Greenstorm's Journal

Might as well update about the animal situation.

Solly and Thea are working great as a team all night. I put them in the front at night (the grain is all there) and Avallu in the back with the geese, Thea I put in the back during the day with Avallu so she can go in and eat and I can keep Solly mostly on her puppy food.

Avallu is getting more ok with Solly, but after two incidents where he was pretty sure she belonged only on the porch we need a little more than current levels of ok. In the evenings we often do cheese o clock, where they all see each other through the fence and get lots of cheese. I think they may have got too much cheese, so I may need a lower-fat alternative for some of these evenings. Avallu is doing well listening to commands even when Solly is in close proximity, but he's also very respectful of the fence. Solly is very wary of Avallu after the last couple incidents but has a seemingly limitless well of optimism and is coming around with enough cheese again.

I've definitely made some mistakes during this intro but I suspect everyone can be convinced to forgive me.

The geese are sleeping right up close to Avallu many nights and spending more time than usual up by the house. I can tell when there are no bears around because they go into the orchard. They've taken care of this spring's goslings well and those are now fully feathered. The orchard is pretty well mown at this point and the geese are starting to gorge on grain to fatten up for fall, they've gone from roughly a quarter bucket of grain per day for the 31 of them to closer to a whole bucket.

I have an ancona drake swap lined up for later this year, so he can cover this last two year's ducklings.

Incubator full of chicks should hatch while I'm gone. Things will be set up for mom to just plunk them into the quail shed under lights. These are mostly chanteclers but with a half dozen silkies. If I'm going to do silkies I might as well do seramas, which are the sweetest chickens on earth, but there are none to be had up here. Also Clyde the new rooster (his previous family got him as Bonnie and when he started to crow had to part with him) is doing well. He's a brahma, so he should get very big, but right now he's young and pigeon-sized with ENORMOUS FLUFFY feet. He's also smart, social, and I like him a great deal. I have not yet evicted the previous rooster from the bottom coop and put him in yet, I'm planning to do that when the chicks are a bit older, so right now he's sleeping under the truck canopy at night and hanging with the muscovies during the day. His crow is growing in adorably; I guess I have a thing for adolescent rooster crows.

The three boars have been shedding, I can scratch them with a rake and all the curly wool comes off and leaves growing-in guard hairs. I think they should move to the back to guard that entrance, though really Baby and Hooligan are the better defenders against bears. Did I mention Hooligan kinda bit me when I was stealing her babies? She didn't break skin or even bruise me, but she put her teeth on me in warning after I'd ignored her barking and other warnings. She is 100% a perfect temperament in this regard: she lets me play with her newborn babies if I'm not harassing them, catching them, and making them scream and she loves being scratched behind the ears but she can gauge situations in which it's appropriate to defend and does so with careful escalation. I'm just very impressed with Ossabaws in general, but also her in particular.

We do have at least two bears back there, one big and one small, that appear unrelated. The big one doesn't mind bear bangers, air horns, dogs, or yelling so I'm worried about what will happen come fall. Two bears in that territory is already a lot and it's only August. When bears go into their super calorie-seeking mode before winter they're less cautious and maybe it's not safe to have the pigs back there then? On the other hand the whole herd of pigs may actually be better defenders than the dogs, at least until the whole pack gels and maybe even after that.

The poor cats are withering away from lack of love and attention since I've been into the office several days the last few weeks. Also Demon is not a fan of a New Person in the house to farmsit and complains loudly when she's not around. I expect he'll come around. They continue to break down all doors into my bedroom to sleep on the bed, to my detriment.

Ducks are ducks. The anconas are in the covered area, and I want to make more covered areas for bear/lynx/raven/fox/coyote protection for the littles in future years. One broody ancona made a nest just inside the chicken house so I can barely squeak the door open and squeeze in and she will not be shifted. Everyone likes lamb's quarters weedings from the garden.

It's good? At least until the bears finish eating my neighbour's chickens and turn more attention on me.

It was supposed to get very cold last night, so I caught most of the muscovies and put them in the quail sed in deep straw; I plan on putting heat in there whenever it's going to drop below -20C. They're fairly tropical birds and they don't have all the fancy mods that true ducks and geese do, to keep their feet warm. In the past I've had muscovies that froze their feet, which was... bad.

This morning Chocolate the muscovy came out for water (I water everyone before work) and I scooped her up and put her in with everyone else. I'm not sure where she sleeps, but although it seems like it must be safe I think she'll be happier with other muscovies. I hope she doesn't hold it against me that I picked her up just because she lets me get close. We'll see.

It feels warm out. The thermometer reads -15C, but maybe the lack of wind is helping. It's almost foggy and I suspect the moisture helps too. In a couple days we're supposed to be up to -6C over a couple nights, that will be a nice respite and should let me pry some of the water dishes off the ice as it softens.

Samhain is over but the veil still feels so thin right now. I go about my daily business and there is just a near presence of death, not necessarily a foreboding, just that I feel it around me even with the worst of the killing cold done for now.

I do what I can to stave it off for the animals, that's what I'm here for, and then to sort seeds for new life in spring.

drive through the night:
the feeling of morning;
vision before colour

I got up at 4 in the morning so I could give the stove a bit of a burn on fresh wood before turning it down. The road was dark but not snowy, frosty but not wet. Newly-painted centerlines stood out under my single aging headlight and my high beams had a long reach. Sometimes I had company on the highway, usually in clumps going to the mill, to the pipeline camps, to a town. Often I was alone and that was better.

The Highway of Tears is becoming familiar. The cell signal is much better courtesy of a political push; this is how we deal with missing indigenous women (though to be fair the men die at a pretty high rate too): we put money into a program, in this case into some company's pockets. They put a bus in down here too, though it's not tremendously useful. Meanwhile the folks north of me, in Middle River and Takla, apparently call the ambulence when they are in dire need of a ride to town.

There was a lot of dark this morning. When I woke up, when I pulled out of the driveway with my grow lights shining through the window behind me, the sky was the clear bowl full of stars that dominates our winter landscape. The moon was a sliver superimposed on a sphere, low near the trees, and it took a very long time for the sky to grow pale grey behind me as I headed west.

There's no snow on the fields. The word I associate with this open, windblown, waiting-for-winter feeling is sere, colourless-dun and patient. When the light came up I was in the Bulkley Valley as it opens up, as the mountains rise to shape a valley, as the trees retreat to the hills and leave even the patchwork of the previous valley. With the mountains it feels wilder; with the fields it feels cozier and more settled. I like it here.

When I stopped for gas I could tell it was light because the truck, still for the first time in three hours, started crowing. The ducks were upset, chattering away, and that's always hard on my heart.

Three days of especially hard labour, of angling the vibrating pressure washer to kick up a minimum of bird-shit-spray, stray, and feathers into my eyes and sinuses as the light fled; of rounding up the ducks and pulling out the keepers over and over as they kept running back to rejoin the main group; of hauling and pushing and pulling heavy carriers as gently as possible; of carrying bucket after bucket of grain to every group of animals so they'd have days of food for the day I was gone and for an extra day in case something happened; finally four hours of relentless driving in the dark until the light crept up behind me and a bright spot of sunrise showed in the south (why the colour just in the south? I have no idea).

Unloading was easy, having enough carriers is a blessing that way since the animals don't need to be transferred.

The morning was for errands, but first I passed a sign that said "Alpine World" on the highway. When I stopped, the man who ran the plant shop said he'd forgotten to bring in the sign the other day and gave me a two-for-one deal on winter-bare potted apple trees: a Gloria and a State Fair will join my collection. We chatted about apples for a bit, then I moved on. The feed store was less helpful: $22 for a bag of layer pellets ($48 for organic) and I figure I should just wait till I get home. Then the wholesale place, where I get my yearly bakery-quality flour to mix with my home-ground stuff and where I picked up hedgehog mushrooms grown by a small local company. Since I'm innoculating logs with them I might as well taste them, right? The "taste like crab" thing arouses both my suspicion and my interest.

I'm also somewhere I can replace the headlight that went out the day before, so I picked up one of those and some oil. I think she might be burning a little oil? Too hot to check right now though.

By that time it was 11, and my check-in at the hotel was 1:30. I borrowed their parking lot, right in downtown, and walked to lunch and to more errands and sightseeing: replacing insurance, getting soft pretzels and doughnuts for lunch on the road tomorrow, inhaling and looking for inspiration in the european deli/sausage shop, picking up beer from the local brewery, looking at potter's shops and bookshops.

Halfway through my plate of pierogies and sour cream I noticed a cat come to the front door of the restaurant and sit expectantly in front of the glass. After a nod from the owner I let him in and he stalked meaningfully into the back room; twenty minutes later as I was nearing the bottom of my London Fog he stalked back out and sat by the door again, at which point I let him out. "It's not my cat" the owner said, "but he can come in"

The most delightful part of the town was the little farm/craft hub. It had two walls of fridge and freezer cases, with each little section labelled with a different farm: this one had lamb, this one had pork, this one had frozen meat pies. I was badly tempted by another set of mushrooms, and by a mushroom grow kit, but my strategy of doing a full circle of the place before picking up a shopping basket paid off: I was over budget, but not as much as I could have been.

Beside the fridges and freezers were tables of storage produce, mostly garlic and squash at this time of year. There was a bunch of baking, dried mushroom powder and coffee and jerky, and then the other wing of the building was occupied by arts and crafts. All sorts of paintings were on one wall, glass baubles hung from the ceiling, and a blacksmith's display of hooks and pokers took up the back. Textile arts and cosmetics were displayed in two rows down the center, each arranged by artist as the food had been arranged by farmer. Here was a farmer that raised their own alpacas and spun impossibly soft scarves; there was someone who sewed waterproof canvas diaper covers and bags; on the other wall was jewellery and sweaters and round hats and pointy hats.

Altogether it was perfect: in effect a condensed farmer's market full of lovely displays closely side-by-side. The lovely variety and texture of goods was highlighted by how closely the displays could be spaced: unlike a farmer's market there was no crowd and no one was standing behind their goods watching. Lacking the budget to buy paintings I bought three greeting cards from one artist and four from another which will get clustered in frames in my two bathrooms. I chose three kinds of garlic because of course I did, music and spanish roja and marino, half of each to eat and half to plant. The music was notably bigger than the others. I also brought three chocolate bars out with me, half-sized ones (!) suitable for my way of eating sweets: sour cherry with light and with dark chocolate, and a peanut dark chocolate. The mushroom kit remained behind, as did the soft fingerless driving gloves and the frozen spanakopita and the blacksmith's towel hooks.

With that I checked into the hotel. When I reserved the room I asked for something on the top floor (I don't like people above me) with a bathtub and that's what I got. With a courteous "are you alright with stairs" I was given actual keys and headed down the long corridor, up the stairs, and then back the length of the building to find a big, old, worn, sparkling clean, comfy room facing a quiet back street. One thirty, time to collapse, to touch base with folks, to just enjoy the feeling of...

...there's nothing. My hobbies aren't here (though I brought patterns and books to read) and folks are still at work. These days of working my body hard (I was hobbling last night until I put on my muscle salve) and planning and keeping the pressure on myself let up into this evening of perfect release where I sit in a hotel room and contemplate the options of bath or nap, pizza or sushi, light from a bulb or an open window.

I love this feeling and I also can't get here without the buildup. A lack of demands is in itself a demand, and I can't experience it except when the cliff of necessary work falls out from under me and I'm left in midair, still trying to run and finding that instead I'm flying. In a good world I fly far enough to land on the next, carefully-chosen cliff and dig into another good run followed by another flight, and so on. Pacing those leaps and those runs is everything, is the difference between energy and burnout, is the difference between flying and crashing.

There's room in this space for all of me, for delight in the farm hub and deep sadness as the way the goslings' father called after them as I carried them away, for the texture of locally-raised beef jerky strips and lazy contemplation of dinner and the sideways leap of just sitting and writing instead of any of that. There's room for feeling capable and confident as I look up headlight replacement videos and for relief at being able to go home from a place where civil rights stickers in the windows are all in reference to vaccines and masks and wistfulness and envy and possible future thoughts about living somewhere full of small farmers and a little hub I could contribute to. There's room for my body to be tired and for the bed to come up and support it and for me to stay sitting up, typing, with the silvery feeling of exhaustion in my head and for that to be an ok choice.

Pizza or sushi? Bath or nap? I could install the headlights first, even?

Either way, I made it. I did all of it, on my own, and I am here fully filling up my space.

Vision first, but then: colour.

Prepping for the trip still in odd moments at work. It's going to take a bunch of prepping.

o Talked to the abattoir, I can pick up either around 5pm the day of (fresh) or 2-3pm the day after (frozen). Neither of those really allows me to drive home across full daylight. Processing what I'll do.

o Keeping an eye on the weather. Snow is supposed to hit afternoon/evening of "the day after" (so maybe I should load the fresh birds up in coolers with ice and try driving straight home? But it's a 4 hour drive, and I'll have done the 4 hour drive in at 5am that morning, but I'll maybe avoid snow?)

o Updated BCAA/roadside auto insurance, just in case

o Got grain last night, need to offload a bunch of it still, which means...

o Need to cut and power wash a couple more grain barrels (and need to powerwash carriers and coolers)

o Still researching possible places to stay, there's a nice place (The Creamery Inn) in a small town nearby, but that isn't close to restaurants. There's also a treehouse place in that small town that would be fun if Tucker was coming along. Hotels in the bigger town are an option. Keeping an eye on budget, of course, this will cost me a couple hundred in gas and more than that in butchers' fees.

o Got snow tires put on.

o Slowly acclimatizing the ducks to eating in the goose shed, so I can put them in there Wed night, close the door, and get them in the carriers on Thurs so I can leave at 5am Friday.

o It would be great to get the mat off the truck bed and wash under it.

o I definitely need to put the top on the truck, which I haven't done singlehandedly before. It's several hundred pounds and very awkward, I think I have a system that involves scootching it along 2x4s. I should probably find someone who can be a safety check-in after I do that. I guess that'll happen Wed evening, since I need to unload tires and grain tonight.

o I need to choose which geese are going, I have three selected but need to select the other couple.

o Also need to pull my breeder ducks.

o Need to get lumber and other odds and ends under cover suddenly, since it's supposed to snow and if it sticks then everything is there forever/until May or June.

o Really should cover straw.

o Need to pack, including birth control pills and pads since this of course will be happening over my period.

o Need to make sure the truck has emergency supplies if I need to sleep in it, patch a tire, etc.

o Need to figure out how to get both full carriers and coolers into the truck, this is a lot of items that take up space. Tetrisy.

o Need to load the animals up on food/water on Thurs night.

o I'm tired.

Averaged out, each year is better than the last. I'm more gracefully and assertively able to navigate my own life, my own desires, and a variety of environments. I have more faith in myself with each passing year as I continue to show up for myself more often than not, year after year after year after year.

I feel more self-possessed, not in the conventional use but in the literal meaning of the term. I am in better ownership of my self these days, and everything that comes with it.

All that said, these remain hard times. Bathtub Goose died a couple days ago. I planted a Tecumseh plum tree over them, and an Opata nearby. I miss them, they were so snuggly and loving.

Today one of the two new boars plus UV and another gilt of UV's cohort are going to a breeding home. Rounding the last one up yesterday took a ton of work, but luckily the first two walked right into the woodshed. I used a bit of pig psychology for that: I let them out of the pig fence into the yard and the boar went straight into the woodshed. I let him go back out again until he and UV started wandering around together, then he led her right back to the woodshed. I don't think she would have gone on her own-- the other one sure wouldn't.

Now that I know which of the new boars I'm keeping, the other one has revealed himself to be named Oak. I am keeping the bigger-framed one, not the smaller curly one. Interestingly, all my boars have a pretty curly undercoat but I only see it when they shed their bristles so the wooly layer is on display.

I'm putting twinwall polycarbonate on the greenhouse part of the woodshed, it had been plywooded up for last winter. I'm excited to grow in that space next year, and maybe to move the tomatoes into it from my deck this fall for a couple extra weeks of growing time. The twinwall sheets are cheaper (and more delicate than) the single-wall corrugated poly panels I used on the roof. They'll need to be carefully framed so the birds won't hurt them. They have a pretty neat appearance, a little bit like a Fresnel lens, so things are slightly distorted through them.

The americauna chicks are mixed in with the other breeding chanteclers in the henhouse. They're not old enough to breed or lay, but they are well feathered and lovely.

I have several new ducks. Hans the ancona was shooting blanks, or mostly blanks: I put several eggs in the incubator and few to none were fertile. So, I tracked down a new drake who came with the name Romeo and he's in there. The next step is to make sure the ducks are not in with the chickens, since the roosters may be preventing the drakes from mating. But, a couple weeks and I can set those eggs.

I also got a trio of pekins. They are huge beautiful birds and not super smart; they're more similar in size to the Chinese geese than to the other ducks. They've blended in ok, foraging in clover at the bottom of the garden and wandering around with the geese from time to time. They're too young to lay, I believe; I may need to wait for next spring.

The last batch of quail is about ready to go outside. I'd like to set another round of quail, a round of chanteclers (since no one hatched their own eggs this year), and a round of ancona ducks. I'd better get moving because I don't want to be doing that in winter.

It has been and remains very very cold here. It's still in the single digits at night (C), we had hail yesterday multiple times, and now that the incubator is off my house is *cold*. Chimney cleaning needs to go on the to-do list so I can start a fire.

The garden is doing... ok. If we don't get anymore heat the green beans will barely squeak in and the drying beans won't go. I'm starting to get tomatoes off moravsky div and I believe stupice and one of the cherries - maybe sweet aperitif. Cabbages look nice, gaspe corn has ears but I don't know if they pollinated, potatoes are huge and beautiful, zucchini are just starting (!). Beets look great. Raspberries are beautiful bushes and I'm looking forward to the harvest next year - they were just planted last year so there aren't too many berries yet.

Rounding up the pigs for sale also let me confine the pigs in the new field field… oh dear, that's gonna need a better name. The far field? Anyhow, that means their winter area is clear and I can split it in two. I'll need to take down a spruce tree and then I'll have the pig winter field and a field for planting haskaps in. The haskaps on my deck are looking lovely, so they should be good to go in the ground next spring. I worry if I plant them this fall they'll be eaten by voles and frost heave.

Anyhow, then I need a real solid winter fence for the pigs and we'll be good. In winter I can't reinforce the fencing with electric -- I don't get a good ground through 3' of snow -- so it needs to be pretty solid. On the plus side they can't dig under the fence when the ground is frozen.

In other fencing news, I caught the bottom of my 4runner on the slip-wire gate I've been using for a couple years, tore a piece off the car, and distorted the gate badly enough that it doesn't reliably keep the dogs in or out. Given my neighbours, that's a problem. So, proper gates are arriving Thursday and I hope to put them up on the weekend. This is one of the real daily-use life-is-better upgrades since struggling to lever the gate closed a couple times a day wasn't super great.

I think the piece I tore off the car was unnecessary.

So: I'm pretty immersed in my life. It's good. Hope you are as well as you can be too.