The Farmette Report

Spring lambs

The sheep that belong to our across the road neighbors have been busy lambing! The little ones are so light on their feet - just springing and bouncing every which way. However, they are like their stodgy parents in that they are cautious about strangers approaching from the other side of the fence and would have nothing to do with me. Actually, this photo shows them retreating from my approach.

The sheep seem to be a mix of breeds, and even though we love the color of the brown wool on the big guy, we suspect these critters are more for meat than for fiber, poor babies. For instance, some of them have been marked with a colored dye, which doesn't seem like the thing to do if you were primarily interested in harvesting their wool. But, then again, we don't know much about keeping sheep.

It is funny to see the undocked tails of the young'uns, something I'm not used to seeing. The first time I noticed those long tails, I did a double-take as I had forgotten that most sheep don't have naturally stumpy tails. (I'll save the "dock or no-dock" argument for those who know about such things.) The best part about the lamb tails is watching them waggle madly whenever the happy lambs enjoy an opportunity to nurse!

We're not the only ones who enjoy watching the wee lambs. We've seen our donks Molly and Ambrose gazing at them, transfixed, from across the way. Maybe their sheep guarding instincts were kicking in?

Enjoying the day

Thursday was my birthday, and as is my custom, I took the day off from office work. Some folks have told me that they find this a "quaint" custom, and I suppose they mean that a middle-aged woman should be above making such a fuss over a birthday. Apparently most women my age prefer not to dwell on anything that reminds them that they are getting older. I've never been one to resent getting older, especially when you stop to consider the alternative, and neither am I someone who requires being "fussed" over. Rather, the customary day off came about because of my career in human resources management - and the first year when a manager at a company where I worked needed my presence during the termination of an employee who had numerous performance issues. It occurred to me that I had better ways of marking the day than firing someone, and so we settled on another date for our meeting with the soon-to-be former employee - and I have taken my birthday off ever since.

This year, I wanted a quiet day of reflection. I planned to achieve this by taking my knitting and sitting out back with the donkeys nearby while I worked on my current project. What luck - the day promised to be unusually sunny and lovely. The temperature was a mild 65 degrees, with a slight breeze. A beautiful day for idling around the garden and the donkeys.

As you can see, I was not the only one who welcomed the sunny day! With his high-maintenance white coat, you'd think our cat would know better, but he couldn't resist lounging in the sun-warmed earth of the one of the small raised beds next to the kitchen.

I set out towards the donkey's main pasture, passing one of their dust baths on my way to a pretty spot where I could sit and knit. Look what the dust bath revealed, plain as day:

At first I thought these were groundhog prints, because we see those critters the most - and their paws are so well padded, but after consulting one of our wildlife books, I'm not so sure these aren't raccoon prints. Groundhogs have four "toes" in front and raccoons have five. Plus, it looks like the edge of the longer rear paw is visible in the lower left corner of the photo. The tracks couldn't have been there long, either, because the donkeys use their dust bath several times a day, especially when the day is sunny. But then that would mean that we have a raccoon traipsing around in the donkeys' dust bath during the day.

Speaking of donkeys, Molly and Ambrose most obligingly followed me to my knitting spot. They grazed nearby while I knit, an arrangement that seemed to content us all. Every once in a while, one of the donks would come over and visit with me while I scratched behind an ear or offered a treat of carrot or while Ambrose tried to mouth the yarn I was working with.

At one point, when I got up to stretch my legs, Ambrose ambled over to check out my unguarded knitting bag. At least that's what I thought he was up to, until he made it clear that his real interest was in sniffing the rock where I had been sitting. Have I ever mentioned how much the donkeys are like big dogs?!

After knitting for a good while, I took a walk with the donkeys before ending my relaxing afternoon sojourn. I passed under the tall spruce on my way to the house, and there - newly dropped - was the tree's latest gift:

Harbingers

Our crocuses have arrived! I almost missed them because my focus has been on other things, but yesterday was unseasonably warm and sunny - perfect for checking in on going's on in the garden. The daffodils have been shooting up for a few weeks now, and today they obliged us with their first blooms.

These are at the side of the barn, in view of Molly and Ambrose. I wonder if they appreciate the sight as much as we do? Not likely, but that's okay.

While the flowers are a welcome harbinger of Spring, we've also had some unwelcome activity from the local groundhogs and at least one... skunk. The skunk problem started a few weeks ago. At first we thought that maybe a skunk had been hit by a car on the road in front of our house. But the smell kept going away, then returning on different nights. Then we thought that perhaps a skunk had tried to help itself to our cat's food, and there had been a tussle followed by a spraying outside our kitchen door. But the smell outside went away fairly quickly, while inside the house, and especially in the cellar, the smell remained fairly strong. Then, one night around 3 am, we got hit with a renewed blast of skunk that was so strong, it woke me - gagging - from a sound sleep.

What to do?

Keith did a little research and discovered that skunks move from one den to another fairly often. They like to use burrows created by groundhogs, and we definitely have more than one entrance, and maybe even more than one burrow under the 90 feet of porch that wraps around two sides of the house. The Humane Society suggests persuading the tenants of these burrows to vacate by tossing ammonia-soaked rags into the holes, then semi-blockading the entrances so that we can tell if there is any new traffic. If the hole remains unused for a few days, it is safe to close it up without worrying about trapping anything inside.

Keith went looking for burrow entrances this morning, so we could plan our campaign. At the far end of the porch, near the outside entrance to the cellar, is a retaining wall. Last year, a new burrow entrance was dug into the top of the hill on the other side of the retaining wall. This morning, when Keith peeked inside the hole - a groundhog peered back up at him!

"It was cute." Keith said to me later, as he described the incident.

Cute?! The groundhogs are our sworn enemies. Their extensive digging can ruin buildings, create a misstep that can break a donkey's (or a person's) leg, and do untold damage to a garden. We're supposed to be vanquishing the vermin!

Later this afternoon, I went out to snap a quick photo of the groundhog hole for this post. If I stand on tip-toe and lean over the edge of the retaining wall, I can just see inside the hole. I stood. I leaned over. A groundhog - the groundhog - peered back at me, about 18 inches from my face.

Gahhh! What in the world was it still doing there? Shouldn't it have hightailed it the heck out of there this morning? I quickly held the camera above my head, pointed it at the hole and snapped, hoping for a decent shot.

It's not easy to see, but there it is.

Our first thought was to put a Hav-a-Heart trap near the opening, baited with something yummy, but we don't want to risk trapping a skunk instead of the groundhog. After all, how would you go about releasing a skunk? I keep imagining something to do with Marlin Perkins and tranquilizer guns.

And now I can't shake the thought that, if the groundhog had held its...er, ground since this morning, maybe it couldn't readily retreat or move to another burrow. Maybe it was protecting something. Maybe that something was a new batch of baby groundhogs.

Cute.

Among the living

Oh, dear, dear, dear. It has been that long, has it?

Well. I think I can explain. Sorta. Kinda.

You see, back in January, that very week that I killed an afternoon in traffic court, I had my annual physical. And while I was killing time in traffic court, my doctor's office was trying unsuccessfully to reach me to tell me one of the lab results showed I had an infection - and where would I like the prescription called in? Because I ended up playing phone tag with the doc's office, and then, when I tried to pick up my meds, my pharmacy sent everyone away because of a bomb threat, I got about a one week late start on antibiotics. And even though I got the stuff that has been known to vanquish anthrax, it was only a three day supply - and I just knew, just knew, it wasn't going to do the trick. But when I called my doc's office, they wanted me to go to a lab and get a culture done - that way they could be sure of using an effective antibiotic. I went to the lab. And waited, waited, waited for the results - my calls made no difference.

A week passed, and I got a call saying the results were... all clear. Well, that just couldn't be true. Because now I was feeling truly miserable. It took about all I could do to just take care of the basics at the office and at home. I went in for another culture. This time they agreed that some heavy-hitting antibiotics were in order. I went to the pharmacy and picked up a week's worth of something I'd never heard of before. It took about two weeks before I felt as though I were surfacing again.

And just about the time when I was resurfacing, I got sick again! This time it was something different, a nasty-ass cold. Okay, maybe it was bronchitis. All I remember thinking is how unfair it was to get some new bug so close on the heels of two different courses of antibiotics. It hurt to look at a computer screen. So I didn't. I wanted to sleep 23 hours a day. So I did.

Thank goodness for a husband who kept me supplied with juice and tissues and tender loving care.

Thank goodness for a pair of little donkeys who, when I was ready to go for my first "crip-walk" after a couple of days spent mostly shut-in, followed me around the field visiting with me and generally making me feel welcome.

And thank you for your concern, too. I missed you, too.

See you in court, baby

Traffic court, that is.

Keith, whose more pessimistic nature complements my sometimes over-optimistic self, likes to say "No good deed goes unpunished." I usually wave off those kinds of remarks, but this time he was right, as I realized last month when I received the subpoena from the county district court. That auto accident I saw on my way to work the day before Thanksgiving? Well, the state of Maryland decided to charge the driver of the pick-up truck with "failure to control veh. speed on hwy. to avoid collision" - and, instead of paying her fine and taking her lumps like the very crummy and very guilty driver that she is, the young woman decided to contest the ticket. Which meant that I, as the official witness of record (aka "hapless sap"), had to take half a day off work and pay $9 for parking so that I could tell the judge, after waiting two hours in traffic court for the case to come up, what any mo-ron could tell by looking at the front-end of the pick-up and the rear-end of the sedan: that the driver of the pick-up was guilty, guilty, guilty.

She was looking at a $120 fine and points on her driving record. Reducing or avoiding "points" is the reason most people even bother with traffic court instead of just paying their ticket. I don't know how many points she was facing, but she had told me she was in an accident the week before the one I saw, so maybe it would have been enough to totally wreck her insurance premiums for a long time to come.

Maybe she thought that it would go easier on her if she pleaded not guilty, but the instructions I received stated that "Under Maryland law, the defendant may admit guilt prior to trial by paying the established fine. The defendant may also admit guilt and request a hearing for the sole purpose of seeking leniency. In either instance, your appearance would not be required." Maybe she thought the ticketing officer would fail to make an appearance, which would produce an automatic "not guilty," but - helloooo - there was a witness, namely me, who was compelled by subpoena to make an appearance.

Just to make it truly weird, I was already sitting in the courtroom when she and her father showed up and sat immediately in front of me. I don't think she realized that they had done this until she sort of turned sideways and saw me - then she whispered to her dad. Lots of whispering. In fact, she was doing so much whispering that they both failed to hear when the judged called her name. He called her name twice, and when she failed to speak up, he noted her as a "no show." I tried to get her attention, but she ignored me. As soon as she was marked for not showing, I could have left, but I was afraid that I might be called back for a second court date and that would just be too much. I was already pissed about the half day and paying for parking, so I decided to stick it out and see what she and her father were up to. Court proceedings were too brisk and too formal for me to do anything while other cases were being heard, so I waited. And there was the teensiest bit of worry that perhaps she wasn't who I thought she was, so I resisted the temptation to point her out to the judge while exclaiming, "There she is, there's your 'no show.' Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!'"

Near the close of the session, she went up to the bailiff and whispered something like "Oh, was my name ever called?" - at which point he got her case put back on the docket. When asked, she told the judge that she was not guilty, irking me no end because I then had to get sworn in, state my full name and address to the whole courtroom, and tell the judge what happened. Then she had to get sworn in and tell him that what I had said was correct, but that she was hoping for leniency because "traffic was really bad that morning."

The judge found her guilty, but took pity by giving her "PBJ" which does not mean what one might at first think when one has skipped lunch in order to make it to court in time to sit for a couple of hours listening to a line-up of people trying to beat the rap on their speeding tickets and fender benders. PBJ means "Probation Before Judgment" which means, in this case: no points. He also reduced the fine to $35 plus $25.50 in court costs and ordered her to take a remedial driver's course offered by the state MVA. As it was, the only reason she was found guilty was because of my testimony - the ticketing officer had left when she was pronounced a no-show.

We had already learned that insurance was taking care of the wrecked sedan. But what about my parking? What about screwing up my afternoon? There was no point in my asking. (Grumble, grumble. Whine, whine.) I resisted the urge to reward myself with a detour to the yarn shop, but instead came home and spent some time with the sweet little donkeys. They never get called into traffic court.

An omelette and a glass of wine

Supper by myself tonight; Keith is working late. I had the menu in mind all day: an omlette with baby spinach, with a dab of rosemary roasted baby potatoes and carrots on the side - quick and easy with veggies left over from Christmas supper.

I came home, fed the donkeys, the cat, and the woodstove. I plugged in the lights on the Christmas tree even though it sits in the next room out of sight of the cozy, warmth of the kitchen. Ah, surely it prefers the milder temperature of the front room, anyway. The kitchen is invitingly free of clutter just now, still in that "company's coming" stage of cleanliness. As much as I love company (and yesterday it was my brother, his wife, and their delightful 9 month-old twin girls - their visit exactly what I had asked for, for Christmas), I also love that it compels one to stop knitting or reading or brooding for at least a few hours so that one can take care of some overdue housecleaning.

So the kitchen is rather tidy just now. Being one who likes her sauteed spinach on the garlicky side, I minced three large cloves of the stuff and tossed them into the heated olive oil. When slightly browned around the edges, I added the baby spinach and a dash of nutmeg, cut the heat, and left the spinach to wilt while I made ready with the omelette. Two eggs, tonight. That's plenty. Into the butter, already sizzling in the small and shallow skillet. Tilt and swirl. Use the spatula, mark an asterisk in the eggs before letting them settle down. Salt. Freshly ground pepper. A bit of Swiss cheese. Half the nicely wilted spinach (the other half is for Keith's omelette when he comes home later).

I cheat a little now by covering the skillet for perhaps a minute, or not quite, so that the center will cook and the cheese will melt before the rest of the omelette turns to rubber.  Then it is folded, and it slides easily onto the warm plate that already holds the tiny warm potatoes and carrots. Perfect.

Then I remember that I'll want something to read as I dine, and all the usual clutter of books and papers has been cleared away. I go to a bookcase in the other room, thinking I'll read up on knitting technique and colorwork. I pull out a book - and the one right next to it pops out and lands on the floor at my feet. Shelve them a little too tightly and that'll happen. I pick up the book: Elizabeth David's An Omelette and a Glass of Wine. Hmmmm. A collection of essays I haven't gotten around to reading yet.

The book accompanies me back into the kitchen where - why not? - I pour myself a small glass of organic, sulfite-free "California Red" by Orleans Hill that has been sitting around opened (but stoppered) a little too long.  I am not fussy about wine (meaning: I am wildly ignorant about wine). I'd rather have an omelette and a glass of beer. But, what the heck, I'll do it for Elizabeth. And so we settle down, Elizabeth and I, with an omelette and a glass of wine. It is delicious.

*******************

To my online friends, I am really sorry for going AWOL for... gosh... more than a month. I appreciate your kind thoughts, your stopping in despite my continued neglect of the Farmette Report. Things have been a little odd lately, with sad news for two of my dearest friends, and I have been in this weird space-time continuum dealie where it felt like maybe if I held my breath or just knit-knit-knit while waiting for their news, then the bad thing wouldn't be happening to my dear friends. Of course it didn't work, and all I've managed to do is be about a week late for everything in my personal life for the last month or so - or, in the case of my blog, a month late.

On the plus side, the shawl (my very first shawl) that I started Thanksgiving week is more than 80 percent done. Photos and updates soon. Yeah, you've heard that before, but really this time. You have already been so patient.

Before it gets any later, one last thing for tonight: Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and a happy New Year to you all.

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.

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.

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.