Port Potager

Our intrepid barn cat hurt himself! We don't know how, but last Wednesday morning he was sporting a pretty gimpy limp when he came to the door for breakfast. I think he was actually pretending to be as fine as he could manage when he knew I was watching, but when he was under the dining room table and thought I couldn't see, he looked way worse. He could barely put any weight at all on his right front paw, and he looked very slow and stiff. That afternoon, Tiegan found him in his bed in the workshop, which is up on a workbench. He couldn't get down by himself — no surprise that he didn't want to leap on his foot if he couldn't even walk on it. So she scooped him up and brought him into the house to eat and sit on her lap for the afternoon. Kirk and I checked his foot, but it was fine. We figured it was a sprain, and a quick look online ( did you know the WebMD has a pets section? ) suggested giving it three to four days before calling a vet. I caved by Frid...

Last time I wrote about Abigail, she was quarantined in the workshop  with a taped up foot: Not a bad place to be during the blizzard , since the workshop is (minimally) heated, and she had a ton of space to herself. We just used the portable chicken run we built for turning rye grass, and made sure she had food and water. She slept in a clean corner and even was laying eggs (although that slowed down, since she's subjected to the limited natural daylight of February, whereas the henhouse has a light on a timer to simulate more spring-like conditions). Anyway, for a week or so Abigail got daily attention with her bandage (which we stopped using after a couple days) and daily applications of Silvadene cream  to keep her foot from getting infected while it healed over. That stuff is a fairly expensive prescription item, but it worked really well. I also made sure she had lots of protein and calcium to help her heal:  This is a scrambled eggs with...

You're welcome for avoiding a terrible chicken pun in the title. This morning Kirk checked on Abigail and found her bandage almost all the way off, so he removed it and put her into the portable run . Since her foot is still a red, exposed, slightly bloody mess, it's really important for us to keep her away from the other chickens (you know, so they don't get a taste for blood and peck her to death — chickens are dicks). Kirk snapped this photo of our flamingo impersonator before he left for work: As you can see, she's trying not to put weight on that injured foot . Still, it looks like she had a nice day, since she picked the last of the rye grass clean, and had no trouble with drinking water since it was around 40 degrees today. When I got home from work to check on her, she was walking gingerly around the run, eating grain and drinking water. It was clear that she had laid an egg — and pooped, too — so we're able to check off several major signs of ch...

This afternoon didn't exactly go as I had envisioned. When I got home from a long day (and a longer, boring meeting), Tiegan let me know that the chickens needed water. But when I went out to get the fount, I saw Abigail lying in one of the laying boxes. She was oddly splayed on her side, with one wing stretched out back toward the hen house. Her eyes were closed. So I thought she was sick. Or dead. I ran around to the outside to open the nesting box door. I gently scooped her up. And then I saw the blood. So then I thought the other chickens had turned on her and pecked at her — especially with her one eye closed. After a closer look over Abigail, I realized the blood was coming from her foot, which had been pinched in the door of the nesting box. She had probably been stuck in there for 20-30 minutes, from when Tiegan shut the nesting box door until I got home and out to check the water. I carried Abigail into the house, where I had to work on stopping the bleed...

I have to say, I've been slowing down this week. It did rain a lot, which let me stay inside and skip some waterings, and it's been nice to back off a bit as that short break has become kind of a habit. After two (almost) solid months of hard labor, I'm kind of tired. There's still a lot to do before winter, but now that things are planted and summer is winding down, I'm fine with just picking at things instead of working 8-hour days out there. It would be nice to enjoy some fun stuff before summer is over, too. Another reason to take it a little easier is that I'm racking up gardening-related aches and pains like nobody's business. From top to toe, here's the litany: 1. Scalp sunburn.  Preventable for sure, but working suntan lotion into the line of my part every single day is kind of horrible. I know, I know: not as horrible as melanoma.... 2. Tennis elbow .  Or some other tendonitis, both elbows. I think this comes from the repetitive...