Winter was back Sunday morning. It was 18°F
with a dusting of snow.
A dusting of snow on a cold Sunday morning
There were even tiny little icicles on the tiny Little Red
Hen Barn.
Tiny little icicles on the tiny Little Red Hen Barn
Nadia finally has feathers! They’re not fully out yet, but
she does look less like porcupine.
Nadia's head is looking more normal
We’ve had some trouble with Gracie and Nadia knocking over
their food and water. I haven’t figured out what to do inside the Little Red
Hen Barn, but outside I can bungee-cord them to the hardware cloth. Terry
happily provided me with a couple of 2 x 2 blocks to keep them straight while
in bondage.
How to keep feeders from tipping over
And yes, the water is yellow. Last Monday, I had dinner with
Dr. Chris, my veterinarian friend, who confirmed my diagnosis about vitamin
deficiency in Bella. Why I didn’t think to ask her about it at the time, I can’t
imagine. Sometimes I just can’t connect the appropriate dots. Anyway, we
discussed the pros and cons of continuing dosing Bella once a week vs. vitamin
supplements in the water for everyone. She said either would be fine. It turned
out that Hilda and I had trouble remembering to give Bella her medicine, so
Hilda picked up the vitamins for the water midweek. Hence the yellow water.
Such a week I had last week. In addition to dinner with Dr.
Chris, I had meetings on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. I was most grateful when
Hilda offered to share fried chicken, potato salad, and baked beans Wednesday
night. Just as she was making her delivery, I was getting a bottle of wine from
the spare fridge. “Must be spring,” I said. “There are bags of sticks in the
refrigerator.”
Grafting scions, not sticks
Terry, who was in the bathroom and was not supposed to be
listening, yelled, “Those are grafting
scions!”
So as it turns out, he can hear quite well when he puts his
mind to it.
It’s been a beautiful, warm weekend. We have mostly enjoyed
it, but in the back of our minds is the nagging worry that the ground will thaw
enough to wake up the trees before their time. Of course there are going to be
frosts at least through March and maybe into April or May. If the apple trees
blossom before then, we will have no apples. We still had frosts the last two
nights, and it looks like next weekend will have more seasonally appropriate
temperatures. I heard killdeers and redwing blackbirds already. I hope they don’t
freeze their tail feathers before the real spring.
In the meantime, we took advantage of light northwest winds
yesterday to nearly finish burning the hay. Terry was able to do a little more
on two days during the week. It was sufficiently dry that we got the whole
south field done by 1:30, and that included an hour break for lunch. If the
forecast for light south winds holds up for tomorrow, Terry will knock off the
restoration area (which is taking its sweet time drying) and the last four
plots on the north side. And it will be done well ahead of Terry’s self-set deadline
of Good Friday.
View of the burned field to the west
And to the south
Nadia’s head still looks more like a porcupine that a bird,
but black is starting to show through on some of the shafts. Only little tufts
at the top yet, though.
Nadia's porcupine head
The rest of the girls enjoyed the day. Here Ruthie and Layla
are eating celery leaves like they’re the best things ever. They are the
embodiment of mindfulness and an example for us all.
Ruthie (left) and Layla (right) eat celery leaves while two Barred Rocks and Bess (in back) look on
I have a very busy week coming up. I’m out three evenings
this week. Somehow this made me think I needed to spend the morning making
Provisions. I did my usual yogurt with fruit and carrot and celery sticks. I
also made bran muffins and hard boiled eggs for breakfast and pizza pockets for
my lunches. Leftover pizza is an excellent lunch, but pizza pockets are easier
to pack. I had the following typical conversation with Terry this morning:
Me: I am making pizza pockets for my lunches this week. I
can either make a lot of pockets and freeze some, or I could make a pizza for
you to have for your lunches. Would you like a pizza?
Terry: No, I don’t like pizza pockets.
Me: Let’s review.
Pause. Terry: Oh. Yeah, you could make me a cheese pizza.
But I am an optimist. Even after nearly 19 years of
marriage, I hold out hope that one day
he will think before he speaks. At least this time, I didn’t have to repeat
myself, suggesting that he did listen. That in itself is a victory.
I love making pizza dough. There are only three cups of
flour, so it is the perfect size for kneading. You start out with a sticky,
lumpy mass and after 8 to 10 minutes of rhythmic, meditative stretching and
folding, there it is in all its smooth, elastic glory. It is a wondrous
transformation. It feels so good in my hands. Plus you get pizza at the end! I
was smart enough to bake the pockets on parchment, anticipating the eruption of
cheese through the slit in the top.
Mom and Dad sat out on the deck for a bit this afternoon.
Hilda is reading a seed catalog.
Mom and Dad on the deck
When I’d cleaned up the kitchen for the fourth time, Hilda
and I sat down with the catalogs. We put together the chicken order for this
year and went to work inventorying and discussing the seed order. The warm
weather puts one in the mood. I remind myself that it is only mid-February. We
won’t be digging in the soil for a while yet.
This will be the last post I write with a cat wedged between
me and my laptop. Skippy will be returning home probably on Tuesday. Jane is en
route home after a month in Florida, and I’ll be glad to have her back.
Probably more glad than she will be to be back, but at least we are supposed to
have relatively warm temperatures by the weekend, making the climate shock
somewhat less. I’m sure she will miss the fresh seafood, walking on the beach,
and having Jan to do fun things with all the time. But she will have a nice
gray cat to sit on her lap.
Gracie’s head continues to recover, although I think she
might be turning into Nadia. The only way we could tell them apart was by their
head feathers. Gracie’s were short, and Nadia’s were long. The new feathers are
more like Nadia’s. The shafts are complete. They are tipped with tufts of
emerging feathers, like tiny paint brushes.
Tufts of feathers barely emerging from the shafts
Yesterday we started burning the hay field. Terry tried
without success to sell the hay a local farmer. After two bad experiences with
different farmers, he finally agreed to my plan, which was burning. My hope is
that it will rid us of invasive species and maybe allow some long-dormant native
seeds to grow. It will be interesting to see if there is anything in the seed
bank or not. It would be great if there were, but after all the years of
corn/soy rotation, I’ll be amazed if we do see anything we haven’t already seen.
Terry watched anxiously all winter for conditions to be
right to mow a grid of firebreaks through the field. The snow from December had
to melt. The rain from January had to run off. The ground couldn’t be too
frozen or too thawed. He got it done finally, and the wait began for a perfect
day, when the ground was neither too wet nor too dry and, most importantly, the
wind was going to be light for the whole day. We had a terrible experience once
when we started a burn in the calm of the morning only to have it get away from
us when the wind came up.
Yesterday was perfect. The wind was just enough to spread
the fire without whipping it up uncontrollably. The temperatures were slightly
above freezing, so the soil was only thawed on the very top. We started at
about 9:00. There was a slight breeze from the south. Terry used a small
propane torch to light the north side on the first block to back-burn the
downwind edge. I stood by with a water sprayer to put out any flames that
threatened to cross the firebreak and escape into the neighbors’ woods. It wasn’t
a hard job. The grass was short enough and wet enough that the fire went
nowhere.
Terry starting the burn with a small torch
Back burn on the downwind side
Terry then went to the south end. The fire spread more
rapidly with the wind behind it, as predicted. By the time he was done, the
wind had shifted to the east. Terry had gone to the west side to patrol the
firebreak, leaving the torch in the Gator on the east side. I got it and
started the parts that hadn’t burned.
Terry starts the fire on the upwind side
Terry with a water sprayer patrolling the west side of the burn plot
After a little while Hilda came out the help, although since
there wasn’t much to do, we settled into watching voles and mice tear out of
the grass to safety as the fire approached. The wind shifted around so much
that Terry sometimes had to light the blocks on all four sides.
I had not watched grass fires much. The grasses we have are largely bunch grasses, meaning that they grow in clumps. In between the clumps, the grasses fall over and get matted. The fire often skipped over these spots. In the video, you can see one of the bunches go up in flames. What surprised me was how much heat was generated at the base of the bunch. The end of the video shows a mound glowing red.
We got four plots burned before lunch. After we ate quickly,
we went back at it. Terry couldn’t stand crouching anymore and got out the big
torch. The plus was that he could light the fire while standing; the minus was
that he had to haul around the heavy propane tank.
The big torch
When we did the last plot on the north side, the voles
really tore out of there. I was monitoring the south edge when Hilda told me
she’d seen 6 voles already. I went down in time to see 5 more as well as a tiny
rodent of some kind that came out dancing. It was about half the size of a
mouse. It could have been a juvenile. It sure hopped around erratically.
North side done
We moved to the western side of the land after that. The
plot closest to the creek took a long time to burn because it was so wet. We
did two more plots after that. At the beginning of the second to the last one,
I felt like I could carry on until dark. The last one, however, did me in. We
had grown cavalier about back burning when we’d had so little trouble with
spreading. The wind had been from the north/northeast all afternoon. Our method was to start on the southeast
corner and light the fire along the east and north edges. This last piece was
drier over the firebreak and had more fuel. Furthermore, it really mattered if
it jumped because we wanted to be done, and the next plot was a long one. I had
to dash into the smoke again and again to put out the flames that moved steadily
southward. I’d refilled my water reservoir before we started burning the last
plot, and it was heavy. By the time the flames died, I was whupped. My
shoulders ached from toting water; my legs ached from walking around in my
heavy pack boots all day.
I dragged myself up to the house, took a shower, and had a
cup of tea. It was a good day’s work. Terry’s plan is to have it all burned by
Good Friday. We probably did ¼ of the total area yesterday. He is, therefore,
way ahead of schedule.
We didn’t wash our smoky clothes in the hope that we might
burn again today. I slept so well last night that I wished I could work outside
all day every day.
We were debating trying to burn for a little while this
morning before the wind came up. Just as it got light, however, we had a short
period of rain. We canceled the burn and put all our stinky clothes in the washer.
Terry and I were both still physically tired. As much as I love burning, it was
a relief to have the day off. Maybe conditions will be favorable on another day
when I can help.
As I mentioned, Bella was completely cured of stargazing
quite suddenly last Sunday. We kept her in the cage until Monday, just to be
sure, and then put her back with the rest of the flock. Unlike the chickens
described in the backyardchickens.com discussion board, Bella’s recovery took
only a week of vitamin therapy. We feared it would go on for a month or more.
We will continue weekly vitamin supplements as recommended by the discussion
posts.
When I went out this cold and windy morning, Bella was in the
kennel standing on one leg to keep her other foot warm next to her body. Two
weeks ago, she couldn’t stand at all. It has been an amazing recovery.
Bella standing on one foot and keeping the other tucked up under her feathers
Here she is hanging out with the rest of the girls in the
coop.
Hanging with the girls
What to do about the Silver Crested chickens? I asked Kate
to ask her sister (Kim) to ask the student (Hallie) who took Jackie if she
wanted two hens who didn’t lay anymore. The answer came back Monday—Hallie’s
mom said no more chickens.
We considered our options. Terry was all for clipping beaks.
This seemed hard to me. I didn’t know what kind of a tool we would use or how
to clip the tip of the beak without cracks developing in the part that remained.
I looked up pinless peepers on Murray McMurray. These are like blinders for
chickens that are supposed to keep them from pecking each other because they
can’t see in front of them. How long would it be before they figured out how to
get them off? Furthermore, installing them required a special tool and, like
the clipping, seemed hard when I imagined trying to keep the bird’s head still.
What about a small coop with its own run to keep Nadia and
Gracie safe from being pecked for the remainder of their days? Maybe in the
absence of bullying, they would start laying again. I also envisioned using the
coop as the chicken tractor I’d always wanted. Come spring, we could take the
coop down to the garden and have the chickens pull weeds and fertilize before
it was time to plant. Farm and Fleet had three models, all in stock. Two of the
three got terrible reviews. No kidding. The subject heading of one was “Junk do
NOT waste your money.” Well. Only the
most expensive model had good reviews. Plus it was very cute. It was called the
“Little Red Hen Barn.”
Hilda was enthusiastic. She ran right out to Farm and Fleet
that very day and bought one. Terry got started putting it together the next
day. The Little Red Hen Barn was made by the same company as the Junk-do-NOT-waste-your-money
coops, and Terry gave me an earful when I got home. The roof, which was
designed to open, was not constructed to take the force of opening. The only
thing holding the two halves together was a ridgepole made of inferior weak
wood. Also, it came with an insufficient number of hinges. A piano hinge would have
been best, but it came with 2 two-inch hinges. I gave approval for Terry to add
braces to each side to hold the roof together. He would pick up more hinges
next time he was at Menards. Meanwhile, we had to be very careful to open it in
the middle NOT at the edges, or we would pop the hinges. Yes, sir! By Thursday,
it was done. He even made a nice brace to prop the roof up while we did the
daily coop maintenance.
How to keep the water from freezing? I stopped at Farm and
Fleet between meetings on Thursday afternoon to get a heated waterer, but came
out with a heated pad. I hoped it would keep the water thawed as well as keep
the girls warm.
We put the new coop and pen inside the regular run so the
girls would still be protected by the electric netting.
The new coop inside the chicken run
Friday morning, we got everything set up and put the girls
in the pen. The morning was bitterly cold with a ripping west wind. The girls
wouldn’t go inside, preferring to hunker down in the corner. Hilda remember
that we generally start chicks inside their new coop. I put scratch grains on
the ramp and inside the door. They ate the scratch grains without entering the
coop. After an hour with no sign of interest in the shelter of the Little Red
Hen Barn, we shut the door and put them inside. After a couple of hours, I
dropped the door again, and they went in and out normally.
Close up of the Little Red Hen Barn showing added braces on the roof and the board to prop the roof open
Inside the new coop--the black is the heated pad under the water. The feeder is the square jar on the lower left
Gracie’s head looks like a porcupine with the new quills
sprouting. I’m looking forward to seeing both girls with heads restored to
their previous glory.
The quills on the back of Gracie's head
Side view of Gracie's head
We hope they will be happy in their retirement home.
February 1st was World Hijab Day. Some of our
Muslim students (admittedly a tiny minority of our predominantly white student
body) organized an event at the College that provided free hijabs to anyone who
wanted to participate. I did a little research on hijabs when I got to my
office. I would be wearing one to class and wanted to be prepared for
questions. The hijab is worn for modesty. Musllims certainly don’t have the
corner on that market. Any number of world religions advise modest dress as
part of giving up worldly desires in the path to enlightenment and/or pleasing
God. Buddhists, Calvinists, Puritans, Shakers, some orders of Roman Catholic
nuns and monks, and on and on. My inclination to modest dress stems from less
lofty ideals. I never could work up an interest in fashion, and I prefer to
devote my resources to other worldly desires, such as fine dining.
Some countries have laws requiring women to wear hijabs;
others have laws forbidding it. To my mind, both of these laws are violations
of women’s rights, just as it is equally wrong to forbid or require abortions.
World Hijab Day (worldhijabday.com) seeks to raise awareness and support for a
woman’s right to choose.
After I was done at the Fitness Center (working out in a
head scarf seemed a bit much), I reported to Student Life to pick out a hijab
that matched my outfit and by coincidence was my favorite color (red). The hijab
was very soft, 100% rayon, and made in India. My hope was that one of the two
Muslim students on hand would just put it on me, but I only got a demo. I also
noted that they both had tight head bands beneath their hijabs, which I soon
realized was the only way on earth you could possibly hide all of your hair.
They also had a handout about the hijab that had photos of how to put it on and
guidelines for the rest of your attire while wearing the hijab. The photos
showed safety pins; only straight pins were provided. The guide included
covering your whole body except hands and face and specifically prohibited
showing cleavage. Check.
Here’s what I learned from wearing the hijab:
There is a learning curve to putting one on. I had to stop
in the restroom on the way back to my office to start over because it had
already started to slip. The key seemed to be securing it very tightly under
one’s chin on the first pass. A safety pin would have been helpful, but after
six attempts, I had it done with the straight pin.
Once you put on a hijab, there is no turning back. When I
took it off to reposition the first time, my hair was more plastered to my head
than I had ever seen it. Totally worse than hat hair.
It definitely cuts down on your peripheral vision.
My head was not hot while I had it on, but it was cold when I
took it off.
While it felt odd at first, by the end of the day, I really
liked it. I enjoyed the feel of the soft fabric caressing my face. I loved how
the cloth cascaded around my shoulders and the fringes lay over my chest.
Even though the point of the hijab is modesty, I must
confess that it made me feel quite elegant and exotic.
I wish that hijabs would catch on among non-Muslims,
actually. With modesty comes freedom, whether from worldly desires or just from
having to fuss with your hair. Bad hair day? Throw on the hijab. No time for a
shower? Where’s my scarf?
I’m not sure how my students felt about me wearing my hijab.
I explained that I was taking advantage a multicultural opportunity and
encouraged them to do the same because that was what college was for. And then
we went on with lecture.
I was happy to have had this opportunity. No matter what, I
will always support a woman’s right to make her own decisions. I can hardly
wait for World Hijab Day next year!
