A Little Progress

on the roof. I started with the easier piece, the roof's shorter over this end of the house so there's less panel to manoeuver - an important consideration in the wind.

Work and weather keep getting in the way of roofing and the next few panels are tricky, they require multiple cuts, still more roof is in place this week than last.

The time to mend the roof

may be when the sun shines but it doesn't seem that there'll be any sunshine this year so, at dawn on Sunday morning, I fed the chickens, caught the stray dog and fixed him to a post,

and started moving materials on to the roof



The roof wasn't completely shot, it didn't leak in the winter, but falling branches and rarely drying out had taken a toll on the shingles.



Moss had taken hold in several places.

We've decided to replace it with a steel roof primarily because we like the look but also because bumping shingles on to the roof is the second hardest job I've come across (and I've already moved hay this week). Shingles are a bother anyway, they cost almost as much as steel and even the 25 year ones are shot in 15.

The first task is to strap the roof with 1x4's. After the first day and a half that's pretty much done. I don't want to tear off the ridge vent leaving a hole until there's a chance of a half day without rain so I've left the last pieces and moved on to the second job, trimming the edges.

That satellite dish presents a challenge, I fear that the internet provider will have to come and resight it when the roof's finished.

At least I haven't had to deal with the sunburn one usually gets on a roof, drizzle, pelting rain, thunder, but no sunburn.

Random Good Picture of Monique

Just because they are so rare....

Sorry, Monique doesn't do looking at the camera, smiling, AND being clean. Two out of three is about the best it gets.

Poor Donkey

The big day for the donkey arrived. First, it was trimming. The donkey's performance made me think about our next building project: stocks. Although, in truth, I don't think that would help. The donkey was okay for the front feet, and we managed to do one back foot with a twitch, but that was it. He was done. Much practice tying, picking up and holding up of feet is coming.

The donk was badly in need of a trim. Here we see one back foot done, the other not yet done. It took the vet's drugs to do the last one.

Happy donkey doesn't know what is happening to him. The surgery was fascinating to watch. Perhaps we'll do a post of just gory pictures so that those who aren't interested in seeing testicles being squeezed out of scrotums don't have to look.

The horses look on, not quite sure what is going on either.

The donkey slept for about 30 minutes, then started to come around.
He stood up, trembling, no doubt feeling several pounds lighter.
He is now out on grass with Austin while Dixie is in the sacrifice paddock. The vet says that he might still be able to impregnate her for another month. Dixie is NOT PLEASED.

Cars.

I used to be something of a car fetishist. To this day I think any convertible to be better than any hardtop but along the way I've lost the idea of trying to run a car with an unmarked wooden dashboard and a pristine leather interior. I've also given up on hoping for perfect paint, all my cars in recent years have had swirls in the paint and now some have horse teeth marks. Here's the culprit for the interior wear and tear:





Monique was playing in the water and related mud. Her other shoe is in that mud. It seems she felt the need for music and wind in her hair and so she went to the place where that happens. Note that the dust on the dashboard has been been carved in swirls through swinging finger nails. That's the swirling pattern all paintwork acquires if Monique's minder is derelict; you have to be some careful at the motor show.

This post is more about cars and autism than country living but, since we're having the donkey gelded tomorrow, I expect we'll shortly be gruesomely back on track.

They're just not very bright.

This hen drowned in the, ahem, horse trough.

I suppose ramp construction will have to go on the endless job list.

Kobe

It was Anna's birthday and, like so many women, she wanted a donkey. Finding a donkey for sale was easy enough though learning his history proved a challenge due to the lack of a common language with his owners. The name Kobe has something to do with the Japanese cows though it doesn't look as if Kobe has been massaged daily.








Getting Kobe home was another story. I went to collect him with Sarah who has a boarding barn just north of us and Debbie who doesn't mind a donkey in her trailer. He was quickly haltered and walked willingly enough to the base of the ramp

but that was that. Kobe was born on that farm and felt no need to leave. Here one person pulls on the lead rope, two pull on a lunge line across the ass's ass and a third whacks with a broom. No progress.

Here pushing is added, to no avail. We also tried carrots, backing him in, grabbing parts of a donkey one would rather not grab, all the tricks in the book of the two highly experienced horsewomen.

After an hour, in a scene that could have come from In and Out (the semi-literate semi-pornographic novel of showjumping), a car with Florida plates stopped and a tanned well muscled man in a tight shirt and tighter, well worn, jeans got out. He said he was up "to ride for Mike" (presumably a local trainer) and then his eyes met mine, "link hands" he said almost romantically. We held hands and thrust of arms under Kobes bum. One big heft and he was in!

Sarah and I had tried that earlier but perhaps we lacked faith or gusto. Anyway clutching the hand of the dark stranger got the job done. I must do that more often.


Luckily, we had no similar trouble unloading. Offered a bowl of dog food (something familiar to him) he was out in a moment.


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He's had a worming shot and is segregated pending alteration. For the moment we need only worry about the noise. More on the noise will certainly follow.

For Dana, who likes farm pictures.

This is a fraction of the chaos inside the barn. The new chickens are looking a bit grown up now and venture out, flutter up to perches and generally behave like young chickens. Except the meat birds, of course, they're now the size of the year olds and have enormous feet, they just waddle like ducks.

This is, I think, an ISA Brown cock:


This is the partridge chanteclair, a very shiny bird:

Assorted birds not staying still enough to be identified:

The cock's comb never recovered from the frostbite, still for the moment he has no competition so it doesn't matter if minor bits fall off.

A Sunday Drive

We've been rather house-bound of late, working on the bathroom, the deck, the garden, the pasture, the lawn, the laundry, the cooking, the cleaning, the.... Well, you get the idea. After a hot, buggy, early worky morning, we gave up, packed the kids in the car, and went out for a good old fashioned Sunday drive. First we had to get gas at Masonville. And look what they had there! Shame Charlie took the moment of the picture snapping to smell the puppy's bum. And look Mom, I'm wearing a hat like you always tell me to!

Our next stop was the Pine River fishing preserve. We were glad to see that we weren't the only ones who allow their dog to disturb the fish. Charlie doesn't seem to have forgotten how to swim. In fact, his new skill set includes diving like a duck to pick up logs from the bottom of the lake and drag them to shore.

Monique was feeling strangely ambulatory and took off down the trail, often dragging us behind her. This was very odd behaviour for her. While she enjoys most modes of transport, be it car ride, horse ride, or piggy-back ride, self-ambulation has never been one of her strong points. She seems to be going on strike less and less these days, however. I guess fresh air (and being swarmed by bugs of unnatural size) agrees with her. She ran the length of the trail until it stopped, and then dashed into the woods. There, finally, she lost the trail and seemed to forget what the urgency was in the first place. It's a good thing she didn't take a liking to the water. The dog came out quite a different colour than he was when he went in. Everyone seemed to enjoy the change of scenery and the wind in their hair. I'm glad they at least weren't fretting about the price of gas, or the bags of rice they could have bought for the price of a Sunday drive.

While I was typing that bathroom stuff

Hunter was outside, tied to a tree. This is going to end badly. There's the uncontrollable force of Hunter's wanderings and the immovable object of our attachment to the chickens. It'll eventually have to end with the departure of the dog.

In the meantime though the shame faced yut owner came for Hunter. He apologized after a fashion and took him away in the back of yet another F150.

Enough Bathroom already,

It's gone from functional but truck stopy to really quite presentable. The bin, the medicine cabinet and the mirror remain from before we started all else has been reworked. The mirror doesn't fit at all now so I suppose that'll be replaced in due course.

Before:

After:

Now, if it would just stop raining, we could see some proper progress on that deck. As it is the boards discolour before I can slap stain on them and they have to be sanded again. One step forward, three steps back.

Pestilence

This week it stopped being winter and started raining. It rained every day and there was much mist and fog. Last night there was a spectacular lightning storm, we grabbed "open containers" and drove up on a hill to be thrilled by it. It's now 90 degrees with 100% humidity. There are mosquitoes everywhere, if I touch the back of my neck my fingers are bloody, my feet are swollen with bites made through my socks, the backs of my hands have enough bites that people mistake the scabs for the result of some nasty injury. I wonder how the pioneers settled this place or, indeed, any of the northern States without DEET. I'm mostly thankful that I'm not carrying logs right now.

Hunter's Victim

We picked up a dead chicken and took it over to the house of Hunter's owners. We explained that we can't go on with this. I think the chances of asking the owners to stop the dog straying and eating chickens working are between slim and none but we'll give him another chicken.

Country Chores.

In a climate like this one must always be thinking of Winter. Even today, June 1st, we had a small fire and on May 19th it snowed a little. That stack is two cords, most of it was dumped in the driveway and hauled in this weekend. We burned five cords over the past year so there are three more coming for the pile. We also burn deadfall, I found this branch leaning on a fence last weekend. The chainsaw dates from another era, an era when I thought light trimming was all I would ever do with trees. An electric chainsaw is next to useless so when it burst into flames yesterday I had mixed feelings; I'm glad to be rid of it but I'm not sure that no chainsaw is better than an electric chainsaw.

Meanwhile Anna's been making dandelion wine.

I suppose this is a traditional starving-peasant-in-need-of-alcohol type thing so I'm a bit surprised the recipe calls for oranges, one might think they'd be in short supply in barely settled
Ontario.


It looks, er, interesting but then I suppose even the best Bordeaux don't look their best at the feet-on-grapes stage. Time will tell.

Something else Anna's been doing is salting the eggs from the bantams.

They've been laying well but that may be about to come to a halt. One has disappeared. We twice returned Hunter to the neighbour's place this weekend, once after he was chasing the chickens. He has to be the prime suspect and that presents a problem, it'd be nice to find a better solution than the traditional "shoot, shovel, shut up".