Sunday Stroke Survival: Going to the Dogs

Yes folks, quite literally, today we're going to the dogs...and cats, and rabbits, and chickens, and maybe to those animals known as homo sapiens. Today's topic is animal husbandry after a stroke.

I've moved to a mountain side to be able to keep more animals. With that comes responsibilities. This winter we've had one cat teetering on the edge of meeting his Maker, coyotes and stray dogs killing and maiming our chicken flock, assorted injuries and aging difficulties, and just everyday care of our brood. That's not to say I do all the work, but I do my share. Sometimes, more than my share of the animal husbandry around here.

This winter was a case in point. My roommate suffers with Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). She goes into a deep, dark depression as the days shorten. She can't even leave the house for weeks at a time. That leaves all the chores to me. But this is beside the point. With animals come responsibility. As a stroke survivor, most of you, have difficulty taking care of yourselves without the added burden of something else to care for. But I actually feel better taking care of others and not focusing wholly on myself. To me, that's just depressing. Caring for others gets me up and moving. It gives my life a purpose to accomplish. Yes, even so, at times I've bitten off more than I can chew.

After I feed and water the inside critters- 2 dogs and 5 cats, it time to feed the other critters on our homestead. In this case, for the rabbits it's water bottles to refill and clean. Our water bottles are held in position by springs attached to the cages. Although I've bought the automatic watering nipple for the rabbit cages, we haven't installed them yet. Springs are much better than the conventional wire holder which takes three hands to remove and put it back up. While the lower cages I can balance the bottle with one knee to pull the spring, the
upper cages were problematic. My knee didn't reach that high. I ended up holding the bottle against the cage with my head while pulling the spring. (hoping I didn't catch my hair in the process) I realized the difficulty with these type bottles early on after getting Buddy. So I bought top filling bottles. I didn't have to remove the bottle to fill it. And even if I had to removed it for cleaning, it just slipped back in place. But moving up here, I didn't have enough bottles or cash to buy all new bottles for all the rabbits. The down side to the top filling bottles is that they dripped constantly so I was having to refill them several times a day and clean up the water mess as well. With a total of 15 bottles to fill, it can take upwards of thirty minutes to do them all. Not so bad now, but during winter all the bottles had to be replaced because of freezing twice a day.

Then there is the feeding of these adorable creatures. During the spring, summer and fall we grow wheat fodder for them. During the winter, it's 100 lbs organic commercial feed a month. Not that I'm complaining. Commercial pellets are an easier feed to distribute. A 3-inch J feeder will supply them feed for two days. Unless Mel's Lionhead/Jersey Woolies are concerned. They detest fodder. No amount of coaxing will get them to eat it. But they are only 1 1/2 to 2 lbs total weight so the J feeder filled will last them a week. So feeding the rabbits is no huge chore except walking down the slope to the outside hutches and the rabbitry. Climbing back up is another story. Let's just say that you burn less calories walking down a slope carrying a 3-gallon bucket of rabbit food (roughly 6 lbs) and a gallon of water (8 lbs) than going uphill at a 20%- 30% incline.

Shown with now deceased Whitie

Our four grown hens come when called so feeding them is no issue. I usually do a sprouted grain and organic layer pellet mix for them, and then there is the goodies...leftover vegetables, beans, rice, stale bread on baking day, and assorted other things like grits and eggs leftover from breakfast, etc. Yes, they eat very well plus they free range for bugs and weeds throughout the day. I make sure all the 5-gallon buckets positioned around the house are filled usually with rain water. Like I said the adult hens are easy.

The chicks on the other hand are a handful. They go through 4 1/2 cups of organic chick starter and a handful of granite gravel a day. I'm so glad that I changed out their little feeder to the big one. Each day I clean out their waterer because they poop and kick straw into it. It's a two-gallon waterer so I fill it once a day for right now. We have a young Buff Orpington rooster (I think) that I've aptly named Houdini. He escaped the brooder and was uncatchable for two days. I've since tightened up the wire cover. He's fast. He even out ran the adult hens when they went after him.

Providing none of the rabbits have escaped their cages during the night, this week It's Kieran, my meat rabbit buck off sowing his wild oats. It's time to bake. I'll make bread, cinnamon rolls, danishes, or baked apple fritters. I make full use of Mel's Kitchen Aid mixer for the heavy stirring, mixing, and grinding if I'm making turkey or pork sausage. This I do twice a week. I actually start the sourdough or yeasty baked goods before I go out to the outside critters. By the time I'm finished with them, it's ready to go into a second rise or in the oven. 

Then it's on to other chores. The angoras need to be groomed weekly if not twice a week. We have six, so if it's just me, I brush two a day. It will eat up the rest of the morning and early afternoon in a heart beat. Usually, I'll start my prep work for dinner. It takes time when you are doing all that slicing and dicing one handed.

This week I'm videoing a Homestyle Dinner Collaboration with Two Family Homestead over on

YouTube. So far I'm one of about 60 other channels to participate. It's suppose to start airing the first week in May. I'll be cooking smothered chicken or rabbit in onion and mushroom gravy, green beans, roasted corn on the cob, hot sourdough rolls, with a cool strawberry pie for dessert. I'll do the chicken or rabbit and veges in one episode, the sourdough rolls in another, and the strawberry pie in yet another. What is the deciding factor of which one I'll do, rabbit or chicken? Whatever I have the most of at the time. Right now, it's a toss up. Although the table will be set with all of it. I try to keep my episodes to under 20 to 30 minutes each. Video taping an episode adds an hour in cooking with all the starts, stops, flubbed words, and setting up the shots. I do try to video tape most of what's really good to eat for the channel. Except for those whoops moments when after I prepare dinner I think, 'I should have taped that.' See I'm still getting photos together for my cookbook too.

I don't bathe the animals because they won't behave well enough. I leave that to Mel. Now cleaning pasty butt chicks and baby bunnies, and ear mites, I do. They are little enough for me to work on. But if I had to I would. I'd figure out a way to mummify them in a towel to work on them. I'll scoop and empty cat litter boxes, clean boo-boos on the dogs and cats, and assorted other tasks that go along with owning and caring for animals. During the winter, I was also buffering Mel's emotional storms.

After the sun goes down, we are still busy but multitasking. We are knitting, crocheting, weaving, or spinning while relaxing and watching NetFlix or YouTube. Maybe it's just age creeping up on me but have you noticed that computer monitors are now bigger than our first TVs? Mine is 27" and I was an adult with children before I got my console TV with a huge 25" screen. My first TV was a 10" screen, only black and white, and that was considered a huge screen.

Then, there is the garden. We are still building and planting it in between other stuff like pharmacy, grocery, general shopping, stroke group meetings, and doctor runs. I'm as busy as I want to be by design. When you have this much going on in a weekly, if not daily, basis who has time to feel sorry for themselves living post stroke? I know I don't except for those few seconds as I wake or go to sleep blissfully exhausted, or fall down when trying to accomplish something. Then, I'm right back and at it again. Yes, I'm going to the dogs, and cats, and rabbits, and chickens.

Next week, I'm battling the rats. Both human and animal types.

Nothing is impossible.

Sunday Stroke Survival: Things that Make Me Go ARGH! Revisited

Everyone has them. I'm not immuned to "ARGH!" moment, but the past couple weeks there have been almost daily events.

ARGH! #1
 I tried something new with this blog. I tried to link this blog to our website. Instead it redirected to our google + page. So I believe all my previous posts are there. So if you were trying to find it...it's there, I think. I also think I've got it all back to normal to appear here now. We'll see when this publishes.

ARGH! #2
Before I left my previous cardiologist, she had performed all of the necessary information gathering for my new cardiologist except for an ultrasound of my legs to check for PAD (peripheral artery disease). So I had one done once I got established with my new cardiologist. The results were troubling. Coupled with severe leg cramps several times a night and pain, I agreed to another heart cath and angio of my legs. If there was significant blockages, stenting would be performed or I'd be sent to a vascular surgeon to have it corrected.

At this point I should mention, I had a coronary artery disease and a heart attack before age 50. I also have a very bad family history in heart disease from both parents. The heart attack damaged two valve in my heart and with time (10 years) the stress on my heart has damaged a third of four total valves. I'm heart broken which limits me even greater than my strokes. Oh, and my strokes were from blood clots forming in my heart which went to my brain. All my doctors agree that I'm a very sick woman, but that's only their opinion.

Angio of triple A like mine

Okay so I go through all of these tests, after waking Mel at 4 AM to take me, and the results...the cramping is NOT a blood supply problem. So now I'm still having leg cramping and pain from some mysterious, unknown cause. So this test didn't do anything. Surprisingly, what the angio did show was an Abdominal Aortic Aneursym (Triple A). It's still small so it bears watching although it could rupture and kill me. My thoughts on the matter, everything else is trying to kill me, why not this too? But hey I'm still here in spite of everything.

Don't think I'm taking this lightly. I'm not. This is serious. It has less than a 10% survival rate if it ruptures. It will be taken care of. It should be as easy as a stent placement with only a day in the hospital.

ARGH! #3
We built the new coop and run for the chickens. The chickens have flown the coop literally! It took less than two hours for the main rooster, Whitie, to figure out he could fly over the 4' fence safely and show the others how it was done. They were back to roosting on our front porch.

I got irritated with it all. I swiped them off with my cane. They just waited a few minutes and were right back again. I grabbed a sleeve of stale crackers and led them back to their new roosting spot inside the fence. A couple of them decided to fly the coop again. My trusty cane had a workout until they decided to see it my way. I had to do this for a few days before it became a habit for them. Now they at least roost in the new chicken area instead of our porch. I take victories when I can because once daylight shines they are back free ranging everywhere. They still lay eggs in Mel's tool box and behind the front storm door, so I can at least gather eggs. The egg laying bins need to be built. The hens like their privacy and security. Then I'll have to train them to the new set up.


ARGH! #4
We finally got a good drenching rain!! It's been a long, dry summer and fall. We actually had puddles on the property that weren't from a busted water pipe! They lasted for two days before they dried up/soaked in. Of course, it would storm the day we had to drive at 5 AM to the hospital for my procedure. But we were thankful anyhow. It's supposed to rain today according to the forecast, we'll see. It gave us a reprieve of sorts.

As far as our water conservation techniques go, it looked something like this.

• Early AM, while the well had overnight for the spring to refill, I'd draw five gallons of water.  

1 for the household animals
2 for the canning pot on the wood stove
1 gallon for cooking
1 gallons for outside animals (rabbits and chickens)

• Early afternoon

6 gallons for washing clothes (1 load by machine)

• Early evening

2 gallons for iced tea
Mel's 5 minute shower and my sponge bath.

• Late evening

2 gallons for the wood stove
3 gallons to run the dish washer.
1 gallon for incidents or in case the well goes dry overnight so we can at least have tea in the morning. Hot tea is our coffee in the morning.

Hope all is going well with you. As always ...

Nothing is impossible.

Friday Fun ~ Bye Television Until Fall; Hello Garden

With television watching, all of my favorites are going into slumber until Fall. Of the new shows only one has piqued my interest...Dracula with Jonathan Rhys Meyers holds promise. Scandal, Arrow, The Following, and the Walking Dead will be back to titillate and tease through new seasons. but until then what to do...

Well, there's my adaptive gardening to take up the slack and preserving. My corn now stands three foot tall and the weather is rainy but above 70 degrees so this weekend the green beans and black-eyed peas get planted underneath them. My zucchini and yellow squash went into the seed starters last week.

I had a thought about the wasted space under my raised beds. I despise wasted space when it could be productive. It's just one of my many quirks. My brain started working on what could grow underneath that required limited sunlight. Plus the weeds have taken root and I pulled up some dandelions, the greens are quite tasty when they are young, but bitter as they age. I didn't want them taking root haphazardly throughout my yard either.

I bought a few more bags of organic soil, and planted pumpkins and cantaloupes under them. The vines will grow outwards as they need sunlight. It's good ground cover to prevent weeds as they grow. If the vines grow over a place I need to stand to tend my raised beds I can train them another way with my shadow cane. Both end products can be dehydrated or frozen. The cantaloupes and pumpkins will be easy to harvest when small. Just a snip with my pruners and drop it into my harvest basket.

My harvest basket used to be one of those pans that you got at a hospital admission for bathing. At one time I had about ten of them lying around my house. I got three with my stroke admissions alone. But they take two hands to carry when full. They'll be re-purposed for the processing aspects after harvesting. By the way the kidney shaped pan makes an excellent seed starter and the drink pitcher can double as a seed sprouter. Nothing goes to waste in our house.

This year I'm actually using a basket with a handle for ease
of carrying. I'd honestly thought about swiping one of those hand carry shopping basket from my local grocer, but that would be stealing. I looked online to purchase one or two but the places that sold them had them in lots of tens or hundreds. Way to many for my purposes and expensive. So I settled on the grapevine basket to the left that I found at the farmer's market. It wasn't cheap, has a very sturdy handle, and should carry up to ten pounds of produce. Any more than that would throw me off balance anyhow.

I only planted forty corn stalks so that's what my harvest will be. This is a trial thing with raised bed three-sisters. I've actually gotten two to four ears of corn on one stalk before, but not really excepting that this year. We'll keep about half a dozen ears for fresh eating and remainder will go into the chicken feeder after it's dried. I don't feed the chicken much corn, but let then free-range for most of their diet.

"Now wait a minute, Jo. This is fun Friday and you are talking about work. Not fair!" I hear y'all out there. This is my fun. I get out of the house, soak up some Vitamin D thanks to the sun. Watch my grandchildren and teach them the finer points of surviving, and producing what they eat. Later we'll grab some eggs out of the hen house and make some infamous Neiman Marcus $250 cookies. What's even better is that we'll eat them warm with cold glasses of milk. **Drool drool!** Is that better?

Have a great weekend.