Way out in the Middle of Nowhere

I'm enjoying a rare day off. Actually, it's made even rare-er due to the fact I'm actually getting PAID for this! I'm going to go up to a friend's yarn shop and help her take great pics of her store so she can post it online and get better sales. But here at the house, the things are pretty quiet. That's actually GOOD. The geese are doing well, even Sweet Pea, who lost an eye to some sort of mishap two weeks ago.  If you look in the photo, he is the one goose whose eye does not reflect the flash of the camera. Which is why I took the photos in the first place. We were pretty sure that the eye was damaged beyond healing and we've been putting Triple Antibiotic Ointment in the eye to make sure that the eyeball heals over and will be sealed away from bacteria.  As a goose, he'll not want to fly anymore, but as a domestic goose, he'll be fine. We've had a goose before that was born with one eye that did just fine. Knitting-wise, I've been ...

Which is kinda an oxymoron if you think about it.  You're trying to focus on something but keep getting distracted!  Here at the farm, distractions come in all sizes: From the loose dogs that killed my duck (bad) to getting hurt at work and not being able to use my hand for a few weeks (worse) to new babies being hatched out (YAY!) Yes, two dogs came into our flock, killed Duck Duck and scattered geese to the wind.  I needed Dave's help to get them back to the farm, but when I was able to talk to the County Sheriff, I simply told him that if the owner's dogs got out again, there will be consequences.  This ain't no "Old Country Buffet" here. My hand..........well! I was working a month ago and a blender accident caused the blades to slice N dice my ring finger on my right hand pretty nicely. I'll spare you the really bad pics, it was gruesome. Seven stitches later, they wrapped it thinking it was broke.  Two weeks later, another scan showed no bre...

Newer laptop, forgive me if I scream a few times. I get random glitches when I type for too long. So we've been incubating eggs for a while now and this is the first year that I've had a ton of issues with it. Two sets of eggs  have died within the shell before I could even sneak them under a mama goose. Then there was the chicken, who would not stop being broody, so we stuck a duck egg under her.  So now we have Dobby the duck with a hen as it's mom. It's working out fine right now, even though the Dobby is almost as big as his/her mom and s/he's only 3 weeks old. We honestly didn't think she'd sit long enough to hatch a baby duck. That's at least a week more brooding time than a chicken. But she did and the only assistance we gave her was to move her nest down to the lower level when the duck was hatched so it could get out easily. They wander around and I make sure there are puddles for the little one to drink and wash from. Now the duck is ...

It's a quote that's been running around my head now for a week. It's from a movie, can't remember which one but all I know is that when it was said, the quote was from a guy and it had absolutely NOTHING to do with the movie. The guy was beat up, drugged or something. It will come to me, but right now, it's just random garble in my head. Which happens when I finish up a semester of school. I get random stuff stuck in my head. I also have a severe case of ADD. It's gotten to the point where I'm CLEANING  and knitting dishcloths! DISHCLOTHS people!  There's not a thing wrong with dishcloths, really. It is just a symptom of my inability to concentrate for more than 2 seconds. I feel like a fish in Finding Nemo. One of 2 baby blankets I've finished in the last month or so. This one is interesting in that the yarn is a super-bulky yarn from Red Heart: boutique dash.  Ok, so the yarn is like spool knitted. I found a skein in clearance and started ...

I had intended on getting the two goslings outside this morning, but they are under my feet twittering while the rain ensues. There may be time later to get them outside, but for now they are fine. So let's see, some of the fun we've had here in the last two weeks. School started, so I've got that going for me. Biochemistry, Immunology, Phlebotomy and Lab Skills. A full boat this semester. The work is made less due to the fact that I've had experience in the lab and spend two semesters in Chemistry already.  Immunology seems to be challenging for my mind to grasp, but that's what Youtube is for. Phlebotomy? Well! I get to stick people and draw blood. I'm only nervous about doing it correctly. Last weekend we went to the County Fair and it was blazenly hot. As we trolled around looking at animals and chugging water, we sweated and sweated and sweated. While near the food aisle, Dave pulled me over to the Italian Ice guy as I started to look at bit peaked. A ...

It's another hot day here in South Central WI. I've got the two goslings out in the cooler mornings learning how to be goslings. I had hoped to foster them out to new Moms by now, but everyone is kinda "meh" about it. Ah well. While I wander with the flock, I spin and the kids graze. Well, actually this is their first attempt at grazing today. They've been out 2 days now and this is the first time they realized they should be eating what they're walking on. The shawl is almost finished. The scarf is being worked on slowly. It has a nice repeat on it, and I use that to gauge how much I should be doing. I do two repeats a night if I can. Today,  I'll get into the physical therapy treatment we are doing on little Georgia here. She's the one in the back near the babies. She sat on her nest for 6 weeks and when she was done, hatched out two babies. But the problem was that she had a bad leg before going broody that got worse after the babies ha...

That's George, Fred is behind him. They're doing well.  I've put up the enclosure again so they can be protected while outside. They have food, water and a bath in their enclosure. The rest of the flock is still harassing them. I don't know why, nor do I care. I just need time to be inside. Carrie is sitting on the last 2 eggs we have. I've incubated them until yesterday when B5 was internally pipping. B3 and B5 were fertile and have progressed well since I popped them in the incubator. By putting them under a broody goose, she gets to be Mom and I get my life back. This is just a nice photo of part of the flock. I can tell right away this is the flock we term "Ron's Flock" because Buddy is in it. Buddy, Ron, Sweet Pea and Gingi are all part of our original flock sent to us over 2 years ago. Everyone else in the group is Ron's offspring: Ronson, Sissysan, Penny, Nelly, Lumpy and Arthur. It was a cool morning after a good rain. We could u...

I'll let you in on a little secret: In my mind, I have like 5 ideas for blog posts every week. Due to age and my schedule, by the time I get to the posting, I forget them. Some ideas: A nice listing of hobbies/interests that I understand, but just don't 'get'.  List of what I've learned from my Grandmother. It boils down to three things: 1, independence 2. frugality, and 3 putting family first. Moments in my life where I've dodged HUGE bullets.  I lead a blessed life, not because it's all been easy, but because there were moments in there where I was given a choice between easy and correct. I chose correct.  If I were to write a book, which story would I choose? Mindless rants about how people drive, stare at their phones or just are assholes. Yeah, like that  hasn't been overdone on other blogs! inane photos of more geese, ducks, chickens and knitting. Oh you know  that will happen anyways, right?  Summer is summer. Tyranny of the shoulds ...

This is Nelly who has a baby gosling nestled under her wing with it's little head sticking out by her butt. Look closely and you'll see. I tucked this pipped egg under her wing 3 days ago and it hatched. Her eggs weren't viable. She's last years' gosling and they really don't get the hang of brooding and such until the 2nd year. We've got a few gals that are really good Moms; Luna is foster Mom to Elsa and she is just loving it. Molly is just a natural Mom who has always had good clutches of goslings. Nelly is slowly picking up what to do. The last 2 days we've had her segregated 98% of the time from the flock so that the gosling can get on it's feet, learn to eat and drink and learn who is Mom. Today they are out on the land checking out stuff. Nelly's got the jist of keeping the kid near her, but does not understand when the baby needs to have mom lay down so it can warm itself under her wing. She's very protective of her; attacked...

We lost our Sissy girl last night. Found her dead in the coop this morning. She'd been sick last week, with a swelling under her beak. We let her stay inside the house, and she was stumbling and bumping into stuff. Her bad eye went worse and I was treating that but she seemed to take a turn for the better last night. She got in her last nibbles on our hair and Dave's beard and we put her in the coop because the others were harassing her. Going to be a crappy day............

It's a good color after all that white/gray of the last 6 months. The grass is greening up. I see shoots of the daffodils beside the house, and buds are starting on the trees. I'm knitting a green hat from the leftover Knit Picks sock yarn from the shawl. The stupid yarn was just hollering at me to be used, so I found a nice hat pattern from Pattons: Basic beanie  that will use up the rest of it and make something that I will actually use. You see, I've decided to forgo an actual gym membership, not because I don't like working out, but because it takes 1/2 an hour to get TO the gym and 1/2 an hour to go back home...to spend an hour working out. I've decided on using that time to work out here. I'm calling it the 'Rocky IV' workout. Unfortunately, I've seen all the Rocky movies. Rocky IV was when Rocky goes to Russia to fight Dolph Lungren. Dolph gets the state-of-the-art facilities while Rocky gets a barn with a tree stump. High Tech meets O...

My Piper's journey is done. In the middle is Malabrigo sock yarn in the colorway of Solis - a blend of dark blues, greens and a hint of mint. Which is why I chose the Mint to finish it off with. It was purchased off a Ravelry user since it is on backorder w/Knitpicks. It was a fast shawl to create, and yet...I'm meh about it. I like the colors but as a shawl it just doesn't work. I need shawls that cover my back and my shoulders and will lay there just warming me. This is more of an affectation shawl meant to accent an outfit.   This is just an awesome picture of Percy. He's got his "I'm a STUD!" pose out there. Nice form, ginormous knob, good honk...he's a stud. But I'm not going to tell him that :).   Now that it is warmer out there, the flock is in breeding mode. It's like a frat house on a Saturday night out there.............all day, all the time. Fights between ganders, shagging girls in the pools, girls nipping off to lay eggs, a...

Yep, there are few patches of land out there under all this snow. The last few days helped out quite a bit. I got to  muck out both the goose pen and the chicken coop. We ended up having to do a deep-bed type bedding for the animals simply because it was 1: Warmer, and insulates the floor and 2: we really couldn't get the stuff up until it defrosted a bit. 6" of wet, smelly, poopy straw was under the nice upper layer. It's a decent way to go for winter, but it makes mucking take hours. And my elbow still doesn't like it. However, I do appreciate the effects of Aleve in getting rid of much of the pain and swelling. I've started the last sleeve on the gray sweater. Once that is knitted up, I'll block it and see if it fits me better. It's a close fitting thing now, but hopefully the blocking will give me a better fit. The cabled shawl is longer, with many cables on it. I finished up a hat for my seatmate, Cody who wanted one for his Dad. A test in C...

This is a short video of our goosie Sissy chewing on Dave's hair.  She does this every night when we put away the animals. As geese go, she is the only one who shows affection towards us. Of course, she's the only one we hatched and raised.  The others were hatched elsewhere, shipped to us. Sweet Pea will come up and give us 'kisses' by nibbling at our lower lip.  That's another video that will need to be taken to believe. 

Updates: 1. STILL fighting with school over financial aid.  Due to the fact that I dropped that Lit class, they've withdrawn my ability to get any loan. I'm 1 credit short of what they consider 'part time'. I had my advisor find another credit -working with the theater dept.- but they say it's too late. which brings me to: 2. Fighting with the UW about that stupid flipping book. At this point, their obsessive love of this book detailing the abuse of young girl is becoming hilariously ridiculous.  You mean to tell me that this is THE  definitive book on the African-American experience? This book is 40 years old! Try finding a book from THIS century! But still...I've got an interim director who just freaked when I told her that she was being insensitive by her vehement defense of this book. She STILL defends it! 3. I've got a Calc test today. Wish me luck. 4. I came home yesterday to find 3 dead geese lined up by the mailbox.  Someone had hit 3 of Mol...

I made a hex sign. Sometimes they are called a barn quilt, but I call it a hex sign.  When I get done putting that last layer of clear on it, I'll have Dave put it on the coop. Right now it's sitting propped up on the hedge in the front yard. The fun part is that 2/3 of the paint on this thing was free.  I had to pay for the quart of pumpkin, but the purple and cream were free quarts from Ace.  One day a year they have a free quart of paint in the color of your choice.  Dave came back with the cream, I went down for the purple. The design is called 'flying geese'. I thought it was appropriate. It was the first day we tried butchering ducks. Yeah, no more raising ducks for food. Next year it will be chickens. The ducks are too hard to butcher, pluck and dress. It takes about an hour a duck. School started.  I had two classes, Calculus and Multicultural Lit. The Lit class was an online class. I was in the process of gathing the reading materials, readin...

It's been an odd Summer weather-wise.  Life-wise, pretty much the same. we've learned a few new things this summer: Butchering ducks is not as easy as it should be. We've done 8 and it's complicated. It requires a duck with it's adult feathers in and a cool day, not a hot day.  There's a technique using wax to strip off pinfeathers that works well..........when it's not hot outside. Another 20 to go.... Percy has found his dude-ness.  He's hollering after he shags a girl. EVERY girl. It was cute the first 10 times. Now I walk out and say, "Percy, no one needs to know every time you shag a girl. You're not THAT good at it!" We had one rooster that was terrorizing our flock of ducks. We have 3 roosters, so we had to be sure it was this  rooster that was the offender. We put a band on his leg and observed him. Sure enough, it was that rooster. He was very tasty in with peanut sauce and rice. There really isn't a need for m...

"   Man it's hot. It's like Africa hot. Tarzan couldn't take this kind of hot." - Eugene in 'Biloxi Blues' It's going to be another hot week here.   Anything that can hold enough water + a duck or goose is used to keep them cool.  Here we have Molly's babies in a Tupperware cake carrier and a heated dog bowl.  Don't worry, it's not like cake ever makes it out of the pan, even.  12 hours and it's all gone.  There's never a need for cake carrier. I needed to keep the big pool out of commission until these little blighters can get out of it safely, but I still needed to keep everyone cool. So I am using litter pans, dog bowls and even the plastic drawers out of one of those cheap plastic dressers as mini pools.  Eh, Dave's gotta clean that one out anyways.  It was the back end of the duck pen when they were inside in the laundry room.  Now they are big enough to be outside.  I finally had to suck it up and clean up and ...

We have our worries about Sissy, center in the photo.  She's been acting oddly lately; standing in corners just zoned and walking aimlessly not with her flock. Her bad eye has been looking worse lately, and I suspect she's lost more sight in it.  Her depth perception is worse: I see her trying to lap up water about 1/2" from the actual water. If it is true, and she's lost all sight in that eye, she WILL eventually adjust. We'll need to adjust as well.  Before I walk over to pick her up, I talk to her and make sure to touch her side so she knows I am there. She had an injury to the area below her chin. With the hot, muggy weather lately, it was important to keep it bug-free.  I slathered triple antibiotic ointment on it twice daily to keep it from blood sucking bugs. It's healed over now, so that's another thing that will make her feel better. I've been working on a redesign of the banana squash head pillow.  I discovered that it is a great th...

No, they are just so cute! Molly hatched out 6 babies day before yesterday. Like Sissy, she's a first-time Mom and doing a LOT of hissing.  A leaf blows by too close to her and she hisses.  Yesterday was the first time the kids got to go outside. At first, all the goose girls came up to her nest to see the wee little ones.  Mary is very interested  in those girls.  She'll make a great Mom next year, I think. We've compared these goslings to Sissy's since these will be a Toulouse/African cross. Well, we were not sure until they hatched.  If Daddy was Buddy, they'd be straight Toulouse.  The kids would have a grayish beak. These are all black beaks but the chicks themselves are more yellow than Sissy's which are straight Africans.  I've seen pics of the Toulouse/African cross: Big bodies, with that tuft-y neck, dark streak down the back with brown instead of gray coloration. Hey, we're diverse here. Sissy, here in the front of the group, ...