day the Sunday before the actual day.  I avoid the day itself, as it is too often a day marred by idiots+drinking+driving.  As is usually the case, I have my parents and their besties (my neighbors) over for dinner.  This year I also had my neighbor who makes my life so much easier (as he does for most of his neighbors).  In the past, I would have gotten an expensive cut of brisket, organic taters and carrots and cabbage, whipped up three soda breads - making sure that everything was cooked as traditionally as possible.  Well, let's just say that this year was different.  I had gotten a cheap cut of brisket before my non-shopping at the store vow and had it in the freezer.  I did manage to snag an organic cabbage and carrots at a winter farmers market.  I had potatoes in storage.  I resorted to the crockpot (never to look back, I may add).  I made two GF soda breads that I thought I had ruined due to multi-tasking, but they were fine.  I vacuumed the house to within an inch of it's life, put Pepper in lock down (he injured his back - see 'run of bad stuff' referenced above), did twelve loads of laundry and draped it all over the house on Saturday.  Somewhere around 10A Sunday, I started to hyperventilate.  This happens all the time.  Instead of a go-with-the-flow attitude, I get a OMG-what-if! attitude.  It's not helpful.  Desperate to get myself on a more even keel, I put a meditation cd on the stereo.  By jiminy, it worked!  While it will take years of practice to whip my frantic brain into a single focus, hearing the calm voice settled me down, as I flitted about with my dust mop, going "ooooom" and "aaaaaah".  The dogs were skeptical. 

My parents arrived, Pepper was assigned to my dad's lap (they both loved it), their besties arrived shortly afterward and then it was like hearing birds chattering.  I got to putter around in the kitchen, set the table, heat the plates, serve the food.  It was fun.  After everyone had gone and the dishes were cleaned up, the dogs were all in an exhausted, happy heap.  Pepper was snug in his little bed with a heated rice bag on his back.  Lovey was snoring away, all three marrow bones held close to her chest.  Scrappy was snoring loudly, wrapped in his blankie on the favorite end of the couch.  I was tucked in a chair with the New Yorker magazine and a nice cup of tea.  All was right with my world.

Happy Friday the 13th!!

This is the view coming down my mountain.  Which I got to enjoy on foot this morning after my tire blew out halfway up.