Elvis has entered the building!

Actually, he's entered the "L-barn," to be more precise. Somewhere around midnight, Priscilla's long-awaited calf made the decision to join us.

Priscilla had been taking her time with this one, which concerned us because she is a very small cow and she had been bred to a larger bull when we bought her. She was also late for the vet's estimated due date. We have had several false alarms in the past two weeks and, though we have been watching her carefully, she seemed determined to keep her freshening a secret. Last night, she calmly ate her dinner and showed no early signs of labor. But when Tom checked on her in the wee hours, Elvis was here, dry and on his feet.

Priscilla is a careful momma and is very protective of her baby. But she bribes easily and we are certain that we will be able to handle Elvis with a minimum of concern on her part. For now, we are just giving them a little quiet time to get to know each other.

Welcome, Elvis!

Our Peeps

Our garden is now in full vegetative bloom, complete with kale, beets, cucumbers, beans, tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, squash, melons, lettuce, onions, radishes and sunchokes. And in the very near future, we will have an abundant crop of insects that eat kale, beets, cucumbers, beans, tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, squash, melons, lettuce, onions and radishes. Last year, we discovered that no living creature will eat Jerusalem artichokes. They are tasty and nutritious, no doubt about it. But they also require a major realignment of your digestive track to process. All animals seem to know this. Still, if the big one hits Burkeville, they are a likely path to survival. The plants, members of the sunflower family, take enthusiastic hold anywhere you plant them. We have been told that the only way to get rid of them is to move.

This spring, we have decided to add to our little flock of chickens. We already have hens that lay brown, white and blue eggs. So to keep our refrigerator interesting (that is, if you don’t consider what’s in there now interesting enough), we opted for two more groups that will lay green and dark brown eggs. I say “groups” because the first four pullets are a cross between the lovely Buff Orpington and the tailless Araucuana. We purchased these as started birds at six weeks old. They are gentle and attractive and will probably lay eggs that are either green or pink.

We brought the second little troupe home yesterday. They are six little Marans of several color varieties: Birchen, Blue Copper and Black Copper and they are about three days old, not a lot bigger than our dust bunnies. We won’t go there. But Tom and I spent the first few hours of their arrival watching them investigate their little enclosure, peeping and rolling over in little fluff balls when their large, unfamiliar feet wouldn’t get out of the way. We had some concern over the little black one, who was suffering from stress and seemed unusually subdued. This morning, however, he was considerably brighter and we think he is on the road to recovery.

Watching these tiny creatures taking their little stumbling steps into the world reduces it in size a little. We don’t know what the national economy will look like tomorrow. They don’t yet know whether we will eat them. They are, after all, nature’s little snacks. Their concerns seem bigger than mine. But when I reached my hand in yesterday to give them food, one of these tiny, half-ounce birds puffed himself up and with all the deadly intensity of a pit viper, lunged and pecked me. I was impressed. Of course, one of these days, about half of these birds will be 12-lb roosters with spurs. At that point, I will be even more impressed. But for the time being, watching these fragile chicks bravely facing an unknown world makes me want to buck up and stand tall. Sometimes, problems are just a matter of your perspective. For example, a bumper crop of ravenous bugs will look entirely different to me than it will to these little guys. To them, it will look like a crawling smorgasbord. Who knows? Maybe we can all learn to eat Jerusalem artichokes.

Welcome Home: Speckled Jim, Willow, Bob, Amber, Tattoo, Sasha, Little, China, Carrie and Brighteyes.

Winter has Gone!

April Snow Showers!
Now it's gone (the winter) and the weather has finally turned warm, I can look back at winter's last kick in the teeth and laugh! So the cold and wet weather has given way to warm and wet, and our ground water level is probably at a pretty healthy level after this winter. In the self-sufficiency stakes that is a big whoop, as getting a good first hay cutting depends on a decent initial soaking. And while it is nice to have a good second, or even third cut, getting the majority of our hay in the first one is a great relief. Although the pastures are coming in nicely, we now have a number of muzzled horses (Cushings and insulin resistant) who can't be on grass and need, therefore, to be fed hay through the summer. Luckily we did well last year, and will actually have some bales to spare by the time we come to cut.
I now only need a summer photo to complete the "Four Seasons" photos of the dogwood.

So what of the farm life here at Triskelion. Well Priscilla seems to have gone into reverse, but may still be on time for an end of April, beginning of May delivery. She is looking much better than when we first had her, shiny hair and much improved shape, though milk production hasn't started yet. Bessie and Rosebud have shown few signs of pregnancy but, equally, don't appear to be going into heat either, so we hope that the AI has taken. That will put us around November, not the best time to freshen, but they should be well established before the really cold weather starts.

Priscilla and Bessie

We have four new pullets, Americana/Buff Orpington crosses, which should provide us with green eggs to go with our current blue ones from one of the Araucanas. Next Easter we won't have to paint eggs to be festive!
For ease of maintenance, we have moved the vegetable garden plots nearer to the house and will have a wide variety of veggies to show for our labors! More on the outcome as the growing season progresses - what works, or doesn't and what gets shared with the critturs. In addition we have had a general tidying up around the front of the house, removing old bushes and the ever present ivy, plus new beds and walkways, which will make for a more picturesque garden, with some of the features of our much loved yard at the farmhouse in Orlean.

Chamara 1972 - 2009

On Wednesday night, Arabian "Princess" Chamara joined her friend Rudy over the rainbow bridge - to range free and sighted once more. In a manner becoming a Princess, she passed away quietly, asleep in her stall; a fitting end to a long and valued life. For most of that life she had been with just one owner, who has been a regular visitor to see her at the rescue. On her last visit just recently, she spent time grooming Cham and enjoying her obvious pleasure over all the attention. There was nothing to alert us that anything was wrong last Wednesday evening, and although Cham had given us some concerns over the previous year, she seemed as strong as ever.

Chamara and her son, Star, came to us in April 2007. Chamara quickly established herself as a strong personality with an unflinching certainty in her royal ancestry and exalted position on the farm. However, her obvious belief in herself as a "Princess", was somewhat undermined by a strange whinny that sounded more like one of our cows in the throes of ovulation. Chamara was afflicted with severe vision problems that included a cataract, uveitis and at one stage, a corneal ulcer. With the loss of her sight, she became more and more distant with people and other horses, but had a like/dislike (love/hate would be way too deep) relationship with Bear and Lily. However, her real affection was for Rudy, the blind Appy in the next paddock. After he died last year she could still be seen at the fence listening for him, and we believe that a part of her went with him.

Chamara had been as fit a 37-year old as one could expect. Apart from being a somewhat hard keeper (she had a senior horse's penchant for turning her nose up at feed she had happily eaten for weeks) and one incidence of gas colic, she was in good, general health. Wednesday evening, she came in, ate a good dinner, and then quietly passed . We believe the cause to be heart failure.

We will miss Chamara’s strange whinnies, her regal attitude and the obvious fine Arab breeding that could still be seen under the grey hair. Adieus then, Chamara, enjoy the rolling fields and lush grass, and the reunion with Rudy that are your due. We are happy to have enabled you to live out your days in safety and dignity, and are glad that your passing was comfortable.

Folly and Chamara

The Heat of the Moment

She waited expectantly, her heart fluttering with anticipation. Somewhere, he was out there. Flowers bobbed gently in the warm breeze and their intoxicating aroma filled the night air. She could think of nothing but him. His strength, his smell, the sound of his footsteps. She knew she shouldn’t, and yet…. Excitement ran through her like a current of electricity and the waiting became excruciating. An eternity passed.

And then, suddenly, he emerged from the darkness. She could think of nothing at all to say, as she gazed into his warm, brown eyes. His strong body glowed in the moonlight and in a moment, she was swept away. Somewhere in the night, a bird trilled a love song to an invisible mate.

Nah. I made all that stuff up. And this should illustrate exactly why engineers should not write romance novels. Really, after observing Priscilla’s increasing interest in her best friend, we finally witnessed the mounting that clearly signaled Bessie’s “standing heat.” A quick call to our AI tech brought Rhonda to our farm within minutes. The wind was gusting and it was bloody cold out. But armed with her trusty nitrogen tank, electric water bath and a semen straw from Son of Fat Louie, she expertly performed the insemination procedure and confirmed for us that Bessie was in heat. Bessie was far more interested in eating sweet feed (that’s our girl) than in anything else going on, and within minutes, was on her way back to her buddies with a belly full of feed and a soon-to-be fertilized egg. Rosebud went through this procedure exactly one week ago, and we are hoping that both inseminations result in pregnancies. We will know in about 3 weeks.

While the procedure does not sound all that romantic, Tom and I felt that it justified celebrating with a really nice Bourgogne. Of course, we feel that way about a lot of things- like cleaning up the basement, getting all the stalls picked and finishing the taxes. Because, despite the depressing news and worrisome economy, there is much to celebrate in our lives. There are catkins on the Elm trees, a hint of green in the grass and 24 wheels of goddawful smelling brie in the cooler. For all its complications, life is still, generally good.

(Photo courtesy of carrieanddanielle.com/.../sustainability/page/3/)

Horses First Domesticated 5,000 Years Ago

This item appeared a few days ago courtesy of AP on PeoplePC's news page, and I thought it worth reprinting in full.

Medieval knights, the warriors of Saladin, Roy Rogers and fans lining racetracks around the world all owe a debt to the Botai culture, residents of Central Asia who domesticated horses more than 5,000 years ago. New evidence corralled in Kazakhstan indicates the Botai culture used horses as beasts of burden - and as a source of meat and milk - about 1,000 years earlier than had been widely believed, according to the team led by Alan Outram of England's University of Exeter. "This is significant because it changes our understanding of how these early societies developed," Outram said.

Domestication of the horse was an immense breakthrough - bringing horsepower to communications, transportation, farming and warfare. The research, reported in Friday's edition of the journal Science, also shows the development of animal domestication and a fully pastoral economy may well be independent of famous centers of domestication, such as the Near East and China, Outram added. Compared to dogs, domesticated as long as 15,000 years ago, and such food animals as sheep, goats and pigs, horses are relatively late arrivals in the human relationship. "It is not so much the domestication of the horse that is important, but the invention of horseback riding," commented anthropologist David W. Anthony of Hartwick College in Oneonta, N.Y. "When people began to ride, it revolutionized human transport. For the first time the Eurasian steppes, formerly a hostile ecological barrier to humans, became a corridor of communication across Eurasia linking China to Europe and the Near East. Riding also forever changed warfare. Boundaries were changed, new trading partners were acquired, new alliances became possible, and resources that had been beyond reach became reachable," observed Anthony, who was not part of Outram's research team.

"Some researchers believe this new mobility may have led to the spread of Indo-European languages and many other common aspects of human culture," Outram said. In addition to carrying people and their goods, horses provided meat and even milk, which some cultures still ferment into a mildly alcoholic beverage. The date and place of horse domestication has long been subject to research, and the steppes of Central Asia and the Botai culture have previously been suggested as possibilities. But the new report adds extensive detail to the tale.

Outram's team developed a troika of evidence the Botai domesticated horses:

• Studies of the jaws of horses from the site show tooth wear similar to that caused by bits in modern horses, an indication of riding. A 1998 paper by Anthony raised the possibility of such findings, but the new report is much more extensive and detailed.
• The leg bones of the Botai horses are more slender than those of wild horses, indicating breeding for different qualities. The new way of measuring and analyzing horse leg bones "shows here for the first time that the Botai culture horses were closer in leg conformation to domestic horses than to wild horses. That is another first," Anthony said.

• And complex studies of ancient ceramic pots from the location showed evidence they once contained mare's milk. "This is, apart from being fascinating, something of a smoking gun for domestication - would you milk a wild horse?" said Outram. Anthony agreed: "If you're milking horses, they are not wild! The invention of a method to identify the fat residues left by horse milk in ceramic pots is a spectacular and brilliant advance," he said of Outram's paper. "It is really important to be able to identify the fats in the clay pots as not just from horse tissue, but precisely from horse milk."

Still today mares are milked in Kazakhstan and Mongolia. "The Kazakhs ferment it into a sour tasting and slightly alcoholic drink called 'koumiss.' It is clear that dated back at least hundreds of years, but beyond that no one knew. Who would have thought it was a practice that went back 5,500 years, at least," Outram said.
"The new research was funded by Britain's Natural Environment Research Council, the British Academy and the U.S. National Science Foundation.

Bringing Back Chesapeake

In 2003, the White Bird Appaloosa Horse Rescue was still in its first year of operation as a non-profit organization. We were an enthusiastic bunch of rescuers (many fresh from the ranks of companion animal rescues) who were undaunted by distance, finances or complicated logistics, and who were still becoming familiar with the many issues and ethical minefields in the horse industry.

One day, I happened upon a post from another rescue, which was forwarding information about the upcoming auction of horses by the Colorado State University. Horses have traditionally been used in the school’s veterinary program labs, and at the end of their tenure, the horses had just as traditionally been auctioned off to the highest bidder. These usually turned out to be buyers for the slaughter market. Without opposing bidders, the horses would certainly enter the slaughter chain. The more we thought about it, the less fair it seemed. These horses had already come from owners that they had served, then been used by the University in their embryo transfer program. Now, they’d be sold for meat. It seemed to us that these horses had already done their service to humanity and deserved a better end.

A handful of members of our Yahoo! group pooled their resources to form an ad hoc team they called “ARC (Animal Rescue Corps), with the intention of buying one of the horses through the on-line auction. We selected several likely candidates from the list of auction horses and when the auction opened, we bid. Our bidding methodology was simple: we assumed that the least expensive horse would be in the greatest danger of being sold for meat. We altered our bids accordingly and remained watchful.

When the bidding ended, we were shocked. Every single horse had had their bids topped and their high bidders had been outbid. We were equally shocked to receive an email shortly after the auction, advising us that “our” horse would be available at our previously bid price. We have been told that there were some shady dealings at the end of the auction, though we cannot verify what happened. We only know that we had “our” horse, an overweight, sullen-looking chestnut mare with a large scar on her neck and the number “1830” tattooed on her butt. ARC named her Chesapeake Hope, a compromise between the ARC members who favored “Chesapeake” and those who favored “Hope.

The following weeks involved a flurry of negotiations with a rescuer in Colorado, who picked her up at the vet school for us, kept her for several weeks, and helped us to locate a reliable hauler to bring her home. The horse that rolled out of the trailer was far different from the one in the photo. She was bright, lively and in better condition than in her photo (thanks to Shirley, in Colorado). What a bundle of energy! From the quarantine paddock where she desperately wanted to get to the other horses, to the love and discipline she doled out as “Momma” to our nurse mare foals, she took immediate control of the herd and remained its matriarch. Did I mention she is bossy?

Among the volunteers we have had at the rescue was a young woman who came out a couple of times a week to help feed and clean stalls. The chemistry between these two grew quickly and we received the surprise request one day for Chessie’s adoption. We were ecstatic. Chessie went home with our best wishes for a bright future.

But predicting the future is impossible. We never know what hooks and turns our lives will throw at us, and so it was with Chessie’s adopter. Several weeks ago, we were advised that Chessie would need to return to us, for reasons beyond anyone’s control. So six years after Chessie arrived from Colorado, we brought her back to White Bird, to a new farm she hadn’t yet seen and to some old friends, both horse and human, that she still recognized.

Chessie has been very well cared for by her adopter. But it is apparent that Chessie’s life prior to her rescue had not been an easy one. We are now seeing the results of what appears to be a series of old injuries that are emerging as various arthritis and joint problems, in addition to the navicular syndrome that is so common in Quarter horses. It is not unusual for old injuries to start causing problems a long time after they seem to have healed. But for a 14-year old horse (a baby by our standards!) she has a surprising number of health issues. Chessie will never be completely sound and will always require a little extra care to keep her comfortable. But she is still our bright-eyed, bouncing girl and still “large and in charge.”

We are sorry that Chessie lost her home and the person who loved her. But we are glad that she had somewhere safe to go, especially in this difficult economy and terrible horse market. People are not exactly standing in line for busted up mares with bad feet, no matter how personable they are. But one of the best reasons to adopt horses from rescues is that, if something unforeseen happens, your horse has an insurance policy. Bringing back Chesapeake was possible because her adopter opened her home to a rescued horse, ensuring that in an emergency, her horse had a safe haven. But we are also grateful to her adopter, for taking such good care of our girl and for making sure she was safe when she could no longer care for her.

Top photo: Auction picture taken at CSU, 2003
Middle photo: Despooking exercise, taken at White Bird's Stillwater Farm in 2004
Bottom photo: Chessie at White Bird, taken this morning, Valentine's Day 2009