To The Hospital We Go

After two and a half years of farm life I had to take my first trip to the hospital.

Anyone who has spent time with me knows how clumsy I am. I am always covered in cuts and scrapes and bruises. So what could possibly send me to the emergency room??

Was it a chainsaw accident? No…

A fall off a ladder? No…

Did I get hit with a falling branch? No…

Tractor accident? No…

Was I protecting my barn from a bear? Closer…..

Protecting my chickens from a coyote? Closer….

Alright I will tell you.

I was trying to examine my 8 year old cat Charlie’s eye which is recovering from an ulcer when he had enough and bit me!

Yep, that’s it. I was sent to the hospital with a very fast moving bacterial infection caused by my overweight, slow, old, mostly indoor cat. 

Now anyone want to guess how dumb I feel!? I totally wish it could be a cooler story with more heroics, but no. A domestic cat bite got the best of me.

I now have to sit (the worst punishment of all), allow others to do things for me (a close second in the worse punishments of all time) and let the antibiotics work. Apparently, by using my hand, the bacteria is pushed faster and further through my system.

Ugh…sounds like a Netflix and chips afternoon. 

Busy, Busy, Busy…

I have made decent progress on my to do list this week. 

I finally finished putting the garden fence back up, reinforced the walls and weeded the perennial fruits, asparagus and garlic.

We put up a small outdoor  run for the bunnies so they can now frolick in the grass! And they are loving it!! It is so fun to watch them chase each other around the tree.

I have spent too much time sorting poop lol!! What is this world coming too?? Apparently rabbit fertilizer is amazing. Does not need to be composted, has a perfect mix of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium and can be sold for $15 a pound. So I cleaned over 20 pounds and now we wait and see if they really are golden nuggets!

If you recall we successfully hatched one duck. But only one. Zoe and I found a person selling more call ducks so we went and picked up more friends for LD (our nickname for our duck born on the province wide Lock Down, or for Lonely Duck, or for Little Duck). The new babies are still in quarantine, but we are very happy that LD will have friends soon.

Warning…this last paragraph/photo may be upsetting to some people.

Our young barn cat and old indoor cat worked together to make their first kill! Finally!!

Shutdown…Again

I want to start today’s blog with a hello to Aunt Lucy and Carol who reached out last week. It was great to reconnect and catch up with you both!

We have been very COVID lucky here in Nova Scotia. We had the three month lockdown last year and since that, have been able to return to work and life (with the addition of masks and social distancing)…until April 28th. 

Zoe was laid off of work at that time but I have been able to stay working (with reduced hours) until now. I will be laid off again now though until we get our COVID numbers back under control. 

Since I always look for the positive side of things…I am going to appreciate the time off to get many neglected tasks done as well as do basic spring chores. 

To begin with:

If you recall, the ends of my garden fence blew out in a wind storm. Our first task was to rebuild that. The chickens have been very helpful!

We have been able to spend more time with the animals. We put up a very quick (and inadequate) run so our bunnies can come outside. They loved it and it has inspired us to build a better area so they can come out more, unsupervised.

We introduced our two hatches of chicks to the big hens and it went way better than I anticipated! There is very little bullying or pecking. Today they started to bond over shared sunflower seeds.

I was getting very nervous about the potential of wasted eggs. Our hens lay over a dozen a day right now and they were starting to pile up with only a few customers. We have a great sign that our neighbour gave us that we put out at the road late last week and …voila…we have customers!

I wrote out my list tonight and it looks like I will have a busy week (although I also am reading a great book right now so there will be lots of time for that Gayle Redmond!)

 I am very excited to have this time to accomplish lots and hopefully that means…back to weekly posts!