Mutants, Beasts and the “Thing” in the Brooder

In the flurry of the spring egg setting season in preparation for Easter this year, some eggs went into the incubator that were unidentified. They came out of the Silkie pen, and were thought to be bantam eggs. The Silkie pen has a small flock of white Silkies, but also mixed in with the group are two white Frizzled Cochin bantam hens. The Silkie /Frizzle Cochin crosses are the only crossbreeds we produce on purpose here. The chicks come out with the soft feathers of the Silkies, but pointed in all directions like the Frizzles (like some one put them in the clothes dryer with a sneaker). We have coined the name “Sizzles” and they grow up to be very cute little chickens with good natures. The females make good little broody hens for people wanting to set eggs. They do not breed true, so you never know which traits you will get from crossing the two breeds. I have had some with the black skin or shanks of the Silkies, and I have had some hatch with 5 toes. Once I had one hatch with 5 toes on one foot and 4 on the other. They are all very cute in their own ways and it is always fun to see what the gene pool will come up with in each chick.
Other then the “Sizzles” I can tell right off the different breeds of chicks right when they hatch without a doubt-they all have a very distinct look that is breed specific.  Or I should say I could up until about two weeks ago.
Both the incubators were running at full capacity, and that translates into approximately 430 eggs. In the fall/winter months we only set eggs once a week, so we only have hatches once a week. In the spring however, we set eggs every day, and this makes for frantic mornings of tray-fulls of chicks being transferred into the brooders and a close watch that must be kept on setting dates to get the new eggs into the hatching trays so that the chicks do not hatch in the turners. Some mornings it becomes quite hectic if there are large hatches in both incubators at the same time. I like to check over each chick as it is transferred into the brooder for any malformations,  health issues or weakness. We have a separate ICU brooder for any small or struggling chicks to go into before they join the general population in the larger brooder.
On one of these frantic large hatch mornings, I pulled a large striped/speckled chick out of the hatching tray that had an unusually elongated head, and very strange speckled markings on its face. The only thing I could think of at the time, was that it must be a Speckled Sussex chick – they are the only chickens I have that are born with spots. It had come out of a medium-sized lightly tinted chicken egg, so I just left it at that.  I kept watching it in the brooder and every time I looked I would think to myself, “what IS that thing?”
When it came time to take the hatchlings to the feed stores, I left this one behind, as there just seemed to be something weird about the way it looked. A few days later when the brooder had just a few chicks left in it, I took a closer look to try to figure out just why it looked so strange and then it dawned on me – I have a trio of Ring Necked Pheasants in the same coop and this was an inter-species cross! A pheasant crossed with a chicken. I had been on a website years ago where they had some funny pictures of them. I remember there was the offspring of a male pheasant and a Barred Rock hen, and a Peacock crossed with a guinea hen as well. Rare and strange, but I guess it happens! I pulled it out this morning and sat down to get a really good look at it. I think my suspicions are right. It has no comb,  game bird markings on the feathers and is getting tall, but it also has the telltale dark shanks of the hybrids, and on one leg, just a faint bit of feathering!

There still seems to be little information on the web about these crosses, but from the bit I can find, only 6.5 of these eggs ever hatch, and the chicks are mostly weak and don’t tend to live very long, so this cross is more of an oddity, and does not really produce an offspring that has any real value to the poultry industry.

We will keep an eye on our little oddity for the next few months to see what he/she turns into, and try to figure out what to call it – a “Cheasant” or maybe a “Phicken”-?

Phicken? Cheasant?

April Showers Bring May Flowers

Yes, that old saying is so true, all the rain we experienced in April has done a world of good for the roses this May.
I had a 60 foot pine tree (that had a bad case of bark beetles) removed from my front yard last winter, opening up a huge area to full sun now. The “pink garden” (the rose garden with only pink shades of roses in it) that has always only had half a day of light, is now reveling in the sunshine and blooming like crazy. I have put a heavy layer of mulch  from the goat barn down around the roses’ feet to keep them cool and damp now that the days are long and warm. All of the heavy pruning I did back in February has paid off and the plants have good shape and nice air circulation all around them. A lot of the clones from last year are producing buds for the first time and it is rewarding to see these new varieties in the garden. Moonstone and Mint Julep are  newcomers welcomed in, as well as Secret and Topaz Jewel. I am still waiting for Butterscotch and Dream Yellow to put out buds. Here are some photos of some of my favorite ones so far…..

Butterscotch

Butterscotch bud

Eden

Chris Evert

Mint Julep bud

Tineke

Marans and the Giant Egg

I have a small flock of Cuckoo Marans chickens that I have been working with for the past four or five years now. I like this breed of chicken, not only for their gorgeous dark chocolate brown, almost round eggs, but for their calm temperament as well. The flock as a whole is a peaceful, slow moving group, and nothing really seems to bother them as they go about their days. To their credit, the 3 roosters in this pen have never given me a bit of trouble, and do not fight among themselves. Though I will still never fully trust a rooster of any kind (if you’re curious about why, read my book!)

Just as we were about to set the clocks ahead this year for daylight savings time, and there was an increase in the daylight hours, I went into the Marans pen one morning to collect eggs. I found two of the normal dark brown eggs in the box, but then there was something very strange in there with them. It was a huge egg with a very light colored, thin shell, like something a Sussex would lay. When I picked it up I was really surprised at just how large this egg really was. I have been raising chickens for a long time and have seen a lot of large and/or misshapen eggs, but this was about the biggest I had seen on this farm.

A friend of mine has a very sensitive balance that can weigh within a 100th of a gram, so I borrowed it and went about the task of recording this freakishly large egg with a scientific approach. I first weighed the other two found in the nest with it- they weighed in at 59.29 grams and 62.84 grams. The next day, I found another large egg in the Marans pen, it was much more normal looking than the giant egg, but it weighed in at 90.03 grams and had a double yoke when I cracked it open (there’s no picture of that one because it ended up as breakfast.)  The giant egg weighed in at 152.20 grams – over twice the size of a normal large egg! I also measured it to be 3 and 1/2 inches in length and 7 inches around, exactly. Ouch!

Next, I tried to candle the egg. I could not see the normal air sack at the top end of the egg, there just appeared to be a watery liquid in it. I could not see the yoke/yokes, which I thought was odd. To my surprise, when I cracked it open I found a perfectly formed whole other egg inside! The shell of this inner egg was dark brown and just as thick as they normally are.

In all the years of my chicken keeping, I have never seen this before, so of course I immediately started to research it. I found that what causes this oddity is when an egg gets backs up in the oviduct for some reason and then goes through the last few stages of production twice. Rare, but not unheard of. I just had to feel empathy for the poor hen who finally had to lay it!

More About Marans

This breed originated in western France in the town of Marans, and the word itself is both singular and plural – you have one Marans or many Marans. They do well in damp areas, having been developed in a marshy portion of France. Marans are a large, heavy breed that grows and matures slowly, with the roosters reaching up to 9 lbs, and the hens around 7 lbs. I raise the Silver Cuckoo color variety, and my stock has the feathered shanks like the original French birds (for some reason this characteristic has been bred out of the British lines.) The French recognize 9 color varieties:

1. Silver Cuckoo

2. Golden Cuckoo

3. White

4. Black Copper

5. Black

6. Wheaten

7. Black-tailed Fawn

8. Ermine or Columbian

9. Birchen

The Cuckoo variety is very similar in appearance to the Barred Rock, except the barring is not as distinct, giving it less of the striped appearance. The cuckoo pattern has all feathers marked across with black and white bands. This pattern is the result of the action of the sex linked barred (B) gene which is dominant.  When the males are homozygous for the Barred gene (BB), their color is lighter than that of the hemizygous (B-) females because the Barred gene produces the white bars.   In Cuckoo Marans, males are lighter in color than females–it is said to be possible to color sex them even as chicks with pretty good accuracy. If I stand back from the brooder and narrow my eyes a bit, I can pick out some of the young roos right away, but for the most part this is a breed that you really have to wait until they 5-8 weeks old to really sight sex. Even then, I did have a roo a few years who did not get his saddle or tell-tale neck feathers until he was about 4 months old.

Out Like a Lion – Update

Well, we haven’t floated away yet! I have a few doom and gloom friends (the doomies) who predicted this past week would bring earth shattering quakes and comets that would hit the earth with the super moon and equinox together. I bet them all dinner that this would not come to pass- needless to say I have not heard from any of them since. Hey, you guys still owe me!

Monday was spent moving the turkeys to a dry enclosure in the pouring rain and buying a trunk load of tarps. Tuesday we were blessed with Christy’s brother Tim and friend Daniel who drove all the way up from Pasadena to help put the fences back together and move the turkey pen to higher ground. Thanks guys, you rock! Also, a guy from the fence company came out to measure the fence lines and is still working on some numbers for us for the replacement of the back and side fences.

Somewhere in the middle of all the chaos of the past few days I remember going into the garage for something. I was soaked to the bone and chilly and glad to be out of the driving rain and wind for a moment. As I flipped the light on and went to the tool bench, I heard a familiar sound coming from one of the incubators. I stopped what I was doing and went over to check. Sure enough, there was a fuzzy little chick sitting in the hatching tray looking out at me. I pulled back the wet hood from my soaked jacket and pushed up my soaked sleeves, and unlatched the incubator door. I picked up the warm, brand new little fluffy ball of life, and pressed it against my cold cheek. I felt myself smile for the first time all day. It cooed softly and cuddled down in my hands, and closed its eyes. I could hear the storm raging all around us outside trying to destroy everything in its path, yet in here there was peace. In this small protected place new life was able to emerge, safe and warm. I stood humbled in this moment thinking of a scripture that I could not remember exactly, but it is something about being under the pinion of God’s wings. Being tucked up close to him under his wings, safe even in the worst of storms. I think he was trying to tell me in that moment that if we just learn to stay there, close to his heart, we too will be safe and warm, even in the worst of life’s storms. All we need is to come to him with childlike faith and he will keep us in the midst of the storms that seem to hit us from all sides. I placed the sleepy little newborn chick up into the nice warm brooder above the incubator. As I stood in the doorway on my way back out into the storm, I reminded myself once again that Scripture always tells us that these storms come to pass, they do not come to stay. We just have to learn to work through them, no matter how bad they seem at the time or what is going on around us in the world.
I just have to remind myself this storm will be over soon, and spring is already here- even if it does happen that it will be going out like a lion this year.

The First Day of Spring – Out Like a Lion

Sunday, March 20th brought us the spring equinox. I always heard the saying for March was “in like a lion, out like a lamb”, but where we are it can still be a decidedly harsh month. The fruit blossoms have been out for a week, and some of the roses have even put out their first blooms, but as of last night a heavy rain storm and a strong wind have been pummeling us non-stop. The storm keeps changing direction and seems to have blown at us from all sides now. I fear for the safety of some of the young rose clones, and tender blossoms, as this wind is strong enough to rip the heads right off of anything that has flowered in the last week or so. The animal pens have once again been turned to molten mud, and it has been necessary to put on the high rubber boots to go slogging through the muck. We lost some birds in the mud, and sections of the  fences have fallen over from the high winds. Parts of the solar panels were torn from the roof, and tree branches are coming down around us, and the septic tank in the back yard is slowly collapsing from the weight of the mud. To top off the high winds we received 5.2″ of rain in 14 hours. I am keeping my eye on a couple of trees that look like they might want to topple over. They said it will rain all week.

About a dozen water-soaked hens ended up being put in the greenhouse over night and my office had a Cuckoo Maran hen that picked the wrong day to be egg bound and two crates of unhappy pheasants pitching a fit most of the night – not understanding that they were in there for their own safety and protection. Try telling that to a pheasant who has been stuffed into a crate. Needless to say I did not get much writing done.

Yes, I know full well complaining about the weather will not make it stop raining, and yes I also know that compared to what other parts of the world just went through, I should feel lucky. I’m not really complaining, just stating the facts.

The e-book- dreams, hard work, and much gratitude

Click image for more information.

Today we launched The Blue Hill Farms Guide to Basic Chicken Keeping (for now as an e-book, we will most likely get it out in hard copy as well.) I like that it is called a “guide,” as I really don’t like telling anybody what to do. I would rather teach people what to expect, and then let them do things their own way, at their own pace, in their own time. I would like the seekers of this knowledge to be able to plan ahead, to avoid common problems, to be able to tell when everything is going along as it should be and to know what to do when plan A does not always work out (and the first rule of farming is – plan A does not always work out.) It is best to be prepared.

The guide is taken from the class we teach here in the spring – Poultry Keeping 101. This class is for anyone new to chicken keeping and/or people who are thinking about chicken keeping and would first like to see what they are getting themselves into. We bring them to our “outdoor classroom” on the farm where they can experience for themselves the sights, sounds, and feel of this new adventure they are undertaking. They get to see the chickens in action – see a hen taking a dust bath, touch a fluffy little hatchling, or even watch an egg pipping in an incubator for the very first time. We teach them the beginning basics of what it will take to keep their new charges happy, safe and healthy.

We like our classes to feel like people are sitting down and talking with a good neighbor or friend so that they feel comfortable to ask any kind of questions, even if they think the questions seem dumb. My grandfather always used to say that the only dumb questions in the world are the ones people don’t ask. Hey, if you don’t know something – ask. Better to find something out ahead of time than after it has become a issue. In fact, a lot of what is included in this guide is what our students have taught us with their questions. We have heard a lot of frequently asked questions from our beginners and it has helped us to help them learn the basics and dispel much misinformation that is floating around out there about poultry keeping.

We only teach these classes in the late spring/early summer months, but found that we were getting many inquires year round about many of the same issues. So it was time to write it all down, get it in a format that is easy to understand and use, and make it available everyone who needs it year round. It is truly my sincere hope that this guide becomes a useful reference and source of information for everyone who reads it. It always makes my heart glad to be able to pass on my experiences to others with the hopes that it will benefit and reward both the new keepers, and their chickens.

As with anything of this nature, this guide took a lot of time, effort and some plain old-fashioned hard work to bring into fruition, so I would like to take this moment in time to thank the two people without whom this guide would never have happened.

First, my thanks to Christy Shay, Editor, co-worker and good friend, who took all of my random e-mails of information and put them into a useable format. She put hours of time into this guide and has corrected miles of my horrific spelling and errors in grammar along the way. She has put up with my stories, endless questions and my fear of modern technology with patience and grace. I could have never done this without you Christy, you are truly a blessing in my life.

Also my thanks to Meredith Newcom, Illustrator, co-worker and friend, who brought color and life to these written words with her beautiful artwork. I watched in awe as she took her brushes and colors and blended them into these beautiful illustrations and whimsical portrayals of chickens. The illustrations and layout of the guide exceeded my wildest dreams for this piece, and her talent is a true gift, as is her friendship. Thank you Meredith.

I find it very apropos that the first chicks of spring hatched today; on the very same day we launched this guide.

New life and new beginnings in a new season. It just does not get any better than that!

Dreams realized, hard work paying off and recognizing their value is great way to start a project! I wish everyone success in their chicken keeping adventures, and welcome all of the farm’s new friends in poultry!

Coming soon!

Of Mice and Farm Cats

Lucy was a city cat, raised in an apartment. Just your typical little black shorthair of unknown parentage who ended up at a rescue and taken in as a pet by our friend Ambika. Lucy spent her days as an only cat, doing what most apartment cats do- lounging in the sun in front of a window, sleeping on any smooth, flat surface she could find, and chewing up the cords to the computer mouse. She was brought her food every day, and was implored by her owner not to use her claws on the furniture. Unfortunately for both pet and owner, Ambika soon had to move to a different city, and to a place where she could not keep Lucy as a pet anymore.
Christy had met Lucy as a tiny kitten and she let Ambika know that if she could not find a placement for Lucy, that we could try to take Lucy to the farm and see what would happen. No one was sure at the time of how Lucy would react to going from being a house cat to being exposed to all of the animals and livestock on the farm. Lucy was about 10 months old at the time, was small, slight and had only ever been indoors. To be honest, between the coyotes, the owl and the hawks I was not even sure how long a little cat would last up here.
Lucy adjusted to Christy’s house right away, and developed a love/hate relationship with Christy’s dachshund Mandy. Mandy loves cats, but Lucy, true to her feline nature, loves to, at times, terrorize K-9s. As much as they get along even now, Lucy will always take any opportunity she can to pounce on Mandy, or bip her in the head for no reason. Mandy seems to be a very good sport about the whole thing though, and does not retaliate other than barking. Lucy is not really one who wants to be petted or sit in someone’s lap. You can tickle her under her chin, but only for just so long, and then without warning you will receive a smart bite to the hand and she will dance away out of reach
I will stop here and say, that yes, there are cat people and there are dog people. I have had dogs my whole life; I have had up to 7 dogs at one time, and in fact bred and showed them at one point. I have only ever had 2 cats in my entire life;. one that found me and one that the kids dragged home. I was, for the most part, indifferent to both. I don’t like the scratching thing,  I don’t like the hair that gets everywhere, and I am not a fan of litter boxes or their contents. Hairballs or the sounds that have to be made to produce them, are something I don’t even want to have to think about.
So as a devoted “notacatperson” I admittedly found much humor in it when I would sometimes walk by Christy’s house and hear a scream, followed a few seconds later by the door opening and a still wiggling lizard’s tail or legless grasshopper or potato bug go flying out past the screen as Lucy began to find her “inner hunter.” The more Lucy started to grow and put on weight and size, the more she also started to expand her dominion bit by bit, and began to venture from Christy’s yard and garden across the driveway and into the feed shed. Here was her training ground, and she started to spend many long hours learning to hunt among the feed sacks and barrels. I actually was very proud (after a few seconds of being grossed out) of her the first time I was coming to the shed one morning, and she had lined up her morning’s catch for me to see right there in the doorway; three little headless mice. I hailed her a mighty hunter and was glad she had found a job and a new purpose in life here.
It was months later that I witnessed one of the strangest things I have ever seen a cat do. I was out working in the raised beds one day and Lucy walked past me carrying  a fairly good sized mouse in her mouth. It was not dead, she had just stunned it like cats will do sometimes. The next thing I knew she had taken the mouse to the goat yard fence and dropped the stunned mouse down. She waited for Nikki, our livestock guard dog, to come over to where she was, and then proceeded to bat the mouse through the fence to her. She then sat there with what seemed like great delight, and watched the dog kill and consume the mouse. I was fascinated by this bizarre behavior and my mind reeled with stories. Could it be like the story of the lion and the mouse and that the dog had once caught the cat and the cat had had to make a pact to bring her food, or maybe the cat felt a deep need to bring sacrifices to the great Anatolian keeper of the goat yard for some reason unknown to us? Anyway, it is one of the strangest things I have ever witnessed animals doing.
These days, Lucy is doing a very good job of keeping the rodent population down in the feed shed and she has expanded to the garage and raised boxes as well. She is now a full fledged “big game” hunter, adding birds, small rats, and gophers to her list of kills. As time has passed by, I can now say that I am even somewhat fond of Lucy. Now that we have adjusted to having to say words of praise over the line-up of body parts and entrails in the driveway, or the CSI “presents” she leaves for me to find (where she knows I will see them) on the shelves in the feed shed, and the occational “live dinner show” she will bring into Christy’s house (I think Lucy still likes to hear her scream from time to time) I feel that Lucy has found her place here on the farm and she does her job well as farm cat.  She now does what her feline instincts tell her to do and we have to adjust ourselves and be accepting of her “catness”, even when it sometimes takes us by surprise (or grosses us out.)

All Hail Lucy O mighty hunter!

February, the calm before the spring

Although it is still pretty chilly in the mornings, the outdoor chores have begun in earnest the first week in February. Since Mr.Groundhog has announced that spring would come early this year, I have been up in the wee morning hours to grab a nice hot cup of coffee and venture out to examine the gardens. I am always glad to welcome the longer hours of sunlight on my morning rounds, as the dark winter months slowly give way little by little. I have stopped by the trellises, and unused water containers that were emptied, and most of the outdoor furniture to check for damage. I also have begun the task of removing old branches and pruning back fruit trees, rose bushes and berry canes. Two mornings in a row I felt brave, and tackled the huge Joseph’s Coat rose that has climbed all the way up the rebar archway in the lavender field, and has begun to pull it over. I have not cut this rose back in years, and it was quite the battle to get him back under control again. In the end, he got a severe lopping back, and I am covered from the elbows down in pokes and deep scratches. The hazards of owning rose bushes I guess. I will get to the vineyard soon (I hope). I put my used feed sacks to good use, filling them with the pruned branches, canes, and garden debris and hauling them off by the bag load. Leaves and things that can be put through the chipper will go into the compost piles and worm bins. Every once in a while I peek under the covered raised beds to see how the weed eradication is progressing. All of this starts to rekindle my interest in the garden’s design, and my head starts to reel with visions of the spring planting just around the corner.

I also use these fallow days to clean the chicken coops down to the dirt – when they are dry enough in between storms. Sometimes it is all I can do just to keep ahead of the mud this time of the year, and just when I get everything somewhat cleaned up and dried out, it rains again. It seems like I am forever changing the straw in the nest boxes and scrubbing muddy water buckets. The goats are still sporting their heavy winter coats and long beards. We had two days of much protesting as they were all tricked into a pen with a bucket full of sweet grain, and then systematically captured, removed one by one and secured on the milking stand strategically placed in front of the pen. Here they are each checked over and given their vaccinations, wormed, checked for lice and have their hooves trimmed. You would think they would be wise to this tactic by now, but they seem to fall for it every time. 14 goats times 4 hoofs each, makes for a lot of work and a few blisters later. We are all glad when this winter chore is done. So are the goats.

Not much new life here now, only a handful of eggs have been collected and put in the incubator lately. Just a few chicks and game birds have hatched in the past few months – we’ve watched them closely to make sure they are warm enough to make it in this off-season. It looks like most of the molting has stopped in the breeding cages and a few of the pens are even producing a couple of eggs a day now. This time of year the flocks are at their bare minimums, so as not to have to feed as many birds through this non-productive time. I even put the geese out to earn their keep by weeding the back field.

The new calendar page of set and hatch dates was taped to the clear door of the Sportsman incubator to remind me to note the days until Easter. I would remind my hens of these dates as well, but I doubt they would listen.

There is a bit of lettuce growing in one of the raised beds but everything else is still too cold and weary under winter’s firm hold. We will be gearing up for spring soon, but for now we can enjoy some lazier days, pruning back with not much to water, fewer animals to feed and tend, and a bit of time before spring hits us full force. In the meantime I will enjoy having a fire in the fireplace, time for a good book, and the house smelling of something baking in the oven. I will enjoy this time of calmness February brings.

Prepared for Christmas… or at least I thought I was

I attended a Christmas breakfast with some co-workers the other morning- it is the same one I have attended every year, for more years than I even like to admit to. Because of the overall scheduling of the department, we are forced to have this celebration and fellowship very early in the morning. Now, 6:30am is a time of the morning I am up anyway, it is just that I am not necessarily in the mood to get out of my farm clothes and go out to a restaurant and have to be social. But there I was, sitting at a table of familiar faces, most of us yawning and getting to our first cups of coffee of the day. When there seemed to be momentary lull in the conversations that were starting around the table, the question was poised by one of my co-workers as to who was actually “ready” for Christmas by now. On of the gals answered back, ” I’m not- Christmas just came so fast this year!” she groaned.   I said (without thinking) “But it comes on the same day EVERY year.” It will be 364 days since last Christmas, why is it then that it sometimes seems to take us by surprise?  This year Christmas did not take me by surprise, but I did have a setback that would soon make me think back on those words I had blurted out at breakfast nearly two weeks before. I had my cards, I had my gifts, I even had the wrapping paper and tape and bows- so I was sure that nothing could go wrong with “plan A” this year…I was wrong.

We have been having problems with various rodent populations this year. Both storage sheds, the garage, and even the kitchen have been invaded by an abundance of vermin. Our kitty Lucy, has done a beautiful job policing the feed shed, and our livestock guard dog has gotten her fair share of moles, ground squirrels and rabbits in the field. Still I have had to set numerous traps and bait stations around the farm to keep these critters at bay, as we store thousands of pounds of grain here every month.

I am one of those people who always packs bait pouches in the boxes every year when I repack my Christmas ornaments, as mice have built nests in the boxes in years past, but I have never really thought to do the same with my artificial tree. I have always wondered what is that makes some animals chew the plastic insulation off of wiring. I don’t imagine it smells very good, and I don’t think it makes very good nesting material- but in talking to a few people about it, it is more common then I had first thought. One person said she had a house bunny that use to like to chew their stereo cords. Another friend told me that animals have completely ruined  wiring in the engine of his car. I myself have watched farm kitty chew the cord to the computer mouse -more then once- so I should not have really been all that surprised when I pulled down the heavy plastic zip-up bag from the rafters that stored my 4 foot tree.

I noticed the two large holes in the side of the bag first, and hoped it was just chewed from the outside- no such luck. When I unzipped the bag I was hit with an overwhelming smell of rodent pee, and realized the tree might be ruined  before I even saw the actual damage done. The rats/mice/squirrels had not only chewed all the lights off but had stripped about 20% of the branches bare of their  plastic needles – leaving just the wire skeleton. I mumbled my curses at them and put the whole of what was left of my beloved little tree into the recycle bin.  Ok, on to “plan B”- go buy a new tree. My Christmas plans would not be thwarted by this setback. I would be on vacation the week before Christmas, the stores would be filled with trees-not a problem.

I was up bright and early Saturday morning, sales papers in hand and ready to go find my new tree. First stop Michael’s (where my former tree had come from 6 years back). I knew I was in trouble when I found plastic bamboo in pots where the trees normally are.  Ok, sold out here. On to Lowe’s where there was nothing left but giant 10 footers-my ceiling is not that tall- next. I then tried the Green Thumb nursery where they were also sold of of that size plastic trees.  I made two more stops in town, and the only choice I had at these locations was feathers or pink plastic trees that looked like something that belonged in Barbie’s Dream House. Foiled in my search I drove back to the farm, treeless and pouting.

Still determined to have a tree this year, I moved to “plan C” mode. Ok- It’s Christmas time. I don’t have a Christmas tree. I want a Christmas tree. I can’t get a Christmas tree. I must now look to the heavens for divine inspiration and ask myself that age old question “WWMD” – what would Martha do?! I started to search all around the house for the “shape” of a pine tree. No luck in the house, so I opened up the front door and stepped out onto the porch- and then I saw it. The iron obelisk in the front yard that I grow my sweet peas on every spring, now standing there bare for the winter. Just the right size and shape! A quick rinse with the hose and a dry with a hand towel, and my “tree” was in the house! ! A fast run to Rite-Aid for a length of green tinsel and it looked just like a tree (well for the most part-if you stood back a ways). I was happy. It even came with the black iron bird on the top, and that inspired me to do an “all bird” theme this year. I had my Christmas- I was happy! I adorned my little tree with all my favorite bird ornaments, little nests and feathers, and one ornament where Santa happens to be in a hot air balloon (not a bird I know, but I thought he deserved a place in there this year).

Even though it was a deviation from my normal practice this year (and those who know me know how much I hate change) I think it came out kinda cute after all was said and done. And I would love to think that somewhere out there, Martha looked up from what ever she was doing for a moment and smiled, and she did not even know why~

Merry Christmas to all!