Last Day Of Summer
The Last Day of Summer
Yesterday was the last full day of Summer. And boy were those summer days full, right up to the end.
The dawn came crisp and clear, with a little mist settled in amongst some trees in the distance, where I think the LaHave River flows under the highway. A white-tailed doe and two fawns were nosing around the crabapples before the sun topped the horizon. Either a crowing rooster or one of the restless cats on the bed had awakened me, so I wandered as I always do to the windows, starting with the one to the northeast side of the bedroom, to take in the view from our hill top. It reminds me daily why I love this place, one of many reasons.
I opened the window to shoo the deer, “Don’t you touch my garden....get going!” They are so elegant and sweet, except on the days when they have destroyed the fruits of your hard work. We have been lucky so far this season although yesterday we found some hoofprints and nibbling around our pepper plants in the herb garden. They’d be gone in a hurry if they’d tried the jalapenos.
After the chickens were released from the henhouse for the day, we received a call from a friend who’d been over for dinner the night before. A retired commercial pilot from Germany, he invited us out for a tour in his ultralight, meeting at 10 a.m. The weather was perfect, clear and bright, winds light. As it only seats two, he took us up one at a time, taxiing slowly around the small lake before a short take-off into the wind. What a glorious view! There are so may little lakes dotting this county, hidden from main roads, the secret treasures of those fortunate to have sought them out through realtors. My favourite sight was that of the many hill top farms, older and more established than our own wee one, with huge open pastures, still bright green and freshly mown, topped often with a white house and a red barn. In other areas a few clear-cuts left their scars on the landscape, as did some of the hidden dump sites that I missed but my husband saw, revealing a disprespect for the land that we can’t understand.
But overall the beauty of this place, Lunenburg County, is remarkable, rolling farms and hectares of forest spreading down in fingers to the the jagged coastline full of rivers and inlets, tiny islands and coves. The LaHave River on which I spent my teens looked quite majestic, glinting black and silver, backlit by the morning light, opening out to Dublin Bay and the LaHave Islands beyond. Then a turn to the east and out toward the coastline to the heritage town of Lunenburg, the sun lighting up the candy-coloured waterfront of red and blue and more, and a surprise, the Bluenose II sailing in toward the harbour, returning to it’s homeport after touring as our sailing ambassador.
Of course a highlight was seeing our own farm, recognizing the ones that were landmarks along the way until there it was, We Are One Farm, diminutive in comparison, and harder to see with our soft green house and even the purple sheds, receding into the earth unlike the white and red of other farms. The lavender beds were not so appealing from the air, half of them covered as they are right now with only the black weed mat, not yet mulched with the granite filter sand. And the field down back, which is not really a field but a wasteland formerly a logging yard run by the previous owner. It is starting to be reclaimed by nature with a variety of grasses and clumps of sweetfern, but needs some TLC. My vision is a lavender labyrinth although it might be a nice spot for an orchard, protected from winds and quite hot in the summer.
And the beaver pond, oh the beaver pond, far bigger than I realized, remnants of the original pond’s berm barely visible, more like an island, but the first of at least three dams quite visible, as well as the fine lodge. Looking at photos later one can see that the pond now traverses almost the entire width of the property, cutting us off from the back acreage.
It is simply one more thing we don’t have time for and is at a stage now that would require either major excavating equipment to destroy, or in my husband’s latest notion, the converting of the woods between our field and the pond, into a cleared pasture, effectively robbing the critter of his food supply, the trees on the north side of the pond being perhaps too large for his liking. Then, the theory goes, he would, by his own volition, pack his bags and leave, taking his toothy little family with him.
But there are enough chores to keep us busy for the time being, so perhaps he will winter with us one more season.
And after the beautiful flights we enjoyed, (oh, did I mention the bald eagle twirling at eye level as we banked for our landing?), and breakfast at a local diner, it was home for more end-of-season duties. Edward’s afternoon was spent on construction of a very substantial woodshed which he started last fall, mine on picking still more of the delightful plum-shaped yellow grape tomatoes which insist on producing still, another mixing-bowl full yesteday. Buckets have already been consumed in salads and sauces and prepared for the freezer. And I plucked some twenty or more acorn squash, some a bit small but ripe. We had so much rain in early August I think some things slowed their growth and then I stopped watering as it had been so wet for so long.
The lack of a second bloom on the Munstead and English lavenders suggest that is indeed the case, it got so cool and wet for about three weeks they failed to produce new spikes after the July harvest and pruning, unlike last year. Last summer I got a fairly substantial harvest of buds, albeit on more stunted and irregular spikes, not good for bundles but fine for any use of the dried buds.
I spent the rest of the afternoon doing some more pruning, starting on the Grosso which didn’t bloom until late July and also seemed stalled by the August wet spell. I have held off pruning them as they have been sending up sporadic spikes still but I think the best are done. There is no expectation of a second bloom with these under even optimal conditions, as far as I know. So I must clip them into tidy tight shapes before the hard frosts come.
A gang of five or six Barred Plymouth Rock chickens gathered around me while I crouched and cut between the beds, some looking simply curious and enjoying the company, others apparently hoping that I was digging, turning up the odd earthworm for them. “No worms today, “ I told them.
I also spent considerable time with a chicken I call Gimpy, please excuse me if it is not a very “pc” name, I do alternately address him with Big Guy and My Handsome Boy. Chicken rearing has been more challenging than I expected, to say the least. They say, “never name your chickens,” but somehow it is inevitable as some of them develop notable personalities, and unfortunately this summer the most notable ones have all been those who have succumbed to the odd condition and died, like Sleepy whom we thought was merely, and amusingly, narcoleptic, as it lasted for a couple months until he suddenly lost control of his motor functions and died. Then Peeper, a noisy and talkative little Barred Rock, who was always out front leading the pack of his contemporaries, finding the most worms and full of energy. He (or possibly she) regrettably recently died from what we now believe was likely Marek’s disease, as did a few others, one at a time, after being quite healthy. It has no known cure.
In Gimpy’s case, he is a most handsome Barred Rock rooster, beautiful bright red comb and wattles and white and dark grey barred feathers, beautiful feathers, the ones around the neck falling like a fringed collar. Gimpy somehow had an accident, a fall from a roost perhaps, dislocating his hip forcing his left leg out straight behind him. It did not look like something we could rectify, and as he did not show obvious signs of pain, surprisingly, maintaining energy and an appetite, we have kept him in segregated quarters, with his own side yard off the coop, so he would not be assaulted by the merciless pecking order of other healthier roosters.
Gimpy has been stoic, and when we have had to separate other chickens who later died from their illnesses, he has been a fine and quiet companion, the others often sleeping pressed up to Gimpy’s larger size. Being slightly older he may have been immune to Marek’s or whatever has taken them, but his time seems to be rapidly coming as now the muscles of his good leg can no longer propel him around the pen. He did remarkanbly well for a while, even getting stronger for a while, hopping on one leg to get in and out of the coop on his own, over into some shade or closer to the feed.
But he is having more trouble and cannot now balance well enough to feed himself and keep his head from nose-diving into the earth when he tries to move around. So yesterday I held him a few times to prop him up so he could eat and drink, as did Edward this morning. He can’t manoeuver himself in the coop anymore or get out into his yard so we pick him up and place him in or out as needed. And we’ve been taking him for “walks” to see the sights on the farm, cuddling him close to our chests. Apparently exercise is important to chickens, as their gizzard in which the grit they ingest goes, serves to grind up their food, but it requires their movement to work properly. As Gimpy slows down and has lost the ability to even hop or drag himself around, he cannot properly process what food he does eat.
So regrettably and inevitably perhaps, his days may be limited and we are contemplating putting him down soon so he won’t have to die from wasting or starving. As he can no longer clean himself or tuck his foot under him, it would be a problem as the cold weather comes too for him to keep warm enough. He will not be a meat bird.
After teary prayers were said for Gimpy last night, on the eve of the autumnal equinox, we did what may be one of the pardoxes of farm life, at least for a newbie like me. After pouring out my love and nurturing on a lame chicken for the day, we sat down to a meal of the leftovers from Saturday’s dinner with our pilot friend, ratatouille made with our own tomatoes, peppers, summer squash, eggplant, and herbs, mashed potatoes dug up that afternoon, and our first roast chicken, one of the Rhode Island Red roosters that we killed ourselves, with grateful ceremony and the smell of lavender and sage smudge in the air, on Saturday morning.
While those roosters were not yet fully grown, we needed to “do” some to allow the management of the other chickens within the structures we have and to permit the hens to lay. With the quantity of unsexed chicks we got in the spring we are “rooster heavy”, okay in one sense since we planned to consume some of the flock as meat birds, but difficult to get them to full grown first, due to their aggression towards the other roosters and hassling the hens who have been trying to lay.
Our birds have been raised completely free-range, they have had the run of the field all summer, returning to their coop at night on their own to roost quietly together. But lately we have had to build an outdoor run for certain roosters, trying to determine who’s picking on whom in order to separate them successfully. One red rooster has run to the woods daily for the past week to get away from another, so now he gets “room service” down there with food and water rations delivered 200 feet away until he voluntarily returns to roost at night.
There’s officially just less than an hour left of Summer now, Autumn due to arrive I believe at 12:44 ADT. I think I will go down to the coop and check on Gimpy, help him feed and drink, put him out in his yard leaning against the hay bale. Maybe we’ll have a walk and a cuddle before I go to town. My Handsome Boy.
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