You Capture - my 2009

Our You Capture assignment this time was a year review in photos.

SPRING

When our little bean decided it was time to be born, we found this between us and the hospital.


And it wasn't like we weren't already concerned about making it in time, with our previous child having been born in the car, or anything like that.

There is just nothing like walking a makeshift bridge across a raging, noisy torrent of icy cold water, and theft of a neighbor's vehicle to slow your contractions down. Perhaps it was just what I needed?


There was water everywhere.


SUMMER

Some of us thought about turning our basements into swimming pools, but others just thought all this water was tons of fun.


My basil grew like it has never grown before.


We built a super cool swingset.




Mmmmmm... sweet, juicy plums!


FALL




Oh, be still my heart, our hens began to lay perfect brown eggs!


This lovely lady was considering whether my camera might possibly be edible.






WINTER





Other than the birth of our daughter (and the poultry chaos) you might call our year boring. But it wasn't boring at all, it was free of things like television or busy schedules. Our year was quiet and full of blessings, and our year was simple and good!

So sorry, my cat

First, she dumped the laundry basket over.

She pulled the clothes out from under the cat, and then put some of it back.

And next...

Thoughtful gift

You will never, ever guess what my parents got me for Christmas. Not clothes, not cookware, not a fancy suitcase, not even a book or movie.

One Christmas my mom got my sisters and I nutcrackers. You know, the little metal tool you actually use to crack nuts open. Mom laughed and laughed at her own joke while we looked at her like she was crazy, although that really wasn't so unusual.

Anyway...

I know you'll never guess that I unwrapped a shiny, new, gleaming, expensive, sharp, forged steel head, unbreakable handle, lightweight, evenly balanced axe. It has the obligatory caution sticker on it with the usual blah, blah, approved eye protection, blah, blah, blade is sharp, keep from children... and guess what else it says on there? "Use cutting edge for cutting wood only."

Why on earth did I get an axe?

For cutting chicken heads off... obviously. "For cutting wood only", WHATever.

WARNING: There is a headless chicken picture posted below, so don't get all mad at me if things like that upset your delicate stomach, and you chose to keep reading anyway, even though I warned you. It's not a horrible amount of blood, but I'm just saying.

As much as I can, I try to put food that we grew and knew on our table. At times, I admit it can be rather entertaining. Getting this poultry project going was quite an experience. My main goal was to establish a flock of laying hens, but there were a number of roosters that had to be dispatched along the way. There is a good chance we will do meat chickens in the future, and I almost have my husband convinced we should try turkeys too.

This is me last summer, with a freshly beheaded rooster. Don't worry, he earned it, BIG time. I thought about letting the hens eat his testicles, but that just seemed wrong, even though "cruel and unusual punishment" could have been his middle name.


Do I look just a little bit too thrilled?

He was one mean son of a lady chicken.

Yes, I did chop his head off myself, and despite what you'll read below, he was small enough (and I was determined enough) that I did do it ALL by myself.

The axe I used last summer is double sided, with a four foot long wooden handle, and I swear if that thing weighs ten pounds, it weighs fifty. It is absolutely IMPOSSIBLE to hold a chicken's legs in one hand, while stretching it's neck out across a tree stump with a rake, and swing that hefty axe with the other hand. Believe me, I have tried. And even if you could do it, I don't know how on earth you could ever aim that thing properly to squarely hit your target.

The blade on the old axe is also curved, so unless the strike is made in exactly the right place, it won't take a chicken head clean off in one swing. Chickens have a lot of feathers which makes it hard to see where, exactly, to aim. So you see, even though the chicken would feel nothing after the first whack, it's chop, chop, chop... you get the idea. Lots of fun (not really).

So, besides being quite an ordeal, the axe swinging is a two handed job, which by default makes chicken slaughtering a two person job.

Actually there is a way around it, but my chicken slaughtering procedure isn't that streamlined yet.

That shiny axe, it was actually quite a thoughtful gift. Unfortunately, the blade on the new axe is only about five inches long.

Hmmmmm... I think I might return it for a machete.

Haircuts

Our boys got haircuts last week. Haircuts that are such an ordeal, we go super short with them.

One of these boys thinks he loves getting his hair cut, that is, until he is trapped there, stuck in the middle of it. Despite my best efforts, little bits of hair get in his eyes, and up his nose, and poke into his skin around his neck. It isn't long before he is fussing, and it isn't much later that it turns into full blown howling.

Once the result is more or less satisfactory, we vacuum the kid off, and into the tub he goes. A bubble bath can make almost anything better, and in a real hurry too.

What a handsome guy!


The other boy is so excited for his haircut that he rips off his shirt and pants, and laughs as he climbs up into the chair. A ticklish goofy kid plus a vibrating clippers is a bad mix. He giggles through the entire haircut. But his giggles are so wiggly that at some point I ask his Daddy to come and grab his head to hold it still for me. His giggling turns into deep belly laughing, so infectious that soon all of us are wiping tears off our faces.

What a stinker. It's all I can do to get the job done, and get that kid thrown into the tub with his brother.


Once upon a time, we used to take the clippers to one of our indoor cats twice a year, but don't even ask me about that!

January tomatoes

This couldn't possibly be from my garden.


Or could it?


If, in fact, these are from my garden, that would mean they have been sitting around for longer than three months.

Someone (alright, I admit it was me) put this basket full of tomatoes in my basement last fall, and kind of forgot about it. Well, not really forgot about it, but procrastinated sorting through them... until New Year's Day.


These pictures are fresh, and so are the tomatoes. Very special tomatoes.

Because I didn't store them properly, about half had bad spots and were sent away to the coop. The chicken joy was complete! I love watching them wipe their beaks after they enjoy a juicy feast. Betweeen the dog and those birds, almost nothing goes to waste around here. They even rob my compost heap.

It is January, and I am smiling because I have four window ledges full of almost-ripe tomatoes that I started from seed nearly a year ago. How satisfying!

This is what they looked like last September, at harvest time.


No wonder it's called the Long Keeper Tomato.

Winter dreaming

When the snow is deep and the days are cold and dreary, the garden porn starts arriving in my mailbox. Every year, it never fails.

Oh, the colors! Oh, the varieties!


Also, without fail, every year I dream while my garden sleeps through our long winter. I dream of a perfect garden, without weeds or pests. I dream of earthworms and ladybugs. I dream of wet toes as I walk through the dewy grass in the morning, and bowls full of green peas and sweet, juicy raspberries.


I want to order one of everything in those catalogs, because this year, my garden will be perfect.

Heating the chicken

It's cold out tonight, really cold.

This egg was not out there too horribly long. But obviously it was long enough.


For some reason I had -20 in my head as the point at which I would put heat on in the coop. The weatherdudes say we're already at -25, and think we're headed to somewhere near -30 tonight. I was just out there, and it is almost -15 in the coop. So that is it, time for heat!

My husband helped me nail a heat lamp up with some wire staples, and it is now hanging very securely over the roost. My goal here is to NOT burn the barn down.

Once that was done I took my gloves off and started rubbing petroleum jelly into my two rooster's combs and wattles. It's supposed to help prevent freezer burn frostbite. I still had the hens to do, but after just those few minutes of bare skin exposed I could hardly move my fingers.

I ran back to the house.

My long underwear were missing, because I had to empty my bedroom closet.

This is the reason why.


Nice, don't you think?

A huge gash in the sewer pipe, which was letting a whole lot of very stinky air right into the wall between the bathroom and my bedroom closet... but usually only when I did laundry. But even that is often enough to be a real problem. Finally I had gotten everything emptied out of the closet so my husband could attack the wall. I'm just thrilled the problem was so obvious. It's now temporarily patched up with a bunch of caulking. Still stinky, but not as bad as it was before.

Like I said, my closet is empty... and my clothes (and honestly I really don't have much after being at home with these kiddos for almost five years) are now in three random locations around the house.

So I searched for awhile and eventually found them, the long Johns, and also grabbed my ski pants too. I now had three layers on my legs. My husband found me a pair of disposable nitrile gloves (like exam gloves).

Back out the door and to the barn, which at the moment is colder than my freezer, again.

I peeked in the coop door, and guess what? Not a single freezing frostbit bird of mine was anywhere even slightly near the heat lamp! Birdbrains!

Did you know that a tube of petroleum jelly gets awfully stiff at fifteen degrees below zero? Crazy weird that stuff is, it actually freezes at 100 to 113 degrees Fahrenheit. Rubber bands get really, really interesting at -80 Celsius, but that doesn't have anything even slightly to do with my farm, where I tend to measure temperature in Fahrenheit degrees.

Anyway... what a difference that thin layer of nitrile made on my hands. Too bad I couldn't coat the chickens combs and wattles with nitrile. But even if I could, they would probably just eat it. Birdbrains.

After greatly disturbing each hen to give it a petroleum jelly luxury frozen prairie spa treatment, I placed it on the roost right under the heat. It was amazing! They transformed from the grumpy, hunched up balls of poofed out feathers that they are in very cold weather. They stretched out their necks and looked all around, preened a few feathers, stretched their legs out one at a time, and then settled in.

By the time I was done I had a roost full of hens snuggled in side by side. The lucky ones were right below the heat lamp. Ah, so much better.

I ran back to the house again, hoping I don't wake up tonight to a barn bonfire and blackened chicken. Wish us luck.