Calling the Chickens

"Here, Chick, chick, chick, chick, chick, chick, chick!"  That is the call.  It is done in a high pitched falsetto.  It must include the work 'chick' seven times.  It must be done this way at feeding time so they come.  However, I've never not done it, so they'd probably come even without the call.  I'm sure of it, actually.

Our birds roam free across three acres of pasture, eating their fill of grass, bugs, worms, leaves, spiders, and grain they scratch out of cow poop.  They are omnivores and eat frogs, lizards, mice, and will even cannibalize one another if one is attacked and killed by a predator.  They pretty much are on their own, but they'll never turn down chicken scratch.

We currently feed them chicken scratch that the lady at the feed store calls, "Six Way."  Best I can figure, she calls it that because there are six ingredients.  Here is some in a bucket:

I don't have the ingredient list handy, but I see corn, milo, sunflower seeds, a pellet of some sort, and oats.  That's only five.  Maybe the sixth is wheat that I'm confusing with oats?  Regardless, the chickens really seem to like this stuff.  In the winter, we switch to a laying pellet that has a higher protein percent as they are unable to supplement with much in the pasture as there's not much grass.

So I do the Chicken Call and they come running...  quickly.  They gather with anticipation as I throw out a handful onto the ground.

I spread it thinly over a large area.  If you tend to put it down in thick piles, the pesky goats will eat it all before the chickens can get it.  We feed them twice a day and provide them with free choice fresh water and oyster shell.  The chickens are curious creatures, fun to watch, and we definitely enjoy their fresh country eggs.  Our flock numbers between 45 - 50 birds right now.  Egg production is soon to drop off substantially as the daylight hours dwindle.  We might order a few pullets to replenish those that kicked the bucket this year, but we'll talk about it, the wife and I.  That means more chicken scratch to throw down and more chickens to call.

A Tad Obsessive? Oh I Don't Know

On the ride to work the other morning, I took out my phone and captured a momentous event in a photo.  "Ol' Blue," our Hyundai Sonata passed an impressive milestone in automotive history.  It rolled over 222,222 miles!  She's a little threadbare and has a Check Engine Light that goes off and on intermittently, but still gets the job done.  She gets from point A to point B averaging 34 miles per gallon, and in a time where gas prices are about to jump over the $3 mark, that's an important statistic.  You keep going, Ol' Blue!

The perfect symmetry of the twos on my odometer caught my eye.  Not sure if symmetry is the right word, but you know what I'm getting at.  While we are talking about gas, I wanted to come clean and admit a little "quirk" I have.  

When fueling up, I have ALWAYS clipped the gas nozzle until I come up with a numerically pure number.  I will stand there and keep pressing the nozzle until it turns over to $37.00 even.  When it is in danger of not getting to that number, I'll bounce up and down on the trunk to "make some room" and continue fueling until I get it to the perfect $38.00 or $40.00.  

This practice has a fiscal responsibility aspect to it, too.  I can look at the credit card bill quickly to see if someone else is using my card.  Uneven numbers are easy to spot.  There are occasions, however, when I'm not careful enough and it rolls to $39.01 and there is not a chance of getting to $40.00.  I have a remedy for that.  It is not quite as pleasing as a perfect number, but acceptable, nonetheless.  In those cases, I shoot for ringing up $39.39.  I've remained in the closet about this tendency, thinking that it was just strange and obsessive behavior.

However!  I saw the following meme the other day that brought me a chuckle:

I am not alone!  Come on, fess up, ya'll...  You do it to, right?  Right??

(Okay, perhaps I should seek professional help immediately.)

The Road Less Traveled

I've posted about this before.  It's something we do on Saturday afternoon.  We are very simple people and like simple things.  Our little Saturday afternoon excursion is so doggone enjoyable.  Here's what we do.  Long about 5 pm, we jump in the pickup truck, roll down the windows and being riding on country roads.  We don't have any set route or travel plans.  Like Jerry Jeff Walker sings, we just kind of let the truck "wander around."

We do have several rules.  First we listen to old time country or bluegrass music.  We both sing to the top of our lungs, especially to Montgomery Gentry's "Lucky Man" and "Amarillo Sky."  We drive very slow and try not to go over 25 or 30 miles per hour.  Oh from time to time someone will come behind us, but we pull over to the side and let them pass.  We are setting the pace here.

We try our darnedest to not drive on blacktop roads, if at all possible.  We put gravel in our travel.

We observe the sights and sounds around us that busy schedules might cause us to easily overlook.  Last trip we saw a coyote.  This trip we saw a rabbit.  I was telling Tricia about shooting the .22 rifle off the gully bridge at snakes and turtles.  We didn't have the rifle this trip, but we stopped nonetheless and saw an alligator lazily swimming in the muddy water.

Other than killing time, we have no agenda, no timetable, no deadline or due date.  Our destination, however, is Peto's.  Peto's is a gas station that sells, among other things, sausage, specialty meats, boudin, duck quesadillas, fried fish, cracklins and boudin balls.  The boudin balls are either spicy plain or stuffed with jalapenos and cheese.  We grab a couple of boudin balls for the road and eat them in the cab of the pickup.  Boudin balls are a special treat!  Now, it is not healthy - it's boudin (minus the casing) rolled into a ball, battered and deep fried.  Talk about good!

We never take the same road home.  We drive slowly by as the sun descends and see parties and crawfish boils going on at people's homes, kids riding four wheelers in the woods.  The pace of our truck as well as life in the country is slow and easy.  I mention to Tricia that you wouldn't imagine that busy I-10 is only a mile from where we are as the crow flies.  Hank Jr.'s "Family Tradition" comes on the radio and we sing along as we see an old truck in all its rusted glory parked on the side of a homeplace.

We take a turn on Dama Landry Road that we like.  The trees grow to meet one another, making a tunnel that we pass through.  One could easily be fooled into thinking we've stepped back in time.  The road dips down and we pass over flowing water.  

All in all we've made what is normally a ten minute trip last an hour and a half.  As we get ready to turn back into our driveway, the sun is dipping beneath the horizon as God paints the sky a dazzling array of colors.

As we pull into the driveway, my wife says, "What a great afternoon.  This is my favorite thing to do."  I must say I agree.  If you have a country road nearby, I highly recommend going out and letting your truck wander around on it.  There are adventures to be enjoyed by simple folk on the road less traveled.

A Sign of Fall

Living in the south as we do, it can be officially Fall but still feel very much like summer.  It is still swelteringly hot and humid, the grass is still growing, mosquitoes still biting and the leaves haven't started falling.  One harbinger of Fall is the ripening (and falling) of the persimmons from our wild persimmon tree in the yard.  The fruit falls from about twenty feet up in the tree to the ground and the soft St. Augustine grass catches it, protecting it (most times) from bursting. 

You can see how tall the tree is, although it is hard to zoom in and see the persimmons up there.

Here is one I zoomed in on.  Their bright orange color is easy to spot and you can gauge how many more will fall.  We go out with a colander every day and pick up what's fallen.  We gather a bunch.  We used to have twice as many as we had two trees, but one of them died.

Unlike normal persimmons, these wild ones are slightly smaller than a golf ball.  Each persimmon has a 'cap' that we pop off and leave on the ground.  We also pinch off a black tip at the bottom of each fruit.  We bring the day's harvest in and wash them up in the sink.

We process them prior to putting them away.  In order to process them, we run them through a full mill.  

By hand cranking the mill, the fruit is broken up and the processed fruit is squeezed through a screen at the bottom.  This leaves only the skin and the large seeds, in the mill while the processed fruit falls into a measuring bowl below.

You can see the screen at the bottom of the food mill and also get a good idea of what the processed fruit looks like.  It is very, very sweet!

We measure the processed persimmons in a big measuring cup.

The reason we meticulously measure the processed fruit is because we make delicious persimmon cakes with them.  The recipe for a persimmon cake calls for 1 1/2 cups of persimmon.  We pour exactly 1 1/2 cups of persimmon into each zip loc bag, using a canning funnel to avoid making such a big mess in the process.

We seal each bag up, label it and stack in the freezer neatly.

We can open the freezer, take inventory of how many bags we have stored up.  Each bag = 1 cake.  It may be my sweet tooth talking, but I see 14 cakes in the freezer.  Nothing like a hot persimmon cake coming out of the oven on a cool, fall day!

Taking in Afghans

We have kind of an empty nest here on Our Maker's Acres Family Farm.  It's just Tricia and I.  Our daughter has a career in a city an hour and a half from us.  Our oldest son has a career in a city 30 minutes from here and our youngest son is a junior in college.  He lives in an apartment there and works there as well.  The house seems quiet now that they are gone.  We have lots of room now that our little birds have flown from the nest.

At one time we talked about adopting or maybe fostering, but haven't really talked about it much since then.  We're still pretty busy around the homestead.  So imagine my surprise when I came home from work this week and learned that Tricia had taken in a couple of Afghans!  We didn't discuss it.  There was no agreement.  No planning or preparation.  I come home and there are two Afghans now living in our home, sleeping on our couch.

Tricia and I had a long talk so that I could gain an understanding of how this had come about.  She told me that she had received a call from our dear next door neighbor who asked my wife to go over.  Tricia walked next door.  We live close enough where you can walk right over.  Well, they visited for a while and then Mrs. Joyce gave Tricia two Afghans.  Here is a picture of them sitting on our couch:

This post went in a different direction, didn't it?  The blue one is the one Mrs. Joyce made for me and the fall-colored one is the one she made for Tricia.  Tricia asked how long it took her to make one.  She told her that she timed it one time and it takes about 40 hours to make one!  That is such a generous, kind gesture.  Can you imagine?  80 hours of work went into that.  Tricia said that she told her that she's made about 300 Afghans over the years.  That is very impressive!

So here is a close-up of mine.  Blue is my favorite color, so I really like it.  It will come in handy this winter.

And here is Tricia's:

Tricia's is fall-colored and can be decorated.  Above the functionality and beauty of the Afghans, it's the neighborly actions of Mrs. Joyce and her family that really makes me happy.  We didn't know them at all 20 years ago, but they've always been so good to us.  I hope we've been the same to them.  One thing's for certain, we'll take good care of the Afghans and give them a good home.

Belle is a Lot of Trouble

Our Great Pyrenees dog, Belle is something else.  Believe me, she is a sweetheart, but she has not yet proven to us why she has the "Great" in her breed name.  She has been a great menace.  She is supposed to be a livestock guardian dog, but she eats our laying hens.  Predators eat our chickens when she is in the vicinity and she doesn't so much as bark.  I think Belle and the predators are in cahoots.

As I drove up this afternoon, Belle was in the garage.  Beautiful.  Now I have to park outside the garage and far away from her.  The last time I parked close to her she chewed through my brake lines on the car, emptying the brake fluid and leaving me without brakes on a scary ride home.  Not only did this empty my brake fluid, but it emptied my wallet paying for the repairs.  

Back to today - I asked Tricia why Belle was in the garage as I had repaired her kennel.  Tricia informed me that Belle escaped her kennel.  We had her in the pasture with the reasoning that she would 'grow into her role,' getting to know the animals were her charge.  Good thought.  Belle had other ideas.

She jumped over the barbed wire fence and escaped leaving 'fingerprints' at the scene!  

We don't want her roaming around the neighborhood.  Although we live in the country, we still have neighbors.  We don't want her to get hit on the road.  We also don't want her to get pregnant.  As I type, I hear her barking in the garage and we're wondering how we teach her to do right.

We rescued an old stop sign from a ditch in the country.  I mounted it on the wall out in the barn after using a Sharpie to add a lyric from the Supreme's 1965 hit to the sign:

I wish Belle would 'stop in the name of love, before she breaks our hearts. Think it over, Belle.  Behave!

Got Milk? Elsie & LuLu's answer is "Yes!"

He answereth and saith unto them, He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none; and he that hath meat, let him do likewise.  Luke 3:11 KJV

It is good to share.  Our Lord encourages us to be generous and to love one another.  In fact, He makes a point to tell us to love our neighbor as ourselves. That begs the question, "Who is our neighbor?"  The Parable of the Good Samaritan answers that question.  Our neighbor is anyone we cross on our path.

I noticed a good example of that this weekend in the Animal Kingdom.  We share the milk with the calves.  I've mentioned it many times before.  During the day, Elsie and LuLu have full access to their mommas' milk.  All day long they can drink it at will.  However, at night we separate the calves from their mommas.  The milk the mommas make at night from that miracle they do of converting grass to milk is ours!  Why here is Elsie and LuLu cordoned off from their moms in the barn.  They watch us, expectantly, impatiently even.  When I finish milking Clarabelle, I open the gate.

With much flourish and fervor, Elsie runs through the gate and latches on to Clarabelle's teats.  By this time I've milked most of the milk out of her, but cows are uncanny about 'holding some milk back' for their babies.  Elsie sucks, slurping noisily, banging on Clarabelle's bag to make more milk fall.

LuLu does likewise, rushing out to suck on Rosie's teats, well three of them, at least.  We're hoping that changes soon.

Both Rosie and Clarabelle stand dutifully while their babies are nursing.  Everyone is getting their fill.  You will note that Elsie is growing.  Won't be long before she'll be as big as Clarabelle.  She's a big galoot.

Elsie is finished with her breakfast much sooner than LuLu.  Watch what happens.  Elsie moves over to Rosie and says, "LuLu, you gonna eat all of that?"  Then she proceeds to take a seat at the table.

LuLu is sharing with her neighbor, Elsie.  Side by side in harmony.  Dwelling together in unity.  Loving one another.

If only humans could take note and follow this example.  They might live in a land flowing with milk and honey.