Clearing The Orchard

This introductory song, Helplessness Blues, by the Fleet Foxes, mentions orchard somewhere along the line in there lyrically, like "If I had an orchard I'd work til I'm sore...", which I have done.  A few days now.   And I just love the harmonies these guys produce.  I was introduced to this song by the legendary San Francisco radio station KFOG, who what which has turned me on to substantial amounts of new, great music over the last twenty or thirty years.  Legendary.

I have this bit of ground down by the county road.  I call it the lower lower forty, just because it's the lowest ground we got.  It's between that parking area I had to dig the culvert for and the county road, to be more specific. 

This last autumn saw a lot of action in that nape of the neck of the woods.  We cut down a total of twenty-two trees, from six inches in diameter to fourteen or so, ranging in height from twenty to forty feet and probably a little more.

My brother in law took down a couple larger oaks when I was still recovering from my Achilles tendon problem.  Then I jumped in when it felt like my Achilles problem felt better.  Which it did.  But fifteen downed trees, four new ones planted, huge brush piles burned, the clearing, wrangling and burning of manzanita and other brush on the upper forty and I am back in the damn walking cast and on pain meds again.  Tra la la.  Lucky me.

Here's the Lower, Lower 40 when we first moved in, thick and lush with scrub pine and oak:

Here's a few more shots as we plowed through with our handy dandy chain saws:

Here's what that brush pile above looked like after a few hours of mondo nuclear warfare.  It was about eight feet tall, fifteen feet wide and forty feet long. 

Live Action.  I wanted this Digger Pine to go a specific way.  It was just tall enough to top out in the road or get hung up in the lower oak, which can get extremely dangerous.  So I tied it off to my car, made my lower, directional cut towards the car, and then just cut about half way through on the top cut on the other side.  Then I turned on the car, put it in drive and proceeded about five feet forward.  She came down right where I wanted her to.

I plan on grooming the existing cedars and planting a few new ones in the bare spots below and turning them into a hedge.  As you can see by the open space, a fairly large oak prevented any further cedar growth both here and a couple other places.  I will be planting about six to eight more cedars to fill the gaps.  I will also be topping the existing ones, and eventually hope to have about a twelve foot high cedar hedge running along this side of the orchard.  This will also take the lower parking area and propane tank out of street view, and provide a sound buffer from the road.

Here's a clearing sequence looking north:

                                        
Both corners of the drive at the road are sporting regalia's of daffodils. Some were planted in 2011, some last November.  Both corners should be alive with dancing yellow daffodils in a few short weeks.

 

And then, splash, hey!  Let's paint in a Honey Crisp Apple Tree at the north end of this row, and wrap it in a little six foot high cage.  There will be three other varieties of apples to join this intrepid adventurer soon.

And looking south:

                                     

I think I'll eventually have either six or eight trees in this upper row, next to the cedar hedge.  The new tree in a cage at the south end of the top row there is a Santa Rosa Plum.

Then there's room for another six or so in a lower row, with that oak kind of in the center.  He was too picturesque, I couldn't take him down.

I also kept one other smaller oak at the far south corner of this 115x50 foot space.  He was right on the top of the embankment, and I decided to leave him there for erosion control.  I will be planting some form of deer resistant hedge along the road embankment as well and then have it curve up towards the cedar hedge where the daffodils grow.  I'm also making this up as I go.

Anchored in the far south west corner is the oldest fruit tree I had in a pot, my Perez Peach.  It is so named because a close friend gave it to me on my 55th birthday.  Three years later he's finally out of the pot and can actually take root on planet earth.

 You'll of course notice the 6' high deer wrapping.  This area will remain unprotected until the hedge gets underway, which will take 3-4 years.  Of course, by that time the fruit trees will be just about tall enough to forgo the cages anyway.   Each tree will have to be individually wrapped for deer protection until then.

I also have another peach in the ground.  I missed the timing for bare root delivery, but I will still hopefully get a few more in the ground this winter.  I plan on having a total of sixteen to eighteen fruit trees, with many other types of fruits to come.  Apricot, cherry, pomegranate, pear, more apple, etc.  Unfortunately, the winters are too cold here to grow citrus without protection here, but I do have a Meyer Lemon I started from seed in the house.   Eventually I'll make a protected home for him somewhere outside, as part of a greater green house extravaganza.  Or shack.  It will amble and ramble in some sort of lovely, ambient fashion.
  
The first and hardest part of this particular operation is done.  I dropped, brushed and bucked about twenty trees myself, ranging from 6-10" in diameter and 20 to 40 feet tall.  One Digger in the corner by the Perez Peach was quite a challenge.

Like the Digger I tied off to my car, this one had the potential of falling into the road, only about twenty feet more so.  He was too far off in the corner to reach by car with the rope, but I tied a rope around him anyway and let it hang.  Just in case.

I made my low, directional cut so that he would drop eastward right along the property and fence line.  Then I started making my upper back cut and got him cut about 3/4 through without movement.  Since the top part was leaning towards the road to begin with, I was concerned about the tree rocking back on the chain saw at any moment.

So, I ran the rope off, squared off on a tree stump and gave a mighty heave ho.  The tree came slowly towards the me and the lower cut, and then rocked back and sat right on my upper back cut.  And it just stayed there, balancing on that thin cut like a fifteen hundred pound hulking gorilla ballerina.

When it first started rocking back I was afraid it was going to drop in the road.  Now, instead. and much to my chagrin, I still had a pretty dangerous situation to contend with.  I had a forty foot tree with all the trimmings essentially just standing there and connected to nothing.  A stiff breeze in any direction could cause it to fall. 

I looked it over and decided further cutting would be too dangerous.  I would do that as a last resort.  Unfortunately, I didn't have any more rope.  Another sixty feet could have reached my car and then no problem.  But I only had fifty, so I had to make that work.

I grabbed the rope, went back to my stump and dug in.  I gave a mighty heave ho, brought it towards me but couldn't snag it and let it slowly rock back.  Then in synch, I gave the mightiest of mighty tug while on the stump back and got the beast suspended momentarily.  I dug my feet in again and gave it my all, finally falling back on my ass as the last tug hit it's mark and the mighty beast fell right along the fence and manzanita line, right where I wanted it to.  Touchdown! And I wonder where I might have re-injured my ankle?

Now that all the lumber is down and there is no fear of falling behemoths smashing fragile new plantings, I have the rest of my life to dial it all in.  Actually, all the fruit trees will be in no later than next January, 2014.

There's still plenty of work and clean up to do.  I've got to bring up about a cord of already bucked oak for next year's heat, and all stumps will eventually come out.  I've also got to take out a few existing bushes.  Some of the native plants will stay, but some will need to go.  And get a hedge started. 

I've got a water spigot about ten feet away from the cedar hedge, so it won't be a big deal to get irrigation down to the orchard.  That will be a spring time chore, as well as more deer fencing.  And dialing in another area in the back of the house, which will be major.  Minor excavation, minor construction, concrete, lawn etc.  I'm sure you'll hear all about it.  Once the Achilles heals. 

Chicken Update

Goldie and his Harem are doing fine.  We've been averaging about six eggs a day out of nine layers, which I understand is pretty good since most layers slow down a bit in the winter.  They all perch up in the outside cage, even when the night time temps have gotten down to 27-28 degrees.  They have a nice, insulated mansion, replete with perches, yet they all have chosen to stay out all night.  Party animals.

They are a mixed heavy breed bag, good layers and less susceptible to cold than other breeds.  That was one reason I bought that variety, but I still would have thought they'd mosey inside when the temperature got below freezing.  I guess a layer of thick feathers will keep tails warm all winter.

Culvert City

There's Culver City, a city in Western Los Angeles County, famed for really nothing yet who's city history is packed solid with almost entertaining information.  Culver City calls itself the Heart of Screen Land, and since it was the home to MGM Studios back when and is currently home to Sony Pictures Entertainment as well as the NFL Network Studios I guess its got a little bit of screen.  Maybe not as much as Hollywood, or Burbank, but it's definitely got some screen.

And then there's my very own Culvert City, which shall hopefully never become famous or packed solid with anything, especially anything solid.

You see, I got this situation.  Our driveway curves up from the county road, often at a pretty steep clip, because we, like, live on a hill.  It's about six hundred feet long, with one main curve coming up to the house.  This top portion (leading up to the house) drains quite nicely along the right side and keeps going almost straight ahead beyond the turn.  It then dumps into a little seasonal arroyo, or wash that lays between us and our neighbor.   

That little drainage ditch along the right side there also handles all the wash down from "The Red Riffs of Rover", as well as all the water that dumps from our upper hillside onto our back yard.  It gets flowing pretty good when it's raining hard.  Like, for instance, if you happened to be a little cartoon rat, like  Ratatouille , and happened to be scurrying down the embankment in the middle of a downpour because you were being chased by 101 Dalmatians, you could jump on a piece of bark and use it as a raft and quickly evade your provocateurs.  Trouble is, after this whoosh of a rapid you'd be dumped Victoria Falls style into a ravine with even more raging water, and then subsequently get dumped into the street.  Where, if it took you a few moments to catch your breath, you'd probably be run over by a car.

I think the moral of the story, best not to be a furry little rat. 

There's both rock, concrete and asphalt reinforcement along the left-hand side of the ditch where it meets the road.  Homeboy, the previous owner, had some of that going on when we arrived.  But a couple areas of the drive, both on this section and the lower straightaway have received serious patchwork where he (homeboy) let things slide, quite literally.  Since those areas have been patched, I have been very diligent about drainage.  This section gets a look-see every summer and gets patched where necessary.  

The rest of the water from above us and our immediate yard eventually dumps down onto the hillside below our house and lawn area, some of which flows into another drainage ditch which runs along the left side portion of the drive below.

This, too, flows quite nicely now when it rains, like the Rio Grande where it flows through much of the lower border between the United States and Mexico.   But if there weren't a bridge on El Paso Street in El Paso, Texas, another All Time Greatest Hit by Marty Robbins, it might look a lot like this:

El Paso Street that is.

As you can see, our propane tank's access was getting compromised, and this is also a nice, level, lower parking area for when things get really out of hand up above, which they do from time to time. 

That big rain we had a month or so ago really helped dig the channel, but enough was getting to be too much, so I capitulated and got out the old pick and trusty trench shovel.

I had to dig down another three to four inches.  I was happy it was only that much because the gravel had been pretty well compacted over time and it was tough digging.  But it only took an hour or so, a little huff and puff and I got the channel wide enough and deep enough to accommodate three inch flex drain pipe.  If this had been the Rio Grande I probably would have needed some metal and a lot of other stuff to make this thing happen.  A few workers.  More money.

A little skip to ma loo my darling later and it was all covered up and ready for travel.  I also made an erosion proof entry point for the water at the top.

I originaly put a medium mesh screen in there, which I soon discovered was a way bad idea.  Way bad.  All kinds of small leaves and twigs were getting trapped there and it didn't take long before it was fully plugged.  Like about ten minutes.  After the second time it clogged I removed the screen and let her rip.  The force of the water is plenty enough to carry all the smaller debris through.  The pipe is now channeled alongside the concrete drive and all this water drains directly onto the county road.

Prior to this there were two places running through the soon to be orchard (next post) that drain onto the road.  There is significant erosion at these two spots, as well as where the arroyo meets the road.  The county has already been by with a dozer to remove the mud that had sloughed off onto the road. 

Deer Redux and the Lucky Horseshoe

I have been continuing my ongoing battle with those flea ridden parasites, you know Bambi and her dang brothers.  I had to cut and clear a number of trees on the south side first, and then I have completed both the lower portion of fence as well as the manzanita elevated barbed wire all the way down to the road.  The embankment there is a sheer fourteen feet.  No deer's going that high. 

You can barely make out the barbed wire at the top, which runs along at approximately eight feet.

I have also fenced the top (east) and north sides with four foot fencing up against the manzanita all the way to the road, where the embankment is a sheer twelve feet.  This section of the land is thick with manzanita, and when thickened with dead manzanita I cleared from my land I figured it would be impenetrable to those rascals.  But they found their way through, until now!

I had originally put up six foot deer netting along this section, but they laughed as they sashayed on through.  They can't jump over or through the manzanita, they duck their heads and maze their way through.  Let's see them maze through some metal, and eventually thick native blackberry bush, which is the next step in my security evolution.

The land is already fenced along the top at an eight foot level, so I have now effectively made a fenced horseshoe on our land.   I had originally not planned on altering their route, but after they actually started coming up four steps to our wrapped front porch and dining on some very special what I thought were protected plants, I have decided to hell with them. With a little luck, this may hold them.  They don't bother the folks across the county road, as a matter of fact one neighbor sports bright, cheerful, colorful flowers in their unprotected yard every spring and summer.  

There's a donkey across the street too.  Goats, a few dogs  The deer skirt way around in back of the three or four parcels directly across the street from us.  They have been crossing the road and coming through our property.  And dining on our delicacies.  Now there's eight foot high metal in their way.   

I am hoping, as a natural course of events that they simply alter their route.  There is a very large parcel of land on top to our east, and ample room to trample where they may and where the homeowner cares not for botanicals.  With a little luck, we may be able to finally add some splashes of color around the yard.  We'll keep you posted!

The Drunk Rooster

Long before there was a Rooster in the Hen House, there was a rooster in the kitchen.  A ceramic, "Majolica" rooster, bought at an estate auction, but a rooster none the less.  He has graced our kitchen for over eight years.

 "Majolica" seems to be a somewhat loosely used term for almost any brightly colored, brilliantly glazed and exuberantly decorated ceramic.  It is a pottery that was originally developed on the Spanish island of Majorca. Mai Yorrrrrrr Ka.  

In Renaissance times this tin-glazed pottery was heavily imported into Italy, as were Spanish olives and Flamenco dancers.  These should not be confused with dancing Flamingos, which usually only appear after you've been binge drinking for a couple weeks.

By the fifteenth century, the potters themselves were imported to Italy and were provided with many incentives, such as pizza and Tarantella dancers.   These should not be confused with the much aligned Tarantula, which actually is the reason the Tarantella dance was invented.  Supposedly the dance has the ability to cure the bite of the tarantula spider, which is silly.  Tarantula venom is weaker than that of a honeybee and, though painful, is virtually harmless to humans.  That doesn't mean I want to keep one in a jar on my night stand.  Or the garage for that matter.  In case you were curious.

I have heard the term "majolica" used by some of the experts on Antiques Roadshow when referring to any brightly colored ceramic covered with an opaque glaze of tin oxide.  Victorian majolica supposedly originated in Britian in the 1850's, modeled after the Italian original.  It's a big basket of stuff, only I probably wouldn't put it in a basket if I had a bunch of it.  It'd probably break.

I'd pack it in a big heavy box like I did during our four year, five move walkabout marathon.  I got pretty good at packing things.  I had to.  My lovely wife loves lovely, breakable, wonderful objects of ceramic and porcelain enchantment.  Witness the packed china cabinet behind the rooster.  Tea pots; beautiful, colorful, whimsical, incredibly fragile tea pots.   

I have asked her, "Why not collect stamps?  They're beautiful, colorful, whimsical, artful and appreciate in value.  And they only flutter when they fall.  And they can all fit in a cigar box, which can fit under the front seat of the car any time you move."

Then came the roosters on the wall.  They've been around the house for almost as long as our majolica buddy above.

Then came a ceramic hen with a couple concrete chicks.  My wife don't mess around.   Those chicks are about the weight of an eight pound shot put.  Or chimpanzee.  One or the other.  I'm not really sure right now.

                                    

This brings up a very good point.  Most all these roosters, hens, chicks, and other delicately fragile porcelain creations of visual pleasure and art that reside throughout this house have come from the browsing of and meanderings through antique shops, antique shows, garage sales, thrift stores and kitschy-kool boutiques on a couple continents by my lovely wife.  She is the preeminent interior design and fashion queen, with a keen, artful eye for color, space, coolness and whimsy.  Nope, no unicorns or cowboys here.  We got a lady with a balloons, baby!

 
I am but the humble underbelly guy.  I'm out in the real coop with the chicken poop while she's on Mill Street, Grass Valley or somewhere in the south, like the Carolina's, or Tennessee, discovering more marvelous porcelain wonders.

Speaking of underbelly, I am actually in the process of making a repair on the Drunk Rooster, the subject of this post, and that is why we're even going to press.  He came next, but since he's the star of the show you're going to have to wait until he's good and ready to arrive.

After the Drunk Rooster came the rooster rug, a bright little throw that sits on the floor where you stand on his face when you're doing the dishes.  At the kitchen sink. 

I think the pewter water pitcher came next.  He's been supplying water on the dinner table for a number of years now.  I think he's pewter.  I doubt he's silver.  Hope he's not lead.

All of those creations have been with us prior to moving into this house.  After arriving here, my lovely wife found this ceramic planter.

And then a dear friend and Nevada County realtor extraordinaire Pam Amato, knowing of my wife's affection (affliction?) for roosters, recently gave her this little wood cabinet.   If you are ever thinking of buying or selling real estate in Western Nevada County (Grass Valley, Nevada City, North San Juan) Pam's the one.  She knows the area well and knows the intricacies involved with every aspect of the real estate transaction.  There's none better, we know.

And then, quite by accident, about ten months ago, Goldie came along.  You can read all about his arrival and the genesis for this blog in my first post, "There's a Rooster in the Hen House!". 

 Cock-a-doodle-do.

Was it pre-ordained that I write a blog about a rooster?  Did some of my wife's design motif somehow rub off over time and subliminally direct the course of our lives?  Did the constant visualization of that creation allow a live one to show up at our door? 

I understand the actual visualization thing, the power of visualizing, appreciating and directing the course of your life force.  Chanting mantras under the moonlight.  Making it happen.  Being the ball.  Singing in the shower and so on and so forth.  But I'm talking about accidental visualization here.

I mean, what if you had a few monkey action figures, as well as a couple stuffed apes and a few orangutangs in frames upon the wall.    The next thing you know they could all start to fly.  Then what are you going to do?  There's enough monkey business going on out there, it doesn't need anybody's help.  Help, where was I?

My lovely wife has three lovely sisters.  One of them is a twin.  Of my wife.  It's been a fabulous experience  for me, having all of them gorgeous women as a large loving part of my life for over forty years now.  Wow.  Seems like only yesterday...

One thing I have always understood is the special bond those girls have for each other, especially my wife and her twin.  Ah-chi-mama!  That's a relationship that began before time. They were waltzing together to Doris Day or Perry Como before time began.  For them.  In their womb.

One thing they all did together prior to this economic down turn was an annual "sisters" vacation.  Three of them live here in Northern California, and the outcast now lives in Tampa, Florida.  I say outcast with love and affection.  She and her husband are a couple of the subjects in "Florida, Ann Curry and..." posted somewhere in this here blog.  She's just an outcast because she doesn't live here in California.

One legendary excursion linked the sisters up in Charleston, South Carolina.  Besides all of them being timelessly gorgeous, these women are a heck of a lot of fun.  They can drink, howl, arm wrestle and dance like beauty show contestants.  Or roller derby queens.  Angelic and bawdy auras of frivolity radiate from their attraction like a rainbow over a cascade of colorful carnival balloons.     

One magical evening of debauchery (as the story goes), while on the lightly impaired, unfettered excursion from the restaurant to the circus or from the circus to the lounge or maybe the car, my enchantingly lovely wife happened upon the Drunk Rooster in a shop window.

She promptly forgot about the meeting until he showed up via UPS at our door in Grass Valley, California several weeks later.   He is known as the Drunk Rooster for the obvious reason that one of the parties was slightly inebriated when they first met.

Cock-A-Doodle-Do.

This bad boy is about the size of a real rooster, standing at twenty inches high.  We weren't exactly sure what he was made of for years, thinking maybe he was even a wood carving.  But then I dropped him on the floor, part of his base broke and I figured it out.  It's some kind of plastic.  Very hard and dense.  Probably from Brazil. 

You may have noticed the base above, here's a couple more shots:

These shots were taken after a bit of it had been glued back together.  The rest of the base essentially went poof.

How do you drop a rooster that lives on the floor?  Well, when stupid (that's me) was cleaning the floor the rooster went up on the table, and then stupid tried to one hand him back down after cleaning and he slipped right out of stupid's hand.  Nice mark on the hardwood floor, which isn't from Brazil (thankfully) but is now scarred hardwood nonetheless.  And shards and bits of the base went everywhere.  Thank me very much.  As if I had nothing else better to do...

This was not something that could just be left alone, he's one of my lovely wife's favorites.  And he certainly was not going to fix himself either.  Kind of like the rattlesnake under the deck.  Pretending he wasn't there didn't mean it would be so.

After some reflection, I hearkened back to my Cub Scout youth of ten or eleven, when my Mother was also the Den Mother.  She had us boys involved in all sorts of crafty type projects, one of which I recall involved Plaster of Paris.  Plaster of Paris is a powder that you can moisten to just about any useful consistency and which can then be used for many purposes of creation and repair. It's nothing like getting plastered in Paris.  That's something totally different.  In case you were wondering.

Another Cub Scout project involved working with plastic resin, like putting rocks, bugs or toads in a mold, pouring resin over them and then giving the ensuing paper weight to your weird Uncle on Halloween.  Or your Mother for Christmas.

After playing with all that resin in an enclosed space it's a wonder I can even remember the Plaster of Paris thing.  That was the mid-1960's, followed by a drug and alcohol infused 1970's.  Geez, it's a wonder I remember anything.

So I got me some Plaster of Paris and I filled in the spaces.  I rubbed it all down with a moistened cloth until it was a pretty even surface, let it dry and then wet sanded it with a real fine grit until it was smooth.  Fortunately the base was already kind of wavy and had an uneven surface, which made it very easy to match.

I've already painted the base bottom black with an acrylic paint found at a craft store, and I am now working on matching the existing base top color and feathering it in.  The first coat (above) is a little dark, so I just need to lighten the shade a bit more.  It won't be a direct match, but it'll get close enough to work.  In the shadows.  Of a very dark closet. 

And even as we go to press, a new, antique T-Pot has arrived in our home:

Cock A Doodle Do.

Chicken Update

I have recently experienced having some of our chickens spazzing out at night.  I don't know if it's the colder temperatrure (this is their first Winter) or what, but a few of them have been downright spazzy.

What do I mean by spazzy?  Well, imagine you really like cookies.  And you're really hungry.  And you're in front of a bakery that specializes in your favorites of everything that's cookie.  And the aroma is fresh and inviting, and the door is open, and you wander back in forth in front of the open door trying to figure out how to get in.

And the more you walk back and forth in front of the open door the more frustrated you become because you can't figure out how to get in.  Even one of your buddies, who was already in the bakery gorging herself on Macaroons and Snickerdoodles, comes out, yaps at you for a few, tells you to follow her (you idiot) and then shows you the way back in.  And you still can't figure it out.  That's what I mean by spazzy.

The flock is usually pretty self-regulating, all of them perched up in their cage about 4:45 PM these days, which is just before sunset here in Northern California this time of year.  But one evening last week, they were all huddled together in the outside coop in back of the secure cage.  Goldie, our rooster, had already walked around and perched up inside, essentially showing them the way.  But the rest of the flock remained huddled in back.

A chicken's metabolism slows dramatically when the sun sets.  They're like Ozzy on cough suppressant or Nolte on PCP, which really should be a monkey tranquilizer.  (See, I told you to stay away from monkeys.  You never know how the visualization will manifest!)  You could end up on PCP in the shower with Nick Nolte.  

So I had to get up there and try to herd them around and get them into their secure cage for the evening.  Only they could barely figure out how to get around a corner let alone how to get in the cage.  Which they do EVERY night.

So then they started to get agitated.  And then Goldie, their other protector, got agitated and started gunning for me, so I had to tap him a few feet with my toe.  Kind of like a delicate field goal by a baby ballerina.   

It took a few minutes, but I finally got them all in.  I have to.  There's too many varmints and potential nocturnal predators out here that would love some form of chicken a la king for dinner.  Anytime.  Of course, many precautions have been taken for our girls and boy.  You can read all about those in Chicken Fantasia Land, some where else in this blog.

A couple other nights I had two different hens spazz on me.  One night I had to physically pick a Myrna up and put her in.  She was as docile as cucumber.

I also had to corral an Ethel another night.  She went bat shit nut spazzy.  She went by the open door about seven times, with just about everybody else in the flock inside telling her where they were and how to get in.

I remember something like that happening to me at Winterland in San Francisco back in the early 1970's.  Come to think of it, I'm still missing from one of those shows... 
                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

Burn Baby Burn

We finally got some rain here in the Sierra Nevada Foothills in Northern California, y'all.  Actually, we got some a few weeks back, before the Thanksgiving holiday.  Then we just got a whole helluva lot more this last weekend (or two), the first of December.  We got twelve inches here on our humble hillside...over a three day period!  Yowzah!  That's some rain.

My wife and I drove back from visiting our kids and grand kids in Oakland Sunday morning in the thick of one of the fronts.  Can I get another yowzah?  We probably should not have been driving, but my lovely wife, the church lady and finance minister of said church had to be at church that morning.  So we risked life and limb, not so much dealing with wind but sheets of water on the highway, to wash away some sin.  OK, pun intended.

I swear there was a good two hundred foot run where our wheels weren't on the pavement.  Hydroplaning slippage was constant, and so was a (much slower than I usually drive) 55-60 MPH, which dropped to about 25 during a couple hellacious downpours.  Like when you couldn't see the tail lights ahead through a periscope even if you had a submarine.  Or something like that.  Fortunately there were not many folks on the road at six am, so even though it was a slower and dangerous slog we did okay.

I had a father-daughter date that Saturday to see a matinee of  "The Sound of Music" put on by the Berkeley Playhouse at the Julia Morgan Theater in Berkeley.  Wonderful 350 seat venue, fantastic show.  My daughter and I share an affection for the Julie Andrews movie version, donning our cowboy (and cowgirl) pajamas around the holidays and singing along.   We're going to try and catch the sing-along community function in the Castro district in SF next holiday season.  Now that she has moved to within a couple hours we have started an annual father-daughter date.  Her mother and her have been doing it for years, now it's my turn too!

So, I was just finishing editing Sauce and my ankle was feeling good and I decided to test run it a few times with a couple of burns.  I had a couple of piles that had "summered" over much to my chagrin, I hate to have extra dry fuel lying around during fire season.

That's about all we really have to worry about around here as far as natural disasters go.   Well, with climate change a small tornado was spotted a couple months back about fifteen miles south of here.  Other than that, we're out of any major fault zone area, no hurricanes or volcanoes (that I know of)  to deal with.  So that leaves wild fire as the main potential threat.  Well, that and farmland zombies.  They migrated out here from Nebraska I understand.  Fortunately our Grandson is an expert zombie hunter and exterminator.  And there's always the potential of locusts.  Really hot summers.  No gin.

One of the most important, as well as my main time consuming and physically demanding chores around here for the last two years has been clearing and burning (on my terms) all the old vegetation laying around.  As well as thinning the trees.  Just where the heck has Paul Bunyan been?

Yes, I am well aware that it would be incredibly better to chip it all and amend the clay soil around here then to send smoke up into the atmosphere.  Well aware of it, and would love to, but there is only me, and I am rapidly approaching sixty!  I can burn in a couple hours what would take me all day to chip.  Just where the heck has Paul Bunyan been?

That's one thing, and then there is the scope and magnitude and scale of what I'm dealing with.  Right now I'm dealing with a combined brush pile about the size of a small house, give or take a barn or two.  If you lived in the country of course.

I also burn real clean.  I mostly burn Slash (dried brush, tree limbs and stuff-not the musician) that has been aged for a few months.  Once the fire's really cooking when newly cut green stuff gets tossed on it doesn't really smoke at all.

I'm also an ex-firefighter (somewhere back there in my impetuous youth) and always have the relevant permit if necessary.  And the freaking LAST thing I ever want to happen is to have to call the fire guys to come out for an uncontrolled control burn, something we were called out on all the time!  OK, breakout the marshmallows, weenies, beer and sub-machine guns, let's make some fire magic and have us a bonfire.

Every firefighter is a latent pyromaniac, so given an opportunity to burn something legally is akin to dancing at a Grateful Dead show on some Orange Sunshine,  sunshine.  Or slathering down pints of Ben and Jerry's ice cream.  If you were an ice cream junkie of course.  Or whatever your fun loving, feel good sumptuous grand time deal is, that's what making fire is like for a firefighter.  Well, that and putting it out.  It's almost as much fun putting it out as it is making it.  Quite the delicious dilemma.

When I stage a burn I usually set the burn pile in the clearest, nearest area where I have accumulated a brush bonanza.  I'll make a nice pile of smaller twigs about 8-10 feet from the main brush pile and then if I'm not burning soon, I'll cover it with some form of rain resistance.  As long as I have at least a shoe box size dry seat I can get recently rained on slash scorching!

I use BBQ fluid to get it going, definitely NOT gasoline.  You lose your eyebrows unless you light a gas moistened pile real quick, like before you strike the match. And then you'll look like Richard Pryor running down the streets of LA for all the wrong reasons.

Once the seat gets cooking I start adding the surrounding brush, generally feeding it with the closest stuff and working out.  Even though I had three piles to burn this day, I will usually only burn two active fires at once, it's about all this old fart can handle!

This day I started the smaller pile above (with the brown tarp) first, then a much larger one about forty feet below it.  Once I was done feeding the smaller brown tarp fire, I started the blue tarp pile on fire.  By the time the third fire was roaring the first fire was pretty much coals.  Then I was just moving laterally between two larger fires for about two hours until there was no more (nearby) fresh dead brush to feed them.  Then it's just a matter of cleaning up the escaped twigs and odds and ends that always evade the flame when working with a large fire.

Lateral flames:

Crumbs:

It was nice burning the two lateral fires, there was no tree coverage to be concerned with so I could let them rip vertically.  It's nice to work with two fires because you can feed one to extreme and let it rip while you feed the other.  By the time you've finished the second feeding then the other pile is ready for more.  These two big piles went down in about an hour, and then there's the customary couple hour clean up and burn down to simmering ash.

I usually start my burn around 9:00 AM, which is the recommended time by our air regulatory agency.  I'm usually done by 1:00 PM, many times I'm done feeding the fire by Noon.  And if I'm really really lucky, as I was on this particular day, some rain comes in mid-afternoon and eradicates any small chance that there might be a spark.

I have done two more piles since these photos were taken, with two more large ones remaining on the lower, lower forty.  It's a lot of work, but it sure cleans up real nice.  Tighten logic with malleable spanners.

Chicken Update

I have recently had my first experience with a broody hen.  Why, what is a broody hen you may inquire?  Well, just stay with me because I am about to inform you.

Broodiness is essentially is a hen's instinct to set on a nest and hatch eggs. You can read more here Cures for Broody Hen | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/list_6776812_cures-broody-hen.html#ixzz2DkDAoC8g,
if you so desire.  Or you could just read more here.  Whatever you prefer.  Sunshine.

There is broody cute, there is broody mean, and there is broody psycho. 

One of our Barred Rocks, or "Ethels" was the broody antagonist.  My lovely wife has affectionately named the hens, but it's just one name per breed.  It was an inspired idea, I'll be damned if I can tell them apart, except for the breed that is.

So the Barred Rocks are both "Ethel", the Black Star's are both "Myrna", the Red Stars are both "Betty" and the Orpington's are all "Baby".  Except Goldie.  He's the Rooster and got his own name.  It's easy this way, and way less time consuming.  And the birds don't care.  They'd never come if you tried to call them anyway.

It's either that or bright neon spray paint, and I think that's probably inhumane.  And time consuming.  And possibly as insane as a broody hen.  Especially when you try to spray the other side of the feathers.  It's kinda like the other side of the looking glass, only if you were the hen and had inhaled vapor from the spray paint.

So anyway, Ethel starts hanging out for an inordinate amount of time in one of the nest boxes.  (There are three boxes, which is more than enough for nine laying hens.)  They're usually only in there to do they're business, which can be from fifteen to fifty minutes.  Depending on if it's express or regular delivery.

Ethel was in there all day and was cooing and cute and not aggressive (as some broody hens can be), so I just pretended she was cooing and cute and the whole situation would evaporate tomorrow.  

The next morning she was in the same box, and still cooing and cute.  That afternoon though she had moved to another box.  I discovered she had apparently been sitting on three eggs, all of which could not have been just hers. She was in the new box for another day, then switched back to the first box.  It is now when things begin to get psycho, it they're not already.

There were two eggs in the second box, so it began to look like she was trying to hatch everybody's eggs, only they were in different places.  And then, eggs started appearing broken on the floor.  Even though it is covered with rice hay, a concrete slab will still apparently crack an egg after a five foot Humpty-Dumpty fall.  
I don't know what was going on in her pee-picking little bird brain, but it sure looked like Psycho to me.  Anthony Perkins.  Janet Leigh.  Bananas in the shower.  I was getting pretty irritated with her and so I started tossing her out of the hen house.  She'd grouse around for fifteen minutes or so, which is odd because she's a chicken, and then she'd head back into the hen house.

The rest of the flock were still sleeping on perches in the outside enclosed cage, the weather and colder nights have not seemed to drive them into the somewhat warmer climate inside the hen house.  But Ethel just hung out in the nesting box area, flinging out eggs and talking nonsense to herself and her pee-picking bird brain. Like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, or Joan Crawford in anything.

The rest of the flock would exit the cage in the morning, and then, when allowed, would scamper out through the gate to dine on bugs the front lawn.  But Ethel hung out in the hen house, like Rapunzel in her tower, inordinate little bleeps of psycho thoughts orbiting about her pea size bird brain cranium. 

This psychotic event went on for about a week when I finally decided I better get educated on the situation.  I was only getting 1-3 eggs a day, down from 5-7.  Not only was she sending little yolks to their premature death, I think she was also disrupting the harmony within the club house.

Instead of listening to some mellow jazz or new age hip-hop the wanna be laying hens were subject to a non-stop rolling tape of Yoko Ono squelching out all her rabid hits from the seventies, like this one.

After some rapid research, I learned I essentially needed to remove her from the nesting area to disrupt her disruptive behavior pattern.  Easier said than done for me.  It was going to be extremely difficult for me to remove her without either endangering her at night or cutting off the other hens from their nesting area too.

I landed on what I thought might be a trial or maybe solution.  Since the rest of the flock was still sleeping in the cage outside, I just put a small board across their little door to the hen house.  It usually stays open all the time for their ingress and egress.  Then I closed the main door and forced her to spend the night with the rest of the flock.

The next morning I opened the hen house door so they could all get access to the nesting area, and much to my surprise our antagonist pretty much hung out with the flock the entire day.  (The previous week she was never seen with the flock-she was always inside screeching like Yoko and listening to Sound Garden and Barry Manilow interchangeably while she'd throw eggs on the floor.)

 I cut her off from the house again the next night, but it's now been a couple weeks and she appears to be over her broodiness.  How about that?

I didn't need to do a chicken liver labotomy or chick-o-shock therapy.  She went from acting like any sit-com mom from the fifties to one of them postpartum psychotic depression murderesses like Andrea Yates, after she drank gin and snorted some PCP.  Probably.  Or maybe like Margot Kidder on acid  looking for gnomes in strangers backyards.  Which I suppose is better than looking for Nome, Alaska, especially in a backyard in Los Angeles.

The poor flock was also confined to their club house and cage for the twelve inches of rain three day weekend.  It gets tough on them in there, they can only read so many books.  So I got them the game Angry Birds, and they seem to enjoy that, along with Twister and Chicken Cha Cha Cha.  It helps wile away the rain soaked hours, but for them there's nothing like frolicking on the lawn and eating bugs.  Well, that and crowing, if you're a Rooster.   And now, a picture from our sponsor for all you suburban chicken followers: