A "10" on the Farming Weird-o-meter

You know that loud, harried, incessant cackling a hen does after she has laid an egg?

Well, one of ours found it necessary to get out of bed at 2:09 a.m. and do her impression of the Romeo and Juliet balcony scene right under our bedroom window last night using that very noise.

For no apparent reason, other than possibly to run a farm-readiness drill to see how quickly the stunned humans could bolt out of bed, scramble for the flashlight, and hit the yard at that hour...

Darn Weeds! (Not for the squeamish!!)

It was an innocent afternoon of picking garlic scapes for the market...which are planted on a hill...which does have way too many weeds and leftovers from last year's bramblefest...when I went to turn away and step back down hill...and WHAMMO! Stick in the eye!

I pulled out the piece of stick in my eye purely instinctively, but unfortunately left 4 slivers of whatever it was...

And then followed a nightmarish afternoon at the eye doctor. Ever seen that horror flick where they pull open your eye and come at you with a big hypodermic needle???

Yeah...been there.

Chicken Yoga

(or subtitled, "Why You Have To Check On Your Livestock Every So Often...")
Our pair of bantam show chickens live in a little coop, with a little round door, and a little entrance ramp and usually all by themselves. Occasionally, one of the other chickens gets the wild idea to "visit".

Apparently it was Lacy's turn. But somehow she managed to get her right leg caught between the door and the coop, above the hinge. Maybe the photo doesn't really do this justice, but she is in the equivalent position of me raising my leg and hooking it behind my right ear while standing.

How did she do this?

I don't even want to think about it.

(No chickens were hurt in the making of this blog post. Or, if she DID pull something, she's not admitting anything...)

10%

Remember grafting? We tried to graft our heirloom apples; 10 in all - 5 of our favorite variety and 5 of the tree that suffered a serious split in the trunk.

Only one actually took (and I am not a little bit shy about telling you it was one of the ones I did!) and it was of the "favorite" tree. But the split tree seems to be faring pretty well this season, and may yet make it through another winter so I can try again next Spring.

The gloppy, brown, waxy thing on the stem is the site of the graft. Even though the site is still not completed healed over, we are hopeful.

I can deal with 10% success. Totally. And we get to use the root stock again (the 9 that didn't take) again next year. Apparently, they are good for two years before they get too big to be of use. (The top of the root stock and the grafted twig must match in size for the best chance of a graft.)

Keeping fingers crossed!