He appeared here last year. As always, when they come, they get fed. That’s the rule here: Everybody eats. He wasn’t our cat, but once they come and learn that The Food Lady makes sure there’s enough for them, they become mine. We’ve been waiting to get him into the vet for neutering. That’s coming.
For now though…
rolling in the dirt…
He gets to roll around being cute and cuddley. Trust me, it doesn’t take a long time of good food in their bellies before they become lap sittin’ farm cats ’round here. 😉
Sharing with Sandee at Comedy Plus for Feline Friday.
Yeah, today is thankful Thursday. I’m not feeling extremely thankful today though…
It’s cold. It’s day I-don’t-even-know-any-more of extreme cold warnings. Which means it’s much colder than typical for this time of year. I guess Mother Nature is catching us up for the nice weather we had back in December and January. There’s always a cost, right?
So that hay we’ve been doing so well on? Blowing through a bale every 3ish days. But mares gotta eat, or they don’t stay warm. A cold horse in this weather dies. Not on my fucking watch, if I can help it. So eating my Merry Mares have been. And then there’s the waterer…*sigh* I feel like it’s always something, know what I mean? The winds were savage for a while, and the damn thing kept freezing over. And then it froze at the spigot. That means standing there in the freezing cold, with a hair dryer to thaw it…with 3 toddlers dying of thirst, even though I just brought them buckets of warm water from the house to drink, but they be dyin’ and I be cryin’ because my hands are cold and I’m hopin’ I can get the water running before the hair dryer conks out… *sigh* Get horses, she thought… It’ll be fun, she thought… Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. 😂😂😂
Egg production is waaaaaaay down too. Where I was getting 50-60 eggs a day, now I’m getting 8. If I’m lucky. People want eggs. I don’t have much eggs. I’m just barely making regulars and that’s because I had some stocked up from last week…but now we’re low because 8 effing eggs a day. 60ish hens. But they’re eating and drinking and trying to stay warm. Ain’t so easy even with a heat lamp and deep straw.
Today we found we’d lost a duck baby. Again it’s the cold. We can feed ’em, we can make sure there’s fresh water, and draft free coops and heat lamps and damn if some aren’t gonna just die on us anyways. But ya sure feel like shit when it happens.
And then, just to cap off the craptastic shitstorm that is February, I have to go to the dentist. While to some that’s not a big deal, for some of us it is. I have a tooth that has to come out, but need a dentist that won’t make me wear a mask (got that) and will let my Hubby in the room too (can’t do that yet…fuck the govt, because it’s their shit restrictions) because y’all….this woman does not do well without her support person… So I get to stay living with this fucking thing until the shitty restrictions open up enough that I can have my person in the room while having the dental work done. Looking at the way the hand wringing from the “experts” is going, that oughta be sometime in 2037. Think I’ll just tie a string to the tooth, tie the other end to Ruby’s halter and give my girl a big ol’ smack on the bum…that oughta yob that fucker right out of my mouth. 😂😂😂 And if I die, they can list me as a covid death.
I guess I should still be thankful… My Hubby is still working and is able to get his teeth fixed (thank goodness! he’s had problems with his mouth since I’ve known him). We have plenty of food in the house. The house is warm. We’re still able to share our bounty with those who need it. All in all, as frustrated and cold and tired as we are, we’re still grateful for all that we have.
But for this weekend, I’m just done.
Here’s a picture of cats…Hobbes in front, Trouble in back.
Back in the Fall we ran out of time, energy and money to get the greenhouse built. I’d say material wise, we’re about 90% there…now it’s just having the manpower come spring to get ‘er going. As much as I wanted it done before the snows came, we are only 3 people and there was A LOT of other things to get done. And, considering what a bag of dog excrement the person who runs our province is, it’s not like we could put out a call for helpers to get it done either. 🙄 No matter how one feels about the entire virus issue, any politician who encourages snitching on friends, family and neighbours is, IMO, of significantly less value than a bag of dog excrement.
At any rate, without having the entirety of the supplies, it made no sense to knock ourselves out to build and leave it part way done…but now! Ah, but now I’ve found a source of free reusable building materials! Hubby has been stopping at the place for couple weeks now, and the pile of materials is getting to be awesome. So once the ground thaws, the greenhouse project is a go…as well as a couple bachelor coops for roosters and another area for raised garden beds.
I have this plan…
LOL!! It always starts with a plan! So over the Yule break, in a random internet search for an old, long gone from my life acquaintance, I found her latest project. It’s an amazing, powerful, heart breaking, yet beautiful project. And I immediately signed the family up. It’s One More Candle (clickable linky)
From their website:
Our Vision
One More Candle offers you the opportunity to adopt the memory of a child whose life was cut short by hubris and deep seated human evil.
One More Candle is committed to remembering every one of the 1.5 million children murdered in the Shoah (Holocaust).
L’dor v’dor From generation to generation
Simply stated, One More Candle needs you to adopt the memory, a child to honor as though having been one of your own family.
As I said, I got the family on board (trust me it wasn’t hard) and we’ve all adopted a memory. Please consider doing so too.
So, how does this connect with my plan I mentioned above? Well, the past year has shown me how much I need to work on an herb/flower/medicinal garden to go with my food gardens. I’ve been collecting seeds, planning additions, and looking at raised bed ideas to create. And then, yesterday while The Kid and I were doing chores, we were talking about the medicinal garden and we struck on the idea of turning it into a memorial garden. We’ve lost a few important people in our lives in the past few years (including one on New Year’s Eve…but that’s an entire different blog post) and it would be nice to have something on Farm as a memorial. Really, what better than our herbal/medicinal garden?
And then The Kid says “And we can include our children too…because they’re family now, right?” Well damn… I wasn’t crying, it was the stupid turkeys cutting onions. 😉 But she’s right. So, the planning is on for memorial stones for our loved ones (including our children) to remember them. And if I can’t get stones made in time, I do have some lovely scraps of copper sheet and a alphabet punch set that I can make pretty little tags to hang in the apple trees as chimes until I get stones done…in fact, I think the chimes is a great idea to do as well. ❤
In other news…
I’m attempting to do the entire Capture52 project again this year. Last year I fell off the photgraphy wheel way too early, and never really did pick the camera back up to finish the prompts. Ah well. Try, try again, right? And so here I am, giving it another go. The first week was “New”. What better than our “new” dear boy, Hobbes? It seems I’m always going to have neighbour’s barn cats come find us here…it goes with the fact that our cats eat well. It is always The Rule. Everybody eats. So when Hobbesy showed up, we just started adding an extra scoop of cat food to the daily rations. *shrug* Ain’t his fault that he’s here. He’s a super handsome boy…and like aaaaaalllllll the other boys, as soon as we can get him in to the vet, he’ll be losing his boys. 😉
Ain’t he the handsomest?
Once he’s neutered, there will be peace among the felines again. *sigh* That’s the biggest problem with these guys showing up all the time. No one else around here neuters their boys and I end up with them coming for food and fighting with my TroubleCat. And Trouble is the King. He takes no guff, but he’s getting older and eventually he’s gonna slow down. I’m tired of the young boys showing up thinking they can beat the crap out of the King and take over. Them young boys are too dumb and full of their balls to realize the girls ain’t interested since they’re all spayed. No kittens for my hunting girls! But at least Hobbes listens when I tell him to knock it off…and he’s slowly learning that Daphne just wants to play. lol
How do you know it’s Spring at Midnight Calico Farm?
Because all the feral/stray/other farm cats show up here looking for a meal.
This fellow:
Appeared in the garage a while ago…
Maybe a month?
Maybe more.
They’re always really sketchy when they first arrive.
Then they learn that food arrives twice daily up at the house.
If you miss those meals, you have to hunt.
He’s been here long enough to know about meals.
He’s been here long enough to know about drinking from the horse trough.
So now the plan is to try and trap him and get him in for neutering.
As always, boys are welcome to stay so long as they’re not hormonal assholes who beat up the other cats.
So far, it seems he’s young enough that the raging hormones haven’t taken over.
Plus it helps that all my girls are fixed too.
🙂
Oh and his name?
Hobbes.
Because he absolutely looks like the wonderful stuffed tiger from my favorite comic strip ever, Calvin and Hobbes.
Midnight Calico Farm 