~ Retired and Starting My Future In The Foothills ~

[gryeyes]

Here I was, luxuriating in another day of retirement despite the high temperature, just making the occasional trip outdoors to accomplish a task before I went back inside into cooler surroundings. Alice Sebright has been broody in the top of the wooden, 3-level rabbit hutch I moved from the front porch into a shaded area in the "other" side yard. She always marches, chittering in that broody way as she traverses the driveway in front of the house to go into the coop for some nourishment. If ever there was a chicken on a mission, it's Alice, all puffed up like a little tom turkey, bitching the entire way.

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(Alice Photos taken some time ago - her eggs should hatch pretty darned soon!)

Anyway, she'd just exited the hutch for an afternoon snack and a dust bath. I quickly picked up a handful of BOSS (from the bag stored just next to the front door steps and inside the "No Chickens" Zone) then tossed it next to her. She hadn't come out of the hutch when I treated the rest of the flock to some BOSS earlier, so she got her own special treat with no competition.

During this time (of course I had to watch her) a bee landed on my shoulder. Not being fond of bees alighting on me, I flicked it off my right shoulder with my left hand and moved away pretty quickly. Back into the house, away from inquisitive bees.

There was sunlight pouring in through the double French door window panes, so I drew the room-darkening drapes. Must keep the interior of the house as cool as possible without A/C. Right arm up, sideways swoosh, then down again.

Apparently that bee had only moved down the strap of my sundress, or perhaps it HAD been flicked off and it just didn't want to give up its investigation. In any case, when I lowered my right arm to my side, I kinda smushed a bumble bee, which was trundling - or bumbling! - up my arm without me knowing it.

How many people do y'all know who have been stung by a bee in their armpits? As of now, at least one.... *$!*$@#*%

Poor bee. They die when their stingers are ripped out of their bodies by crazed persons attempting to rid themselves of the horror and sudden pain. I was able to remove the stinger using tweezers in front of the bathroom mirror. Which, luckily, is where I store my Benadryl "pen" for mosquito bites. And two types of ointment for "insect bites, rashes due to poison oak, minor cuts, burns, scrapes," etc.

Bees are good insects - well, maybe not the yellow jackets - but I did feel somewhat guilty about killing it. I need them to pollinate my garden crop!



What the heck was it doing on the "wrong" side of the house, anyway? No blossoms over there! Stupid bee.

Lordy did that bee sting hurt! But that was yesterday. Quick removal of the stinger and prompt treatment reduced the amount of time I might have spent swearing about the pain.

Today, well before noon,

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the temperature was over 90 degrees in the shade on the enclosed porch. (Ever notice how the higher the temperature, cats will stretch out longer and longer - almost like nature's thermometer?)

So, I pulled a hose over to the shepherd's hook upon which I hang cabbages in the yard, set the nozzle to a fine spray and draped it through the hook to create a cooling mist for the flock.



Only a few of the flock members are availing themselves of the spray; several of the ducks "bogarted" the choicest spots in the cooling mist.

Quite a few junior birds are resting under a cedar in the dirt pile (slowly being reduced by their construction of dust bowls),




The broody hens and their sycophants are in the coop (except for this little banty gal who traipsed out right after I set up the hose),



and more of the adult birds are underneath the deck.



A fan inside the coop has already been on for the past three days. The second of two fans used last summer fell behind the ginormous brooder some months ago, so I'll have to retrieve and clean it before I set it back up and turn it on for more air movement. (Y'see, **** HAS hit the fan - and I'm kinda gonna have to be up to dealing with de-crusting the fan to rectify that situation first.) Ewwwww.

I have harvested my first tomato and eaten it with gusto.

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There's another tomato nicely "yellowing up" in the other planter and I'm looking forward to scarfing it down, warm from the sun, right there in the garden once it ripens. It won't make it into the house, either. Nummy! I'm not sure many tomatoes will make it into the house, unless a bunch of 'em all ripen at the same time. The lemon cucumbers and melons, however, I'll them inside because I like to eat them chilled. Right now those plants are only in the blossoming stage.

There are some furnishings on the porch now.

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One half of the table is kept bare in deference to Lizbeth, who spends a lot of time on it. You know cats!



I brought those two plants from my office cubicle. They're a bit worse for wear due to the change from controlled light and temperature to being set outside on the deck for just one day. Ooops. They need the filtered light on the porch. They're recovering..... The candle "comes on" (battery and timer controlled) at dusk and flickers beautifully for five hours every day.

Here's the latest, obligatory photo of Curious & Friendly Edna. She jumped up to talk with me whilst I was taking photos of the chickens in the mist.

 

[Rusty Hills Farm]

Now THAT's what I call "retirement"!!!


Rusty, who is green with envy

 

[gryeyes]

I have eaten my second and third tomatoes. A fourth will be ready to plunder... errrr..... pluck tomorrow. There are plenty more growing, too. The two chicken-denuded plants (Mortgage Lifter and Sweet 100 Cherry) have totally recovered and are now flowering. I'm pretty stoked. Yeah, I've had a garden before, but it was on RENTED land. This is ALL MINE.

However, the biggest news is: Ducklings hatching! Two days ago there were two, but now there are at least ten of them in the Doghouse Turned Into Duck Brooder in the coop. Mama duck came at me like a banshee when I was changing out the gallon waterer tucked just inside the doorway for them. I couldn't understand how a gallon "went away" so quickly until I saw the number of ducklings yesterday. There are more eggs under her, too. No photos yet... Mama wouldn't let me get that close.

She may be a Cayuga, but she's turned into a Tasmanian Devil Duck. She comes screaming battle cries out of that shelter at warp speed with wings a'flapping, to body-slam me away from her babies. Friends and I have learned to peek at the brood from a safe distance. They are SO freakin' cute! I can hardly wait until she brings them out into the yard - that's gonna be so amazing to watch.

Escapee Bunny Dusky has been getting very tame and close to me, but I ruined progress on that activity when I tried to snatch her a couple of days ago. I was prepared for the kicking, but not that horrible rabbit scream of panic, so she got away from me. I have some tender scratches on my left hand. Ow. So no return to captivity for Dusky. She's apparently doing very well, and I do put rabbit pellets out for her to supplement what she's gleaning from the landscape. (She also travels onto the properties behind and to one side of mine.)

The hot weather for the past week has been rough. Not that I'm a delicate flower, but heat isn't my thing at all. Barefoot Jeremy visited earlier this week and he carried the A/C unit from the office into the living room and set it up in one of the living room windows. That was worth a carton of 18 eggs. <*grin*> And THEN he taught me how to poach eggs! Y'see, he couldn't believe I really don't cook.... and was dumbfounded I didn't know how to poach eggs. I thought a metal ring or something was necessary (don't have any of those) but oh, not so! Wow. Poached eggs are EASY to cook!

My sign is now hanging in the front yard; I am not sure this is gonna be the permanent installation, but it will certainly do for the time being. I have wanted to display it for months, now...



Any time I see ducks or geese in the stock tank, I simply must watch them for a time. The geese usually swim alone, actually chasing the original "core" batch of adult ducks out when they want to monopolize it. However, Kate has started to swim with her five no-longer-duckling brood.

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Two BO cockerels, a BO hen and a little grey hen (which may actually be a cockerel) have been transported to HH and FL's yard. There is calm here, as those BO boys have been jumping pullets and hens any chance they could get. There are more cockerels to remove - maybe as many as 9 or 10 of them from the Easter Hatch - and two of them have started to crow. (I am NOT getting rid of Maximillian the Guard Silkie if I can possibly avoid it.)

Anyway, one of the cardboard Rooster Transport Boxes has been repurposed by Carl into a secret layer's boudoir. I walked by and heard the distinctive - and oh, so seductive - growly sounds from within it. He had a hen in there with him. Cracks me up! I didn't have my phone camera with me at that moment, but I did catch him later in the day trying to convince Sylvia to join him.

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Bernard doesn't display this behavior, nor have any other of my roosters. Does anybody else have a rooster who does this??

I've had several nice days in a row of just spending time with the flock (when it's not too hot to stay out there observing it). The past two days have been VERY nice for me.

I planted the apricot tree.

John has completed installing the barge rafters on both sides of the house. There's trim to add and painting to be done, yet. But the house is really coming along, looking less and less like a dilapidated, abused and neglected fixer-upper.

At one of John's other jobs - cleaning up a property for sale - the seller told him to take a slew of stuff to the dump or "find a home" for it. There were quite a few items he simply could not discard; he tried to find some Thrift Store or other worthy organization to take some of it, but it was very late in the day and he didn't want to just leave some of it outside in the hot weather, simply hoping someone would rescue it when volunteers showed up for work just "whenever."

Some of it made its way onto my porch, for which I am very grateful. I don't think I could have scoped out a more perfect table and chairs! Plus the CD player/radio, made of wood stained nearly the same color. These items complement the color of my front door. Nice, nice, nice!!

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I can pick up one of my favorite local radio stations, too! Boo ya!

I must go see if I can count more ducklings.

 

[Kansaseq]

Wow-SCORE on the table, chairs, and radio! Can't believe they wanted that stuff gone badly enough to throw it out. So glad John thought of you for their new home.

 

[dsqard]

Linda, as always it is great to hear how things are going on the Olmstead homestead. The table and chairs are a great addition and it looks like the ducks and geese are thoroughly enjoying cooling off in the "pool". I do have one rooster that likes to go into small hiding spots and call to the girls to see if he can get them to enjoy them. I haven't ever seen him go into something as enclosed as the box you have though. So glad to hear that your retirement is going well.

 

[Toast n Jelly]

Beautiful table and chairs and the radio matches! I especially love your sign, was it made from someone on line ? Can't remember if I read about it on previous posts.

Your home is looking more and more beautiful and your animals look so happy as well.

To catch a rabbit you can non-chalantly (sp) walk around her with a portable fence until you have her within a circle or walk around with a large towel or blanket and just throw it over her and voila, 'bun in a blanket' and captured without having scars!

Talking about fences, what kind of fence do you have? Looks light enough that maybe even I could put one up.

Well heat looks to be letting up this week and we should be back to normal summer temps which might send the skitters and black flys into oblivion (please). Look forward to your story-like posts and pictures.

 

[1muttsfan]

My, that Carl is a handsome fellow

 

[Carols Clucks]

Our good OLD rooster loves a good box. Found him once in a plastic barrel I had tipped over to drain.

Poor guy is really slowing down, guessing he is at least 13, he looks for good nap zones where he is safe.

 

[1muttsfan]

13

!!

 

[gryeyes]

She brought the babies outside into the sun!

All 14 of them.



First, she escorted them out of the DuckHouse inside the coop, leading them to the auto-waterer by the people door. I scared 'em into the Kindergarten Pen when I entered the coop to top off feeders and the special feeder and waterer for the duck family. There's a little blue, plastic foot-bath I've utilized for ducklings I've brooded, which I cleaned and filled with an inch and a half of water before placing it just inside the Kindergarten Pen. I didn't have to wait long for them to find it. Every last duckling got into the water to bob and splash about.

Had to take quite a few pictures of them outside in the sun to be able to get an accurate count. Fourteen! Oh my goodness. That just doubled my duck population. Oh, and there are two other ducks on nests in "secret" places (ducks are so silly sometimes) but they're not yet dedicated to setting on them all the time. One nest has a single egg and another has six eggs.... I'm re-thinking my plan to let them hatch.

I love all the compliments very much, but must admit to y'all I am only posting photos of the good stuff. My kitchen is messy, my living room is cluttered, the office is disorganized, and my bedroom still needs stuff hung on the walls and tucked away in dressers and the closet. There's a whole section of the side yard still stacked with things I need to figure out where to put. Gonna need another dump run fairly soon... John will also clean up the wood remnants which are currently available to mine for shims, props, ladder leveling, poultry herding

and/or barriers, all that yard stuff.