Ours is the house with the green roof

matches the car. Clashes with the tractor.



I'm glad to be done with that, it was so often too wet or rainy to be on the roof. The low point was while Anna was away, the wind caught a panel that was laying on the roof and it flew past me. It was lucky it flew past as the edges are sharp. What was less lucky was that, as it went off the roof, it took the ladder with it. I found calling the neighbour to explain my predicament really quite embarassing.

Making riding a challenge.

It's just too easy if you don't have a donkey snapping at your mount's butt.

Runt Kitty

Not a runt at all anymore, and quite a bit browner than he was as a kitten. He appears to rule the house, and seems to have struck gold with getting picked by his owners.

The Honeywood Barbecue

It is held every year to benifit the North Dufferin Community Center (read hockey arena). When we went last year they had cow pattie bingo. We were hoping to find more of the same, but instead had to content ourselves with examining the underneath of the Zamboni.

The cooking pits are impressive. We're hoping to build one of our own. It's a pretty simple concept: dig hole, put fire in hole, put meat over fire.
Here is the potato boiler. Giant cages of potatoes are lifted into the water and pulled out when they're done.
There are lots of pits. I'd really like to be there earlier in the day when the actual cooking is going on.
Later we stopped by to see Jimmy (Runt Kitty). My how he has grown. More on that later....

Quincenera

After a mass in the morning, and a tour of the Coor's brewery in the afternoon, the reception was held at the Arrowhead Golf Club, of the famous tourist photos shown of Colorado. A giant white tent covered more than 200 people.

The scenery around the golf course was amazing, the girls were beautiful, and their father was so proud.

The girls received their ritual gifts (the last doll, the first pair of high heels, etc.) and then the party began.

In the middle of the shoe dance, two deer appeared. Interpretations of the deer's arrival varied, from "what a nuissance," to "like the innocence, beauty, and purity of the girls," to "Grandma and Grandpa coming to watch over their beautiful grandchildren." Although I came up with the second one, I much prefer the last interpretation. At one point, both deer approached the tent and stood there, eyes large and soft, watching the girls and their father as they danced.

I had a wonderful time with the few Trainor cousins who were there, and loved getting to know the Esquival cousins. It was also great to be able to interact with my aunts and uncles as an adult. I guess there are SOME advantages to turning the over-ripe old age of 30. For instance, I drink like a man now. No more pink wine from mini-bottles for me!
My Saunt (is she an aunt? is she a saint? I don't know--let's combine the terms) Ida did an amazing job of organizing not only the girls' Quincenera, but the whole family reunion as well. I wish that I was young enough to be one of Aunt Ida's daycare kids. I hope they know how lucky they are....

Here's the aunts and uncles who were there. The two who are missing are my Aunt Nancy, who died more than 10 years ago, and my Uncle Jim. Sitting in front of the couch is my Aunt Kerrie and Uncle Tom, and laying on the couch is Uncle Mike, the one who scared the hell out of me as a child by telling me that my legs had turned red when I had on red tights. My mom is on the arm of the couch, Uncle Bill is reclining across the top of it, Uncle John is sitting on the top of the couch, and Aunt Eileen and Uncle Dan are in the back.

I wasn't there for the picture as most of the cousins and I had gone to see the new batman movie. Perhaps there will be another post on that later. All in all, it was a fantastic few days. I just wish it could have gone on longer.

The Saddle

Repaired. Brubacher's did a great job.

Now it's time for the real training to begin.

Hatching. Maybe dispatching.

Two of the eggs the partridge chanteclair had been sitting on hatched. One chick in particular is just tiny.



It was perhaps not a great return on her egg sitting investment since this number of eggs had been under her and didn't hatch:



I went in to take pictures and she puffed up protectively, one chick hid under her.




We put her and the chicks in the partitioned area at the back of the henhouse and reinforced the walls a bit. It was all very sweet until about an hour later when Hunter came over. When I arrived at the coop he was chasing chickens around. He ran into the coop and through the partition, the chanteclair came out of the hole and, when I grabbed him, he was leaning over the chicks. There was widespread chicken panic, much clucking and fluttering, but no harm seemed to have been done.

The dog is a problem. Unless it just disappears we're at risk of getting into a war with the owners.

L'enfer c'est les autres.

Now that was a brutal day.

The day started with pasture picking, I hadn't done it the week before and so there was plenty of shit to shovel. I savour the turning of the manure pile, usually that means the hardest physical work of the week is done.




Not today though, I was just at the end of hanging a load of laundry when deafening braying from down the hill told me that something unusual was happening. The unusual thing was Glen, the farmer, backing up a load of hay.



Glen apologized, he had to run as the inspectors were here to look at his potatoes (apparently they can only be sold as seed if they pass inspection). He took his tractor, and his big strong arms, leaving me looking at this:



It just needed piling in here:



It was hot, 80 degrees according to the JD thermometer, overcast and very humid. Charlie had the right idea.



But I couldn't lay under the trailer as I was scared of rain. I had to hurry. I also had to worry. I'd put the equines in the neighbour's field so they wouldn't eat the hay as I unloaded it but that's the field from which Kobe escaped. Is he inside or outside the fence?



Inside. I discovered after running up the hill with halter and lead rope.

Eventually the hay was in and I set about my original task for the day, finishing the roof. I was well into that when the neighbour called to propose a session of fence repair. I climbed down and we fixed fences, "not a bad afternoon's work" the neighbour said as we finished. "Lard tunderin', what about the morning?" I thought, saying nothing.

Still, a lot got done and my thighs are even more rippling now than yesterday.

A Cock looking proud

and rather ridiculous.

An Escape.

Meanwhile back at the ranch. I returned from work to a phone call

"This is the Donkey Recovery Service"

It was the neighbour. Usually our horses wander freely between our field and theirs but recently they've been limited to our field after they leaned over quite a high fence into a vegetable garden and uprooted some radishes. It seems that the neighbour returned from somewhere and his wife told him that the horses were kicking up a ruckus. He went to see what was up and Kobe was in the farmer's field behind us. Earlier in the day the neighbour had finished reinforcing the vegetable garden fence and reopened the gate, he surmises that Kobe squeezed between the wires of his fence and went after the new mown hay on the other side.

He drove around on to the field and confronted Kobe, alas not being as calm as he later pretended, he didn't think to take anything with him and so had to make a leash with a length of chain that happened to be in his truck and the belt from his pants. He led the donkey home the long way.

At lunchtime I shall buy some fence staples and we'll fix the wires tighter. In the meantime the three equines are back in our field with the gate closed.

Dinner in Grand Junction

Frozen salmon was flown in from Alaska and delivered overnight.  A cedar plank and the trusty old grill (20 years old now) created one of the best pieces of fish I've ever had.  Now I'm in Denver at my cousins' quincenera.  Family photos to come, no doubt, if I can ever get away for 30 minutes.

A Present

That cat's so kind, always bringing stuff. And he's clever enough to open the screen door so we're never short of small dead animals inside the house. We even get extra flying things thanks to the door being open.

Not the weather for anything really.

Anna left this morning to visit her parents. I thought I'd finish the roof, mow the pasture, maybe mow the lawn too, then barbecue some big slab of red meat. I got a bit farther with the roof, the house is L shaped and the short bit is done, the long bit now looks like this:

As I worked the sky grumbled and there was some lightning but no wind and very little rain. For a while. Then the sky went dark and torrents fell:

This really has been a terrible construction season (that part of the year not called winter) for weather so far. It rained all through the spring, there was one weekend of dry sunny weather and now we've gone straight to the dog days, hot, very humid, electrical storms in the afternoons and evenings. It's been a bumper season for bugs and power outages but little else.

I prefer this pic of Dixie

Please to be ignoring the weeds.

A Donkey Unbound

We gave up on the segregation and let the equines mingle. Kobe (for want a new name) was cuddly and affectionate, as males are when they want something

Although nothing much happened, the attention seemed to put a spring into Dixie's step, she bounced all around the pasture, often with all four feet off the ground.

I think that, by the time she's next in heat, Kobe will be drained. I certainly hope so!

Not Pheasant Plucking,

We processed the meat birds this morning. We hung them on the washing line and plucked them and, for a while, they dangled looking strangely obscene.



They're in the fridge now and we're having a vegetarian supper.

About backyard butchery

I'm glad we killed and prepared the chickens ourselves. One should know where food comes from and what's involved in getting it to the table but to do so again would make no sense. We have no compelling religious or dietetic need to rear and prepare for table chickens at home. It took us four hours to process the five chickens, even at minimum wage we could have worked and purchased five chickens in the same amount of time. Of course, we'd get better, Tammy the farrier and her mother processed 250 chickens over a weekend, but even so paying to have them slaughtered and prepared is a better deal. If you pay for the processing, the cost of home meat birds on the table is about the same as buying them at the supermarket so the case for backyard eating chickens rests on knowing what they ate. Since we let them freerange, we don't know what they ate. I suppose one could say that they lived more happily than battery hens but that argument falls, I think, on consideration of our having chopped their heads off shortly before their genetically modified internal organs failed.

Keeping chickens at home for the eggs clearly makes sense, the eggs are emphatically better than store bought eggs, but unless these meat birds taste like heaven or have some hallucinogenic quality, I think this should be it for domestic chicken butchery.

Fourth of July

Not really a holiday here but we got some fireworks and drove out to the gravel pit.


getting there was pleasingly jungly

and then, kaboom!

Until we get guns that's likely as much fun as we can have over there.

Tuesday was a holiday here

but there was no time to cut the grass due to being on the roof. Help had to be summoned

There's a bit of a snag in using live mowers in that they don't eat evenly, now we have circles in the grass and it still needs mowing.


Meanwhile, down at the barn, some of the chickens have gone broody. This one's tucked in behind the stall panels

these two are squished into the milk crate. One of them's been there for ages, she was sitting on a couple of fertilized eggs but I dropped one while candling it and we found two others that had rolled out the side and fallen. There are still four eggs under her but it's anyone's guess what, if anything, may come of them.

While I was on the roof Anna was riding out back.




I took a break and joined her.

Not much point in having the horses if you don't take a minute to, at least, trot around the pasture now and then.