Category: SA Times

Snow was the big story of the week here on SA.  It started snowing in the wee hours Tuesday and kept it up until about mid-afternoon.  Never heavy but unrelenting, we probably got five to six inches.  I’m guessing it was the equivalent of half an inch of rain, at least.  That’s not a lot but a half inch can be a good amount for this part of the country if it isn’t too long before the next half inch comes along and it isn’t hot and windy.  Anyway, it was a pretty snow and we certainly need the moisture so we’ll take it.  In fact, we’d take another one just like in a couple of weeks.

Joyce has worms.  In fact, she has a whole plastic tote of red worms she plans to raise and feed her chickens.  She says they eat junk mail and table scraps and are particularly fond of coffee grounds.  Their casings sell for $44 a pound.  I suggested we convert the cave to casing production if we can get that.

Its reported that we’ll be acquiring a dog Tuesday.  His name is Valentino, Tino for short, and he’s a boxer.  He wandered onto the place this past week, maybe Thursday (get it? Valentines Day, Valentino) and Chris corralled him and turned him over to the pound but couldn’t bear the thought of him being destroyed so they’ll collect him Tuesday if the owner doesn’t show up by then.  In the mean time he’s scheduled to be castrated, tagged and inoculated.  Lucky Tino.  Guess it beats what usually befalls strays at the pound.  I knew Chris and Abigail, with Joyce’s support, would eventually get a dog.  They had to win Kari over and I think they did with Tino.  Maybe it wasn’t that hard.  No doubt he’ll fit in with the rest of us eunuchs here on SA.  John Henry is only one getting any action.

Thursday evening Chris, Abigail and Rebecca came bearing chocolate covered strawberries to wish us Happy Valentine Day.  It was a chilly evening and we appreciated their going to the trouble.  We also appreciated the strawberries.

Nice day Saturday.  It started out chilly but the afternoon warmed up nicely.  I trimmed trees and sprayed weeds.  Yes, I know you wonder how I can stand the excitement but I manage.

 

 

 

Chris was up at 3:00 a.m. Saturday morning, sources say, to slaughter and dress his guineas. His friend Adam helped him, though I don’t know if Adam was on hand at 3.  When I strolled down to check on them, Adam was handling the grisly task of extinguishing each guinea. Continue reading “Carnage on SA” →

Early in the week Joyce spied a couple of big black dogs on the place and called Chris. I was blessedly unaware down in the cave. When Chris got into action he found that they were trying to burrow into his guinea run.

One of the dogs responded to his commands and had a collar on so he hitched it to a leash. Joyce called animal control and a dog catcher arrived in due time. They put the well-behaved dog in the enclosure and were thus able to get the other one in there as well. DC-1 called for backup. When it arrived they caught the other dog, loaded them both up and hauled them off. That evening Joyce got a call from DC-1 telling her the dogs had been claimed. The owner lives in the 200 block of Van Buren, which would put him north of the downtown area. Amazing that the animals had traveled so far without apparent incident. Also amazing that DC-1 took the time to call Joyce and let her know what happened.
Continue reading “Some snow and more dogs” →

You may recall several weeks ago I mentioned raking leaves and running them through the shredder except I couldn’t get the shredder started so I wasn’t able to determine if that was a viable strategy or not. Since then I’ve learned the trick of starting the shredder, at least some of the time. So today I hitched up the trailer to the tractor and filled the trailer with rakings along the inside of the west fence. Once the trailer was full I came back to the shop where the shredder was, cranked it up and ran the load through it. I dumped the shredded material on the caliche mounds. The alternative to this is bagging the leaves one bag at a time. I think the shredder method was a little faster for handling a lot of material. Only trouble was, after shredding the first load and collecting another load I couldn’t get the shredder started when I got back to it. It starts OK cold and hot but in between I don’t have the right combination of throttle, choke or no choke so I wound up bagging the second load. Continue reading “Cats and dogs but no rain” →

After two years of drought Joyce told herself unless we got decent moisture this winter she wasn’t going to bother with a garden this summer.  Without some help from Mother Nature it is just too hard to get things to grow you see.  Well that’s easy to say in August or September but then comes along a mild winter day to undermine one’s resolve.   So, yesterday we fired up the chipper and finished the garden cleanup started some weeks ago.  It’s unusual to have that chore done this early.  I want to redo the rows by replacing the metal edging with 2X8 treated lumber.  Last winter we made the mistake of letting the chickens in the garden.  We could have hardly done otherwise since we didn’t have it fenced off.  It was a treat for the chickens but they scratched a lot of the dirt out over metal edging which sort of defeated it’s purpose.  Also, the edging has a tendency to get pushed out by the dirt and in places it lays so flat it doesn’t keep the dirt in or the grass out.   Continue reading “Garden: To have or not to have” →