Good Morning!

[WLLady]

hello everyone....been a while since i was here it seems. so much has happened. the glencoe tornado...well....that was too close for comfort. like way too close for comfort. i'm hoping this afternoon to get up the patience to go and put the lexan back into the greenhouse. and figure out how to reinforce the structure a bit. EF0, but pushing the limits of it apparently. traveled several miles, with the base completely enshrouded in rain and very wide - like 300 meters wide or something. anyways. we lived....the house is fine....everything is okay-got some photos of the cloud before it freight trained over us....i've heard that sound now 3 times in my life. 3 times too many. a few trees and branches down here and there. we'd seen the storms coming in and got the chairs and stuff into the outdoor kitchen before it hit and we hunkered down, barn all closed up and everything. phew. too close for comfort though. we lost power for a little bit with it which fried something in the pool pump....argh. waiting on the repair information for that.....

my guinea hatched 3 yesterday, but one was stuck in the woodpile, so that's in the brooder now, and she has 2 outside with her. very protective. like watch out or you'll have a guinea on your head protective! which is good. because the coons out here are nuts. it has to be 6 coons from the neighbours in the last week.....all trapped going after their chickens. we are teaching them how to shoot...teaching the neighbours, not the coons that is.

i'm exhausted. was exhausted before they announced back to work. been working from home, and well, there's no boundaries working at home. 24/7 on call/email/text/zoom/skype/etc etc. then i got asked to figure out how to get our group back to work safely working with the department. so i swear 80 pages of rules, regulations and lists later, we started back as of monday. last week was spent calibrating and firing up equipment and stocking, ordering....cleaning and sanitizing everything, all the equipment and desks and benches and and and. Then scheduling calendars, training....training students how to wear PPE....get into work yesterday and the safety officer is telling us the wrong way to wear a surgical 2 mask. unbelievable. so a little bit of education later and we're all good. Supposed to work 4 hour shifts but a couple of people are refusing to come back to work so double shift for me and another person, and we're both exhausted-full PPE for 8 hours....having to go to our cars to eat anything and then back at it. my face hurts from wearing masks all the time. sigh. and now we are just watching to see if the cases start increasing in london because of the black lives matter rally almost 2 weeks ago now, the first case associated with the rally was announced yesterday, so....watch and wait.....i do not know what they were thinking, 10000 people all jammed into downtown in the middle of a pandemic. this, folks, is how natural selection works.....sigh.

then the truck needed service, so that's all done. people came for turkeys on the weekend (@funnyfarmerz hope they're doing well!). and chickens out the door. and ducks hatched. amazing the difference with a 1 degree decrease in temp. 10/14 hatched! no i don't have photos. not yet.

still trying to get the mulch spread....my grass is dying because it's so dry so maybe i can just put the mulch on top of the dead grass around the trees....we need rain desperately. the dust is incredible. the house needs vacuuming, and the turkey pens (now empty) need to get cleaned and the litter dumped in the asparagus, and the young poults put into the pens to grow up. Ducks are sitting again-one in the chicken coop on 40+ eggs and another on 30+ eggs in the barn. gah. they're worse than rabbits! The garden is actually weeded...except the onions. the asparagus is finally slowing down. time to make a dent in the rhubarb. our strawberries got hit by the snow....sigh. and the darned chickens started eating the corn plants. jerks. so had to fence the sweet corn patch, ran out of fencing but think there's enough of a barrier to fool them into thinking it's all fenced....still have plants to transplant-some haskaps, livingstone daisies, poppies and california poppies. maybe tonight. finally eating salad from the garden! yay

so trying to finish some of the landscaping outside one step at a time, keep ahead of the weeds and then this weekend is barn cleaning and horse trimming and moving youngsters around....then vaccinations on monday for the ponies.....maybe i'll get some sleep in there somewhere and get the house vacuumed. or i'll open the windows on the windy day and blow the dust out instead.

[Killerbunny]

And on the hand sanitising thing this is a doozie. I went to the Superstore yesterday and it was fine everyone polite etc. On the way in there are 2 large jugs of hand sanitiser - not automatic dispense. I didn't do it because I don't think it works that well and lays one open to other things. So I watched for a while as everyone dutifully walked to it, hit the top with their hand, quick wipe (no real cleanse) and walked to the carts. This seems to me a great way to spread darn near anything, yuck!

[Farrier1987]

Had some visitors last eve. Couple of people werent born in Canada, but have spent their adult lives here, retired, live suburban Windsor. Came to get some goats milk. And of course I can't sell them raw goats milk, so I gave it to them free. But they also wanted a dozen eggs, and farm gate sales are allowed. The nice men gave me $50 for a dozen eggs. I was absolutely amazed, never heard of getting that kind of money for a dozen eggs.

My one acre is not like most acreages, kind of a hillbilly atmosphere and I like it that way. I have chickens and goats and a horse in the back yard, they can come up to the back door if I dont have them in the other part. Mother hen with chicks running about. Baby goats jump up on the bench with you. Garden fenced off and stuff growing, picked a few strawberries and gave to them. The watched me milk by hand.

They, speaking their accent said "You dont live like English. You live like village we grow up." I had forgotten about this sort of quirky way of describing anyone not from their culture as English. The Dukabore-Russians in the Kootenays in BC did this all the time, and the Hutterites in Alberta.

Anyway, I was kind of pleased. Some look down their now at me a little, and thats their right, but some recognize that this is not a bad way to live. Kind of nice.

[kenya]

@Farrier1987 Years ago I had a vet out to vet a horse for me, he was really snarky and asked me if it was Old McDonald's farm. I guess some people don't like it if you have a varied livestock. I had one cow, a goat some chickens,ducks and of course the horses. I guess he was the snobby variety where horses should only be with horses.

[ross]

Kenya , more money In treating horses or should I say most horsey folk

[Killerbunny]

Happy Midsummer Day to everybody!
We used to live in Salisbury/Old Sarum so the Solstices were a huge deal. You should all go out and dance widdershins around something.

[ross]

HAPPY FATHERS DAY to all the guys

[Happy]

Happy Father's Day!

[Killerbunny]

Must get special treats out for HD & Junior! 33 lots of child support so far this year!

[windwalkingwolf]

Good morning all!
So much going on here. Everyone is broody. I have hens sitting on eggs everywhere. I have a hen that has spontaneously stolen and adopted three ducklings and a gosling. I have a turkey hen raising 4 chicken chicks, and it's the weirdest thing I've ever seen: when momma says "quiet", "hide" or "stay", they actually do it. They are a month old now and are simultaneously the best "turkey" babies and the weirdest chicken chicks I have ever had. I don't have to worry about any of them drowning in stock tanks because they tried to peck their own reflection, but the chicks act just like wild turkeys and startle and run away at anything unusual. Once mom turkey is done with them I will have to tame them a bit. They don't even sound like other chicken chicks, and never make the "help me" chick sound. It's going to be interesting to see if I can socialize these 4 guys to the chickens. I've had turkeys sit an hatch chicken eggs before, but the chicks always ended up going their own way and integrating with chickens early on. These guys are pretty happy living like turkey poults. So weird.
I also have healthy turkey babies for the first time in a couple of years... the Ridley Bronze have been very, er, "happy" this year. The two girls are laying down for the Tom, and the Tom, Roger, is humping everything willing and a few things that aren't. The dogs are unhappy with him, and no human foot is safe from his attention. At any rate, my spare of bad luck with turkeys seems to be over, as every egg I've set this year has been good.l
On the other hand, the Beltsville are being difficult again this year: not laying, and only hanging out with Roll Fizzlebeef, an old infertile Royal Palm Tom. Argh!
Holy bejeebus, I have lots more to say about everything that's going on, but my phone is about to die so I will have to get back to here. I've got some news to share. Argh.