ReluctantFarmChick.com

On Wednesday I went for a walk (for exercise and wellness) with some of my relatives - they walk a lot, and sometimes I join them.  It had rained really hard all night.  REALLY hard.  I mean, a LOT of rain came down.  Ad being in a mountain/valley area, the water patterns make for interesting living.  You’d think that after the rain the water would be mostly gone.  But that’s just when the water starts appearing with a vengeance.  All the run-off fills every conceivable dip in the ground - the path of least resistance.  I took some iPhone shots again to share.  This is becoming a habit, maybe.  As long as the pictures turn out okay, I’m fine with it.  Don’t ask me to zoom in or anything though.  It’s less functional than the original PHD camera (Push Here Dummy).

Here’s a picture of the corn field.  Obviously the corn is long gone - but here it looks more like a rice paddy might look.

Here’s another one -

That flow of water at the top of the picture is normally there - but it’s not looking so normal in this shot.  "Normally" you can’t see water from this perspective.  The stream is WAY high.  With much more rain it will be covering one of the bridges to get onto our road.

This is the road to my parent’s-in-law’s house.  The stream flowed over the lane for a long time - but a year ago they put a culvert in.  But this rain is stretching the culvert’s capacity just a bit.  Here they were finding their way over the stream without getting wet.  Sorry it’s so blurry . . . the iPhone is only as good as its operator.

When I was leaving from the walk I saw these images that I thought you’d enjoy:

This barn was originally on my parent’s-in-law property - before they moved or built.  That means it’s more than 40 years old - and Prince Farming says it looked old then too - so maybe it’s close to 100 years old.  How can you tell?  Anyway - it looked quaint with the misty fog.  Just down from the barn is the entrance to their place - this is with me exiting their farm:

Obviously they’ve been farming for way longer than we have.  Their fences are all solid.  And, well - THERE.  They HAVE fences.  The exterior fences around our place are still waiting to be put up - and they probably will not look like this at all.  Hmmmm. 

Coming to our farm, here’s what our vegetable patch looked like:

Yep - the space to the left of the barbed wire fence across to where the grass begins is where Prince Farming planted tomatoes and potatoes. (The summer before last)   It’s a bit overgrown and neglected - and maybe that’s a good thing, considering what happens when the rain comes down!

And here’s the same field you saw in my haying pictures:

This picture is looking up towards the pond -it’s right near the top left of this shot.  Looing down from my kitchen window right now there are multiple pond-looking spots.  All equally muddy.  The rain just keeps coming.  And tonight is supposed to be Prince Farming’s office Christmas party.  And I’m supposed to wear something other than cover-alls and a hat.  Ugh.  Can’t we just stay near a fire with a good book and a cup of hot chocolate?  I guess today this farm chik isn’t all the reluctant, huh?

You can find more views of sky and places from around the world here at Skywatch Friday.

Every week I swear I’m going to blog more faithfully.  I mean, there’s so much going on - it’s not like I’m lacking for information.  But I have this feeling of needing to have "stellar" writing - something witty or amusing or clever.  And my life just isn’t that witty or amusing or clever.  So here’s the ramble.

This past weekend my kids participated in a choral festival in Georgia.  There were over 200 kids there from all over the place.  I went down with a friend to listen to their performance and was totally blown away by the quality!  Granted, their teacher here worked with them for the past several months so they’d be familiar with the music.  But bringing that hodge podge of miscellaneous groups together and getting them to sound like something decent is quite the feat.  Here’s a poor-quality iPhone shot of part of the group.

The empty chairs are where the strings came in during some of the pieces - they added quite a lot to the overall effect.  We drove home after the program - which means we got to bed somewhere around 1:30am.  Maybe that’s how come I feel so totally wasted today (my dad always said "you paint the week red on Saturday night - we were out on Friday night, but it’s having the same effect).

A project that has been looming for a little while is getting our chickens OUT of the garage and into a new dwelling somewhere on the farm.  I’ll take pictures of them soon - but just know that chickens do not take a long time to grow up.  Prince Farming is quite fond of his chicks and is worried about what wild life might not respect chicken life as much as he does.  I told him we might need to appease the Raccoon and Hawk gods with a sacrifice or two, but he’s wanting to take a chance without that pay-off.  Last Thursday we started working on getting the small barn ready for chickens.  It’s been a bit of a dumping ground since we moved here, so there is a lot of clean-up to do.  It’s not done.  I did spend some time helping to stack some HUGE logs.  They were HEAVY.  And after only 2 hours of work out there my back ached.  And my wrists haven’t been the same since.  We were going to do more work on the chicken house on Sunday, but . . . . I’ll have to tell you about that another time.  Brace yourselves.  It just might involve a cow story.

This week we have a cooking class - actually we call it a "Lunch & Munch" - don’t know where that term came from, but it’s stuck.  In my non-farm, non-home life, I am the coordinator for a Wellness program which is grant driven (not-for-profit).  We do all kinds of lifestyle classes, including smoking cessation, healthy living, dealing with diabetes, cooking classes, and wellness lectures in public schools, among other things.  It’s a fairly new program, and from year to year we never know how much work we’ll have to do (or get paid to do - there’s always a lot to do).  So tomorrow is a short class - we’ll do the same thing twice (11am and 12pm).  We have to have everything done in short order because people come through on their lunch hour and hope to get interesting information and a good meal out of the deal.  So today we prepped and cooked.  And we video-taped the demonstration so that people could be eating while they watch how to prepare the dishes.  I am also responsible for the recipe cards - had to get them printed, cut, and collated.  It’s been a FULL day.  And tomorrow will be the same.

Next week I have committed (advertised and everything) to having a Christmas Card stamp class.  I’m very excited about doing a class again - it’s been over a year already (can’t believe I said that out loud!).  So I needed to figure out what I’m doing so I could get an order placed so my materials would be here in time for the event.  I’ll post about that soon - I want to have the cards done so you can see what I’m up to.  It just added to an already full day today.  I placed an order.  I just hope I have thought it all through enough to have what I need.

This week is full speed ahead.  Thursday is going to get here and I’ll be ready to take a nap, but I’ll have the chicken thing to contend with.  Unless Prince Farming gets distracted by something more pressing.  One can only hope.  Although I’m REALLY ready to have those smelly things  (chickens) OUT of the garage.  It just doesn’t seem fitting to have 25 fully grown chickens roosting in the garage, does it?!

This about sums up my rambling post:

So many of you leave happy comments about the sky over my pond.  Last week TheFishingGuy asked about the sky over my barn.  What an idea.  Same sky.  Different perspective.  Got on my little Rhino with my little camera, and here’s what you get.

This shot even has a few left-over hay rolls that hadn’t made it into the barn yet.  They’re all safe and warm now.

And here’s the same sky over the field.  The field looks particularly green.  That happens after the hay is mowed and then we had some rain - which has happy new grass growing.

There have been some spectacular sunrise shots on recent Skywatch posts.  I dream of having a cool sunrise.  I’m sure there is one out there - but from my vantage point, here is what the sunrise looks like:

Actually, the sun would be rising from the opposite direction, but since you know how close the pond mostly seems, you know I’d never see the sun, if I can barely see the pond.  Here’s what I saw when I swung around to the east.

Beautiful, ain’t it?  Actually, it is pretty.  Just not with the stunning, dense colors that some people see when the day overtakes darkness. 

Just so you don’t go through complete withdrawal, here’s a pond sky for you.  I’ll settle for cool sunsets.  I’m not usually up in time to see sunrise - colors or not.

You can see more very amazing skies, clouds, sunrises and sunsets from various angles and from all over the world right here.  Better yet, take a shot of your own, and share it with us - everyone can play.

One of the things I remember from my childhood is chickens.  We had them (bantams) in at least 2 places where we lived.  They were easy pets, and could be left on their own with occasional throwing out of a handful of food.  We didn’t have them for eggs - just as lawn decorations, I think.  So when we got the farm, I was certain I wanted chickens.  But Prince Farming is a light sleeper, and he didn’t want a rooster.  That was the one thing I did want - I mean, how quaint is it to be woken up in the morning by the crowing of a rooster.  But that was not meant to be.  Until recently.  A nearby farmer had a rooster.  He thought the rooster was lonely, so he brought over a hen.  The hen laid eggs.  The eggs hatched.  Then all of a sudden he had a family of chickens, and he didn’t want them around his horses.  One day I came home, and Prince Farming and our son were in the barn fixing up a place for this little family.

In this area there are wild dogs and other predators (racoons etc.) that make a chicken’s life slightly vulnerable.  So we were quite skeptical about their longevity.  Wild critters can get inside a chicken coop very easily.  Based on the time we had and the resources immediately available, Prince Farming rigged a really nice little coop.  Except not nice enough. 

The next day the family was down by a few chicks.  So it continued (despite renewed effort for their safety) until it was just one rooster and one chick.  One day we went down to the barn to take some food and we heard the rooster, but couldn’t find him.  Finally we looked up - and there he was in the rafter of the barn.

We also heard a chick (still really little - unable to fly) but couldn’t find the little guy ANYwhere.  It was the craziest thing.  Our daughter climbed up on some hay to look around - and she found the chick.  It was sitting on the rooster’s back up on the rafters.

How totally cool is that?  The only way for it to have gotten there would have been for it to climb on the rooster’s back before the rooster flew up.  Because there was no hay anywhere close by where they could have done it in small steps.  I just totally marvel at nature sometimes.  I know hens are nurturing and will guard their chicks to the death, but this rooster took on the care of that chick and did it well.  BTW - Our daughter took all these pictures - budding photographer that she is. 

Anyway - the rooster does crow.  People who take walks along the road have heard him.  We don’t hear him from the house because the barn is down the hill and a small distance from here.  That works for Prince Charming.  But now he’s caught the chicken bug. The rooster is all that’s left, and he wants more.  He brought home a catalog of all sorts of critters and the stuff one needs to keep them safe.  So I’m sure there will be more chickens in our future.  And they might even move up the hill to be closer to us - who knows?  But these chickens will be our local egg delivery as well as pets - Prince Farming LOVES farm fresh eggs - brown ones with bright yellow yolks.  Now THAT’S nutrition!

Can I just say that this took me by surprise?  But it’s a wonderful thing.  Check out todays date:

2008 2008

This doesn’t happen very often.  Why have I not noticed it before?  Or maybe I did - and I just don’t remember.  There’s that little memory issue again.  If you need the background on this post - check out this post.

Anyway - just wanted you to enjoy the moment.  Of course. . . nevermind.  I won’t talk about the clock this time.

To make this a bit more interesting to the non-number watchers, I thought I’d add a picture of one of the Gredemeer barns.  This would be a great barn party place, if it weren’t full of hay.  And chickens.  Actually, just a rooster.  More about that another time.