Goosical the Musical

The end of April brought a flurry of activity- a return from Disney, the farmstand opened up, friends came to see the chicks/compost/peas/ lettuce and a blossoming goose family took over some reeds on the edge of the pond. The Smart Man I Live With had suspected they built a nest, and with a little gumption, the Mother Goose could be chased off to allow viewing of 5 fist sized, grey eggs. On the last Saturday of the month, both Mom and Dad goose were sighted, swimming and guarding the nest. Papa Goose did a particularly good job keeping other waterfowl away. A pair of mallards who were casing out the joint were soon sent packing, as was the heron who was delighted with his personal fishing spot  before the geese took up residence. 

I must confess, I did not relish the thought of goslings imprinting on our pond and returning year after year. I even toyed with the idea of taking the eggs away, donating them to the  ag science program at the high school, or even to my daughter’s anatomy class. Certainly a fetal goose would be less objectionable than the cats they had been dissecting. The animal husband (or would that be wife?) in me won out and I left the eggs where they were and let nature take its course.

Well, the last Sunday of the month was a different story. Papa Goose was seen and heard  swimming around, but a close examination of the nest area revealed not a Mother Goose or egg in sight. Nary a feather could be found either. Wishful thinking had the goslings  hatched and hiding in the woods with their mother, but a little intuition and knowledge of the woodland occupants pointed toward some audacious hunter, or hunters (coyotes? a pack of dogs? the fox went out on a chilly night?) had taken out the mom and her soon-to-be babies in one fell swoop.

For the next 3 days Papa Goose honked his lover’s lament,searching for his absent mate. We chased him off the pond more than once in the paddle boat, trying to encourage him to look for her elsewhere. He would leave, only to return, hoarse from honking, resuming his search in the reeds and nearby woods. His calls brought flocks of other geese overhead, who luckily for us, chose not to come down to investigate the primo digs he was inhabiting.

One goose’s call may be music to his mate’s ears, but to his human co-habitors, his grief was almost unbearable. 16 year old Hope was moved to tears on the walk to the bus stop when I explained what we surmised had happened to his mate and her babies and how this particular breed of geese mate for life and it was unlikely he would find another mate. 

Certain communities go to great extent to rid themselves of these so called migratory geese. Most of them migrated from the frozen north and liked it so much in the sunny Carolinas, they never left. Now they fill lakes, retention ponds, golf courses, schools, neighborhoods and our tiny dock with their droppings and honkings. NC state law states in no uncertain  terms the penalties for harming (read that ending the life of) a migratory waterfowl. My donation to the high school of fetal geese in the shell could have been punishable by a significant fine.

Perhaps I should be thankful (!) that the fox went out on a not-so-chilly night. For now, I’ll listen for nighttime howls,  keep all my domestic animals inside at night and the not so domestic ones securely locked up in case Wile E. and friends come back for seconds.

Manure is My Destiny

As we finish up the last few days of Lent, along with the tiresome Lenten music, I can’t keep my irreverence from surfacing. For 4 weeks we had the same closing song, a fine marchlike anthem with a slight hint of sea shanty. Jerusalem, My Destiny written by Rory Cooney, never fails to rouse the masses as they leave the church, especially at the quick clip we take it at.

But I could not help but insert my own words as I mucked out the chicken house two weeks ago, filling over 40 2 gallon buckets (which were salvaged from the dumpster of a national known grocery chain, well known for their commitment to organic food and local growers…but that is a blog for another day) with the remains of Dayna’s leaves and 6 months of chicken droppings. While I marveled at 1. the amount of leaves one suburban yard can generate and 2. how perfectly the carbon of the leaves combined with the nitrogen of the chicken poop creates a beautiful,nutrient packed odorless soil, that Sunday’s closing song kept running through my head. Except I sang Manure is My Destiny to the tune of Jerusalem etc. Irreverent? Sure. The first time? Of course not.

Whenever we have a baptism, we usually sing a beautiful Irish blessing called, Lord Bless This Child. Our congregation loves it and and can sing it without the words. However, the song comes in a part of the liturgy right after the child has been dunked into the font and is laid on a towel to be dressed in a white garment. Since some babies are squirmier than others and some are more corporative than others, occasionally this event takes longer than the time required to sing the song. More than once, I’ve been tempted to sing, Lord, Dress This Child in an attempt to get the parents and godparents to hurry up. I mean, how hard can it be-dry the baby off and slip a simple garment over it’s head. worry about the hat and booties later.All 3 of our kids wore antique family garments that my husband and his siblings were baptized in. Out oldest was arguably the hardest child  to dress in ANYTHING the first 3 years of his life. He just didn’t want his clothes changed. Ever. Fortunately he was baptized en masse at a large church in San Diego where we were able to stuff him into his father’s baby shorts and shirt before we left the house.

Baptizm. Lent. Manure.  Hmmm….There’s some kind of birth/life/death cycle here.

On a less cerebral and spiritual side, the new broilers arrived this week, Easter cute, yellow and fluffy. The bees come on Thursday, the farm stand opens on Saturday and and my days become busier and busier. That trip to Disney next week is beginning to look like a vacation . Scary thought.

Using Them There Eyes

First good day of sunshine was squandered on things other than farm work, all of them worthy in their own right, but unttimely given the weather opportunity. 2008 medical paperwork, radio interviews and child fetching get in the way of the best intentions. 

I did transplant hundreds of onions, started by Jane right after the new year. I also got the rest of the tomato seeds over to Ruby, who owns the nursery down the street. She and her brother were commenting on why we needed both kinds of Abe Lincoln tomatoes. I guess the notion of compare and contrast was lost on them.

16 year old Hopie has been trying to come up with a new song to sing with the jazz combo while the band is on their Disney trip, which I have graciously agreed to chaperone. 14 hour bus rides with hoards of hormonal teenagers are just my thing.I should mention that this is not the first time I have chaperoned the band to Disney, so I speak with a voice of experience. Hoards of hormonal teenagers. 14 hours on a bus. Taping doors shut in the hotel to prevent any middle of the night forays, lest the hormones get the best of them. The teenagers, not the hotel doors.

Strains of Billie, Ella, Diana Krall and Jane Monheit have been gracing our home for the past week as she winnows out each song for singability, key and ease with which the combo can solo on the changes. The winner appears to be “Them There Eyes”, which has all of the above attributes, plus lyrics appropriate for a 16 year old to be singing in public.

As I transplanted onions and fennel in the big garden, and cleared out old leaves and partially degraded burlap sacks from the rows, these old eyes spotted Spring’s first reward in the next row over- a few stalks of asparagus! They were slender and purplish green, thanks to a hearty does of Jean D’s worm enriched horse manure. Jean and I share many things in common. We both have 3 children, we both got goats, and then promptly got rid of them.  We both have had chickens on and off over the years and both of our husbands are scientists. We’re both tennis and animal nuts and can count on each other in times of joy and sorrow. She is an accomplished horse woman with two horses and 5 acres in a suburban neighborhood, just around the corner, and has that rare ability to make everyone feel as if they are her best friend. The piles of manure created by Sally and Starbucks are in great demand among our gardening friends, and just the right things for a bed of asparagus.

I broke off three 10 inch stalks and ferried them into the house where I gently steamed them for 22 seconds in the microwave and added them to a salad of store bought (not for long!) romaine, a few leaves of red oak leaf from the pot out on the porch and a handful of lentil spouts I had been babying on the counter for the past week. When asked to look closely at the salad, the other set of old eyes in the house commented on the nice spouts and thought the green stalks were beans. I told him to look more closely at them there. Ah ha! Asparagus!

We finished up the dishes listening to Hopie singing in the shower “Them There Eyes” while I brushed up on my Mama Cass imitation at a friend’s request to sing Dream a Little Dream for her birthday party on Saturday.

http://www.we7.com/track/THEM-THERE-EYES?trackId=392461&m=0

New chicks!

What a difference a week makes. LastSunday we were waiting for snow, this Sunday it’s 80 degrees. The chicks that were supposed to arrive tomorrow, came today, causing a canceled trip to the Broadway musical and a hurried trip to the post office. 31 noisy peepers have settled down in a kiddie swimming pool in the garage, warmed by a red spot light. The next few weeks at thomsonranch will include visits from school children and their parents, cameras in hand.Funny how chicks bring out the inner child in the teenagers who also want their picture taken with a soft fuzzy chick.

On Saturday, this year’s farm intern, recently retired Jane, on the other side of 65, patiently planted carrots and lettuce by hand in the 100 foot rows. Visiting friend Ron chose to do the tougher job of digging out the monster clumps of grass at the ends of the rows, dubbing it more “manly” than planting. I don’t know, the sight of Jane on her knees deftly dropping one seed in each hole with the precision of a surgeon conjured up visions of pioneers planting for their family’s survival, a al Laura Ingalls Wilder’s The Long Winter. thomsonranch’s size is such that with the modified square foot methods we use, our planting and harvest is too large for a family garden, but calling it a farm  is a stretch, as the guys at the old timey feed store keep reminding me when I haul out my Ag extension card. They also snicker at me when I search for supplies in the dusty back of the store, using plain English to describe hardware. “You know, the kind of lock that slides across into a sleeve?” You mean a barrel bolt, ha, ha, ha.In this bleak economic environment I’m glad I can provide them business AND entertainment. Sort of like dinner and a hat when you spot raccoon roadkill.

As to the hawks and foxes, the fishing line appears to be working. We haven’t lost any more girls since the line went up, but it only took 3 days for me to clothesline myself on one of the low parts. The saying around here is “if there’s something to spill, drop, break or trip over, I’m your gal”. Maybe I should add throttle yourself.

Battling hawks and foxes

Husband Steve bought  me a solar powered electric fence for Christmas, the kind with the white plastic netting on poles that supposedly one person is able to move by themselves.We had visions of our 20+ chickens happily scratching only where we wanted them to, instead of them taking over the perennial bed. Instead, all we have done is provided a hungry hawk with 5 chicken dinners. Putting the 1.5 year old hens out on the pasture made them ripe picking for a big Cooper’s Hawk. At first we thought it was a fox, but then after we lost another one that was in a  double electric fence (garden fence plus poultry netting) in the middle of the day, we put two and two together and that’s trouble with a capital H.  The most recent victim was a beautiful 8 pound white Wyandotte. As I drove up the driveway, I watched her (the Hawk, not the hen) fly away out of the chicken enclosure.Running a cursing toward the pen, I removed the poor dead hen, and raked up the feathers to avoid traumatizing the rest of the flock further. Not that it helped, they didn’t come out of the chicken tractor for at least another 24 hours. since it was below freezing, I declined to bury the poor girl until I could get a shovel into the ground. I hid her behind a tree, beyond the gaze of her former mates, but not from the gaze of the sharp eyed hawk. She came back the next day for seconds. Another 14 degree night prevented me from digging that hole , and a hungry fox did the job for me, removing the dead hen in the middle of the night. My friends at Piedmont Wildlife Animal Rescue would probably thank me for keeping their woodland friends alive through these late winter days. Steve and I ran fishing line all over the top of the hen enclosure; supposed to deter hawks. The obnoxious rooster that lives with the other flock of hens does a good job of protecting his girls. We haven’t lost one yet from that flock. 

Now if I can just figure out how to keep the blue heron out of the pond. Fishing line or rooster?