Pet Picture Day

I was thinking I really should make an effort to post again this week, and since every day is pretty much the same lately; computer, painting, laundry, cooking, driving to town and back again x2 or even 3, I decided that a pet update is always a good diversion from mind numbing sameness. Heh.

So a few months ago, I noticed that our little pumpkin was getting chewed up, and assumed it was some sort of critter that was getting at it at night. Then one day I noticed the chickens were crowded around it and well, duh! They had been pecking at it and we all had a good laugh about it after we realized that carving pumpkins would not be necessary this year:


They didn't bother with the big pumpkin until they had decimated the small one. Now I wish I had charted their progress on it, it has been pretty interesting to see how much pecking they can do in a day.


I am liking these big gaping holes that they have fashioned in our home grown pumpkin:

Nice form, don't you think?

The flock seems to be doing pretty well since our rooster died, and it seems that this scrawny old hen is the replacement 'rooster':
I see her rounding everyone up, clucking behind the stragglers and she is the last one to go into the coop every night. She is always very talkative with me and comes rushing up to me everytime I come outside. No attacking, just chit chat. Still miss the rooster's crow each morning though........

The weather here has been so mild that the dogs are still spending a lot of time outside each day and I got this shot of the dogs just as the sun was hitting the porch the afternoon:



Mr. Wilson is about 2 1/2 now, but it seems like he will forever be a puppy. Even though he only weighs about 4lbs, he is brave enough to pick a fight with any or all of the cats, who each weigh about 15lbs. Mr. Wilson pesters them, they smack him, he whimpers, then starts it all over again. Silly pup.

The cats are just cats. Fat, sleepy, hissy with each other and did I say lazy? I can't get them to do anything around here (although they are good at keeping track of all my shipping supplies):

They do like to find all the sunny spots:
warm places (this chair is next to the fireplace):
and guess who is coming to dinner?

So there you go, folks. Pet update, another post in the can, oh and a gratuitous image of a painting that I just finished for the upcoming show in Williamstown.
Turning At The Edge, 2009, Oil on Birch Panel, 18x24

And PS. Keep an eye out for my Happy Birthday To Me post this Sunday, k?

Pumpkinfest 2009

So funny! I sat down to post some images of this year's Pumpkinfest and then thought I'd add some recent photos taken around the house. Then I looked for my past posts about the Pumpkinfest and found one from 2007 with the same set of photos-a batch of huge pumpkins and shots around the yard including Penny, our awesome dog!

Every year we try to see at least one part of the Pumpkinfest in Cooperstown. I prefer the contest on Saturday, but watching Sunday's pumpkin regatta on the lake is always good too. Hard for us to get to both events every year, but sometimes we do. This was from last year's regatta.

So here is this year's version of life in a small town.

When you have a contest to see who can grow the biggest pumpkin:


You sure need to have a few of these on hand:


Ginger is still my go to kid, always willing to pose in front of a huge pumpkin. My other kids cannot be bothered anymore.


Penny, relaxing in a bed of fall leaves:


My Black Eyed Susans are still blooming:


Still pretty excited to have this step down from the patio door; took us 4 years to get it built! And love the piles-of-dead-leaves-scattered-around look.


Still a lot of green on the patio though:


And even a fall flowering shrub:


The burning bushes are flaming red, right next to our grill which, I suspect will sit in that exact spot until next spring, just like last year, heh.

Flower Gardens

Right now, this minute, is the high point of my flower gardens. I have spring flowers, and a few late summer and autumn blooms, but none of them even remotely compare to what happens in the garden in late July and early August.

Back:



Front:



The view from my studio window:




And Penny, of course:

Penny Has Had a Busy Day!

Penny, who is really just the most well behaved, sweetest dog ever, also has a bit of a dark side.

When she brings these sorts of things to the house, I start to question what the heck I am doing out here in all of this nature crap. Will I ever get used to seeing dead animal parts? And will I ever not still be slightly fascinated by them anyway?

Dogs, Cats and Chickens Everywhere

So Mr. Wilson is unbearably cute. He is much fun, and it hasn't escaped me that it's been just like having a toddler in the house again. I am forever fishing odd things out of his mouth, he LOVES to be held and carted around, and house training is taking way too long. He does sleep way more (and through the night!) than any of my kids ever did though. Heh.

He has folded nicely into our household however, and the other pets tolerate him quite well. He tries desperately to play with the cats, but they just stare at him like he is deranged. Once in awhile if he pesters them enough, one of them will turn and bat at him with a (declawed) paw, their version of playing and he completely overreacts by yelping and whimpering. I call him a drama queen. My kids correct me and say he is a drama king, since he is a male. They don't understand certain subtleties yet.

Anyway, as you can see in the photo, Mr. Wilson is in dire need of a haircut. There aren't any pet groomers in our town, but a friend of mine was able to get Mr. Wilson in with her dog next week. Some groomers in the area aren't even taking new customers. Good grief, who knew?

Penny is coming around. At first she completely ignored him, but now they interact and I think she enjoys his constant adulation. He follows her everywhere and when we go on our walk Mr. Wilson finally has a good shot at keeping up, because they are both on leashes. Sometimes the constant licking and pawing at her face is too much and Penny very politely stands up, ensuring that there's no chance that Mr. Wilson can continue bothering her. He keeps trying though!

Our new chickens will soon be laying eggs, I think. There are eight-three Buff Orpingtons and five Araucunas, which are the ones that lay blue or green eggs. I have been keeping them in a dog kennel, separate from the other hens until they were big enough to go into the other hen house. Before we left on our vacation I put them in with the other hens and things did not go well. The older hens harassed them so badly that they huddled in the hen house and wouldn't go outside, but we had to leave them there because we needed the kennel for Penny while we were gone. When we got back the new hens had managed to crawl under the screen under the roosts (where the poop falls through) and were all crammed in there, totally terrified. We got them out and put them back into the kennel. A couple of them actually had chunks of skin missing from their backs and one had a terrible gash on the back of her head. I was very disappointed in my older hens and told them so. Now I am trying to figure out another solution. I have a few things that I can try and if all else fails then we will just set up a more permanent, separate hen house. The good thing after all of that is that the new hens like me better now (I saved their lives, after all!) and now approach me and let me hold them. We are patiently waiting to see our first blue eggs.

The older hens clearly have their pecking order established and the new rooster in charge is much nicer than the previous one (Penny killed him) was. He never attacks me, which is a definite plus, and with the exception of rough sex, he is kind yet firm with the ladies. Ok, the rough sex is bad, all of the hens have bare spots on their backs from where he um, holds them down. BUT, I have been recently letting them free range in the late afternoons and I have noticed that many of the hens have feathers growing back in. I guess he has other distractions now. We didn't let them free range before because of Penny, but we spent a few days working with her, making it clear that the chickens are off limits (she is very smart) and now she just sleeps on the front porch while the chickens are just across the road running free. We don't entirely trust her though, everyone knows to keep an eye on Penny and/or the chickens while they are out. I love seeing the chickens wandering around the property though. It seems right.

Oh, and the cats are exactly the same, fat, lazy and shedding everywhere. Once in awhile they get all worked up, chasing each other around the house and knocking things off the tables and shelves. Then they collapse and nap until feeding time. Typical cats.

Dead, Dead, Dead Rooster

Don't let this pose fool you. Penny can go from zero to sixty in less than a minute.

Just keeping an eye out.

Well, the mystery of the missing rooster has been solved. I am glad because I was really feeling creeped out that he could just go missing so cleanly and quietly. And as we all suspected, Penny our dog was the culprit. I am not sure that she actually killed him, although she probably did, but my son saw her carrying the bird last night and we all ran outside to see. We found it right where she dropped it (she is good about dropping something if you call her name). Then my daughter showed me an area of our property that was just littered with dead animal carcasses. Woodchucks, rabbits (just the rabbit fur, actually) and there were many bones just randomly scattered around.

Ewww.

Gotta love her though and she really is such a good dog. After a busy day of hunting and killing she comes inside and rolls around on the floor playing with her squeaky toy. She loves to cuddle and she gazes at all of us like we are the most amazing people ever. She's probably thinking about fresh kill, but whatever. We'll keep her around even though she offed our rooster.

Anyway, I am off today to help out at a medieval festival at my son's school. The sixth graders all built catapults, most of which are incredibly elaborate, and they all have to wear costumes today. Which my son told me about last night at 7:30pm. Typical. We rushed around and put together a fairly lame but almost historically accurate outfit. Well, except for the blue jeans. And the design drawn with a sharpee around the keyhole neckline of the tunic. So we're close.

Farm Miscellany

Another Red Barn, 2007, Oil on Panel, 12x16

We had a very busy and productive weekend. There was much running around, delivering kids here and there, and Doug cleaned out the garage, which was a major undertaking. After a winter of just winging things out into the garage from the back door of the house, it was a wreck, although we did have a path through the rubble from the house to the door outside. I worked in the gardens, raking out debris, pruning and tidying up in general. I didn't go into my studio all weekend and I don't even feel guilty about it. I have been making good progress on the work I need to have ready for two upcoming shows, so I haven't really needed to work on the weekends. Not yet, anyway.

Last week one of our hens went broody, meaning she was ready to sit on a clutch of eggs. I found a great website that told me what to do with her and so I set her all up in a separate space. She was fine for a few days and then she began to poop in the nest (bad) and when I checked her on Sunday morning I saw that she had broken two of the eggs (really bad). So she is back with the flock. I'll try again if another hen goes broody though, because I was surprisingly excited about having a new batch of chicks via the old fashioned way.

Then yesterday, my son and I managed to get Rooster Number One out of the chicken coop. I was planning on setting him up with a couple of the hens in a different hen house because the two roosters together, were competing with each other for their ladies affections and were getting pretty rough in the process. The hens all have bare patches on their backs and their heads, where the roosters hold them down while mating. Anyway, this rooster is my least favorite-he is nasty and has attacked me several times in the past when I go in the coop. After we let him out I thought I'd let him free range a bit (although he was mostly just hanging around the chicken run, trying to be in charge despite being outside of the fence) and then try to get him to the other space later on so I went back to gardening.

Except...

When I went to round him up I couldn't find him. We all wandered around the property looking for him but there was no trace of him. No pile of feathers, no chicken legs, no blood, nothing. The hens were really jittery and kept looking outside the fence (if only they could talk!). He didn't show up at the hen house at dusk to roost which was a bad sign. I suspect our dog Penny had something to do with it, as she is a notoriously excellent bird killer, but this is a 15lb. rooster and I didn't hear a squawk. While I am not entirely sad that Rooster Number One is probably dead, I admit to being seriously creeped out by his disappearance.

But we will move on. Already this morning, the hens seem much more relaxed without the presence of RNO, who ruled with an iron fist. They ate from my hand and I was able to pet a few of them without being threatened. The New Rooster Number One (formally known as Rooster Number Two), while a bit violent with his ladies, is a more docile guy in general and hopefully we will be friends.

So that's an exciting update on life on the farm. Sorry. I literally have nothing else to talk about today. I am planning to do some underpaintings this afternoon however, and I will put up some images of those tomorrow, in order to still qualify as an art blog. Heh.

A Sick Guest

We have a new house pet today. One of the chickens has been invited into the main house.

She's not been right for a few days and so finally I decided to bring her inside to see what I can do to save her. She was kind of out of it the first night and couldn't seem to move or walk normally. I put her in a cage the first night, pretty sure that she would be dead in the morning. I didn't sleep well, waking up often wondering if there was a DEAD CHICKEN in the house!

But she was still alive in the morning and seemed to make some progress yesterday. She seemed more alert, ate and drank water and even walked around a bit. I spent a lot of time on the internet trying to find out what she might have and although she does have symptoms for a few common chicken aliments, they don't seem conclusive for any of them.

Today again she doesn't seem well. I am getting used to the idea that she may not make it and that I am going to have to deal with a dead chicken body. I am not sure I am cut out for a farm life that includes livestock, as I find this part of it to be fairly stressful. I am also reconsidering our plan to get sheep and maybe a few goats. The last few days have made me feel sure that I can't and don't want to handle this stuff.

Wait! I need to remember to just buck up and deal. Of course I can handle this. The benefits far outweigh the drawbacks with animals. Our cats are the best lap warmers ever, Penny follows us around with complete devotion in her eyes. I love watching the chickens and their antics, their eggs and how they are so happy to see me each morning. Even if it is because I bring food.

So I will keep the chicken inside until she either dies or gets better. If she were suffering I would probably put her down, or to be more precise, I'd get someone else to do that part, but she isn't yet so I am just going to see what happens. I never considered myself to be such a bleeding heart when it comes to animals. But we have these animals and now I find myself washing off chicken butts, clipping hamster teeth or holding a cat's mouth closed until they swallow a pill (that's a story I haven't told here).

I managed all of that just fine, I guess.