Farm News 04-30-06

Sunday morning, after chores


More Bunnies!

Fifi, the solid black doe, produced a litter of bunnies Thursday morning. It doesn't feel like there are a lot of bunnies in the nest, but I have not yet tried to count them.

Suzette's three bunnies have opened their eyes. On Saturday the gray bunny spent part of the morning at the Public Library helping the volunteer librarian.


Marriage and Chicken Bones

Dr. M., the veterinarian who has agreed to do any future heart surgery I might need, became a Mrs. last Sunday. I'm sure all the readers of this publication join me in wishing the new couple happiness.

Dr. M., now that you have all that wedding stuff out of the way and have had a week to adjust to being married, (isn't a week long enough to adjust to being married?) would you please try to find time to answer a serious question from the editor? “Is it really dangerous,” he asks, “to feed chicken bones to dogs?” Are chicken bones more dangerous than the wonderful items of road kill that the dogs like to bring home? One time Trusty had a chicken bone stuck cross-wise in his mouth; it didn't appear to be dangerous to him although he was certainly uncomfortable with it jammed in there.

Paula insists that chicken bones go into the landfill so that the dogs can't get to them. The other garbage goes into the chicken yard and, when we turn the chickens out to chase bugs and eat greens, the dogs go into the chicken yard to find old bones and other treasures. Most web sources say that chicken bones are dangerous, also. Are they correct, Dr. M.?


Incubation

Ting has decided to try motherhood, finally. She is four years old, middle-aged by chicken standards, and she has started setting on her nest. She was missing from evening chores on Wednesday so I started looking for her and found her on her nest. Her eggs were stretched out in a line with three eggs exposed on one side of her and four on the other.

I rescued seven exposed eggs, brought them to the house, and put them in the incubator alongside the turkey eggs that were already there. The remaining eight eggs I tucked under her a little better, a procedure which elicited growls and snarls one would expect to hear from from a Tyrannosaur.

Thursday morning Ting was off her nest, stomping around in the barn, snarling and attacking anything that moved. I gave her some grain, which she ate, but she wouldn't go back to her nest. Her eggs were again arranged in a line longer than she could possibly cover. Friday morning, though, she was on her nest again and had all her eggs covered.

Sunday morning, as this is written, she was still keeping them covered, generally, and not taking any long excursions from her nest. Will Ting make it to motherhood? Which will be first, Ting or the incubator? Life is exciting out here in the country.

Blanche and Blue, the hen turkeys, spent Thursday night on their nests. Blue has a nest behind the fire wood stack south of the barn and Blanche is nesting under a spruce tree. This is the first attempt at motherhood for both of them and I hope they will be successful. Unlike Guy, the hens are calm and docile.

There are three hen ducks, one of whom, the brown hen duck, has a nest under a pine tree near the barn. The other two are hiding their nests or not laying very often.


Precipitation, Finally

It was best described as precipitation and not rain because most of it was in the form of hail. Sunday night we received 0.7” of water, after it melted. The hail was mostly pea to marble size and did little damage; the Flowering Dogwood still has its flowers. Friday morning dawned with a small shower and rain predicted for the entire weekend. Saturday morning the gauge held 1.3” and Sunday morning 1.2”, all in the form of gentle drizzle.


More Fragrance

I thought it was the Russian Olives starting. Then I looked up and there, reaching for the sky, were clouds of Black Locust blossoms. The Honey Locusts have not yet bloomed.


Petroleum

Petroleum, like most commodities, is sold primarily in two different ways. There is the spot market, where crude is currently selling for $70 or more per barrel. On the spot market you buy it and then take it home with you. The other market is the contract or futures market. A futures contract is an agreement where the seller agrees to deliver a certain amount of oil at a future date at a specified price.

The strategic petroleum reserve, an enormous salt cavern down in Texas that is used as a storage tank for crude, is an example of a use of the futures market. The government doesn't buy crude for the strategic reserve on the spot market, it contracts with the oil companies for them to deliver so many barrels of oil to the reserve within the next year. The average price of the oil in the reserve is currently a little less than $28 per barrel.

When the President canceled deliveries to the strategic reserve, he allowed the oil companies to keep oil that they were contractually committed to deliver at the contract price and instead sell it on the spot market at over $70 per barrel. I couldn't find the average contract price for deliveries to the strategic reserve for this year, but I'll bet it was less than $40 per barrel. If so, that would mean that the oil companies are being given an opportunity to make an extra $30 or more per barrel.

If the President had decided to take oil out of the reserve and sell it, instead of canceling deliveries, the U.S. Treasury would then reap the difference between the contract price and the spot market price.

Aren't you glad the President is looking out for our interests?


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Farm News 04-23-06

Sunday morning, after chores, 60°


Monday Morning, After Chores

Suzette had more bunnies. I felt three in the box and decided to leave them alone for a few more days. Shotgun has three kittens: one black, one orange, and one calico. The duckies are still working on their shells. Three have hatched and four more are trying. Drusilla, a Golden Sebright bantam hen, started setting on her eggs yesterday. Chickens take three weeks to hatch.

What a nice Easter Sunday. Duckies hatching, baby bunnies, and kittens all on the same day. Back in the dust bowl days my uncle woke up on an Easter Sunday to find a hen with chicks, a cat with kittens, a sow with thirteen piglets, and a cow with twin heifer calves. Then it rained briefly that afternoon.


Incubation

Nine ducklings hatched from the fourteen eggs in the incubator, a hatch ratio that I can live with. If I had been more careful I might have hatched ten or twelve but no more; one egg was definitely infertile and another was damaged. Nine extra ducks will keep the grasshopper population under control. If I had left it up to the ducks to hatch and raise them there probably wouldn't be more than two or three.

None of the goose eggs have hatched and they are past due. Bebe goose is setting on two, and they have not yet hatched, either. Later this week I will take the eggs out of the incubator and empty Bebe's nest. Bebe and Beth will probably start laying again in a month or so and we can then try again.

Also on Saturday, I received a very excited telephone call from Starra announcing the hatch of a bantam chick. Natalia and Starra, with some help from their parents, are using the transparent top incubator with a dozen bantam eggs in it. Six or more of the eggs are pipped, so it looks like they will have some birds. That classroom incubator is just right for bantam eggs.

Saturday, 4/22, 26 turkey eggs went into the incubator in my office, alongside the goose eggs. The turkey nests now have five eggs left in each of them, enough to keep Blanche and Blue from realizing that their nests have been robbed. They will probably continue to lay until they have ten to fourteen eggs in the nest and then go broody.


Famous Dance Team Leaps Poop in Barnyard

[Have you used Wikipedia? In the first two paragraphs several words are underlined or in a different color. They are links to entries in Wikipedia.]

Bree and Caitlyn, two of my favorite girlfriends, came to inspect the baby ducks, bunnies, and kittens. After their inspection they spent quite a bit of time testing the new barn swing, an accidental invention.

The new barn swing is a 1¼”, rope about 15' long, tossed over a 4x4 beam above the ramp to the hayloft in the barn. The barn has 14' high walls, topped with trusses that then hold up the roof. The trusses are oriented north-south. Running east-west, atop the bottom, horizontal, portion of the trusses, is a 18' long 4”x4” timber. The rope is tossed over this timber, leaving about 7' of rope hanging down on each side of the timber. Both ends of the rope terminate in loops about 6” in diameter. Boards or sticks can be slipped between the loops, or feet can be inserted. When the rope is hanging at the westernmost practical position from the beam, the ends of the rope are about 1½” above the ramp. In the easternmost position the ends are about 4' above the ramp.

The girls can, with some difficulty, move the position on the beam from which the rope hangs, thus determining how far it hangs above the ramp. One of the fun games is to bounce down the ramp to the rope and then bounce up and grab it with hands and legs. The rope is simply tossed over the supporting beam, so if you grab only one end you land on your butt. It would leave me limping for a week but eight year olds find it hilarious.

Bree and Caitlyn are both members of a local prize-winning dance troupe. I figure that if either of them should break a leg falling off the swing, their parents would save money and be grateful. Broken bones are covered by health insurance but dance lessons are not, nor do broken bones require as many weekly trips to the city as do dance lessons.

Farm News 04-16-06

Sunday morning, after chores, 66°

Columbines are blooming



Bulletin

Easter Sunday began with two baby ducks hatched in the incubator and six more eggs 'pipped', i.e., the duckling has made the first hole in the egg shell. In the rabbitry Suzette produced a single baby overnight. Maybe she will have some more, I hope so.

Fragrance

It smells pretty good around here. The Koreanspice Viburnum is blooming and it is definitely the dominant scent, sweet with light musk. You can smell it way downwind, especially in the evening. In the orchard there are apples, crabs, pears, and plums blooming. South of that there are sarvis-tree and native plums. The honeybee population is still weak but there are many species of native bees working the flowers and delighted angle-wing butterflies move from blossom to blossom. Butterflies can get silly around flowers.

Daffodils, or the Narcissi, a genus of spring bulbs, are still blooming. The fragrance of each variety is different, some strong, some faint. Hyacinths are blooming in several places yet, including a bright yellow variety by the south deck that is very nice. I drove over several of the plants with the pickup when loading the piano for the grand-nieces but they seemed to survive.

The White Flowering Dogwood, High-bush Cranberries, and Arrow-wood Viburnum are ready to bloom in a week or two but they aren't fragrant. After the plum and Koreanspice Viburnum finish blooming the fragrance intensity eases to the point that males over the age of 50 can go for 30 seconds or more without thinking about sex.

Queen Isabella, the one of King Ferdinand of Spain and the sponsor of Columbus on his discovery America, was proud of the fact that she had bathed only twice in her life: once at her christening and once when she married Ferdinand. In those days people had real appreciation for fragrance, I guess. But why did she think it necessary to bathe for her wedding to Ferdinand?

When it smells this good it is time to put up the hummingbird feeders to feed the little monsters. Willy LaDuke, a fine fellow who died some years ago, kept hummingbird feeders up for many years. He also lived at the edge of an oak wood, a habitat hummers seem to like. His population grew to an amazing size. Feeding the hummers seems to definitely help increase the local population, as long as the feeding is consistent throughout the season. It also helps to have two or more feeders, with the feeders separated by buildings or dense plantings; otherwise, one male hummer will stake out his territory around the feeder and no other males can feed there. The more feeders you have, the more males.

This also produces an environment in which hummingbird fights are fairly commonplace. They seldom hurt each other, that not being the goal, but they do often provide some amazing aerial displays. They strike each other with their wings while in flight, making a sharp snapping sound. Slowed down by a factor of several orders of magnitude, it must be an incredible dance, more exotic than the wildest flights of Asian super-warriors.

If sunflower seeds are also available year round there will be a lot of male Cardinals eating them. The Cardinal guys are spending a lot of time making noise about where their territories begin and end. The females are busy laying eggs.

Speaking of Eggs, This is the 3rd Week of Incubation (or is this the 4th?)

Here they come! It's baby season! Baby bunnies, baby ducks, baby goslings, baby bantam chickens, and baby goats: they all will probably appear within the next moon cycle. Wednesday evening I put a nest box in for Suzette, a tri-colored, mid-size, lop-eared doe rabbit; she immediately started preparing for bunnies.

I've started talking to the goose eggs. Though not essential, it does help them learn to recognize and respond positively to a human voice. Camille Woodruff, an expert on turkeys, says, "There is some synchronization of hatch initiated by the hen talking to the eggs and the unhatched poults whistling to her and each other close to the 'due date'.”

As the hatch date approaches you can sometimes hear baby birds talking from inside their eggs. Ostriches seem to be able to tell how close an egg is to hatching by listening to the babies and then synchronize the hatch by moving advanced eggs to a cooler area where they develop more slowly.

The ducklings and goslings are due the day after Easter and another litter of rabbits is due a week after that. The baby goats are due the first week of May, I think. Shotgun, the mother cat, looks like she was due three weeks ago but hasn't produced anything yet.

Baby animals aren't the only new things appearing at this season. Hundreds of Green Ash, American Elm, and Mulberry seedlings are coming up everywhere except in the pasture, where the goats nibble them off as soon as they appear.

Lucy

Lucy goat had a yellow tag in her right ear when I purchased her. The tag read, “KS 4H 39606.” That tag was her 4H registration. A schoolchild registered Lucy with the 4H as part of her 4H project. Show judges, advisors, and other contestants all know that “KS 4H 39606” is the same goat she was last year. Now, she is Lucy. She has retired from 4H to become a very pleasant member of the barnyard family, so, today, I removed her yellow ear tag.

Lucy is about the most placid goat I have ever kept. She is very cautious but doesn't go crazy when startled. She has been going into the barn every evening for weeks, learning to jump up on the milk stand and behave herself. Still, every evening, she pauses at the door to the barn and carefully, slowly looks around. That sort of behavior is much more common in beef cattle than goats.

The saying is, “Milk makes nerves.”

Dairy animals tend to be much more nervous and flighty than meat animals. There are many exceptions, of course, but that is the general rule in cattle and goats. Lucy is half Boer, a meat goat, and half Nubian, a dairy goat. This will be the first year I milk her, but, from the looks of her udder and teats, she is going to be a nice producer and easy to milk. Maybe I'm lucky and have a goat which combines the best of her ancestry.

Potbelly was my first dairy goat. She did not have a pleasant, placid disposition, not in any way; her disposition always brought to mind in men the expression, “Nasty old bitch.” Nevertheless, I put up with her until she died of old age. Potbelly could convert a bushel of weeds into a gallon of milk and still thrive. Every morning and evening, nine months of the year, for twelve years, she produced a half gallon of milk. During the tenth month she tapered off to zero production. A person with four goats like that could almost afford to keep a teenage boy.

In the barn, at that time, there were two goat feeding stations: stalls with three solid wood sides equipped with a bucket of water, a bucket of grain, and a hay feeder. One morning a tiny kitten cam wobbling into Potbelly's feeding station, tail sticking straight up. Potbelly looked at it, stretched out her neck, and picked it up by the back of the neck. She turned to the side and neatly dropped the kitten into her water bucket. Nasty old bitch.

Queers

Whenever I tell someone that I think that sexual orientation is genetic, they usually respond with, “Then why hasn't homosexuality weeded itself out of the genome? They don't reproduce.”

I propose that some homosexual individuals are inevitable in a population that reproduces sexually, that sexual orientation is much more complex than simply possessing X orY chromosomes, and that the genetic expression which produces heterosexual orientation is also able to express homosexual orientation.

What is sexual orientation? Is it a simple straight line scale, from those who copulate only with the same sex to those who copulate only with their own sex? No, it's a lot more complex than that, even though we assume that we are talking about people who have only two sex chromosomes and that those chromosomes are intact.

In our genetically correct population about 1 in 5,000 people will have external sexual characteristics that do not match up with what appears to be their genetic makeup. To help simplify the argument I would like to ignore those people. Their lives are interesting and they show that the idea of a simple binary dimension doesn't work even for sexual characteristics. There are many more people, though, whose sexual orientation does not seem to match up with their X-Y makeup. There are far more than one in 5,000 whose sexual orientation is to mate with those who have the same number of X and Y chromosomes.

Why? What keeps their genetic structure in then human genome? Although I know many homosexuals who have children, I know even more who don't. I homosexuals' lower rate of reproduction was effective there would not be any homosexuals by this time. Instead, there are homosexual birds. The last common ancestor we had with the birds came before the dinosaurs.

Biology, the blind watchmaker, is a slippery thinker. The reason, of course, is that we humans always look for thinking, not that there is any thinker involved. Because every biological activity is the result of patching together the quickest solution out of the closest available parts, the results frequently contain unexpected consequences. If you have no expectations, or cognition, you certainly can't expect to avoid unexpected consequences.

In order to produce sexual reproduction, there had to be sex. Sex itself, the idea of male and female, is a hodge-podge slapped together of various things. The X and Y chromosome determination applies to many but far from all sexual organisms. Most of us monkeys use a system called SRY: there is a gene S something on the Y chromosome which determines our gender. Most other animals use a gene called UBE-1, which also resides on the Y chromosome, to determine their gender.

Oh, well. Regardless of how they determine their external sexual characteristics, a tremendous number, probably most of the mammals, have noticeable homosexual populations. The only reason I can see is that occasional homosexuality is the result of sexuality in general.

Farm News 04-09-06

Sunday morning, after chores, 44°

Ting Solicits Proposition

Ah, yes, bless her little heart, Ting has fan mail. In fact, it has grown to the volume that Ting now has her own email address: Ting@geezernet.com. She appreciates all mail although she is not always able to respond to every message. She collects all fan e-mails and saves them hoping to use them as part of her memoirs.

This week her mail included a request from a bunch of owl-huggers down in Texas that she come down to talk to their group about organizing to encourage better TV programming for poultry. Amazingly, they were willing to pay her travel expenses. Ting, of course, obviously wants to go, but all she would say was, “Oh, dear, that date corresponds with the Manhattan Poultry Show, which I shouldn't miss, but it seems such a noble cause. Oh, I'll have to sleep on it a few nights or I will have a frightful headache.”

If not her exact words, the above is at least a good paraphrase. Ting mangles English almost beyond comprehension and the editor attempts to straighten it out a bit. She says English is her second language but the truth is that she doesn't have a first language, yet.

It might appear wimpish to pander to an old chicken but it seems the easiest way to maintain peace, so I maintain her email address for her, read her mail to her (she says reading gives her a headache), and assist her in collecting it into her memoirs.

Let's hear it folks, three cheers for Ting and send her a fan letter. Make the old bat happy, if possible.

Whoops! The second week of incubation

I just discovered I accidentally turned off the power to the incubator sometime yesterday, probably more than 24 hours ago. Fourteen duck eggs and eight goose eggs are in their second week. I'll bet most of them survive the mistreatment. I sure hope they will.

The Garden

Broccoli, Cabbage, and Cauliflower plants are out. They have had a light frost but seem to be doing well. The onion plants look fine but something is chewing on the garlic. The geese are at the head of my list of suspects. I've been feeling sorry for them, shut up with the goats, and turned them out to frolic on the lawn. I think they have been sneaking into the garden when my back was turned and trimming some plants.

Last fall I set out some bulbs of some sort; so far I haven't been able to remember what they were. Whatever they were, whatever it is is eating them right down to the ground. The geese have been sentenced to confinement in quarters until late summer, and the nibbling seems to have stopped.

Last fall I filled a paper sandwich bag with seed heads from columbine and then scattered them along the edges of the path down to the pond. At least five plants have come up and are establishing. Those five plants will probably, in total, produce a sandwich bag of seed heads in two years, so, in two years, there will be twice as many seed heads being produced along the trail. At that point, mowing them occasionally can scatter the seed heads even farther back into the woods. Sometimes, planting things can yield compound interest at a high rate.

Dr. M Writes (because she is tired of thinking about the wedding)

Un canard: Vulpes Vulpes and Burl Ives

The fox went out on a chilly night; Prayed to the moon for to give him light.
Red foxes are actually not nocturnal. A healthy fox will hunt mice and voles during the day. Or, in the case of the fox that might be living underneath the deck at my parents’ house, sun himself in the backyard on a nice mound of woodchips. His hunting habits are unknown, but, I think he has fleas because I’ve seen him scratching. His worship habits are also unknown, but it would make sense for a woodland creature to pray to the moon for light.

Many a mile he had to go that night before he reached the town-o (town-o town-o)
Well, here in the exurbs, town consist of enormous Victorian houses that are either falling down or being turned into Bed and Breakfasts. The outlying parts, such as where my parents live, have plenty of “edge” habitats. The formation of a lawn creates a perfect edge, dense brush to hide in, with a vole rich lawn to have dinner. So my thought is that the fox is pretty happy not going that far.

He ran till he came to a great big pen, where the ducks and the geese were kept therein. A couple of you are going to grease my chin before I leave this town-o, town-o, town-o.
Penning fowl at night is a good way to keep them from marauding predators such as foxes, but also raccoons. I don’t know that since the house up the street that had geese was sold that anyone keeps water fowl around here. Also duck can be greasy. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten a goose, but goose fat has long been used for a light source in candles. The fox in our backyard has a pretty slick coat, so he may be living on the fat of the land as it were, but that fat is most likely coming from the garbage put out on Wednesdays.

He grabbed a grey goose by the neck, strung a duck across his back; he didn’t mind that quack, quack, quack and the legs all dangling down-o, down-o, down-o.
Canines actually rarely kill by ripping out the throat of their prey. Rather, they attack from behind, hamstring and eviscerate their prey. This is one reason why many communities have open season on dogs during hunting season. A pack of wild dogs is a dangerous group. Foxes don’t hunt in packs though, and I think (having met several mean geese, and plenty of very timid foxes) that the fox would more likely go for the eggs and skedaddle.

Well old Mother Flipper-Flapper jumped out of bed, ran to the window and threw out her head crying John John the grey goose is gone and the fox is on the town-o, town-o, town-o.
Ducks and geese certainly can make a commotion. But bully for Mother for being able to see a grey goose in the mouth of a red fox in the middle of the night. That’s some eyesight!

Well John he ran to the top of the hill, blew his horn both loud and shrill. The fox he said “better flee with my kill for they’ll soon be on my trail-o, trail-o, trail-o”.
There is a current controversy in England over banning fox hunting. Apparently the city folk think that it is cruel to hop on a horse, let loose the dogs, and trail an oversized furry cat like creature that can out-think a foxhound and a Warmblood horse in its sleep. In reality, preservation of hunting land preserves green space that everyone benefits from; even the city folk who visit the bed and breakfasts in town and come hike in our woods and look at our trees.

He ran till he came to his cozy den, there were the little ones –eight –nine –ten they cried “Daddy! Daddy! better go back again for it must be a mighty fine town-o, town-o, town-o”
Well the den that the fox has under my parents deck is probably pretty cozy. It’s nice and dry because the back yard drains very well. I am not sure about the little ones though. It is still a bit early in the New England spring to see kits.

Well the fox and his wife without any strife, cut up the goose with a carving knife. They never had such a supper in their life and the little ones chewed on the bones-o, bones-o, bones-o.
So, the fox hunted his supper, and brought it home to the missus as it were. Foxes are omnivorous, but, they lack opposable thumbs for the operation of tools though. The goose met an untimely demise (may have been deserved though, there was probably some little kid it had menaced) but had lived a pretty good life over there in town. And thems of us that eat meat oughta know where it comes from and what kind of life it lived before it came to our plate.

Weddings

Poor Dr. M. is tired of thinking about her upcoming wedding. I thought the hippies had solved that problem: don't have a wedding, just shack up. If you feel you need a document of some sort to prove you are married, if you wish to be in such a state, then let me know and I'll write something up for you. I am an ordained minister, despite being an atheist. Some people see this as oxymoronic but I don't have any problems with it at all. So, occasionally, I conduct weddings.

Marriage is a public contract: two people make an agreement with each other and proclaim the details of that agreement at some sort of public ceremony. That ceremony traditionally includes two people who act as the public representatives to the creation of the contract, and a person who is willing to certify that a significant number of citizens would think that all four participants knew what they are doing, by some sort of standard, though not necessarily every standard.

The basic message of a wedding ceremony is that the participants are asking the community to recognize and support their agreement. They say that this agreement is to lash the rest of their lives. Yet, when they feel they are unable to continue in the contract, they fail to ask the representatives of their community for assistance in resolving their difficulty. That seems very rude to me.

E-mail Subscribers: To subscribe, unsubscribe, contribute stories, complain or send a gift subscription, send an email to FarmNews@GeezerNet.com . The editor reserves the right to steal ideas submitted, rewrite submissions, and sign false names to them whenever it strikes his fancy to do so.

Please address fan mail for Ting to Ting@Geezernet.com.

Farm News 04-02-06

Sunday morning, after chores, 62°
0.4” rain last night

Ting Lays

I discovered a nest hidden in a corner in the barn. In it were eight duck eggs and four small white chicken eggs; Ting had been there! Those four eggs bring her total production for the year up to seven eggs. I also found the nest of one of the bantam hens, it contained 16 eggs.

Ting and the bantams, all of whom live in the barn, have access to all the high protein chicken feed they desire. The bantam hens will continue to lay an egg a day for months, except when they are busy raising babies. Ting is probably about finished laying for the year and she has no interest whatsoever in becoming a mother.

Ting likes to complain, attack humans, and talk about her life on stage. She and Ling, her sister, called themselves The Somerset Twins and dreamed up a career as entertainers. They were total phonies, of course, and never entertained anybody. Their 'singing' was terrible and they danced like they learned from cows. Generally, they had less talent than Paris Hilton and were flat chested to boot.

Ling decided to become a mother one year. She created two nests, laid some eggs in each, and then would sit on one nest for a while, then the other. This strategy failed to produce any chicks. Ling disappeared shortly after she gave up trying to be a mother and Ting went into mourning for a few hours.

Since Ling's disappearance Ting has been spending her days working on her memoirs (all lies), pecking ankles (mostly mine), and complaining. She complains about the food, the water, the other animals, the weather, the barn, and the grass in the yard. I have a telephone in the barn on which Ting daily tries to make long distance phone calls to 'darling Annick in Paris' or 'dear Malia in Honolulu.' I foiled these attempts to run up my phone bill by installing an old fashioned rotary dial phone that she can't operate.

Ting is a Polish Crested hen, a breed not known for long lives, but she seems to be one of those rare ones that lives almost forever. Phyllis, her great-grandmother, lived fourteen years, so I may be stuck with Ting for a long time.

Does anyone want a chicken?

Spring Garden Activity Starts

Paula planted potatoes this week. She hopes to plant beets, carrots, lettuce, and peas soon, too. We'll spread floating row cover, an extra light weight fabric, over everything we plant this early. The row cover helps protect from frosts and rabbits. A cottontail can eat a row of newly germinated peas in one night.

The garlic is looking lively, the rhubarb is showing green, and it's time to clear the asparagus beds. Paula set out onion plants this week. She prefers plants to bulblets for some reason I don't understand, but she does the work so there is no sense in arguing with her about it.

The peaches are blooming pink accents. The plums and cherries seem to be finished. There are still daffodils coming along. The daffodils on the south side of the house have finished blooming, but the ones that are in shady places are just coming out of the ground. One patch of hyacinths is finishing and another is about to show some color.

On Friday I noticed a fennel seedling, this is the ornamental fennel commonly called Bronze Fennel. I like it because it feeds the caterpillars of the Anise Swallowtail butterfly. If you have Bronze Fennel in the mid-west, you will probably have lots of Anise Swallowtail butterflies. The caterpillars are as neat as the butterflies, especially for kids. The caterpillars have great protective markings and appendages. Look them up, Papilion zelaicaon; the local butterflies have orange instead of white.

Fur Mites

Doctor's offices are dangerous places. The little bunnies picked up an infestation of fur mites, nasty little arachnids that cause the bunnies to lose the hair on their faces. The treatment is to sprinkle them with flea powder for cats every ten days for a while. They had their first treatment Friday.

Four Things

My youngest daughter writes a blog, also. Last week she wrote “Four Things,” a bunch of lists of her four favorite cities, vacation spots, restaurants, etc. Don't believe what she writes. For instance, under 'Four cities where I have lived', she includes Oskaloosa. She has never lived there, she was born in a cow pasture and lived in the country until she went away to college. She lived near Oskaloosa, but not in the town. Anyway, the idea looked to me like a perfect opportunity for ranting about something, so I decided to try it.

Four Restaurants I Like:

The above list is empty because I don't like restaurants. For breakfast I like oatmeal and for the rest of the day beans and rice will do. Food tastes best when cooked over a campfire and eaten outside.

Four Favorite Cities to Live In:

The above list is empty because I don't like living in a city. I lived in several cities for a while about 40 years ago and didn't like it at all.

Four Favorite Vacation Spots:

The above list is empty because I don't like going on vacations. Who's going to take care of the place while I'm gone, Ting? Why should I go someplace else when I have everything I need right here?

Four movies I could watch over and over:

The above list is empty because I don't care much for movies. I can clearly hear the actors talking but can seldom understand what they are saying. It's probably old age softening my brain.

Four Favorite TV Programs:

I'd rather read.

Four Jobs I Have Had:

Who wants to talk about work?

Four Favorite Dentists:

I have only one favorite dentist, and I hardly feel 'favorite' about him, especially when I receive a bill from him. I won't name him because his wife, who is also a dentist, might might misconstrue my favoritism to mean that I think he is a more competent professional than she.

Maybe I can think of some things to be positive about in the next week. I promise to try.

Cindy

A young woman I know, named Cindy, often said to me, “Boys don't kiss girls that drool.” Cindy drooled a lot. Cindy and her sister, Dotty, were coming home from school, Dotty driving. Through a series of rapidly occurring mishaps they hit a bridge abutment; Dotty was bruised up some and Cindy (whose seat belt wasn't fastened) went through the windshield and hit her head against the bridge. She was 15 at that time.

Her face was scarred up some but she didn't lose any arms or legs. Her brain, though, was a mess. After the accident she had enough control in one hand to operate an electric wheel chair, so she could get around fairly well. The right side of her face was paralyzed and drooped like the face of a person who had had a stroke. Her speech was slurred and slow but if you listened you could generally figure out what she was saying.

Cindy said, “I can handle wearing a diaper for the rest of my life, but I hate being retarded, now.” She wasn't retarded, really. Most of her brain worked fine; it was the parts that connected what she was thinking to her body, including her speech; they didn't connect correctly. She couldn't put on makeup, pull up her panties, or drive to the drugstore, but she sure could want to do those things.

There is no nice ending to this story. Cindy graduated from high school and moved into a nursing home with a lot of senior citizens. She still lives there. She's a nice woman, but you might not understand what she says.

This article might be out of character for Farm News but it is a story I have wanted to tell. It's true, except for the name. And the point is, Cindy wasn't wearing her seat belt. She didn't die but many of us would think that she has a 'fate worse than death'. Now, she has no choice; she is unable to kill herself and is in an institution that has a legal responsibility to protect her. Thus, to young people, I say, “Wear a seat belt: it saves many from death, and it saves many, many more from a 'fate worse than death'.”

Is the preceding punctuation correct? Looks intelligible to me, which should be enough.