Chicken Shepherd

A new puppy brings so many new photo opps. Only one of her ears has straightened up so far, but it can take 4 to 6 months.


Today I took her out to the pasture with me to feed the 3 1/2 week old broiler chicks. When I set the first feeders out and birds started flocking to them, Abbie realized where they were supposed to be and started herding the stragglers over to the feeders. I only had to tell her once to stop herding them once they were at the feeders. Then she sat and watched them eat, and if one would wander away she would herd it back. So cute, and only 9 weeks old!

Abbie is definitely a girl puppy. When we took her for her shots, our vet offered her a corn chip. She ate it in 3 dainty bites out of his fingers. She's also a bit of a drama queen. If Ike attempts to play with her and even comes close to touching her, she rolls on her back and yelps as if he's just beat the tar out of her. He just rolls his eyes and looks at me as if to say, "Why did you bring this snotty little puppy home?"

She likes to play with dolls.

A Boy and His Dog

Rafe and Ike take a break after a hard afternoon of digging dirt and playing tractors.

Tell me Pyrenees aren't the best dogs ever.

These Three

I heart them






M, O & RH ~ the girls' 1st day of school '05

Abbie

Madeline really proved herself able to take on the responsibility of a dog with her hard work on her 4-H dog project this summer. But as well as Ike did, he's really my dog. Plus a Pyrenees is just never going to be competitive in agility events. She wanted a dog of her own.

So we told her that she could buy her own puppy. The rules were that she had to save up her money for not only the puppy but the shots and vet work as well, and Matt & I had to approve her choice of breed.

She's diligently saved her allowance and babysitting money all summer, even turning down a shopping trip offered by her Aunt Amy. And we let her keep $100 of her ribbon auction money. So it didn't take as long as I expected for her save up a pretty good chunk of cash.

Settling on a breed was difficult. We ruled out all small breeds immediately, since we already own a giant dog. Don't want anyone getting stepped on and crushed. It had to be a breed that would be both good at agility training, and good with the livestock on the farm. After several months of research the list was narrowed down to a collie or a German shepherd.

Then the question was whether to adopt a dog from a shelter or buy a puppy from a breeder. And it came down to the best interests of the farm. We just couldn't take a chance that we'd get a dog home from the shelter and it would take after the chickens or the cats or anything else. We felt that a puppy brought up with the livestock would be a better choice.

So we started looking for local GSD breeders, and found one about 45 minutes away. And he happened to have a litter of 8-week-old pups ready to go Sunday. Madeline was about $45 dollars short of his price, but Matt & I decided to advance her the difference so that she could have a few days of dedicated puppy training before school starts Thursday.

So after that long-winded introduction, meet Abbie...

Stan's Ferris Wheel

A fixture at the annual Cedar Valley Memories steam engine show is Stan's ferris wheel. Stan was a friend, mentor, and co-worker of Matt's. He was always tinkering with stuff out in his shop. An empty reel that had held electrical conduit sparked in him the idea of making this ferris wheel (the large red "wheels" on either side). He loved doing things that brought fun and joy to his grandkids and a lot of other kids as well. He is missed by many.

This Little Pig

Plans for catching up on housework and picking green beans went by the wayside tonight as soon as the girls ran in the house saying, "Sarah's got milk!". I went out with them to have a look, to find that she had pushed open a gate, crawled under the corn crib, and made herself a dirt nest under there to deliver in. A half dozen fresh eggs coaxed her out so that Matt could wire the gate shut. After many vigorous attempts to get that gate back open, she gave in and did it our way and nested in the cattle shed.

It's really cool to watch a sow giving birth when she's free to move around and build a nest. I'd only ever seen one birth in a crate. In between contractions Sarah would get up and fluff up her nest.


Then all of a sudden she'd flop down and push out a piglet.

She would also walk over and check on her already-born babies in between contractions. It's interesting to hear her "talk" to her babies. Just like cows have a special "moo" they use to talk to their calves, sows have a special grunt they use to talk to their piglets.

Our job was to keep the piglets out of her way while she was nesting and delivering. Matt quickly constructed a corner "creep" by screwing a couple of 6-foot boards across one corner and hanging a heat lamp overhead. As each one was delivered Matt snatched it up, cleared its mouth and nose, and placed it in the creep.

The labor team


A piglet, literally 30 seconds old


The piglets are unbelievably spunky. This one, only a couple of minutes old, is up, walking around, trying to climb stairs.


After about 2 1/2 hours of labor, we have 8 healthy piglets! More pictures to come, of course :)

Cedar Valley Memories

This past weekend was the 10th annual Cedar Valley Memories steam engine show, held just a few miles west of Osage. The show just gets better every year. It was a beautiful day to be outside walking around, enjoying the displays and demonstrations.

I love that these machines and implements are being preserved along with the know-how to use and maintain them, thanks to the many volunteers who work on this year-round. One thought kept running through my mind the whole day - with peak oil right around the corner, who knows but that these skills may be called upon again some day.

One of the most impressive demonstrations was the plowing with this goliath Reeves engine.



It pulled the plow like it was a toy wagon. Each set of blades was individually manned by pulling up a lever to lower the blades and pushing down the lever to raise the blades.



It cut thru the soil like butter. (And beautiful, black Iowa soil it is, too.)



For some reason, this turned out to be one of my favorite pictures of the day.



'Tis the season for steam engine shows. Zanne over at The Farmers Wife is reporting on one in Illinois.

Pssst, hey you, over here...

Could you bring just one more pail of corn? Aw, c'mon, we'll be your best friends. How about we give you five bucks? Bet your mom would bring us some. Here's an idea - let's play feed the cows, you go first! No?

A little spin on one of Rafe's favorite books, Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus

Here a Pig, There a Pig

Delivery of Sarah's next litter is nigh, so yesterday we moved her out of the love nest and into a deluxe birthing suite. She is literally in hog heaven what with all kinds of green things to eat, and part of the cattle shed all to herself.

This is all we saw of her after the move


Winston, bachelor once again


This is 4 of Sarah's first litter, almost all grown up.


Stay tuned for a birth story, within the next week or two!

Someday, when he knows better,

he's going to get Olivia for this...

Close Call

(Now that my ISP has restored FTP access, let the blogging resume.)

My cousin Tim, amongst other interesting things, is a pilot. One of his piloting jobs is crop dusting.

The aphids moved in on area soybean fields in the last couple of weeks, so the skies have been filled with planes and helicopters spraying insecticide. Tim was spraying in the area and I got the opportunity last Thursday to take some pictures.





Then on Saturday we were at Tim's parents picking sweetcorn. When we went back up to the house his mother met us and said, "Becky (Tim's wife) called and said a plane crashed but she's almost positive it's not Tim." Matt said, "We've got to get back to town, I may have to go to work."

Sure enough a large part of the town was without power. It was chaotic. The plane - identical to the one Tim was flying - crashed shortly after takeoff narrowly missing a Super 8 motel, a drive-in packed with suppertime customers, and someone's garage. It crashed through power lines, breaking off 2 poles, and then a willow tree before landing in someone's front yard.

Matt and the rest of the line crew worked until 1:30 in the morning before getting power restored to everyone except the drive-in. (Yes, an old-fashioned drive-in where you eat in your car. But the waitresses don't wear roller skates and poodle skirts anymore.) They couldn't disturb the crash site until after the investigator came, so Sunday noon they got clearance and worked all of Sunday afternoon also.

Taking away the plane. The cockpit is a burned out skeleton


The tree it ripped through. Can you imagine a plane dropping into your yard?


The Super 8 and the broken power pole next to it


The pilot was very lucky. Landing in the middle of town as he did, there were lots of people around that jumped in to pull him out of the plane before it burst into flames. He came away with a broken collarbone, a couple of crushed vertebrae, and chemical burns on his hands and face. It could have been so much worse, for him and for the people enjoying their supper at the drive-in. Close call, indeed.

The Best Thing You'll Ever Do With A Zucchini

There's a lovely website called 101 Cookbooks, by the equally lovely Heidi Swanson. This past spring she was so kind as to include a link on her site to our site, and that link sends quite a bit of web traffic our way.

Tonight I made the recipe she posted for Chocolate Zucchini Cupcakes. Oh wow. They're so good I can't even begin to describe it. You'll just have to go make them yourself.

I have visions of making hundreds of these things and storing them away in the freezer to get me through to zucchini season 2006. But there's another truckload of sweetcorn waiting to be frozen, a 5-gallon pail of pickling cucumbers from our garden waiting to be pickled, and a whole lotta green beans waiting to be picked and frozen. So I may have to settle for the 18 I made tonight, along with this superb chocolate zucchini cake.

Optimism

comes in boxes of 100

Hay, Round 2

We finished out our week of vacation last week with hay making. It's really a bit late for the second cutting, but the guy that cuts it for us had mechanical difficulties with his cutter and ended up buying a new one.

As soon as the guy that bales it for us got started, we got started hauling it home. The process goes like this: Matt spears a bale on the rear forks for weight. I'm pulling the hay rack (borrowed from my dad) behind the truck. He loads 4 bales onto the hay rack with the tractor, then spears a 6th bale on the front forks. We head for home, him following me because he can't see ahead or behind him very well with bales on the front and back.

The truck & hay rack


He stacked this batch up, and covered it with plastic tarps on Sunday. 41 bales in all - an excellent yield for a second cutting. (We got 46 bales on the first cutting.)

Corn Time

Friday night we picked corn at Aunt Veronica & Uncle Lyle's. Every year they plant sweet corn with their regular field corn planter - so this is one huge "patch" of corn - and generously allow friends and family to come and pick what they want.

The plan was to freeze it first thing Saturday morning, but hay making ended up taking precedence. As Matt & I drove in and out hauling hay bales back from the field Saturday afternoon, there was Olivia on the porch husking her little fingers to the bone. Without being asked, even!

She had the majority of it husked by the time we got started with it at 7:00 that night. Good thing - as it was, we didn't finish until midnight. I can't imagine what time it would have been if we'd had to shuck all the corn as well. She got her allowance doubled for the week for her efforts :)

Put 37 bags of corn in the freezer. Next weekend we'll do it again.