Posted in Carter, dear diary on Sunday, January 10, 2010| Leave a Comment »
Yesterday was a just-about-perfect day:
Posted in Carter, green living, homesteading, pagan, wheel of the year on Wednesday, December 9, 2009| 4 Comments »
This morning we woke to a howling blizzard. I took more satisfaction than usual in the morning ritual of kindling today’s fire from the still-glowing coals of yesterday’s, and watching it catch and then roar.
Heating with wood is like baking your own bread. It takes a fair amount of planning, organization, effort, and hard work, but you have not only a greater appreciation for the end product (even an imperfect loaf of home-made bread tastes better than store-bought), but a communion with the process. You have to tend the fire throughout the day. Sometimes it doesn’t go as planned – a log is wet or rotten and doesn’t burn well. Sometimes you forget to check it and it burns down too low, and you have to waste kindling (which you split last week with great effort and freezing fingers) to re-start it. But it’s all part of the process – and part of a direct connection with the elemental energy of fire.
And even if it weren’t for the environmental and spiritual benefits, just knowing that if the blizzard should knock the power out, we’ll still be plenty warm is worth the extra effort.
Carter, our half-husky, took two steps outside, and turned around to come back in (we let him – who’s to argue when the dog thinks it’s too nasty to be outside?). I think I will spend a good part of the day baking, and maybe put some soup on in the crock-pot as well.
Posted in Carter, Green witch, pagan, wildlife on Wednesday, August 12, 2009| 5 Comments »
Carter and I go out for a walk every morning around 8am. Sometimes I take one of my field guides, to identify wildflowers or trees. Sometimes I take a bag to gather herbs. Sometimes I take my camera:
Posted in Carter, wildlife on Thursday, June 25, 2009| 2 Comments »
On yesterday’s walk, down by one of the smaller ponds in Mike’s back field, Carter suddenly got very, very interested in something in the grass. I looked, but didn’t see anything at first glance. Carter’s body language made it clear that there was something there – something he wasn’t too sure about.
“Probably a big old bullfrog,” I thought, “Or maybe a snake.”
I went over to take a closer to look at where Carter was staring at, circling, with his hackles starting to rise, and a growl starting. There was nothing. I looked closer. There was a rock.
Carter barked at it.
“Why are you barking at a rock?” I looked even closer, “Aha! It’s a turtle. Carter, it’s OK, it’s just a turtle.”
It was about 6 inches across, and all pulled into it’s shell, of course, faced with a circling, growling, barking 50-lb dog.
I got down close enough to see its head pulled in tight, green with yellow and red stripes, just a regular turtle.
Carter didn’t agree. He barked. He circled. He barked some more.
“It’s just a turtle, Carter.”
I decided he would eventually get bored with an immobile turtle, so I wandered off a ways, figuring that he would eventually join me and continue the walk. Carter continued to bark at the turtle. I wandered off and looked at some wild flowers, picked a few strawberries (they’re not quite ripe yet). I called Carter. He ignored me and continued to bark at the turtle.
This continued for ten minutes. I got annoyed, and decided that enough was enough. I went back to the dog and the turtle, grabbed the dog by his collar, and picked up the turtle and tossed it into the pond, where it sank to the bottom and was immediately obscured in the mud. Carter bounded in after it, but he doesn’t really have the concept that things sink in water, so after looking around for a bit he failed to find the turtle floating on the surface of the pond.
And we finally continued our walk.
It was probably a Midland Painted Turtle.
Posted in Carter, chickens, homesteading on Tuesday, May 26, 2009| 2 Comments »
I took these photos on Friday, when the chicks were three weeks old:
Since then we’ve had to secure netting across the top of their enclosure to stop them from flying out and getting lost in the garage. It’s still much too cold for them to go outside, though (we had frost last night that looks like it got my grapes!) even if the coop was built, which it’s not.
They are all eating and drinking well, and really enjoying the greens (clover, grass, and dandelion) I cut for them. Most of them now eat the greens first before starting in on the grain. And they’re starting to get their beautiful adult plumage, though I haven’t seen any signs of a comb on any of them yet.
So I will need to figure out how to rig taller ‘walls’ on their enclosure for the next couple of weeks until they’re ready to move outdoors.
And in Dog News, Carter’s doing well too. He only has his splint on for his daily off-leash run in the back fields now. He’s walking (well, limping) on his bad leg most of the time in the house – which is a big improvement over a week ago when he was still hopping around on three legs in the house most of the time. Hopefully within another week or so, the muscles and tendons will be strong enough for him to go without the splint entirely.
Posted in Carter, chickens, dear diary, homesteading on Friday, May 8, 2009| Leave a Comment »
I suspect there will be many posts in which I rhapsodize about the chickens…
Today the chicks are one week old, so I got to switch their bedding from paper towel to wood chips. This is because in their first week they are still learning to recognize food, if they had wood chips for bedding, they might eat them, which would make them sick.
This is nice for a number of reasons:
However (you knew there had to be a catch). They scratch very enthousiastically. One of them was trying to dig to China, I’m sure. Which is incredibly cute, but sends the wood chips flying everywhere – including into the water font:
Within two minutes, the font was full of wet wood pulp. Not good. So my ingenious solution was to raise the water font up on a block of wood. Hopefully this will minimize the amount of bedding that ends up in the water. I’ll go and check on them in a few minutes to see.
They are growing feathers! At vastly different rates! Some of them have long wing feathers already, some still have only tiny little stubs. Some are starting to grow tail feathers (I wonder if those are the roosters?) in tiny little straggly tufts.
They are all well. There’s one I’m a little worried about, it’s smaller than the rest and seems weaker. At least one runt in 25 chicks is to be expected, however, so I’m just hoping it’s healthy and will develop normally, even if it ends up smaller than the rest.
And in Carter news: The result of last night’s vet trip is that he is out of the cast and back in the same type of splint he had when this whole debacle started. The vet is very confidant that his leg has healed enough to be safe in the splint. He is not allowed off leash outdoors, nor is he allowed to play with other dogs for another few weeks, but we’re getting there. As we were leaving the vet just after 8pm (we had the last evening appointment), they got a call saying a fellow was on his way in with two dogs, each with a face full of porcupine quills. For one of the dogs, apparently this would make the third time they have pulled quills out of his face!
Posted in Carter, chickens, dear diary, garden, homesteading, tagged chickens, gardening, strawberries on Thursday, May 7, 2009| 1 Comment »
Chickens: The chicks are doing really well. They’re eating and drinking and gaining weight and getting bigger and louder and trying to learn to fly. And they’re still incredibly cute. Yesterday I started them on green food in addition to the chick starter (which contains corn, roasted soybeans, wheat, flax meal and minerals). I carefully harvested (with scissors) a tempting selection of green grass, clover, and dandelion leaves from my back lawn, chopped it fine, and mixed it in with their regular food. They liked it just fine. No new picture because they still look exactly the same as they did 2 days ago.
Carter: While he was boarded at the vet’s over the weekend, they x-rayed his broken leg to see how it’s doing. Result: he needs to be in the cast for two more weeks. Then last night t! noticed that the cast looked wrong, and saw that it had ‘slipped’ down his leg about an inch. Where his toes used to stick out the bottom, now they are barely visible. And more importantly, the cast now sits below, rather than covering his elbow. So we’re back to the vet’s tonight to get the cast re-padded.
Field: While I was out walking the dog the other day, I noticed something that looked suspiciously like strawberry leaves. I thought that was silly, the back field couldn’t be full of strawberries, could it? Maybe there is some kind of weed that has strawberry-like leaves. Then I spotted some that had flowers:
They’re strawberries all right! And they’re everywhere. So in a couple of month’s time, we’re going to be overrun with wild strawberries. I expect the birds will get most of them – in fact I’m guessing that’s how they got here in the first place. Maybe I’ll try to find a nice big patch and rig some bird netting up over them in the hopes of getting a few…
and Garden: I haven’t had a chance to do very much digging. Hopefully soon. I have, however been stockpiling perennials in the garage. Blackcurrant bushes. Rhubarb. Blueberry and cranberry bushes. Asparagus crowns. Grape vines. And herbs: lavender and thyme. Now if the rain will just stop so that I can get out there and plant!
Posted in Carter, dear diary, garden, wheel of the year, tagged Chionodoxa luciliae, dog, Glory of the snow on Monday, April 13, 2009| 2 Comments »
I declare it spring in North Stormont county! Some of the crocuses (that were a lovely housewarming gift and that I planted around the well in the fall) are starting to come up. The tiny delicate pale blue ones are coming up first, which seems appropriate. The pussy willows are out, all soft and fuzzy and silver-white in the hedges and by the sides of the roads. There are fish in the spring streams that run through the roadside ditches. I thought that they were tadpoles, at first, because tadpoles are what you generally find in ditches, but these were much too fish-shaped. I presume that they must migrate to the ponds and streams that the ditches flow into. A solitary female wild turkey was ambling across my back lawn when I got up this morning. And one of the previous owners planted these
at the back of the house where they get the morning sun, as I discovered yesterday when I hung the laundry out on the line for the first time this spring. Does anyone know what they are? The closest I can find by googling is something called Chionodoxa luciliae, or “Glory of the snow”.
And in Carter news:
Last Tuesday, he got a new, more sturdy cast to deal with the fact that he had re-broken his broken leg. On Thursday evening he chewed through the fiberglass cast. I called the vet’s emergency number, and on Friday morning she met us at the surgery when she was meant to be on holidays, with her two small sons (aged 5 and 3, I’m guessing) in tow. She opened up the cast and found that a swollen area on Carter’s leg had caused a small pressure sore, which was no doubt painful enough to make him gnaw through his cast. She cleaned the sore and fixed the bandages and padding inside the cast to relieve the pressure, and put his cast back together (they’re made in two halves), and patiently answered all our questions about how much he was allowed to move and walk (not much at all) while the leg healed. And told us a horror story about a previous patient that increased our determination to keep his cast clean and dry.
So now, in addition to the cast, he has to wear a cone to keep him from chewing the cast again (now that he knows he can chew through it if he tries, he’s much more likely to). And we have to watch carefully for any signs of irritation. And we have an appointment to get the cast checked again on Thursday.
I can’t begin to say how much we love Dr. Ingrid, our vet. She called me back within 5 minutes of me leaving a message on her emergency number at 10:30 on a Thursday night. She came in on the Good Friday holiday, with her kids, to check Carter’s cast for us. She reassured us (yet again) that we weren’t responsible for his injuries, and she answered all our questions. She chatted with us about her life and her work while she worked on re-bandaging Carter’s leg.
We will be getting her something very nice as a “Thank You” gift for all the wonderful care she has given Carter.
Posted in Carter, dear diary on Tuesday, April 7, 2009| 3 Comments »
Carter managed to break his leg. Again. In the splint. Worse than the first time.
We don’t know how or when, just that this morning we saw that he had chewed a hole through his bandage directly over the break, and this was worrying enough that we took him to the vet first thing.
So now he gets a full immobilization splint/cast. And crate rest. And tranquilisers.
Yes, I’m serious about the tranquilisers. The vet offered to prescribe Valium for us, too. I’m pretty sure she was joking about that part.
Posted in Carter, dear diary, tagged dog, vet on Friday, March 20, 2009| 6 Comments »
Carter broke his leg.
We were on a walk in the back field, and he took off after a deer into the woods. I heard him yelping and by the time I caught up with him he was sitting on the path waiting for me, looking very contrite and holding his front left paw up, obviously injured. He let me examine it, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t dislocated, but couldn’t tell if it was a break or just a bad sprain – no deformity and no blood though, thankfully. It took us ages to get all the way back to the house, I carried him part of the way, but he weighs 60 pounds, so I couldn’t carry him for very long. He limped slowly and pathetically on three legs back to the house. By which time it was 7pm and the vet was closed.
t! stayed home yesterday, and we called the vet first thing. They didn’t have a free appointment until 5:45 (the vet recently had to take a week off due to a death in the family, and so she’s still really backed up). Carter spent the day dozing on our bed, whimpering whenever he moved his injured leg, which would bring both of us running.
We took him to the vet with me driving and t! riding in the back with Carter. At the vet’s, despite being in pain and on three legs, Carter made friends with everybody, greeting all the dogs and getting pats from all the people. The vet was very busy, and we needed to wait for the x-rays to be developed, so we were there for 2 hours, all told. The x-rays showed one bone broken and the other cracked (the radius and ulna), but in a very good position to splint, so that’s what the vet did. He will be on painkillers/anti-inflamatories for 2 weeks, and the leg will take 4 to 6 week to heal. Since he’s young, the bone should knit with no problem. I said to t! that this was pretty much the equivalent of a 14 year old kid breaking his arm playing hockey.
We both love our vet. She showed us the x-ray and explained everything very clearly, including the possible complications, and answered all our questions. She gave us the option of having him anesthetized while she splinted his leg (we declined), and had me hold Carter while she put the splint on. He even got a cute happy-face sticker.
The splint isn’t slowing him down very much. This morning he trotted next door to say hello to the neighbor dogs and our neighbor Milvie, and to have a drink of water from his favorite ditch.
out here 