A full week into January, and those promises for an above-normal snowfall this winter appear to be empty. The forecast for the rest of the month only dips below freezing during the night hours.
The Christmas Eve storms shook some dead limbs out of the big, rotting hackberry tree on the fence line to the west of the house. Since the farm truck has been confiscated for business purposes, I fired up the tractor today to haul the refuse back to the brush pile we have stashed back in some woods. The soft rumble of the diesel engine stoked some of the joy that had been dwindling in me; it felt good to be outside and moving with purpose. The business requires that I sit and stare at this computer screen, and once here, roots seem to grow out of my butt and into the cushion of the office chair. I am learning to stand up and walk away before they get too deep.
After dumping the hackberry wood, I parked the tractor and went to get my pruning tools. The young trees I had planted in past years needed some attention, and I had been waiting for the weather to cool some before I started amputating unwanted branches. One of the trees that needed shaping was our Japanese maple. It had started looking a little furry this summer with numerous wisps sprouting from the trunk and its beautiful structure was hidden in a fog of little leaves. The leaves had also been hiding a nest I didn't realize was there until fall stripped the tree bare. I will have to pay more attention this year to see if any birds come back to nest there again.
We are down to six chickens. Isadora is gone. I found some of her feathers strewn about in Queenie's pasture last month, so it was obvious something had snatched her. That same day, I found another dead chicken in the coop. We're not sure what killed it, but all its guts had been eaten out leaving the legs, back, and wings. We set up traps and caught a couple of possums, but I'm not sure they were the real culprits. The remaining hens must have been traumatized by the event and started roosting in the stable near the house. A couple days ago, I lured them back out to the coop with food. Even Rockstar, who normally stays close to the house, followed me out. I closed up all the entrances to the coop and run, and am going to leave them penned up for a few more days in hopes that they will return to the coop once I let them wander again. It would be nice to clean the chicken poop out of the stable.
With so few hens remaining, I have been daydreaming about raising a variety of chicks again, but both Finley and Joe are involved in 4H this year and want to participate in the chick chain. The only options for their project are Black Sex Links and Rhode Island Reds, and they have to order a minimum of 10 chicks each. The thought of having nearly three dozen birds roaming the farm is unsavory. We need to get that aviary built around the coop that Chris keeps hounding me about. Maybe the mild winter will let us get something like that done.
