Gotcha!

Finally after trying for over a week to catch the mama of this family of five, here she is. What an intelligent and wily critter!
Every morning I would find the bait gone and the trap sprung, and upended as her signature. I tried tying the peanut butter sandwich in place with multiple wraps of baler twine, only to be foiled repeatedly. She got every last crumb without ever stepping on the incline plate that would drop the door. Finally she was caught with a McGyver contraption consisting of a plastic container of peanut butter tied to a string that went up through a pulley and connected to the door dropping device. I dont feel all that smart since I was outwitted by a rodent for 10 days.

Baby chicks!

What an anxious, engrossing time waiting for three eggs to hatch...We could hear peep-peeping from inside the shells and little tapping sounds like trapped miners signalling for help. At last a tiny hole in each egg and a small beak partly visible.

Mama hen was patient with us, letting us check the progress and then tucking the egg back under her feathers to keep it warm.

It took about 10 hours until all three were hatched. Amazing how active and adventurous they are already, on their second day. Hard to get any work done today, they are such fun to watch.

Bye -bye bandits

What a cute little face! But not so cute when they are ransacking my corn patch. This is captive number three from a family of four (that I know of) Three raccoons in five nights, they will go anywhere for peanut butter sandwiches. From here they go for a trip to an uninhabited wooded area with a stream, so I hope they are re-uniting and happy in their new surroundings. One more adult to catch, the push is on, with the corn a week or two from mature. Really hoping another family doesnt move in til the season is over.

Chicken Little aims to be a mother hen

Chicken Little has gone SOOOOO broody. For two weeks she wouldnt get off the nest, she would hop onto any new laid egg and claim it as her own, chirruping and complaining when I would put her out of the henhouse.

Along with this new behavior was a lot of feather fluffing, strange exotic dances and sudden leaping into the air with frantic wing flapping.She kept up a continual scolding "book, book book" sound. She refused to be a part of the hen social scene. No scratching and digging, no lolling about in her dust bath. The compost pile lost all its attraction and she could not even be tempted with wiggly worms held in front of her beak

So we relented and took a day trip along with Little in a carrier box, to find her some fertilised eggs. The farm where I had bought some of the other hens just had three eggs that hadn't made it to the fridge yet. So we slipped them under our little obsessive-compulsive and she was a very happy hen.

Little is very devoted to her adopted eggs. They are from a flock of white rock hens, like our Serena, but I'm sure Little wont mind. Hatching day is the 25th or 26th of august.

Each morning I make her get off the nest, covering the eggs with a warmed towel, so she can stretch her legs and have a gigantic poop. She wont mess in the nest at all. When I put her back in after a few minutes of her strange rituals, she is SO attentive to those eggs, hooking her beak around them to push them in under herself. Then she fluffs out her feathers and settles down until the next interruption.

This is all amazing to me, how animals and birds know just what to do with no instructions or experience to go by.

Yes, we have water...

To all our friends, neighbors, B&B and cottage guests, and assorted well-wishers : our 6 week water crisis mystery is solved . Two cottages and the main house on one well. 1,000 feet of underground pipe from the 260 ft deep well at the far cottage to the main house. After trouble free years, suddenly not enough water..."Yer well musta caved in " says the plumber. Ditto say the well drillers. They drill down to 600ft. "Now you gotta get twice the horsepower pump , bigger piping and heavier electrical to get the water up." So we do that and we keep running out of water. "Well she's gotta be leakin unnerground somewhere." The backhoe is called in and digs up 3 locations where joints were made. Plus he digs a 7 foot hole in the garden to find the old well that used to feed the main house. Eventually the plumber comes back and finds the joints are fine. The well guys come back and air pressure test the underground pipes in all directions. They determine we are losing water at the main house. We shut off the incoming valve and sure enuf the well fills up overnite. A week later the plumber is back and discovers that if he shuts off the valve in the basement that leads to the barn the pressure guage holds steady.

SO... the barn is shut off till the next excavation, everyone has water enough, the well guys are $14,000 richer, the backhoe guy nearly a thousand, and several hundred for the plumber , and the whole problem could have been fixed for under a thousand by fixing the leak in the barn line in the first place!!! And my hair would probably be a darker shade of gray without the most stressful summer I can remember.

Thank God the weather has dried up here! We had a record breaking 195 mm of rain thru july and the coolest july on record also. The garden has struggled with lack of sunshine and warmth but its responding wonderfully to the change.

Chicken Mural Finished Today

What an on again/ off again project this as been, with SO much rain the last month.
Here are Buffy and Serena checking out their finished portraits.

The girls are having the run of the front lawn lately and they stay within about 100 feet of the henhouse, enjoying themselves with their scratching and pecking and bug hunting chicken pursuits. They seem to get a lot of pleasure from digging bowl shaped depressions in the lawn to take their siestas in.

Here is Serena, looking like some unfortunate road kill, but in reality is in the throes of dirt flinging, feather dirtying , chicken ecstasy.













...which culminates in a quiet nap, if one could just be left alone.

Clover heads, purple or white are popular on the lawn buffet, must be some sweetness in the nectar they are after.
All this entertainment, and 3 or 4 eggs a day now!

Painting again

Its been so long since I picked up a brush...and this big white surface has been beckoning me for weeks, to paint a mural. Its on the chicken house and will be portraits of my five hens as if the viewer is looking into the henhouse. I started by drawing each hen from photos, on separate pieces of paper and moving them about until they all fit into the background.


Then the design was transferred with carbon paper to the coop.









The dark floor will be mostly covered by painting in the straw litter at some point.


I might get this finished tomorrow or the next day if it doesnt rain. Gee, I look at these pictures and wonder if I'm at the "dotty old lady" stage of life.



Its a fun project, and it gives me something to think about besides worrying about the poor Iranians and their horrible government.

Hammock making

I've been learning how to weave a hammock and I'm quite pleased with the way they are turning out.

Here's my first one in progress on the weaving frame up in my studio. Not much to it : 2 dowels and a 2x4 and a book of instructions. And a LOT of rope, 600 feet in one hammock!

At first it looks very confusing and I had to unravel a few rows when I caught my mistakes, but now I can weave and talk at the same time without any boo-boos.

This one is finished and hanging in the ceiling of Salty Dog Arts, our shop at the local wharf.

Its made of a soft non-cotton military cord, uv resistant and impervious to moisture. I opted not to use cotton as my research told me the squirrels like to chew it up for bedding.

The stretchers are 5 foot birch cut from the hillside behind our farm. They look beautiful finished with a few coats of linseed oil.

It's a cosy fit, designed for 2 adults.......

(Sigh... if we just had time to lie in it!)

Newest addition : Chicken Little

I couldnt resist this goofy looking little hen at the Petitcodiac "Wings and Whiskers" sale. She is a mutt, part silkie and probably part banty.

I traded 3 jars of jam for her and what a sweetie she has turned out to be. I named her Chicken Little because she is the littlest of the flock and she has a startled 'The sky is falling" look about her.

My former favorite, Buffy, a Buff Brahman who was the lowest on the pecking order because she was gentle and small, now has someone smaller than herself to pick on, and oh boy is she showing a mean streak!

I have moved the big hens to the barn for a while so poor little Little has only one at a time to get used to. This could take a while because it was a week before they stopped bullying Buffy. Little must think I am Mommy because she runs to me and tries to hide herself in my clothes, what a funny little bird she is.

The original black hens, a few posts back , enjoyed their retirement for over three weeks without a single egg forthcoming, and sadly have gone the way of all non laying layers.....

Enough said about that..

Their replacements are Serena, a large White Rock who is moulting and can be excused for not laying right now.

And Sonia who is an Ancona, a breed originating in the mediteranian.

Sonia is high strung and flighty with tail feathers like a roadrunner. I dont know what her excuse is for not laying yet. The Rhode Island Red, Rudy, and Buffy lay their predictable egg a day so hopefully the others will take note. The chicken house is full, Ive gotta quit before I turn into one of those warped collector people and the neighbors start talking about me.

Garden progress

Welcome welcome greens! Such a long wait since last garden season for fresh picked organic salads..

The garlic will be sending up scapes soon..

I'm still planting, it takes a month or so to get everything in. Now Im down to the warm weather squashes, peppers and tomatoes that all need protection for a while yet, from our sometimes chilly ocean breezes.

We have voracious flea beetles which love to munch on cabbage family transplants and turnip and radish seedlings. The cloth is thwarting them so far...this is a long patch of turnip that we grow for winter feed for the horses.

A peek under the cloth shows all is well so far...

The broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage transplants go under ice cream buckets with the bottoms cut out, and a fine mesh over the tops. The center is cut out of the plastic lid to hold the mesh in place. This works wonderfully, protecting the little transplants from wind, flea beetles, and cabbage butterflies. They stay in place till the plant begins to outgrow its confines, at which point it's big and tough enough to be unappealing to the bugs.

The tomatoes are going into the ground under their plastic hotcaps, where the'll stay till they outgrow them and hopefully it will be warmer then. These used to be expensive in garden stsupply stores but now you can get them at the dollar store. In that end of the garden is my windbreak of recycled storm windows. Sure it looks like Dogpatch, but hey it works!

The peppers and little sweet million tomatoes get planted right into the greenhouse soil for the summer where they thrive in the heat and humidity. I love to be able to pick their fruits well after frost. Still have a bunch of transplants to go out, at this point they are all in individual 3 or 4 inch pots so I dont have to hurry anything potbound. What a lot of interesting , rewarding, healthy hard work!

A week of Firsts...

First radishes...

First egg!

First flowers around the pond...

First Rhode Island Red....

But the best first of all...ta-da...a grandson born to son Cody and daughter in law Sherin. No photos yet, but I'm going to visit in two days.

The new hen, Rudy arrived 2 days ago and has laid 2 eggs, putting to shame Mariah and Dorothy who are still slacking off after 2 weeks. So much for the theory of "stressed out due to change of environment". The black hens were quite jealous and possessive of their food and water when Rudy arrived, and behaved like playground bullies. They got the sharp points of their beaks rounded off, so they couldnt do her much damage.

The wood is all put up for next winter...we need more roof!

Happy hens

Two chickens have moved in to the new chicken house, Black Maria and Dorothy. They have had a remarkable week from a hen's perspective...when I found them they were living in a battery situation, each in a one square foot cage, standing on wire mesh, indoors, barely able to turn around. They couldnt walk properly at first, with their legs going every which way like intoxicated fowl, and being intellectually deprived they couldnt figure out the ramp or what the roost was for.

So after crawling in the cage for a few nights and shoving them up the ramp, they caught on and now they go merrily up and down just for the fun of it. They learned how to scratch and dig and discovered worms , and now I hear a kind of anticipatory chirruping that translates "Heads up, the worm lady is coming!"

They have been very entertaining all week, but are yet to lay a single egg. Could be they feel they are in some chicken spa with gourmet food and dust baths and on vacation from work.

There is room for two more, but I'm holding out for a poultry show and sale in June where I hope to find a pretty speckled Barred Rock.

Rest in peace Baby Taylor

The tragic death of a newborn baby found dumped in a snowbank a few months ago near Moncton, NB has touched many in the province. He remains unidentified and police have named him Taylor after the road he was found on. Today was his funeral. Tuesdays paper had a story which upset me greatly, and prompted the following letter to the editor, published today . (click on the cutting to enlarge)

The To-Do list

The spring chore list is gradually getting whittled away but its not getting any smaller because new chores keep getting added to the bottom of the page. Like this one.

The first load of next winters wood arrived today, yes the first load, theres more to come. This is my right hand man's chore. I once had a wet heavy chunk of maple land on my ankle, followed by a trip to the emergency room, followed by my hero announcing he would do all the wood piling henceforth, bless him.

Today the first of the potatoes went in, we should be having our first taste of tender new taters by late july. The cloth is covering rows of turnip and radish to protect the leaves from the voracious flea beetles. They also love broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower which they chew to resemble lace so they all need protection until they get bigger and tougher. I found this fine net type material cheap at a Fabricville sale last fall.

All the leafy stuff is in now, chard, spinach, onions, 5 kinds of lettuce, onions, and the garlic is up 6 inches.

In the corner of the photo is my other right hand man, Big Red. My Troy Bilt tiller I bought new in 1978, the only piece of machinery I have ever truly loved. He has some new parts mind you, (my favorite ever Christmas gift from Mr Hero was new tractor tires for Big Red)

We are off to the farm auction today in Sussex to scout out some laying hens and look at something besides a chore list.