A week ago, Patch had her 4th litter with us. Here are some pics.
Also, we got our meat birds in. Our freezer is pretty empty. We have some pork, just a little beef and some chicken wings. So getting the meat chicks in is a relief.
Spent Saturday planting: putting in tomatoes, peppers, and planting peas and green beans. (Corn went in last week.) We aren't done, but it is a great start.
Youngest daughter was riding the neighbor's horse on Sunday - the neighbor riding hers. The horse dahughter was riding started freaking out and bucking (perhaps due to jealousy?). Daughter, deciding she wasn't getting bucked off, held on and stayed on the horse's back. The horse, deciding the only way to get rid of her was to rear up and go over backwards, did just that.
Daughter fell off as the horse continued to fall backwards on top of her. The horse fell on her, rolled over and took off for home. Fortunately daughter didn't hit her head and was lucky to only break 4 bones on the backbone, the transverse process. These are the little hook-like bones coming out of the side of the backbone near the tailbone - if I am describing it correctly.
She never lost consciousness and directed the neighbor to call me. They were riding close by. I got there, called 911 and they air-lifted her to Columbia, the nearest trauma center. I think they were afraid (as I was) that there may be internal bleeding - which there wasn't.
Certainly scary (for me and her) but all's well. Daughter is in a brace and can walk gingerly and on pain meds. She won't be riding for a few weeks!
A month or so ago the drain in the upstairs bathroom sink became veeeeeeeeery slow. After trying the usual things, I figured that the clog must be in the horizontal galvanized steel pipe in the eves of the attic.
I usually do all my own work, but this was a little bit hard to access, so I decided to call a new plumber in town.
Well, his diagnosis was the same as mine, so he replaced the horizontal section. Unfortunately, both our diagnoses were wrong. So I paid the bill and still had a clogged drain. He gave me a number of "reasons" why he didn't want to do more and thought he had made it better.
For the 69th time or so, I learned that I shouldn't hire contractors!
So, last weekend I removed another section of pipe - the obvious if the horizontal wasn't the problem and sure enough, that pipe had a solid clog - partially decomposition of the pipe with some hair attached.
It was hard getting in and out of the eves with my tools all day and balancing on the joists going back and forth, be we got it fixed.
On the last trip out of the attic, my foot slipped off the joist and landed through the ceiling in our towel closet below! As seen with my footprint in the picture below.
It could have been worse. This can be patched up in the closet without the care and worries if it had happened through the ceiling of a room.
I put in 32 broccoli plants last Friday. Unfortunately, one of my chickens didn't want to wait until it was ready for me to harvest before going after almost every leaf ....
The chickens are picking up a little in their laying. In the peak we were getting 20 eggs a day. This went down to 4-5 a day in the midst of mid-January. Now we are getting a dozen a day +/- 1 or 2. I am hopeful these 2nd year chickens get back up to 15-18 a day. I will be more than happy with that.
Still cutting wood for next winter. I had a couple chainsaw problems which has slowed me down. There is plenty of wood out there to take - much more than I can get this year, but I will do my best. I like to finish cutting by March 1st as this is when planting starts in earnest. Once again I didn't make this deadline.
We still have kale from the fall garden, and spinach. Funny because of all the spinach I planted, only 2 plants came up. But then a couple weeks ago I found my original spinach coming up all over the place. Maybe I planted it too deep.
In any event, I won't have to plant any this spring. I should be putting broccoli in the ground tomorrow with any luck.
The chickens are making a slow comeback on the egg-laying front. We were getting 20+ eggs a day before the cold weather hit. With the cold and shortened days, the chickens were down to 4 or 5 a day. Now it appears they are coming back. 10 - 12 a day.
I like to keep chickens at least 2 seasons, so if they can rebound to close to 20 a day I will be really happy.
I have been slowly reading Wendell Berry's The Need to be Whole of the past couple months. It is slow because I usually read it in doctor office waiting rooms. The introduction is excellent, and I meant to write some comments on it a few months ago.
This morning I read a new take (for me) on the tenth commandment (9 & 10 are combined here: Thou shalt not covet.) Here goes:
"Thou shalt not covet .... any thing that is thy neighbor's." By contrast the industrial famers of our time are economically constrained, and by the industrial orthodoxy are encouraged to regard their neighbors as competitors, and to overcome them (and possess their farms) by means of newer technologies and bigger machines. Thus a fundamental relationship and obligation is broken by the now generally accepted "realism" and "necessity" of economic competitions, which necessarily brings us to our present condition: a public consisting of dismembered families and communities and the virtually deserted economic landscapes of our country, where, as the parents grow old and die without successors, the children are distributed from sea to sea.
I never really thought of capitalist systems as violating the commandments against coveting, but I should have. I have looked at industrial farming and other capitalist endeavors from a moral view to be sure, but never really connected them to a specific commandment.
Tuesday night (starting around 4-5 PM) our area got .25 to 1 inch of snow. The snow ended by midnight if not before. It did not turn to rain or sleet. Wednesday morning the roads were clear - but never were icy. The snow was powdery, so it just blew around the roads.
Tuesday one of the colleges I teach closed their campus at 6PM on Tuesday shifted to remote learning for evening classes.
Wednesday morning (note the roads are very clear) both colleges closed their campuses ("due to an abundance of caution) and had a "remote learning day".
Everything in our town (bank, dr office) except the Dollar General and the Hardware store were closed on Wednesday.
Here it is on Thursday, the colleges are open, but the local bank is delayed opening and the pharmacy and doctor offices also have delayed openings.
It is CRAZY! Less than an inch of powdery snow with no ice and the whole area shuts down for 2.5 - 3 days.
I understand in Conway they had 6 inches of snow. For South Carolina, this is pretty major. But come on - let than an inch of powdery snow during the evening and night and we shut down everything?
From Fox News article (Does the Color of Eggs Mean Anything?; 11 January 2025):
"Foods that are high in xanthophyll and carotene, which are basically pigments called carotenoids, will make nice dark orange egg yolks," she said.
Carotene is found in orange-colored foods, she said, such as carrots, mangoes, cantaloupe and pumpkins.
Xanthophyll can be found in leafy green vegetables, like spinach and kale.
But while a darker egg yolk does not mean a chicken is eating a nutritious, organic or fresh diet, "it likely will correlate, since the foods with the pigment are also packed with other nutrients," she said.
Which is why many folks want to buy pasture-raised eggs, especially from small farmers.
But Big-AG can't lose a single dollar. So what do they do?
Even so, feed companies and commercial egg farms have discovered workarounds to create a darker egg yolk without these nutrient-dense foods, Steele said.
These companies "have gotten smart and realized that consumers want to see that bright orange yolk, so they'll add things like marigold, paprika, sea kelp, corn [and] alfalfa to 'artificially' boost the yolk color," she said.
Anything to make money; deception be praised and damn the consumer.
Oremus pro invicem!
Friday, December 27, 2024
May the joy the Christ-child brings fill you this season and throughout the coming year!
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