I suspect that invite is specific to YOU, Mistress Dahlia...
Offical Muffler Sulking Section etc part 3
If Divine silencing required the sacrifice of one of my Divine Socks I would have to have second thoughts...
No, honest, Santa - I didn't do it!
Well to be frankly Cousin Grow since we have been corresponding monthly for many years, Santa has always taken the time from his busy schedule to stop for a visit on Christmas Eve. He says that I am the only one who writes him monthly instead of just before Christmas (HINT, HINT ALL). Visiting has been especially tiresome for him since I moved to Cowtown where reindeer are banned by the Chicken Police so he has to hitch hike to my house sigh. WHOOO HOOO that I'm in AZ tonight. He can land with the deers right here ^_^ I just hope he knows where to find me :/ I left him a note at my house just in case.
I moved to the country for the quiet...
manic yipping coyotes half the night
love lorn cows bellowing the other half
dang hoot owl sitting on my roof calling across the valley
donkeys braying whenever the mood suits 'em
and all the dang dogs barking at all of it.
At least the people are quiet. =0)
Aren't ya glad J that we're not moving in next door? Tootaloot crazy northern snowbird neighbours? ^_^ And I sing ALOT... mi mi mi...
AIn't that the truth Jay.. lol
I wake up at 3am to hear the roosters.. then you can hear everyone else stirring and starting to make thier little noises.. which out here echos through the land.. and your head.
BUT: love the sound.. and don't miss the cars, sirens, screams.. and people in general.. have all I need right here... ahhhhh, now I will go back to my feather bed and snuggle.
Merry Christmas everyone.
Oh yes, I'd much rather listen to the bellowing of a love sick heifer backed up by a chorus of amped up coyotes than thudding, booming rap counterpointed by the banging of a trash truck any day of the week!!!
Hah, Dnut... When we first moved here, my uphill neighbor (a classically trained opera singer) used to stand on her back porch and sing arias... the donkeys joined right in. A kind of country shout-out. =0)
Merry Christmas everyone, and Happy New Year.
Or, as we say 'round here...
Feliz Navidad y Prospero Ano y Felicidad!!!
LOL. Perfect Jay!! Reminds me o' the time my opera-singing brother yodeled for the neighbors cows...seriously.
What opera has yodeling? I might like that one...
not Verdi.
oh duh... the Grand Ol' Opry... I'm blaming it on the eggnog...
Im gonna sulk.. my NWD can't make it too me till next week bc the mail lady refuses to leave mail when she can't get closer than 3 feet to the mail box. (refuses to do her job & get out of the car to leave mail, which they are required to do, i checked) The MODOT trucks stupidly scraped the snow off the road.. which left ONLY ice on it & dropped quick melt ice melt.. (like always) which means it started melting only to run & refreeze. My road looks like an ice skating rink. This is the first time in years I've seen cars turn around & go back bc it was so slick. I can't even walk across it. :(
Grand Ol' Opry is good. :)
ooo i'm only sulking bc of the mail refuseing to run.. I'm a bit impatient once mail actually hits the post office.
Bummer grykyttyn :(
LOL Grey, tell her you will meet her out by the box....
Jay -he lives in Germany and decided he would do a yodel for me as he had learned how...Verruh funnay. What I wouldn't have given to see the neighbors faces as they tried to suss that one out...
she won't even come down the road Miss Jestr... When i was a kid, the mailman had our phone number & he would call when he got to our road, wait the 20 minutes for me to hike in the snow/ice the mile up to the main road & give me a walmart sack of mail for our neighbors ( about 6 houses that knew i was going not the entire roads worth), I'd hike back home, dropping mail at the doors as I went. This one says she doesn't want to do that.. its too much trouble. i'd gladly walk up there for the mail too.
Thats just not right, isnt it the mail motto Thru raine sleet and snow the mail will be delivered?
I asked my cousin who was a post master for 30 some yrs.. (delivered mail also..) the mail is to be delivered no matter what, rain, sleet, snow, high winds, no matter the weather.. the mail will get thru... They also are required to walk it too your door & ring the bell (or knock) when it wont' fit in your box NOT sit in the drive way & honk. We have awful mail service here.. have for years. Where our shop use to be, it was a 1/2 mile dirt road & they tried to tell my mom, who was 8 months pregnant with me.. that she would have to walk to the corner to get the mail or she wasn't getting it. (no car at that point) they weren't getting stuck.. HELLO.. we own wreckers.. we would have pulled them out IF they got stuck.. for free. Its been downhill here ever since.
I have come to the conclusion the pony express was more reliable than the mail in this corner of Missouri.
I have a mustang that we can come and deliver your mail.... LOL she would love to play in the snow.
oo i love horses! I'll trade you.. mail for 4 dozen eggs. How does that sound?
Did anyone know that chickens eat snow?
OK, I'm going to ruin your day... we have a wonderful mail carrier and post mistress. Ida is second generation post mistress and she has the little PO in the front of her house. She calls us whenever there's something huge or weird and in a pinch she'll even stay open a little late if she knows we need her to. And the carrier, Tranquie (for Tranquiliano) has a 4-wheel drive that could make it to Antarctica and back, no prob., and Tranky knows how to drive it.
We give them both big plates of cookies every year... and Ida gives us plums off her trees. And we swap iris plants...
everywhere else around here has great mail service.. its just Joplin & the people the post office here serves. I usually go to another town to the post office but they are now being run by Joplin's main office also. Its getting to be a bit old.
oooo I can't believe it!!! we ended up with a substitute mail carrier... a nice older man who saw the package I was waiting on & said it HAD to be a late Christmas gift.. which needed to be left. He parked on the side of the road, got out of the truck & was trying to stuff it in my tiny mail box as I came sliding down the drive to get it! The package was HUGE. My word I couldn't' believe it. Its the most beautiful NWD I have ever seen. Its huge! I can wrap it around & around my neck & over my head to keep my ears warm. Its the prettiest colors with a navy background.. o my my my... I'll get pictures as soon as I can! oo & there was the warmest prettiest knitting HWD in there also! THANK YOU LOREEN!!!! thank you! thank you! thank you! many hugs & thank you's sent your way! How in the world can I ever repay you for such a beautiful gift? You have a wonderful talent for knitting. The yarn is beautiful.
Santa's understudy working overtime! =0D
Sounds wonderful... pictures?
Hooray Hooray! I'm so pleased that you were able to get it today! What a great timing moment with the postal worker today. Can't wait to see the pics!
Lovely...perfect timing too!! Modelling definitely a must...
OK I'm all misty about Grey's NWD (sniff) and the wonderous man who delivered it. I don't know if it works the same in MO but we had psychomaildude when we first bought our house who refused to deliver mail at whim. After he cut off our mail for a month, I phoned postal control to find out where to pick up the bills. THEY FREAKED and said he SO could not do that and delivered our mail by special speedy truck with a letter of apology. Psychomailman was never seen again in our neighbourhood. Methinks he was transferred to a polar bear route on the hopes he would be eaten. You might want to call postal control dear grey. Methinks postal control would not be too happy. Methinks they are really into the '"Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds" thing.
postal control is in on it methinks... we've been calling for at least 15 yrs that I'm aware of.
They are currently getting around to restructuring our entire system here. HOPEFULLY it helps.
Pictures will come.. tomorrow. I was going to take them outside on the snow. :)
Is this where we share new flock potential??? I am probably on the wrong thread but methinks that I could have a roadrunner flock. Everyone this is Ronald. We had a serious discussion about flocks over a multi-grain bagel today. The problem is Ronald eats everything which might include eggs :O MissJ and J will know for sure. YOOO HOOOO MsJ and J.
This message was edited Dec 26, 2009 6:14 PM
We have the cutest roadrunners here! I love to watch them. Only problem is I have to go 3 hrs southeast of me to see them. :(
Oh Dahlia, your roadrunner is superbly squatty and has a lovely sort of speckledy appearance. I think it would be very suitable for you to have a roadrunner flock instead of a skunk flock. It would be far more acceptable in the neighbourly sort of way. Does Ronald eat roadrunner eggs too? That is not very Darwinian. Will he sit on your lap?
Ronald?! What kind of self-respecting roadrunner calls himself Ronald? He comes from the land of Panchos and Geronimos and he calls himself Ronald? OMG...
Sorry, RR do not flock. They briefly pair up... a most entertaining courtship involving dead reptiles... and then hark off. They are solo birds... has he clacked for you?
Remember, these loverly birds come from the same part of the country as the rock squirrel... the cute little ground squirrel that eats carrion, eggs, and hatchlings.
I know not dear Claire. Ronald and I are new friends but he did seem keen on being a 'flock' based on the provision of seed. Also he eats snakes. Snakes are very around about here and do eat eggs for sure! Did I mention that I cried about the perfect barn on 3.5 acres. According to those I chatted to in the area it is miserably windy and dusty in the winter there in that part of the desert. I don't thnk it would be a good place for rescues or flocks in the winter :(
Thanks J. I thought Ronald might be smoozing me sigh. OMG I'm newbie bait :(
I don't know what part of the desert you are looking in, but miserably windy and dusty is pretty much standard weather much of the year... when it's not miserably hot and dusty.
I've lived in or near the high desert most of my life... AZ and NM and dust is a constant. In NM, the wind did just used to blow (up to 70 mph) in the spring, but the weather has changed and it blows a lot year round now.
You can tell someone is getting acclimated to the desert when they stop work and look out the window when it rains (usually around 5 years), and after 10 years, they stop work, go outside, and watch the rain water run in the streets.
It's kind of a big deal 'round here. LOL
I do not think Ronald would be a big threat to your large birds, but he would probably find a chick quite tasty... I was on a RR circuit, he stopped by every couple of days just to eat lizards and things, peering at me from atop the fence post. He'd roost on top of the mobile home and glide down over the dogs yard to the tallest fence post and drive the dogs wild. But he seemed to have no interest what-so-ever in the hens.
Basically, they are opportunists. I dissected one that somebody had shot once and it was full of grasshoppers, which makes them my friend.
I HEARD that J while I've been chatting about ^_^ I don't mind dust and wind cuz in Cowtown it's a constant too but it seemed to be continual in Deming. I DO know so far from our travels that I LUV the desert. It's so wild and beautious!
Deming! That's farther south and hotter than I ever got. It is pretty down there, but yeah, dust and breeze (it's not wind til it gets over 30 mph). Did you know the first concrete grease pit is not far from there?
If you move out of town, you will get wind, coyotes, snakes, and occasional gunfire. If you're looking into a place on a well, look deeply into the water situation... you can't know too much about water in NM. Visit the well drillers & feed stores and talk to them about what's going on in the area... they'll know where wells are going dry, where the bad water is, etc.
As for dust.... I just figure I don't need to supplement any minerals. LOL
Tee hee about the minerals. Oh ya water is everything. I notice its not mentioned on alot of listings. I'm all over than J. The area we were originally thinking of in CA is not only waterless now but on rotating brown/black outs EEK!
Oh good, you're up on the [lack of] water situation. So many people get sucker-punched on that one.
What I do for the wind is plant fences... trees would be nice, but there's that water thing... snow fences, slat fences, coyote fence, but not solid fence. Solid fences create a develish vortex on the backside and don't give as much protection from the wind as one would think. "Permeable" fences, like above, break the wind, let a breeze through that creates a bigger buffer, something like twice the height of the fence in distance.
Creosote bush is also nice, but mesquite is a royal pain, causing all kinds of trouble with small stock.
As for dusting the house, just give it up. Invite people over after dark, use mood lighting, create ambience. You'll know you're here when you get out the putty knife to scrape up the sand drifts in the corners of the windows. LOL
Chickens do just fine in the wind, but I had to keep tracking down the feeders...
Good to know about the fencing. Thanks J. I have never cared about the dusting of the peoplehouse. After all the people house exists for sleeps, showers and flat surfaces for seed and herb drying, don't ya think? And a cold room/rootcellar and mud/puddle room and O a spot for a coffeepot and chocolate storage. Did I forget somethin?