New blog, new address

Tea Time Chatter is going into retirement, to be replaced with a new blog:
Good Life Writer (http://goodlifewriter.wordpress.com/). Update your links to keep up with my exploration of this good life.

I'll also be exploring the rapidly changing world of writing for a living, which you may find instructive or amusing depending on your point of view.

Ironing

The laundress, sweating in a cloud of steam as she irons mounds of (men's) shirts, is pretty much the poster child of the feminist movement. My life -- at least my professional life -- is pretty much the other poster child: degree in Engineering, with emphasis on Chemical Engineering. Technical writing career in the high tech industry, when high tech was the very coolest place to be. Etc etc. Fact is, though, I like to do ironing. I especially like to iron my guy's shirts. The sisterhood would be aghast. What's the deal here?

I find fabric both sensual and rich in history. I like the feel of it under my fingers. I like the way the cotton goes from wrinkled to crisp as I stroke it with the iron. I like the routine of ironing a shirt: collar, left cuff, sleeve back, sleeve front, right cuff, sleeve back, sleeve front, right shoulder, yoke, left shoulder, left front, back, right front, done. I smooth the tight cotton with my hand, then with steam, then with the iron. Lift and pull, taking the shirt though its stations on the board.

Fabric is amazing stuff. Thread is amazing stuff. As I work I feel connected to a thousand generations, mostly women, who took bits of fluff, cotton or wool, and transformed into thread, then fabric, then garments. I've spun on a drop spindle, and I know the magic of feeling strong, useful yarn come into being as it passes through my hands.

I follow a woven stripe with the point of the iron, assured I am working with the grain. I whisk the finished shirt off the board, crisp, slightly damp, too malleable still to hang in the closet. I arrange it gently on the hanger, hang it in the door frame, and carefully fasten two buttons. It pleases me, hanging there, perfect, the work of my hands.

Music for a philosophy of life

I'll be taking Mastery I early in February. The registration materials include this item:

In preparation for Mastery I, please choose a piece of music to bring on a CD to the program that summarizes your philosophy of life. This piece of music is to be clearly labeled with your name, the song title and the track number.

I have been agonizing over this for more than a week now. I'm realizing that I don't much listen to music with lyrics (I like to listen to music while I'm writing, and lyrics are a distraction). When I do listen to music with lyrics, it's usually something rollicking, like "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown." Fun stuff, but about as far as you can get from my philosophy of life.

A couple of years ago Seattle's Civic Light Opera put on Annie Get Your Gun. The actress who played Annie sang a rendition of Sun in the Morning that is a strong contender. Sweet as a sigh, heartfelt as a prayer. It resonates with me. But does it nail my philosophy of life?

I considered finding a piece of music without lyrics. Grieg's Morning Mood, say. I've loved that one since I was a kid. But the whole point is for the music to articulate my philosophy. If I have to write a speech to go with it, it kind of misses the point.

So... here's my philosophy of life, close as I know. Let me know if any piece of music that you know springs to mind.

I feel that the connections between living things are the truest reality, and that this world is a laboratory or classroom for learning the importance of those connections, and how to make and sustain them. We have bodies that need food, so that we can break bread together. We have beauty around us, so that we can share it and retell it. In this life, we learn to give and accept things we need, things that may sometimes be scarce. We sample fear and trust and betrayal and loyalty and anger and remorse. We learn love.

In a nutshell, we are here to pet the cat. And the cat is here to be a warm bundle in our arms, and soothe our hearts with purring. The rest is props and shop dressing.

An overdue update

Wow, it has been a long time since I posted. So much has happened around here. In brief:

• We processed SOME of the wood that we took down in the summer of 07. We filled the woodshed completely, and have been enjoying dry firewood this winter. This is especially important since we don't have a furnace currently. More on that later.
• I have been taking a series of experiential classes through Context International: Pursuit of Excellence, The Wall, Advancement of Excellence, and Inside Passage. I'll be taking Mastery I in a few weeks. These courses have really helped me turn a lot of corners in my life. The last traces of burnout seem to have been swept away. I'm ready and eager to get back into the workplace. My relationship with Jim is stronger and happier. And...
• I have started work on a piece of fiction. I'm thinking of a series of short stories that together can become a book. The setting is Baghdad around 785 to 800 AD -- during the Abbasid caliphate. (The idea has been rattling around in my head for decades, long before Baghdad became a staple of the evening news.) I've been doing research on the period. I've been writing back stories for the characters. Those back stories are a great tool -- when I put the character in a scene, the nuances of what he does and what he notices and how he speaks all fall into place. Exhausting, exhilarating work.
• We ripped out the kitchen cabinets. We'd seen a wee bit of mold and were deeply concerned that there was a lot more hidden behind the cabinets. There was not (whew!). However...
• We discovered that mice had been chewing the wiring. Mostly old damage, apparently from before we moved in. But exposed wires are dangerous no matter how long they have been there. There were scorch marks around some of them. So...
• Most of the circuits in the house have been shut off. We are rewiring the entire house in conduit -- it's called a "commercial tube job" and it's a monstrous piece of work. There might be a couple of walls we don't have to rip open, but essentially the house will be a shambles for months.
  We trust the circuits Jim put in conduit out to the garage, and we are running heavy duty extension cords from them to various parts of the house. And he ran a fresh wire to the water heater early on. But the furnace is not hooked up. Nor is the drier, although the washer is.

The electrical issue has thrown a wrench in the kitchen remodel plans. We had set up a very nice camp kitchen on the back porch, in September. (This had the happy side effect of necessitating an enclosure for the goats OFF the back porch.) That became less useful when we had that little bout of freezing weather. We had to disconnect the hose from the utility sink we had set up. We had to keep popping back into the house to warm up.

And the toaster seemed not to work. Turns out that ambient temperature has an effect there -- those little elements were giving it their all, but the cold pouring into the bread slots defeated them. Indoors, we get toast.

So now we are well on the way to at indoor camp kitchen -- something we can live with until we redo the wiring, move the electrical panel (that was part of the original remodel plan), and have the inspector out. After the inspection, we can put drywall up, install cabinets. Until then, we will have cheap counters & plastic rolling drawer units. We'll tack down a scrap of vinyl flooring to protect the exposed subfloor. The dishwasher is hooked up and usable (provided we aren't running the space heater in the living room at the same time). The kitchen sink will go in RSN. We will get to test-drive and fine-tune the layout of the new kitchen. We've already been doing a lot of that -- it is increasingly obvious that we will not be buying off-the-shelf cabinets. Jim will be building cabinets that tuck into wall spaces, especially where we have thickened walls. He has a nice stockpile of high-end hinges and drawer slides, and that will deal with a lot of the expense.

Since we have expanded the kitchen, taking over the old laundry room, we'll have about 40% more counter space, somewhat more cupboard space, and a much, much better traffic flow. We will have our caffeine corner -- coffee & tea equipment isolated in one corner of the kitchen, with its own tiny bar sink. The stove will be propane, and we will be installing the tankless gas water heater we've had in the box since before we moved here. Hot water during power outages! Woo-hoo!

And, let's see, what else has been going on? Jim's been taking classes at Bellevue College, formalizing his on-the-job business training and filling in a few gaps. He is taking a break from that now, to focus more on the house projects. (Projects. Did I mention the upstairs bath? It ended up needing a remodel as part of the kitchen remodel. It's stripped out, expanded, and has a generous shower stall framed in.)

Jim is now looking into becoming a real estate agent. I think he'd be good at it. This is a scary market to start in, but it's a scary market for doing much of anything. I'm looking for work as a writer. I'm hanging back on the faux finishing until the economy picks up, but I'll be doing all the walls in the house. That will be fun, and I'll have some cool stuff for my finishing portfolio.

Rosie, one smart goat

The goats are penned in an enclosed back porch, which has glass doors leading to the living room & dining room. They are currently sharing it with many, many chickens who arrived in early March. The goats are tethered to one section of the porch.

Rose has figured out how to loosen her collar enough to slip out of it. This morning Jim discovered that she had:

• Slipped out of her collar
• Eaten all the chicken feed (she'll need to eat a lot of roughage today to avoid a catastrophic tummy ache)
• Started to work on the door handle to get into the house. They are lever type handles; she's quite capable of figuring them out.

I have this image of waking up to a goat climbing into bed with me. Dearie, dearie me.

The Mysterious Traveler has a nice post on the goats, including a view from my living room. Rose is the one in the pink collar.

A new tea house

It is important to me to have a place to go and relax over a cup of really good tea. My all-time favorite was Tiger Mt. Tea in Gilman Village, but they are now web-only. Yesterday on my way home from visiting Julia I ended up at Crossroads Mall in Bellevue, and stopped in at Xiu Xian Tea. It was lovely.

First let me tell you that their web site only hints at the varieties of tea they carry. One long wall is lined with big jars of tea, behind a counter. And in front of that counter are small jars of the same teas. You can open the small jars, sniff them, look at them -- without disturbing the tea that's for sale.

The staff was very helpful in suggesting teas to sample. Yes, sample. This is where it gets luxurious. I was guided to one of two large gong fu tea tables near the front of the store. These tables are works of art, carved from huge burls, waterproofed, and fitted with a drain. The one I was at had several levels, a carved bridge, and two dragon heads -- all designed so that water poured anywhere on the table flows to the drain. Electric water kettles are nearby, and there are a number of gaiwans for brewing the tea samples. The chairs are also carved from burls, and are really comfortable.

Your hostess puts a sample of a tea you have chosen in a gaiwan, rinses it with water from the kettle, and pours out the rinse water. New water goes into gaiwan, the brewed tea is poured into a serving pitcher and then...

At the moment it is served in a paper cup. The kitchen has just been set up, and the dishwasher isn't installed yet. My recommendation: Bring a tasting cup, or buy a $1 tasting cup at the store. Paper adds an odd taste to these delicate teas.

I tasted several teas, three that I'd sniffed out and some that were already sitting in the gaiwans on the table. I bought three:

• Sweet Jade, that has an incredible vanilla overtone although it is just tea, no added flavoring
  
• Iron God (rich) a savory and complex oolong with a silky finish
  
• An organic Pu Erh (Palace - Rich) with a gorgeous red color and good earthy flavor

I'm looking forward to going back there. While this is primarily a place to buy tea, they do have small tables at the back of the shop with gong fu tea trays where you can linger over a pot of tea, brewing and re-brewing to enjoy all the flavors the tea has to offer. If you are in the area and want a peaceful place to unwind, I recommend it. Maybe I'll see you there.

Twitter

Karen, bless her, has turned me on to Twitter. I've mailed the URL for her post What's Twitter, and why I love it to a few people, and now I'm sharing that URL with you here. If you've heard of Twitter and your reaction was along the lines of ??What?, Why?, or "That's just silly," check out Karen's post. And let me know when you sign up for Twitter.

New chicks on order

I got an email yesterday from Ideal Poultry. My name came up on the waiting list for Barnevelders! Barnevelders are one of the breeds of chickens that lay dark, dark brown eggs. They're pretty rare, hence the waiting list.

I called Ideal today and placed my entire chick order with them:

• 15 Barnevelders
  
• 6 Easter Eggers (EEs)
  
• 15 Australorps (Aussies)
  
• 6 Silver-laced Wyandottes
  
• 6 Gold-laced Wyandottes
  
• 8 Red sex-link
  
• 5 Gold sex-link

They are scheduled to ship 5 March, so I'm hoping for an EARLY call from the post office on the morning of the 6th.

Himself plans to be building the chicken coop starting 20 March, when his classes let out. He assures me the work will go fast once it starts. He's going to scale it for 100 chickens, with two runs. That way everyone will still have space to stretch her wings and do all those other important chicken activities. And I'll be able to keep the new chicks separate from the adults.

Short term, we'll have the brooder cage on the back porch, which is still enclosed as a goat stall.

Laid off, sorta

For the past couple of years I've had a dream gig, writing technical documentation part-time, from home, for a group of really nice people with a well thought out product. About a week and a half ago, in the middle of a mail thread on what they'd like me to work on next, I got the following message: "I was just talking to _____ to see what the high priorities are for the next few months and we feel we are in a great position (much thanks to you). For now we are going to hold off any new updates to the manuals and see where that takes us. We will definitely keep you informed if our needs change."

The suddenness of the shift threw me off for a day or two, but frankly I'm more excited about what might be next than I am concerned about what just went away. The world is changing (again), and in change there is always opportunity. I'm good with words, I'm good with critters, and I believe that there is the opportunity for depth and richness in everything we do. Surely I can combine all of that to make a life that supports me financially, emotionally, and spiritually.

While I was writing manuals in Word, Web-based writing and networking grew and morphed, and continues to do so. There it is again, change and opportunity. So I'm actively studying the current state of web-based writing, including blogging, networking, and things like Twitter. I'm studying search engine optimization (SEO). I'm looking for the next shift in this wonderful connected world the Web has brought us.

I'm watching for ways to draw together seemingly disparate skills and interests (animals, technology, psychology, bead work and textile arts, small farm management, ...). They all have one thing, at least, in common: they all live in me. Ergo, they all fit together, and they all describe the way that I fit into the world. My work right now is to find how I can offer them up in a way that supports me and mine in return.

FRESH Eggs!

Breakfast this morning included two fresh eggs for each of us. We are talking still warm from the chicken here. The whites are thick and the yolks are firm and round and deep orange. The flavor is great -- we had them over easy with not so much as salt and pepper and they held their own just fine.

Last week I started to have two eggs for dinner and ended up having four. I had them with Roasted Roots -- in this case a yam, a double handful of red potatoes, and a yellow onion, all cubed, tossed with lemon juice and olive oil, sprinkled with salt, pepper, and an Italian herb blend, and spread out on a foil-lined baking pan. Bake at 350 until tender and just starting to caramelize.

If you are thinking it might be nice to have a couple of chickens in your back yard, even just for the eggs, the answer is yes. Once you get set up with housing for them, their care takes minutes a day: Check that there is enough food & water, toss them food scraps from your kitchen and any weeds you've been pulling from your garden, and bring in the eggs. Most people end up hanging out with the chickens a bit more than that, though, because they are amusing. You'll want to really clean out the coop once or twice a year, say on some nice spring day as part of gardening. Other than that even cleanup is minimal (scatter food grade diatomaceous earth & wood chips once every week or two or three). All in all, a flock of chickens is much less work than a cat or a dog. And they do a great job on those garden weeds.

I've started selling eggs, too. Himself, watching the egg cartons pile up in the fridge, was threatening to serve chicken dinner if I didn't start selling eggs to subsidize their upkeep and housing. Our flock of twelve is producing almost five dozen eggs per week. So I ran an ad on Craigslist, and now have a few families that I'll be supplying on a regular basis.

Of course, that's encouraging me to get MORE chickens. I'll be putting in an order soon.

We have GOT to get that coop built. The big girls are OK in a sheltered run, but babies need better protection in the late winter and early spring.

The creek is rising

There is a lovely little seasonal creek just behind our house. It usually runs from late fall to mid or late spring, maybe until early summer if it has been a wet winter.

At the moment, it is running the highest I've ever seen it. It's making a wonderful noise, and it's flooding much of the back yard. We've been clearing branches from the culvert to make sure it doesn't flood near the house.
 


The winter has, so far, been pretty extraordinary. A dusting of snow or a freezing night is usually a big deal here. We had snow on the ground from December 19th until this morning, and it was below freezing for most of that time. Here are some pics from the snow.


 

Now, of course, we have the high water (with plenty of rain coming down to join that snow melt). It's only January; we are getting into the winter weather season. I'm glad we have lots of firewood, and a generator.

The Year of Prompt Solutions

The new year sputtered to a start in our neighborhood -- the pump went out on the community well sometime New Years Eve, and we all woke up to no water. Happily, it was fixed and the system recharged before nightfall. Maybe 2009 will be the Year of Prompt Solutions.

I've got some serious must-do items for the coming year: I need to get my house in order, literally and figuratively.

Literally:
We are still sorting through all the stuff -- from Jim's business closing, from my folks downsizing, from plain old unexamined accumulations. I am starting to see the light at the end of that tunnel, and that helps.

We still aren't really set up for the critters. We put temporary insulated walls up on the back porch to see the goats through our extra-severe winter weather. Gigi was still recovering when the cold hit and we really needed to keep them warm. We need a real goat shed for them. They won't appreciate it, though. They've gotten used to watching us in the living room at night. The chickens will appreciate a proper coop. They did amazingly well through the cold, partly by eating heroic quantities of layer pellets. But now the runoff from the melting snow is invading their run, and damp is worse for them than cold. Well, at least it is well-ventilated.

We managed to tear up the yard, front & back, last summer. Now we need to landscape and plant.

Figuratively cleaning house, now that's harder. I need to sort out some new directions for my work. I'm burned out on the kind of writing that has been my bread & butter for so long. Really, really burned out. It's a bit scary. So I'm looking at other ways to make a living. Faux finishing... I'm pretty good at it but this is not the economy to build a new business like that. (But, oooh, I do want to get into those traditional lime plasters. Beautiful stuff, natural materials, and it makes for a healthy indoor environment. That is what we will be wanting in our homes.) Writing is still my mainstay. I'm looking at ways to make money writing about things other than computers and software.

With the house clean and tidy, the animals properly housed, and work in front of me that doesn't constantly remind me of difficult times, I expect to have a lot more energy. Enough to get paying work done and still have the time and enegy to work in the garden and with the animals, doing the things that light me up.

I don't know how long your "must do" list is for this year. But I know we are all apprehensive about the economy, the ecosystem, etc. So let us raise our cups to the Year of Prompt Solutions.

Tea Sites

StumbleUpon just led me to a great site for tea lovers. Gong Fu Girl appears to be Seattle-based. She posts lots of thoughtful information about buying, brewing, and enjoying tea, including links to tea houses in the area. I've added her site to my "Links I Like" list.

Of the essence

In my last post, I listed some of the projects that we are working on. You might have gotten an idea of the outrageous level of mess and confusion I've been living with these last few months. For me the baseline for living is a clean and orderly environment in which to work, so the mess and confusion is a major issue. Added to that are worries about the economy (national and personal) and about the ecology. This is the kind of thing that spins me out and makes me completely dysfunctional.

And yet...

I am profoundly content. And I think it has to do with keeping the chickens and goats.

I wouldn't say that chickens and goats inevitably confer contentment. But for me, having critters in my life is literally essential: it resonates with the essence of who I am. Back when I was working with Curt Rosengren, the Passion Catalyst, he said to me, "You are all about Life." (I was having trouble coming to terms with the fact that the place I worked, which is not at all about Life, was a really bad fit for me.)

There is, apparently, some inborn farmer in me. It skipped a generation and I never got to spend much time with any of my grandparents, so who knew?

I just recently learned from my mother that both of my grandmothers loved to work outside. I knew that my father's mother worked in the fields a lot, but I had not known that it was her preference. Turns out she had a team of horses and hired out to neighbors as well as working her own acreage, back in the Depression when she was a single mom. I never even got to meet her; she died while my dad was still in high school. We would have had so much fun together.

My mother's father was good with animals, plants, and the land itself. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, before anyone was talking about contour farming, he used what he called "lay of the land." He pruned trees with a pocket knife, gently pruning the branches while they were still the tiniest of twigs. That takes getting to know each tree and shrub as an individual, and visiting it often. He could work with animals that no one else could get near. He had a series of farms that he bought when they were worthless and built up to be valuable, productive land. He died, a very old man, when I was five. I was with him perhaps a week in all of my life. But I find that I look at land and plants and animals the same way that he did. How did this gift come down to me? I think that my mother acquired his outlook on life, and it has informed everything she does all of these years. And that in turn was passed on to me. It's about respect and responsibility toward each living thing around you, and joy in sharing the world with all these kinds of life. It is about letting them be who and what they are -- reveling in who and what they are -- even when you must take complete control over their lives.

I am content because I have in my life what is essential to me. What is essential to you?

What a hectic summer it has been!

The Mysterious Traveler pointed out that I've not been blogging. This led me to two startling realizations:

1. It really HAS been a long time since I posted anything.
2. Someone is actually reading what I post.

Well, I'm here to tell you, it wasn't for lack of material. It has been a crazy summer, and "must do by end of summer" chores are still piled up around us. Here is a short summary:

Remove sick trees
We knew we had a couple of sick trees. And I'd been talking with Josh (who we were renting goats from) about doing some landscaping. He does trees. So we had him look at the suspicious trees, and he pointed out some that we had not realized were a concern. I mean, he could walk up and stick his hand into a rotted trunk. So...

All told we took out 17 trees. At the base, they ranged in diameter from about 14 " to close to 5'. And in a lot of cases they were more rot than wood at the base. For example, the three maple trunks growing over our bedroom (actually over our bed) had a thin ring of wood around a massive hole in the center. I don't know how we got through winter storms the past few years without being crushed as we slept.

There is a lot of wood in 17 tall trees. Even after you discount the rotted parts. Really, really. A LOT of wood. We have

• Hillocks of chipped brush and ground stumps.
• A wall of massive rounds of firewood completely that blocks the back driveway.
• The woodshed is nearly full of split wood.
• There are towering heaps of split wood waiting to be stacked. Somewhere. (Note: Hydraulic log splitters are good things.)
• And we bought 2 Costco tents to shelter the sawn lumber.

The guy with the portable sawmill is great, BTW. Greg's Mobile Milling. I recommend him. We are still getting the lumber in the tents, stickered so it dries properly. But we are set for fences, a goat shed, and a truly magnificent hot tub gazebo (that's Himself's pet project; I've attached a rider for a steam sauna/shower). And we have another heap of firewood from squaring off the logs.

All this tree cutting suffered some delays. Not through any fault of Josh's, I hasten to add. Mostly problems getting the crane operator out to pluck up the trees closest to the house as they were cut, and lay them gently in place for the miller. The guy who finally showed up was a prima donna who laid out the wood in a haphazard pile. When we could get him off the phone long enough to work. It was September by the time we had the trees down, and then we had to rent a backhoe to rearrange them so the miller could access them.

Get my goat(s)
I mentioned in my last post, ever so long ago, that I was considering goats. I got goats, I love the goats, but it was a rough start. Of the three little goatlings that Josh brought out for me to choose from, one died within 48 hours, and another a couple of weeks later. Josh looked at everything I was doing, where I kept them, what food they had access to, and assured me I really was not doing anything wrong. We never did figure out what happened to the first casualty. Josh took Sadie home for a backyard autopsy. She had eaten a handful of dry ferns (why, with all the lush green available to her???) and that blocked her up and gave her a bit of bloat. Which she probably would have survived; we were treating it. But she had a wee bit of a cold. Which she probably would have gotten over quickly. But with the bloat, she was laying down. And laying down was the worst thing for her cold. It turned into pneumonia. From eating the dry stuff to death was maybe 18 hours.

Rosie, meanwhile, was robustly healthy. Eating her way through a forest of blackberries, sweet, smart, and energetic. She even dealt well with being an only goat for a few weeks. Now I have Rosie and Gigi. Rosie is the clear leader & the brains of the operation. Gigi lets Rosie pull things down where she can reach them -- or calls for me to do it. Gigi is purebred Nubian; Rosie is 3/4 Alpine and 1/4 Kiko (and that Kiko is probably the source of her smarts and vigor).

Together they've cleared the back yard. We can see the trunks of the trees along the road in the back yard. We moved into this house nine years ago, and we have never seen those trunks before. They were smothered in blackberries.

Butterfly lady has extended a standing invitation to the girls to dine on their blackberries, so Rosie and Gigi are busy extending the neighbors' meadow.

Clear the coop area
Early in the summer, we identified a good area for the chicken coop -- at the road end of the back drive. It had a scattering of brambles and scrub, and it was really uneven ground, and it had a pile of mixed brush on top of an old maple log blocking access.

We cleared it.
It filled up with trim from the big (BIG!) cedar that needed to come down.
Chipped the branches -- coop area was clear.
Then the crane operator filled it with trees.
Himself moved those to the far side of the driveway, and then filled the area with logs positioned to roll onto the portable mill.
The millers cut that, then started work on the logs in the front yard.
Himself staged the rest of the logs on the coop area. (Seventeen trees. A LOT of wood. Lordy, lordy!)
The millers cut all but the marginal stuff at the back of the stack.
Himself cut the marginal stuff into rounds, and Millionaires helped move that to the driveway (where it now forms an impenetrable wall) when they were out to help move the heaviest lumber.

Now the coop area is pretty much clear. The slabs from the outside of the logs are pushed to one side, in a pile about 12' long and 6' high and 5' deep. When we can get to the coop area (past the wall of rounds in the driveway), we can rake it smooth, shovel in some sawdust and maybe some gravel so we (never mind the coop) don't sink out of site in the muck, and start building. The girls can hardly wait. I mean, really. They need their coop!

Eat chicken
Did I mention that two of the chickens turned out to be roosters? Those roosters turned out to be vicious. Rhymes with delicious, which they were also. I was the only one who could go into the pen once those roosters matured, and I had to constantly watch my back. Collecting eggs should not be dangerous.

Really, I didn't know chicken could be so flavorful. The pullets get table scraps, and boy did they enjoy the rooster left-overs. Himself was convinced that they knew exactly who they were tearing into. (The roosters were a bit rough on their girls -- but not as bad as they were on us.)

Tidy up the back yard
I mentioned the goats. They do a great job eating leaves and small stems off the brambles. I spent a lot of happy hours with the goats, clipping out the bigger branches so they could keep moving through the yard. Among other things, they cleared access to one of the trees that needed to come down.

Having the backhoe let us do a few other things -- take out stumps both new and old in the back yard, etc. We've been burning half-rotted stumps & roots off and on since the burn season started (1 October). I've scattered clover seed on the exposed earth, and started separating out the stones.

Right now, though, the back yard looks pretty raw.

We've identified a fence line; we will need to build fences to keep the neighbor's dogs away from the livestock. That's another story.

Bury my father's ashes
When enough of the back yard was cleared, we were able to access the spot where I wanted to plant a willow and bury my father's ashes. We had a tiny ceremony on his birthday. It was harder than I expected, but gives an element of closure.

Get things organized indoors
Himself started with the lovely room over the garage, that had been wasted on storage while designated as my sewing room. We've been going through everything, making a conscious decision whether to keep each item. I need to list the things we have decided to sell; donations have been going out in batches. We are maybe halfway through this project and I can't remember the last time we didn't have boxes of stuff everywhere -- all through the house, and on both porches.

I even burned old financial records -- cancelled checks from the '70s and '80s and '90s. That was hard. It was like burning diaries. So much of my life is recorded only in those old records.

Paying work
I did a little faux finishing. More technical writing at this point. I do that part time, for one client. I work from home & set my own hours, and check the goats and chickens on breaks.

Beadwork
Learned netting and ndebele stitch, and used them in some necklaces that came out great. I will get pix and post them.

Structural Materials from Cellulose?

My Google home page led me to this article: New 'super-paper' is stronger than cast iron.

I love this. A gentler processing method for extracting cellulose yields a strong, resilient material. We get structural strength from renewable resources. I look forward to seeing where this takes us.

The information junkie considers goats

First, I must confess that I am an information junkie. I collect information like a pack rat. When I'm stressed, I collect information frenetically. Not necessarily information that pertains to the issue at hand. Any and all information will do. Some odd detail about issues facing Andean potato farmers? I'm all over it. My wonderful psychologist suggested that, when stressed, I NOT listen to NPR.

So you can imagine what I'm like when considering a new venture.

Like, um, keeping goats.

You see, the brush is growing back. And there were areas that the goats couldn't get to because the ground was wet etc. And they are really, really nice animals. I was talking to Butterfly Woman yesterday, and she's thinking the same thing. Maybe we could go in together on a pair of goats. They have an old dog run on their property that could be the basis of a goat shed... hmmm...

So this morning the information junky was sitting in front of her computer, thinking about goats, and found the most wonderful site: Fias Co Farm. Excellent, practical information on goat care. And I'm definitely going to get some of the herbals they sell.

I've been planning to write "The information junkie considers chickens" for weeks now. I'll let you know how I organize the information (all on my computer; the last thing I need is more paper around the house!) And I'll give you a more complete list of links than the short list in the sidebar. Keep an eye out for it!

Sun on the feathers

Today we had an abnormally warm day, and I decided to take the chicks out to the front yard for a bit of sun.

This is not a matter of taking them out and letting them run free -- too many predators & too many chicks to chase.

So I had to rig up a holding pen for them. I have scrap lumber and hardware cloth. Himself prefers that we not use up material that could go toward the desperately needed hen house, so I'm trying not to cut or nail anything. I'd be shy about cutting anyway, since I avoid using his tools or getting into his workspace.

I succeeded in putting together a VERY rough pen with boards (some of them already nailed together), a plastic table on its side, a pitchfork, a weed bag... you get the picture. My wonderful neighbor, Butterfly Woman, helped me rig up the last of it and load in the chickens.

The pen had three sections for the three flocks, although I hoped to bring that down to two flocks by the end of the day. The Specs are three weeks old and fast outgrowing their tub brooder.

Here are some of the Ameraucanas stretching in the sunlight, while Speckled Sussex chicks watch the big girls through the wire. The Amers loved the sun -- they'd lay on their side and spread their feathers out to the sun, exposing as much skin as they could.

After a while, the Specs found a way around the barrier between the pens and started venturing into the section with the Amers. To our relief, they were mostly ignored by the big girls, except for Rachel who would fly at them with talons out. But she made no effort to actually hurt the chicks, even when she had one cornered. She just wanted to make sure they know who's boss. The Specs have always been so full of themselves, it's kind of nice to see them taken down a notch.

Here is a shot of Rachel, showing off her black cape. As chickens go, she looks a lot like an eagle.


We did have eagles out today: a huge bald eagle and a much smaller one, very high up. It looked like a flying lesson.

Another large bird -- eagle or large hawk -- came in closer, definately eyeing the chickens. Butterfly Woman saw it in the treetops of the yard and raised the alarm. As it flew close overhead we could see very distinctive markings on the underside of its wings. No pics of that one -- I was too busy getting a cover over the chicks. It watched as we spread out the linen we'd used an a shade cover and the hardware cloth we'd been using as a divider between the Specs and Amers. Then it waggled its tail at us and flew away.

The Aussie chicks got to get out too. Here they are resting in the sunlight.

Pics!

I'm finally adding pics to the blog. Check out the Caprine Dream Team post. I'll add to the chicken posts later. I still don't have it working as easily as it should, but at least it is sorta working.

My computer does not recognize an SD card in its own drive, but it turns out that it does recognize it in the printer (or in my Windows Mobile device, when it deigns to recognize the PDA). Whatever. I was able to import into Picassa.

And from Picassa, I could add them to a web album. Or with ridiculous effort paste them into an existing blog post.

Testing the predator-proof cage

I had the chicken cage on the back porch nicely screened with bubble wrap on 3 sides, but tonight when I went to tuck the girls in (i.e., toss a drop cloth over the remaining side) the bubble wrap was shredded. Raccoons, I'm sure. Tomorrow I put on a better latch, before they figure out how easy the makeshift one would be to open.

When we build the hen house it will be a fortress.