Phantom of the Peeps

Yesterday Young Son and I were doing some staining. (Yes, we are finally moving again on the bathroom remodeling project, though still quite slowly.) We had a door, several crown molding corners and a couple of corbels to stain.

Young Son went out to the workshop to get some sawhorses. When he came back, he asked me if I'd seen the dead chick in front of the feedroom door. Rats! No, and I'd been out there just a couple hours before.

There's a hen sitting on eggs under the workshed, but she hasn't shown up in the yard with any chicks in tow yet. Maybe one of her eggs hatched early? At any rate, I figured I'd check it out when we took the sawhorses back and did the evening chores.

Sure enough, there was a tiny little form on the ground in front of the feed room. Poor little fluffball! I touched it with my toe to scoot it out of the way until I could deal with it... and it peeped! Whoa! Buzzing flies notwithstanding, the little chick was still living. Guess the vulture flies would have to wait for a meal.

On first glance it looked it really bad shape, like something stepped on it, just catching the side of the head and taking the feathers and skin off. I wasn't sure if I shouldn't just put it out of its' misery, but I like to give every critter every chance to make it. I decided to take it inside and see if I could doctor it up a little then put it in an incubator for a while.

Once I cleaned all the dirt off, and used some Visine saline drops to clear the junk out of both eyes, I could see that although it was nasty looking, it wasn't as bad as I feared.

Actually, it sort of reminds me of a 'Phantom of the Opera' mask.

I'm not positive both eyes are undamaged, but they're open and the chick is moving around. The little peep is now residing in a brooder box with a nice heat lamp to keep it warm, and a teddy bear to cuddle up to.

Hopefully the little Phantom gets to grow up and make lots of operatic clucks.

Chicks & Peafowl & Frogs & Bats

It’s been another hot day on the farm, and high time to get the bigger chicks out of their brooder box and into a "big chicken" pen.

They weren’t too sure what to make of such a big wilderness to explore, and didn’t want to come out of the cage at first. The Farmer walked up behind them and shook the cage a little to encourage them to go out.

Once The Farmer moved out of the way, a couple of the peahens decided to come up on the other side of the fence and check out the small fowl. That gave the little ones the needed incentive to move. I'm sure those peahens looked gigantic to them!

Besides, they were thirsty, and I had put out a fresh jug of water for them.

This evening when I went out and checked on them, they were running around in the tall weeds at one end of the pen, playing hide and seek. I stayed a while to watch them flitting about, then walked down into the bottom pasture to enjoy the fireflies fairy twinkles for a while.

From there I wandered on over to the pond and listened to the frog chorus. I got a surprise bonus, and watched a fancy aerial display from several bats.

They were munching up some of the bugs flying above the pond. It was too dark for the camera to focus on them zipping around down close to the pond, so I had to catch them up in the sky. Listen close and you can hear the frog chorus, with a short solo from our peacock.
Summer nights may be hot, but they're still pretty cool.

You'll have to do that yourself....

The other day, it was my turn to prepare dinner, so I asked my wife to go over to the local market and buy some organic vegetables.

She came back rather upset. When I asked her what was wrong, she said, "I don't think I like that produce guy. I went and looked around for your organic vegetables and I couldn't find any. So I asked him where the organic vegetables were."

"He didn't know what I was talking about, so I said, 'These vegetables are for my husband. Have they been sprayed with any poisonous chemicals?'"

"And he said, 'No, ma'am. You'll have to do that yourself.'"

Guineas Gone Goofy

I looked out in the pasture a while ago, and saw two guineas running round and round the pasture. This is nothing new; they do it all the time. One chases the other, trying to prove dominance I suppose.

Then I remembered I'd taken a short video of their crazy antics back in the spring. I was sitting at the table eating breakfast, and watched those goofballs chase around the pasture for a half hour or more.


Guineas can be awfully mean to each other and any other fowl on the farm. Good thing they have redeeming qualities like being great "watchdogs", and the best critters for cutting down the tick population. Here's one of the guineas keeping watch from the top of The Farmer's work shed.
Without such redeeming qualities, I doubt if many people would put up with the Guinea Gangsters.

Peachick Surprise

A couple hours ago I looked in an incubator to see one chick almost out of an egg, and another just pipping. But a while ago I decided there sure was a lot of peeping going on, so I peeped too... peeped right in the incubator that is!

Here's what I saw: It's the 3 Stooges! Or maybe it's 3 little T-Rexes!

What a nice surprise! I've got 2 peachicks in a brooder box already, and 3 more hatched out now in the incubator.

This is more like it!

Rural Writer Tells All

Well, maybe not quite all. But way back in April I promised to tell more about Ellie, and then more recently to tell about what I’ve been studying and working on lately. Some of it ties together, so here we go, Rural Writer tells all.

What I’ve been studying: The main course I’m taking is on List Building and Internet Marketing. The Farmer can’t work forever, and since I’m handicapped by Regional Pain Syndrome and Fibromyalgia, I can’t work off the farm. I’ve toyed with many different ideas, but this seems to be the best fit.

For the first few weeks we had up to 4 teleseminars a week, lasting a couple hours each. These were guest teachers, Internet Gurus sharing some of their wisdom on how they make money. We also had a weekly Q&A session with our two instructors, and we have online videos to watch and scads of stuff to do to implement what we’re learning. This is an INTENSIVE course.

Now most of the people taking this course are flat out Internet Marketers. By that I mean they are learning about internet marketing, and they are going to sell internet marketing. Most, but not all! A few of us are learning how to build a list (you need someone to sell to) and how to market on the internet to different niches, such as art shows, home decorating, horse training, fitness, health food and more.

My first niche is health food. One of the building blocks is a blog, and mine is “Health Food Made Easy.” I don’t believe it’s one way, all or nothing, but that you can make small changes to your diet to include more health food… one bite at a time. I’d love to have some new visitors and would really love some comments to liven it up. Getting started takes time, and I’d be thrilled for any support!

While I’m learning internet marketing for my own “career”, I’ve got a second use for it as well. I want to apply some of what I learn to help raise money for Ellie’s surgery.

More about Ellie: She's my 3-year-old granddaughter. Ellie was diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy when she was a year old. She was born in Texas, but they moved to Canada to be closer to my wonderful DIL’s extended family, so they could have more help with Ellie. Also, Canada has a so-called “free” health care system.

Most of the time that health care system is a good thing, and really helps with Ellie’s many medical and therapy expenses. The problem is the surgery she needs, a Selective Dorsal Rhizotomy, is best done at the St. Louis Children’s Hospital. They do a less invasive type of surgery, have done more of them than anyone else in the world, and have a better rate of success.

Naturally, Canadian free health care doesn’t apply in the US. They’ve got to raise the money for Ellie’s surgery. A minimum of $40,000 worth of money. It needs to be done next spring for various reasons – Ellie’s age, and making it during better weather so it’s easier on her parents to drive an hour every day to take her to physical therapy after the surgery.

My “building block blog” for fundraising is Helping Ellie Walk. It’s just getting off the ground, and I have even more work to do with it than Health Food Made Easy.

What is NOT easy is condensing all this information into one blog entry. What is NOT easy is trying to take classes and go through all the instructional materials, put what I learn into practice, keep up with the farm chores and household chores, and once in a while get some sleep.

But I’ll try to do better at keeping updates posted here now and then, however brief they may be. In the meantime, you can always check out my other two blogs to see what’s happening with Ellie and one of my business ventures!

And that’s my Reader’s Digest Condensed Version about Ellie and what I've been doing!

Cost of CSA Baskets

Actually, these baskets costs more than $25 each week. I was thinking about paying the $100 a month, but I forgot to take into account the deposit we had to make.

The total cost for this CSA season is $650, and it is supposed to run from the first week in May until the last week in September. Looks like about 21 weeks to me, in which case, the baskets of food cost about $30.95 each.

I keep waiting to see if this gets better, but right now I'm thinking I'll either try a different CSA next year if I can find one, or just forget the whole thing, which I really hate. I really, really wanted to be able to support CSA's and write great things about them. But I was looking for really good, better than I could buy in the grocery store kinds of veggies. For the most part, that isn't happening.

Maybe it'll get better. Maybe we'll get some huge baskets of food as the garden really gears up in a few weeks.

Maybe.

This Week's CSA Basket

Okay, the quality of food is better than the first few baskets, and by the 4th week, delivery was on time.

Here’s what the veggies looked like this week:

That’s Romana Italian flat green beans in the little greenish box. As you can see, there are also decent looking tomatoes. Also included are 3 straightneck yellow squash, onions, and a few sprigs of oregano. That’s kale in one of the gallon baggies and collards in the other.

We also got another dozen dirty eggs. Two were cracked and I immediately fed those to the dogs. How do I know what bacteria seeped into the eggs?

We also discovered one of the other eggs was bad when Young Son tried to make scrambled eggs this morning. He dropped it in with the other eggs before he noticed it, and the yuck spread throughout the mixture so thoroughly we had to throw the whole batch away. He now knows to crack them singly into a smaller bowl first to check their freshness. He’s spoiled because with our own eggs, if I don’t know for sure they’re freshly laid, I don’t put them in the fridge. They’re immediate dog food.

We get an email each week from these people doing the CSA and they are always sooooooo enthusiastic about what’s in the basket. Maybe I'm just too picky, but while some of it is looking decent this time, other things I think they’ve waited too long to pick. The Farmer wonders if this is their first year gardening. The people where he works make fun of the food in the basket. It's not turning out quite as I'd hoped.

But there you have it, another $25 worth of eggs and vegetables.

Hidden Cameras?

The Farmer and I went down the driveway you see in the header of this blog. It's across the road from our driveway. We wanted to see what exactly is back there.

There's a house way off from the "main" road which we'd never seen in the 10 or so years we've lived here. It's a lovely setting with a creek in the front, and a swimming pool and big field in the back.

The neighbors work someplace far off, and only occasionally come back for brief visits. Since they're gone so much, they ask one of our other neighbors to look after the place, and have ADS security.

They also have this sign on both the front and back doors...

I smiled and waved when I read the one on the front door, and The Farmer did the same when he read the one on the back door.

Just one thing... I hope whatever jobs they have don't require great spelling skills.

Bird, M.D.

In this case, the M.D. stands for Major Deity, because I'm sure that's what the parrot looks like to the little chicks below her.

There's this feathered being far above them, much larger than they are!

Or perhaps she could be BIRDzilla!

Whatever she looks like to the little chicks, she is intensely curious about those peeping little fluff balls!

Egg Survey

A quick question here...

If you sell eggs, or even if you just were going to sell eggs, do you feel like they should be cleaned? Or do you feel cleaning is up to the person who buys the eggs?

I'm curious... so tell me EGG-xactly what you think!

Camouflage

How do you like my stealth chick?
I have two brooders now, a new one for the older chicks with a cooler light source and taller sides, and the older one that is in use for the latest hatchlings, with the hotter light and teddy bear.

I didn't want my older chicks to feel too deprived so I put an old fuzzy slipper in their box.

Little did I know I was providing the almost perfect camouflage for my party chick with the medley of colored feathers.

We're high tech here... we have stealth chicks!

Dropping in for a minute...

A minute... that's about all the time I seem to have these days. A minute for this, a minute for that! My minutes are all busy!

I have a backlog of pictures of more chicks - there's a total of 9 hatched out right now, and butterflies and a second bloom on the Voodoo Lily, but no time to sort through them now and put them up here. Soon I need to go out and do evening critter chores, then Farmer and I have to go pick up our truck we let a friend borrow.

This week is the last BIG push on my classes, in that I have not one, not two, alas, not even just three teleseminars this week. No, I already had one advanced training call today, and have three calls tomorrow, and two more on Thursday. Add them up, and that's SIX calls in ONE week! No wonder I can't get anything done!

But that's the last of the scheduled training calls, and after that I can proceed more at my own pace watching videos and doing homework and getting down to "business" work.

So stay tuned, and hopefully I'll soon be able to post more about what I've been up to and what's going on around here on the farm!

A Whole Lot of Peeping Going On

I have 3 incubators full of eggs. Most of the eggs are from the peafowl. I'm using automatic turners in two of the incubators, and they're so big I can only fit one in every other space.

Since my hen population is getting a little elderly, I decided I'd put a few chicken eggs in-between some of the peafowl eggs. I started back on May 16th. This past Wednesday, just 19 days later, the first chick hatched.

When I don't have very many chicks, I give them a washable stuffed animal to cuddle up to and help them stay warm.

Yesterday another one hatched, and sometime during the night yet another.

Looks like the latest has some Silver Crested Polish in there.

Later this afternoon I looked in one incubator and there were TWO more new ones. They both look like Buff Orpingtons, so the count is 4 yellow and 1 party-colored.

I wish the peafowl eggs would hatch so easily. I haven't had any luck the last two years, and haven't heard a peep out of any eggs this year either.

I'm hoping a whole lot more peeping goes on before we're done!

Voodoo Magic

There's a bit of Voodoo at our house right now. Specifically, the Voodoo Lily out by the pond is blooming.

It's scientifically known as Dracunculus vulgaris (aka Arum dracunculus). Some of the common names are Dragon Arum, Ragons, Snake Lily, Black Arum, Black Dragon, Dragonwort, & Stink Lily. In Greece it is called Drakondia, with the dragon being the long spadex inside the enormous maroon-lipped spathe.

There is also at least one plant nursery that has dubbed it "The Viagra Lily" for obvious reasons.

When we first moved here, there was a whole colony of these plants on the hillside above the spring feeding our pond. Unfortunately, when the guys dug out the pond we lost a lot of them. It will take a while for the colony to rebuild. The plant spreads by tubers underground, and spreading seeds above ground.

It's an interesting plant. Way up there on the cool-o-meter! Not only is it funky looking, but it's a thermogenic plant! The first day or so it's in bloom, the flower produces heat. I suppose that's to help carry the stink. Yeah, for a short period the plant also rates high on the yuck-o-meter.

It smells like something that died a long time ago. The Voodoo Lily uses the carrion smell to attract insects that like dead stuff, like flies, for pollination. You can see in this video the smell works very well at attracting flies.

Fortunately the smell doesn't last long, but all kinds of bugs seem to love it.

The flower (spathe) on this plant is a couple feet across. The shimmering purple-black "jack" supposedly can grow to as long as fifty inches. This one has a ways to go before it reaches that size, being only a little over 23 inches long from the base down in the throat of the flower, to the tip. It really is a neat plant. Just don't breath deep the first day it's blooming!

Last Week's CSA Produce

We finally got our produce from our CSA on Thursday. I took a bunch of pictures so you could see what we got. It comes in what I think is a half-bushel basket:
Peeking inside, you see the eggs and veggies. The first week we got some sausage, and last week there was some pork, but this week there was no meat included.
I spread out the vegetables to make it easier to see what was included. Besides the eggs, there was broccoli, radishes, 3 onions, a couple little boxes of sugar snap peas, a gallon baggie with kale, and another with lettuce.
Oh, and there were a couple of sprigs of some herb also.

As you can see, the lettuce didn't fare too well being kept closed up in a bag and no refrigeration for 2 or 3 days. I threw it out for the peafowl to munch on.

The kale looked a little better, and the sugar snap peas were so-so.

The broccoli fascinated me, however. I don't believe I've ever dealt with such limp broccoli before. The picture doesn't really do it justice. You had to see it wobbling around, all flopped over, held upright only so far as the more rigid center stalk would keep it.

So there you have it, my $25 worth of veggies. Hopefully next week they'll arrive on time and in better condition.