The Farmette Report

A thankful heart

"A thankful heart enjoys blessings twice - when they are received and when they are remembered."

That quote was all I was going to post today, but then, on my way to work yesterday, I saw a small pickup truck crash into the back of a sedan that had hesitated at merging from one busy ramp onto another. There is no merge area in this spot where two ramps join before becoming part of a busy interstate highway, and the woman driving the pickup truck hadn't noticed the car stopped on the shoulder when she changed her own mind about being able to merge into the rush of traffic.

Suddenly the scene switched to slow motion as I saw truck smash into car, sending glass and parts flying, while I and other drivers behind me had to take evasive action to avoid becoming part of a pile-up. Because I had seen the accident, and because no one else seemed to be stopping, I pulled over onto a safer section of shoulder and walked back to check on the condition of the two drivers. They were both pretty shaken, but said they were otherwise unharmed. The young woman in the sedan was just sitting there, looking uncertainly at a cell phone in her hand. I asked her if she wanted me to call 911 for her, and she nodded her head.

It is always difficult for me to hear my cell phone when there is noise in the background; the steady roar of passing traffic made it impossible. All I could do was tell the dispatcher "I can't hear you, but there's been an accident, the drivers are pretty shaken up, the location is...." I thought I heard the faint response, "We'll send someone to check it out" - and that was that.

We waited. Worried that she was siting in an unsafe spot, I coaxed the sedan driver out of her car, which I noticed was packed to the gills. Where ever she was headed this holiday weekend, she wasn't going to get there in that car. When I observed as much to her, she told me that she was moving from Kentucky to Maine to join her husband who had made the move before her. The young woman driving the pickup was a local; she had been planning on selling her truck before starting college next semester.

After waiting thirty minutes, a state trooper pulled up. He collected my contact information and my statement, and I wished both women well as I gave them my business card in case their insurance companies needed to speak to a witness. 

It happened in an instant. Thankfully no one was seriously hurt, yet it served as a reminder not to take things for granted because a life can be changed in a moment.

But I promised to write about how eating Thanksgiving dinner in a restaurant isn't as sacrilegious as some might think. We had a wonderful time this evening, but the telling will have to wait for another, less drowsy, time. Meanwhile, here's hoping you all had a happy and safe Thanksgiving with your loved ones.

Getting ready

Anticipation. I think that's what makes Autumn and Spring my favorite seasons. In Spring, so much is happening - seedlings risk the chill of a late season frost and dormant plants reappear with renewed vigor, full of the promise of Summer days. Mild Autumn days are suited to the work of stacking wood, cleaning out gardens, and getting ready for what's to come. You do a lot of "getting ready" in Spring and Autumn.

The leaves have put on their annual display - they tried their best, they really did, but this year's month of no rain followed by a month of heavy rains muted the effect. Still it was a lovely show, leaving us with no short measure of anticipation over the raking to come.

As I've mentioned before, I love to rake leaves, but everyone has their limits. Not that we rake every last leaf, either. We are not that finicky. The leaves among the trees and the leaves in the garden beds - we let those stay to do their Winter's work. It's the lawn and the grassy paddocks that get our attention, and we do a large part of the leaf clean-up with the leaf sweeper attachment on our lawn tractor.

The donkeys are fascinated  by the leaf sweeper. To them it is a movable banquet, full of good earthy smells. They'll eat the leaves right out of the hopper, when they get the chance. After all, doesn't everyone know that a leaf in any kind of container is tastier than a leaf on the ground? (And tastier still, is the leaf offered by hand.)

I made the mistake of rounding up over 30 loads of leaves in the leaf sweeper the other weekend without wearing a dust mask. This set off my allergies pretty badly, and this past weekend, I took to wearing a mask, even though I was only using a regular leaf rake.

While I was raking, I found this poor little goldfinch near our kitchen gate. One minute there was nothing there, and the next time I went through the gate - there she was. I don't know what caused her death. Our old cat is a little too slow for bird-catching, and besides, she appeared whole and intact. I buried her in a hollow of tree roots in the woods.

Next up: the most expensive pumpkin butter in the world and why it is sometimes okay to eat your Thanksgiving meal in a restaurant.

His smile warms me

He was already a mature cat of 10 years when he joined our household by camping out on our suburban front steps nine years ago. Because of my major cat allergies, he's never been allowed in our house - and so he's had to tough out his winters outdoors. He always managed quite well, growing a furry coat as thick as a polar bear's. Still, when we moved to the country from the 'burbs three winters ago, we knew it was time to up the ante on the aging Mr. White's winter quarters.

The first winter, I bought him an orthopedic egg crate "nest" with removable cover. Then I got a wet/dry heating pad and slipped that under the cover. Once it was plugged in and turned on low, you wouldn't believe the blissed out look on the cat's face. You'd have to pry him out of that nest on a cold night if he didn't need to step out for food, water, or the "facilities" (which he seems to think is all of the outdoors where I happen to garden). When the weather turned colder, we could adjust the heat setting accordingly. It was a nifty system that made it hard to feel guilty about keeping the cat outside.

An odd thing happened that first winter. One unseasonably sunny winter day, Mr. White was basking in the sun outside of his nest. He rolled and stretched, revealing a long, thin strip of bare belly. It looked like someone had taken a razor and shaved him smooth with one long stroke from stem to stern on his underside. Closer inspection showed that his skin wasn't cut - it looked healthy and so did the rest of him. He didn't appear traumatized. But there was this completely smooth one and half inch wide patch, completely hairless, in marked contrast to the rest of his healthy-looking fur-covered self. 

All I could think was that someone had taken the poor beast and had subjected him to surreptitious medical experiments. As that prospect seemed highly unlikely, I did my best not to wig out, but to look for some other explanation for the hair loss.

I started to closely monitor Mr. White's belly fur. As the winter progressed, so did the denudification. Now, instead of what looked like a sharply demarcated shaved strip, his belly sported a growing, sprawling patch of hairless pink skin. The cat himself seemed perfectly content. From above, you would never know anything was amiss, but when he laid down and showed a glimpse of belly, he looked like a cat that was recovering from some recent major surgery.

He was already something of a sight. From a distance, he is this lovely, graceful white cat with a slim, rangy build. Get a little closer and you will see that this neutered male was quite the tusker in his day: he is missing one fang, has quite a few notches in his ears, and has a fondness for rolling that white coat of his through the dirt.

Because his looks and disposition seemed otherwise completely normal, as did his weight and appetite, I decided against a trip to the veterinarian's office. Whitey hates car travel, hates vet offices. And I wasn't looking forward to paying a chunk of cash to find out that they were as stumped as I was. Sorry if I offend anyone who believes in running off to the vet at the first sniffle, but ever since I noticed that a vet visit never seems to cost less than $300, I think twice about the need. I don't skimp on care when it is truly needed, and our pets get regular vaccinations, but we try to work things out on our own when we can.

Besides, I had a theory about what was causing Mr. White's depilated belly. All I needed to do to prove my theory was to make one adjustment and wait a few weeks. Sure enough, weeks passed, the days became warmer, and the furless patch began to fill in with snowy new fuzz. Before long, Mr. White was as be-furred as ever; once again, he could show off that furry belly with pride!

The cause of Mr. White's hair loss? An over-heated nest. At some point during the coldest days, we had cranked up his heating pad to the highest setting. He loved it, but his belly fur, which bore the brunt of the heat, couldn't take it. We had baked the fur right off! The "adjustment" that I made was to turn the heating pad to the lowest setting (or off completely, when it was warm enough) and let nature take its course.

Since that first winter with the heating pad, Mr. White must have developed a tolerance for the extra warmth because, while he lost a little belly fur at the beginning of the second winter, he has since maintained his hirsute state throughout the following winter seasons. What a good cat he is!

2005 Antietam luminary display scheduled for December 3rd

Speaking of Google searches, the Farmette Report is starting to get some hits from folks who are looking for information on the annual Memorial Illumination at Antietam National Battlefield. Barring seriously inclement weather, the Illumination is always  scheduled for the first Saturday in December. According to my calendar and the National Park Service, that means this year's display will be held on Saturday, December 3rd. Go here for more information about the luminary display, or click here for last year's blog post about how gut-wrenching it is to view 23,000 luminaries, knowing that each candle represents a human life, the dead, the missing and the wounded from the bloodiest single day of fighting in the Civil War.

If you've never gone to the Memorial Illumination, it's well worth the visit. A couple of hints if you decide to make the trip: 1) take a bathroom break before you get into the line of cars waiting to get into the park - the wait and the slow five miles through the park can take up to two hours; and 2) bring a little cash for the small "suggested donation" at the park entrance.

Math on the farmette

I love looking at the searches that bring people to The Farmette Report and just had to laugh at this very long Google entry: Nine woodchucks can chuck 27 pieces of wood in 6 hours. How much wood can a woodchuck chuck in one hour? Why? math problem

The answer? 86.

The real answer? Okay, kiddies, let's take this apart: if 9 woodchucks can chuck 27 pieces of wood in a given amount of time, you can divide the wood among the number of woodchucks (27/9), meaning each woodchuck would be able to chuck 3 pieces of wood in the allotted time of 6 hours. But how much wood would a woodchuck chuck in 1 hour? Well, divide the number of pieces of wood by the number of hours (3/6) to find out that woodchucks, or groundhogs as we call them 'round here, don't give a fig for chucking wood. What they really want, if they are not already hibernating at this time of year, are the apples in your orchard. So, if you have 3 apple trees and each apple tree produces 200 apples, and you have a groundhog that can eat 6 apples an hour, and the groundhog puts on 1 more pound of body fat every 3 hours, how much bigger does the groundhog have to dig its hole so that it can fit back inside its burrow before you shoot it?

If you have the answer to that, let me know. Otherwise, brush your teeth, finish your homework, and get ready for school. I'll have your lunch packed and ready when you're done.

The turkeys at work

I was going through some photos I took within the last few months and found this one that I meant to post:

How many times have you gone home after a rough day on the job, moaning about  "the turkeys at work"? Well, in late September, we literally had three wild turkey hens hanging around outside one of our offices. Usually, wild turkeys are extremely wary animals (not like their dumbed-down domesticated cousins), but these three gals let me approach them from the parking lot and take photos at close range. If I'd had any cracked corn on me, I bet they would have been glad to let me share it with them, which makes me wonder if someone kept these particular birds as pets or if they are just going the way of some of our resident (and increasingly domesticated) Canadian geese - who seem to know a good thing when they see it.

Now that Thanksgiving Day is drawing nearer, I hope these gals have managed to stay out of trouble.

Donkeys in Apple Time

Molly and Ambrose have a favorite poem of late (with apologies to Robert Frost):

Something inspires the donkeys of late
To make no more of a wall than an open gate,
And think no more of a wall-builder than a fool.
Their faces are flecked with pomace and they drool
A cider syrup. Having tasted fruit,
They scorn a pasture withering to the root.
They run from tree to tree where lie and sweeten.
The windfalls spiked with stubble and worm-eaten.
They leave them bitten when they have to fly.
They bray on a knoll against the sky.
As bellies thicken, they heed no cry.

For the original, "The Cow in Apple Time," as Mr. Frost wrote it, keep reading:

This is November?

A woman I know tells me that she can't stand to see what the first hard frost does to her annuals, so she rips them out before the frost comes. Somehow, I find it difficult to pull up prettily blooming flowers, even when it means I'll later be pulling out a sad mass of frost-killed blooms. This cosmo, for example, was still lookin' good yesterday. Even the impatiens, flowers that have little tolerance for cold, are hanging in there - that's how unseasonably warm it has been. But all good things must come to an end, and with our first below-freezing temps of the season expected tonight, today will be the annuals' last hurrah. This weekend, I'll clean out the last of the flower beds.

I'll also start raking; there's been none of that so far. What a strange fall this has been, as though the mini-drought early on, the one that prevented or delayed the trees colors changing to full glory, was also instrumental in the trees hanging onto their leaves that much longer. This week, finally, the leaves have started to fall in earnest. There is raking to be done.

While waiting for leaves to fall and frost to come, we've been cleaning the woodstove flues, splitting and stacking wood, knitting for the holidays, making pumpkin butter, practicing target-shooting with the recurve bow I got while we were on vacation this summer, making yogurt (inspired by Liz) and also yogurt cheese, and just generally hanging out with the donkeys and enjoying the crisp fall air when we can. Oh, and I just saved a bundle on health insurance. No, seriously, in addition to everything else, it has been the busiest time at the office of late because we're starting open season on insurance benefits. That's why I haven't been around as much, which I don't like. But we did save tens of thousands of dollars on my employer's insurance, which I like very much indeed.

And back again!

I was moping around outside in the cold, when Keith drove up. We went inside and changed into warmer clothing. I cut up a few carrots and stuffed my pockets. Keith grabbed two halters and leads, then we headed off further into our neighbor's 30 acres of woods.

"Molly!"

"Ambrose!"

"Donkeys!!!"

We called. Keith whistled. We tromped along with our flashlights. The rain had stopped, and the trees were shaking off a few drops in the breeze.

Suddenly, Keith stopped: "Be quiet for a sec."

We both stopped and listened. After a few moments, he turned and flashed his light behind us. There was Molly coming up the deer-path behind us. Ambrose was close behind. It had taken them less than 20 minutes to find us in the strange woods (well, 20 minutes if we overlook the hour and a half that I had searched the edges of our property calling, whistling, and trying to find the donkeys.)

They happily nibbled some proffered carrots as they followed us up to the front of Keith's workshop. At this point, they were standing in our driveway, looking disinclined to head towards the lit-up barn. Why should they go to the barn? They were too busy having a donkey-venture!

It took a good many bites of carrot and some coaxing to get the donkeys to step back into their fenced-in home. After we settled them down to a late supper of hay, Keith and I walked along the fence-lines to look for their escape route. He checked a small, seldom-used "pedestrian" gate on the other side of the barn paddock - it was open.

What a relief to know they are safe and to know how they managed to get out in the first place. With that accomplished, the next thing we all need is a good night's sleep! Good night, everyone!

Missing

They're gone.

I worked late tonight, and arrived home about 90 minutes ago to find a message on our answering machine from one of our neighbors. Molly and Ambrose, our beloved little donkeys, were seen wandering up on the busy, high-speed road late this afternoon. Somehow, they got through a gate and... I don't know where they are. It's dark. Rainy. The chill in the air is not too much for them, but it wore at me after nearly an hour and a half of calling and whistling into the rain as I walked along the neighbor's woods with a flashlight. The only thing keeping me from panicking right now is that I heard them bray about an hour ago - but nothing since.

Keith was working late, too. He's on his way home now. I came into warm up and regroup. I'm about to head out again with the flashlight.