Changes...

A lot has changed for Mike and me in the past few months.

First and most importantly, our lovely daughter Jen married her true love Graydon on May 28, and has moved to California for the foreseeable future.

Five years ago, we were certain that Inman Road would be home pretty much forever...but we have moved!  On the second to last day of April, I dragged Mike to see the cutest little log house ever, just 10 minutes away...and on the last day of May, it became ours.  We spent a couple of weeks gradually moving our stuff (of which we have a ton), and on June 17 we became permanent residents in our new home.

So the Inman Road Chronicles will be no more...but I hope you will join me at my new blog Under A Cariboo Sky 

Thank you for sharing a small part of our lives on Inman Road.

Karen xo

Spring...sort of.

I can report that the last of the snow has finally gone, as of yesterday. Finally.  It was a long, long, winter and thus far a cold, damp spring.  All is well...the garlic is up and about 4 inches tall.  My fall spinach planting experiment worked well, and the spinach is doing its thing too.  No leaves out just yet.  The ice came off of Horse Lake late last week, 36 days later than last year!  The birds are coming back in droves, and although I haven't seen a hummingbird yet, a feederful of high octane syrup is hanging in anticipation.

Critters are all alive and well, except that we lost one chicken a couple of months ago; the others kept attacking her.  I brought her into the house and kept her in Rudy's crate to heal, but the others wouldn't accept her back, and I'm not quite "country" enough to exist with a chicken living indoors over the winter. (It actually wasn't so bad, except she kept kicking woodshavings through the wire door and the dogs tracked it everywhere) I'm not quite "country" enough to put a chicken down either, so a friend had to take care of the dreadful deed.

Under Siege

 La Nina has given us our snowiest winter since we moved here five years ago.  There is about two feet of snow on the ground, and winter is showing no sign of letting up just yet.

For the most part, mornings here on Inman Road are quite routine.

In the mornings, I put the kettle on, let the dogs out, and feed the cat.  I make tea, let the dogs back in and give them breakfast.  I enjoy a big mug of tea, chat on the phone with Mike if he is away on the road, and then pull on a warm jacket, step into my boots, fill a jug with water, and head out to the chicken house.

The chickens are always happy to see me, and gather around my feet to peck the snow off my boots.  Their water gets replenished, I feed them, and I collect the eggs. (The chickens have heat lamps to keep them from getting too chilly in the cold weather, and a light on a timer that comes on at 3:30 a.m.  They need the artificial light to stimulate them to lay...with the light coming on that early, eggs are usually ready to pick up when I go out to feed them.)   Once the eggs are collected, I take them back to the house, and then go back outside to feed Buck and Rupert.

Equine breakfast consists of hay, and hay comes from the hay shed.  Buck gets three or four large flakes of hay, and Rupert gets about 1/3 of a flake.  On Wednesday morning, there was hay strewn around in the hayshed.  A bale had been torn open, and there was lots of loose hay on the ground.  A moose had found the hay. (This has been more or less inevitable, but we have managed to avoid being raided until now.)  I fed the boys, and pondered how best to deal with pillaging moose.

Being resourceful, and not wishing to share my $8 per bale hay with the local wildlife, I decided to block the open end of the hayshed with the tractor.  And so on Wednesday afternoon, I carefully positioned our trusty Kubota crosswise so even I couldn't easily get in. Problem solved.  No access to hayshed for moose, and therefore no further hay loss.

That was the plan, anyway.

Yesterday morning, Thursday, I went through my usual routine...kettle, dogs out, feed cat, make tea, dogs in, dog breakfast drink tea, talk with absent husband, wait till it was light enough to go outside to feed chickens...as I was about to head out I spotted these two:

 Not just one, but two moose...a big cow and her calf.

 They loitered,

 Checked the birdhouses for occupants

And eventually wandered away...  

I did the chicken chores, then went to feed the boys.  One of the two moose had gained access to the hayshed by going through the tractor, breaking the steering wheel, smashing the glass of the instrument panel, bending the front end loader control and doing other damage.  The tractor is unusable now until it can be repaired.  

The moose were back last night, and this morning were loitering in Rupert's pen after helping themselves to another free meal.  Rupert is not happy about having company.  And neither am I.  I'm not sure how we're going to deal with these now not-so-welcome guests.

A Thanksgiving Offering

We had some chores to do in the chicken house today; Mike installed a heatlamp to keep the girls cozy in the coming cold weather, and we hung their feeder from the ceiling and raised their water container higher from the ground in an effort to keep shavings out of it. We had shooed them all outside while we worked. I was doing a routine clean, and found these dear little eggs in their nest boxes...haven't checked for a few days, and wasn't expecting any eggs quite yet, as they're not even four months old yet. The first eggs are about half the size that the girls will eventually lay. A lovely surprise for Thanksgiving!

Chicken Watching...Everybody's Doing It

The chickens are an endless source of fascination around here.

Cody and Jasper can't get enough of chicken watching.

Lucy is equally enthralled.

Buck and Rupert, on the other hand, are much more interested in hay than chickens.

Fall in Lone Butte

Second Annual Note to Self

Because I can never remember what I planted where the previous year: Garlic is planted as follows in alphabetical order:  Rows 1&2 Bogatyr, Rows 3&4 Georgian Fire, Rows 5&6 Polish Hardneck and the rest are Yugoslavian.  Each year I'm planting fewer varieties. The first couple of years I went a bit crazy with planting zillions of varieties, but in all honesty they all taste pretty much the same to us.  Some are a bit milder than others, but I don't think I have it in me to be a garlic gourmand.

All done.  I planted the garlic after work today;  it is an especially lovely afternoon, mild and breezy, and the apsens are at their stunning golden best everywhere.  Yesterday I dug and weeded all the raised beds, except for the herb and flower one, which is too full of stuff to tackle just yet.  Then I got out the tractor and scooped a couple of buckets of composted manure from last winter's pile (thanks, Buck and Rupert!) and added that to the raised beds.  They can sit now for the winter, and in the spring will just need a quick dig to loosen up the soil again.

Critter update coming soon, RinV!

September Snapshots

One of the most wonderful things about living in the Cariboo is witnessing the southward migration of sandhill cranes every September. Mike and I were cutting and burning beetle-killed pines last week when this group appeared. They spent quite a bit of time circling and calling, and gradually other cranes flew in from different directions to join them. We watched them spiral up and up until we couldn't see them any more.

One of our aspens, in fine fall form.

Here's what I woke up to on Tuesday morning...September 20 seems a tad early for 3 inches of snow! It stopped mid morning, and was all gone again by Wednesday afternoon.

My beautiful Rudy has been very unwell for many weeks. He has been back and forth to the vet, had bloodwork, xrays, and a multitude of other things done to him, and got no real diagnosis. During the summer he was thought to have developed laryngeal paralyis when he had trouble swallowing and lost his voice. Next he developed a huge swelling under his jaw, which opened and drained spontaneously. After that his gums swelled enormously...and then we discovered he had developed the world's stupidest habit of eating wasps and bees. That all resolved, but next he developed an enteritis. That resolved, but he has been quite lethargic, often seemed to be in pain, and he lost several pounds which he could ill afford to lose, being a naturally thin dog. On Tuesday, he developed a large abscess on his abdomen which the vet incised and drained...he had his drain removed from today. He's on antibiotics and is feeling lots better. Hopefully this will be the end of his problems. He had a horrible summer. I'm sure he'll have a much nicer Autumn.

All Grown Up

The Girls, as you can see, are all grown up. They're now just over 3 months old, hatched on the first day of summer. No eggs yet; they should start producing within a month or two...everyone I ask who knows about chickens has a different idea of when they should start to lay. Some say four months, some five, others tell me I won't see an egg till Christmas. We shall see.

All 26 chicks survived, we kept half, and a friend from work added 13 to her existing flock.

They're quite tame, and highly entertaining. Elizabeth, the one eyed chicken, stayed with us.

They're Girls!

Backtracking a couple of weeks...I called the hatchery three Mondays ago to explain that my brown leghorn chicks were not brown at all...the nice lady on the other end laughed, said they get calls like that all the time, and that in fact future feathers would emerge brown. And sure enough, that is the case.

We moved the girls to their nifty new chicken house two weeks ago...they are venturing out into their run, and generally doing chicken things on a miniature scale. The dogs are mesmerized by them, and stand at the chicken run staring for hours.

One has lost an eye, I am not sure if she was pecked, but the eye has gradually atrophied during the last week. She is very tentative in her movements but seems to be managing okay...her name is Elizabeth...no names for the others just yet...can't tell them apart.

I'm Perplexed...

My brown leghorn chicks are growing creamy off-white feathers...so apparently they are not brown leghorns at all. I will have to check the packing slip to see what the hatchery says they shipped...the box they came in with the packing slip attached is in my office at work. This is going to take some investigation. If they have shipped the wrong breed, they could also have shipped the wrong sex...now I'm horrified at the thought of possibly having 26 roosters to contend with. Hell's bells.

Peeps!

Things are carrying on as usual here in Lone Butte. Since mid-May the weather has been generally cool and damp, and today we have had periods of very heavy rain. This has been the wettest late spring and early summer we've had since we arrived here 4 years ago. No complaints though...I'll take this over worrying about forest fires.

We have some new critters...tiny little ones! Yesterday morning I arrived at the feed store to pick up our long awaited chicks; brown leghorn pullets who will be providing us with fresh brown eggs in a few months. The minimum order was 25; we will be keeping about 12; a friend from work will add the rest to her flock when they are a little larger. I'm keeping the chicks at work until tomorrow. The seniors are loving having them around. The chicken run is almost ready for occupancy, Mike and I just need to staple the wire on when he's home. In the meantime, the chicks will be occupying the spare bedroom with a heat lamp to keep them cozy.

The Lull...

We are caught in a lull here...winter is over, but spring hasn't quite yet sprung. The snow is all but gone; just a few hardy patches where the sun doesn't quite reach yet. We still see the odd flurry of snow, but any accumulation is short lived. Our nights are still very frosty for the most part.

With the light snow cover this year, there is very little standing water...I am hoping this bodes well for a relatively light year for mosquitoes. Behind our property stands a marsh...this time last year the water at our fenceline was nearly to the top of my trusty gumboots...this year there just soft wet ground. There are other areas where we have temporary ponds in the spring; this year one is completely dry, the second is just mud, and the third has about four inches of water instead of its usual two feet. I hope the summer is not too dry...we don't need another year of forest fires in the area.

The ice is off the local lakes already. Mike and I drove past Horse Lake as we went into 100 Mile House on Good Friday...the lake was ice covered with a small accumulation of snow. When we returned about an hour later, the lake was bare with white caps from a howling wind.

The ice came off our most local lake, Irish Lake, on the weekend. This is about three weeks earlier than usual, and a full six weeks earlier than 2009...for some reason, we keep track of things like this.

In other news...we plan to build our house this year and are awaiting bids from local contractors. Mike spent a few days plowing and removing rocks from an area of the pasture we are improving...we seeded it on Sunday, and put an electric fence around it to keep Buck and Rupert out. It's not quite warm enough to germinate yet. I'm hoping for some rain, but may have to water to get things going.

All the critters are well, as are Mike and I. Mike and Cody are off to Virginia and Maryland after 10 days at home. Things are quiet here without them.

Things to Do on a Saturday in February...

You can trudge through the snow, carrying a section of newspaper and some dry cedar kindling and light up a great big stump pile...


Or you can just lay down in the snow and chew on a log.

It's up to you.

The Critters (most of them, anyway)

Here are a few moments captured yesterday afternoon.

Lucy and Jasper roughhousing. Lucy does pretty well for an arthritic old lady, whose hip dysplasia is apparently so bad that her xrays could be those of a dog who can't stand up.

Victorious Lucy pins Jasper by his throat. That's Rudy off to the side. He doesn't join in the play fights...he just continually shrieks encouragement at the top of his lungs from the sidelines.

Here's Buck at his scruffiest. He doesn't look like the beautiful sleek golden horse who lives here during the summer months.

Rupert, tucking into his meager ration of hay. He thinks he's being starved, but as you can tell, he's still looking rather over nourished.

Feeding the Birds

Early this winter, Mike made me two simple log bird feeders by boring several 1" holes in each, and attaching a hook to suspend them . I stuff them with a concoction of peanut butter, suet, & mixed seeds, much to the delight of the chickadees, nuthatches, sapsuckers and woodpeckers who visit them almost constantly.

Yes, right...where was I?

We are still here, still alive, still well. Please pardon my absence from the blogosphere.

A quick recap of the last few months:

Snow came late to the Cariboo; there was none to speak of until late November, and there has been very little since. Today is the first really snowy day we have had for many weeks. I don't know what the total accumulation has been for the winter, but with weeks of mild days, it has added up to very little on the ground. Williams Lake, an hour north of us had no snow at all last week when we were there. The winter of 2009-2010 has been by far the mildest since our move here 4 years ago. Oh, and just before the snow came, Inman Road was paved.

Mike & Cody are in Saskatoon today...tomorrow they will make their way to Winnipeg. They were home last week, and left on Tuesday. They had almost three weeks at home over Christmas, and an unplanned return home in November for two weeks when Mike was quite ill. Some heavy duty antibiotic therapy and my expert (but sometimes unwelcome) nursing skills got him mended and back to work again.

As for me, I have been hobbling around for several months with plantar fasciitis, which feels more or less like someone is driving a railroad spike into your heel with every step. Not too pleasant. Anyway, to make a short story long...a few weeks before Christmas, and after consuming several large bottles of ibuprofen, I finally decided I should do something about that, and found a podiatrist in Kamloops (a two hour drive away) and dutifully showed up for my appointment. He did foot castings and I made an appointment to pick up my orthotics last Monday. My first clue that all was not well should have come when he asked me, "So do you go by Beatrice, or Bea?" "Karen," I replied. "Oh, right." The orthotics felt roughly like someone had sliced a lacrosse ball in half, and inserted half, round side up, into each shoe. "Weird," I thought, but what do I know about how they should feel? Everyone says they take some getting used to. I gamely limped around, and managed to keep my shoes on till we got home. The podiatrist called around 5 pm to sheepishly advise that I was in fact, in possession of Beatrice's orthotics. I acquired my very own pair yesterday, and hope for the best! I hope that Beatrice has hers now, and that her poor fallen arches get some relief.

The animals are well, all of them. Rupert is on a diet, much to his chagrin. Buck is beginning to lose his winter coat and is oh, so itchy. Molly has been going out some nights (that's how mild it's been, last year she didn't set her princess toes outside until mid March) and yesterday morning left the first mouse of the year on the doormat. The dogs are fine, and are awaiting the return of their bedding from the washer and dryer.

There you go...all up to date. Enjoy the weekend.

Happiness is Rolling in the Dust

Rupert enjoying a good roll on a sunny afternoon.

A Treasure Map

During our first fall in Lone Butte, I ordered and planted many varieties of garlic. To keep track, I painstakingly recorded each variety on a bright orange piece of paper, which I promptly lost...not to be seen again for two years. By then I had no idea which variety was which.

This year, I'm making my garlic map here in cyberspace, where I won't lose it. At the end of summer I'll be able to look back and see which varieties did well, and which I won't grow again.

Row 9 Persian Star
Row 8 Persian Star
Row 7 Northern Quebec
Row 6 M M M M M NQ
Row 5 Majestic
Row 4 Dan's Russian
Row 3 Dan's Russian, YP YP YP YP
Row 2 Yugoslavian Porcelain
Row 1 Magic

Now all I have to remember is that I actually recorded what I planted!

And then it was Autumn

...which is my favourite season here in the beautiful South Cariboo. Summer's heat returned with a vengence in mid August, and has only just given way to overnight frosts and that wonderful crispness in the air that makes working outdoors such a pleasure. My sheepskin slippers just been pulled out from under the bed to replace my flip flops, and I think the woodstove is going to get its first use of the season tonight.

Over the past weeks, several projects have been completed...the most major being the shop, which has taken three years of intermttent work. Mike and I moved the raised garden beds to their new home in Rupert's former pen last weekend, as they were occupying ground which is going to be the building site for our house next year. The herbs and strawberries have been replanted.

This morning I have been splitting firewood and planting daffodil bulbs, this afternoon I'll be cutting back the delphiniums, lupins and artemesia, and planting garlic.

All here are well...Mike and Cody are back on the road since Tuesday after a week at home. Today they are in Ohio, and will be in Virginia by tomorrow morning. Buck is in the yard, grazing on the end of season clover...Rupert is loudly protesting that he can't (too rich, causes founder) join Buck.

Rudy's personality has blossomed in the past few months...Lucy has finally decided that since he isn't going anywhere, she might as well accept him and stop terrorizing him. He's a scoundrel, and a clown, and he makes me laugh every day. Jasper is dedicated to spending every possible moment inside, and Molly has been presenting us with a dead mouse most mornings.

Life here is predictable, and routine, but very, very good.