Newfound Lake

This weekend we took Winter to Newfound Lake in New Hampshire. It is a very clear, pretty lake with a sandy bottom. There is a lot of beach front development, but the State wisely bought up a long strip for a state park, with a beach and trails. Chuck spent time in the area as a kid, so it was fun to bring our own child. She has not been to a lake before, at least not like this, and she had a pretty good time. She swam, dug in the sand, hiked, climbed, looked at ducks, ate ice cream and french fries, and patted the waves. The only negative in her view was the very thick coating of sunscreen mean old mommy made her wear. We also went to Sculptured Rocks, a glaciated mini-canyon where intrepid youth dive from the edge into the shockingly cold water that runs through it. Winter watched with rapt attention, hopefully not getting any ideas. After all the fun, she fell asleep in the car on the way home in 4 minutes and 30 seconds.

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The Wagon Ride

Winter would be happy if this went on for hours and hours and hours, but lame mama and dada usually tire out first.

Overheard

I stopped at our local gas station the other morning on the way to work. One of the cashiers has worked there for quite some time now. He appears to be in his 80s, thin and bearded, with notably long, long fingernails. Time dawdles at its own pace when he is on shift. When I entered the store, I noticed he had physically cornered the other cashier, a young woman of probably 19, with long dyed red hair. He was animatedly telling her a story of some sort, it seemed. She was unsmiling, and her eyes were shifting around almost frantically, desperate to be released from his attention. She was looking for something, anything, any excuse to flee. I wondered what could possibly be so awful that he was telling her. I stepped up to the counter with my items, and he turned to check me out. As he did so I could hear the last trailing line of his tale...

"And I haven't had stuffed peppers since!"

I knew better than to ask, but I would have loved to have heard the start of THAT story.

Winning the War on Water

Pretty much the first thing we did when we moved to the King Farm was begin to Wage the War on Water (Chuck is the four-star general in this effort; I am just a lowly private, but I do know how to run the sump pumps). During the first storms, we noticed water ran in little trickles right into the basement, straight through the foundation. This was no good. The first effort to abate the water situation involved digging up the entire back yard, with hopes of redirecting drainage away from the building. It would have worked, if not for mindbending incompetence on the part of the contractors, who blew up pipes and rammed the house with heavy machinery, so that now during storms the water poured in through the walls, instead of trickling, and also ran right down the bulkhead stairs. During a storm, we once pumped 8,800 gallons of water out of the basement. Many, MANY efforts later, the situation is vastly improved. One of the last remaining weak areas is around our porch- a car parking area was created sometime in the last 50 years- two layers of nice flat rock. Big rocks. Which Chuck has spent the last week moving and removing. We will have better drainage in the area, as well as an attractive treadstone walkway that will be easier to remove snow from in the winter. And hopefully, the porch will stop rotting. Winter thinks this is all pretty awesome, especially the big holes and dirt piles. She also thinks that pointing her finger and saying "dah?" is awesome, and that blueberries and wagon rides are, too.

The bee hive situation remains...enigmatic. A few weeks ago, I was quite certain the end of the hive was imminent. When I opened it up, there were some honeycombs, but no "brood", or bee larvae. That typically means there is no queen in the hive, and it is was too late in the season for me to get a new queen. I checked on it again this weekend. The first thing I noticed as I approached the hive was the scent of fresh beeswax. If there is a better smell in the world, I don't know what it is. They are indeed busy, filling combs with honey. There seemed like there were more bees than last time. The bees were coming and going from the front of the hive non-stop. They were building comb. Everything looked pretty good. And I could still find no evidence of a queen, or any brood. I will go in again in a month...stay tuned, for these are the Days of our Hives (sorry! but it really is soap-opera like, or even Shakespearean, what with all the intrigue!)

Happy Birthday, Winter!

Winter turned one on July 3. She got a few presents, played with them, ate pizza, and ate cake. That was quite a day, even for a big one-year-old, so then she took a nap. I hope all her birthdays are as happy.

Prodigal Chicken Returns

A few weeks ago, almost a month, in fact, we lost a chicken. We keep them penned because of the fox, but a couple of the cleverer ones manage to escape. We had seen her milling around the yard, scratching and pecking. And then- she vanished. I thought Chuck had gotten her back in the coop, but he hadn't, and at the nightly chicken count we counted 11 chickens, not the 12 we had. Our girl was gone. We got flashlights and circled the farm, searching barns, fields, and hedgerows. We were loathe to give up, but we finally had to- there was no sign of her. We assumed a fox or hawk had grabbed her so swiftly that she had not left behind the tell-tale poof of feathers that signals an attack.

Weeks passed. During those weeks, we had two more very bold fox attacks (no chickens killed either time, though!). Those attacks are just the ones we know about...we know this fox routinely cases the farm. Not to mention the many other predators haunting the woods and fields.

I went up to the coop Tuesday morning to look in on the chicks, who are now in a holding pen to get them used to life in the big house. As I approached the coop, a barred rock was loitering in the old sheep barn. I was surprised a hen had escaped, because I knew Chuck had left the coop locked down, which makes escape nearly impossible. Figuring she must have slipped out the coop door after him while he changed their water, I called to her "come on, chicky chicky chicky" and easily got her back in the coop. When she got inside she immediately headed for the feeder and proceeded to eat like she had not eaten for...oh, three or four weeks. It then dawned on me that her tail feathers looked pretty ratty, and I did not recall any chickens with ratty tailfeathers. It also occurred to me that she was leg banded, and our other leg banded barred rock was already pecking in the corner of the coop. I counted chickens. Twelve. Twelve chickens, not eleven. The barred in the barn was the prodigal chicken, returned.

I think I did an actual double take. It felt almost like I was looking at a ghost, or a resurrection chicken. I would have bet you $100 that the missing chicken was gone, eaten, and I am not a betting person. A chicken to survive alone in the fields, in an area with known fox, coyote, hawk, raccoon, skunk, and owls? For ALMOST A MONTH? Impossible. But the proof was still greedily gobbling food.

We think she must have gone broody; she knew where some eggs were stashed and sat on them until she was satisfied. The timing is exactly right. It is unlikely any chicks hatched because the eggs were probably too old- she certainly did not return with any. My admiration for this mothering instinct knows no bounds, but a foolish mission it was for a chicken in the wild!

After a little bit of ruffled feathers as she settled things with Manny and the head hens, it is as though she never left. If only she could talk; the tales she must have.

Babies

Spring is baby season. The other day as I rounded the corner on a walk, I came right on to a mama deer and her brand new baby. She alerted to me, but the baby was so focused on nursing it did not even know I was there, and they stayed put, so I got a good look. The fawn was covered in newborn spots, had impossibly spindly legs and tiny hooves, and enormous ears. I backed slowly away and cut across in another direction, feeling fortunate to have seen them. There are baby red squirrels darting across the driveway, and turkey hens herding gangly chicks through the fields. The barn swallows are diving at our heads whenever we go near the barns, in their seasonal frenzy of familial protection.

We have four baby chicks in the basement. They looked like this when they were five days old. They are now three and a half weeks old, and look almost like tiny chickens; they are mostly feathered out, but still have downy heads. The rate of growth on chicks is astounding. They are visibly larger at the end of the day than they were in the morning. They got most of their feathers over the course of three days. When they are about six weeks old they will move out of the basement, and will go into a pen in the coop. These are Americaunas, which will lay eggs with sky blue shells when they get bigger.

The goats are doing very well. They visited Winter's daycare a couple of weeks ago and got their photos in the local newspaper. They loved the visit, and the human kids loved the goats.

Winter visited the Montshire museum recently. The Montshire is a medium-sized science and nature museum. Chuck and I used to teach science classes to kids there, and probably will again, but I had not been there for a while. I knew there was a water park area, but I expected that Winter would just want to maybe paddle her feet in the water. I did not even pack a towel or change of clothes, not figuring I would need them. Winter took one look at the water area, and I knew immediately. She wanted that water. I turned around and headed back up to the gift shop to purchase the required swim diaper. I coated her in a gallon of sunscreen, and turned her loose. She played, and played, and played. And played. She played in the water for well over an hour, and would have stayed for much longer, but I knew she was so wet that a second coating of sunscreen was futile. She passed out in the car on the way home and slept the sleep of the happy summer child.

She also had ice cream for the first time recently. I think she has decided it is going to be a great summer.