Indoor guinea

Found J-n-E in Nadine’s room this morning (that's the classroom south of ours, named for the big maroon cabinet that used to be in there). Earl told us there was a guinea in the house last night, but I was too tired to care. I caught him and carried him out. Should have handed him over to the chickens, who are all quite indignant about what he tried to do Henley, the big black hen, yesterday. Hormones are running pretty high in guinea land.

We should probably put a couple of the males on Craig's List. Four is too many. They are too busy fighting to eat grasshoppers.

Planted four plum trees yesterday. Apparently sheep are crazy about plum leaves. I'm still pissed at them. I'll tell you about it when it starts to seem funny.

I'm off to work. I wish I could stay home and get more of the garden beds ready to plant, but nooooo. Too busy to take time off. And the back could use a rest, anyway.

Johnny-and-Edgar takes a time out

Found him like this in the netting over the chicken yard this morning. He doesn't seem to be hurt. Look at those pretty white eyelashes.

Yesterday I did some tilling, including under the old hoop-house shelter for the big animals. C. planted spuds there, some sprouty ones from storage. Hauled over some bedding out of the barn for mulch. C. planted peas and basil. Worked on the tilled up area on the south side of the garden, picking out grass roots and adding terracing.

Since we're working on the old animal pasture in front of the building (the future orchard), I foolishly thought I could let the big animals back in to chomp some of the green grass, since their area is getting eaten down. Put hoops and chicken wire up over the raspberries. The crap apple has fencing around it. And I'm working right there, so I can keep an eye on things. None of it is fenced well enough for permanent grazing, but should be fine for short-term, right? Everybody will be interested in fresh grass.

Those little bastards the goats made right for the raspberries. I hollered and threw things, which they found amusing. So while I'm beefing up the berry fence, I turn around and there's Pants, finishing up the last of the crab apple's leaves. He jumped the four-foot fence into a tiny area and pulled the tree over and started munching. C. came and lured the goats away with grain, and I shut them back into their brown pasture. Shitheads. The other guys are still munching green grass, and behaving. I'd better go check on them.

Guinea fight!

Johnny-and-Edgar has been getting into it with the young dude who deposed him as lord of the guineas. The young guy doesn't have a name and I don't recognize him unless he and J-n-E are fighting. They go round and round and over and under, full-out running and flying at each other and biting. The rest of them go about their business, chirruping and buckWHEATing and eating bugs.

After work

Monday, patched sheetrock in the hall (still have to goop it).

Tuesday, planted red raspberries from the ancestral home. Neighbor John D. gave them to us years ago; I stuck them in the ground around the silo and they made a few berries. Now they'll have a chance to go crazy. Hope they do.

Wednesday, tilled on the south side of the garden. Went over it just once, hoping to pull the quack grass  up, but not chop it.  Em's idea. So we can rake it out, then go back and till deeply. Anything to avoid picking through the dirt after tiny sections of quack root! You can see the white roots everywhere in the photo – every millimeter of every root will make a new plant, so you have to get it all out. The tiller started right up for me, and I only went careening down the hill once (the throttle sticks). And I was able to get it stopped before tilling up the wire fence.

And C. has a new rock! It's a half-boulder in the middle of one of the beds. Maybe we could lever it over and use it as part of a terrace? Or maybe it's just fine right there.

Thursday, raked quack grass out of the newly tilled area.

Bunnies and tilling

C. has two of the young rabbits in the bathroom for plucking. (If we didn't have six dogs, she could pluck them on the couch watching TV, but noooo.) So I plunked them on the toilet and took their pictures. Here, then, are the first of my series of Toilet Portraits.

Here's Plumb Bob. Check out that grey undercoat, fawn coat, and pale grey/fawn loose fluff.

Here's Rue, with her white fluff. No silly tufts or muttonchops, just lots of white fiber.

So Em and Richard brought the Ancestral Tiller, and I got a lesson in tillology. It starts right up, and goes. I'm feeling empowered. Nothing will be safe from me. 

It's damp and grey out. Might till, or pot tomatoes. Might just read by the fire.

We finished the tomatoes – 141 total.

Gardening in the snow

From green to white, overnight.

Yep, snow on April 27. Not the best for gardening.

It is melting, though, and the expected high is 52. We'll probably get out there later. Richard and Em are bringing the Ancestral Rototiller today, but it might be too wet out to till. Our soil is very sandy, so we'll see.

Cute earmuffs, dude.

We've got a fire going this morning, and C. is wearing earmuffs. That's Kewpie on the left, and Jazzbert on the right. Jazzy is wearing her morning hair. It's considerably tidier than her afternoon hair. She does it herself, on the rug, and it enhances her rep as a barbarian princess.

 I finished the vacuum installation last night. Now I need to patch the sheetrock and the floor and generally tidy up. C. is vacuuming. It's not too noisy, more like a rushing wind than the roar of the shop vac. I can stand it, with the radio turned up. C. loves to vacuum. So does Emma. (We got Em a Little Green Clean Machine, a carpet/upholstery shampooer, for her 10th birthday. She was thrilled.) Weirdos.

Yesterday C. and I transplanted a great many tomatoes from flats into 6-inch pots and yogurt containers. Probably about 80. We have another 30 or so to go, but ran out of potting soil. The greenhouse is full of tomatoes! They have bottom heat, so the snow probably won't bother them.

C. strips the lower leaves off a tomato plant and sets it deep into the pot.
It will develop roots all down the buried stem.

C. has finished vacuuming and is now telling me all about the virtues of central vacuuming. She is pleased. I am pleased.

I heart the crawl space

Well, that's an exaggeration. But I am OK with it. (I think we learned to say that in the 1970s.  It wasn't just about disco, you know. There was also pop psychology. And embossed vinyl yardage at the fabric store so you could get your mom to sew neato dimensional snakeskin vests to wear to junior high.)

I planned to install the vacuum piping from the attic. I tried. I left some big herkin' holes in the sheetrock in the hall trying to figure it out. But nooooooo. It's just too short, and I'd have to balance on ceiling joists, and there's fiberglass insulation everywhere. (Fiberglass is the asbestos of the future, you know.)

So that left the crawl space. I do a lot of grumbling about the old crawl space. But that's where you have to go to get things wired and plumbed and ducted. And we have plenty of that to do. So I decided to quit bitching and make it work.

I cut a trap door into the lovely old maple flooring of the old entryway. It was hard.*

I know there are already four places you can access the crawl space, but this is the only one on the southeast side of the building. It's mostly free of asbestos (which is the asbestos of the past). It's also free of overhead pipes, which means I can actually crawl, rather than wriggle painfully. From now on, all the wiring and plumbing and ductwork goes there. If possible.

I'm working on installing the vacuum system. This photo explains why we need it, C. says.

Yes, it's the office chair with an impression of my butt in crawl-space dirt. In my defense, I point out that I got that dirt while installing the vacuum. Harrumph.

So, anyway, I spend Easter Sunday hanging and gluing and cutting PVC pipe in the crawl space. It's nearly done – one last little wonky section remains – and then the low-voltage wiring and the exhaust pipe to the outside, and then C. can vacuum. The dogs and I will go and hide, and she can vacuum up a storm.

Central vacuuming is a wonderful thing. I know most Americans think it's European or gay or something.* But it makes a lot of sense. Take the motor out of a standard vacuum, super-size it and hang it on the wall in the garage or someplace. You can make it big because don't have to haul it from room to room or push it around. Then you put an outlet in or near each room. You just plug your hose into the outlet and push the sucker head (not the technical term) around. The oversized motor provides a huge amount of suckage. And it vents to the outside, so you aren't blowing all kinds of dust out of the motor exhaust or bag. The motor lasts forever. And you can buy different sucker heads and accessories (do they have a bunny-plucking attachment?), as well as modify the piping to adding new outlets.

We know our vacuums. We have six dogs and 11 fiber animals and one human slob, and we have killed many ordinary vacuums over the years.

When it's all hooked up I'm going to throw confetti all over.







* little joke