“When hinges creak in doorless chambers, and strange and frightening sounds echo through the halls. Whenever candle lights flicker where the air is deathly still — that is the time when ghosts are present, practicing their terror with ghoulish delight!” That is the beginning narration in Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion ride; did you recognize it? It wasn’t until I was in my 30’s that I started being able to go through the ride with my eyes open… I still have difficulties – it’s scary! Well, we don’t have much cause to be scared here, unless it has to do with rattle snakes, scorpions, or some spiders -the three scary s’s – but I thought I should at least try for a Halloween themed post today. Shall we take a quick tour of the halloween farm? “There are several prominent ghosts who have retired here from creepy old crypts all over the world. Actually, we have 999 happy haunts here — but there’s room for 1,000. Any volunteers? (Bwahahahaha) If you insist on lagging behind, you may not need to volunteer. And now, a carriage approaches to take you into the boundless realm of the supernatural.Take your loved ones by the hand, please, and kindly watch your step.” Continue reading
happy halloween
31 Wednesday Oct 2018
Posted in Uncategorized
As the days grow shorter and the egg production begins to decline, people have been asking, “Well, what else is there for you to do?” I think I say this a great deal in the blog – or I used to; there is never an end to what needs to be done on the farm. We do a heck of a lot of maintenance, all the time – but especially during the slower months. After the fall and winter maintenance, then comes Spring cleaning… just like in your home. 
I don’t know how you felt when you were a teenager and had just received your driver’s license, but when that happened for me, I was scared. I think I may have been an odd kid, but I really didn’t want to get my license. Yes, it was going to be good to be able to drive myself to choir, and youth group, and play rehearsals so my folks wouldn’t have to schlep me around all the time, but I was honestly afraid of driving. Don’t get me wrong, I was a fine driver, my dad taught me well and I had driven many things on the farm – drove a Caterpillar tractor starting at 9 – but not on public roads! You can hurt people!!!! Driving is a form of freedom, but it is also a major responsibility. I was scared, but I did have the courage to use my newly given freedom. I think maybe that fear made me a better driver; I certainly wasn’t cavalier about it —- until much later. Freedom is scary. 
The last few days we’ve been experiencing some of the wet, clear, cool stuff that falls down from the sky, i.e.: rain. We may have had more rain over the last few weeks than we had all Monsoon season. Please understand, I am not complaining. We will take the rain whenever we can get it. It saves on us watering, helps us to recharge the aquifer, and allows us to see how our rain catchments are working. It also helps to keep things a bit more green – even during the winter – and therefore, less of a fire hazard; however, it does make for more mowing/weed whacking work. 
The days are getting shorter and shorter as we get closer to the winter solstice. For those of you outside of Arizona, you may not know that we do not observe Daylight Savings Time, so we never change our clocks. That also means that for 1/2 of the year we have the same time as my folks, and our friends, in California. This November, California will be voting on whether to continue to adhere to Daylight Savings or not. If that passes, then we will always be an hour ahead of California. Interesting times. 
It has been a wicked long week and we are so glad it’s finally Friday! It seems like Monday was about a month ago. Rather than pick one thing to write on, like I did earlier this week, I thought I’d do one of those general run down things that we sometimes do to catch you up on what’s been happening around the farm. Shall we get started then? 
Yes indeed! I wasn’t here for the excitement , so the story you are about to hear is coming to you second hand. The names have not been changed to protect the innocent. Unfortunately, I left my laptop at work -again- so I am typing on my phone which has minimal formatting options; please bear with me. 
Just taking a quick minute to let you know that we’re only doing a short post tonight because we hope to be able to report on the righting of the RCW tomorrow. If the weather can hold after the morning, Tom will be here to help us out. I’ll be in Scottsdale most of the day, so I won’t be able to be part of the excitement- but hopefully everything will go well. For now, we’ll just leave you with the weekend egg report and call it ok.
The rain has come. It began as a mist coming over the mountains, then seemed to pick up in intensity during the morning hours; it has remained with us through out the day. There are long strings of minutes when it holds back, only to pour again as if making up for this lost time. I believe it has settled in and decided to stay the weekend. Monsoon season is over, now we must be into the fall rains. We always welcome the rain, but were hoping that it would have held off until tomorrow, or even just until later this evening, so that we could have had Tom come to help us right the RCW today. As it was, the day was too wet. 
It’s Wednesday, and that means it’s the short blog day. Which is kinda good because there really hasn’t been much time to do a whole heck of a lot. We can update you a little bit on the general goings on.
2) Bob went back to the vet today and was given a gold star for his healing progress. We are definitely starting to see new growth around the open wound areas. The Dr. took out all the remaining stitches and told Sue just to snip and remove any others that she came across. This is all very good news. We’ve also started weaning him off the sedation pills by 1/2 a pill at a time. When we ran out for a day, he just started to get out of control so we thought we’d begin to back him off slowly so he can remember what it’s like to be normal again. He’ll go back to the vet in a month and we hope his healing will be so much more progressed that we can let him free of the cone and off the leash. Yea, Bob!
to feel secure – and I’m pretty sure it was simply some type of stresser that kept them from regrowing their feathers. We may never know. All’s well that ends well.