Homestead happenings

Fall is well upon us, as I felt the nip in the air this morning on my way to the barn. In the dark, ha! Yes, it is dark even without clouds now when I do my morning barn chores. The big dog is sure looking around in the mornings too, so I am paying fairly close attention to him-he'll surely see or smell something long before I do :)

Friday evening when I got home, we let the chickens loose. Well, what we did was prop open the door for them. The garden has been harvested, and as long as the doors are closed on the greenhouse there isn't much for them to get into now. Saturday, I did not see them all, as it rained fairly heavy off and on all day. Yesterday, they were up near the barn and came running right over when I called. I was rather tickled that they 1) came at all, and 2) remembered where their old coop area was. I treated them to a handful of sweet feed because I like rewarding them that way. This morning I was happy to see that they had roosted at the barn-the three hens on the one stall wall, and for about two minutes I could not find the rooster at all....but eventually I spied him sitting on a pallet that was stood up on end-I figure he can't see well enough to fly up there into the rafters and boards with just the one eye. As usual, when he heard my voice he emitted his tiny chuckling coo. Happy birds, they are, with the run of the place. We'll probably loose whatever eggs are laid until we finagle a new chicken coop, unless the hens wander all the way down the hill to thier nesting boxes (possible, but not likely) for now.

Hunting season is in full swing, so my hub has been out trying for a moose. This means a combination of "road hunting" (driving around back roads with eyes peeled for bulls and trails) and getting out on the four wheeler, exploring. They've found a few likely spots which will be carefully hunted over the next couple of days. I am hoping for good luck as moose would be a welcome addition around home!

On the horse end, not much happening. The mare is still off now that the ground is saturated. However, we finally have level heels, and I am optomistic that time and exercise will encourage better, healthy growth for her hooves. I know that her coffin bone was at an angle when I got her, based upon the condition she arrived-and I also knew it was going to be a long slow recovery-I was just hopeful we would have had more correction by now. I am a little hamstrung with her, because I can't "feed her up" for hoof growth, as she is already on the line for being obese as it is, grr! No grain whatsoever and a measely 16 or 17 pounds of hay a day, and she's um, fluffy, to say the least ;) Basically she needs the poo worked out of her, day after day, but I am unable to do that working full time, darn it.

The old man is in very good spirits, and obviously happy to be back in his old stall and pen. On Saturday when we were working on stripping the greenhouse, he had wandered down to see what we were doing. Looking over the fence down into the greenhouse, he watched for a while and then walked back up, hand a roll, and trotted back to the fenceline. Where he promptly zapped himself on the fence! With a big snort and a shake of his head, he bolted back to his stall....it was funny! Not like he doesn't know the fence bites, the silly guy :)

The big dog is still unhappy with my hub being home. He is pretty "woofy" with men who come to the house anyway, and seems scared of my hub for the first week. That fear does not stop him from trying to worm his way onto the bed at night though! Funny how the dog is fine if my hub is reclining (in the recliner, or on the bed) but all twitterpated if he's standing? I have no idea what's up with that, but I do know that men wearing ball caps and anything red, tend to scare him. I presume this is something from his past-he is getting over the ball cap thing because so many men come to my office who wear them. The color red? Not so much. Just something to work through over time, we'll get there.

Saturday was the strip the greenhouse day. What should have taken a full days work, ended up going pretty quickly with my neice and her guy helping. My gosh I have a lot of green tomatoes! I sent them home with quite a bit of ripe tomatoes, cucumbers, and a variety of peppers too. And, I have a half a dozen small sugar (pie type) pumpkins sitting on the bench in the greenhouse too. So I have a lot of pepper seeds to harvest and my chore today is to find a pile of newspaper and a bunch of boxes so I can get those tomatoes ripening off. Although just where to put them is the question....

I also put the pansy bowls in the greenhouse as I need to harvest seeds from them as well, antique shade pansy seeds are very expensive! Oh, and I *think* I have figured out where the seeds for broccoli grow on the plant! Well, not positive, but I think I found them.....after the plant flowers (which, by the way, are great to eat if you haven't tried them) the flowers will drop off and these thin little spiky looking things will remain. It looks for all the world like rather thick green cactus spines, but each of these has little lumps in it-I presume the seeds? So I picked a handful of those and they are in the garage, drying. Not quite sure how to open those pods but I am positive there are seeds in there :)

Which leads me to wonder: How do cabbages seed? Cauliflower? Brussel Sprouts? I have no idea, lol! I mean, I know they must, but since our season is so short, we never get to see the plant actually mature long enough I bet. Hmm, something interesting to look up on the net today :)