SPRING HAS SPRUNG!!!

April 6, 2010


The computer bounces on my lap as we head down highway 412 in northeast Oklahoma. It’s the Dan P. Holmes Expressway leaving Tulsa. I actually remember Dan P. Holmes. To me he was just a face on the television. He was a gentleman who was always complaining about the horrible condition of highway 412. He constantly campaigned to get that little two lane road that lead from Tulsa, Oklahoma to Arkansas repaired and widened. As a kid growing up I had no real grasp of why this interstate road was so important, or why the man was constantly campaigning to get it improved.

Now as I type I appreciate Mr. Holmes. It’s a nice divided highway that allows you to move safely and freely from Oklahoma to Arkansas and back again. Sadly the highway was completed after Mr. Holmes passed, but I like to think he’s up there somewhere smiling, knowing all the good he did for all the travelers.

In the two weeks we’ve been home from Davis the world flying by my truck window has turned from winter brown to varying shades of spring green. The landscape is dotted with colorful redbuds and stark white wild plum trees. As we drive through the towns on our way to Springdale, AR I see jonquils blooming in the yards. Spring has finally come to the area.

Pastures along the roads are filled with new calves, lambs and kid goats. Easter was last weekend and we’ve been blessed with a nearly storm free spring so far. I hope it stays that way. Tornadoes are very scary things.

I’ve actually been in about six and would prefer to never be in one again. I’ll do a blast from the past post soon about one such tornado when I was rendezvousing fulltime. It was an experience that is funny now, but back then it was really pretty scary.

Right now I’m simply enjoying the spring day.

At home Sean is taking care of the gifts of spring we’ve recently received. Easter night Gary had gone out to do some late chores when in the pitch dark he heard the sounds of new life. The sounds of a tiny chick strayed from its mother. He called into the house and told us what he was hearing.

Sean grabbed up a flashlight and headed into the woods where the sound was coming from. He soon realized it was more than one. Climbing through the underbrush he found two tiny chicks. One was white and the other was brown, plus a nest of pipping eggs. No mama chicken to be seen.

He knew that this late at night if the hen wasn’t on the nest she was permanently gone. Gary verified this later when he told us he had found the Mama dead not far away. The chicks were gathered first and placed in Sean’s shirt tail to keep them warm until he could pass them off to Gary, who then passed them off to me.

I took them into the house and warmed them up while the two men gathered the ten chirping eggs from the nest. All were far enough along in their hatch there was no sense in firing up one of the two incubators we still owned. Instead a cardboard box was setup in Sean’s bathroom vanity with a 100 watt light bulb.

By morning we were up to five healthy chicks, by bedtime last night only three eggs remained unhatched. One of them was nearly finished hatching, the 9th one is rocking and rolling but no cracks in the shell as yet. We feel no life in the 10th egg. Sean will candle it tonight to see if anyone is home and still alive. Sometimes there is one chick that hatches as much as 48 hours after the rest of a clutch.

We had not even set up brooders yet for the season, so that’s on the top of Sean’s to do list today. That way the birds can be raised properly and not stink up the bathroom.

When we last spoke with him he hadn’t decided if he was going to work on the small pen or the garden roof today. Fairy goose, Elf’s mother, is sharing a nest with a banty turken in the small pen coop. Which is very comical to see the turken trying to warm the five goose eggs along with her own tiny eggs when Fairy is off the nest.

The pen needs some major repair due to the big tree, of the emergency room fame, fell on part of the pen. The guys removed the tree Sunday, but Sean will need to do some fence and roof repair to make the pen safe for the little ones when they hatch. So he’ll probably do the pen.

The garden roof may sound strange to some of those who haven’t heard me speak of this before. My poultry all free range, so my garden is caged, complete with a chick wire roof. The repetitive snow and ice storms of this last winter knocked the roof down, as well as taking down many limbs of nearby trees.

We’ve been cleaning that up and doing the repairs ever since we’ve been home. All the limbs are now either firewood for next winter, or have been burned as brush. New saplings have been cut as uprights and the two men have restrung the chick wire.

The roof is essential because most of my birds can fly right over the fence and take up garden seeds as fast as we put them in without it. Only a small amount of work is left to complete it. Sean has plans on finishing it this week.

He’ll then start putting in his “first” garden. I had planned on getting it all planted, but life happens, so he’s decided to do it since he was “downsized” three weeks ago out of a job. He’s hoping to be employed again quickly. However, in the meantime he’s going to intensely plant the garden. The seeds are all sorted and ready. I have told him the choice of what and where is his. I’ll be curious as to what he does plant.

The fish we placed in the rain water harvesting pool (yet another post I need to write) have over doubled in size in the last two weeks. We actually thought the ducks had eaten them all. So imagine Sean’s excitement when he realized he was looking at a four inch long goldfish late last night and three three and half inch long ones today. More on this version of aquaponics another time.



Right now I’m just enjoying the bright greens of spring and the warm day.

Jan who is thankful winter is finally over in OK

FIRE AND ASH

Just yesterday I had told Gary I had not seen Porche, our little buff and flame colored Banty hen, in a while and wondered if she had been part of the big predator slaughter while we were gone. Little did I know I’d see her flying in fright and self preservation the very next day.

Remember me saying at the end of my last post that I was going out to burn trash? Well here’s what happened.

Gary had already filled the barrel before I had got out there. We are very careful as to what we burn. We recycle as much as we can and the rest must be burnable, nothing non-burnable is allowed in the trash burner. Especially considering Sean uses a hand held inhaler and if one of those gets in a trash burner RUN FOR YOUR LIFE! I’ve had “help” from a sil, whose family burns everything, before and she put a whole bag of non-burns in one day while here. Holy Moly it sounded like a war zone and was nearly as dangerous as those things exploded.

As the first round of goodies burned I gathered up odds and ends and fed the burner. It soon was blazing a little higher than I like so I decided to let it burn down a bit before adding more.

“Goose, Goose, Goose” I called and the geese came running. They knew that meant we were going to the pasture and they were ready. We’ve had such a predator problem lately they haven’t ventured to the green grass in a while. As we marched down the driveway I sang “I love a parade, the flap of the feet the honk of the bill it gives me a thrill” as the geese honked and squealed along. This is our pasture marching song and as long as I sing they follow. If you had ever heard me sing you would wonder why they weren’t running the other way!

Suddenly I realized it had grown quiet behind me and I turned to see why. The entire goose flock was looking at the blazing trash burner. That’s when I saw Porche sail out of the spare barrel next to the burner screeching at the top of her lungs. Her screech was followed by the pleading chirps of a just hatched chick.

I ran for all my fat body was worth, yanked the spare barrel away from the flaming burn barrel, slightly burning my hands as I did. Inside were a dozen or so eggs and two barely fluffy chicks. A rotten egg exploded as I reached in to grab the first chick, a gray one. No time to be squeamish, the netting the birds were sitting on was starting to melt. Setting it down near Porche I dug for the second, one, a red brown one, that was madly screaming not only due to the building heat but was caught up in some netting Gary had put in the barrel to haul to the dump. Finally freeing it as my hands got warmer and warmer I placed it by its mother as well. I kept expecting to be flogged by Porche but she sensed I was trying to save her young. Next I scooped and examined the eggs. One chick was dead in the shell the others I carefully laid on the ground near the cedar tree Porche was now crouched under.

The geese watched all this silently, even the rowdy dogs sat mouths open and watched.

Once I had all the eggs out of the still hot barrel I watched the two chicks closely, the second one had suffered more from the heat and was panting heavily. Ignoring my stinging hands I ran for a chick waterer Gary had just filled the hour before and brought it back sitting it near the panting chick. Then stood a distance away.

After a while Porche took both chicks to the water, then started scratching for them to eat as if nothing at all had happen. The red one, Fire as it will now be called, drank a lot of water than toddled after it’s Mama. Ash, the gray one, drank only a little and was definitely more interested in eating than drinking. After a while Porche, who was named that for the three clutches of chicks she hatched under the front porch last year, inspected the eggs. When last I checked she had both chicks and ¾’s of the eggs under her as she sat in the shade of the cedar tree. I’m sad the one died, but at least I save Fire and Ash.

My hands are not blistered, just a little stingy, like a sunburn so all is well that ends well.
Jan who says, check everything around your trash burner BEFORE you burn trash in OK