Newbie

As Hannah has gotten older, she is more involved in her teenage social life and high school which means my volunteering with her has lessened in terms of time commitment.  While I will still of course, be her "big sister", it was time to find a new volunteer project since I have some extra time to give.  Thus I finally decided to volunteer with animals.  I have always shied away from the animal scene for a variety of reasons: the prospect of adopting all the animals I am volunteering with!  The heart wrenching stories of abuse.  The nutty people that unfortunately seem to populate a lot of animal rescue.  And so on.  However, I decided it was time to stop making excuses and at least try it.  So I decided to volunteer with Pasado's Safe Haven.  They are very close to where I live and they have the added benefit of having not just dogs and cats but all manner of farm animals.  At some point down the road, I will hopefully have an even bigger farmstead with more farm animals and I figured what better way to learn about proper care and what's involved than by volunteering.  

I went online and filled out the application form.  Me being me, I also felt the urge to peruse the animals that are up for adoption.  And there I found Newbie.  Newbie is a 14 pound black male turkey who was picked on by all the other much bigger turkeys and so took it upon himself to hop the fence and go live with the chickens instead.  I, of course, was instantly in love with him, poor fellow, for being the underdog and being picked on and bullied.  I have always wanted a turkey, don't ask me why, but had read that sometimes it's difficult to integrate turkeys into chicken flocks.  Newbie was the perfect match.  Since he chooses to live with chickens and is very submissive and docile according to his bio, I figured he would fit in perfectly at my place.  The turkey caretaker came out and did a home check and agreed I had plenty of room for Newbie and thought he would fit in well here.  

So yesterday I went for my three and a half hour orientation at Pasado's and then brought Newbie home.  Here he is, in all his turkey glory!

Gobble Gobble!

A close up of his face.  He has so much character.  I just love his snood and caruncles.

I put Newbie in the coop and I wish I had a video of the look on the chickens' faces!  They were horrified by that giant monstrosity!  They ran around clucking and chirping like well, chickens with their heads cut off!  Libby of course, being the head honcho, thought she should take a swing at Newbie in a misplaced attempt to keep her position on the top of the totem pole.  She quickly got the giant turkey smack down.  All Newbie had to do was stretch his wings and gobble at her and she was a goner.  Suitably chastised, they all went into the coop and huddled together on top of the nesting boxes.  It didn't take long for peace to reign and everyone to acknowledge that Newbie is now king of the coop.  The girls can't be that stressed because they continued laying without pause.  In order to help Newbie adjust, I brought him some fish skin from dinner last night, a tasty treat which they all love.  I also hollowed out the big orange pumpkin below.  Chickens love the innards of squash.

 Halloween gourds.

 

Unique pumpkins from Mt. Vernon.

 
I never foresaw the day when I would walk out my back door and say to myself, "Please god don't let the turkey be gobbling or the neighbors are going to complain!"  Newbie gobbles a lot and he gobbles loudly!  Listen:




To my relief, after their heads almost twisted off staring at Newbie, the dogs ignored the incessant gobbling and went back to their bones.  They don't seem too excited about Newbie.  I was afraid with him being as big as he is, they may see him more as a playmate than they do the chickens.  Instead, they went back to being twins while they gnawed on their bones:

I also seem to have acquired a beautiful black feral cat.  The dogs went ballistic chasing this poor kitty out from under my shed and up a tree.  I had to get their leashes and drag them back in so the cat could descend.  I would be quite happy to have a barn cat to keep the rodent population down around the chicken coop so I put some cat food and water out for the new Halloween kitty.  (Which will probably just attract rodents instead...)  He (she?) is very shy and won't let me near.  If I could catch him, he will be going to the vet for shots but so far I haven't caught sight of him again.  The farm continues to grow!

In closing, I would encourage everyone to check out Pasado's Safe Haven and consider making a contribution.  I was enormously impressed with the facilities, the organization, the way the money is spent and the care the animals receive.  Having had a chance to check it out myself, I can vouch for the fact that your money is much needed and well spent.  No doubt it's only a matter of time before I will be contributing more than just time and bringing another critter home!

Alaska

As promised, I have poached some of the great photos my mom took on their recent 3 week road trip to Alaska.  Since I wasn't there, I can't give a good itinerary of where these were taken but they are worth sharing.  Without further ado:

Spirit Bear.

Elusive and very rare, hence the obscured face.

Spirit Bears are not albino bears.  They are the result of a rare genetic combination that produces the white coat.  They have a special place in the culture of the Native Americans.  A good, short explanation of their significance can be found here.   Needless to say, due to their rarity, it's remarkable that my parents were so fortunate to have seen one.  They spoke with several native Alaskans have never seen one in their lifetime.

 A beautiful fox.  All the animals in Alaska seem to be slightly larger than their southern cousins and in excellent health.

Who can't smile when looking at an otter lounging on the water!

Majestic.

And also dangerous.  Lots of crevasses out there.

Kissing swans.

Perfect plumage for blending in.

The beauty of fall which comes much earlier in Alaska.  This was early September.

Mr. Moose

Caribou.  So stately.

Imagine the weight of those antlers!

I will post the remainder of the Alaska photos every so often.  Having heard the stories of the abundance of the wildlife as well as seen the photos and the majestic mountains, I foresee a trip to Alaska in my future!

Hustle and Bustle

It's been a little crazy around here lately.   Firstly, remember that mower I gloated about a few posts back?  The nice shiny green John Deere one?  It died.  Twice.  Despite the craigslist guy's best attempts, it does not function.  I have become much like the stereotypical weekend warrior, obsessed with my lawn...so you can imagine that this has thrown me into a tailspin.  I swear I can see the grass growing by the minute given this unprecedented weather we've been having.  So I finally sucked it up and went and bought a brand new, super duper John Deere which will mulch, is an automatic and has all the fancy doo hickeys on it.  It has yet to be delivered and you may see me out there in the pitch black mowing my lawn the first day it arrives!

Another bout of weed whacking took place last weekend.  While I didn't end up looking like a quadriplegic due to a semi-effective "technique" I discovered, it still took my forearms several days to recover.  However, the ditches in front of my driveway look fabulous, a fact I do not hesitate to point out to anyone unlucky enough to have to endure a trip to my house.  

I spent this past weekend on a huge project that I had been studiously ignoring every time I went into the back yard.  I have a large island which contains a huge, gorgeous holly tree, a dead cottonwood or two and some climbing something or other that had taken over, leaving a mass of tangled greenery that needed completely cleaned out.  This weekend, I finally gritted my teeth and threw myself into it.  I cleaned out the whole island and my dad came over Saturday with his trusty chainsaw and we chopped down the two cottonwoods and the climbing thingamajigger.  Despite a few days of hard labor, it looks fantastic and is now ready to be properly landscaped and planted.  Underneath that wild growth was an old post for a birdhouse so I duly went out and bought a new birdhouse for finches which I attached to the post.  A little more planning and planting and it will be a whole new view for me.

As I mentioned in my last post, Frannie was seeming awfully broody and I was sure she was about to lay any day.  It turns out my newly acquired chicken skills were correct!  The day after I posted, I discovered a gleaming white egg in the nest boxes.  Frannie is my only white egg layer (did you know you can tell the color of the egg a bird will lay by the color of their ears?!) so I knew it was her and I was thrilled to see one of my pullets "grow up".  Now that leaves Petunia to start earning her keep although she shows no sign of doing so and I harbor doubts as to whether she will ever lay.

The first Frannie egg!

Frannie is a white leghorn which, if you do your research, you will discover is the most common breed used for laying and now I know why.  Frannie is a laying machine.  Once she started, she didn't stop!  Whereas Libby misses every other day, Frannie will lay 6 days out of 7.  It's kind of amazing to look at such a small bird and think how many eggs she will produce in her lifetime.  So now I have eggs to spare and have been able to give some out to the many who have made egg requests.  Last weekend I went to an hour and a half seminar on "Winterizing Your Henhouse" which was held at the Issaquah Grange.  A very informative session that gave me lots of good ideas on keeping the ladies happy in the cold weather.

In the meantime, my two polar bears have been up to no good in the yard, burying their bones and helping me out by tilling my vegetable gardens so they can sleep in their holes in the cool, moist dirt.  Alas, they often appear at my door looking like this:

My nose is always this dirty mom.  I swear...

 Lola made me do it.

You can see in the above picture, the bark collar PB sometimes wears.  It has a small microphone in it and when he barks a short spray of citronella is released.  It provides immediate negative feedback and is not harmful to dogs.  However, they definitely hate the smell of citronella and when PB is nuisance barking as opposed to barking at something in particular, I put the collar on him.  It has worked wonders in putting an end to his attention seeking barking.

I discovered more suicidal frogs hiding under my hot tub cover last week.  Still traumatized by the squishing death of the first one, I gently removed this little fellow from the cover:

 You do not see me.  You do not see me.

Unfortunately, he hopped once which generated oodles of interest from the polar bears and Dexter:

Is he edible?

 It's a small miracle Dexter didn't fall on his face.

He moved!  He moved!

So while the farm has been keeping me fairly busy on my days off, I have still had some time to go enjoy the outdoor events that fall brings.  On Friday, my mom and I went up to Mt. Vernon to the tulip farm to get some bulbs and pick up some lovely fall decorations in their gift shop.  Then we stopped by Gordon's Skagit Farms and picked up some really unique pumpkins and some corn stalks for my front porch.  We went to this farm last year and were impressed by the unique varieties of pumpkins they had so we made it a point to go back this year.  

Today, I took Hannah to Bob's Corn, a small farm in Snohomish for some fun outdoor events.  We visited all the animals, took a hayride down to a 10 acre corn maze which we decided we could defeat in no time.  Ha.  Were we ever wrong.  It took us an hour and a half in the blazing sun, lost among the corn to finally find our way out!  And that was WITH a map.  We finally attached ourselves to a friendly family of four and between all of us we were able to figure it out.  Exhausted after our corn maze travails, and just like little mice, we wanted our cheese at the end so we got hot dogs and kettle corn before going pumpkin picking and choosing.  All in all a great fall day.  

More surgery is coming my way in November so I am trying to get done as much as possible before then.  This surgery will be a spinal surgery in which they are going to temporarily kill the nerves that lead from my pancreas to my spine so that even if I am in pain, I will not feel it.  I am very hopeful that this will finally give me some long term relief and the doctor feels confident that this surgery will be successful.  So the next few weeks will be filled with getting the farm and the animals ready for mom to have some down time before the holidays set in.  We hope everyone has been out enjoying this incredible weather and partaking in all the activities this time of the year brings.