Now this is what snow looks like at my house.

Both ends of the rainbow at my house this morning.

See this?  It was very cold and wind chill was -16.  This is when I went out to take care of the geese.  When I poked the hole in the surface with the wrecking bar water squirted straight in the air.  That tells me I need to pick up a tank heater to keep my tank from rupturing.

Ok, I got  a dentist appointment this morning so I got to get around.  Just wanted to show you my rainbow.

I am just as serious as a heart attack!

Here I am having a visit with my geese.  There are 13 of those feathery fowl now.  This summer I did away with the pond and bought a really big stock tank.  My thoughts along that line were that it would be much easier to keep clean.  It is definitely easier.  And they love the thing.  Course I had to build them a dirt berm into it and a platform to give them footing to get out.  And in the digging process I screwed up my foot and neglected to go to the doctor so when I do get around to that I will probably have to have it amputated.  That is alright.  Easy come easy go.
So I had reason to be on the Southside a  week or so ago and happened upon a house which is currently being put on the market.  Full basement, 2 bedrooms up and 2 down.  Laundry down.  Patio. Storage shed with electric and cement floor in the back yard.  2 Car attached garage.  And neighbors.  Located on a cul de sac, so low traffic.  3 blocks from my friends Kay and Frank.  And the price is right.  I could sell this place and buy that one and put enough in the bank to live on for probably the rest of my life.
Now, I am thinking about this very seriously.  Yard work would be minimal.  Kitchen is a bit dated, but so am I.  The appliances are all new.  So is the furnace.  Only draw back is no outside fowl are allowed in the city.  Imagine the neighbors when I pull up with my stock tank and 13 honking geese!   If I could get lucky and find someone to buy this place that would take the geese and promise to never sell them, or eat them, or let the fox eat them, I would be headed for town in a New York minute. (That means really fast!)
Winter is coming on and I am sure at some point it is going to snow.  The pond will freeze.  The geese will run out of feed and all kinds of problems happen out doors.  I do not like winter.  Pueblo is not as bad as Hutchinson used to be.  We are kind of in a hole here and severe anything is just not the norm.  But if I was in town, I could just stay in the house.  Well, I still have to shovel the walk.  Except there I would have to shovel the driveway, my sidewalk and the one in front of the house. Here I just mash it down.  Cities have rules.  I forgot that.
So maybe I will just wait a little longer until I am really old and I can go into the Assisted living.  Hmmm.  Wonder if they will let me bring the 2 dogs, cat, 2 looms, machine quilter, embroidery machine, ebay crap.....
Guess I am going to be cursed with living forever!

Here Foxie, Foxie, Foxie...Wait, not here!

Well, excitement in the back yard tonight.  It is raining here a little.  Not enough to do any good, just enough to make me think I should have a coat on over my shorts and what was I thinking any way.  So it was just almost to think about getting evening and I thought I should take a stroll out back.  Well first thing I see is Icarus, the calico cat  over setting in the Llama pen.  She does not usually do that, but I thought what the hey.  Then I noticed the brown Llama was on high alert, so I scanned the horizon and saw nothing.  Then the brown and white Llama started running.  I still saw nothing so I started on out to the duck house. 

Lordy, about that time something shot past me and I seen the Fox about 6 feet away running and scaling the back fence right in front of me.  He ran into the alfalfa field about 25 feet and then just stopped and set down and he and I engaged in a staring match.  I never had an encounter like that before.  This was very strange, so I grabbed my trusty cell phone and dialed Bret up and told him to bring his rifle and come out back.  As luck would have it, across the field is several houses so the rifle was out of play at that point.   Bret picked up a few rocks and chucked them at him, but he just looked at us and some of them were close.  So since I was getting wet and cold I decided to come in out of the rain. 

I guess what bothered me most is that he usually comes from the West through the Llama pen and then crosses the fence going South into the alfalfa before he gets to my property.  This time he came from the North,  over my West fence and then over the back fence heading South.  And he looked very ragged.  Not like the sleek fox I have been seeing.  Unless, of course, this is a different fox.  Good grief!  I think I have solved the mystery.  Nothing wrong with my fox, just this is not my fox.  Wonder how many of those things I have around here?

Have to worry about that tomorrow cause I am falling asleep here!  Good night all.

The end of an era here in my corner of the world.

A moving trailer backed up to the house and with that simple move we end an era here.  Twenty-five years is a lot like a quarter of a century any way you cut it.  I remember when Jacque and Clifford moved in.  There was a ratty old double wide trailer on an acre of ground.  The huge shop building was the only solid thing on the property.  They had no kids at home, but his mom and dad lived over on the corner.  They came with 2 dogs and a parrot.  That soon changed.

Seems the property came with a miniature goat.  Well, that goat was pregnant.  Soon there were 2 goats, and the cat, Blueberry.  Then came 3 turkeys and a few more goats.  Then the turkeys hatched babies, and they bought more goats.  Well, then along came a grand son, born to the son who was in the service and stationed  in Okinawa.  Then the dogs got old and died and they got more dogs, and more cats.  Pretty soon it looked like Green Acres over there! 

Well, then they adopted the grandson.  We adopted our grandson.  They were the same age and learned to get into lots of things together.  I got lots of good pictures before we got them trained to keep their clothes on and only pee in the house.  Some day those pictures are going to come in handy!

They decided to put a new double wide on the property since the other one was falling down.  They bought a camper to live in while that was happening.  I did lots of cooking, the neighborly thing to do!  The new double wide on a foundation was a definite improvement! 

Time passed and things happened.  They buried his Mother and Father.  I buried lots of people, including my mother, sister and husband.  When I needed some thing that I was incapable of doing, I knew Clifford was there for me.  Anything from a mechanical problem to untangling the barbed wire in the high wheeler to wringing the neck of the goose who was having seizures! 

We grew apart, but not really.  They were always there.  They waved and I waved.  Occasionally I baked something and took it over.  It became a more taken for granted thing than an active friendship, but  a friendship none the less.  Then she lost her job and he lost his.  A sign of the times.  Then it seemed that a major move was the only answer.  She scored first in North Dakota, of all places!

And that is why yesterday when I went out to start the car very early and found the Uhaul backed up to the door, it hit me.  And there was Clifford.  We made small talk about the weather and how it might slow down the move, but not much.  Then there was nothing else to say.  So I just hugged him.  Another part of my life is over. 

And finally the time change is here!

See that face? That is a very happy face because the time change has finally gotten here! I can let the fowl out and it is not even 7:00 AM yet. I got my young self busy on that changing of the clocks very early, assuming I moved them the right way. One year I did it the wrong way, loaded the grand kids in the car and arrived to an empty parking lot. I then called one of the church people whose number I remembered. He was very quick to tell me where my mistake was.

I hate this time changing. This particular one, I like because I am a very early riser, but the one next Spring is the one that makes me postal! I would like it if the government would kindly leave my clock alone!  They can figure all they want and give me statistics until the cows come home,  but I still know there will be the same amount of daylight hours.  My ducks and geese wake up when the sun comes up.  If I need to leave early I have to open the pen door in the dark and that leaves them vulnerable to predators.  Sure, things can come in the daylight and eat them, but it is a lot more likely in the early morning hours before the sun pops up.

Now, here I am and it is 7:20 AM.  The water fowl are out and swimming around.  They are fed and happy. There was just a moment of confusion when they saw Icarus, the cat, perched on the feeder in their yard.  Normally the cat does not linger when I open the door.  But today she thought she would like to visit a little while.  The geese started to make a circle around her, but being the agile creature she is, she escaped that trap.

So now that my life is on this even keel with the sunshine and stuff, I may be able to get something done around the place.  Oh, I doubt that!  Next I will bellyache cause it is too cold!  I know me pretty well after all this time.

Well, that is my thoughts for the day, so go have a good one and try to keep the cart between the ditches.

The babies at 10 days old!

Look at this mess!! Those little guys think they are big geese! They are so damn cute! They get out there and run with the big geese and even bite at the stickers. If they are going to eat the stickers, I will love them to death and they did not learn that trick from the big geese. Big geese only want grain and nice green grass. They also like weeds, but only certain weeds and only ones that do not grow in the back. Just the front, so I can pull them and toss them over the fence to them.

I think if you click on this picture it should get very big. These guys made the first trip to the pond for a swim at 7 days old. Before that I had a container in the shed in which they would paddle around. I guess it was called a swimming pool! Duh!! Container, indeed! They have not quite started to get pin feathers so we are not sure of the breed these guys/gals are. Will not be really sure until they are about 2 or 3 months old. They, of course, are still making the peeping sounds.

Oh, and guess what I found in the duck house today!! Seven eggs! That means they are laying again and if I am not real careful they will hide a nest somewhere and I will be blessed with a bunch of ducklings! Had one hen surprise me with 13 babies one year. Not looking favorably on that prospect.

Ok, that is it from the farm for the day. Oh, man, I remember when I lived with grandma and great grandma and we lived in Plevna, Kansas. The high school was exactly one block from grandma's house on main street. When I came out the door of the school to go home for lunch I could hear the Farm Report blaring on grandma's old brown upright radio all the way home. Only time that radio was ever turned on was for the noon farm report and then everyone in the town of Plevna, population 103 (everyone of which I knew) could hear it whether they wanted to or not!!

Sorry about the change of subject, but sometimes the old mind takes a turn and I gotta go with it! Have a great day!!

One in a million shot of baby goose and the mother!

Every once in a a while you get a shot with your camera that is actually worth saving.  This is mine!  Baby geese began hatching at my house Thursday evening.  This is a long arduous process. I have an Emiden setting in one part of the compound and Goosie, this African Gray, in another part.  Goosie is a story in itself so I will cover the Emiden babies a little later.

About 5 or 6 years ago  Bret decided he absolutely had to have baby geese.  The fact that we had 20+ ducks at the time was immaterial.  So off we went to Big R for the purchase of 3 geese. I do everything living in triplicate for some odd reason that only God is privy to. Any way, the geese grew and were quite attached to us and the ducks.  As luck would have it, we had 2 ganders and the one hen.  The first 2 years Goosie would lay her eggs and I would eat them.  I called this retro active birth control.

Then the third year the biggest gander developed neurological problems and had to be put down.  I let Goosie set that year.  Her eggs were not fertile, so there was a stinking mess!  The next year I had acquired  3 pairs; 2 Chinese, 2 Emidens, and 2 more Africans. They all set, except Goosie,  and they all hatched and the ganders trampled most of them, but I did manage to grab the 6 surviving babies and take them to my friend Penny to take care of until they were feathered. While over there 2 got sick and died, one was ate by a coyote and 3 survived. When they got tired of taking care of them they brought them back. This brought me up to 10. One of the Emidens did not make it through breeding season, so down to nine.

I decided to let Goosie try this year and we were very happy when this little fellow pecked it's way out of the shell.  Bret spotted this shot and took it for me.  If you click on the picture it will get bigger and you can see the little fellow nestled in  Goosie's wing with just it's head showing.

If you are ever in my neighborhood, feel free to drop on over and check out my little farm here.  Better hurry though, because the fox is busily eating my ducks and you may not see them if you don't hurry!!

Have a good one, and happy Father's Day to all the male species, with and without feathers!