If you have been following the blog or my Facebook page, then you know that we have been working on various home remodeling projects here - including (but certainly not limited to) - replacing our white wall-to-wall carpet throughout the downstairs with porcelain wood-look plank tile. Downstairs includes our master bedroom. And once we had pulled up the old carpet, it was completely necessary to take the opportunity to repaint as well. The original walls were a mossy green - which I updated to a more muted bronze months ago. We started laying our tile in the bedroom at the beginning of July. I will be honest: I thought we would have been done with the entire project by now. But we had a bit of a setback in having purchased and used the wrong mortar for the job when starting out - resulting in having to take up and reset a lot of previously laid tile. And there is also the problem which will never go away: my choice of tile. Porcelain wood-look plank tile (6" x 24"): A few things you should know (that we did not know when we decided to use it.) First, porcelain is very hard and difficult to cut - a decent quality tile saw is absolutely imperative if you want to finish tiling with porcelain within a generation. Also - as we learned the very hard and tearful way following our wrong-mortar fiasco - the 24" sides mean that plank-style tile is always considered a large format tile - no matter how narrow the planks may be (purchase the appropriate mortar). Everything else is concerning the relative dimensions of the tiles. And I do mean relative. The tiles are not the same thickness. They are not the same overall size. They are not perfectly square - some curve significantly. They are not a consistent thickness throughout the tile. Many have a substantial bow to them and will not set flat on the floor (something you have to make up for with some creative mortar beds). All of this means that it is impossible to get a perfectly consistent grout line or a perfectly straight line on long runs of tile. The stuff is great if you start out with the idea in your head that you want a rather random and rustic look. (Fortunately, that's exactly what I wanted.) If not, you will surely lose your mind. We have officially finished the bedroom - which looks fantastic. No regrets! Even though it took at least six weeks longer than we had anticipated. We now have somewhere comfortable to sleep so that we can rest up and conquer the rest of the downstairs floors. We have begun laying out the tile for the remaining hallway and into the foyer. I am a little anxious about the incredibly long runs that have to happen from the front door to the back of the living room and we are hoping that enough planned randomness will compensate for less than perpendicular lines... Besides dark (black!) grout covers a multitude of sins. Now I have to stop talking about it and get to work - I hear Dave mixing a bucket of mortar as I type. Posted by AnitaHates wall-to-wall carpeting this much.
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Fences are expensive.And I mean really expensive. The next time you are driving down a country road and you see one of those cheap barbed-wire fences, remember that cheap is relative. Sure, you can pick up a roll of regular barbed-wire for around 60 cents a foot. But then you have to multiply whatever length you need by 4 or 5 depending on how many strands you are going to be using on the fence. Pretty quickly you can find yourself shelling out $3.00 per linear foot. Chances are, you won't be pulling barbed-wire for anything less than 100 feet at a time per side. Add in the cost of those beautiful wooden posts for corner and center braces at between $10 and $15 each and pick up some unsightly t-posts (just under $5 each) to drive in every 8 feet or so and you've got yourself an investment. Full disclosure: This is not at all something I learned today. I figured out the expensive part just a few months into our small farming adventure. However, it is something fresh on my mind today because Emily brought the above photo evidence of downed-fence to me a few minutes ago. To be fair, this particular stretch of fence was supposed to be temporary anyway. But it turns out that a lot of our temporary fixes end up in service a lot longer than planned. And, unfortunately, it simply is not time for a big fence project - the ticks are still alive and well, the temperatures are still in the 90s in the shade, and I have this totally rational fear of copperheads keeping me out of the woods right now. Besides, we have floor tile to finish. For now we will throw up some sort of emergency something to keep the donkeys from exploring all of Mayes County while we sleep at night. And we will be praying that Oklahoma storms get all of the fence-destroying business out of the way over the next few weeks and before we make repairs. Posted by AnitaKeeper of the ever-expanding to-do list. As I sit here at the laptop this afternoon, there are far too many tabs open in my browser at the moment. Email, Facebook, this blog, articles to read, t-shirt designs, photo albums, homeschool planners... It's all over the place. I have just as many lists of things to do and paperwork to go through and books to read scattered on the table next to the laptop. It does not seem possible that we will ever complete the various tasks before us... There is not enough time. There is not enough energy. There is not enough determination or concentration or motivation. Impossible. Yeah. I'm a little overwhelmed today. When things get overwhelming, I have to step back and look at what we HAVE accomplished rather than melting down over what still lies ahead. For my sanity. So what have we done this year so far? Here's a list of major accomplishments for 2019 in no particular order. 1. We got doors. |
DIY IN TEN EASY STEPSSTEP ONE: Decide that new project will be 'easy' and should not take 'much time'.
STEP TWO: Gather tools and supplies - most of which will be totally unnecessary. STEP THREE: Realize that we forgot half of what we needed to complete the project and go back out to gather more tools and more supplies. STEP FOUR: Begin project with an enormous amount of effort and struggle. STEP FIVE: Spend some time questioning whether or not this was such a good idea because we are completely incompetent. STEP SIX: Muster some determination and start again at Step Four. Results are the same - only more intense. STEP SEVEN: Consider setting everything on fire and moving into a full-service condo. STEP EIGHT: Realize that at least one of the tools or supplies is exactly the wrong tool or supply for the job. STEP NINE: Gather the proper and necessary tools and supplies and start over. STEP TEN: Easily complete the project in record time. |
We have laid tile before so we were pretty confident going into this last weekend. We were both slow to realize that something was wrong, however. I guess both of us were thinking that it had been a while and we were rusty at the mechanics of mortar and tile. I admit that I complained a lot more than Dave. Mostly I wanted to know why the pre-mixed mortar we were using had the consistency of hot toothpaste. I was not polite about it at all. It was sticky, messy, and impossible to spread with the trowel. It was on my shoes and in my hair... It made me cranky. But we used it anyway. A whole bucket of it... and then a little more.
It is the strangest thing to me that all winter long I see reminders on the news and social media to shelter your pets and other animals from the cold - yet when summer comes there is basically silence. Personally, I find it a lot easier to warm up than cool down... And my experience has taught me that a lot of my fur-covered or feathery companions have much the same problem.
Aside from breaking up ice in stock tanks and hauling around buckets when our hoses are frozen, winter is fairly easy around here. I am probably only able to type that out at the moment because it happens to be July, but I am going to go with it. Check back with me in December and see if I have changed my mind. We have never lost an animal to cold weather. As long as they have shelters with some deep (and actively composting) bedding, full bellies, and a few companions to snuggle with - they do just fine. I have heard otherwise. So much so that I was pretty shocked as a novice chicken owner to find my first Buff Orpington hens dust-bathing in the snow for the first time on a particularly frigid January morning.
It should not have been so surprising, I suppose, as Buff Orpingtons are a cold-hardy breed. Which is great! In winter. Summer, however, poses quite a few challenges for our extra fluffy and often broody hens.
I haven't had a moment to breathe, let alone blog, for the last couple of weeks. Still, the thought of empty blog space sitting out here on the internet haunts me and I feel compelled to sit and write something just to make the tiny bell inside my mind stop ringing for a while.
This is our fifth year here at LeChat Noir Farm in Salina, but we have never gotten around to most of the home improvement projects that were needed when we first moved in. We focused our energy on building a barn (and an apartment for our older boys) when we first arrived. Then we turned our attention to fences and shelters - as we were starting out with exactly zero and though we wanted to free-range the animals .. our neighbors probably would not have appreciated that much free-ranging going on.
Just as we reached the point of having enough in order to fix things that needed to be fixed in our own living space, Dave was laid off from his job in Tulsa. He moved away for work temporarily while looking for a new job close to home. Temporarily turned out to be two years. Which, I suppose in the grand scheme of things, is actually temporary - but hardly feels so to a mere mortal such as myself. Needless to say, everything was put on hold for those two years while the kids and I worked to just maintain the place mostly on our own. Improvement was out of the question.
As anyone who maintains a small farm knows, you cannot always keep animals just because they are cute. They need to serve some practical function as well. What can a flock of geese do for you?
The guardian goose.
There is a blog post or a YouTube video floating around out there somewhere that suggests keeping a single goose with your chicken flock to protect them from predators. I have never personally encountered the original source of this information, but I have read enough blogs and such to have encountered the reference repeatedly. A lot of our customers also come out to our place looking for a 'guardian goose' for their flock. They tell me that they read that they could raise a single gosling with their chickens and it will bond with the chickens and fight to defend them as part of its own flock.
I really hate to burst bubbles here, but it simply is not true. I will give the benefit of the doubt and say that individual animals have their quirks - and it is possible that someone somewhere ended up with a goose that seemed to do exactly what they are advertising. However, such a goose is an exception and, if he does indeed exist out there, he is in imminent danger.
In our experience, a single goose will not actually bond with chickens (or guineas or turkeys and so on) no matter how young the goose is when you bring him home. It is within the realm of possibility, though I am purely speculating here, that if a gosling were actually hatched by a chicken he would imprint on the chicken and, therefore, appear to have bonded with the other chickens. However, imprinting happens a lot earlier than a couple days later when you bring a gosling home from someone else's farm. Bonding is something else entirely. A goose bond is very strong and it is not handed out all willy-nilly to any other creature just because it happens to have wings. A goose will bond with another goose if another goose is available, but a lonely gander's second choice is... you. (Because if that gosling had been incubated and hatched by humans, chances are high that he imprinted on a human.) Sure, you may be able to isolate a goose to the point of him following your chickens around in desperation for company, but he is not going to stick his neck out (pun intended) to defend those chickens. Any such behavior is self-defense and nothing more.
And this is where the real problem comes in: A single goose cannot defend itself against a determined predator. A flock of geese work together to defend their territory - circling, honking, hissing, and snapping like a multi-headed monster. To the unwary predator, that is exactly what the flock is. It is no longer a scattering of meal-sized birds, but a single, immense, obnoxious, and potentially painful creature that is just not worth the trouble for a snack. If you are following me here, you can clearly see how one goose and a flock of chickens cannot produce the same effect.
Would you believe there is an update to the peacock story already?
After posting A TALE OF TWO PEACOCKS this morning, I went to the barn to collect some food for the guineas and.. I heard chirping.
Posted by Anita
Auntie to three new peachicks.
If you have only found us through our website and this blog, then you may not be aware that we have a pair of Indian Blue peafowl. They are not listed under 'Critters' on our page. They do not even get an honorable mention. There is a very good reason for that. You see, when we were putting our website together, we were not completely sure that we even had peafowl. There's a story here....
On the feeding of donkeys... and other creatures.
I am just going to jump right in and say it: We people tend to feed our animals too much. Maybe it is an American thing. I have no experience anywhere else. But it is a thing. That is not to say that I do not know people who follow their veterinarian's advice to the letter and measure out their dog's food with great care. The fact that I know anything at all about the details of how and when acquaintances feed their pets -- because they went out of their way to explain it to me as if it were a matter of importance -- tells me that this is something that is hard for them. Not hard for them to do, but hard for them to wrap their mind around.
I was the same once upon a time. I would read the suggested feeding amounts and schedules on the back of the dog food bag and scoff: "What? My dog eats a lot more than that!" Not that he should have, just that he did. As if that makes sense at all.
Of course, my own eating habits were much the same. I am pretty sure from the barrage of news headlines about Americans and obesity that I was not exceptional.
Then I moved to Oklahoma and bought a donkey. I recognize that the things that motivate me to self-improvement are often a little unusual. But caring for a donkey changed a lot about how I viewed diet and health.
Of course, my own eating habits were much the same. I am pretty sure from the barrage of news headlines about Americans and obesity that I was not exceptional.
Then I moved to Oklahoma and bought a donkey. I recognize that the things that motivate me to self-improvement are often a little unusual. But caring for a donkey changed a lot about how I viewed diet and health.
It does not matter how long we have been doing this, or how many times things go horribly wrong and we get through it. When we lose any animals, the heartbreak is the same. It means we are human, I tell the kids, We know by the pain we feel that we have lost none of our humanity along the way. And none of that reassurance in our humanity dulls the ache -- or quells the fear.
When I tell people that we inevitably lose some poultry each year to predators, I do not often see any surprise register on their faces. Honestly, I think I might be able to hear them thinking: "Sure. That's what happens when you insist on free-ranging your animals, you ding-bat." Sometimes my confession is followed up by their testimony (which confirms that my mind-reading skills are on target), "We will be keeping ours in a safe coop and run. So, no worries."
No worries. If only.
While it is true that we have a chicken missing periodically - the likely victim of a hungry hawk or a late morning fox on the prowl for a snack - most of our losses have not actually had anything to do with free-ranging. Nothing compares to the losses we have sustained inside safe enclosures. And I mean nothing compares - by any measure and not just quantity. The chicken who comes up missing at the mid-morning roll call does not compare to the discovery of an entire grow-out flock helplessly torn to bits. Waking up the morning after your safe enclosure was no longer safe is a punch in the gut.
The story of our first goats.
Our sudden and somewhat impulsive move to Oklahoma in December of 2013 was tumultuous and it took several months to even begin to be in a position to start acquiring poultry and livestock. Having said that, I realize that we were not entirely ready then and had we been more reasonable people we would have given ourselves a year or more to get settled in before throwing live animals into the mix. But with experience comes such wisdom - and we lacked both.
We also lacked patience. We had gone through a lot to get here and time was passing. Back then, we still worked on suburban time -- expecting things to happen in hours and days rather than months and even years like it does out here.
I had done my research. Long before the move I had poured over every goat book I could get my hands on. I spent hours watching YouTube videos and reading the best and worst blogs that offered goat advice and information. I had decided that we wanted to raise Kinder goats. They were a newly recognized breed - a hybrid of a Pygmy and Nubian - which promised to offer all the good things you get from a meat goat and a milk goat in a moderately-sized package. There was also the advantage of these goats being a fairly rare breed which would mean that we would be forced to take our time finding exactly the right goats at exactly the right time.
Or at least until May of 2014 - which was probably not exactly the right time. There happened to be a Craigslist ad for registered Kinder goats for sale within driving distance of us. What are the chances? It was like destiny. We made arrangements with the seller and rented a horse trailer to go pick up our goats of destiny.
At this point, even in retrospect, I cannot say with certainty that we had done anything regrettable regarding the purchase of our first livestock animals. We had: 1) Done our research, 2) Decided on a breed which would be well-suited to our needs and resources, 3) Committed to that breed, and 4) Decided to buy registered stock from a registered breeder.
We also lacked patience. We had gone through a lot to get here and time was passing. Back then, we still worked on suburban time -- expecting things to happen in hours and days rather than months and even years like it does out here.
I had done my research. Long before the move I had poured over every goat book I could get my hands on. I spent hours watching YouTube videos and reading the best and worst blogs that offered goat advice and information. I had decided that we wanted to raise Kinder goats. They were a newly recognized breed - a hybrid of a Pygmy and Nubian - which promised to offer all the good things you get from a meat goat and a milk goat in a moderately-sized package. There was also the advantage of these goats being a fairly rare breed which would mean that we would be forced to take our time finding exactly the right goats at exactly the right time.
Or at least until May of 2014 - which was probably not exactly the right time. There happened to be a Craigslist ad for registered Kinder goats for sale within driving distance of us. What are the chances? It was like destiny. We made arrangements with the seller and rented a horse trailer to go pick up our goats of destiny.
At this point, even in retrospect, I cannot say with certainty that we had done anything regrettable regarding the purchase of our first livestock animals. We had: 1) Done our research, 2) Decided on a breed which would be well-suited to our needs and resources, 3) Committed to that breed, and 4) Decided to buy registered stock from a registered breeder.
In the past when I have shared pictures of birds still inside our brooder boxes, I have gotten comments asking how I keep the brooder so clean. The short answer is: hard work and determination. However, there are a few things that make that hard work more effective in the long run which I will be sharing here today. Read on to learn more about the cleaning method that has made all the difference for us.
I am almost too tired to write this, but as I sit here watching more clouds roll in for the afternoon I feel the need for some catharsis. You may have heard about the extreme weather that has been pummeling the plains states for the last few weeks. Well, that's us.
One of the many tornadoes that touched down a couple of weeks ago even happened to touch down at our place - but, thankfully, it lacked motivation and only destroyed a lot of our trees and fences. Still, that and the ongoing tornado warnings and sirens and flash floods and closed roads and rising bodies of water and loss of life is more than enough to remind us that post-traumatic stress disorder is a real and lingering thing.
One of the many tornadoes that touched down a couple of weeks ago even happened to touch down at our place - but, thankfully, it lacked motivation and only destroyed a lot of our trees and fences. Still, that and the ongoing tornado warnings and sirens and flash floods and closed roads and rising bodies of water and loss of life is more than enough to remind us that post-traumatic stress disorder is a real and lingering thing.
It occurred to me for the first time this morning that all of this record-breaking severe weather might very well have been the catalyst for starting a new blog. Subconsciously, of course - as these things go. But surely after days of watching the radar screen and listening to damage reports made something go click in my head.
Regardless, it is not entirely the stress of dodging weather disaster every day that has exhausted me. It never is. What wears me down are the daily things. Usually they are little unforeseen difficulties that pile up until they become overwhelming.
Our grass is dying from excess water and our soil is leached. Extra food is needed for all of the animals, but keeping it from going moldy and growing toxins is a constant concern. Disease is more likely to spread in this kind of weather. Parasites proliferate. Small injuries become bigger ones as infection is harder to keep at bay, and nearly impossible to treat properly in muddy conditions.
Regardless, it is not entirely the stress of dodging weather disaster every day that has exhausted me. It never is. What wears me down are the daily things. Usually they are little unforeseen difficulties that pile up until they become overwhelming.
Our grass is dying from excess water and our soil is leached. Extra food is needed for all of the animals, but keeping it from going moldy and growing toxins is a constant concern. Disease is more likely to spread in this kind of weather. Parasites proliferate. Small injuries become bigger ones as infection is harder to keep at bay, and nearly impossible to treat properly in muddy conditions.