Uh oh!! (x2)

Regular readers may remember that our Golden Polish rooster 'Fred' has spent most of his life being somewhat hen-pecked. Recently the poor ol' boy lost the last of tail feathers so now he's strutting around with his bare-nekked, hen-packed, back-side hanging out. (Uh oh! #1)  He is still doing his rooster thing, but it is just not a good situation.

Poor Fred looks a little odd from the side...

... and kinda sad from the back.

To make matters worse (for Fred) , whether it's his less-than-exalted position in the flock or just from being a rooster, he's also become a bit of a bully lately.  I have no problems with the boy unless he thinks I'm mistreating a hen but De, the daughters, and pretty much everyone else have to watch him  close or he'll come up and attack from behind.  It doesn't happen every time someone is out, but it does happen often enough that he's made himself "poultry non grata". We've gone to keeping a "Fred Stick" next to the door so folks venturing to the coop can, if they desire, tote a bit of defensive armament along.  With Ivan, the Polish-Buff Orp cross cockerel coming into his own (more on that later) we've decided it's time to send Fred to "Freezer Camp".  Since it's been something like 45 years since I've done that, I'm recruiting my sister and/or brother-in-law to tutor me.  I'm hoping this will be the week since I'm taking a week of 'vacation' away from the day job.


When Fred has made his way to land of the popsicle, Ivan will be THE GUY in the flock - maybe.  While we had big plans for Ivan to take over the roosterin' duties we discovered what may be a deal-breaker.  We were looking everyone over the other day and thought the young Ivan just didn't look right.  A closer look revealed that Ivan has a cross-beak! (Uh oh #2).

Pretty feathering and a buttercup comb.  A nice looking bird!

It's not awful, but it's sure not right.

 We're doing our homework (backyardchickens.com among other places - we're open to other sources), but if we find that cross beak is something he's likely to pass on to his offspring it's probably a deal breaker for Ivan.  Right now the "experts" seem to be split about 50/50.  We'll keep getting opinions from 'been there - done that' folks, and decide if Ivan will eventually be joining Fred.

On a slightly different topic, I'm taking time off from the day job this week and am making big plans for work around the homestead.  I'll share what I get done as well as what I don't, so I hope get several posts out this week.

Col. 1:9-12,

Mark

It's still coming in!

So with the kids and grandkids back home for Labor Day, it was time for Gramma and Papa to get hot on catching up on the garden chores.  'Hot' is really the operative word here.  Like some of the rest you we have had unseasonably warm temperatures with what I can only describe as brutally high humidity.  While it makes the trip to the garden a bit less pleasant than it might have been, the tropical-feeling combination has done wonders for turning my green tomatoes into red ones, keeping the pole bean plants cranking out beans, growing my late-planted beets, and coercing my one decent bell pepper plant to produce.  (Odd thing is, the jalapenos and banana peppers in the very same bed, are doing great.  Happens pretty much every year.  Strange...)

De had tomatoes and cabbage from a  previous garden visit to work up, and my job for the day was to collect up the next round.  So off to the garden I went.  Or perhaps I should say "we went".  Regular readers will know I never go the garden alone.  I have a constant cadre of helpers that always are right there with me whenever I'm outside, even if I'm not really in the garden.

The "Team" wanting to help me work on the truck.

Whoops! There are some limits to the kind of help I allow.  This 'help' was short lived.

 So back to the garden.  As I mentioned before, the brutal weather is helping to get the tomatoes finished up.  We're at the stage where some of the plants are 'giving their all for the cause', but I ended up with 1-1/2 five gallon buckets full.  This year we tried "sausage" tomatoes instead of "Roma" tomatoes for sauce and like them a lot better.  They are bigger, 'beefier', and equally prolific.

The tomatoes are still producing...

...and the helpers are still a bit miffed the don't get to help with the harvest.

They do get anything that is not up to 'human consumption' as a reward for their efforts on bug patrol.

The green beans are still going well.

 The green beans are still producing quite well for being this late in our season.  The question is "What does one do when you really don't need anymore?"  That little leading questions leads me to an aside, which will likely not get mentioned very often here.  I've started another blog called "Hoosier Country Christian".  I'm currently intending it to be a source of encouragement for Christians using examples from rural living as illustration points, but (literally) God only knows what it will end up being.  I just know I feel called to write it.  I'm going to address the "having more than I need" question in the new blog and will have that post up before bedtime tonight.  I'll get a link to the new blog from this one up, too.

Fred, my poor hen-pecked rooster, is there to supervise the harvest.

As are a couple of the hens.

The chickens get to come...

... and go through the middle of the trellises.  Other than snitching the occasional blossom, they seem to be focused on the bugs.

 There were also some potatoes to dig.  I had essentially given up on them assuming they had gotten choked out by weeds.  I mowed over the area where they were planted and wrote them off.  This morning I got the urge to take the potato fork and just 'go check'.  Sure enough, there were a few potatoes.  Not a lot, but enough to take the time to dig out of the ground.  There is another illustration here for the other blog.

There is ALWAYS a 'helper' around when there worms involved.

There are more to dig, but with the heat index approaching 100F, I decided they would be fine for a cooler day.  I'm past the point in my life where I'm ready to 'go to the mat' for a few potatoes I didn't even know were there.

All in all, we got a pretty decent harvest on this hot, humid day.

Canned tomato sauce with more in the slow cooker.  Freezer slaw ready for the freezer.

Green beans, banana peppers, and a few 'bonus' potatoes.

There is more increase to come from my weedy garden.  We are blessed!!

Col. 1:9-12,

Mark

A Great Weekend!

De and I had a great weekend!  One of the nieces got married on Saturday and the whole clan was up for the event.  It was a morning wedding, 10:30 to be precise, and other than having to get a bit of an early start to get everyone up and ready it worked out well.

It had a somewhat unusual 'motif', but it was a beautiful wedding and both ministers (one from each church that the two attended) did an excellent job of working it into their messages.

The wedding party looked great, and the medieval motif was unique.

 

They had a wonderful reception at the church with friends and family

 The wedding and reception consumed a good part of the day and pretty much wore everyone out.  Sunday afternoon was intended to be a quiet time for all, but twas not to be, and it was OK.

Papa went into his office intending to work on some amateur radio stuff coming up.  The girls followed and pretty soon we had some pretty serious office work going on.

Papa's two office assistants.

I had one end of my office table set up with a non-working laptop, papers, pencils and crayons, and scissors for one 'assistant', with the same set-up on a separate, smaller table for the other 'assistant'.  We got a lot done, but for some reason that radio work is still out there waiting.

The older one is learning a bit about how to tune Papa's HF radio.  Just receiving so far.  My license does all me to let her transmit as long as I'm running the station, but she's not quite ready for that yet. So far I just set it up in the region of the AM broadcast band and let her tune in whatever music she could find there.  In the future I'll set her up in the international shortwave broadcast band and let her find music and languages from cultures around the world.  Should be fun.  The younger is still more interested in crawling up on Papa's lap for help with drawing apples for her to color a bright red and pink, and getting a little help cutting them out with her scissors. 
 

"You have to do all the voices, Papa!"

 This was a pic from the last visit, but we did a lot of this, too. I love reading to the girls, and they love to be read to.  Like all kids that age they have their favorite books, and Papa reads them over and over again. (Except when they 'read' them to me.)

It was a great weekend for all.  They went home mid-Sunday afternoon, and Gramma and Papa crashed for the rest of the day.  There was garden work to do.  But that is another post.

Col. 1:9-12,

Mark

"Gotta" go to work?

Things at the Hoosier Country Homestead have been pretty much the same over the last week.  The green beans are producing, the tomatoes are still coming in, and everything else is looking pretty good given its weedy condition.  The chickens are cranking out eggs and complaining (bitterly) about being thrown out of the tomato beds.  There is, as always, plenty of work to be done and it’s that ‘plenty of work’ that I’ve been pondering this week.

I’ve been reading through the book of Ecclesiastes in my morning ‘quiet’ times and have noticed something of a recurring theme in the first 5 chapters.  Ecclesiastes is not a real popular ‘read’, but as you may or may not recall, this is the book that contains the “There is a time for everything, and a time for every activity under heaven:” passage.  You remember:

“A time to be born and a time to die,

  A time to plant and a time to uproot,…”

This passage, made popular by The Byrds in the 1965 classic “Turn, Turn, Turn”, usually gets the spotlight for this book but it is something else that has captured my attention. 

As Solomon, pretty much universally considered to be the writer, is pondering the value of earthly things apart of God he goes through the list of everything generally thought to be of value and worthwhile.  The list is pretty much the same today as it was some (almost) 3000 years ago when the book was written.  Wealth, pleasures from the sensual to the “good life”, accomplishment of great projects, prestige and position, and a few others.   He comes always to the same conclusion:  “...everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind, nothing was gained under the sun.” 

Tucked in among the lists of things he’s considered and the ‘everything is meaningless’ verses is the thing that has caught my eye:  It appears, in some variation, four times in the first five chambers.  It goes like this in the third chapter.  (For those who care, this is out of the NIV.)  “I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live.  That everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all his toil – this is the gift from God.”  In other places it appears as, “A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work.  This too, I see, is from the hand of God, for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment?”

It is so popular and so easy for us to look at ‘work’ as a four-letter-word.  We look forward being “off work” and to “retiring from work”.  We complain about work, look for better work, try to avoid work, buy things to reduce our work, and all the while wonder why we ‘just aren’t happy’.  Work is more often than not considered something bad and something good to be done with.

The thing I have noticed in this book is that it is not the accomplishments that come from our work that are to be our satisfaction, it is the work itself that is to be our source of earthly fulfillment.   I don’t know about the rest of you, but this is a pretty easy thing for me to forget when you’re outside on a very humid day, fighting off mosquitoes while trying get your early potatoes dug, garden weeded, or critters taken care of.

But still it is there in the Bible and, contrary to the popular culture and, too often my own short-sightedness, I believe it to be true.  I’ve been trying, over the last couple of weeks, to slow down while I’m working, just for moment, to be "in the moment”.  I take these intentional moments to thank God for work he’s given me to do, and  to ask for strength and wisdom enough to do it all for His glory.  As I look out over the place I can see that there will be plenty of opportunities between now and winter for me practice being thankful, just for the work.  We are blessed!

Col. 1:9-12,

Mark

Harvest from a "Weedy" Garden

As you may have noticed by my lack of posts, this has not been the wildly productive season I had hoped it would be.  It's not like there is any one, big disastrous event that kept me away from what I wanted to be doing, but there was a whole string of smaller things that kept me out of the garden and away from the computer when the garden really needed some "love" and the blog really needed some posts.  Some planting happened late and some not at all.  Posts were few and far between.  Mulching the beds, adding compost where needed, tilling up the plots, all the normal early garden maintenance just didn't get done and, as a result, we ended up with the weediest garden we have had in a lot of years.  Your blog posts came and went, occasionally unread. Obviously not "the end of the world as we know it", but still a bit disappointing.  And yet, yesterday De and I went to our weedy garden and picked green beans, harvested tomatoes, carefully plucked egg fruit plant off the spiny stalks, broke off cabbages, and pulled up onions.  And I'm posting again!  Even though the weeds are still everywhere, God has given De and I an abundant increase.

I couldn't help but think, as we were pulling our harvest out from among the weeds how similar the garden this year has been to our life this year.  Our lives, from winter on, have not gone as we had hoped.  There was no single 'big' thing that went bad, but it was a season (or two) full of "weeds": Illnesses major and minor, family and community obligations and challenges, lots of extra work at the 'day job', bad weather when the few 'free times' came along - all "weeds".

Lest I give the impression this has been a season of misery let me assure you we have not been miserable at all.  Frustrated at times perhaps, but never unhappy.  Some work was completed and some was not.  Some hopes were realized, and some were not.  A few goals were reached and many will wait until next year, or perhaps the year after that.  But when we stopped to look, we could see the growth in amongst the weeds.  Children and grandchildren alike are maturing even through, and perhaps because of, the tough times.  The 'day job' seems to be secure for as long as I want to work.  The church is growing, and our small group is growing closer.  De and I are both slowly finding physical healing.  There is produce coming in from the garden.

Through all the 'weeds' we see God's hands not only revealing the growth but providing an abundant increase.  As we sort down through all the 'weedy' things and look carefully, we see not a just a few meager things barely surviving, but an abundant harvest of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, and occasionally a beautifully ripened, perfect red tomato. We are blessed.

Col. 1:9-12,

Mark

The "Helpers" are a bit 'put out'

In my last post I had noted that in the spirit of "better late than never" I had figured out my tomatoes were not being bug eaten just as soon as they turned red, but that the "chicken helpers" were helping themselves!

To that end I spent a little time at the local farm store looking for options.  What I ended up with was essentially snow fencing.  I got the orange color even though it comes in a nice summery green just in case I ever want to use for... Oh, I don't know... maybe...  snow, and want to see it from a truck or tractor.  I got the 100' roll but by the time I figured out how the fence was going to work I would have been OK with the 50' roll.  One company VP I worked for years ago used to say "Ready, Fire, Aim".  The idea was just DO something mostly right and tweak your solution along the way.  I find I follow that path a lot.

In any case, here's what I ended up with:

It seems someone feels a bit 'put out' with this new turn of events.

I was able to use a hog panel for a "people gate".

The four corners are regular steel fence posts, and the posts in the middle are the temporary fencing kind.  It's not what I would call "pretty", but its working.  I left the remaining fencing on the roll and just strapped it in place.  Quite coincidentally I assure you,  the distance between the steel posts on the end almost exactly matched the length of one of the 12' hog panel sections I had.  Thus we had a "people gate" that is easy to open and close, and still quite capable of keeping the chickens out.  A goat would laugh, cattle would scoff (if they cared), hogs would hardly even notice it, but it works great for my chickens.

Since then De and I have began to reap a reasonable tomato harvest.  It's not been been an ideal tomato year from a weather standpoint, but we're starting to enjoy them instead of the 'girls' snacking out on the juicy, red lusciousness.  Again, I probably should have seen this coming, but we'll get a fair crop this year and will be all set for next.  Live and learn, as the saying goes.  I guess I'm just a wee bit smarter now!

Col. 1:9-12,

Mark

A Month of Catch-up!

Back again, with apologies - again.

As you might guess, it's been a busy month.  The last post I did was just after De's foot surgery.  I took one week off work, and after that kind of had a juggling act going.  Between doing the cooking, a bit of cleaning, helping with ice packs, hot drinks, cold drinks, some extra goings on at the 'day job', the garden, the chickens, the pets, Church obligations, and family obligations, and trying to get my SUV out of the body shop I was consumed.

Just to get caught up:

• First - After about 5 weeks De is out of the post-surgery boot and doing reasonable well.  She is still quite sore, especially after spending time on her feet.  She goes back to work tomorrow (she's a Teacher's Aid at the local Elementary School) and I am praying it goes well for her.
• Something like week after De got out her boot. Daughter #1 rolled her ankle at work.  She's now in an identical boot with was first thought to be a high ankle sprain.  After two painful days and another trip to the Doc they found a hairline fracture in foot bone.
• The little chicks we had last time I posted - Grew up!  They are 9 weeks old now.  The darker one, which we are guessing is a pullet, is a Golden Polish-Easter Egger cross.  The lighter one, which we believe is a cockerel, is a Golden Polish - Buff Orpington cross.  As soon we are sure the one is a cockerel, Fred the Rooster - who has been rather ill-mannered lately - will be off to "freezer camp".  There now resides a sizable stick next to our front door known as the "Fred Stick".  He seems to know better than to give me a hard time, but women and children have about a 25% chance of having Fred try to bully them.  I can hear the crock pot calling his name louder and louder every time he misbehaves.

The "Kids" up on a perch in the run.

• The garden, weeds and all, is doing pretty well:

The peas are done now, but we got plenty for fresh eating.

The helpers approved of the my efforts and left the peas alone.

The pole beans went from this...

... to this.  And they are VERY easy to pick in from the vertical trellises!

As always, there is someone there to help us out.

And we got a pretty decent first picking!  Those are 5 gallon buckets.

• Mark, once again, got smarter and not necessarily happier.

Our tomato plants are huge!

Our tomatoes are doing great but seemed to getting bug eaten as soon as they turn red.  To make a long story short, I discovered the culprits are not bugs.  It seems the 'chicken helpers' are helping themselves.  By the end of the week they'll be a fence.

• I traded a bunch of unused rebar for a hoop house garage frame.  I need to get it staked down and then I can get the covering on it.

It's a long one-car garage size.  The mower and other things out the barn will live there.

• I need to catch up on everyone else's blog. <Looking forward to that>
• I need to keep up my posts.
• The yard still needs to be mowed. < sigh >
• There is a lot of landscaping that needs some 'love'.  < sigh >
• There is a LOT of work to do at the 'day job'. < double sigh >

BUT...

Despite all the trials and challenges everyone is doing pretty well.  Pretty much everything that needs attention will be there tomorrow.   We are STILL very blessed.

Col. 1:9-12,

Mark