blink.

monday-tuesday-wednesday-thursday-blink-monday-coA5Dand… it’s Monday.  Sue and I were just talking about how quickly time files. Days are fleeting in and of themselves, weeks and months melt away. It is amazing to me. Especially when we are trying to get anything accomplished. I know that there are scientific reason why time seems to speed up as you get older, but I can’t always wrap my mind around that. Makes my head hurt some days – yet it fascinates me. I like listening to pod casts about this interesting topic… if you want to explore along with me try Radio Lab: there’s one specific episode I’m thinking of called “Beyond Time” – I’ve given you the link there, also look into Krista Tippett’s show “On Being” – she interviews some pretty cool people who talk about the essence of time. I’m thinking specifically of physicist Brain Greene who said recently, in a conversation with Krista Tippett about “Re-imagining the Cosmos,” (hey! this took me a while to find again – so check it out.) “If you went by your senses, you would think that time is universal. [That] It ticks off the same rate for everyone, regardless of their motion or the gravity that they are experiencing. We know for a fact that that is not true. We all carry our own clock, and it ticks at a rate that is hugely dependent on those features of motion and gravity. So there’s a very long list of things that you would be completely misled by if you relied on your senses to understand how that feature of the world works.”  That sort of stuff blows my mind— I LOVE IT!  Anyway, here we are today, experiencing our own time, through the week, over the weekend, and *blink* we’re at Monday. So. What’s gone on? Continue reading

i don’t know why…

 

chicken surprised.jpg.500x490_q67_crop-smart_upscale-true…sometimes I really experience writer’s block – especially mid week – and I definitely don’t have any photos to share of anything new. So, what’s been going on since Monday? I  suppose we can do a bullet list of happenings.had

  • Monday evening, after our fun field-trip visitors, we took a look at Duck-Duck’s foot. At first glance it looked like maybe we were all done and we began to celebrate. Thought we could just let her take a nice bath, soak her little feet, and then let her out of solitary that night. We did all those things; she took a nice long bath, we soaked her feet in Epsom salts, but when we looked at her foot more closely after the soaking – we could see some more infection had come up. So Sue took a pair of tweezers to pull out the plug, and it just came out so beautifully. Popped right out like a cork! (I was going to put a photo here from someone else’s plug, but they are all a bit gross – so, if you’re really interested, you can look that up on your search engine of choice.)  We cleaned it out and wrapped it up for what may be the very last time.  Maybe tomorrow we’ll check it out and see how she’s faring.

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field trip!

IMG_2700For once, it’s not us going on a field trip, but a trio of friends who stopped by to visit the chickens and meet the goats, among others. Serena, along with her mother, Samantha, and her little brother, Colson, came to check out the farm. She brought Sue this amazing sign which you see at left and that is now hanging up on the kitchen fridge! She’s a budding young graphic designer. Anyway, we thought we’d share their visit with you. Continue reading

new (or nude) arrivals

blindersWe have four new-to-us chickens that we picked up today. Sex-links whose owner was trying to find them a less stressful home. They were raised with four Ameraucanas, but early on they had an “incident” which seems to have affected the temperament of the small flock. The owners had to use chicken “blinders” to keep them from picking on each other… it had gotten so bad that one almost died. But we think that the prolonged use of the blinders caused some stress on the chickens; they have been loosing their feathers for some time and just aren’t growing them back.  They had been receiving a wonderfully high protein diet, they had a really nice coop and attached run, they had been getting out to free range on the property several times a week, they were, and are still, laying well – but their feathers were just a horrible issue.
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dl update

rubber duckyWednesday = short day. Thought I’d give you the DL update. Mostly because we just had the duck in for a checkup and that’s on my mind. We’ve continued to let her take a bath in the tub; I haven’t been very good at taking any photos through this whole process, so you’ll have to make do with the rubber ducky in the bubbles. She’s becoming more and more relaxed while in the house and therefore, more and more animated in the bathtub. Next time maybe I’ll remember and take a video – it’s pretty fun! She is definitely making good progress, although there is still a bit of infection present. So, Sue cleaned the foot out and added more Prid to see if we can draw the rest out. We’ll give it a couple of days and look at it again. She still favors it a little, but not nearly as badly as before – she’s putting more and more weight on it as we go through the healing process.  Continue reading

gifts

I keep saying how wonderful our neighbors are… and its true! When Sue couldn’t walk at all, our neighbor – Monica – brought over her crutches for Sue to use. She even offered Sue the use of her support boot… but Sue had one from when she had her toe surgery. The crutches were so incredibly helpful for Sue, and I think helped save her sanity over the last week. She’s doing better, by the way, no crutches anymore, just in the boot.  Continue reading

desert dangers

Where we are located in the extreme southeast of Arizona, there are many natural predators and threats to our animals and ourselves. Just around us we have, Pumas, Bears, Javalina, Coyote. It’s something that I guess you get used to. I grew up with some of those as well, so sometimes I get lax in my vigilance. Sue had other types of threats in her life (you know – Navy), but I think she’s more aware of the dangers around here. Maybe aware isn’t the correct word, its more to front of her thoughts than with me. But there are two dangers that still unnerve me, and I’m always looking out for them. The biggest for me is Fire, the second is rattlesnakes. Continue reading

the DL

Bumblefoot 1Yes, I know – we’re a day late… and probably a dollar short, but we’ll have to wait and see on that one. Things are just a bit busy around here, we’ve been working on the Duck with bumblefoot.  We’ve discussed bumblefoot a number of months ago, but this is the first time we’ve ever had to treat one of the ducks. This isn’t a photo of her foot, but its almost exactly what it looked like prior to our working on it.  Before Sue left we had treated it by soaking in Epsom salts and then applying Prid to bring out the infection. It worked well and on Sunday we started to remove the infection that had been brought up. She hasn’t been able to go into the pond since we’re keeping her isolated, so when we worked on her yesterday, we decided to let her bathe in the tub first. Continue reading

trip report

30742329_585226521839834_1796423505240129536_n Armed to Farm class photo

Sue’s Class Photo

Sue is back (as of Sunday)! I conned her into writing a report on her trip, so the majority of today’s blog will be from her. I’m just uploading it and adding the photos she’s sending me. Sounds like she had a great time learning the in’s and out’s of the business. She met some great people, a couple of them live on the same street as my parents – that’s just amazing! There were 30 some people signed up for the class, but not everyone was able to attend. In addition to attending classes, they did go on some field trips and enjoyed a BBQ mixer on one of the farms.  Here’s her report: Continue reading