Hello and welcome back after such a long absence! Okay, maybe I am just welcoming myself at this point...but darn it, I deserve a hearty welcome!

So much time has come and gone since last post, but not so much has changed. The garden grew over fantastically with weeds. Then they grew prickly seed heads. Then I had to don protective clothing just to walk through it, long sleeves and long pants. Then I got good and mad and spent three days yanking and grunting and and tugging on weeds, staggering backwards as they let loose, and after those three days, the ridges on the insides on my fingers and palms were raw and blistered, so I had to quit, and a week later, went back, only to open up the barely healed, tender blisters. Then I got really good and mad, pulled out part of the fence and the old metal kitchen sink cabinet that I had set up to wash the dirt off of root vegetables out in the garden instead of dragging the mess into the house, made room for the tractor and eight foot mower deck, backed it in and wreaked some havoc. Mowed all the parts that had already been harvested or died in the heat, all of my lettuce and spinach. Lifted the deck high and swung the deck wildly behind the tractor, mowing the prickly tops of weeds off as far as I dared reach over the peppers, potatoes, onions and tomatoes, sacrificing the tops of a few pepper plants and at least one watermelon vine in the process.

I have a plan for next summer. Obviously, I am accepting my limitations as a big, sprawly sort of gardener. My big, sprawly garden kicked my butt in the month and a half of temps soaring past 100 degrees. Next year, I plan to plant the whole dang sprawly thing to root crops that can go in early, come up early, and be already mulched before the weeds have a chance to know that they need to be getting the jump on me. My mistake this year was spreading my planting out so much that I could never just mulch one area, because even as my onions and cabbages were finally big enough to not get smothered along with the weeds with my wheat straw mulch, the peppers right next to them were too tiny. So next year, onions, potatoes, carrots, beets will be planted with wild abandon in the sandy, fertile, earthworm-loaded root-crop super soil that is my garden, and then, once spring warms the ground a bit more, right outside my back door, like literally five steps away, I plan to build a magnificent raised bed, one railroad tie wide by two or three railroad ties long, backed on the west side by a six foot pine fence (also serving as one boundary of the dog run we plan to install, enabling us to leave our doggy babies home more often once we are hauling around a human baby) that will shade it from the harsh afternoon sun. And at the end of it, a greenhouse. Maybe just a baby one, one that can barely be walked into, but something to keep lettuce and spinach and cucumbers nice and cool long into the unbearably hot summer months and warm into the nippy cold of November, hopefully into December. I think that is something we can do without a lot of money invested.

As far as the warm blooded inhabitants of the farm, I have been having chicken issues. The chicks I hatched have grown into flamboyant, exotic-looking crossbreeds, smallish like their Silky daddies, smooth-feathered like their heavy breed mamas, sporting shiny russet bodies and poofy black heads and legs. Except that nine out of sixteen have met agonizing deaths, very suddenly being unable to stand, going into seizure-like spasms in which their legs snap out straight and their necks snap back over their backs. Two of them, I monitored closely, and saw how that when they had these giant seizures, or even smaller ones, they pecked blindly at the earth and straw in front of them, and those bits, if not immediately grabbed back out of their clamped beaks, immediately found their way down their throats. I felt their gullets, rock hard, I am assuming from the muscle spasms, so I am sure whatever they swallowed just stayed in their necks. And inevitably, after several hours of this, and hours of choking on whatever they had swallowed or aspirated, they had one last spasm that lasted too long for them to be able to breathe, squawked desperately, passed out and died. I have several theories. The vet's theory is that something bacterial is going around. Quite possible. It seems like some sort of neurological disruption going on, and we are a little suspicious that perhaps, even with me replacing the possibly chemical soaked dirt, perhaps they are still picking up tiny granules of 30 year old furadan. Which is something that haunts me, because I cleaned out that barn when I did because I was in a rush to get it done as soon as possible, just in case there was something toxin in it, it could be long out of my system by the time I got pregnant. Because that was the month I decided to not put my entire life on hold while I held my breath for two weeks, it hadnt happened in six months, in months when I felt much more symptomatic, so it most likely would not be that month either. A few days later, I peed on a stick, and what? Two lines. The baby had already been growing in there for two weeks. I sincerely hope that there was nothing I breathed, no toxic compounds, that will ever affect this kid. But with the fear of Furadan, one of the most toxic pesticides known to man and instantly fatal for birds, causing symptoms very similar to the ones my birdies were experiencing, comes the puzzling fact that not one of my big chickens, the chickens I bought already full grown, who also peck in the barn dirt, has had even so much as a hiccup. Not even the Silkies, who are the same size now as the chicks I hatched. It does seem to be related to size though, since most, or possibly all of the surviving hatchlings are roosters, the more delicate hens having succumbed. Awesome. Fail on my big plans for egg production. As it is we are getting an egg a day. Anyway, and the other thing that argues in favor of the barn not being completely toxic is the chick who spasmed and went lame in very much the same way while I still had them in a tiny cage out under a tree in the front yard, before they had ever been introduced to the barn. So perhaps it is something genetic or something bacterial or viral they have been carrying since shortly after hatching.

We have four kittens, entirely too mobile for only being about six weeks old, scampering across the yard from barn, where we put them every night, to house to do like the big cats and make a dash for the gap should the back door ever open. Thanks to their bottle brush tails, wide, surprised eyes, and round tummies, we cant leave them alone, and as a result, they follow humans like normal kittens follow their mama. Their mama is lacking pathetically in mama instinct and they already chow cheap catfood like the big varmints. There are about three hawks who live in the Harvestores (the big blue silos behind the barn) who circle above the house, watching, daring one of them to wander far enough away from the house to allow an unimpeded dive and grab. I am thinking about giving them away for that reason- I would rather have them in good homes than a string of once-adorable kitty bits hanging from a hawk's claws.

Wow, I sound really fatalistic. I guess this has been my biggest adjustment back to farm life, the cruelty of nature. I have witnessed so many things die since moving out here. It has come to be an expected part of life. From the meadowlarks in the car grille to the piles of cattle lying in rows in the feedlots when I ride with Bobby, cows who gave in to the heat and dust and disease of feedlot life to my chicks and pets that I am constantly expecting to lose, it is just easy to realize out here how incredibly fragile life really is.

And speaking of pet scares, Andy gave us a giant one the other day. So he has this habit of chewing on his feet. He does this in the morning before we are awake. I think it is a habit he picked up from aways digging pine needles, weed seeds and snowballs from between his pads as a Colorado dog, and it became a comforting habit to him, getting his paws all warm and wet and slobbery in moments of introspection. Well, although we try to keep him from doing it because it could lead to doggie athlete's foot, fungus between his toes, it's not the worst habit a dog could have. So the other morning, as we were lying in bed snuggling and pondering getting up and packing for our "big" fall vacation, a weekend in Colorado, I called him onto the bed to join the snuggle, as is our pre dawn morning routine. He didnt move. I called again. Bobby said "I think he is down there eating his feet again." I rolled over Bobby, reached down and lifted Andy's head, which he immediately tried to force back down to his front paws, licking obsessively, then transferred the obsessive licking to my arm. That was weird. I pulled back my arm and was a bit puzzled to discover it was smeared, wrist to elbow, in a sticky, dark substance. That was even more weird. I switched on the light to reveal Andy down on his bed, his front feet on the carpet in a puddle of bright red blood as he licked at them. I assumed he had somehow cut his foot or feet, and got out of bed, making him sit as I inspected his feet and he continues smacking his lips and tongue and swallowing. His feet looked fine, so I turned my attention to his mouth, and forced it open, and blood immediately filled it and spilled out over my fingers. By this time Bobby was awake and up, and he ran, carrying Andy, all blood- dripping 85 pounds of him, to the bathtub, where we turned on the bright heat lamp for better light and further explored his mouth. Luckily, we got him over the newish carpet in the hallway without any running over, thanks to him gulping big mouthfuls of it. But the bathroom immediately turned into a bloodbath. Thank goodness for dark tile and grout. It looked like an eighties slasher film, the tub all running with red corn syrup...that was actually blood. We monitored him for the next hour and a half until the vet opened, then lifted his 85 pound dead weight into the back of the pickup, where he hung his head over the side and sniffed the breeze as blood dripped and splattered back along the sides of the box, and by the time I reached Sourke Vet Clinic in Scott City, it had finally slowed to a slow drip that he kept swallowed before it escaped. After an examination in which they determined he had not been poisoned and wasn't hemorrhaging, they finally found the cause, a gash under his tongue, about three inches long, with the big blue vein under his tongue pulled out and severed. They were a bit amazed it had stopped in it's own at all. Poor Andy was pretty weak and pale by this point, both with an upset stomach from all the blood he had swallowed and from having lost so much, and we left him there to be sedated and stitched up. He has been functioning at a much lower energy level now, in the four days since then. His gums are still a bit pale as he adjusts to having less blood and needing to rebuild it. And of course, after his surgery, he barfed giant quantities of it, and his poo was dark black the next day. I returned home to try to scrub the bathroom and salvage our family vacation to the mountains, finished packing the camper, and made another 70 mile round trip to the vet to pick up Andy after he had come out from under anethesia, gently bedded him down in the backseat of the pickup, and hit the road west for a fun-filled weekend on camping in Colorado. And every night, I slept curled around Bobby, who slept curled around Andy, squeezing him tightly and telling him how much he was loved and how much he would be missed if he ever tried a stunt like that again. We are pretty sure that the longest claw on his back foot somehow slipped in under his tongue and hooked that vein as he was eating his back foot in the peaceful predawn wake-up foot chewing session that morning.

As far as human baby, little Dan or Christina is doing quite well at 15 weeks. Or at least s/he was hale and hearty three weeks ago at the twelve week ultrasound, kicking back, kicking around in there. We have every reason to believe he or she is still just happily hanging out in there and as soon as we have confirmation of parts in a little over a  month, he or she will have a gender and will be a lot easier to refer to. I got a break from the pregnancy queasies in Colorado, which was entirely weird- apparently this kid likes the altitude. I have never heard of feeling better the higher you get, especially while pregnant, generally oxygen is a friend to the working body, but I think we have a little oxygen deprivation junkie growing in there, because it let me go for a twelve mile road bike ride at 9,000 feet, hike, hang out by the fire, smell things like grilling hamburgers, and did not even rebel. Granted, my bike shorts were a little tight, and had to be pulled up over the bump he or she has created in my baby-generating regions, but it was a wonderful break, all round. We went with Bobby's family, the whole immediate family, which is something that happens about as often as Halley's comet, so it was a special occasion for all of us.

And now, off to make and bake ten loaves of french bread for the big Koehn family reunion next weekend. We shall see if I remember how to bake. The last time I officially baked anything was November 18. I know this because it was for Bobby's birthday. After that, I rebelled, except for one quick emergency hamburger bun baking episode this spring than kinda flopped and a banana bread episode last month that flopped spectacularly. So now, after a long hiatus, back to the good old Kitchen Aid for another go at it.