Life and Death and Pizza

We are well into the growing season here at Lick Skillet.

 

The garden is green and lush, yielding tomatoes and beans, corn and potatoes, bean beetles and slugs and flea beetles. 

At least this year the balance is tilting towards more vegetables than pests.
 
Our livestock is blossoming also.

Dale had more kittens (she finally has her date with the veterinarian next month). Current cat count is now at 5.

Mr. Gottlieb

Mrs. Claypool

Our two breeding does continue to be productive. Fluffy Black Phantom (I gotta stop giving the grandkids naming rights) had 9 fat kits who are now old enough to drive her nuts. Monster Bunny followed a few weeks later with 6 babies of her own.

And we recently harvested* eight rabbits. 
That brings the population at Rabbit Town up to 18.

The big surprise of the summer is keets!

One of our 4 guinea hens took herself off into the weeds for a month and came strutting back with 16 babies following her around. The noise level from 4 guineas is sometimes overwhelming, There just may be roast guinea on the menu at some future date if we want to keep our hearing. 
Guineas number stands at 20!

Our chicken raising hasn't been so successful. Our last two laying hens were attacked and killed WHILE IN THEIR FENCED RUN by what turned out to be a neighbor's dog. I came home a few weeks later from a poultry swap with three adult hens, two of whom died within days. The remaining Barred Rock is getting used to her surroundings but keeps looking for a flock to hang with.

So, on a whim, I ordered chicks from the Meyer Hatchery. 

This is a mixed bunch of peeps of indeterminate variety plus a free one. Meyers offers a free chick if you agree to donate its eggs to charity. Got my fingers crossed that it lives that long!
Chickens at this moment=17.

We were blessed to increase the human presence to 4 at Lick Skillet for a few days in July. Grandchildren Lizzy and Elias came to help out and keep us entertained.

 

They ran and climbed and painted and planted. We watched and listened and scolded and loved. In a few years we hope to add brother Oliver to the mix. A group of sheep is a flock, a bunch of sparrows is a host. Would a trio of grandchildren be called a frenzy?

A farm is a microcosm of the world; life and death and growth. Animals are born, some die. Crops grow and wither. Seasons come and go. But at Lick Skillet, one thing never changes...

Homemade pizza for dinner at least once a week.

*In other words, we killed and ate them. I was trying to be sensitive.

Saturday Revels

Most people look forward to the weekend. When they return to work on Monday, they regale each other with tales of their adventures. 

I bet few of them will say they spent their Saturday washing kittens.

I discovered, much to my dismay, that our three little white kittens were infested with fleas. These are outdoor cats so they are not held to the hygienic standards of house pets. But when we can see the little black specks fur swimming and occasionally jumping off to bite a human, then something has to be done.

We're 11 miles from the nearest store and on a tight gasoline budget, so a trip to find flea powder would have to wait for a regular errand run. I turned to the internet; a Dawn bath was suggested.

I was not going to try to bathe cats by myself so I enlisted Tom's aid. He brought the victims in one by one.

I put a ring of Dawn around the kitten's neck. Fleas will run towards the head when they suspect you're out to get them so the soap necklace served as a barrier. Then we soaked the poor cat in the extra bubbly water.
 

Once the fur was wet, you could see how many fleas there were. Ugh! We tried to comb them out but we don't have a flea comb so that didn't work. We picked out as many as we could be most wouldn't budge. We can only hope the soap killed most of the critters.

When we felt we had tortured each feline enough, we rinsed them off and Tom towel dried them.

They were amazingly cooperative; we didn't get scratched once. Their mom, Dale, also has fleas but I draw the line at trying to wash a full-grown cat. 

They're out in the sun now, complaining to each other about how horrid humans are to helpless kittens.

What did you do this weekend?

Neutral Territory

Our cat, Dale, just had 4 kittens.

STOP! Don't touch that keyboard!

I know some of you are ready to zip off a comment about spaying, unwanted animals, adoption, etc.

Let me explain the history of our barn cats.

We got our first cat in McDonough.

Atwell was a great cat--good mouser and reasonably friendly. She was visited by a smooth-talking tomcat and gave birth to two kittens.

Now, Woodchuck Acres was over-run with rodents, so the prospect of multiple outdoor cats was appealing. We found a home for one of the kittens and elected to keep the other whom we named Petrov.

And since we now had two female cats, we took Atwell to the vet and had her neutered.

Within a month she had gone walkabout never to return and Petrov got hit by a car.

We arrived in Indiana sans felines.

Skillet Farm also seemed to have it's share of pests and vermin. So we acquired two kittens, Dale and Penny.

Penny was the most energetic in chasing down small furry animals. She also was the one who disappeared forever within a month of her arrival.

The decision not to spay Dale was intentional. We like cats, we do not like mice and voles and rabbits who chomp our garden vegetables and find their way into the insulation in the garage. One cat can't keep up with three acres worth of nibblers.

We now have 5 cats. We don't expect we will have all 5 for long. You may not understand this, but cats at Skillet Farm are working animals, not pets. They live outside, are free to wander the neighborhood and sometimes meet up with unpreventable mishap.We will make future decisions about how many kittens to keep --we may give some away, we may even finally spay Dale, but whatever we decide is right for our situation.

Ok, let the comments begin!

A Shocking Development

The roll of poultry electronet arrived today. It's relatively easy to put up and can be moved to provide the hens with fresh pasture. They are no longer free-range (see "Fences" ) but this is almost as good with more protection.

We precharged our solar energizer and hooked everything up. Before I could locate the current tester, Dale sniffed the fence and flew back a foot or so! Guess the fence is working!



Dale, aka "Fence Tester"



Blame the Grandkids

We let our grandchildren name the chickens, so meet

Brownie, Stripey, Cinnamon,

and Hot Dog.

I named the cats--Penny and Dale, two Ginger Rogers characters in Fred Astaire pictures, but I bet you knew that.

Strategies

Kitten Penny patiently tracked a small lizard. She persevered, finally pounced, and caught it.

Kitten Dale yawned and watched, seemingly not interested in such goings on.

Then she calmly walked over and stole the lizard. Her growls made it known to all and sundry that the prey was now hers. Dale toyed with it for awhile and then ate it.

Treachery wins over honest hard work again.

Why Woodchuck Acres?

Our current homestead came with an abundance of rodents: mice, red squirrels, chipmunks, grey squirrels, voles, moles.


But the worse were the woodchucks.


Big, arrogant, bullies. They ate my vegetables, they moved in under the house. They even stood on their stubby hind legs and ate the branches of the dwarf cherry trees.


It was war.


We fenced and tried scaring them away, even threw rocks.


The chubby groundhogs laughed.


We got live traps and did catch a few.


But the real turnaround came when we got Atwell.

In no time at all, the yard was rodent free. This tiger in a cat's body even faced down a raccoon (the coon was three times her size so I intervened).


After we found out that local schoolkids derogatorily call McDonough-ites "woodchucks", we couldn't resist slapping the name on our place, trusting Atwell to make sure 'chucks were there in name only.


Atwell was an outside cat and one day went walk-about and never returned. We've had two other cats since but none had the spirit of that yellow tabby.


We're cat-less at present but the very first animal we'll get at our new place will be feline to insure there won't be a Woodchuck Acres II.