Most significant news is our vaccination status…Rob is now FULLY vaccinated and I have had my first of the two Moderna jabs! We’re so very close! Once I’m fully vaccinated, I plan to actually do the grocery shopping in-person again rather than curbside (I really want to be able to pick my own produce), but honestly other than that, we may not be changing our behaviors all that much. Still, will be relieved to have that protection!
We dropped Woody & Stony on separate days at a place for baths. We couldn’t guarantee they wouldn’t bite from fear (doubtful, but who knows as they hadn’t been around any other people) so we sent them in with a muzzle on. The cool thing is that when we came back to pick each one up, the groomer had removed the muzzle! Ah, so great. Clearly the groomer didn’t feel threatened and the dogs got bathed and nails trimmed!
I stopped giving them chill pills each day as we didn’t really notice a difference. I cut them off cold turkey and we noticed Stony was getting all freaked out two days later at…practically nothing. So we realized it was maybe withdrawal so then we gave him decreasing amounts over another couple of days. We’ll save the remaining pills for an event we think will be extra stressful.
I tried feeding my sourdough discard to the chickens but they didn’t like it. But then I learned about making scallion pancake with the discard…YUM!! So now I’ll be making that once a week :) See picture below in the center of table.
I’m going to share graphs of 3 months of trail cam stats. I track any animal sightings except rabbits and deer since they are so commonplace. If there’s 1 or more of something, it gets 1 tick mark that day. Will wait for the moon phase data to accrue more datapoints before I share that. I hope it makes sense. I have a hunch I should have used a different kind of chart but anyway.
People have spotted a mountain lion in our area recently. Would be so cool to catch it on my trail cam (or with my eyes directly), but we have not yet.
My Mom came to visit for a few days which went really well. When she planned the trip, we didn’t know if vaccinated persons were likely to spread virus or not, so anyway, to be safe, my Mom stayed around the corner in our neighborhood as they have a Bed & Breakfast! We just stuck around neighborhood most of the time, but the best thing for us was that she could interact with the dogs. The dogs barked and were nuts at first, of course, but even after like day 3 or 4, when she showed up, they’d act crazy again. She offered them treats, and they would maybe sneak one or two from a table next to her, and they would run for the toys she brought, but they NEVER let her pet them! That’s how scared they are of other people! So it was an awesome first socializing experience for them.
We did take my Mom to Jester King Brewery which went well, but there was a cold front so kind of chilly. She also played darts with us at night which was extra fun.
One of the days she was here I was checking on the eggs in the roost and found Cole face-down, dead in the floor of the coop! No apparent struggle, just dropped dead I guess. She had apparently just laid an egg too. So now we have only 3 chickens: the hash browns and Matt.
We will need to add more chickens to our flock. To do that, you have quarantine the new birds for awhile in case of disease and also to get the chickens used to each other. So Rob has picked out a “chicken tractor” design that we are starting to build. Once that’s finished, we’ll figure out how to get a few more birds!
What the tractor should look like
Our baby peach tree just may have survived the winter, as it has some leaves and flowers. The fig is alive, but is just growing some leaves from the very bottom, so not sure how viable that is. Pomegranate trees appear dead.
Pics below.
