Exactly what demographic is Noggin attempting to draw with these Jumparounds videos? The all-important "Desperately longing for youth so we'll take a role we're 20 years too old for" group? Perhaps those "I really wanted to be in Scooby Doo as a kid" folks you hear rumors about? Seriously. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

No, really. I don't get it. These people are all at least 30, pretending to be teens. Nothing new here, I know, but it still boggles the mind. They do lameass dance moves that Perp is trying to copy. I find this both amusing and horrifying. Yes, I love that she wants to get her groove on, but dude. Can't we put on Code Monkey* or something instead?

Also: I don't care what anyone says, I love Yo Gabba Gabba. Biz Markie! There's a party in my tummy! It reminds me a bit of the Sid and Marty Krofft acid trip extravaganzas of my youth. I honestly thought I'd come up with H. R. Pufnstuf during a febrile nightmare one night. Seriously. What. the. fuck.

Oh, and using periods for dramatic effect has officially jumped the shark. I saw it on the cover of some gossip rag at the grocery store yesterday. Shit.

In other news, Jabba is nearly sitting up on her own. She does crunches when she lies down (uber cute), and today went from propping herself up with her hands to fully sitting. On her own. Awww, crap.

She cut two teeth on the bottom and is busy trying to gnaw my fingers off whenever she has the opportunity. She has tried bananas and avocados and loves them both, but I don't think she's getting much down her gullet. I just park her in the high chair and give her a slice of either (long ways) and let her go to town. I have to say, I don't miss the purees at all and I don't think she does either. Since we waited to introduce solids until she was 6 months old, it seemed reasonable to just skip that whole stage. Whee!

I ate cheese today. I suspect I'll be posting tomorrow about the hideous night she (we) had. But maybe we'll luck out. She still does not approve of coffee or wheat but I'm just not ready to give up the latter, given that dairy and joe are out.

Holy shit, ya'll, it went from 47 to 87 today in about 20 minutes. The wind started to shift around noon, with a HUGE wind storm, then it calmed down just a few minutes ago and no shit, it's 90 at our house. In town? fifty-nine. That's crazy, yo.

Dude is still cute and has oddly adult mannerisms, none of which I can bring to mind at the moment. Thanks, lactation lobotomy! He and Perp start summer school mid-June and we're all v excited about it. It gives Perp the perfect opportunity to get familiar with the school layout, introduce Dude to new kids and possibly neighbors (playdates!), and give Jabba a few hours a day of pure, unadulterated Mama time. I think this will be a good thing.

Perp is in an ... interesting ... stage. She's 5. I think that's probably all you need to know. It pretty much says it all:
"Oh, yeah, sorry about X, Y, Z that Perp did. She's 5."
"Ohhhhh, gotcha. Sorry!"

Mary Poppins will be coming to our house for the summer again. She'll be splitting her hours between us and some friends in town with a toddler, so I won't have her daily, but I am so sublimely blissed out by this that I don't even mind it much when Dude tries to headbutt me on the way to naptime. Much, I said. I'm not stoned.

Random mix of news that I'm not even trying to tie together in a coherent post:

I got Husband a Kindle for his birthday and he's in the trial phase, trying to determine if he'll use it enough to keep it or if he should trade it in for blowjob coupons. I suppose I chould just give him both.

We got three pallets of concrete blocks delivered so I can make raised beds where the fenced gardens used to be. The wood was rotting and I decided that a few raised beds made more sense than 55' of mostly unattended garden. Also, I can reorient them so they run N/S instead of E/W. A friend's rockstar husband came over and tilled the spot for the first bed last week, so I just need to level the edges and place the bricks. She said, casually, as if it were just that easy. I think a friend is coming later this or next week to ride herd on the kids while I work.

We have our second batch of meat birds in the garage. I moved the first batch of chickens and turkeys out to the bird yard, and they're all doing really well. We lost one chick to spraddle leg/trampling, and I think two each to general failure. I found the remains of one turkey outside the fence. Since the pigs trashed it last year, the birds have been just ducking underneath a section and going on walkabout. Not so much with the safety, there.

The first batch of chickens is due to go to the slaughterhouse at the end of next month and I honestly don't know if they're going to be big enough. Since they're actually free range, they don't sit and eat crazy high-protein all day long, which means that while they are gaining faster than the layers, say, they're still not going to be mondo birds by 6 weeks, like the ones you see in the grocery store. You read that right. Six. Six weeks. How sad is that? But at least mine are running around, eating bugs, taking dust baths, and doing crazy chicken things, instead of living inside a building loaded with their own shit and devoid of sunshine and grass. Also, I think this first batch will be more like 8 weeks.

If we can get our shit together this weekend, we'll put the electric in the temporary pig yard and get the first two of four. We can't get any until we're ready to build the main yard, though, and I realized that we might need to change our method of building after I saw the fence a friend put up. Seriously, it's a thing of beauty. We could use it for pigs, sheep, AND cows if we wanted, and I suspect we could put birds in there and keep them safe.

Said friend also has Muscovy ducks and I'm going to bring a few home. They are very good setters and mothers and I suspect that the only thing that will keep ducks safe is starting with wily adults.

I got a few dozen minnows for the pond and released them yesterday. I think the pond freezes enough to kill all the fish off, since we NEVER see any feeding dimples in the water, but I don't mind getting a few dozen a year to keep the mosquitoes down. Maybe we'll even see some predator birds.

My mom wants me to take a Master Canner class. Should I? I do a little bit most years, but I'm kind of afraid it would raise my interest in an unhealthy way. That is to say: I'll go apeshit and try to can everything I bring home and we'll never get the kitchen back.















*Known as "Code Monkey love you" chez Smacky.

Anyone need some eggs?

That's two eggs short of eight and a half dozen. I'm sure there's some kind of crazy joke to be made in there, and I wouldn't begrudge you one little bit. I really wouldn't. Husband found the motherlode today, almost three dozen in a tipped over cardboard box out in the pole barn. I've seen that box I don't know how many times, but it never occured to me it would present itself as the Ideal Nestbox. Silly me.

Yeah, so hi! Hello, how are you! Um, I guess I don't have a good reason for not posting. Post partum derangement, perhaps? Yes! Why not? We've had two birthdays, not including Jabba's, a couple days where I sat for a friend's kids and had something crazy like eight preschoolers, toddlers, and babies in the house with just me in attendance*. If that ain't crazy, I don't know what is.

So, a roundup of our activities over the last few months (shameful!):
I flew with all three kids to my dad's place on the East Coast. By. my. self. And we were all unmedicated! I KNOW!

Actually, when it comes to flying, my kids are rock. stars. They kind of suck in the airport itself, but really, where would you rather have the good behavior? In a relatively small, exceptionally contained space, or a hundreds of thousands of square-feet facility with room to run? Yes, exactly.

We spent two weeks out east, with Husband coming out for the second half, which is when we turned it up a notch and dispatched 500 clams. Dude didn't have a chance to repeat his astonishing oysterfest, but he made do. We took a couple dozen out on the dock and tossed them in, hoping they might take a liking to the place and settle in for a stay. Who knows, it could work.

My folks and I took the kids to the beach for a foot-dip, but it was pretty windy and cold, and really too early in the season for a beach day. Perp was ecstatic about being able to stick her toes in the ocean, though. Dude managed to handle the wind pretty well; he HATES it when it blows in his ears, always has. Even as an infant, he'd burrow his face into my chest at the least sign of a breeze. Freak.

Unfortunately, we had a minor tragedy. Let me just say that a four-pound box of shortbread cookies and I cannot coexist in the same house together. Good thing I got the stomach flu yesterday and managed to unload a few pounds in the space of 16 hours. My pants almost fit again.

We all flew home togther and managed to survive the cancelled flight, reroute to Chicago (go see the dinosaur!) and late-night drive from Big City airport to our little burg. Instead of arriving home in time for a late-ish bedtime for the kids, we got home at about 2 am. But we still got home, so okay.

We got our first batches of birds last week, 25 turkeys (bronzes) and 25 meat birds. I have them all together in a wading pool, but they announced their displeasure with this setup by starting to pick at each other. I had to put three bandaids on the butt of one of the chickens. I'll try to get a shot of that, it's actually kinda cute.

So tomorrow, I'll move them out to the new old chicken coop, set up the lights, and let them have more room to roam. I think it'll do them a world of good and I bet the picking stops right away.

And! One of our hens hatched a chick! And she's raising it! For those of you what don't have chickens, this is a Big Deal. Most birds have had the setting/brooding instinct bred out of them, so the only way to increase your flock is to buy chicks or use an incubator/brooder setup. But I managed to score an excellent mama hen, who is doing a bang-up job, and I hope she'll hatch out a full clutch this summer. I suspect that any chicks she raises that have the least natural inclination to motherhood be more likely to get the job done. The other birds we've had who managed to set long enough to hatch eggs out were suckass mothers and smothered the hicks or abandoned them. This is too cool. Me, I'm remarkably easy to please. Cheap date!

So far, no indication that I'll get into school early --holy crap, it's POURING just now-- and frankly that's good since we have no childcare leads. Helps to look for some, I suppose..

And now, cute kid pics!





































*I don't mean eight of each, of course. That would be insane.

Gobble gobble

Today was the day of destiny for two of our turkeys. Husband dispatched, plucked, and cleaned them and now we let them sit until Thursday, when we will gorge ourselves silly and thank the turkeys for their ultimate sacrifice. I had really hoped to keep a pair of them as breeders but we still can't tell who's a hen and who's a tom, and my god they eat a lot, so all four (someone got the fifth last night, if you can believe it) are going to meet their maker.

I hope they're good. The chickens certainly have been, so I'm going to assume we're in for a treat come T-Day.

In other non-death related news:
Fat Baby is doing really well. Her jaundice is clearing up nicely, and she gained 6 oz between Tuesday and Friday. I expect she'll be back to her birth weight or better by her 2 week check on Tuesday. Two weeks! How the hell did that happen?

Perp and Dude continue to be fascinated, if a bit dangerous. They either don't get the concept of being gentle with her, or they are trying to off her in subtle ways. I really can't be sure which. Good thing babies are tougher than they look.

I can't get the kids to play outside, or even go for a walk. Christ, it's going to be a long winter.

Holy crap, I'm in

I just turned in the paperwork for the ADN program at a local community college. So in 18-24 months, I'll be starting my first semester of nursing school. No assessment tests (I have a BA), no pre-program classes (I have a BA), and no swollen uterus (I have 4-8 weeks left. Oh, did I neglect to mention that? Time somehow flew. Another post for another day).

In other positive news, the pigs are gone. The yard we had them in was fairly devestated (picture Beirut, for instance), and the grass literally was greener on the other side of the fence (simply by virtue of there being grass). So they started busting out. We thought we were being all clever by putting the portable electric fencing inside the other yard but they had the nasty habit of charging *through* it instead of backing off. So they busted out again. Then the last time I realized that I couldn't: herd the pigs, fix the fence, and keep the kids from killing each other while I tried to do the first two. Poor Husband had to rush home twice in a week to help me corral them. His partners probably find it very amusing.

After wandering around the yard for 10 minutes weeping hysterically, I called the butcher and begged them (more weeping) to "come out and kill these damn things." They took pity on me and when Husband and I managed to lure three of them into the kids' play yard (again: Beirut). Lovely Clyde the Butcher came out and dispatched them that day. The other three we got into the old freezer (don't worry, it's 18'x20'), and they went to the Great Beyond two days later.

I picked them up the day before yesterday and I can't tell you how much more relaxed I feel. Between that and stepping down as the organizer for a local Meetup group, it's like I was on vacation for two weeks. I had no idea how much they were freaking me out until their collective weight was off my shoulders.

We've pretty much decided that we won't have more pigs until we have permanent fencing, which we might be able to do in the spring, but probably not. Luckily, Clyde the Butcher sells directly so we can buy from him if we need to.

I probably have lots more to report but I can't think of it now and it's time for the news.

Oh. Um, EWWW

When you flush the toilet, ideally all the products therein flow merrily downhill through the stack and into the sewer/septic/holding tank/whatever fetid locale you happen to have. Right?

I'm just checking, because right now? If you flush the upstairs bathroom toilet, massive quantities of ick flow up through the tub drain. Into the tub. Which we generally use for cleansing our bodies.

There are no words.

Husband made a valiant effort and tried to snake the toilet, but my theory is that the issue is in the tub's line and it's moved far enough down that now it's affecting the toilet, too.

PS, my god we poop a lot.

In other news, I called our local meat guys and am waiting to hear back on when they're coming out to do the pigs. They won't be nearly as big as Breakfast and Brunch, but we got them late (thanks, local meat guys!), so our timeline was shorter.

I feel bad because unlike pretty much any other animal I can think of, when the pigs encounter the electric fence, these guys charge THROUGH it instead of backing AWAY from it. So we haven't had any luck moving them to greener pastures (literally). They're still in the chicken yard, which thanks to several days of rain and the handiwork of our rootertillers, now measure about 5" of muck. I know they'd rather have nice cushy grass but they're too effing stupid/stubborn/bizarre to accept that white lines = pain and hey, STAY AWAY FROM THE WHITE LINES AND EVERYTHING WILL BE FINE.

Next year, we learn them young and early.

Perp started preschool last week and is already home with a cold. Swell! I know she's really feeling pretty bad because she's willing to just flop on the couch with Noggin on, and even spent several hours upstairs in her bed with no complaint. People, that's huge.

Dude has mastered the art of pooping on the potty. This morning, he dragged Husband in to show him and said, "That certainly is a big poop!" Too bad we couldn't flush it down the freaking toilet.

I'm back! And I'm biased!

Ah, summer. Hot, sticky, humid summer. It's coming and I'm about to grow Very Cranky. So I thought I'd try and figure out why it is that I'm so intolerant of intolerance, but still manage to have my own little balls of bias living in my brain.

I don't like formula feeding. That is, I don't like it for convenience. I understand that there are a few (very few) women who legitimately don't produce enough milk, and that some can't nurse because of meds they need to take. But when women just choose to do it, it really bothers me. I never, ever say anything, because it's not my place to tell people how to feed their children. And I know that puts me in the minority of lactivists, but still. It's there. Right under the surface, just hoping I get an opening to put in my two cents. Which I'm too chicken to give. Ah well.

But there it is, I don't support formula feeding unless it's medically necessary. And I'm guessing that my idea of medically necessary is a lot different than most people.

I also find myself discounting people who are very vocal about their religion. Mostly that ends up being Christians (and when did that become a denomination?). I have a few friends who are very religious but it's just part of who they are, not something they use like a hammer to wear others down. When someone says, "What *we* believe," or "In *our* family, we do X," I have no problem with that. When someone says, "What *you* should do," or "The bible says you should do X," I shut down. I can't help it. Part of it is that I just don't seem to have the faith gene that others have. And I'm okay with that. I really am. A lot of people are not okay with that, though, and they don't mind telling me so. THAT I have a problem with.

I understand the command to go out and spread the gospel. But I think it should be shared with people who want to hear it and not forced on people who don't.

But again, I keep it to myself. I don't complain when people talk about their faith, though I think I'll start telling them I don't need to be saved, thanks.

It didn't even occur to me that I had these biases until I was ranting about intolerant people and it suddenly clicked that, hey! I have a couple tender spots myself. I like to think that I don't force them on people or make them feel bad for their choices/beliefs, but it's really, really hard for me to let go of my opinions. And maybe that's okay.

In other news:

• We have 6 new piglets and ohmigawd are they cute
  
• Perp and Dude went to daycamp this month and luuuurved it
• Perp starts 4-K in September. Big girl school!
• Dude has the vocabulary of a 3-4 year old and it's bizarre
• My mom had a great book review for her new kids' book
• We're switching to DirecTV because hey, we have this HD tv that we really can't put to its full use with Dish Network. But DTV doesn't work with TiVo, so we have to use their suck-ass DVR. I'm sure I'll get over it, but I'm not all that happy about it. On the plus: more channels of Absolutely Nothing!
  
• The goats are gone. They went to live on a farm. No, really! They'll be in the county fair this fall and we're going to go visit. But we don't miss them, not even a little.
  
• I'm turning into a fruit bat; I eat at least a pound of cherries a week, plus a pint of raspberries, lots of oranges, and peaches. How I love summer.
  

Still here

really. Just not feeling the posty love. But I'll be back TODAY with something. Husband is at a CLE, so it's just me and the ankle biters from last night to tomorrow morning. So far so good, though Perp woke up with a bug up her ass. Then she had a giant poo and felt much better. Amazing what a dump can do for your outlook, no?

We have high plans for running a few errands but I may just leave it until tomorrow when I go and get my knit on. Saturdays are Daddy Day at Moot Point; I hit the ground staggering, go to a local-ish bagel shop where I can't eat anything, and study. Then I go to the knitting house when they open and spend the day on whatever WIP I have going on. Tomorrow it's finishing Perp's Einstein jacket, then I start Husband's Christmas present. Yes. It's February March. I don't want to talk about it. I also have to get a BSJ out for friends who are having a girl in May. As many times as I've started that damn thing, I should have about seven of them done.

Anyway. More later when if the kids nap.

Choppy weather

The day before we left to visit SIL and BIL in Germy, Breakfast and Brunch went to meet their maker. Lucky us, our butcher's brother does on-site slaughtering, so we were able--for a ridiculous price*--to have the girls dispatched on their own turf with very little, if any, stress.

Two days after we drove, nay, staggered home from the airport, I went to the butcher to pick the girls up. Nothing like leaving 400 lb of pig (Breakfast) and coming home to 200 lb of neatly wrapped piles of meat. Well, hanging weight wasn't that high, but he guessed she ran about that big. Hanging weight was 237 lb for Breakfast and I think 162 lb for Brunch.

The breakdown:
88 chops (in pairs)
4 steaks (not sure if they're in pairs or not)
8 packs of ribs
9 shoulder roasts
4 loin roasts
*37* packs of bacon (I figure ~1 lb minimum, some clearly more like 3 lb)
1 roast (what kind? I don't know)
4 shoulder steaks
9 hams (picnic and big ones)
1 fresh picnic ham (for my dad)

We have 148# of bacon and hams! There's also 14 lb of sausage coming, but it's not ready yet.

The smoking was an extra charge of $111.00, and the butchering fees were $57 (Brunch) and $82 (not Brunch). So we have several hundred pounds of pork for $288 (not including feed costs and the cost of the pig). Not too shabby. Even if I dropped $200 for feed, that's still a great price per pound (Under $2!). Plus? We're not contributing to factory farming and astonishingly inhumane "living" and work conditions. I feel really good about that. Really good.

We're already planning on raising a few more this year. Several friends have asked if we'd raise one for them, and I figure it's just as easy to do 2 (or 4) as it is to do one, and they do prefer to be in groups, so... This time around I think it's safe to figure the pigs would have a hanging weight of 120-160 lb. We sure won't let them get as big as Breakfast did (6 hams off of her, because they were so big!). We figure to buy the pigs in early spring and schedule a slaughter date for mid-late September, which should lead to them being in the preferred slaughter range of 200-250 lbs.

Honestly, no one who knew either of us a few years ago could have predicted we'd be doing this. Hell, we wouldn't have predicted it.

What I love about this is that not only do we get truly fantastic meat, but our pasture is going to be all the better for it. As we move them around our field, I'll go in after and reseed to rebuild the soil and upgrade the pasture. Right now it's in pretty poor shape, and the rooting, pooping, peeing, and weed eating is just what we need to start off on the right foot. If I can figure out a good shelter for them, I'll also put some chickens out in with the pigs, to spread the manure and take care of flies and worms. While the pigs are young, I may also put the goats in with them, but the girls got pretty aggressive and I think that I'd prefer not to find out if pigs eat goat.

* how much would you charge for killing, skinning, and cleaning two pigs in 21-degree weather? Figure 2-3 hours of work, here. It probably wouldn't be $36, would it? How do they make a living at that price? That's where the extra few bucks came from in the price breakdown, btw. Thirty-six. When he got the bill, Husband said, "Thirty-six ..... dollars?" and butcher's brother said, "Yeah. It's cheap."

I am farmwife, hear me roar

Yesterday evening I took a chicken from cluck to pluck all by myself (okay, further than that, I also gutted it but that doesn't rhyme as well as pluck so if you don't like it, find me a better word). If you ever find yourself complaining about the price of free-range or pastured poultry, knock it off. It's a dirty, smelly job, and when you don't do it on a daily basis, it also takes a long time. So when you next enjoy a tasty wing or drumstick, say a silent thanks to the wage worker who killed and cleaned that bird. It's not a job most people would want to do regularly.

But damn, don't they taste good.

Quack

is what I imagine the ducks said when they saw the fox/opossum/racoon/whatever coming at them last night. It translates to "Why the hell did that madwoman force us to sleep outside the safety of the coop and bed down with these disgusting goats?"

It's because they constantly spilled all the water out of the fonts which led to constantly wet bedding, which led to respiratory disease, which led to Coccidiosis, which led to five (six? more?) dead broilers, two more sick ones, and a sick layer. So far.

So. I put them out thinking that they'd be safe and the chickens would get better and here I am with no more ducks. Fuck fuck fuckityfuckfuck.

So. No more ducks. None more.

And where the fuck is the trapper, already?

Unexpected visitors

I am determined to do some gardening for the fun of it this year, not just for the food of it. Even so, I was out weeding the future asparagus bed (bed for asparagus next year, not some futuristic Star Trek asparagus that bends you to its will with a gigantic butt-shaped head [seriously, they looked like butts, did they not?]). The first spring we were here I decided it was the perfect location for a permanent bed of some sort, and decided that strawberries are easy enough to come by, but asparagus, ahh... that's not so easy. Fresh asparagus kicks the stih out of anything you get at the store and even sometimes the farmers market, which I boycott anyway ('nother story for another day).

So. Hauled a ginormous tree out of the bed with the help of good old Hal (that lift gate can sustain a surprising load) and hopped in to commence the weeding. Cut out popple seedlings/young trees. Cut out whatever-the-hell-else is in there that isn't grass. Nip over to fill the wheelbarrow (bliss!) with wood chips and notice ... can it be? Am I seeing things? No! NO! Asparagus! I see a nearly-ferned out asparagus stem! OMIGOD, I SEE FIVE!

I put them in that first spring, then saw no signs of life (you know, how you put them in and cover them as they grow until the soil is all level about them?. I figured they were shot. So I didn't weed the bed for four years. Or fertilize them. Or mulch them.

But there they are, all the same. Five glorious stalks of the wily asparagus, once and again lending credence to my stance that if it can't take neglect it gots no business in my garden.

Happy dance!

Of course, it's too late in the season to eat them, and I didn't notice one of them before I hauled the tip off, so I cut that one back and I'll hope for the best. It seems to me that if it made it this far, it will pop back up in no time. Right? OF course it will. And next year I'll put in more. Or maybe it's still early enough to do it this year. Next weekend, perhaps. Mmmmm. Asparagus. Stinky pee.


Update: I cut them back just for the hell of it. Maybe they'll produce a few more stalks before I stop for the season. And maybe harvesting will stimulate them into thinking they should produce more, which would be nice since each crown currently only seems to have one measly stalk.

Cross your phalanges!*






*I know that isn't correct. I don't care.

Further cementing her place as "animal least likely to live until spring."

The pig? She ate one of my ducklings. It is official: I will feel no remorse when she gets offed. But I will feel sated when I eat a large portion of her ass.

Her name is Breakfast

Now the boys need names.