Catching Up

 

I guess I have a lot of catching up to do. To start with, all of us have been battling the cold that never leaves. I thought it was supposed to be 7 days from start to finish. It has now been more than 21 and counting.

To add to my distress, I caught some kind of chicken thing from cleaning out the coop without a mask. Who knew? Now that we have 10 chickens, there is a lot to clean and I guess a lot more pathogens (or whatever they are). Take it from me: wear a mask. The cold was irritating; the chicken germs were toxic. I was pretty darned sick and I still had to stagger out to minister to my flock.

 

 

Speaking of the flock, there is more to dumb Dora than meets the eye. Or less, actually.  She has lost almost all her neck feathers and most of her tail feathers. I felt really, really sorry for her since I thought that the other chickens were picking on her. Nope. She was hell on wheels going for the seed and the others kind of gang up on her to keep her out. So she is now not only too dumb to find the coop but scrawny and ugly as well.

The egg production is down as we head into winter. Everything changes with the seasons. It is part of the continuing fascination of a farm. Grass stops growing, it starts raining, and it gets colder. When I lived in Washington, or even Prescott, these were changes that barely impacted me. Now, this means that our source of raw milk is compromised. The organic  dairy lets its milk cows ‘rest’ for 2 months before introducing them to the bull. So what do we do in the meantime?

I wasn’t too keen on raw milk to begin with and we had a scare here in New Zealand with one dairy being closed down after making its customers ill. I feel better overall but since the raw milk directive came at the same time that I finally had my tooth pulled and got rid of the ‘massive’ infection, who can tell which (if either) is the determining factor. But I don’t want to go back to store bought milk. I am sure that that is not a good option. Perhaps Dan can strike a deal with the dairy farmer. We’ll see.

There is one winter change that I am looking forward to. I get a heat pump installed in my room this week. I can’t wait. It doesn’t actually get too cold (compared to North Dakota) but it is very damp which makes life a little less pleasant. So with the heat pump organized, I can settle in to do some of my indoor chores. Or not.