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     Our last riding lesson was in early February.  Right after it, we went skiing in Colorado for a week, then a local trip to West Virginia with hubby’s sister for another day of skiing.  This was done with no injuries, though I did take a head whacking spill in West Virginia, but with no real lingering effects.  Shortly after the skiing, we had a string of beautiful almost spring like days and Ranger would still get in the car, so we started doing doggie walks on the Huckleberry Trail or at Pandapas Pond.  The last time we did, hubby complained toward the end of the walk that his knee was hurting, though he hadn’t stumbled or twisted it, just dealing with the 180+ pound dog.  His knee continued to bother him and after a week or two, we made a trip to our GP who diagnosed a meniscus tear, gave him a steroid shot and told him to see a specialist if it didn’t feel better in a couple of weeks.  It didn’t, the specialist ordered X-rays which showed no damage, injected another steroid shot in a different place, prescribed anti-inflammatory meds and said an MRI was next if that didn’t help.  It didn’t.  The MRI was Thursday, showed no meniscus tear and another appointment is scheduled with the doc in a week and a half.  This put a halt to riding.
     In the midst of not being able to ride, we joined a Horse Master’s Club, an adult offshoot of the US Pony Club.  The local chapter, the Sinking Creek Pony Club operates out of the stable at which we rode.  The first two meeting of the Sinking Creek Horse Master’s Club were organizational and informational and today was the first mounted meeting.  Hubby was a bit concerned as weight bearing on his knee equals pain, but he wanted to try and I wanted to ride too, so we signed up for the riding meeting.  As this was our first mounted meeting and as many of us had not been on a horse in months or even years, we did only flat work.  This was the first time I have been in the ring with more than just hubby, we had 6 of us riding, a new challenge.  It was mostly an assessment ride, but for the first time, we were taught to canter.  I wasn’t sure about doing this, it was voluntary and I am still a bit unsure at a fast trot, but when Doc broke into the canter, it was so much smoother, like a rocking horse instead of a spring loaded bouncy horse.  What an awesome feeling!  As it turned out, using the higher ramp for mounting worked for hubby, riding didn’t bother his knee and even dismounting was ok, so maybe we are “Back in the saddle again…”

     One of the animals I had discussed about raising on the farm is alpacas.  When we first started talking about them, they were way too expensive to really consider and we fear the coyotes might go after them as they are relatively small animals.
     Today I had the opportunity to go help with an alpaca shearing for a couple dozen animals.  It was quite an experience.  I was the first helper there and beat the shearers who got lost by an hour and a half.  This gave me an opportunity to get to know the critters.  Some are friendly and want attention, others are just very curious and nosy.  Some grunt, others hum, sounds almost human.  They vary in size depending on age and gender, but the largest weren’t any bigger than our mastiff.  Some have longish snouts, kind of Llama like, others that are much cuter, have short stubby snouts.

     In addition to shearing, they were also getting their monthly worming injection, which was going to happen just after they were sheared, but as the shearers were late, we held each one while they got their shots.  During their shearing, they also got their toenails clipped and the clippers were the size of my garden shears.  A few of them also needed their front teeth ground down and I must say that part grated on my nerves.
     To shear one, their front and hind legs are stretched out like they are being tortured on a rack.

Some took this stoically, others cried and spit.  The first cuts take off the prime fleece, the blanket and that I watched as it was shorn and bagged.

My job was to collect and bag the seconds, the neck, tail and leg fleece and sort it out from the hay and other material caught in the fleece and to also sort out the trash fleece, that which is too short or too full of matter that can’t easily be cleaned.  This was a lot of up and down, kneeling and rising and after 6 hours of it, I am sore and tired.  When I left, only half were done.  I’m sure the other helpers will also be worn out.
     The alpaca is not nearly as cute after the shearing.

     It was quite an interesting learning experience.  Maybe someday, I will be able to buy a fleece like that, clean and card it and prepare it for spinning.

     It is raining, not sweet spring showers, but bathtubs full.  We were almost out of chicken feed and with 23 squawking mouths to feed, and with me going to help at an alpaca shearing tomorrow, we braved the torrents to go to town for feed, pine shavings for the coop and lunch for us human types.  We got home to find our farmer friend here to pick up the morter mixer we are loaning him, stopped to chat in the barn for a few minutes, then on to the house.  The temporary coop had a seriously sagging roof, the tarp was filling with water and disaster was looming.  As that pen is the testosterone bin anyway, I felt sure that gallons of water suddenly dousing the only dry spot of their pen would not be welcome.  I was already wet, so a little more time in the rain wasn’t going to melt me, I haven’t been accused of being made of sugar for many decades.
     Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, the giant Cornish Cross meat birds, that look like turkeys at this point, go through food and water faster than the other 21 combined and they were unhappy with me for neglecting them this morning.  They are so fat that they can’t even get up in the coop and just huddle under it.  I did erect temporary walls on two sides to try to keep them dryer and put a feeder and waterer under with them to meet their needs.

Tweedle Dum and Lucy, quite a size difference

     Last night, I decided that three young roosters in the hen house was not working, so I captured one of them and moved him to the testosterone pen where since he couldn’t pick on the pullets any more, he would get in a fight with another rooster.  I captured two of the pullets that were in that pen (the meat birds to be) and transferred them to the hen house.  That left two roosters in with the girls.  After thinking about it last night and wondering if I will have enough hens to produce the eggs I desire, I moved two more pullets in the rain today and captured another rooster from the hen house to cull.  That still leaves two young roos in the hen house and one of them will have to go, but I am waiting until closer to harvest day to see which one has the better disposition.

The foreground 4 are now happily in the warm dry henhouse

     In the middle of the relocation, I hit on a solution to tent the tarp a bit, to run the water off instead of it pooling.  First I had to get rid of the pool that was already there.  Using my upper back and the back of my head, I stood up and the back staples came out of the tarp, 10 roosters and 2 pullets, along with my feet got doused.  They ran out into the rain, figuring out there it was coming in drops, not buckets and looked at me like I was the meanest creature of all time.  The tarp is now tented in the middle with an expansion pole inside a bucket, the back side of it is restapled and they can again get in out of the rain.  As a consolation, I gave them a second perch.
     My wet clothes are drying, I am warming up, chicks are tended.

     Ok, hubby is from El Paso, so I had to throw that in.  We have had a beautiful week for which I am thankful.  It has been cool enough for long sleeves, or even a jacket or sweater, but no rain.  That is about to change as the clouds are rolling in, the wind is gale force, it is almost coat chilly and we are set for 4 days of it. 
     I’ll just look back at the photos of this week and dream of later in the week when going back outdoors is possible.  We saw our first snake of the year, sunning on our gravel driveway, just a juvenile black snake.

     He is welcome to stay as long as he limits his diet to moles, voles, mice, and chipmunks.  As soon as he discovers my eggs, he will be relocated far, far away.
     My walk yesterday afternoon gives you a glimpse of a part of the property not usually photographed or walked even.  I was on the road, the upper part of the property is rocky with scrub and trees with a runoff creek that makes it muddy.  The grass is more than knee deep making the rocks a challenge and giving the ticks a great place to hitch a ride, so I stay out of there.

Roadside wildflowers.  I don’t know what they are, but they are shades of violet to white.

A creek side dogwood peaking through the trees.

And a young redbud, one of my favorite spring blooming trees, on the edge of the creek. The hayfields are so tall, that the turkeys are almost invisible, except when a Tom puffs his chest and spreads his tail.  Even the deer are able to hide.  It looks like a good hay year.
      After a one week strike of not getting in the car, we have gotten Ranger, the mastiff to get in my car from the front porch, 1 step up from the ground, and yesterday with a bit of coaxing from the ground.  He is balking at using the ramp or horse mounting steps to get in hubby’s car which is higher. We think he has gotten spooked that they move a little under his 185 lbs.  At least the steps make a good stable ladder for me in the garage.  He is quite capable of jumping in, but doesn’t realize it.  At least we took them for a ride yesterday.  Shadow, the shepherd would jump to the moon to get in.
     The garden is basically planted, except for beans and a second planting of peas, so the seedlings will enjoy the soaking rain of the next few days.  I will stay in and knit, spin, and read.

     Today was a dedicated garden day.  The self watering seed starter set by Burpee that I bought to use with my heat mat and starter light, proved to be a very poor purchase.  The cells were much to small, the sprouts crowded each other, didn’t have enough room for good root growth and as I discovered today, it was almost impossible to get the starts out without damaging the little plants and their roots.  Today is one month since I started the seed and I needed to get what did grow into the garden.
     As I had finally gotten the upper hand on the weeds, except in the paths, and since I had a roll of row cover and bought 10 very long fiberglass hoop poles so that I could plant the seedlings that I had and protect them from insect and cool night damage, it was the task of the day to plant.

The bed of cabbage, kale, chard, and broccoli after a weed check and before the cover went back on the box to protect them from cabbage worms.

Herbs, salad, marigolds and lavender.

The row cover protects 3 kinds of tomatoes, 3 kinds of peppers and behind it are two boxes of garlic and onions.

This cover hides the winter squash and the cucumbers at the end of the bed that has pea sprouts coming up to the trellis.

The grape bed got 3 Seminole pumpkins added to it.  There is still a 4 x 4′ box waiting for the beans and part of the grape bed is waiting for a second planting of peas.  I am thinking about waiting until it is a bit later in the season and planting a compact raised bed for potatoes, using well sifted compost in a huge section of plastic culvert.  I would love to plant some eggplant, but each attempt has resulted in flea beetles stripping them of all leaves before they can even get a start.  I guess I could put them under one of the little tents too.  Next year I think I will return to making my own starter cubes for seedlings and perhaps I will have better results and won’t have to go to the nursery for 2 tomato plants to add to the few that did grow and pepper plants as none of them grew.

I still have a bit of weeding in the aisles and then they are going to get a good thick layer of wood chips over cardboard to try to win the battle of weeds between the beds.

                                                 Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

    Today is gloomy and cool.  Currently foggy and a misty rain falling, not expected to clear today and not getting very warm.  A good day to stay curled up in the house with a book, knitting or spinning and a cup of tea.  I go through spells of not being able to sleep well at night.  I don’t know if it is age related, seasonal or situational.  I have long ago switched to decaf coffee, only one cup in the morning, decaf or herbal tea, except iced tea when I’m out and have no control over their brew (but even then I usually choose water).  I do like chocolate and try not to indulge in the evenings.  Sometimes, I know it is situational, when my brain won’t turn off and I worry or ponder the problem.  Earlier this week it was the chicks overcrowding that didn’t let me doze off until 4 a.m.  Also concerning is the knee strain that hubby got out walking Ranger about 7 weeks ago.  That sent him to the GP a week or two later and he was diagnosed with a meniscus tear, given a steroid shot on the opposite side of the knee and told to see and orthopedic specialist if it didn’t improve in a couple of weeks.  It didn’t improve and he saw the ortho a couple of weeks ago and was told that the Xrays didn’t show a tear, he thought it was inflammation, gave him another steroid shot under the kneecap on the side of the pain, Celebrex for the inflammation and told to call back in a couple of weeks if it wasn’t better.  It isn’t, so now he is scheduled for an MRI.  He is down because he can’t do anything physical that he enjoys, even walking is painful.  I am worried about him.
     Sunday night my sleeplessness was situational, fretting over the overcrowding in the chicken coop and worrying about how to solve it, buying another coop not an option.  Craig’s listing the extra birds, not the desirable outcome as son wants some chicken in his freezer.  In spite of that night’s lack of sleep, I worked all afternoon building the temporary shelter and run for those birds.  I did sleep somewhat better Monday night.  Yesterday I spent the afternoon doing garden labor, hand weeding the grape bed finally, doing a bit of planting, building a trellis for the peas that are starting to come up and hardening off the veggie starts from in the house.  I was tired so we went out to eat.  I ate light, but had a chocolate milkshake for dessert.  Not a good move and again last night I had a hard time falling asleep and my sleep was restless and broken.
     It is good that it is too miserable to work outside today, I just lack the energy.  I will just put the veggie starts out in the gloom and drizzle to harden off and try not to nap the day away, so perhaps I will be able to sleep tonight.  I don’t want to resort to sleep drugs, though I have been known to take a Benadryl occasionally when I have a string of restless nights.

     Today dawned gray, but mild and looked like it might be a good day to work on the weeds in the grape bed.  After turning the pups out for a romp and to do their business and feeding them and me, I walked over to the coop to let the chicks out.  When I opened the door, I noticed that Tweedle Dum or Tweedle Dee, the mammoth white meat birds had been pecked to the blood.  Plans changed to trying to find a solution as I knew that I had too many chickies in the coop and have worried for a couple of days for a cheap solution to separating them into two flocks, the keepers for eggs and the meat birds that will be harvested in a few weeks for the freezer.  I don’t know who the culprit doing the pecking was, as one of the unknown breed white birds and one of the pretty Silver Laced Wyandottes roosters are pretty feisty.  The Wyandotte, after pecking at both hubby and me has been named Little Bastard and is sure for the freezer as soon as he has enough size.
     My initial idea was to enclose the base of the raised coop and divide the run, but it really was only marginally large enough.  On our way to buy the supplies to try to solve the problem, hubby and I discussed my digging out one of the compost bins and building a temporary run in front of it.  When we got home with the wire and posts, we found the two new smaller pullets not only out of their temporary pen, but also out of the coop and the run, happily grazing in the compost bin.
     After much digging and stapling chicken wire around the inside of the compost bin, the cage wire was strung around 8 metal fence posts and topped with plastic poultry mesh to keep hawks out and chicks in, a huge tarp doubled and stapled over the prevailing wind and rain side and the top and moved 11 of the chickies to the new pen.

     That solved part of the problem, hopefully without inviting every predator in the county to come feast.  The next problem was to find a solution to separating Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee from the rest of the chicks as they are so big and so lazy now that they have become targets for bullying.  We had a large dog crate unoccupied in the garage, so it was put to use as a resting area for the two.  I divided the run to make a separate fenced area for them, the width of the cage and the length of the run with their own food and water and they are happier too.

     The only remaining problem is keeping the newest two chicks separate from the other potential egg layers, at least until they are larger or accepted by the flock, so I redesigned their pen inside the coop to give them access to the perches.  They are sharing the coop with only 8 other birds now and hopefully the aggression will tame down and everyone will be happier for the remainder of their time on the farm.

     In early March, on a spur of the moment stop at Tractor Supply, I left with a box of 8 very young chicks.  The next day at a different Tractor Supply, I bought 7 more.  Two of the first set died within a week, a hazard of feed store chicks and of the very fast growing meat birds that made up half of the original purchase.
     While I was learning more about raising the birds, I joined a forum for backyard chicken growers and ended up connecting with a local gal who had 6 birds that were the same age and breed as one of the heritage types I had purchased and she couldn’t keep them.  I met her in a parking lot to buy the chicks from her.  They adjusted quickly to the coop and run and settled into the routine of being let out each morning and returning each evening by dark.
     Eldest son scheduled a visit to come in mid May to cull the two giant meat birds and help do some work at our house with plans to return in early July to cull the rest of the birds that we won’t keep as layers.  It appears that most of the 6 I bought last weekend are roosters and won’t be kept.
     Today, we went to Tractor Supply to buy a 5 gallon waterer as the gals and guys are now getting quite large, looking like chickens, not chicks and were emptying the 1 gallon jug at least twice a day and in the parking lot was pickup truck with several cages in the back of chicks about a week or two younger.  Two of the three breeds they had, were heritage breeds that I wanted, an Easter egger, that lay blue or green shelled eggs and Buff Orpingtons, that are just a pretty dual purpose chicken.  They were all pullets and I left with one of each to add to my flock. 
     Unfortunately, they are much smaller than the ones we already had and several of the “older” ones took issue with the newbies and attacked them.  This resulted in making an impromptu cage in the corner of the coop to protect them until they get similar size or at least the others get used to them.
     The plan is to keep the two new ladies, 2 of the Rhode Island Reds, and 2 or 3 of the Silver Laced Wyandottes as my laying flock.
     Today’s purchase has given my hubby all the fuel he needed to decide that I have a chicken addiction and has resulted in some teasing, all in fun.

     The flock just can’t get any larger, the coop and the run just can’t handle any more.

     One of the Asian Pear trees did not leaf out this year.  The trees are about a year and a half old, so not to fruiting stage yet.  Today we went to Crow’s Nest Nursery, my favorite local nursery and bought a new tree that is about three years old.  Before I could plant it, I needed to mow the orchard and around the chicken coop and garden.
      Since I put electric fence around the entire garden, chicken, and tree area, I can no longer mow it with the tractor without taking the electric wire down each time.  When I mowed around the house last week, a narrow swath of grass was left for fear of damaging the house and deck with the tractor or brush hog.  I pulled out the professional size and style weed trimmer and spent several hours trimming the knee high grass around the perimeter of the house, around the outside of the electric fence and finally, around the coop, garden and the area within the electric fence.  I am spent.  Knowing that this will be a task repeated at least every two weeks during the summer and fall, we are discussing buying a yard riding mower and reserving the tractor for the heavier mowing of the parts of the yard that are only mowed a few times a year. A riding mower can be used to do a lot of the trimming that we have been using the weed trimmer to do.
     Since our local Sears is closing and they are starting their closing sale in a few days, we may on their doorstep early to see if there are any deals on their mowers.
     I still need to plant the tree we bought today, but that is going to have to wait until tomorrow.

     Each day as I go out to water and feed the chicks, I see that the weeds in the garden are quickly taking over and from experience, I know that the thicker and taller they get, the harder my garden prep work becomes.  Today is cool, sweatshirt cool, but clear and blue and since the mastiff has gone on strike and won’t get in the car to go on a town walk, I turned the pups out, turned the chicks out into their run and decided to see how much of the garden I could deal with in one afternoon.  The garlic and onions only needed minimal weeding, the herb and greens beds were done a couple of weeks ago when I bought the starts, that left a 4′ square bed, an 11 x 4′ bed, and an 8 x 4′ bed that needed to be prepped for planting.  The berry beds were done about a week ago also and as they are heavily mulched with straw, they weren’t too bad.  The garden is weeded, except for the grape bed.  I thought I had that one handled as I put a cover crop of oats and field peas on it in the fall.  The cover crop came up beautifully, and the deer thought I put it there for them, so after a few freezes, some grazing by the deer, there was no cover left and the weeds are winning.  I think I will sharpen the hoe and hack them down another day, then plant a heavy crop of clover in there to try to keep the weeds down for the season or plant the winter squash and pumpkins in that bed, knowing their dense leaf cover will help keep the weeds down.
     Two types of shelling peas are planted and I harvested enough of a mess of greens from the ones that survived the winter, to have a meal of African chicken and hot greens with farro pilaf.  A delightful dinner, heavy on our garlic from last year.
     I have enjoyed watching the young chickens explore their first full day outdoors as I worked in the garden.  I think they will be a good addition to our farm, adding fresh eggs from pasture raised birds and enjoyment watching them search for bugs and greens while chasing each other around the run.  I think they have decided that I am friend, not foe, they even gathered at the fence on the side I was observing them.  I am awaiting whether they will coop up on their own now that it is getting dark or whether I will be out there in the gathering dark and cold trying to catch each of the 21 birds and putting them in the coop.
     My knitting and spinning have taken a rest while I work my way into spring.

White Trillium