156 Today

That's how many small squares were on this wagon at noon:

All gone at five o'clock. All gone to our hay trailer. Well, not that last one, the twine broke.

I moved that lot. I moved it alone, first using the Land Cruiser which holds 10 bales and then using Glen, the hay farmer's, truck loaded with 30 each time. It was hard work and I wondered as I did it, how come I can never persuade any of the people I know who are keen on manscaping to lift something useful? Who cares how many pounds you can bench press? Only other men who like male bodies, that's who, your fellow ice hockeyists. How many bales can you throw, how much ditch can you dig? Those are statistics I'd listen to in the coffee room.

While I was shifting that lot Glen and the hired man were out baling. That's sore arms for somebody right there:

Me perhaps. 156 is just over half what we need to be safe for the winter.

I found it on the way home

and it was pronounced fit. Better than fit, in fact.

Tomorrow I'll see about bringing 299 more home. Already everything hurts.

Where's the bloody Summer?

It's always raining, or hailing in this case, I'm getting nowhere with the deck. I really want to finish sanding and staining this year.



Lot's else to do, of course, this is a cord that wanting hauling and stacking, we need four more so as to be set for next Winter.



In animal news, I see deer on the road most days,

and chickens on Anna's head from time to time.

This week I hauled three bags of chicken feed to the barn, one was for this year's chicks, the others wanted blending for the adult birds. The gate latch failed so the horses got in and blended the three for us:

This year's chicks just had to grow up fast, they're getting two-thirds adult food now.

Coexistence.

Pardon the unmown grass. What we have here is a dog chewing on one bone and a chicken pecking at another. A little later the chicken actually pecked the bone Brigid was gnawing without a ruckus. So, even hunting dogs don't have be like Hunter who, btw, was around at four this morning frightening the horses, setting the dogs a barking and generally buggering up my beloved sleep.


The paddling pool is good for Monique to dabble in and for the dogs to drink from. I used to think that the only drawback was that it allowed dogs to wet themselves completely before running all over my clean floors. Tonight though I found a new problem, having wrested a ball from the snarling pair I ran backwards, about to throw it, and tripped, splat, into the cold and foul water. I was shocked how quickly I took to shivering. In June.

The Migration.

So, I had to move the chicks. Easier said. First I had to catch them and shove them in boxes. The ones with white feathers on their heads and where their shoulders would be, if chickens had shoulders, are very fast and very nimble. There's an uncaught one on the right here:

Eventually I got half of them into boxes and the boxes and feeder and whatnot into the car. Monique was in the front, Brigid in the crate and Charlie tied up. All under control so off we went:

Unfortunately, one box wasn't up to the task. The bottom fell out and I then had to catch the chicks again, only this time in a car.

It was hot and humid, later there was a hailstorm, bugs were all over me. I felt pressured, chicks to move, logs to stack, floors to wash, pasture to pick and I wanted to sand some deck before the storm. Overwhelmed and rushing I forgot to close the gate by the barn so, of course, I then had interested visitors:

The procedure then became, elbow equines out of way, open tailgate, grab box, open stall gate, close stall gate, open henhouse door, tip chicks out of box while watching for earlier chicks escaping and full grown hens wanting in. Chase down escaped chicks. Repeat.

Once the car was empty I drove back to the house, caught another boxload, put it in the car and went back in for more chicks. When I came out I found that even the cat had decided to get in on the act.

I reached for him but he ran into the car. The procedure for this load then was the same as before but with the need to swat the cat out of the way after elbowing equines and grabbing box.

"Bucolic" ought to be a synonym for "exhausting".

Windy much, where you are?

It's usual in Canada to have a little house in which the kids wait for the school bus. It's not so usual to have to buttress it.

Commerce in the country.

It's a basic truth of country life that there's never enough money and never enough time, the fences could always be better, the animals could always be better groomed. And so we do what we can with what we have. I stopped today to see about hay, usually hay is brought in during June here. Glen, the hay guy, who's primary business is growing seed potatoes, has the demeanour typical of a farmer, "I don't know if anything will grow this year, we're breaking the ice to put in our potatoes. It won't be soon anyway". Otherwise he was cheerful, "recession's been good for me", this year he has cheap workers, workers who need the job. Despite his dour view, things aint so bad, hay is $3.5o this year, down from $4 last.

Since the hay bill isn't coming soon and since we're still burning wood to heat the house, I ordered a couple of cords of firewood. Albert, the wood guy, was as full as shit as ever. Like the gas station guy he used to be a butcher until Loblaws put the butchers out of business. I expect he sold sell liver as steak. Anyway, two cords of "premium quality, better than last year, every year a little better" firewood will fall on the drive this week, three more to follow over the Summer. $320 a pop, cheaper than oil at any rate.

Glen, the farmer, lectures at a university and he works for an agricultural marketing board. Albert, the wood guy, rents his land to a sheep farmer. Bruce, who owns and operates the gas station, raises 3,000 turkeys per month. Nothing is as simple as you think.

Dogs, relaxing.

All day they go at it, always struggling over something.




I was ill advised in reaching in to grab the frisbee thing with a view to throwing it. That got me some teeth marks.

Why it's time for the chickens to go to the barn.

They live in boxes, the sides are two feet high and the chicks can now easily hop up on to the edge.

This morning I fed the chicks in the left box first. A chick leapt out of the right box and landed in the left joining the scramble at the feeder.

These, by the way, are the reasons that people in the country in Canada don't lock their houses; guns and dogs.''most everyone has guns and dogs.

The potential burglar doesn't know that all that noise is coming from a demi-poodle.

Time for the chicks to go to the barn.

And so time to deal with the egg stealer. Last night I set a trap. This morning I shot the occupant and buried it in the manure pile.

I was careful and then I showered, twice. Even so there seems no chance of sex today, there seems little chance of sharing a room today.

Here's a car load of trouble, Monique and two dogs. Charlie's used to convertibles but Brigid tries to climb out at every opportunity.

Beyond that, Charlie sleeps, Brigid gets up and needs taking out at two, then at four, and then as the sun rises. The sun rises at 5:15 so on weekdays it's not worth me going back to bed. On weekends it is, but barely, Monique gets up at 6:30. After a month of this maybe it doesn't matter that I smell of skunk; I'm not good for much.

The Cocaine House

We've no need to move but, if we could have more land, a better barn, access to a body of water, we might move for those things. Hard times are the times to move up. And so today we went to a foreclosed property of 100 gorgeous but unfarmed acres and perhaps the strangest house imaginable. The house was 100 years old and had been, ahem, unsympathetically renovated in the 80s. These pictures are from mls and so don't show the full horror but that bulge in the the centre is a window, now occluded, added on a ledge built out of the house. Behind it is the original house wall so it's a window to nowhere.

This is, perhaps, the dining room. The grey slab in the middle of the room is actually a slab of concrete dangling above the fireplace doors. Why one would have a concrete chunk in front of the window is anyone's guess.

Note that the floor in front of the fireplace has been dropped into the cellar, presumably that was complicated and expensive to achieve and one can see that it was necessary in order to align the eyes of anyone in the sunken area with the concrete slab. The rest of the house was no more sensible, it was a reverse Tardis of tiny rooms and windows opening to more indoors. Curiously, the showers over the tubs had been blocked off, perhaps Scientologists had been there.

The house offered a number of walkouts on various floors, most of them being just doors to nowhere. Nowhere but the ER. It also had a concrete pool surrounded by smashed up concrete blocks and two large diameter white stucco chimneys running up the outside. The chimneys and the rounded stair enclosure next to them reminded me of a building in Toronto, 25 the Esplanade, in which I once lived and which I had always to explain was the architect's failed attempt to build something like a ship. We hope this house was renovated by rock star wannabees snorting lots of lines and we hope it was the site of Bacchalic parties because the idea that someone sober and of right mind could create this is horrible.

That puppy,

seen here mouthing Possum. He's one tolerant cat, when Brigid tries to get hold of Sid and nibble him, the result is a swift whack to the nose and a yelping dog.


Possum will put up with it for minutes at a time.

Brigid's all legs now. Lithe or starved, depending on your preference in these matters.

This is what she eats, a curious blend of offal and berries.

She loves it, perhaps due to the sparkling wine.

Not the weather for blogging.

This has been typical weather lately, the many storms and generally high humidity have played havoc with the internet connection, the TV and even the electric power. Disappointingly, these storms haven't come with tropical weather; we're still having log fires.

Brigid hasn't been sleeping through the night. Standing outside with here at all hours has afforded the opportunity to discover that what the weather is good for is bugs. It's a strange combination to be shiveringly cold and swatting mosquitoes.