Birchtree Farm

About a month ago one of our hens was attacked by a hawk. I got out there before too much damage was done, and she spent the last few weeks in a crate in our living room next to the woodstove, living the good life. She healed fine on her own and started regrowing the feathers the hawk had ripped out of her neck. It is notable that the hawk picked the white hen, the only white hen we have. The rest are various shades of brown, grey, black, chestnut, etc. White seems to say "pick me! pick me!" to any predator passing by.

Anyway, on Saturday it was sunny and relatively mild, which is to say it was around 32 degrees, so I took her outside and put her back in with the rest of the chickens. No one really bothered her, except for the roosters of course, in their own "special" way. But she was not being harrassed that I could see. However, Sunday morning when I went to open the coop and feed them, she was up on a roost and her back had been picked completely bare of feathers and was a bit bloody. Apparently someone started in on the broken feathers on her back, and that was all it took. A white chicken shows any little bit of blood so easily and chickens love to pick at anything red. She is now back in the house, in the crate by the woodstove, and seems to enjoy it very much. A house chicken.

Meanwhile, it is snowing AGAIN. We are expected to get another 6-10 inches today. It is granular powder so it is not sticking to anything, including the ice under the snow. I was walking the dogs this morning and even though I knew the ice was there on the driveway, and was being careful, I still ended up flat on my back. It was the perfect slapstick fall in the best traditions of old vaudeville or Dick Van Dyke. It didn't even hurt, although it was quite surprising. I should have made a snow angel while I was down there - it was a perfect opportunity. Maybe next time.

We finally got our January thaw, even if it took until February to get here. Yesterday was a glorious 55 degrees. Everything is very squishy. It's impossible not to track mud into the house, but I'm not going to complain. I keep a towel by the door to wipe the dogs' paws.

Spring fever is catching now I think, and we are ready for winter to be over. I'm afraid we have a ways to go yet, but even though it's supposed to get colder over the next few days, it's not going to be the frigid temps we've had for the past month or more. The end of winter is in sight!

Link: http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2009/02/bowl-of-chocolates.html

I think everyone should read this article, and the ones it links to. We are so, so, so weight-obsessed in this country, that anyone not fitting the government BMI charts is automatically labeled "unhealthy" and if you are a celebrity, every pound you gain (or lose) is scrutinized and yakked about ad nauseum. No wonder eating disorders are so prevalent.

Please, enjoy your Valentine's Day yummies without guilt, or counting the calories, or thinking you have to "give up" something else to "make up" for eating them. Just enjoy them and be thankful.

...you are outside and the warm moist air rising up from behind the scarf wrapped around your face condenses and freezes on your eyelashes.

So, yes, it's been cold. Readings of -12F to -20F in the mornings have not been uncommon. I know, I know, there are places in the US that get much colder so I shouldn't complain. But after a certain point, can you really differentiate that much between -20F and -40F anyway? The water in the animals' buckets is still a solid mass of ice that has to be knocked out before more water can be poured in. Your fingers still burn from the cold even with heavy gloves on. And the drain pipes under the apartment are still frozen.

Which brings me to Operation Commode, Part II. The day after we got the toilet re-installed in the main bathroom, we had to get the shower back in usable shape. The panels for the tub/shower surround were not well installed, so they were loose, allowing water to get behind them. No, I didn't want to look and see what was behind them at this point. Yes, eventually everything will be gutted and rebuilt, but for now we just needed a shower. Ken found some tub/shower surround construction adhesive at the local hardware store and glued the panels back on where they were loose, and then duct taped everything for a couple days while the adhesive cured. So for 2-3 days we were taking showers surrounded by duct tape. I felt like those folks on Extreme Makeover Home Edition who end up getting a whole new house after they send in a video of their falling down/rotting away/decrepit living conditions. Hmmm... maybe Ty Pennington would like to come see our place? :-)

After the stuff cured however, we stripped off the tape, and caulked everything. It's good enough for now.

Speaking of now, it is snowing like crazy out there. They are predicting 12-20 inches of snow for our area by tomorrow. Ken went to work, but hopefully they will send everyone home early, as it's only supposed to get worse as the day goes on. This piece of equipment is going to get another good workout.

How did you spend your Martin Luther King Jr. Day? I'd be willing to bet it wasn't anything like ours. We awoke to find that the toilet in the bathroom wouldn't flush very well and it seemed that the problem was a frozen drain pipe somewhere under the house.

I'd better explain the house. The main house, built in 1930 or so, has a foundation, and there is a bathroom in the main house, but we have not been using it since it was in dire need of gutting and a total remodel. When the septic system was put in, the plumber who connected the house to the system noted that the floor under the toilet was all rotted, and so we opted to leave the toilet disconnected, and not use that bathroom.

The other part of the house was previously an attached garage, and was converted perhaps 20 years ago into an "in-law apartment". It does not have a foundation but sits on blocks, essentially. There's just a crawl space underneath (if you are really skinny). Where the main house and the apartment are connected there is the entryway/laundry area which also has crawl space underneath. The apartment actually has a bath and a half, and we have been using the full bath as our bathroom. The drain pipes for the apartment run from under the apartment, thence under the laundry room, and through the foundation of the main house into the cellar where the kitchen and main bathroom connect in and then the whole thing runs through the foundation again and out to the septic.

The problem is under the apartment and laundry area. I'll just say it's not pretty and whoever built the place had no idea what they were doing with regard to plumbing, not to mention other things, but those are topics for another time.

So basically things froze up at a certain spot, and both bathrooms in the apartment were affected. We did manage to get the full bath working again, as it would drain veeeerrrry sloooowly, so we kept pouring buckets of hot water in the toilet and waiting for it to drain and repeating as it gradually drained quicker and quicker until it was basically back to normal. But now it's evening, and it's getting colder again, and we're back to a slow drain.

Ken has therefore been working all day on getting the bathroom in the main house functional. He started by tearing up the vinyl flooring where the toilet was. Then there was a layer of rotted plywood that had to come out. Under that was a layer of linoleum tile flooring, and under THAT was a layer of solid oak flooring, rotting of course. But he finally got down to the original board subfloor. They aren't pretty either, but at this point, he has cut a piece of 3/4 inch plywood to fit the space and that should provide enough stability, once screwed into the floor joists, so the toilet can sit without rocking. Eventually it's all going to be re-done so it doesn't have to be perfect at this point. And since that bathroom drains into pipes inside the main house's foundation, they hopefully won't freeze. They haven't yet anyway.

So perhaps by the time we go to bed tonight, we'll have a working bathroom. One can hope!