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Heya, LJ.
Not much happening here. I'm procrastinating. I don't want to finish an email.
It's funny how we can fool ourselves by thinking "I'll get it done later", isn't it? We lounge around and avoid work, but it sure doesn't feel like it.
Anyway. People caught the runaway lamb from the Celtic Festival. It made it all the way across the woods into suburbs, and the owner donated a hundred dollars to the Special Olympics.
My sister takes horseback riding lessons. The horse farm where she takes them is an interesting place. It's dusty and cobwebby and littered with the dried flattened corpses of baby sparrows who fell from their nests, and it smells strongly of horse(Duh.) but it's interesting.
I remember when I was a little kid going to my aunt's farm. She has three horses. After seeing my older cousin lounge on one of them, only to fall as the animal started running, I was pretty wary about being bit, tread on, or kicked, so I stayed on the other side of the fence. My aunt taught me how to feed them and I'd spend a ridiculously long time gathering the long grass by the side of the road. See, with long grass, you don't worry so much about getting bit. If you don't let go when the horse takes the grass, it'll try to pull it out of your hands, but that's more amusing then anything else.
Anyway, at my sister's horseback riding lessons, there are stalls full of horses that aren't in the pasture or being mounts. One is a mother and her colt. But they don't beg shamelessly like the other ones do. I like to feed the beggars snatches of hay or scrapings of grain that have fallen to the ground. I'm probably not supposed to... oh well.
Back to the topic of my aunt's farm.
She has chickens, egg-laying hens with one attatched rooster. They are kept in a pen with a small shed inside, and frequently allowed out to eat bugs and grass and whatnot. At one point they raised guinea fowl. I don't know what happened there. At another point they raised meat chickens and stopped because the stupid things did nothing but eat and have heart attacks.
I never saw the meat chickens, but my family did store one in a freezer for a long time before eating it. It was the biggest damn chicken we'd ever seen. And it was by far the best-tasting. _Nothing_ like supermarket chickens. The farm chicken was so rich and sweet and _fine_... It was years ago, but I still remember that taste. Oh yes. Wonderful food.
The eggs from my aunt's farm are also vastly, immeausurably superior to supermarket eggs. They're of different colors and irregular shapes and sizes, and the yolk is a startlingly bright yellow. The shells seem a bit thinner. And when they are used for cooking... wow. There's just no comparison. I suspect it's because supermarket chickens are kept in little boxes or all crowded together and eat nothing but perfectly balanced, vitamin-dusted kibble.
Whereas the fowl at my aunt's farm in Kalamazoo are allowed out. And along with the bugs and weeds- and ventures into the horse padock, at which point they kick apart horse manure to peck at undigested grain- they get grapes and apples and stuff. Not the best grapes and apples, sure. But still.
I find it amusing to dig into a bowl of slightly-spoiled grapes and fling them, one by one, into the scattered flock, which charges madly after each one. It's like Oddball.
But you know what? Apples are even better. My aunt told me that there was a bag of apples in the garage, and I could feed some to the horses. I found the bag and realized that several of the apples were seriously rotting.
So I fed the sound ones to the horses. They get jealous of each other, but each had two and subsided. Then I flung a rotted gooey apple far into the paddock where several hens were scratching.
The rotted part practically exploded and chickens desended, pecking at the rotted goop and the sounder part, kicking it about madly.
The other no-longer-sound apples went to chickens who were not in the paddock. If the rotted are was big enough, it fell out, leaving a sort of wedge in the apple, and chickens exploited that. I crushed most of them with my shoe, though, so that they could eat the whole thing.
And they did. They just left a sort of scum where the rot used to be. Whenever they are being fed, they make strange noises. Not so much clucking as this worried-old-woman sound "Ohhhhhh... Brohhhhhh". Can't do it justice here.
It was fun.
Not much happening here. I'm procrastinating. I don't want to finish an email.
It's funny how we can fool ourselves by thinking "I'll get it done later", isn't it? We lounge around and avoid work, but it sure doesn't feel like it.
Anyway. People caught the runaway lamb from the Celtic Festival. It made it all the way across the woods into suburbs, and the owner donated a hundred dollars to the Special Olympics.
My sister takes horseback riding lessons. The horse farm where she takes them is an interesting place. It's dusty and cobwebby and littered with the dried flattened corpses of baby sparrows who fell from their nests, and it smells strongly of horse(Duh.) but it's interesting.
I remember when I was a little kid going to my aunt's farm. She has three horses. After seeing my older cousin lounge on one of them, only to fall as the animal started running, I was pretty wary about being bit, tread on, or kicked, so I stayed on the other side of the fence. My aunt taught me how to feed them and I'd spend a ridiculously long time gathering the long grass by the side of the road. See, with long grass, you don't worry so much about getting bit. If you don't let go when the horse takes the grass, it'll try to pull it out of your hands, but that's more amusing then anything else.
Anyway, at my sister's horseback riding lessons, there are stalls full of horses that aren't in the pasture or being mounts. One is a mother and her colt. But they don't beg shamelessly like the other ones do. I like to feed the beggars snatches of hay or scrapings of grain that have fallen to the ground. I'm probably not supposed to... oh well.
Back to the topic of my aunt's farm.
She has chickens, egg-laying hens with one attatched rooster. They are kept in a pen with a small shed inside, and frequently allowed out to eat bugs and grass and whatnot. At one point they raised guinea fowl. I don't know what happened there. At another point they raised meat chickens and stopped because the stupid things did nothing but eat and have heart attacks.
I never saw the meat chickens, but my family did store one in a freezer for a long time before eating it. It was the biggest damn chicken we'd ever seen. And it was by far the best-tasting. _Nothing_ like supermarket chickens. The farm chicken was so rich and sweet and _fine_... It was years ago, but I still remember that taste. Oh yes. Wonderful food.
The eggs from my aunt's farm are also vastly, immeausurably superior to supermarket eggs. They're of different colors and irregular shapes and sizes, and the yolk is a startlingly bright yellow. The shells seem a bit thinner. And when they are used for cooking... wow. There's just no comparison. I suspect it's because supermarket chickens are kept in little boxes or all crowded together and eat nothing but perfectly balanced, vitamin-dusted kibble.
Whereas the fowl at my aunt's farm in Kalamazoo are allowed out. And along with the bugs and weeds- and ventures into the horse padock, at which point they kick apart horse manure to peck at undigested grain- they get grapes and apples and stuff. Not the best grapes and apples, sure. But still.
I find it amusing to dig into a bowl of slightly-spoiled grapes and fling them, one by one, into the scattered flock, which charges madly after each one. It's like Oddball.
But you know what? Apples are even better. My aunt told me that there was a bag of apples in the garage, and I could feed some to the horses. I found the bag and realized that several of the apples were seriously rotting.
So I fed the sound ones to the horses. They get jealous of each other, but each had two and subsided. Then I flung a rotted gooey apple far into the paddock where several hens were scratching.
The rotted part practically exploded and chickens desended, pecking at the rotted goop and the sounder part, kicking it about madly.
The other no-longer-sound apples went to chickens who were not in the paddock. If the rotted are was big enough, it fell out, leaving a sort of wedge in the apple, and chickens exploited that. I crushed most of them with my shoe, though, so that they could eat the whole thing.
And they did. They just left a sort of scum where the rot used to be. Whenever they are being fed, they make strange noises. Not so much clucking as this worried-old-woman sound "Ohhhhhh... Brohhhhhh". Can't do it justice here.
It was fun.
