06 Mar 2005
Ruminations

cattle feedingWell, I said I had been very busy last week, and had a lot to blog about. And that's true - but I'm going to combine it all in one longer post. Because what I'm really doing is ruminating, which is what the cattle in the photo will be doing shortly.

"Ruminating", meaning thinking deeply, is based on cattle. The first bovine stomach is called the rumen, and cattle will fill this up when eating, and then lay down and stare into space while "chewing the cud" - the extra saliva they generate when just chomping is enough to kick start the rumen, and get it emptied faster. So they can resume feeding.

I have no idea, of course, what my cows are cogitating while they're ruminating, but from the look they get it must be pretty deep. Hence the title of this post. (Which diversion was inspired by Carnival of the Etymologies, a regular Thursday feature of Done with Mirrors, which I discovered via Secular Blasphemy. Ain't the web wonderful?

I was lucky to live through last Monday. Literally. I was getting ready to attend a trade show put on by Slow Food Indy and was running late. I ran out of color ink in both the Mac printer (a Canon i950) and my PC printer (an Epson). So I had to make a flying trip to Indy to get some more carts, and it was 1pm by the time I got back home and restarted the printing process. I wanted to hop in the shower, but figured I'd better make a run thru the paddocks and chicken coops before I did that.

So out I went - got some eggs in the Big House, and the birds were out of water. So I went around and opened the big doors on the barn, going inside to fill the bucket. Boy, did I get a surprise!

As I turned toward the spigot, I found myself face to face with Goldilocks - pictured in the foreground of the photo to your left. She was very agitated, and was stomping and snorting. Highlands are normally very sweet and docile, but Goldie was feeling trapped, and I was between her and an exit - the big doors I'd just opened, and left open! And I was just slack jawed with a big basket of eggs over my arm - the cattle whip was behind her, and no way I could reach it.

So I just stared at her and very calmly put down my baskets and grabbed the nearest thing I could find: a hoe. I then tried, as calmly as possible, to push the door shut. It was bad enough that she was loose in the barn foyer, it would be a potential disaster if she was running amok across the highway!

And I managed to slip past her into the barn before she charged. Which was one of the scarier moments of my life!

I dashed around the corner and up the stairs - once safely off the ground, I looked around to see what had happened and how she'd gotten in. It seems as though they had managed to swing on of the stall gates leading out to the paddock shut and wedged it so it couldn't be opened. That trapped them in a stall and they found it easier to break down the gate leading into the barn rather then the one they'd wedged leading into the paddock.

The foyer of the barn was a wreck - we store our hay bales in there before we feed, and of course, Goldie had munched a bit out of every one, breaking the bales and scattering hay everywhere. Worse, she'd broken through the floor in the old tack area, and had broken up several pallets and knocked over the garbage pail.

Keeping my hoe in hand (I still couldn't reach the whip) I very carefully clambered from the stairs over the short wall and into the open stall. I then shut the gate into the barn and forced the one to the paddock open. I opened the gate into the barn back up, and clambered back over the short wall onto the stairs.

Somehow I managed to maneuver Goldie out and into the stall. But as I went to latch the gate, the little bitch charged it, flinging it back open and tossing me behind the stairwell. The tip of her horns came within about six inches of my chest. It was, uh, "terrifying" is the only word that comes to mind. So I started over, and managed to get in the stall again and get the gate relocked. Whew!

Feeling pleased with myself, I turned to get my basket of eggs and was face to face with Maeve (the darker cow in the photo, behind the round bale)! Holy shit! Now what?

She had apparently gotten in when Goldie did, but rather than staying in the foyer had slipped into the lambing pens, behind a wall and out of sight. So I repeated the process, this time having to concentrate on keeping Goldie in the paddock as well as trying to hustle Maeve into the stall.

By the time I get her there it was 2:30pm, and I dashed into the house, threw on some clean clothes, grabbed my printing job and flew down to Indy. It was an interesting show, but nothing to compare to what I'd just managed to live through at home.

And that was just Monday!

Tuesday I ran the egg route - that's always a busy day. Egg production has been falling of late: I'd been getting between 40 and 50 eggs a day for a while, and for the past week I've been lucky to get 2 dozen. I think the birds are just in molt, which is OK, but I'm keeping a close eye on them. More on that when we get to Friday.

Wednesday and Thursday I just worked my hindquarters off programming. My biggest customer was having something of a crisis with some of his commercial software, and it was up to me to craft a workaround. All Windows C++ database stuff, so it's not exactly the most exciting code I've ever written, but there are a few spots where it gets clever.

When I'm coding that intensely, however, I really like to have some peace and quiet - I used to do this kind of stuff between midnight and 5 am, but on the farm that's a tough schedule to keep when you have to take care of the livestock in the morning. By about noon on Thursday I was so sick of phones ringing and email dinging that I shut both off - only to have the driveway alarm signal a visitor.

I knew what he was before he'd shut his care door - a slightly elderly (~60) gent with a thick book and a wad of flyers. Come to save my soul, and yep: I was right. I politely declined his invitation to Bible study, and politely explained when asked that I was not a Christian, and that I followed the old gods and goddesses of the Germanic tribes. We actually had an interesting conversation - he could tell it was pointless to try and hard sell me from the get-go - and I ended up selling him two dozen eggs and a frozen, whole chicken. It was the only time in my life I've ever been richer when the evangelists left than I was when they arrived. Kris commented that I could probably sell ice cubes to Eskimos.

Friday was a troubling day: I had to cull one of my hens who was showing symptoms of a cold. Bird flu can be a deadly thing - it can wipe out a flock in a week and I'm not taking any chances. The scary thing: I found a dead hen yesterday in the big house: apparently just keeled over mid-day. I hadn't noticed anybody else sniffling and sneezing, and it was an older (4 years +) hen, but still - you worry about such things when it's your income on the line.

So that was my week: which is why it took me until yesterday to deal with the blogspam issue. And I think I'll take a nap now: I've earned it.

00:00 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link

Rolling Our Own

Premier SupermaticWell, last Sunday, after deliberating much on the subject, and curtailing our smoking considerably, we decided to invest in the necessary equipment to roll our own. We had met some folks who had claimed good success with it, so we took the plunge. The initial kit we bought (200 tubes, tobacco and a machine) from ZigZag for a mere $17 (about half the price of a name brand carton of cigarettes in Indiana right now) proved that it could be done, and to quite a tasty result, too, but the machine proved unwieldy to say the least.

By Tuesday morning it had frustrated us so badly that Kris picked up a pack of "real" smokes on her way into work, 'cause we'd not been able to roll enough to get her through the day.

Tuesday is my egg route day, and one of my stops is at Low Bob's Tobacco. They had a display of the machine shown here. It was $50, but thanks to the display I could "try before you buy", and I was sold. It was as easy to operate as the other machine was difficult. It makes tasty cigarettes that look just as good as commercially produced ones and actually smoke better. And a carton of cigarettes will henceforth cost us a mere $10 again - $8 for the tobacco and $2 for the tubes.

Because the tobacco is actually packed tight into the cigarette, they don't fall apart very readily as do some brands, and because the tobacco has fewer (if any) additives to keep it burning, they actually last longer. The end result being: we smoke less.

For us, anyway, rolling yer own is a winner all the way around.

00:00 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link

A Moral Vacuum

This was posted recently to a Heathen elist to which I subscribe by my good friend Pat Buck, aka Jordsvin. It was in response to how one behaves when the inevitable missionaries come around. Read it and ponder the wisdom ...

I've told Christians this:

One should envision one's Gods as being at least as good as the best human beings. The best of us would not damn people for eternity for an honest difference of opinion or because they liked to drink beer and get laid. The best of us would not set up eternal torment at all. Your God is less worthy than the best of his admittedly very imperfect human creations. I refuse to worship him on moral grounds. If you ever managed to convince me that Yahweh is running things, I would run, not walk, to the nearest Satanist group and sign on the dotted line in my blood in a New York minute. I hope that I don't live in a universe where the moral high ground is Satanism, but if that should prove be the case, I know where my loyalties would lie.

00:00 /Asatru | 0 comments | permanent link

Writebacks

have been disabled until I can figure out how to control the latest flood of comment SPAM.

I've gotta run my egg route today, so it'll be a while, and all I can say to the bastards who are doing this is to throw their own domain name back at them in the form of an invective:
Just Blow Me!

Not that I believe they are capable of reading anything. They seem more like the type of folks who just like pictures and slot machines...

00:00 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link