Sat. May 30th... What a Beautiful Day We Had Today... and a wall is Up!!!

We went to Albany for Vick to grab more material for curtains here in the house. She wanted to make her own shear fabric curtains that the wind could ruffle as it comes into the rooms, kind of like we remember as kids. There is something so quaint and comfy about a pair of silk curtains blowing in a slight breeze in the evenings. I don’t know what it is, but it transports you back in life to a simpler time when you were young and never had a care in the world. Somehow for me, lying in bed with curtains furling gently as the breeze comes in through a window is about as calming as can be!

We had a bunch of hatchlings in the brooding house today. We have a ducky out of the incubator and into the brooding box this evening with another two to three ducks trying to hatch at this minute. We had two regular chickens, a Bantam and a Guinea fowl hatch also, with a few more on the way tonight. It’s actually hard to tell what I’ll find in the morning when I go out there, but it’s really fun to see them. I’d say we now have about 75 to 80 birds in that brooding house now, with more ready to come out of the shells. I believe we’re going to reload both of the incubators and hatch out a bunch more and sell them. Agway can’t keep up with the demand anymore..... They’re like a month or two behind with some breeds not available at all. We will caution anyone asking to buy chicks, that they need to be doing that as a labor of the love to have chickens, getting an egg or so occasionally, because they will never make money selling eggs, that’s for sure. The feed is outrageously priced and a chicken can really pack the pellets and scratch feed away, unless they can free range every day... even in the rain. If you don’t do everything right, you will probably be paying @5.00 a dozen after your initial equipment costs. Also, you can conceivably spend hundreds of dollars in cage materials and supplies, feeders, watering devices, etc., etc. Another thing we will tell them is that if they like to have nice flower beds or potted plants around the house, then you don’t want chickens. Our flower beds look like a mining town. Chickens have dug whole plants and shrubs completely out of the flower beds with their infernal digging and dusting. There is no way you can keep them out either. If you use fencing, they just fly over it... use anything to cover them and they tear it off.... Believe me... they are impossible if you want things nice and neat around you home. You better talk to other folks with chickens to see that I’m telling the gospel truth! Give it up unless you want to watch and hear chickens!

This afternoon when we returned from Albany, we went to work on the first wall of the Hospice Gift Shop and by dark we had it framed and standing, propped and bolted to the concrete. Tomorrow, the rear wall goes up and then we tie them into one another with the two ends. After we get to that point, we’ll have to stop and take stock of our lumber and see how we want to pursue the porch deck. I know we have the roof rafters, but I don’t really know if bought the porch flooring and framing materials. I don’t think the designer program I have gives that material list and I never even thought about that. No biggie! We’ll just call our resident sawyer, Mr. Ed Pooters, Jr. of Middle Field Lumber and request the necessary lumber when I know what it is. He just loves supplying the Cluckin’ “A” Critter Farm, LLC, with his lumber! Jeeze... we’re his best advertising tool.

Sat May 30th... The Sun has Returned to Warm the World Today... How Nice!

The Sun crested the ridge this morning sending streaks of vivid reds and pinks across the horizon in widening bands. I don’t know what ever happened to the old sailor’s adage of “Red at night, sailors delight; red in morning, sailor’s warning”. It doesn’t seem to hold true for us “land lubbers”, that’s for sure. Today will be a beautiful day. It’s a little breezy, cool and really bright. Perfect weather for getting out there and making some saw dust fly. (Hey Julie... I’m not lookin’ out the window anymore, but I’m still that lil’ boy!)

Just got off of Kevin’s rant (http://theblacksphere.blogspot.com/) where I was reading about our “clear and present danger” of mellonheads trying to change the constitution. They want to actually do away with the 22nd amendment, dealing with term lengths. Come on now..... Let’s all use our heads a little bit here. Congress passed the amendment on March 21, 1947... It was just after FDR successfully led us through a depression and World War II with his leadership. Do you think congress was pissed off that Roosevelt was instrumental in those four years, of saving our country? Maybe they thought that since FDR died, during his fourth term, that another great American president may come along and do the same, so congress decided to limit a president’s term to just two four year terms. Not likely... I believe the congress of 1947 was intelligent enough to take steps to protect our country; not from a good president, but from the mistake that a president might make by becoming overly complacent and overly confident in his decisions...... or worse yet, a president that hasn’t had that much experience and makes executive decisions based on those cabinet members around him... members with bad information or their own agendas. Sometimes the American public is blinded by promises of change needed so badly, that manipulating presidential advisors can inject their agendas to control and mislead people... possibly keeping one president in power forever. Given the correct influence, you can have a dictatorship, even though you have an election.... much as we’ve seen in some foreign countries.
Given all this thought, by the congress of a country returned from ruin, as was the case in 1947 and right after the death of F. D. Roosevelt, Why would we think our government of today is that much smarter than those of 1947? Our government today, isn’t very successful at anything and hasn’t been for the last decade.
Most of our congressmen are young... and many of our Senators are young too. Those that are older and wiser are few...... and are usually out voted by the many younger ones. Think of this; when did you ever hear of a single term Senator winning a presidential seat in the white house? Well....... that happened! I’m not saying Obama is doing a bad job, or a good job, but it happened! The masses spoke in November, and just as Jay Leno showed on national TV, most that voted for him, knew nothing about him or the election in general. It was kind of like the Lemmings over a cliff, and would have been no matter who won. If they knew little of Obama, they knew little of McCain also, so I’m not being anti-Obama here, but believe me..... Government can do as they wish by simply setting the stage before the American public.
Go to http://www.end22.com/ and read it with an open mind. They make it sound so good and such a wise decision, but remember those wise folks in 1947 that created those limits, directly following such a successful president. They did it for a REASON..... A real good reason!



The start of the Hospice Gift Shop.












Now then..... Back to the farm. I went out this morning and freed the masses which were trapped indoors for the last two rainy days and fed everyone. Upon entering the brooding house, which is bursting at the seams with chickens, I found that three duck eggs are now poking through... along with a guinea fowl. Now that’s an accomplishment. Guinea fowl are extremely hard to incubate and care for, until they are about two weeks old. We will be extra careful with this little guy and hope the four others in there will hatch too. (Pictures below)








Our farm... everything you see is ours.






The Pupskill Bay Lake Pond. Our's as far as the eye can see too.









Two day old chicks






One to two weeks old.

These Bantams are a month old...

Due out anytime now...

This is how we do business here on the farm. You take em... leave your money in the can...

Vick is busy making sheer curtains for all the windows, so we can have them blowing in the breeze, which we both love to see and think makes everything seem so “country quaint.” I suppose later, we will pick up on the hospice gift shop and see if we can get some walls up and in place. It’s nice building now, because there is no frantic push or schedule we have to follow. Although we want to get it done, so we can go and enjoy the summer seeing sights and doing things away from here, we don’t necessarily need to rush like the buildings that house animals. That makes working on this project enjoyable.

More Later on this evening... Stay Tuned.

Thurs May 28th... Rain Is Falling Onto Other Rain and Then Unto More Rain...

It appears to us that there is a crushing affect to rain falling unto other rain, because the raindrops never remain round. They immediately crush to a flat film of water upon impact with the other crushed raindrops already there. One would ask themselves, if anyone ever investigated this to see if this phenomenon is really happening as we see it. Perhaps we’re missing something. Have you ever observed rain hitting the windshield on a car? It doesn’t matter if you are sitting still or moving at sixty five miles per hour... the result is the same. How can this be?
Also; think of a big bug, observed flying straight toward the windshield, just milliseconds before inevitably contacting it. They never seem to hit the windshield, but always manage to poop or pee all over it as they barely whizz by it. Did you ever notice that they always do one or the other, on their way past the glass? Sometimes they even sound like they throw a little stone or stick as they squeeze by... at least I’ve heard the little tap as they pass by, but in addition to throwing something, they always crap or pee on they way by too.
The other night, on the way home, we encountered a whole swarm of ninja bugs, that attacked us unmercifully, by throwing stuff at us that you could hear but not see. None of them defecated or splashed the windshield either! Odd I thought... these little guys ambushing us...... throwing things, yet not messing up our windshield.
Hemmm, I wonder what their intent was??? I never confer about these things with Vicki though. She’s a registered nurse you know and I don’t want her making appointments for me with doctors that think they know all about this kind of stuff, then end up asking you to explain it to them.
You know what? I just observed more rain drops hitting the rear deck at eye level and they appear to splat flat too. I did notice however that raindrops hitting the water in the swimming pool may remain round, because it appears that a round penetration area, momentarily splashes up when the round drop enters the water. If this isn’t so, wouldn’t the surface of the pool look like the deck when the drop hits? Aww man, I gotta think about this......

I’ll write about boring things later today, if anything less interesting happens...
But it will probably only rain all day, so what can you do but act crazy?

Wed. May 27th... Ya Win Some & Ya Lose Some, Then Some, Ya Just Piss Off......

We had suggestions to remove the music... suggestions to give an option to turn it on or off... and when we just removed it all together...... we were overwhelmed by emails to put it back on......AND PRONTO!!
I guess it’s like the old saying, “You can’t please everyone, all the time”; so, here’s how it is.
If you enjoy our music, simply turn up your speakers and enjoy.
If you don’t like loud music, turn your speakers down a little.
If you don’t want music at all, hit your mute button for your sound
If you want to hear other than our music and don’t want to turn your speakers off, then go to the music player and shut it off there
If none of these suit you, we’ll never please you and you’ll just go away and will never read our blog again. We hope this will not be the case, but there’s only so much we can do to please everyone.

We missed Stanley’s last watercolor class this evening. Vick really didn’t feel well all day long because of her hernia and her back. It was for the best anyway, because we would have had to drag Casey Mae along and have her in her crate for two and a half hours, because Vick and I both wouldn’t leave her alone with staples in her belly from her spaying yesterday. What if she jumped and tore them out and started bleeding and we weren’t here to see her. She could bleed to death. After all, she is wearing a belly band because of bleeding anyway. Besides, be it really known, I didn’t feel that well myself. I had an upset stomach this afternoon too. We’ll give Stan some of our work this week to display in the library, as usual anyway. We did hate missing his class though... as we always sign up and always enjoy his classes.
Hopefully, tomorrow will be a better day and we will all feel a bit better.

Wed. May 27th... Five More Chicks Hatch and Duck Eggs Go In Hatch Box...

Last evening, there were four eggs cracked, with little chirping beaks, protruding from each. This morning, I found five chicks in there... three dry and ready for the brooding box, feed and water, the other two, still needing to dry. That told me they had just escaped the egg. So far, we have hatched a total of 14 chicks from the eggs out of the barn nests and there are still more to go. Today was the 25th day for the first slew of duck eggs in the incubator too. I put them over into the hatching box for the next three days. They should hatch out on the 28th day, and then we’ll have a new “Rat Pack” crew of young ducks. Soon the rest of the eggs in the turner incubator will go to the hot air incubator to hatch and we will fill the other incubator turner assembly with more chick eggs. Perhaps we should start another hen kept brood nest in the barn and mark the eggs with the blue pen again daily until there are enough to constitute pulling and incubating. It seems easier to do.

Casey Mae is doing much better this morning, Last evening; she was slow, dopey and had chills from the anesthesia. That all continued until we went to bed and I can tell you that the dog and I slept far better than the nurse! I knew when we started into this, that Vick would not take her eyes off of Casey Mae while she was downstairs, OR when we went to bed. Sleeping last night was out of the question for Vick. I awoke several times as Vicki was stretching out over the edge of the bed, to be sure Casey Mae was still breathing and OK. Now that she is no longer under the influence of the anesthesia, she and Vicki are both snoozing on the bed. I told her she might as well, because we aren’t going anywhere for awhile because of leaving her alone. If she is doing well this evening, we’ll take her along to the library for Stanley’s last scheduled watercolor session. If she isn’t able, we’ll miss the class, that’s all. Stanley would understand.

Later this afternoon, I might opt to work on the interior door opening for the “Bunny Brothel” where the rabbits used to be. I can also work on hanging a cage for Wuzzie, who is still with us. All the rest of the bunnies went to the kids from Two Kids Bakery and are now being watched regularly!! We hope Ian and Anna learn much from them and enjoy raising them. Reggie, their Dad, said the one just had a litter of three babies, which will be very educational for the kids to follow.

Tues May 26th... What’s Goin On Here Anyway? Is It Springtime or A What???

Yesterday was a beautiful, sunny, eighty degree day. We all sat on our deck and ran the BBQ grill, visited and chatted until late in the evening. It was then that things started to go to pot, so to speak... Over night, the temperature dropped to frigid levels, nearing the frost zone again as it had last week. Now today, it’s dreary, cold and windy. It seems to be a prelude to what they are calling for tomorrow, which is a chilly, rainy day. We need the rain badly, as is evident by the level of the duck pond and the Pupskill Lake Pond in the back yard. It appears to be about a foot below normal at this point and they just said this morning that the rain index for this month should be around 15 to 17 inches and we are at 9 inches right now... almost half the normal amount.

Casey has been spayed. We dropped her off at Maple Ridge Veterinary Hospital at 8:30 this morning and when we called at noon, they said she was awake and doing well. We will pick her up at 3:30 and bring her home. At the same time, we are taking Dutchess and Princess for their limes shot.

All the bunnies went to Reggie and Keren’s house Sunday afternoon. They own the Two Kids Bakery and their daughter and son are having a ball watching them. One bunny had a litter of three last night and they are delighted. We were tickled to give the seven bunnies and two cages to them for the kids to raise and watch. Vicki did keep the one male, that she calls Wuzzie and will keep him in the new bunny house with the Angora’s which will come in July sometime.

The hospice gift shop is now started. We have the front wall almost built and ready to raise and sit into position. The next several days may be rainy and we may not get back to building out there until next week, but at least it’s started.

Mon eve May 25th... Our Memorial Day Picnic Was Very Relaxing......

We entertained Vick’s parents, Joe and Anita, her brother and family, Rich and Robin, Kenny and Katie this afternoon with a cook out picnic and visit on the rear deck. Everyone enjoyed the food and watching all the animals running around the yard. I turned the turkeys loose to run this morning, hoping they would meet up with and hang out with Tina. The company would do her good, because she has been all alone since Timmy died last Friday.
We really didn’t do any real work today, because it seems we can give this day to the veterans and celebrate the holiday in their honor. We did go for gasoline to mow the pond banks so Vick’s family could see the geese and chickens. Besides, it looked pretty ratty for the holiday, or we wouldn’t have even performed that much work. The swimming pool is now back to normal now; liner replaced and the water refilled. We simply filled it using the garden hose, running it several hours a day, ever since they replaced the liner and straightened out the wrinkles on the bottom. At least it is back to normal for the summer, and we plan to use it since we had to pay for a liner and reinstallation out of our pocket. The insurance didn’t cover a thing since it was ice damage, per the jackal that was here and checked it. I knew it wouldn’t be covered! I ask you all now...... why the hell do we even buy insurance? They never cover most things that happen... I dropped the insurance on my camper because of the same thing. It sits there doing nothing and I pay for coverage... and then when something happens, it’s never covered.
WHY HAVE IT??? All it does is piss you off when you hear what you know they’re gonna say. “Ohhhh... that’s not covered under the policy”

Tomorrow, Casey Mae is gonna go to the Vet’s and become a spayed little lady. Vick will be on pins and needles. Hell....... she’s been on pins and needles ever since she made the appointment with Curt to perform the spaying..... Tomorrow will be hell until curt calls and says everything is fine and she is ok. Boy... I can’t wait for that call to come. Once the operation is over and she comes home, we will not leave her out of our sight until the staples are out and she is healed. Wednesday is the last day of Stanley’s watercolor class, and Casey Mae is going to the class with us. She will just sleep in her crate anyway. I suppose we might work on the hospice gift shop tomorrow too. We’ll see.

Monday May 25th... Memorial Day is a Day We All Remember.........

This is Memorial Day, the end of a long weekend and the un-official, but traditional beginning of summer. People will have their BBQ’s smoking and will enjoy the day having fun with friends and family. But this is not just a day for parties and catching up on projects around the farm. This is a weekend to pay tribute to our finest. We must never forget it is the soldiers of the United States that protect our freedoms which we take for granted every day. So over the weekend have your fun but always remember those that lost their lives protecting us and our American Dream. There are many out there right now, in God forsaken places, protecting us as they remain far from friends and family, missing the picnic and laughter. They are truly our living heroes, deserving all our respect for what they do and sacrifice as they fight to protect us and keep us free. This we shall do today and every day hereafter as we honor those that never returned home, making the ultimate sacrifice for our freedoms. Fly your flag proudly and announce to the world that our fallen hero’s will never be forgotten.... along with those that walk among us or are still abroad.

It was written someone unknown to me and must be passed on..........

It is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of the press.
It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech.
It is the soldier, not the campus organizer, who has given us the freedom to demonstrate.
It is the soldier, not the lawyer, who has given us the right to a fair trial.
It is the soldier, who salutes the flag, who serves under the flag, and whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the protester to burn the flag….

I ask this... Why it is the soldier, that wonders if his country loves him, as much as he loves his country?

I know we never have to wonder if this soldier will die for us while protecting our country and our freedoms!

I think it is time to stop every soldier in uniform as we pass them on the streets or in the stores and thank them... And tell them you appreciate the protection of our freedoms which they provide for us... and that we are proud of them and love all our soldiers for doing so!

Sunday May 24th... We're off to Stormville, NY Today...

We're off to meet our son and daughter-in-law, Bill and Loraine at a huge flea market at the Stormville Airport. They go every year and asked if we would like to meet them there and spend the day. We need a break from all the building and farm stuff, so we told them we would meet them there as soon as we got up, fed all the animals and iced the eggs in the self serve cooler on the porch. I just put another chick into the brooding box and as I was taking him out of the incubator, I saw another one popping through the shell, so he will be out and fluffy dray whan we return. I'll place him in the brooding box then.