Starved Rock Canal Boat Tour, Reprise

The day after the 60^th anniversary, Dad, Hilda, Terry, Jane, and I went to Starved Rock for another Canal Tour. You may recall we went back in June for my birthday. We did not intend to take the Canal Tour twice; our River Tour in June was canceled because of flooding. Picky, picky.

The Lodge was nicely decorated with a fall scene. We particularly enjoyed the paintings and decorations around the giant hearth in the dining room.

Decorations around the hearth

I saw on my way down the hallway that Missy and Karl were having a wedding reception in one of the big party rooms. Apparently, our trolley was also going to be pressed into service at some later time to transport wedding guests.

Wedding decorations on the trolley

It was a nice day if one had enough layers. The sun was shining. Due to heavy winds in the recent past the trees were more bare than resplendent in fall colors. Oh well. It wasn’t raining, and that counts for a lot. Here is a picture of Hilda and Jane.

Hilda and Jane sitting on the bench of the upper deck

We didn’t learn too much that we didn’t know before. One new bit of information, which the mule driver shared with us before he started his walk, is that the boats used mules because horses will literally work until they drop dead. A mule will work until it’s tired and stop, refusing to go further. Thus the expression “stubborn as a mule.”

On our way down the canal pulled by the mule on the right

Our guide, Riley, was a young woman who had majored in Anthropology and was now working on a degree in Physical Therapy. I wonder why. She was very pleasant and knowledgeable. Unlike our last tour, she did not use a microphone. After the safety lecture, we were dismissed to move to the upper deck if we so desired. Most of us went up. Riley talked to the lower deck first, then came up to give the spiel to us.

Terry and I saw many fish in the river as we poked along. Our trolley guide told us that the canal had just been stocked with trout in preparation for a fishing event. We saw one. The trolley guide walked along the mule path with the boat rather than waiting in the trolley. He liked the exercise, he said.

When we got to the aqueduct where the canal passed over the Vermillion River, I could see all the flotsam from the June flood backed up against the supports for the canal. In June, of course, the water had been much higher.

The mule turned around when we reached the aqueduct

Aqueduct for the canal over the Vermillion River, which was much lower than it was in June

Driftwood piled up on the aqueduct supports

I had a better view of the process of turning the mule around. He got it into his head that he wanted to stray to greener grass. The trolley driver intercepted the mule and held it until the mule driver could take over. The driver had to pull the mule over to the fence and tie him up while he switched the rope to the back of the boat. The video shows that process as well as the begining of our trip and shadows of Terry and me watching the fish.

I had Jane take a picture of me by the boat.

Me in front of the boat (right)

Before I got back on the trolley, I walked down to see the historic locks, which I  had not noticed in June. There was even a statue of a man moving the lock gate.

One side of the historic lock with the new permanent wall (and the canal boat) behind it

The other side of the lock with the statue of a man moving the lock on the left

And then it was back to work for another week of grading lab papers. I was jubilant Thursday evening when I finished all of Wednesday’s papers. With a light heart, I took to the garden Friday morning, eagerly anticipating getting everything crossed off the to-do-at-home list during my three-day weekend. I got all the drip irrigation pulled up and made good progress on rolling up the landscape cloth. I was sore and tired by the end of the day, but had that good feeling of accomplishment.

As I was drifting off to sleep, random thoughts flitted through my head. “Lab manual due to duplication on October 26….today is..hmm…October 23…Saturday, 24, Sunday, 25…uh-oh.”

Did I have the lab manual at home? I did not. Saturday morning, I went into my office to pick up my lab manual and copy the latest version to a flash drive. I spent an hour in the lab trying to figure out the best way to stain the nuclei of onion epithelium. As long as I was out, I did some errands. My regular ATM was out of order. I stopped at another branch to get my allowance. I filled the gas tank and drove all the way to Bed Bath and Beyond only to find that the spice rack I saw in the sale flyer was out of stock. When will I learn to never expect sale items to be available? I did my grocery shopping on the way home.

Today was a beautiful day. Probably the last nice day before winter. And I spent it sitting at my computer revising the lab manual. But I’m not bitter, that’s the important thing.

60th Anniversary

When I was a girl, I sometimes read about couples celebrating their 50^th wedding anniversaries. They usually had gotten married when they were 16 or 17, and I would think that my parents would never make it because they were so old when they got married. Dad was 29 and Hilda was one week shy of 25. She is fond of saying that she narrowly missed being an old maid, 25 being the cutoff in those days.

I reflected on this memory when they reached 50 years and again last week when they celebrated 60. Terry and I will be slowing down a lot by our 60^th anniversary, because we were really old when we got married. At our 60^th, I’ll be almost 99 and Terry will be 103.

My parents have had their ups and downs, but what impresses me is that after all this time, they are really good friends. I didn’t appreciate that until I lived with them.

To celebrate this auspicious occasion, Doug and Pam met us at the Lake Geneva Inn for supper. I had been so busy grading lab reports that my only wardrobe planning had been to hope the warm weather would hold so I could wear the dress I got for Robyn’s wedding last April. When the weather became more seasonally appropriate, I was at a loss. Arriving home from work 15 minutes before departure for the restaurant, I just put the dress on anyway. At least the jacket had ¾ sleeves.

We got to the Inn as the sun was going down on a windy, cold day. The lobby was filled with young people, but the restaurant was fairly deserted. We would learn later that there was a wedding rehearsal. The wedding was the next day and was to be outdoors. They were hoping for better weather. Who plans an outdoor wedding in the middle of October?

Mom and Dad by the lake at sunset

The table was decorated with a centerpiece of yellow roses. Dad, of course, would be in charge of ordering the flowers, since flower arranging is a hobby of his. He also got nosegays for each of the women. There was some discussion of whether or not the correct term was “nosegays.” I was pretty sure that it came from the days of the Black Plague when people thought that smelling flowers would prevent the disease. In the odoriferous Middle Ages, flowers undoubtedly made the nose gay in any case.

Pam, Hilda, and I with our nosegays

Doug arranged to serve a bottle of very nice Champagne from his own cellar. We had small plates of artisan cheeses, fried calamari salad, Buffalo shrimp, and garlic-ginger quinoa salad along with several kinds of bread. For dinner, I had chicken breast with mushroom cream sauce, grilled asparagus, and roasted fingerling potatoes. Terry ordered the daily special of almond-crusted halibut with cranberry wild rice. Mom and Dad had steaks with fingerling potatoes and asparagus. Doug had veal. Pam ordered the vegetarian entrée of herbed farro and wheat berry with summer vegetables. I assumed she was trying to make healthier choices. Doug and Pam’s dinners both came with roasted hen of the woods mushrooms. We’ve got those growing under the oak trees. Maybe that can be our cash crop!

Mom and Dad had ordered a cake to be delivered to the restaurant. After eating our delicious food and getting our leftovers packed to go, our server, Terri, brought the cake with two candles. Mom and Dad blew out the candles, and Terri whisked the cake back to the kitchen for cutting. When she returned, I noted with infinite pleasure that the cake was chocolate! Hooray!  Doug and Pam declined leftovers, so Terri divided the rest of the cake into two boxes.

Terri brings the cake

Chocolate!

Dad presented Hilda with a small box. In it was a necklace of white and blue diamonds. Hilda was surprised and touched.

Hilda with her new necklace

We assembled at the hearth after supper for a group pictures. Doug and Pam stayed overnight, and we went home. It was a lovely evening.

The happy couple

The whole family

Uneasy peace

Yes, I know it has been two weeks since the last post. I would say that I am and have been in a complete sheet storm of grading papers, but most of the work has been online rather than physical sheets of paper. This week, I have two online lab report (15 each), the lab paper for Wednesday’s lab (20), and an exam for a double section (43). Next week is one more online lab report and Monday’s lab papers. By Halloween, I hope to breathe again.

I have been taking pictures all along. Let’s start with the chickens. On October 9, I went out after dark to see how things were getting along in the coop. Five of old girls were huddled on the east end, farthest from the door and presumably the preferred post. Five of the new girls were clustered at the top of the ladder. And in between, Nadia and Helen were either roosting together or guarding their respective borders.

East side: The old girls from Lizette to Nadia

West side: Nadia and Helen at the border, the rest of the new girls around the top of the ladder.

October has brought us beautiful sunsets, a little earlier every evening. We may have rain tonight, which would be welcomed. It has be 34 days since we had anything measurable. The ground is rock hard. While I am not eager for mud, some precipitation would help us get the dead plants out of the garden without using a pickax. Terry rototilled half the garden before it got very, very dry, and I was able to get the garlic planted on Sunday. Check that off the list.

Sunset over the fifth oak

Turf wars

In our last episode, we had moved the pullets into Coop 1 for the night. Hilda let the chickens out the next morning. The hens ran right out; the pullets lagged behind, but came out for scratch grains. So far, they forage around the margins, darting in and out whenever space opens up among the hens to grab a grain and run off. We left Coop 2 closed. At the end of that first day, the pullets lined up by Coop 2, uncertain of how to proceed. I had a late meeting. Terry helped Hilda shoo them into Coop 1. Hilda left the light on the timer so that it came on at 4:00 Thursday morning, but there was no evidence of pecking when she let everyone out at 7:00. We consider this a victory. That evening the pullets were in Coop 1 at dusk. We had a couple days of a strong cold wind. The pullets spent a lot of time in the coop. We were relieved that the hens were not defending the feeder.

Pullets taking shelter from the wind in Coop 1

By the weekend, we were ready to put the original fence up in the run and take down the chick fence extension. I cleaned out Coop 2 while Hilda was having lunch with a friend on Friday. Somehow she considered this her job because she has done it the last two years, which is as long as we’ve had the coop. My interpretation was that it was my turn.

Coop 2, cleaned and un-fenced

Here’s a video of how the pullets and the hens interact. The tan-colored Buff Orpington (Kirstie) and the black and white Silver Crested (Gracie and Nadia) start in on the scraps from my carrot and celery sticks. Clair, the Rhode Island Red with the white leg band, darts in from the top, grabs a piece of carrot and runs off. From the right, Antonia and Lillian move toward the loot, but don’t quite have enough courage to grab anything. Mostly, they are content to pick at yesterday’s pumpkin guts. At one point, Gracie chases Clair away. Slowly, the new pecking order is being established.

We continue to be amazed by the volunteer petunia in the patio bricks.

Volunteer petunia blooming its little heart out

My last task of the weekend was to can the sauerkraut. In addition to the 10 pints, 2 quarts and 1 3-cup jar shown here, we have 4 quarts in the refrigerator for immediate use. That should get us through the winter. 

A rafter on a fence

It was a dark and cloudy morning. I didn’t think it would ever get light. I had a cup of tea and caught up on my email, waiting until I could see well enough to do my chicken chores. By then it was raining. No time for a bracing second cup of tea when I got in, though. I was late, late, late. I hung my wet clothes here and there to dry and hopped in the shower. Shoot! It was Tuesday, the day I haul the extra produce to work. We have nothing but cherry tomatoes left. I looked the trays over quickly for split ones and dumped them in two bowls with lids. I was brushing my teeth when my cell phone rang. Then the home phone rang. Who is calling me when I’m trying to get out the door?

I checked the cell phone. There was a message from Terry telling me he was going to try the house phone. I called him back with no small irritation.

“The turkeys are out on the fence by the gate. It’s pretty crazy. I know you like to put pictures on the Internet.”

Well, okay. I had nothing for the blog this week because I was at a conference all weekend. What’s a few more minutes? I multi-tasked by taking up one of the bowls of tomatoes to put in the car when I went up to take the picture. And there it was—a rafter on a fence. Maybe they didn’t like having their feet in the wet grass.

A rafter of turkeys on the fence

I only counted 16 in the rafter this morning. I would not be surprised if cars have taken a toll, along with coyotes. I haven’t seen any bodies by the road, but I don’t ever drive to the north.

As I moved to get a closer shot, the turkeys started wandering off.  One of the turkeys on the fence started flapping and knocked off one of the other ones.

The turkeys get restless as I approach

I tore myself away and went to work.

Tonight when it got dark, we moved the pullets into Coop 1. I took them one at a time from their roost in Coop 2 and handed them over the fence to Hilda. Terry opened the inside door to Coop 1, and Hilda installed each pullet on the roost. Chloe went first and managed to give me a good scratch on the palm of my hand. She didn’t break the skin, but it still hurts as I type this.

The plan for morning is to open the coop at first light. We fear that if the hens wake up while the coop is still shut, they will peck at the pullets, and the pullets will have nowhere to run. We shall see.

Tension along the border

Last week was not without sadness. Hilda spotted Toby, the feral cat that had been hanging around this summer, lying stiff in the road Tuesday morning. She kicked him/her to the side of the road. I walked down to say goodbye on my way to work. I was surprised at how small he was, maybe not even a year old. Poor little guy. I thanked him for his good work keeping the ground squirrel population under control. Terry laid him to rest under a tree later that morning.

Friday night, we rounded up six of the laying hens for the butcher. All of the Welsummers went. Behag and Fiona had virtually no feathers on their necks and backsides.  Morag was beautiful. Our suspicion was that Morag pecked the others. One of the Americauna, Lidia, and a Buff Orpington, Nelly Elly, were also missing feathers, so they got on our hit list. Finally, Anna Vic, the broody Buff Orpington, had to go. Yes, Gracie gets broody too, but the Silver Crested hens are just too fun to put down. If we are wrong about Morag being the meanie, we have just gotten rid of all the submissive hens and may be in for some serious chicken fights as the new pecking order gets established.

When I went out Saturday morning to do my chicken chores, I heard car horns at regular intervals. Had someone put up a “Honk if you love Jesus” sign in their yard? After a particularly long honk, I looked down the road to see turkeys running for the shoulder. Of course.

I opened a passage way between the pullets and the remaining layers. All day, each group stayed on their sides. On Sunday, Hilda threw scratch grains along the border. Both groups ate together uneasily. Gracie took it upon herself to chase off one of the Rhode Island Reds.

Tension along the border

Gracie flares her tail and chases off a Rhode Island Red

I thought I’d better put in some pictures of the Americauna pullets before their cheek feathers get pecked off. I have noticed that they don’t seem to have the luxurious beards for very long, which is too bad. It certainly give them a look.

Chloe has the best beard

Antonia doesn't have as fluffy a beard as Chloe, but she is the boldest of the pullets

Lillian does not seem to have much of a beard, which is not typical of her breed. It will be interesting to see if we get any colors besides green. In theory, blue and pink eggs are possible from the Americauna/Aracauna chickens.

Lillian (right) has virtually no cheek feathers. Isabel (Rhode Island Red) is on the left

The days have passed. Today Hilda reported that she thought all the chickens were together in the shade under Coop 2. The layers have also been eating the pullet’s food. This is too bad, because what really needs to happen is that the pullets need to move to the layers’ coop and run. All in good time, I suppose, but there are still two coops to clean every morning.

We’re getting our fill of raspberries. I experimented with a raspberry pie on Sunday. I can’t blind bake a crust to save my life. It always slumps down the sides. I passed enough raspberries through a sieve to get one cup of juice. I heated the juice with sugar and corn starch until thickened and folded in fresh berries. It was awesome, if I say so myself, especially with whipped cream. 

My raspberry pie in its slumped crust. Still tasted great!

Pullet surprise

I finally got around to researching how to introduce the pullets to the older hens. What I read online corroborated what I’d heard from a fellow chicken owner. The pullets need to be where the hens can see them while still separated by a fence.

Sunday morning, Hilda and I got up early and were out at Coop 2 just as the sky was getting light in the east. It was so beautiful and peaceful that I wondered why I didn’t get outside at 5:30 every morning. Then I remembered how warm and cozy I’d been in my bed. In any case, the reason we went out while it was still dark was because chickens do not see well in the dark, and I figured that we would be able to grab them right off the perch. I could not help but think of this as the “pullet surprise.”

I’d put the transfer cage together when I shut the coop up Saturday night. Sure enough, the girls were still on the perch when we opened the door Sunday morning. I passed them to Hilda, and she put them in the cage. In a few minutes, we were all done. Easy peasy.

We went back in the house to have our morning hot beverages in our respective kitchens and wait for it to get light. Terry was ready to go by 7:00. He took part of the deer fence down to open a wide enough gap for the gator and the coop. While he worked on moving the muck buckets, food, and other accouterments, I disassembled the chick fence. We put the pullets on the back of the gator for their trip up the hill. With everything cleared from the orchard, Terry hooked Coop 2 to the gator’s hitch, and off he went.

We got Coop 2 positioned by the greenhouse facing the chicken run. Terry got to work on getting his farm stand open for business while Hilda and I put the chick fence up. I have to say it was one of my better fencing jobs. Terry later remarked that he made the right decision to leave us alone because he would have wanted to go a lot faster. It would have been trouble for sure.

Coop 2 and the chick fence next to the chicken run

Before we let the pullets run free, we had to clip their wings again. We also leg-banded the Rhode Island Reds so we could tell them apart. The Americauna all look different, so leg bands are not necessary. Clare has a white leg band. Isabel is orange. Helen is unbanded.

There were so many little things to take care of that I despaired of ever being done. We plugged along, however, and were in fact done by 9:00. It didn’t take long for the pullets to be all over their new territory, including fairly close to the fence that separated them from the hens. We will be rounding up six of the hens for freezer heaven tomorrow. Saturday morning, we will open a passage from the chicken run to the pullet run and hope for the best. In another week or so, I fervently hope that we will have only one coop to tend.

Meanwhile, while Dad was cooking breakfast, he saw something big land on the deck. "Scared me to death!" he remarked. I was summoned and got this picture:

The turkeys are getting very bold and perching on the deck rail

The lettuce bolted long since. I have been slowly cleaning out the bed by feeding the lettuce to the hens. Like everything that comes along, lettuce is the best thing ever!

Hilda had some of her friends over on Sunday afternoon. She fretted in advance that the turkeys would not be around. These fears proved to be unfounded, as they showed up right on time to eat bird seed under the feeders. The adolescents are getting really big! 

Turkeys under the bird feeders

The hilarious part was watching the hens watch the turkeys, as shown in this video.