Post #19 - How dry I am

It’s not looking like I’m going to make that goal of 41 posts by my birthday on August 7^th. Oh well, it won’t be the first time I didn’t reach a goal I set for myself. But at least I got this blog jump-started again and that was the original intent.

An old friend who’s been spending the year wandering aimlessly around the Lower 48 unexpectedly found himself in Alabama yesterday and is hanging out here at Spenardo del Sur for a little while.

Watched storms pass by all day and not one of them rained on me. I don’t even want the rain for my gardens anymore. Fuck, most everything died anyway after two months with hardly any rain. At this point I just want enough rain so I can safely have a fire to burn my garbage.

I don’t have garbage pickup so I have to burn, compost, recycle as much as I can. But it's been too dry to burn it and it's starting to pile up. Being summer, I can’t just leave it laying around. I’m not worried about it stinking because it’s mostly just paper & plastic, but it only takes the tiniest crumb of food in there to attract those damned ants. So I have to store the trash in the big freezer until I can burn it.

Did I mention the ants that have been invading my kitchen during this hot, dry summer are not regular ants? No, they are the evil sons of bitches known as fire ants. They will sting you. They are evil and they are everywhere. Sometimes I think this big hill I live on top of is nothing but one giant fire ant mound.

I’ve been pretty diligent about keeping the kitchen clean but they will still manage to march straight to the one tiny speck of food left in the sink. The wall behind the stove is dotted with little strips of black electrical tape. Every time the ants find a new way in, I cover it with tape. I even had to cover up one of the electrical outlets.

I’ve poisoned and killed all the ant mounds on that side of the house but it has done nothing to stem the flow of marauders. I suspect they have built a mound underneath the trailer and I will have to poke my head into the dark & spidery crawlspace to take a look for it.

Gimme some rain, dammit!

Hopefully the laptop power cord I ordered shows up tomorrow. Then I can start posting pictures again (and stop using this slowpoke computer from the late 1900s).

Post #18 - Just an observation...

I've never met so many women with neck tattoos as I've met during my time doing community service. You don't think of rural Alabama as place where women have neck tattoos. And they're not cool tattoos either. These are more on the jailhousey side.

Almost all these neck tattoos are the first names of the women. Why would you get your name tattooed on your neck? Is there actually some logic or tradition behind this? Or is it just what the kids are into these days?

Post #17 - A day in the kitchen

Today was all about food. Blanched and froze pounds of squash, zucchini and green beans. Sorted and cleaned a mess of cucumbers that I will pickle tomorrow.

I also recently splurged on a big-ass brisket which I cooked up today. I plan on eating lots of reuben sandwiches. Damn, do I love a reuben sandwich! I took a stab at making my own sauerkraut last week (with beets & apples!) and couldn't think of a better way to eat it than in a reuben.

I even already had a couple loaves of rye bread in the freezer. I have a killer bread connection that hooks me up with shitloads of bread that has either passed its expiration date or is just about to. Every few weeks I get a wide variety of breads dropped off at my house: white, wheat, multi-grain, French, cinnamon raisin, bagels, English muffins, sub rolls, hamburger & hotdog buns... I pick out the choice loaves for myself and dole the rest out to the chickens.

Cleaned out the refrigerator too. Well, I started anyway. Actually pulling out shelves and drawers. You know, really cleaning. Lots of food had reached that critical "use it or lose it" stage. Made a big bowl of egg salad that gave new life to a mess of aging veggies. A forgotten half can of Miller High Life and a limp zucchini can be transformed into beer-battered, golden brown hunks of deliciousness.

After I cleaned the counter and washed the dishes, I set about making a scrumptious reuben sandwich using hot corned beef straight from the oven. Ooey-gooey Swiss cheese. Tangy homemade sauerkraut. Mmmmmm....

I am so full right now.

Post #16 - Shit. Tweak's a boy.

Caught Pasha and Tweak "sparring" yesterday morning. I wouldn't really call it a fight. It was more like intense staring competitions followed by some chest bumping, usually resulting in Tweak running away.

With one baby chick still unsexed and more eggs due to hatch late next week, I may end up with even more roosters. The nesting hen, Big Red, had eight eggs but she ate one yesterday. I'm not going to count my chickens before they hatch but I am counting on at least a couple chicken dinners this winter.

Big Red is actually an all-white factory farm refugee. I have trouble telling her apart from half a dozen other white chickens so I daubed a little red food coloring on her back - hence the name. Pasha's mother was called Big Blue for similar reasons but, since the dye faded away, I can no longer tell her apart from the others.

I usually call these indistinguishable birds by generic sweetieisms like "Angel" or "Honey Bunny" or, on rainy days, "My Little Muddy Buddy."

If there are more roosters, I want to name two of them Philosophy and Sophistry. It's an Aristophanes reference that I don't expect anyone to get. All that matters is that I'm amused.

Post #15 - A boy...another rooster

I was finally able to establish that one of the chickens born this spring is indeed a rooster. Or, it will be a rooster. Officially it's known as a cockrel until it is a year old.

You can't tell the sex of a chicken until they're about six weeks old. I've read that an expert chicken sexer can tell on the day the chicken hatches but, if you don't figure it out that first day, you have to wait six weeks until the secondary sex characteristics appear. The chicken in question is actually eight weeks old. I'm just a little slow. Today I saw a green sheen in his emerging tailfeathers - just like my other two roosters. Dammit, I wanted a hen.

When he was tiny, he had a penchant for riding around on his mother's back. Probably because he saw siblings squashed beneath his factory farm mother's big dinosaur feet and figured her back was the safest place to be. It reminded me of a person riding a giant elephant and I started calling him "Pasha."

There is one other chicken the same age as Pasha that I still haven't figured out if it's a boy or a girl. I call that one "Tweak." A mix of game rooster and factory farm refugee hen, Tweak is white with a few black smudges. Tweak was hatched and raised by Mama Graybie, the bad-ass hawk-hating hen that takes no shit from nobody.

I really hope Tweak turns out to be a hen. If not, he'll most likely be the one who ends up in the skillet.