Monthly Archives: May 2012

Chickens, Farm, Inspiration, Lost and Found, Neighbors, Peacock, Peafowl, Vermont

Flying the Coop

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We’re puppy sitting for our neighbors and this lovable bundle of bounce is just too much for our farm animals.  The sheep have been stamping their little hooves whenever the miniature terror comes near their pasture.  Bean-the-bunny hops quickly back into her hutch to avoid the wet nose investigations.  The chickabiddies, who are currently confined to protect them from the Daily Fox, crowd to the middle of their yard when a certain silly wagger runs over to say ‘hello.’  The housecats have scattered, but by now, with trepidation, our three dogs have accepted this new charge.  At least the goats and horses seem unphased.

Figaro, our white peacock, typically hangs around our house, calling and displaying rather constantly as his duties these days are all about courtship.  Jewel, his gal, typically moves in larger circles and seemingly ignores him.  Sometimes we find them involved in a “can’t catch me” game where he pursues and she runs away, and it includes some very interesting guttural sounds from her as well.  At night, the two of them roost far, far above in the giant oak tree in the backyard and Fig keeps watch, emitting those very loud and stereotypical peafowl hollers from his branch intermittently in attempts to cast spells to protect his lady friend.

Fig, in full display

Figaro spends a lot of time on the back porch

On Day 2 of puppy-sitting, Fig flew the coop.  We noticed he was missing somewhere around midday.  We searched the fields and surrounds on our road for tell-tale signs of struggle or a trail and couldn’t find anything.  I bemoaned and belittled myself for bad-mothering.  Jewel had come up to me at some point and just hung out for the longest time so that I knew she was worried too.  We walked over to the coopyard together and I tucked her in with the hens for the night.  She and I accepted that Fig was not nearby and she should not sleep alone in the trees that night.

Jewel spent the night without Fig in the enclosed chicken yard

Next morning, bright and early, I was up and catching our loose pony.  I rescued a duckling that had been stuck in his crate all night.  I tended the flocks and was just shutting the door on the chicken coop when a white truck came sweeping into the front yard. (Cue Knight in Shining Armor!)  I fairly flew and ran to say good morning to someone whom I was sure had news of my peacock.

Indeed, this neighbor from several streets away introduced himself and told me the tale of Fig’s arrival in his backyard the day before.  Apparently he came upon his wife who was sunning by their backyard pool and “Honked!” her to attention!  Their afternoon was spent enjoying his company, observing his interesting behaviors when their cat decided to play with him, and searching for his owners.  Somehow or other, we have a reputation in this area for owning white peacocks and they learned that he belonged to us.  They looked our name up in the phone book to try to hone in on where we lived and took it from there.  These kind neighbors had been trying to phone me, but to no avail.

Confession:  I am a HORRIBLE phone person.  I’d never even checked the phone to see if there were messages and obviously hadn’t picked it up during the day when they tried reaching us.  Often I am outside and don’t hear the phone, sometimes I am inside and don’t get to it in time.

All I’d had to do was check my phone for messages and I would’ve saved myself a loss of sleep and frazzled nerves!

Jody and I loaded the truck with a large net, a bucket of scraps & scoop of grain, and crated lady-friend Jewel.  We drove for less than 10 minutes and arrived at Fig’s respite-house.

Jewel, crated for the ride to lure and capture Figaro back

Imagine my relief when we pulled up and there he was, posed on their rooftop.

Figaro-on-the-Roof: safe atop the neighbors’ garage!

The question of the hour was “How are you going to get him down?”  We hoped that Jewel’s presence would lure him to the ground and then we’d be able to shut him into the crate “tunnel of love.”  He was wary and seemed not in a hurry.  So I announced, “I’m going to call him.”  Jody just shook his head and luckily the neighbors had removed themselves to the background to give us a little room.

When I call my peacocks, it’s a rather humbling experience if there is an audience.  I don’t profess to be an expert at animal calls, but if I’m going to do it at all, it means giving it my full effort.  So when you try to sound like a peacock, you do not necessarily stay “composed.”

I held my hands up to either side of my face, tented my fingers and pressed against my sinuses just so, and then called “HmmHAWWW!” as loudly and resonantly as I could.

Guess who knows his mama?!

Imagine the wind spinning the weathervane on top of the roof and you’ve got the picture of Fig after he heard me call.  He quickly trotted down the roof, flew to the ground and trotted right over to me, Jewel and the large crate set up in his honor.

Jody just stood there and said “I don’t believe it!”

After that we gave Fig some time to figure out what he was supposed to do to become captured. When we decided he’d had enough time for that and didn’t really want to spend the day waiting, we used the net.  Jody just swooped it down on top of his head and neck, he didn’t budge, and we carried him into the crate.  Two peacocks loaded into the back of the truck later, we brought the pair back to Wing and a Prayer Farm.

Waiting for Fig to “take the bait!”

Succesful capture – loading peafowl up for their ride home!

Home again, home again!

Fig and Jewel are now chillin’ with the chickens until the puppy goes home tonight.  Better safe than sorry.  Not too many feathers were ruffled though I have happily promised feather souvenirs to the 10-year-old-twins that helped their parents keep watch over my guy.

Safe in the chicken compound.

Preening some ruffled feathers after a morning ride.

Good neighbors, just so you know, they’re still out there!  And today I’m making some sort of pie as a token of gratitude.  The suggestions for appropriate “Peacock Rescue Pies” have been “PEAch” or “PEcan”, of course!

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Green Glass

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Chubby toddler hands clasped in my own, I strolled the rocky beaches of Lake Champlain looking for “green glass” in the morning dawn. As our toddlers became taller, the morning ritual of treasure hunting continued; the glass and rocks still collected to be admired for old and new inspirations. The rhythm of stooping and selecting, the sharing of finds, the careful steps chosen, had been a part of mine and my children’s lives for the past 20 years.

The Whites have been coming together on Lake Champlain going back to my kid’s great, great grandfather, T.A. Unsworth. His daughter, Jim’s gramma Arlene, then bought her “little” place down the shore from T.A. when it became available from the late Tiffany family. Arlene was a modern-gal, the first woman underwriter for New York Life Insurance, divorced and raised her 3 kids on her own, passed out subscriptions to “Ms.” magazine when she met her future grandaughters-in-law, and constructed an updated home in the place of the Tiffany’s three-story Victorian.

Since we started bringing our own babes and now grown kids to the lake, we arrived with our vehicles chock-full of bicycles, boats, sewing machines, dogs, cats, the bunny, and yes, even our ducks came one year. For the past couple of years we’ve been able to borrow space at a kind neighbor’s barn so that we could also bring our horses with us. Family reunions, weddings, funerals, birthday parties and holidays have been shared for as long as my husband can remember. Cousins, uncles and aunts have come together for support to scatter parents’ and grandparents’ ashes from the boat.

We have to sell the place. We can’t afford the taxes, even though we split the property three ways with Jim’s brothers. It is one of those classic “the locals can’t afford to live here anymore” situations.

Our neighbors, deeper pockets to our left and right, have bought us out. They want this property which has possibly the best natural shoreline on Lake Champlain. They are going to level our house at the end of this month and divvy amongst themselves.

Here’s where you get my “anger” stage of grief:  The new owners will probably throw a nice party to celebrate the White Trash that is leaving the neighborhood(that is the running family joke.) Then they’ll commence to build multimillion dollar stone retaining walls, manicured pathways with trendy lighting and employ the best landscape architects that money can buy so that they can recreate Shangrila. Then, for a finishing touch, they’ll install some tasteful fencing.

It’s too sad when you have to sell out. No matter what. I initially wanted to be the pillar and declared “There’s no crying in second homes.”

But I sat on the shores this morning, and well, I cried.

strolls, saved on the mantel

So, sad as it is, I recognize that lessons develop character. You swallow hard and stay positive. March on and figure out how you can give to someone in more need. Gain perspective.

After all, our lives are embedded and blessed with those soul-soothing walks from seasons past. The physical world can change all it wants; we’ve got our memories, we’ve got our faith.

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Don’t Count Your Chicks

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10-week old “Farmyard Mix” Chickabiddies

Tomorrow is moving day.  True Love Farm, just down the road, will be the new home for our 10- and 14-week old chicks to help fill CSA shares with fresh eggs this upcoming year.

It has been an interesting journey, thus far, for this flock.  The 14-week olds had a horrible, tragic experience when they were less than one day old.  We had tucked them safely into their brooder box after hatching and found them all drenched and drowned or nearly drowned the next morning.  Unbeknownst to us, the waterer that we had put in with them had a leak and had filled the plastic box gradually, and by morning it was a swimming pool.  It still seems miraculous that about 30, of 40, were able to be resuscitated and survived.

We had to incubate more to try to make up for the loss.  When this next group hatched out, they experienced an unidentified malady in their barn stall at about 6 weeks old.  We weren’t sure why 5 seemingly healthy chicks were becoming weak and dying and we quickly added electrolytes to the water, hoping to strengthen the remaining flock to fight off whatever had befallen them.

However, more heartbreak in the upcoming weeks was a result of “picking” between the two groups of chicks as we gradually integrated them.  The older birds were scarily mad with bullying the younger group and it seemed we could not segregate and rescue them quickly enough. We lost 4 chicks in what felt like 1992 Los Angeles in the barn. We created a “hospital stall” which allowed 5 patients that did survive to heal, coating their badly bloodied bodies with ointment after peroxide baths.  After about a week, feathers started to grow again and energy returned to the poor little babes.

Seemingly overnight, the bullies found other hobbies and the quarreling stopped.  The flocks were finally integrated and thriving, free-ranging the pastures, woods and surrounds of the barn.

Since the order was for layer hens, 10 roosters went into the freezer last Friday.

It was time for a final assessment.  One little chick has “bumble foot” which is a genetic-defect that occurs now and then.  She can go with the others if the farm wants her, but if they do not, then she will have a home here.

The order is for 50 pullets.  We attempted to tally. The flock has a tendency to move around and come out of or go into hiding just when you’ve almost finished counting heads but we thought there were 30ish hens.

And then 2 more crowed.

“I’m bigger than you!”

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Kittens and hedgehogs and honeybees, oh my!

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Putting on miles and smiles.                                                                                               New goings’ ons with the farm and the fam in the past week and a half:

Giles, 6 weeks old, adopted by one very soft-hearted Tammy when she was actually going to pick up a kitten for a friend of a friend.  Come on, didn’t we all suspect this might happen?  No one should ever send me to pick up a kitten for a friend of a friend!  Husband Jim suggests that we can keep Giles if the goats go.  He’s such a kidder….:-)

Cricket & Giles & Aisling meeting up for the first time.  It took Giles about 4 days to acclimate to the rest of the household menagerie.  He loves everyone and they’re all fine with him, too, except that the older cats are pretending he doesn’t exist.  

Sarah Jane is home for the summer and here she is with her 6 week old hedgehog, “Rosy.”

Rosy eats ground up cat food.  She is nocturnal so her days are pretty quietly spent in her “Moist & Fresh” refrigerator box with cedar shavings for litter, a solid wheel for exercise, and a cat-proof screen covering the top!  Her reaction to new or sudden movements is to extend her quills outward and sort of shiver, making a “teakettle noise”, as Sarah Jane puts it.  It reminds me of when our peacock displays, shimmying and rattling his plumage to intimidate.  Rosy is really sweet and shy right now, though becoming more socialized as the days go by.

We spent three days in Burlington at the Vermont All State Music Festival with Charlotte, one of the 236 choristers.  The music was fantastic, the full days were exhausting for Char, and we were happy to return home to our farm in time for Mother’s Day.

Mother’s Day was spent retrieving and transferring 6 nucs of honeybees that arrived from Georgia.

Jody, who is also home from college now, was instrumental in helping me to get the bees into their new homes. Here is a fun picture showing the back of his head covered with some honeybee friends and Fig, the peacock, displaying. Life is never dull on Wing and a Prayer Farm! I had Jody kneel near the hives so that I could brush the party off and into their new box.

Bee’s Knees…NOT! What happens when I get stung. Sadly the gal that did this to me lost her life with the stinger. I’m o.k. by now, just super-itchy and still a bit swollen. The inflammation should be gone by the weekend(I hope!)

Hard working honeybees find pollen on our Tree Peonies in today’s sunshine.

Aisling helps me to “skirt” the fleeces on Shearing Day.  Here I am working on Iglesias’ fleece, pulling off any dirty or matted tags around the edge.  I then roll the fleece and sheet up and tie them with baling twine before further processing them.

Fred DePaul has been coming to our farm to help us shear for the past 10 years. He is never short on stories and we always send him home with Chicken Pot Pie at the end of the day.

Gandalf & Yogi in their new summer suits.

Today Indian Blue Runner Ducklings arrived from California Hatchery. We waited and waited on the eggs which I’d salvaged from the abandoned nests in the garden, hoping against hope for life after death where my Blue Runner Ducks were concerned. But after plenty of waiting, there was nothing to show for it except for reeking and spoiled duck eggs. California Hatchery speedily filled an order and these 9 gals and 3 guys arrived in good health.

“Quack!”

Just before a fresh salmon dinner this evening, Jim & I wrestled 10 little lambs and gave them their CD & T boosters.  I can happily cross it off the day’s list, put a fresh ice pack on my knee, and bid this day adieu.  

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Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water and other good advice

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When my first child was born, a well intentioned relative couldn’t wait to recommend her favorite babysitters to me upon my arrival home from the hospital. To this day, I vividly recollect that the last thing, the very last thing, that was on my mind was to leave them with a babysitter.

I had that fierce “throw yourself in front of a Mack truck” reaction to any perceived threat to my littles’ well-being, including that I couldn’t tolerate their crying for a minute.

I did suffer post partum depression and severe anxiety in the weeks following my children’s births, but what calmed my frazzled soul above all things was the satisfaction of rocking my contented newborns, sharing those moments with my husband, and of course, achieving any kind of unfragmented sleep.

These days, I foolishly throw sleep away to read just a little too late or allow the dogs and cats to sleep with me.

Another well-intentioned relative suggested to let them be while I was challenged with colicky babies.  ”In her day,” she’d said, “you just put them in the playpen and let them cry it out.”  She also brought piles of newspapers and magazines to read while she would offer to sit with the babies.  I couldn’t imagine how she would get all that reading in while she was there to spend time watching my cherubs.  I lived there with them and hadn’t been able to read the daily mail for a week!

I find a fair amount of time for my own pursuits now, including reading, and happily set them aside when my grown kids and I have a chance to talk together.

Through the years, I caught a lot of flack for carrying my children too long (“You won’t want to hold that kid all day when he’s a 5-year-old!”) or for letting them play with my apron strings while I was cooking.  Literally, Sarah Jane would tie herself to my apron strings and hold onto my legs in the kitchen while Char was in my arms, on my hip, and Jody would be on a chair or stool helping to measure, chop or cook something up with me.

It’s especially nice, now, that Char offers to cook every Friday night, Jody can bake the most amazing chocolate cake you’ll ever taste, and Sarah Jane sews up incredibly detailed aprons like nobody’s business.

I also experienced hurt feelings when more well-intentioned friends criticized my home-schooling decision.  There were a few years when parents of my kids’ friends had been in and out of my home for birthday parties, sleepovers, car-pools, tea and dinners.  When we made the leap into homeschooling from a couple of years of local public school, those same friends just fell out of our lives.  There were many times when we were asked, “Are you sure this was a good idea?”

Needless to say, 10 years at home did not ruin their lives.

One doesn’t want to spend too much time analyzing these periods of growth and life.  It doesn’t change things.  I have learned and continue to learn so much from every decision made in rearing my children.

And could I have done things differently? You betcha.  You sit there with a brand new life in your arms and realize the responsibility you have and do your best.  I believe humans are inherently good and I also believe that the role of parenting is an opportunity to better yourself.

In so many ways I have improved mine and other’s lives because I’ve had this opportunity.

I’m not nearly finished and pray I never will be.

The kids are alright – April 2009

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The Rooster Crows

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A lot of cackling and crowing near 5ish.  I typically love it.  This morning my head is migraine-y and so I’m not as happy about not being able to fall back to sleep.

I walk downstairs with a spill of dogs underfoot.  I feel like I’m caught in a sluice-way when I wake up and imagine that someday when I’m less nimble, I’ll end up in a heap with several pairs of soulful eyes imploring me to arise and get them some breakfast.  I automatically open the front door and we pour out onto the porch where we collect metal dishes, back inside to be greeted by baa-ing and then to the bin to scoop food into 3 bowls.  Meanwhile, 3 cats alight onto the counter, inviting me to throw a little kibble their way.  Back out onto the porch we go, doing the breakfast dance and I slip back into the house for a minor triumph of “6 down, so many more to go.”  I then warm up some goat’s milk in a pan and funnel it into a bottle for Aisling, the bottle lamb.  She delicately skitters about, occasionally bleating, until I lean to serve her a warm and yummy morning brew.

I try to put the kettle on for my own cuppa in and around this.  By the time I’ve made a bottle, the water is boiling and I let my morning tea steep.

I’ve got this down in 10 minutes or less.  The rest of the chores take me an hour or more, depending on the to-do list, and then I’m ready to start the day.

Happy Saturday, folks!

Ginny & Aisling discussing their morning plans