In no particular order...

I'm getting a backlog of photos...

Berries, berries, berries! (Ronna, are these black raspberries, wild blackberries...??? They are all over the farm. Tasty!)

Dogs in pond. One day we'll get a windmill to aerate it so it's not full of pond scum. But the frogs love it.

Sophie and Tristan drying in the sun.

Sumac blooms.

A very young sumac just starting to blossom. The local stewardship council planted a lot of trees and bushes on our farm this year, along the municipal drain and down near the river.

The granary and barn, on a rare (for this summer) sunny afternoon!

But the storm approacheth. Again.

You can tell it has been a cold wet summer because my peas are still in blossom! In fact, I just had my first sugar snap peapod yesterday, and even that one was just a wee young thing.

Potato flowers.

Potato jungle.

Pumpkins and... broccoli? Damn, I think it was something else. Broccoli rabe? Need to check my list.

I grew three kinds of runner beans this year. I especially like this one with the two-tone flowers.

The vegetable jungle.

Rose campion and friend. (Sorry, I don't know what that bush with the pale pink flowers is. Anyone??) I do love rose campion.

A beautiful ruffled poppy. These self-seed every year.

Beautiful sunset but not the best shot. I was being eaten alive by mosquitoes and was having camera issues. Trust me, it was beautiful.

The house at sunset.

I need to take a machete to the garden. I can't believe the way things are growing this year!!

Kitteh Kredenza

Okay, it's not really a credenza. But it IS our new solution to feeding the cats off the floor (so that the dogs don't steal their food) and keeping them off the kitchen table. And look, all three fit at once: Naomi the tiny perfect tortie cat, Julius the fluffy orange Nova Scotian cat, and Alex the three-legged manipulator. "Manipulator" because when we saw him at the SPCA, he was all love and cuddles, but the minute we got him home it was, "Eeyuw! Human! Don't pick me up! Don't touch me! Okay, you can scratch my chin, but that's enough. Now where's my food, woman? Food. I NEED FOOD! Now. Now! NOW!!!"


Alex is beyond obsessed with food. I often wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that he was found in a leghold trap, where he'd been suffering for who knows how long. Some kind soul rescued him and the SPCA found a vet to amputate his maggot-infested hind leg. He's a great cat and very mellow, but he has his moments! If he wants food and you don't pay attention, he starts by throwing his metal bowl on the floor (it used to be on top of a small chest of drawers.) Ignore that and the plastic tray under it went. He broke two nice glass water bowls before we got a clue and started making the cats drink out of the dog bowl on the kitchen floor.

If everything has been thrown on the floor and you still ignore him, he stares at your until his eyes bore holes in your forehead. It's hard to keep him on a diet, but we do.

"Does this Kitteh Kredenza make my butt look big?" Well, in his defense, Alex is a big, solid cat but he's not as humungous as this photo makes him look.

I have much to post and there's a backlog of photos piling up. Bee stories, chicken stories, head-in-jar updates... it's coming. Yesterday at 8:30 am we went to help our friends take bales of hay off the wagon and stack them in the barn. I am now a whiz with a hay elevator. I am also apparently quite fit for a middle-aged fart: all the yoga and walking and slaving around the farm seems to be keeping me healthy, knock wood. I spent a hour heaving 40-lb bales onto the elevator and barely broke a sweat. This stuff matters to me because both my parents were dead before retirement age, and I am really hopeful I can overcome my lousy gene pool and live a long healthy life! Chasing around after chickens will no doubt keep me young.

PS: Wallpaper. I hate wallpaper. The kitchen has the least offensive, least floral wallpaper in the house, but I want it on record that I did not pick that stuff currently adorning the walls, and one day it will be GONE.

Deer horribul peepul....

Deer horribul peepul, mos'ly MEN, who keep threttening to eet us,

We iz not tastee. We dunt know where yoo got the impreshun that wee iz tastee. We iz not. We tastes like coff sirop. Bad bad coof sirop. Buckley's coff sirop gone bad. You wud not likes to eet us. Plus you wud choke on ourz tiny delicate bonez and DIE.

My sister iz rite. We do not go wif crème fraîche. We clash bad wif tarragon. We dunt look good in chiffonade. We smellz reel bad with garlic sauce. We iz very bad for peepuls and if yoo eet us, you will break out in pustules and die a horribul, painful, smelly, oozing death. Oozing. And yooz eyes will bleed. Plus yer man-bitz willz explode. Jes imagine 'splaining DAT! "Honey, my man-bitz iz exploded from eetin' chicks." Ooo. Honey no believe dat one. Yooz in big truble now, dood.

Hello! And no, weez black chickies are not tastee either. In fact, weez taste like BLACK DEATH. Yoo have herd of boobonic plague? Well, dat is whatz weez taste like. Trust us, yoo dunt wanna eets us. iF yooz eet us, YOU WILL DIE!! Weez is verry soory, but dat is fact. Yooz internal organz will melt. Also yoos man-bits willz wither and drop off. If yooz grill us, it meks it eeeven worser. Dis iz family blog so we no can deskribe details of DAT!!




Iz okay, tho. We gotz soloooshun! We iz more den jes purty faces. Oh yez. You dunt need to eets us, witch wood makes you sick and makes you DEAD anyway. Oh, no. Weez smart chickies. We gots alternative. Oh yez. Whip up dat tarragon chiffonade. Roast dat garlic. Fraîche dat crème. Moooove over, chickunz. Horribul peepul, here iz yooz answer:




Fire up the grill.


Lots of love, an' jes a few pustules and some ebola,

the chickz
xoxoxoxox

PEE ESS: Chef Nick, iz yooz eyes bleeding yet? Happy Wombat Boy, hez anyting exploded yet?

Rock-a-bye chickies...

I like to visit the chicks at bedtime, to give some of them a little cuddle. If you've had a crappy day, or even a good day, there's nothing like a little chick-snuggling to make you feel better. (No, HWB and Chef Nick, I do not want to hear about how coq au vin makes YOU feel better at the end of a hard day.)

The chicks are moving out to the coop this weekend, because they are getting too big for a box, and have started flapping up onto the waterer. One daring girl fell asleep on top of it last night:

She managed not to fall off, but at one point her head was hanging straight down, lolling about. These chicks get so relaxed, dude.

Gee, I wonder who's at the top of the pecking order?

My favourite bit is when they fall asleep in my lap!

"I'm in my pajamas! Don't take my picture!"

"You look cute. Smile."

"No! Don't take my picture!

"Smile!"

"No!"

CLICK.

But then, I suppose he can take a pic of me in my pajamas, cuddling chicks, when I have posted to my blog photos of Gordon like this. And this. Lucky for me, he's tolerant.

Peep! Peep! Peep!!


Meanwhile, there is much drama going on down at the beehives. Cuddle death! More on that in another post. I've had to suit up and open the hives three times this week. It's anarchy down there.

Other unpleasantries this week including finding groundhog body parts in my garden, guarded by a rather satiated dog.

Bee balm

Not only do I love bees, I love bee balm, aka bergamot (ingredient* in Earl Grey tea, which I loathe -- Earl Grey tastes like dish soap to me) aka monarda. I grow several varieties of bee balms, which not surprisingly is loved by bees and other pollinators. The blooms are so pretty, and the leaves smell great.

Check out the dude hovering in the upper right corner! Don't know what type of pollinator it is, but I do know it's not a honeybee.

I'm off to visit my bees!


*My bad -- Jim kindly let me know that the ingredient in Earl Grey tea comes from the bergamot orange, a citrus fruit, not monarda (aka bergamot, but not the same as the plant that produces bergamot orange! Anyone got THAT growing in their no-doubt-tropical garden?)

She's gonna make you an offer you can't refuse...

(We had another photo shoot yesterday. This is getting harder to do without an assistant, as the chicks are getting feistier. Little wing-flapping maniacs! And who knew such tiny creatures could produce so much poop? Good thing they're cute!)

The Chickfather... with apologies to Mario Gianluigi Puzo.

"Guidette... someday, and that day may never come, I'll call upon you to do a service for me. But until that day accept this justice as a gift on my six-day birthday."

"I'm a superstitious chick, and if some unlucky accident should befall Chef Nick and Happy Wombat Boy, if they are to be pecked in the head by a rooster, or found hung dead in the chicken coop, or if they should be struck by a bolt of lightning -- then I'm going to blame some of the chicks in this room and then I do not forgive. But with that said, I pledge, on the souls of my grand-eggs, that I will not be the one to break the peace that we have made today."

"Chef Nick...he looked at our adorable photos and said, 'The black one . . . he probably would be really tasty grilled, maybe basted with garlic and truffle oil. Maybe some fried rice and mushroom sauce on the side.' Goddamn chicken-eaters don't respect nothin'! Happy Wombat Boy, he looked at our adorable photos and said, 'Don't you know that garlic would overpower such tender meat? How about various herbs and butter? Maybe a nice tarragon butter...' "

"What have I ever done to make them treat me so disrespectfully? If they'd come to me in friendship, then I wouldn't be forced to send them some droppings from the avian-flu chick. And if by chance honest men like Chef Nick and Happy Wombat Boy should make enemies, then they would become MY enemies. And then they would fear them."

"It's not personal, Happy Wombat Boy. It's strictly business."

"Donna Corleone, I am honored and grateful that you have invited me to your home on your six-day birthday. And may your first egg be a masculine egg."

"Never let anyone outside the family know what you're thinking. "

Sunday Samplings

No cute chick pics today but I have to take more because they are growing up fast, those wee birds!

Here is a photo shwoing about 2/3rds of what I somewhat lovingly refer to as the Vegetable Garden from Hell. It's about 5,000 SF and this photo doesn't do justice to its asinine size. Two people live in this house and I have something like 45 tomato plants.Yes, actually, I am insane. I'm planning on putting the veggie stand up at the end of my driveway again this summer.

We've had too much rain and the weeds have been horrific. The weather SUCKS. I went in for another weed smackdown today and I think I have it under control. I have better things to do with my life than weed by hand! The tomato and potato plants are going nuts... oh heck, everything in there is going nuts. I need to get a garden helper or cut down on the size of this monstrosity.

Meanwhile, here is my sleeping beauty Sophie, with her horsie toy...

And dinner today was splendid. Here's a fuzzy shot of my Guinness and Gordon's fuzzy arm:

I don't drink a lot but when I do it's Guinness, or Kilkenny Cream Ale, or Boddingtons. I'm a terribly cheap date and one beer a week is about as far as I go! Nothing against drinking, but I've always been a lightweight.

And here is the pièce de résistance, the soup Gordon lovingly prepared for supper tonight:

Curried Butternut and Peanut Soup, from Bonnie Stern's Friday Night Dinners. (Yes, I know it's Sunday.) The white stuff is coconut milk, the brown things are toasted peanuts. Oh my, oh my! I am so glad I taught that boy to cook.

On the chick front, all is well but on the bee front? I did my second hive inspection today and am 99.9% certain one hive is missing its queen. They have already got two queen cells on the go, meaning another queen is in the making (whoever hatches first will sting the other one to death in the cell.) The beekeeper who gave me my bees said they probaby assassinated the other queen for not being productive enough, and are making a new one. This is called supersedure. Tough world out there in the hives! As I read on Wikipedia: "When a new queen is available, the workers will kill the reigning queen by "balling" her, colloquially known as the "cuddle death"; clustering tightly around her until she dies from overheating." Death by cuddling... those wicked bees!

William the beekeeper is coming over tomorrow to take a look at my hives and hopefully reassure me that I haven't completely and utterly f*cked things up. And I get worse at lighting my smoker every week. I figure I am just overthinking it, since I light the fire in our wood/oil furnace every day in winter! Today I came back from the hives smelling like a forest fire...

Hope you had a good weekend and no one suffered from cuddle death.

Warning: extreme cuteness!

Repeated viewing of these photos may necessitate an insulin injection!

Got out the Nikon today to take some real photos of the new babies. My photography assistant (aka Gordon) was away at work, so you get to see a lot of my hand.

I feel sugar shock coming on!

Peep peep peep!

We are now the proud "parents" of thirteen "sex-links"chicks, seven black and six red (well, more like yellow-and-brown right now!), trucked to us yesterday from Frey's Hatchery in lovely St. Jacobs, Ontario. These girls (Sex-Links can be reliably sexed at hatching) are our future laying hens and will not be on the dinner table. But yes, I admit it, we will eat their unhatched children, aka eggs.

The chicks are Harco Black and Shaver Red Sex-Links. You can learn more about those breeds on the Frey's site. Click on "Chickens", then "Breeds", the "Dual Purpose Brown Egg Layers."

But mostly, they are just AWFULLY CUTE:


Here's the Chicken Whisperer, looking at the thirteen new girls in his life:

They eat, drink, poop, peep and sleep!

The Proud Chicken Papa, with one little black chick peeking up at me.

The chicks are currently residing in a cardboard box in our guestroom (which is to a me a pink floral nightmare. Lucky you, the pink painted walls don't appear in this picture. Eventually I will be stripping that wallpaper!!! My apologies to those who love pink. I'm not much of a girly-girl!) I suspect the chicks mind the pink less than I do.

A little red hen-to-be!

And a little black hen-to-be!

I'll take some better pics today in the daylight, without the infra-red glow. My dog Tristan has gotten extra-clingy since the chicks arrived. I think he is worried about being replaced by something cuter than him. Not to worry, my Vizsladorable* boy, you'll always outrank the chickens. Just don't eat them, okay?

*Tristan is a Vizsla-Labrador cross, and a rescue dog.



"Look at me. I am so much cuter than a dumb bird!"