The "Nada" Farm Chronicles

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It's Fall again, and the weeds won this year.

But not next year!

I have been mowing all the fields, It takes about four full days to accomplish if everything goes well. So I been busy , but we did get some down time activities in. We actually went to the Guernsey County Fair a couple weeks ago, to look at Rabbits? Well, yes, we went because a young friend of ours (Katie) from the Salt Fork Art Show had some rabbits in the 4H competition. So I like to go and eat food from trailers and learn about little creatures that I normally shoo off with the mower. And we found more friends were there showing rabbits and miniature horses, and we checked up on the kinds of goats we (I) like the looks of, Turns out the pygmy goats are my favorites, still and again this year. Now I need to find someone selling them cheap.

Update, BABY E has arrived! And been slapped with the moniker Alexander.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Things are going well, and the Farm Wife is trying to wear a path, to the west, to spend time with the little fellow and enjoying it quite a bit, it seems. I'll be glad to have another guide for the farm tours, when he gets a little older. For now, I'm glad everyone is happy and healthy, but I like em a little older, and less fragile. So I can pass on a hold me turn now and then, when someone else has a need for cuddle time. Besides they usualy just go to sleep when I get them, probably due to my higher than normal heat output. They always have.

But as I type this I'm finding it difficult to keep things where I want them. I think there is a bug on this page, each time I erase something, everything goes haywire. So I'm rebuilding it from the start in the hopes that the basic page layout can be salvaged to use for the rest of this season. Doesn't seem like a big deal does it? But it is slowing things down a bit.

But not quite as much as the "poison something" I'm trying to control from pulling weeds, I think. Ok that was disjointed, I don't usually get Poison Ivy, I mean it has never affected me. I know I can get a rash from Sumac, or Poison Oak. Well, okay truth is, I don't get rashy very often and I don't know which one gets me, but it did again. It's rare, and I can tell exactly where I wound the vine around my arm and it passed between my fingers as I yanked it out of the ground. Now I know it was dumb, I usually yell at the farm wife about not wearing gloves to weed and then I go and get rashy. It would probably have driven me nuts, the itching I mean, if it hadn't been offset by the yellow jacket sting on the calf of my right leg. In retrospect, I'm glad it got me there, as it was climbing up my leg, inside my bibs. And if it had gotten much higher, I don't think I'd have been very happy. Of course I had been killing these rascals for the last two days. So only one sting wasn't such a bad ratio, as it was the second hive of them I had to decimate for being in the wrong place, basically thousands of deaths to one sting.

Not the "page bug" previously referred to! But it is the bug that zapped me. Not "THE" bug, cause that one got squished, but you know what I mean. Don't be difficult OK?

 

The following paragraph is a Rant, don't read it if such things bother you, Mugsy...

I would like to say welcome, City Firefighters of Akron Ohio, to the United States of America. Congratulations on being allowed to live where you choose, rather than where the Mayor wants you to. Thus ends 30+ years of communism in America. Gotta love them Democrats! And now the Health Department is laying off a few of the Hitler Youth that hound the poorer areas of the city, another victory for freedom. I can only hope that the city will finally make good on my retirement, and provide the insurance coverage that I was promised for 25 years, in our collective bargaining agreements, and I could sure use the $5000.00 per year it has cost me, for other things like food and fuel to heat the old trailer with. I do hope there are alternatives found to the City's proposed layoffs in Police and Fire, because, as I can surely attest to, there will be more injuries and more people trying to get some relief through Workers Comp and that is never good. But keep me in mind if you get hurt, from the initial injury report to the last bells, you have to get it right, or you get nothing! The city will see to it. Thus endeth the Rant!

Meanwhile back at the ranch, er' Farm, I mean. I had this weed growing next to the garage, the bees love it, the hummingbirds loved it, and it was fairly nice to look at. But, it was such an incredible mass I had to pull a lot of it to keep from getting overwhelmed. I finally determined it was "Jewelweed". Now if you know anything about Poison Ivy you might have heard of Jewelweed, it is nature's cure for Poison Ivy. Remember how I said I pulled it all out! And chewed it up with the mower! Now doesn't it then follow that I would get Poison Ivy? Well, I can't blame anything other than my own ignorance for this one, it just seems remarkably unfair, but not unexpected. I'm sure there is a question about the goats that I am too ignorant to ask, which will end with my getting goats that don't eat Multi flora rose, or anything other than Purina "Hundred Dollars A Bag Brand", goat feed. Know what I mean? They won't give milk, have kids, or eat what I want eaten. They will just make noise, and get under foot, and cost money. I know this because I've had pets before.

Fortunately for me, I didn't remove all of the Jewelweed, I like the bees buzzing around in it, and the hummingbirds are neat to watch, SO, there were a couple bushy areas I fortunately saved. Now, it's also called Touch Me Not, sounds ominous huh? Well it's more surprising than bad, the seed pods are explosive. Little racks of compressed seeds in a spring loaded container, and whenever the bush is bumped, or they "the seed pods" are touched they "POP" and blast the seeds out and about. It's really pretty neat, much more fun than bee stings and Poison Ivy. So the farm wife collected some seeds and we planted them in other shady areas around NADA Farm, in the hopes that we will have a large crop of them for next year. And now that I know what I need to defeat the itchy Ivy, and have a source for it's control, maybe I won't need it again.

Yeah right! And in case you missed it the blue words "Touch Me Not" above, are a link, click it and see!

Remember on the previous page, where I showed how much nicer the back of the machine shed looked after painting? Bright red, and I painted it with a roller and finished it up, with a brush? Well, as always, there is an additional lesson to be learned. You see, I was painting under the eaves on the west side of the building, and there are a couple bare wires, on insulators, that supply the electric fence around my little garden, there are actually only two short runs of electric fence that we charge. The first as I already mentioned is around my little garden, a vegetable garden, mostly made up of non producing raspberry plants and weeds and tomatoes and hot peppers and cucumbers and watermelon and, well you can figure out what I mean by now I'm sure. And the other charged area is around the little trees Chris gets from Arbor Day. She keeps trying to get something to grow around here because she wants me to have to clean gutters and rake leaves. But that's another page altogether.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So back to this wire issue, it seems that latex paint will conduct electricity. I'm not sure how much the aluminum ladder contributes to this phenomenon, but I suspect it plays a role in it somewhere, Now these electric fences are a deterrent, not to harm the wildlife that would decimate the veggy patch in a heartbeat, but to send it looking for something a little wilder and untended to eat. So it sort of builds up a charge and oweee! But I'm sure somehow it resets my heart every time, blammo middle of the chest. Man! The third time, I finally climbed down off the ladder, and went and disconnected it. Now the reason I took three hits, is that I usually forget to reconnect it, until I'm in bed and remember it is not on.

Yep for three days, which gave me a chance to unwittingly do some research on an old wives tale I have been told, and even repeated as the truth. Well you judge for yourself. It's said that the Marigold is such an aromatic plant / flower that deer will avoid it, so planting it around your garden will deter them from coming around.

 

 

 

 

So I did, plant marigolds, and tend them, and dead head them so they would get bushy and weed around them, when I weeded the rest of the garden. Just so this pile of pellets doesn't seem to be what one might expect, due to the couple flowers you see. Check this larger version out!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yep that's the same little pile of pellets amongst the marigolds, center of the picture. So my conclusion is the old wives, had another method that worked, and told this tale to the city slickers that they enjoyed laughing at. However, it's not so bad, because they are pretty little flowers. And hearty enough to survive their job of outlining my garden, should it become overrun by grass and weeds, which it did a couple times. So, I gotta call BS on that tale anyway. Watch those old wives, their tales are not always what they seem, did I spell that right?

It's hunting season again, and my buddy is back, (picture on page 23) and the second trip out, while he was sitting in the tree, (that's why the yellow circle), this is what I saw out the back window.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Talk about teasing! Of course, this is much too small a deer to harvest, but it is pretty gutsy to be around the house in the daylight. I thought it was a funny picture to share! He said he had seen a couple small deer frolicking in the field, but out of range of a crossbow. And size wise, out of the range of reason. So we are still looking forward to a larger deer that will be worth the effort to process and maybe even have a rack worth mounting. Because according to my neighbors, who are up much earlier than I ever am, there are such beasts frequenting my property, but again, much earlier than I'm ever going to get up.

And now that it is getting colder at night, the garden is a little less of an issue, and mowing will start to fall off, and I will be moving into Garage Mode. I have a couple projects that will be getting finalized in the next couple weeks and assuming it all goes without a hitch, HA! I should be in pretty good shape by Christmas. Well, at least to dress up as Santa, which is not the good shape some would like, but round is a shape, right?

 

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