Disc'ing and celebrating the 4th

Our disc finally arrived - it was about 3 weeks later than it should have been. Bill was in Wisc and got the call that it had arrived on Fri, 6/24 in the morning. He was supposed to come home that day but opted to stay all day and disc our fields that badly needed it.

With the wise advice of our farm mentor, the plan is now to rake (i.e. with our cultivator) several times to pull the quack grass out. So we did that yesterday.

Bill did one pass and as I was standing at the field edge admiring the soil, I noticed it moving. Like something was burrowing underneath. Groundhogs. If I had a shovel with me, I could have done away with it.

We are having a real infestation of groundhogs at our farm and it is becoming quite a problem. The burrows are everywhere and we often even see them poking their heads out of the burrows. Preferring to not use poison/bait, we've opted for the old-fashioned route. Bill dug out his rifle from his childhood, dusted it off and has been target practicing.

(Yes, our High Life cans from the day before. Our 'end-of-day-good-day-of-work' celebratory beer We typically like microbrews, but on a hot summer day, there is nothing like plunging your hand in an icy cooler and coming up with a can of beer.)

As he was sighting the scope, Bill urged me to give it a try. (It just seems like the 4th of July is the appropriate time to shot a gun, right?) I've never shot a gun before and I was scared. This is an easy to handle rifle and after Bill's gun safety course (he made me repeat outloud the rules, work the safety, load it, unload it, and put it on single shot, etc.) I did it! I didn't hit the target but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I don't think I'll be target practicing on a regular basis, (I'd rather weed the garden). But it was good to try and I might do it again (especially if my friend Mimi comes up to do some target shooting too! :) )


This picture is for my sister-in-law. Pickles enjoying the double full screendoors at our church-house.

Wisc weekend

I'm off to Wisc tomorrow as it is Veteran's Day so I have the day off (gotta love those bank holidays). I am taking my work laptop and am going to try my first day of working remotely from the local coffee shop in Platteville, WI. I hope this is successful! I have tried it before, albeit on a Saturday, and was able to connect and had access to my work related content so I am hopeful that it will be seamless. Bill will join me on Friday night and while I leave on Sunday to come back to work, he is going to stay and work several days at the farm while the excavator begins.

And we have another pet to bury at the farm. Our cat Gracie was put to rest last week. This is our 4th pet euthansia in four years. For the record, it does NOT get easier. However, it was time and we wanted her to go while she still had some of her dignity. She was always Bill's cat as they had a special bond, and was named after the Gracie family of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu fame. He adopted her 2 weeks after we met. She was the end of an era. The last of our original pets.

Flood in late July

We took a long weekend in late July and were in Wisconsin during 4 days of lots of rain.

Water in the seasonal creek - we were so happy to have our new culvert!

We had spent two days (Thurs and Fri) cleaning out the root cellar of the old farmhouse. On Saturday, Bill was planning on installing a sump-pump and a dehumidifier. Mother Nature had a different plan. It rained about 5" on Friday night - after two days of multiple inches) and the watershed off of the back bluff/hillside behind the farmhouse shed water straight off the hill and right into the root cellar. We think the water was up 5' and flowing out the root cellar window.

Bill surveying the amount of water and how to engineer our way out of this one...

Ick. This is the root cellar. You can see the window in the back that water flowed out. An old water heater (round object in the foreground), a non-working furnace on the right back, and our brand new pressure tank (blue floating object). This is about 18" of water.

During this trip, I also started on the kitchen demolition. This photo shows the kitchen in the old farmhouse before it met me.

After me. I pulled out all of the cabinets, the sink and the paneling and fake walls.

And look at this. Terribly ugly paneling. I pulled it off and ....

Oh my - there is a door! This is the original front door of the farmhouse. We are going to salvage it and use it as an interior door in the new house.

This next photo is for my sister-in-law S.M., the cat lady.

Wisc Harvest - and Pickles comes home today!

We were in Wisc from Wed afternoon through Sunday. It was hot, hot, hot.

We worked with our farm mentors on Thursday for a harvest day experience. (Did I mention it was hot?!?!) We harvested lettuce, zucchini, cucumbers, eggplant, tomatoes (Sun-Gold, yellow-minis, slicers, heirlooms). It was good for us to see the assembly line way that these farmers manage their harvest. The packing crates, the wash station, the immediate cool down to remove the heat from the field. All stuff I've read about but great to see in action. We continue to be impressed by the organization, attention to detail, and high standards of our farm mentors. We learned a lot.

We spent Fri and Sat working at our farm. I will post more about that later.

Pickles is on the mend and comes home today. She bounced back well and I think, as Jena suspected, that she had a vaccine reaction instead of true distemper. Our problem now is introducing her to the two at home as we are leaving again on Wednesday for a long weekend of relaxation in northern Wisc. (No work! yea!) This leaves us very little time to get all 3 accustomed to one another before we leave. Depending on how it goes, we may need to board Pickles again.

Feline Panleukopenia Virus (FPV) aka Feline Distemper

Initially our veterinarian thought Pickles was suffering from a mild case of dehydration. Upon further symptoms and tests, she has been diagnosed with feline distemper and given a rate of survival of 40%. Today and tomorrow are the critical days and we will be able to tell if she is responding to treatment or not.

FPV is in the same viral family as canine parvo. It is highly contagious and a very stable virus in the environment. I have read that it can last for years at room temperature and is highly resistant to most cleaners except bleach. Most all cats have been exposed to feline distemper in their lives due to the resistance of the virus - fortunately, the killed FPV vaccination is remarkably effective at protecting against the disease. (Side note: How did I do research before the internet?!?) Pickles had her first vaccination on Friday. I did ask if perhaps we could be seeing a reaction similar to the disease from the vaccination (similar to when humans get a flu vaccine and have mild flu symptoms); he didn't think so.

Pickles had been living in our bathroom so I have bleached that room. Thankfully we hadn't introduced her to Gracie and Georgie yet, however, the transmission of this virus can occur on hands, shoes, etc.

I guess this is part of the deal when you pick up strays. I certainly wasn't expecting this (I'm sure no one ever is!).

New addition

I found a kitten on Thursday. We have decided to keep her. We weren't really in the market for a new cat (we have two); we were considering a dog. On Thursday I was told that the dog that we were interested in wasn't a good fit for us (she needed hip surgery and our lifestyle and 2nd floor Chicago apartment was too much activity). That very same day I found this little one crying outside.

Meet Pickles. She is approximately 8 weeks old.

Happy New Year!

Yikes - where did I go? Sorry, didn't mean for such a long break between posts!

Happy 2010! Wow, we hope to move in 14 months. Ghesh, we have a lot to do.

Here's the dog update. He continued to live in our backyard. His living quarters were upgraded from:

1. Laying in the dirt next to the garage
2. A rug that I laid down for him on the ground
3. A cardboard box
4. A bigger cardboard box
5. A large plastic pot that large trees/shrubs are grown in - we turned it upside down, cut an entry-door in it and screwed a large rubbermaid bin top on the top. It jutted out over the door - we joked that he now had a 'carport'
6. A small doghouse with a heater in it
7. Same doghouse with heater with blankets/rugs piled on top to help keep the heat in
8. Same doghouse with heater and a huge, heavy moving blanket over the top

It was getting really cold out. He wasn't getting nicer to me like I had hoped. I upped the ante and after we made a bunch of chicken stock from the carcases and innards in our freezer last week, I started feeding him chicken hearts. He loved them but still didn't warm up to me. It had been almost 3 weeks. He had put on weight and was looking less deathly but it was cold and despite his nice house (#8 above) it was cold out. We decided to take him to a shelter.

Here's the rub - and I learned something. None of the no-kill shelters in Chicago will take strays. But I guess after thinking about it - it makes sense. If you lose a pet - really, do you want to have to contact the myriad of shelters that are in the Chicago area? No. So all of the shelters direct strays to the City Animal Care & Control facility so that owners that have lost their pets have only one place to go to look for their pet - which also hopefully increases the chances that they will find their lost pet. And realistically, I don't know if this little guy is 'pet material'. He was pretty aggressive and snarley. He didn't warm up to me - even with chicken hearts. So we made what is hopefully the right choice and took him to the shelter where they will hold him, see if anyone claims him, and then evaluate him health and temperament-wise and then probably put him down.

I'm trying to become more realistic about this - but it is hard. Scarce resources shouldn't be used on an animal that has little to no hope to ever be a companion animal.

I gave him food and a home (well, at least a dry bed) for the last few weeks. He's not on the streets anymore. But, I do miss the little guy running around the backyard.

Oh, and yeah, I had named him. Pablo.

Seed panic!

Yikes! It is already the end of March! I have lots more seeds to start namely herbs! I haven't even begun to think about them yet. Tonight is the night. I did prep some seed starter on Sunday - I'm trying a new recipe for this batch. Worm castings, perlite and a little bit of peat. This is the first time that I've worked with perlite - so far I'm on the fence. We'll see what its like tonight after its been hydrating with my castings for a few days. It seemed pretty sharp so I don't know how well that will work in my soil block maker.

The potential farm truck that we looked at in Wisc on Saturday turned out to be a dud. It was all fine and well until Bill took it for a drive. Upon return, pretty near a gallon of antifreeze came pouring out of the bottom and there was oil on the engine that was smoking. We don't expect it to work perfectly of course, but a potential cracked transmission was more than we were willing to take on. We're rethinking truck options. We want something reliable but I'd like to not take a car note. We'll keep looking.

We buried Miss B on Saturday. We like the grave digging and we each talk and laugh about memories. We've done this with each of our other two pets buried at the farm so we repeated the process. We were able to cry and then fill the soil back in the grave with our hands. Its a very spiritual experience for both of us. Bill then found a good stone and chiseled a 'B' on it. He did this for our dog and our other cat too. This was our 3rd pet euthansia in 2.5 years - it sure is hard to watch them age.

R.I.P. Miss B

We had to put our dog to sleep on Aug 25, 07 when her health failed to the point that she couldn't walk. She is buried at the farm. Today we put our 17 year old cat, Miss B to sleep. Her kidneys had shut down and she had stopped eating. Miss B was my first pet as an adult and I've had her since she was 6 weeks old.

We miss the dog terribly. I now will also miss Miss B. We will bury her at the farm next to the dog. We still have two cats still at home: Gracie who is 14 and Georgie who is 1.5 years old. I found Georgie in Wisc and she is the one that travels with us back and forth.

Rest in Peace Miss B. You were the best cat I could have asked for.