Three days without water

Ok, our cistern cracked this summer during the drought, which I didn't discover until I had filled it with about 5000 gallons of water and it started leaking on the basement floor.

I didn't want to get it repaired until we had used at least SOME of the water that I had just paid to have put in there, so I waited. And now the guy who's here fixing it today is grumbling because it's so bloody cold. Like I knew it would be Jan temps in Nov?

And because it is so cold, it's going to take three days for the sealant to dry, which means three days with no running water in the house. :(

I guess I'll go take a shower at my friend's house down the road. But jeez, no dishwasher or other way to wash dishes, no toilet flushing except using the big buckets of water I filled before they turned the pump off, no hand washing (which is really yucky.)

I can see I'm going to have to go buy paper plates and hand wipes and all that totally non-green stuff I try to do without. Very unhappy-making. But the upside is, having a broken cistern is very bad Feng Shui, and fixing it will be A Good Thing. And the really good news is that it's going to cost about half what I thought it would (only $500) yay!

But I sure wish I'd taken a shower this morning before the guy came (I usually shower at night.) Ah well...

Wrapping up the show season

Well, unless I change my mind, we're through showing for the year. Between being Show Secretary for the Bluegrass Poultry Association's 5th annual fall show and getting ready for the Ohio National (over 5300 birds this year!) I'm pretty well chickened out for now.

And the weather has turned cold, so it's time to winterize things anyway. I'll be setting up breeding pens soon, although I won't set a hatch before Christmas this year, in case we go away. We have a wonderful family who come and house sit while we're away, but don't want to burden them with chick care as well, so I'll wait until mid-December to set eggs.

We had a very good show year this fall, with some excellent successes here and there. Colleen and Allie won Champion Bantam in the Youth Show at Lucasville this year, with a Dutch bird no less! This is quite an accomplishment, as the SCCL (Single Combed Clean Legged) class is such a large one, and it's very hard to compete with the White Rocks and Leghorns and RIRs. So if nothing else happened this fall, we'd have been content.

But we did well at the Bluegrass show too, and the OH National is always a pleasure, so many of our good friends there, and partying with the Wolfe men and Tylor is an annual treat for us. We did have to dodge the crazy chicken lady while we were there, but that's a story for another day.

I must admit I don't mind the change of seasons, as much as I like being outdoors (when it's not brutally hot or cold), I do like to be curled up with a book and a cup of tea, or to sit here and putter around the Internet on the computer too. I love the way the 'Net allows me to connect with so many people I'd not speak with otherwise, and I enjoy the social networking sites.

Cool weather always prompts me to catch up on neglected paperwork too - I finished up the tardy show reports yesterday and today printed a number of letters for new BPA members. Looming on the horizon are Christmas cards, but I'm not ready to go there yet. Time enough for those in a week or two!

I've Seen Tomorrow

I don't normally blog "off the reservation" but a new friend of mine sent me a link to a video he recently posted to YouTube with a song he wrote, and I felt compelled to write about it here. I know some of my friends are not Obama supporters, and that's fine, I know some are, and that's fine too. I am a staunch Democrat, have been ever since I was a young person, even worked for Jimmy Carter's campaign when I was a senior in High School.

At any rate, check this link for an awesome song and moving video full of hope:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7-dUFKp2ko

I know I can hardly wait to see what happens next week, I am hoping for good things and a positive change for our country that I love.

Silkies and their Beanie Little Heads

One of the breeds of birds we raise is Silkies. I got them originally for the 4-H kids in our county, they weren't a bird that appealed to me overly, but the kids love them, so I caved.

Since then my daughters have really learned to enjoy them, both their goonie behavior, and for shows. They're cute, they're fluffy, people are definitely attracted to them whenever we show where the public might walk by.

The downside to Silkies is, they have "vaulted" skulls, which means essentially that their skull isn't completely closed. Sort of like the fontanelle in a baby, there's a hole in their heads (actually two, one on each side.) The vault in their skull is part of what gives them the poofy crests like the picture of Luna, above.

The problem with the vaults is, it means that part of their brains is only protected by skin, not bone. And if they get excited and thrash about (as chickens do), they bonk their heads, injuring their brains. It's a problem. It happens more to certain bloodlines than others (those with bigger holes in their heads, if you will), and we're breeding away from it. But it doesn't make it pleasant to deal with when it does happen. There are all sorts of treatment protocol one can use to help cure the problem when it happens (often called Crookneck), but the bottom line is, a bird who is susceptible really shouldn't be bred to.

We have a young bird now who is struggling with this issue. Naturally, he's one of the nicest ones we have (it's never the crappy bird you don't care about who has a problem.) I've been treating him, and hand feeding him. But I don't know how he'll do. Sometimes they get better, sometimes they don't. And I can certainly never breed this bird, so as nice as he is, he's now pet quality instead of the show quality he looks like. But it's the price we pay to work with this breed, I guess. Just wish it didn't happen...

Chickens in the basement!

One of the hazards of living 'way out in the boonies as we do is the sheer volume of predators we have here. Raccoons too many to number, opossums, skunks, weasels, coyotes, hawks, owls, the list goes on. All of them eager to make a meal of my chickens. So we are forced to keep things in the most secure pens as possible, which includes a great deal of hardware cloth (very small mesh wire fencing.) A raccoon can reach in through chicken wire and pull a bird out piece by piece (very disgusting) - the only thing chicken wire is good for is keeping chickens in, not predators out. We have developed some easy to make and relatively inexpensive pens for our birds to keep them on grass. They're called hoophouses, and you can see some images of them on our website here. We have five of them at this point, and we even use them over winter (not that it gets all that cold in KY, especially compared to MN!)

The youngest of birds though, need to be kept in a temperature controlled environment, chicks need heat of 95 degrees for the first week, reducing in temp by five degrees a week until they are old enough (and feathered enough) to go outside. Some people keep their birds in their kitchens (you know who you are) but I hatch too many for that option, (chicks shed an inordinate amount of dander and fluff as they grow!) so mine have been kept in the basement since we've lived here. But DH is finally building me a brooder room in the barn, for which I am immensely grateful. Heated, lit, with boxes that don't need to be protected from the house cats, it will be heavenly! And I can finally vacuum up all of the dust that has accumulated in the basement, which I am quite looking forward to. My non-poultry owning guests never quite understand the mess down there, why it's a sisyphusian task to try to keep up with.

At present I have no birds in the house, for the first time in over a year! The last of the chicks went to a young boy who is newly starting in 4-H this fall. I love helping 4-H kids get started with good birds, it makes them happy, it makes me feel good, and is win-win all around. And I'm pleased to have my basement back, will start getting it clear of dust today. Now just have to ensure the brooder room gets done by November, as that's when I start to hatch all over again.

Poultry Shows

It's been an interesting summer. After returning from the beach life went full-tilt boogie and I've been running to keep up. This time of year is County Fair time all across the country, and here in KY is no exception. My children are 4-H members (of course!) and DH and I are both certified leaders, have been for 7 or 8 years now. Since we have horses, goats, and poultry, we've participated in all of those projects, off and on as the years have passed.

At this point the girls only do the poultry project in 4-H, which is run by the very competent Cathy Sams. She's been in 4-H for many, many years (her eldest is 21 I think, so at least 13 years.) She's a woman of strong convictions, firm loyalties, and dedication. She always goes above and beyond for her kids, and I am proud to call her my friend. Over the past couple of years we've worked together to make the poultry project a better one, and I like to think we've succeeded. The show is far and away better than it was when we came to this county, and the kids have increased their knowledge and skills ten-fold, due to no small part to her efforts.

This past Saturday I was asked to judge a show in a county about an hour away from my home. It was my first time as a judge (although I have clerked for years) and I thoroughly enjoyed it (although four hours on my feet was a bit more than I'd have liked.) The hardest part for me to judge was the Costume Class. Four young people, several of whom were very young indeed, had dressed their chickens, and in some cases themselves, in costumes. My job was to pick the "best" one. A terrible choice to have to make, as they were all good.

The standout choice was the little girl who was wearing a skirt and kerchief in a red fabric with small white stars on it. Her chicken had around its neck a small quilted collar in the same fabric in the shape of a large star. When I asked her about her costume, she said "It's a Red Star!" The bird she was holding is a commercial cross commonly called a Golden Comet, but they are also known as Red Stars, and I didn't make the connection until she reminded me. I thought the costume quite clever, and she won the prize. But I told the 4-H agent that next year, should they ask me to judge again, they would need some sort of celebrity judge to do the Costume Class, as I found it just too hard to pick one from all the cute costumes the kids had devised.

At the Beach

I'm on vacation now, two weeks on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Pure heaven! My grandfather was a clever man. He had spent many pleasant visits here with cousins as he was growing up (we're related to Thompsons in Elizabeth City) and in 1957 bought a cottage on the beachfront in Nags Head. I was a glimmer in my mother's eye at that point, but she brought me here as an infant the following year. I've missed some summers (life can do that to you) but this is my 50th year of coming to the beach. 

I didn't come last year, as the beach was the place I spent the most time with my mother, and she died suddenly last March. I spent most of our time together with her here over the last ten years or so, and I couldn't bear the idea of being at the beach without Mom. I came down this year with mixed feelings - I love being here, but wasn't sure if I would be able to do so without making myself sadder about my Mom's passing. After some initial sadness (I feel I will always miss her, here more than ever) I am ok with being here without her. 

One of my Mom's hobbies was bird watching. She wasn't a fully-fledged (pun intended) bird geek, but she knew a ton about birds, and had a long life list. I remember as a child sitting in the living room as she played records of bird songs so she could learn to identify them. After she died I started a life list of my own, as a sort of tribute. I'm not rabid about it, but I'm having fun with it, and being here at the beach has given me lots of new species to add to my list. I like to think she'd approve.