Cold weather, fine dining, travel plans, herding chickens

It looks like the cold weather that has been paralyzing the north is coming to interrupt out daily routines here also. We are forecast to have sleet and some snow by early Monday morning. Temperatures are not expected to get above 25®F and there is an 80% chance or precipitation. Sounds lovely.

In all of that I have to drop off our gooseneck flatbed trailer to the laydown yard in Krum so the crew dismantling a porch that attaches to the trailers we have had there for years can load the lumber onto the trailer. It is not a large porch and some of the lumber will be scrap, but there are enough good pieces in the mix that it will be worth the effort to sort through it. On the farm, there are always a lot of small projects that need to be done and using recycled boards is far less expensive than cutting up new lumber. Mama and I will probably drop off the trailer tomorrow or Sunday afternoon to avoid the slick roads Monday morning.

Mama and I took a walk down our road yesterday evening. She is not able to do that very often because of the pain she has in her knees but we made it there and back without giving her too much pain. When I make the trek I do so alone but when Mama or Victoria goes with me the big dogs always come along. I do not mind either way but I tend to see more when I do not have the canine company.

Several days ago one of the larger hogs was struck and killed by a motorist. The carcass ended up in the center of our road where it intersects with the larger county road. Some kind soul pushed the carcass about halfway up the road toward our house and half covered it with some dirt and gravel near the creek that flows through a rather deep gully bisecting our little road.

Why it needed to be right there I am not quite sure but it does not smell strongly..at least not to my sensory abilities. The big dogs, however, could not ignore the aroma they were able to pick up from the veritable smorgasbord of ripening flesh. Mama called them very sternly (both coming and going) and both of them were called away – to her great delight – but that will be an obstacle in our future walks for many weeks to come. We have so many hog skin and bone pieces lying about in the yard that I think the big dogs are getting bored with the carrion.

 Grandma and Grandpa are thinking about leaving for West Virginia next weekend. The plan is to spend several weeks working and gathering money to help remodel the little house Victoria is buying. (We are actually closing on Monday afternoon.) However, Grandpa will have to recover from the dizzy spells he is having before they can make that trip, but the plans have been set.

Last night, just before dark, Mama, Grandma and I worked to get three chickens that had been left out the other night back into the coop. I do not know how a chicken thinks but it cannot be too deeply since the “herding” required quite an effort to guide them around fences they could have easily flown over. Every gate had to be opened in such a way as to allow them to pass in the proper direction – once they got to the gate.

I got the stragglers into the back yard from the front yard without too much effort but once they could see the coop – it was just there on the other side of the cyclone fence – it was challenging to get them all the way to the back yard gate to put them on the other side of the fence. One actually flew up onto the fence and ran straight to the open door of the coop. For all three to have done that would have been too easy.

The other two took quite a bit of coercing to get them lined up with the gate they desperately wanted to go through – even when they were only inches from it. Mama got so mad she called them, “you stupid birds…” a couple times. For her that is a little over the top.

Fortunately is does not take long for her to calm down.