Navi needs to relax!

On By stefrobrtsIn navi, pets1 Comment

Yesterday when I came home for lunch, Navi absolutely could NOT sit still. She was a constant blur of activity, going from begging to looking out the window to playing with toys and back to begging – around and around and around the living room. Every few seconds she was back with her paws on me, and I’d gently push her back to the ground, and she’d do the circuit and come back again. So after lunch I took them all out in the rain for a run around the field. She ran and dug holes and played hard. Then I rinsed her off with the hose and brought everyone back in, where she raced around and dried herself off on the furniture while I chased her around with a towel!

After all that she STILL wasn’t settling down. I grabbed my favorite training book, and it recommended starting a session with getting connected with your dog, doing something like a massage. Barclay never cared for it, but I thought, what the heck, let’s try it.

So I sat on the floor and she was SO EXCITED she literally jumped on me, licking all over, almost lick-nibbling at my nose, just going nuts. I started petting her, but she couldn’t sit still for that, and she ran off to do something else, but after a minute she came back and let me pet her some more, then she ran away again. She kept doing this, but I quickly noticed her time away was getting shorter, and the time she stayed with me was getting longer. I kept petting her, and running my hands over her legs, giving her a shoulder rub, things I don’t normally do when just petting. She was really enjoying it, and soon she chose to stay there with me and get petted.

As she was starting to enjoy the petting, the frantic look on her face started to go away. She started to relax. Her tongue wasn’t hanging out as far, her mouth wasn’t pulled as far back, her eyes started to soften. She started to make eye contact more. It really was an amazing transformation.

Once she was totally back in her head, we did a little work with treats and some self-control exercises – Doggie Zen, and Leave It. Very short work, then some more petting, and then she was able to settle down and relax. What an amazing difference some one-on-one time can make 🙂

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Chickens in the garden

On By stefrobrtsIn chickens, garden2 Comments

Last year I planted winter crops, and they got killed by a hard frost we got early in the winter, and in the rain and cold and frost I just didn’t have the umph to go out and clean everything up like I should have. I did clean up a bit and fill the compost bins, but there were still some old squash and whatnot laying around, and of course all the frost killed winter veg. So today I took the cleanup crew out there.

Something has been digging up my carrots and eating them (bunnies?) and there’s nothing really left out there except the sage, and a little sprig of rosemary that refuses to grow into a bush. So I let the girls have at it. I’m going to clean up all the weeds and lay down some fresh chicken poo from the coop, then cover that up and let it sit so the garden will be ready to plant in May.

Beautiful, my fat and friendly old hen, enjoys the selection of greens and bugs available 🙂

While the roo watches for hawks, the girls are all ‘tails up’ looking for goodies. Keep scratchin’, girls!

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Lost Dog

On By stefrobrtsIn petsLeave a comment

Yesterday afternoon I was in the kitchen, and I glanced out the window and saw a black dog coming up from the neighbor’s driveway (this is down across the street, about 300 ft away). I knew that neighbor has yellow labs, so it wasn’t his dog. As I watched the dog got up on the street and started zig-zagging around, and as cars drove by he’d hopefully run towards them. Clearly this dog was lost and didn’t know what to do. Sometimes you see dogs that confidently go exploring, and their owners seem to have no problem with that (country folks!) but this wasn’t one of those.

I grabbed a coat and shoes and hurried down to the road as he was heading towards where the main road for our neighborhood meets the busy street at the bottom of the hill (where he was). I called and clapped and whistled, and the dog looked at me and kept going with a determined look. I hurried down there but by the time I got to the road he was gone. I called Dave and told him about it. I went online and looked for lost dog reports but couldn’t find any.

A couple hours later Dave and I were heading into town, and about a mile from the house I saw a black speck on the road far ahead, so we went that way and sure enough, it was the dog. Now I got a better look, she was a black/blue heeler. She had two collars, but no visible tags. I got out of the car and tried to go to her, but she was scared. Her tail was between her legs, and she looked at me like she wanted to come, but it was just too scary. I couldn’t get within 15 feet of her and she’d turn and run. We spent a bit of time trying to get closer to her. Unfortunately we had no food with us, and no leash to put her on if we did get close, and we were far enough from home that if we’d gone back to get food and a leash I doubt we’d be lucky enough to find her again. Finally we had to give up and continue on. She continued trotting down the street, a black dog heading off into the black, rainy night.

I hope she spent the night safe in someone’s yard. Unless she decided to trust someone, I don’t think anyone is going to catch her unless she corners herself in a fenced area or get’s too tired to run. Poor dog. I thought about her all night. I would be devastated if I lost one of my dogs. I think they are all friendly enough they would go to a stranger if one tried to help them. I sure hope so. I would hate to know someone was so close to rescuing them, but just couldn’t get near.

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The Chicken Eater

On By stefrobrtsIn chickens, photography1 Comment

Well, there’s the neighborhood hawk, hanging out on one of the fenceposts just a short distance from the chicken coop. I think this is a juvenile, because his tail is banded, not red. I would have chased him away, but he looked pretty cold out there, sitting in the rain, watching for field mice. The chickens were safe because they’d already seen him and gone inside their coop. He’s probably about 50 ft from the bottom fence of the chicken yard. I saw him from the kitchen window and got this nice shot of him. After about half an hour he swooped out to the pasture but came back to the post a few minutes later empty handed. It’s got to be tough to be a hawk this time of year. I have a great fondness for all birds, they are just doing their thing, being birds, and hawks are so beautiful, I wish he wouldn’t eat the chickens, but I can’t hold it against him either.

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Snow Day? Not yet…

On By stefrobrtsIn Uncategorized3 Comments

The weather people have been talking about a snow storm coming all week. They were calling for 12 inches (which would be pretty unusual) but the latest report sounds like we’ll just get a dusting. Since there’s currently no sign of snow – or even rain – I took the opportunity to spend a bit of time photographing the pooches having their daily play session.

First off, a kestrel came and landed in the tree right by the yard where we were playing. This is the best shot I could get of him. They are lovely birds, and I’ve seen them munching on big grasshoppers and the like. Although they are predators, they are much too small to bother the chickens!

While I was at the bottom of the hill photographing the kestrel, the dog started getting rowdy, and since they were on top of the hill, I had a nice doggie-eye-level view to photograph their antics – without having to lay down on the grass 🙂

It all started with a game of ‘who’s got the tennis ball’
And the chase was on!
Soon the ball was forgotten
Today was pick on Jack day! Sometimes it’s pick on Navi day, so it’s all fair.
It’s hard to keep up with all the action, so I put the camera on ‘Sport’ mode and just let it click away.  
Sometimes I got this.

And then I got lucky and got this!
But it was all in good fun, and when they were done they shook it off.
Suddenly the air was filled with the sound of a lonely coyote howling, echoing around our little hollow. All the dogs stopped playing and stood still to listen. It didn’t sound very far away to me! That’s when I decided it was time to come back inside for a bit!
That was our fun pre-snow day. Now we just have to wait and see if we get any of the white stuff tomorrow.

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SparkPeople

On By stefrobrtsIn weight loss2 Comments

Probably my main goal for this year is to get my weight under control and get back in shape. I am exercising every day, and trying to eat right. Eating right is the hardest part, because I do a poor job of watching my portions, and guesstimating how many calories are in something. I went looking for help online, particularly for something to help me do a food journal, and I found SparkPeople.

SparkPeople is a free site dedicated to helping people lose weight. There is an excellent Daily Food Plan section, where they suggest a plan, and let you edit it and change it, and at the end of the day they give you a breakdown of how you did – did you eat enough carbs, enough protein, too much fat? All laid out in nice little pie charts. I logged all my food yesterday before dinner, and I was feeling guilty because I had snacked on a piece of bread with cream cheese and nutella. Not a great choice for snacking, but when I logged it and looked at my breakdown, it wasn’t exactly the end of the world either – in fact I ended the day right in the range I should have been for calories, but could have done better on the amount of fats (too much cheese). So it actually made me feel better, and get back on track instead of descending into one of those negative self-hate spirals that so often sabotages my diet plans!

SparkPeople also has an exercise plan section, where they suggest what exercises to do on what days. I’m going to use that for the first time tonight, but I have been walking on the treadmill every morning and I was able to log that as well. It seems like a very flexible system. And there are tons of other features to inspire and motivate and keep me on track.

With this new motivation, I took the big step of stepping on the scale. The number was about 30 higher than I was expecting. But instead of going off in the corner and crying, for the first time ever I felt more inclined to say ‘fine, let’s do this’! I’m ready to take it on – and take it off. I’ve had enough. I want to spend my summers out hiking and bicycling, my winters out snowshoeing, I want to ride horses, I want to be in shape and have balance and stamina and feel good and not feel tired all the time. I’m ready to do this. I’m doing it.

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Red Dead Redemption

On By stefrobrtsIn xbox2 Comments

I wanted this game from the first time I heard about it, and now that we’ve got it, I am completely hooked, addicted, and can’t wait to get my hands back on it from the moment I put it down (which is usually when Dave says ‘it’s 1AM and we have to work tomorrow – come to bed!’)

It’s a cowboy game, and I’ll admit, my favorite part is that you get to ride horses – a lot! It’s by the people who made Grand Theft Auto, and we really enjoyed those games, running around in a free world, doing whatever struck your interest. This one is the same. There are missions to do, usually presented by someone coming up and asking you to do something. It feels very natural. I’ve been rounding up cattle, chasing down rustlers, and breaking wild horses – too much fun! Your faithful steed (once he trusts you) comes when you whistle 🙂 But you have to be careful not to get horse-jacked while out wandering around in the wilderness!

The AI that controls the horses has led to a couple funny situations. In one mission, I was on a posse and dismounted and snuck up with the rest of the posse to peek over the rocks and see what the bad guys were doing, and at the bottom of the screen I see these two horse ears – I look behind me and there’s my faithful horse, following right along! On another mission I retrieved a lady’s stolen wagon, and brought it back to her, whistling for my horse to follow. When I got it back to her and got out of the wagon, she was about to give me my reward when my horse tried to go between the wagon and the horse pulling it and knocked it over, and so the lady instead ran off into the desert crying about how her wagon was destroyed! I love it when a game is so open that situations you would never expect happen!

Along with wandering around in the free form world, missions occasionally break into cinematic cut-scenes so pretty you’d think you were watching a movie. The graphics outside of the cut scenes are just as nice, it really feels like you’re controlling a movie (if this was a movie I’d probably give it an R for violence and language). Having been raised with video games from the time of PONG, it makes me wonder how much more realistic can they get?! This game is just immersive, to the point you feel like you’re living in a spaghetti western. You can play your character good and accumulate honor, or play him bad and end up with a bounty on your head, and the game is going to have different challenges depending on which way you play, so I can already see this game is going to keep me entertained for quite a long time. What more could a geek girl want? 🙂

When Dave plays games he always tries all the unexpected things and does stuff the game designers never intended. It will be great fun to see what he does with this one!

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Heritage Chicken for dinner

On By stefrobrtsIn chickens4 Comments

Well, last night I roasted that roo – low and slow, so as to make it as tender and juicy as possible. You know what? We didn’t like it. Didn’t really like it at all. Although I was prepared for it to be tougher, because I had been warned that the grocery store chicken is considered soft and spongy to people who are used to eating heritage birds, it was really tough. And I had been warned the flavor is a lot stronger. Well, it is strong, and different. It smelled great while cooking, but we ended up putting the leftovers in the freezer for stock. I think it will make great stock.

I’m glad I did this now, before I put in my chick order for the year. I’m just going to get Buff Orpington pullets (girls) to raise for egg layers to keep and to sell. I might also get some of the grocery store type chickens – Cornish Cross, and try raising them up. I don’t approve of the concept of chickens that grow to full size in 8 weeks, but that is what we’ve been conditioned to enjoy for the last 40+ years, so I guess if I want to raise my own meat that is what we will have to get. The good part is that they are ready to butcher in only 8 weeks.

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New Years Thoughts

On By stefrobrtsIn Uncategorized2 Comments

This has been a weird year. I wouldn’t call it bad, because any year you make it out of healthy and kickin’ is a good year! But it did start out with losing our dear Airstream camping friend Darol to cancer. That sucked, I still miss him whenever I think about my Airstream. A couple months later Alki took a sudden turn and we had to let her go. We knew it was coming, and we were grateful she had managed to survive almost three years since her cancer diagnosis, but it was still pretty sad. We still had Barclay and Jack, both young and healthy.

It was a penny-pinching year, with slow sales at the store and online. We kept our belts tight and tried to be as frugal as possible. That’s not much fun, but what can you do? I got better at using cheap cuts of meat I found in the bargain section at the market, learned to make my own beef and chicken stock, and cooked a lot of meals at home. We cut our eating out down until it become a rare occasion, which actually made it more special when we did decide to go out.

My only resolution last year was to get to the top of Silver Star Mountain, but we couldn’t even afford the gas to drive up to the trailhead – so maybe next year!

We had sheep visiting in the spring, but they didn’t stay too long because of the rain. I made a little money at the beginning of the year selling chickens, and raised quite a few more through the year, yet I ended up buying eggs this winter because my old chickens were slowing down laying, and my young chickens weren’t ready to start yet. I got to see the first of the buff/blue chicks feather out and was amazed by their colors, and so I am focusing on making more of those. I also brought home a GIANT incubator I picked up for free on CL. Still haven’t decided what to do with that.

Later in the year we were convinced to adopt another little dog who needed a home, and Navi joined our family. Her mom had been trying to talk me into taking her, but it was Navi herself who clinched the deal, sitting next to me in the grass at the dog park and rolling her head backwards to look at me, upside down – what a crazy ball of fun! I knew she was meant to be, despite my reluctance.

I made my best effort yet to have a successful garden, but the weather didn’t cooperate, and everyone in the area agreed it was a lousy year. No tomatoes for us! Lots of lettuce though. Even though it turned out to be a bummer year for the garden, I did take a canning and food preservation class. I not only learned to can and dehydrate foods, but I got to help teach classes and answer the county food safety line to help other people with their food preservation questions. At home I canned pickles and green tomato salsa (yum) and fresh peaches and pears in season.

Dave did a number of theater shows, and starred in two shows back to back, one of which I was assistant director for. It was fun to get involved in theater again, but it was nice to end the commitment and get back to a normal life too – just in time for the Christmas toy rush!

Here is hoping for a better year to come, and a happy New Year to all!

Chicken dinner!

On By stefrobrtsIn chickens3 Comments

Well, I decided to do the deed and butcher the extra rooster. I dispatched him quickly and humanely, and that was over in seconds. Then it took about an hour to clean him! The part you might think was bad (gutting) was actually no problem at all – getting all the feathers off was the part that took forever. I planned to scald and pluck, but I guess I scalded too long, and the skin tore, so then I proceeded to skin him, and that took a long time. Once I got most of the skin off I brought him inside and worked on finishing it up in the sink. I learned a couple tricks for next time – put paper towels down in the sink so the body doesn’t slide around while I’m working on it, and next time just cut off the wings, then quickly pluck them and throw them in with the rest of the bits for stock.

The end result – 2 1/2 lbs of fresh, farm-raised chicken. Big meaty legs and thighs, not much meat on the breast at all. This is how all chickens used to look before they developed chickens with breasts so big they can’t walk once they’re a couple months old. We’ll let it rest a few days and then find out if it was worth all the trouble.

Current count – 5 buff hens, 5 blue/buff hens, 1 blue/buff roo, 1 big blue roo

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