the rural story

Thoughts from the Deep Freezer

January 9, 2017 by Ilona Erwin

It is a normal weather pattern for central Ohio to plumb the depths of single digit temperatures with little or no snow. It is equally expected for gardeners to go into planning mode during the deep freeze of January.

Reviewing the last year has made me realize that I’m more prone than ever to the unknown vagaries to mess up my well laid plans. It is enough to tempt me to have no plan at all, but to be ready for whatever capricious direction my weather takes me.

2016 Examples

The summer was so hot I could not even go outside for a period of time: no weeding, chores, or even cleaning up outside the air conditioned environs of a couple rooms.

On the other hand, the autumn was truly a gardener’s gift, with pleasant temperatures and clear skies which allowed for a bevy of those undone projects of summer to come to completion. Not all surprises are unpleasant ones.

Vacation Plans and Gardening

Another snafu (which I am not complaining about, simply stating) is how traveling can interfere with progress in the garden. Depending on the time, the weeds won’t wait, and attending new plantings may create a conflict. Should I order new plants knowing that I may not be able to properly care for them?

The best way to proceed seems to be lots of plan A, plan B, and Plan C scenarios.
Mindfully following lessons I have learned from a lifetime of gardening: get as much done as early as possible.
Look for late winter/early spring opportunities of preparing the ground, getting tools ready, and setting up the yard for summer enjoyment.

It may be too early to plant or pull out the patio furniture, but clearing last years growth, tilling when possible, winter sowing, even edging can be done. Pruning is a usual activity for that time of year.

On a Sad Note

Winter’s thrall is not only for hopeful planning, but to assess the past. My beautiful Bantam rooster met his demise as fall turned to winter last year. During broad daylight hours he became a meal for a predator who made off with his head. The hens were out in the yard, but he apparently was guarding the coop.

It is very sad because we loved his beauty and personality. He was the companion of our Banty hen, the pair of whom my husband liked to call “George and Martha”. Poor Martha… he had saved her from a Hawk early in the spring, but now his heroic days are done.

Speaking of the chickens, they are no longer laying with regularity. We have kept them cooped up since George’s demise, and they will be reaching their two year mark this spring; two possible reasons for their egg laying hiatus.

Back to Garden Planning

reseda odorata — Reseda is not a showy flower, but sweetly fragrant. I like to sow it in my containers.

Where was I? To order or not to order?

I have decided that I will order some seeds that I have had a notoriously difficult time finding in the past. I received a ‘Select Seeds’ catalog and several things that I want in this years garden are available there… one being Mignonette.
I will purchase a few trees this spring. Small ones.
I will need builders sand for some projects…. must remind husband, well before.
Since I ordered seeds, it makes sense to start some of my own plants indoors.
Considering whether to buy a replacement rooster.

I am trying very hard to keep my plans small, simple, do-able. Becoming overly ambitious and complicated is my Achilles heel. That lesson was relived over the holidays.

The Simple Life

We don’t really need to be entangled in the grandiose and complex. I don’t want to romanticize a simpler life, and I don’t mean the usual way it is understood. Old fashioned is not necessarily simpler, neither is homesteading or growing one’s own food. All that matters is what streamlines our lives in accordance with our own resources and means.

I think what I mean by a simpler life is one that is balanced, lived in moderation, lived well.

My plans will be influenced by that aim in 2017. Do you have plans, ambitious or otherwise? Have you ordered plants and seeds? I noticed that some selections are already being “sold out” for the season.

Lessons from this Post

Chores can be done during winter thaws
Simplify garden plans, take vacation absence into account
Order plants and seeds now, for best selection
Plan to enjoy life, as well as work

Chickenhawk Attack!

September 24, 2015 by Ilona Erwin

Yes, things have gotten exciting around here, and not in a good way. Yesterday I was working on my blogs, when the distressed squawking of my poor Bantams got my slow, old body coming to the rescue.

Just in time to see a really large hawk front, center, and personal in the general area of where a very scared and angry rooster had taken refuge in my taxus shrub.

I moved towards the hawk to scare it off and it flew through the cherry trees into the wild blue yonder.

It was time to assess the damage.

I went to get my daughter and we managed to flush the rooster from the bush. He was still quite upset and missing a number of his best tailfeathers… and no sign of the little Banty hen. They are always in tandem and I started to worry that the hawk had a successful luncheon.

We looked throughout the area and tried to search under shrubs, and I looked in the prairie patch, which is a favorite destination of theirs. No sign, so I was getting less optimistic that she had survived. But I hadn’t seen the hawk fly off with anything in its talons, so still hopeful, went looking for the group of buff hens.

They were all accounted for under the Annabelle hydrangea hedge along the garage.

We moved them and the rooster to the coop. I figured the rooster needed some time to calm down and feel secure.

I was sitting on the front yard bench and trying to process the loss of the little hen. I had gotten attached to her, she was so cute and steadily supplied us with her pullet sized eggs. She had even shown signs of getting broody and I had planned on next year trying to hatch a few chicks.

Now, I was considering revisiting the old Amish lady (she is closer to my mother’s age than mine, tho’ I’m an old lady, too) and buying another Bantam hen, if possible.

But my heart wasn’t really in it.

So, I decided to search more carefully under the shrubs where the morning’s disaster took place. At least I could do some overdue weeding in that area while scrounging around down on my knees. This was my rationale for pursuing the effort involved in a seemingly unfruitful endeavor after three of us had scoured the area.

I started by the taxus. It is a shrub that I hedge down a bit, so its tightly woven branches likely helped save the Bantam rooster. It is dense and took a minute to adjust my eyes from the bright midday sun.

I saw no sign of my poor little hen. She is a dark brown color and not easily seen in underbrush anyway, but after removing some stray grasses, I resigned myself to the fact that there was no sign of her there.

I weeded a little more and then figured that I ought to look under the neighboring birds nest spruce, next.

Are you sensing a happy ending to this story yet?

I pulled more weeds along one side of the bush looking around, then moved around the other side of the spruce and peered below.

A mess of small feathers boded poorly for the fate of my hen. It looked like the aftermath of a successful cat hunt… a pile of short, downy feathers. I was almost afraid to look further.

Then…

I thought I heard the faintest sound of a cluck. Talking soothingly, I looked underneath, still discerning no sign, but hearing a bit more …tiny hesitant sounds … and then my daughter came round and saw her.

Our little hen, alive!

We were outlandishly happy and relieved. Spared the fate of being eaten by the Chickenhawk (possibly a Redtail, but am unsure), the little brown hen was understandably shaken and we couldn’t catch her, so gently herded her to the coop.

All were given some fresh water, feed, and closed up in the coop for the day.

All is well that ends well they say, but I have some concern about wintering over the hens without a dog on the premises. We all had our excitement for the day here at Flat Iron Acres.

The Hawk

It was quite large, had brown and white barred feathers.

All during this summer we had seen plenty of hawks, some roosting in our trees over the deck. I have a sparsely branched Silver Maple there that is quite old and tall. Two or three of them liked sitting there early in the season.

I’ve have seen quite a few more hawks this year than in years past.

I looked up the term for a large group of them, which we are seeing in our parts lately.

It turns out that I often see a kettle of them (that is when they float on the updraft currents in their circular scans of the areas) and congregate in “a cast of hawks”. Like “cast of characters”, I guess.

Birders have their lingo like all other insiders. We’ve no doubt heard of a “murder of crows” from mystery books, but what of the other groups of birds?

Here are some interesting ones for you to add to your reservoir of trivia (I am always adding to mine):

A cast of hawks
A charm of finches
A congregation of plovers
A cover of coots
A covey of partridges
A deceit of lapwings
A descent of woodpeckers
A dole of doves
An exaltation of larks
A murmuration of starlings
A party of jays
A siege of herons
A wisp of snipe

There you have it… a basketful of poetic vocabulary terms in readiness for when next seeing a large group of said birds.

Thought of Raising Peafowl?

September 15, 2015 by Ilona Erwin

You can raise your own peacock

– Facts about these beautiful and useful birds

That’s right, Peacocks! Or peahens, actually….

Breeds available are the Indian or Blue Peafowl, Pavo cristatus, or the Javan or Green Peafowl, Pavo muticus. The Green is considered the more beautiful, but the Blue is hardier.

The adults do well on turkey grower and some scratch (especially cracked corn in the cold months) in their feed ration. Greens from the grocer are always helpful during the confined months
If you use a flat perch like a 2×4 they will tend to sit on their feet when it is very cold and thereby avoid frost bite.
Be careful feeding any scraps, green or otherwise, when it is warm, for peas are very susceptible to botulism
Peacocks become easily stressed
They need a lot of room to move around

Tips from the Backyard Poultry site

About that last point… When I first moved to my rural country home a neighbor was raising peacocks. They often flew over to my trees to roost. They have an interesting and unique call, which I enjoyed hearing and that is how I knew they were visiting…. they didn’t bother coming close to the house. But city folks take note!

Living With Peacocks

An Informative Book

If you wish to raise Peacocks, or have them reside on your property, take tips from this small book. Domestic birds are easy, as long as a few considerations to their health and needs are followed.

Keep a peacock on your suburban estate? This is your resource book. A very small book, with complaints that it is more like a pamphlet, yet having first hand information on how to raise your own birds successfully.
Find out all about raising peafowl, click here.

Finally. I Have Chickens

May 9, 2015 by Ilona Erwin

It had been years since I had chickens, and I said for the past three to four years that, “This year I’ll get chicks”, but something always intervened in my plans. Well, no more! I now have a new little chicken coop (a bit flimsy, but it will do), half a dozen pullets, and one bantam laying hen, and one bantam rooster.

About that…

We ordered “pullets” and I was always under the impression that this would mean laying hens (I always had baby chicks, previously). I wanted to start out with hens that were laying since in the past it was always a good five months before we got eggs. That would be in the fall, then went without during the winter months until the following spring. (I didn’t have lights in my henhouse.)

What I didn’t know and then found out, after being surprised that my order consisted of chicks, is that you have to designate starter pullets. I was disappointed. Raising chicks is more work initially: keeping them warm in the house, safe from the cats, etc. Not a big deal, but I was looking forward to bypassing that stage.

Anyway, my grown up kids are delighted since the chicks are cute. That ought to be good for a little help (a weeks worth, anyway) in taking care of them.

But eggs. Yes, I wanted some eggs in the meantime.

My neighbor lady raises bantams and sells them, so I drove past there and enquired.

She had a laying hen, and I wanted a rooster, (they help protect the hens and I think make the flock happier), which she gladly sold me. She said she usually butchers the extra roosters but this one was so nice, she hadn’t wanted to, so spared him. This was good for me, and I now have a full bred bantam rooster ( I think the hen is a mixed one). I’ll have to get the name of the rooster- he is a “grey…” something or other.

I think I found the type : “Gray Japanese Bantam”.

My New Bantam Chickens

chickies

Chickens In The Garden

I like have chickens for several reasons. #1 of course is for fresh eggs. You don’t save money, but you get the best tasting eggs ever, very conveniently. #2 reason: bug control. It is nice to have free foraging chickens on the place to cut down on insects in the garden. #3 reason is that poultry manure is wonderful fertilizer. Too hot to put right on the garden, but rot down the litter for awhile and it is excellent!

The down side is when they start scratching and eating a bit too many of your desired plantings. For years I didn’t have problems with that, but I know it does happen sometimes. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Right now I am happy to have a nice little flock shaping up.

My Rural Garden

July 30, 2009 by Ilona Erwin

Or How I Got To Be Here

…it all begins somewhere.

I had been gardening in the city for some years. I don’t remember ever wishing to move into a country place, particularly, but my city neighborhood was deteriorating and my family size was increasing. My interest in history, and then gardening, began to branch towards homesteading. It was the seventies that developed that trend, and so by 1980 I found myself here on a plain that was so flat that it looks as though God took a plasterer’s knife and scraped it hard across the land. The farmers took things further in the ’60’s and began felling all the trees in sight. All for endless acres of corn and soybean. Until I began planting there was very little between me and the far horizon westward. One can see storms coming from a long way off, their anvil-piled wrath thundering in from the west. Long pale gray strips of slanting rainfall give sight to storms across the landscape far away. In the aftermath are visions of light rays that step forth from the masses of breaking clouds.

Sunsets, too, are bright and unhindered, now only trimmed at their horizon line by my trees and bushes. But there are places, still, where one can see the sun melt into earths crust, sherbert colors left too long upon the sky’s table, inking dark the night with its liquefied rays. Twilight is a Parrish painting of silhouette against an oddly transparent blue, like looking long into a darkly clear ocean. This is the best part of being on the cusp of a visually endless plain.

As a gardener I was impressed by the soil, and knew nothing yet of the domineering winds which cut through this garden at all times of the year. The soil is what was left from the wet prairie which kept this area unpopulated and uncultivated until relatively lately… when after the cattle barons of Ohio (oh, yes, there were some, once) gave way to inventive farmers who laboriously dug deep ditches to carry off the ponded water which had disallowed cultivation until too late in the growing season. My property lays at the head of one of those deeply dug ditches, the only elevation difference in the land, unseen until nearly upon them. The Midwestern Haha.

I know my little acres were once very different than when I arrived here, as I had met and talked with a former occupant of the house whose father had purchased this place in 1915, when she was a young girl of 16 years. But by my time, the oaks were gone, the orchard no more, and only the silver maples were the trees that hugged the house incongruently with a misshapen Norway spruce, whose own story was one of tornado force winds tearing out its upper parts leaving opened arms reaching out for mercy.

Two of the largest arborvitae I had ever seen stood marking a long, longgone, front path which she told me was the place she and her brothers rode bikes straight into what was then a ditch her depression era father paid to have covered… for fear of his children’s wellbeing. I realized then that arborvitae are not shrubs for foundations or in proximity to a house… they are full fledged trees when mature. From signs at the corners of the house it seems some were once planted there as well- remaining long past the time they could be tolerated, or should have been.

The house had the unwelcoming hodgepodge of partly planted, partly weed grown things around a deeply listing front porch, I pulled out a number of weedy silver maple tree saplings and gave them to a neighbor. Helped her plant them, actually. The crowded mailorder (I’m pretty sure!) combination of forsythia, weigela, and bridal spirea were all cramped into the area under the front window. I dug each one out and moved them to far reaches of the property. a large rangy growth of lilac with an empty center remains in the front. It embraces my garden bench and presents offerings of common lilac each spring. It has too much history to cut down, and I am too old now to attempt it, anyway. It will likely outlive me.

Most of the yard was mown grass. Something in me does not love a lawn, though I appreciate it in its place. So to the disgruntlement of the children, and sometimes the husband, I have ever enlarged the garden beds and sometimes surrendered some of them back to the prairie grass beginnings, grudgingly, but of necessity. But grass is my form of nefarious weed. I still plot to take back my front border from its greedy grasp.

The ruined pig barn had a trimming of elderberry bushes, and the back acres were farmed… and that is what I found here when first beginning my garden. And that is where I leave us until I write about the garden’s development.

Rural Observations

July 16, 2007 by Ilona Erwin

This week I traveled from mid-Ohio to mid-Indiana, and there is quite a bit of rural landscape to be enjoyed along such a route. I keep track of how the farm crops are doing since I live in the midst of corn and soybean country here.

As might be expected, even with the rain we had, the corn was “pineappled”. The plants leaves spike up like pineapple tops when the ground is dry and they are stressed from drought. All the corn here in Ohio is shorter than usual and needs the rain. No matter where you live you might consider praying for the Midwest farmers crops, because corn and its prices impacts much of our food supply, etc. Soybeans look pretty good to my amateur’s eye, and the wheat crop just was harvested last week. We are clouding up today and I sure hope it comes through on that promise!

My husband took care of watering my containers while I was gone, and before I left last week I noticed the Japanese beetles out in force again this year. I guess they are just going to have to be reckoned with. They are the nastiest bugs and just decimate the leaves of so many trees and shrubs. And roses? Forgetabout-it. Bad.

Last year their favorite buffet consisted of the Cherry trees; this year they started out with the Amelanchiers, and moved on to the Hazels again.

I had seen quite a few butterflies earlier in the season, but today farmers were crop dusting the fields so I expect that means the butterflies and most other things are done for now. I told my son to try to stay inside, but it is a pretty day and boys have a way of sneaking outside at every opportunity. Sometimes I could swear they hide from me if I am actively working in the yard.

Our Old Dog had to be put down ( R.I.P.) and we’ve seen more deer closer to the property. He was a good dog who kept his watch faithfully. Woe unto any ground hogs that dared show their faces here… but now, I suppose they will soon find it more welcoming. I dislike ground hogs intensely. I’ll need to go looking for a new puppy, I guess… but it is hard to please me – I like a certain personality and disposition in my dog. And this last one was an exceptionally good dog, with a few small bad habits (yeah, he liked to chase chickens), but an excellent pet all around. He was protective of children and property without being mean, he was quite large with a ferocious growl, but once properly introduced was completely accepting and companionable. I half-broke him of chasing the vehicles that entered the drive. You had to keep calling his name- and he kept acting like he would bolt after the wheels, but usually was fine. He was good with the cats, and kept to the property… although I do remember now that he always like to carve out a dirt bed for himself in my gardens by the porch. He didn’t like the heat much, and kept cool at the expense of my daylilies and Siberian irises; but I miss him, poor old thing.

The wheat fields around us are now golden with the wheat straw that is lined up in long rows, and the dairy farmers seem to have changed the breed of their herd from Holsteins more to the Jersey… which are much prettier animals. Still, there are very few dairy operations in this part of Ohio anymore, so you have much less bucolic pasture scenes and – unfortunately- way too much encroaching development. Come to think of it, there used to be much more animal husbandry- like flocks of sheep- than I see now.

One last thing- my son asked me which I liked better: Ohio or Indiana? I told him except for the state lines I think they are identical. Much the same history and geographically very similar with a Great Lake at the top and a River at the bottom 🙂 And lots of cornfields!!! We talked a bit about Indian history- always a favorite topic of mine, the Shawnee and Delaware, Blue Jacket and his brother the Prophet, the Miami and how the tribes were moved increasingly West. Fascinating stuff.

Tags: rural, vignettes