Rebuild from Depression Blog

Henny Penny is three years old and one of two hens left from our first batch since we moved to the mountains. She's taken to sleeping outside of her hen house lately which doesn't bode real well for her.

I love cats. I really do. When I was growing up, we were the family with "all the cats." We didn't have numbers worthy of a health department call, but we had a fairly sizable number particularly during the spring kitten season.

My love for cats and my motherly instinct made me want to invite this kitten inside the other day. He was purring and he looked like he needed a friend. When I opened the door for a picture, it looked like he would have come inside. I closed the door.

This, my friends, is a bob cat. It is a jumbo cat without a tail. It is not as big (and thus not as dangerous as a mountain lion), but I wouldn't want it living in my house or on my deck.

Frederick is learning to be very gentle with animals particularly after our new rule:

If you kill it, you eat it.

It is only a matter of time before this rule will be used against my mother who tries to control the local mouse population.

We have had some excellent babysitters in our day, but lately I have discovered the most economical. They will entertain and provide plenty of exercise to a youngster for about two hours. If only they could be trained to give the child a bath at the end of the session and do more than run away if the child gets hurt, these hens might just be perfect.

The grass is always greener and the winter cold seems that much more welcome in the middle of a blistering hot summer.

I was going through pictures and found one from this past winter during one of our snows.

The plums are ripe and their vitamins and antioxidants are waiting for me when I return from the La Leche League Conference. I've heard some discussion of a plum cobbler.

An old cattle fence in the Sequoia National Monument. Cattle still graze in this area.

Two boys in the mountains.

If you have a chance to see this every day, do it.

Note to self: start enjoying the sunset more often.

Not only do they have a great life while they are living, but when they are not, they are more nutritious for us. Their liver in particular is much higher in Omega 3 fatty acids when they are grazing on grass instead of finished on grain (beef liver and omega 3). Their meat is higher too, though they are still not quite in the same league as a fatty fish such as salmon (Omega 3 and beef). When they are milking, the milk has higher levels of a special beneficial fat called conjugated linoleic acid (CLA and milk). That fat helps with weight loss. :) These days, grass fed beef has become the gourmet choice and you can even get it in hotdog form (grass fed gourmet hot dog).

Rock on, grass fed beef.

We just submitted some photos to the California Farm Bureau Photo Contest. This photo is my favorite unsubmitted photo. :)

Sander and I both submitted three photos. I submitted my "I Met My Meat" photo, one of cattle grazing in the foothills, and one like this idyllic boyhood photo. Sander submitted a variant of the Frederick and chick photo above, a beautiful farm egg photo, and one like this old cattle fence in the forest.

It took Thanksgiving vacation for us to go through our mail and discover that one of my photos appeared in the newspaper for the Tulare County Farm Bureau. On September 21, we were instructed to take photos for a "Day in the Life of Tulare County." It was a bit of a dreary day, but started off with great fanfare. The sunrise is below.

I really love this "Day in the Life" concept. Of course, most of the day I sat in front of the computer, so perhaps I should have submitted a screen shot. :)

When I need air and am not under a big deadline, I bring my laptop and lunch here for the day. I start my work time with a hike on the Trail of a Hundred Giants, work until my battery is out, and take another hike. The road to the Trail will close any day now, so I took this photo on my last trip up there to have a nice memory of my favorite workspace. Though today it is so beautiful here that I may have to go one more time. Living in the middle of nowhere has its advantages. Of course, it's easy to forget the advantages when you want to go to a movie or order out for Thai food.

In light of the many inches of rain we have gotten here in the Sequoia National Forest (and spared from the winds and the feet of snow), here is an interesting drought picture I took in December before Christmas.

The picture shows snow in the high Sierras in the background, the first snow of the season. In the foreground, note the dry grass and struggling oak tree. Thank goodness for the recent five-plus inches of rain this week.

You never know when it's going to be a burn day and with ten burn piles on this property (most tarped in blue like you see below), we've been getting busy. ("We" is really "me" at the moment, but I am hoping that will change.)

A "before" shot:

After
tap..tap..tap..

If you were a judge and choosing the best "Farm to Fork" photo, which would you choose?

The judges' choice:

My entry:

Look at that license plate! You can't make this stuff up.

(Okay, I really didn't think this photo had a chance but couldn't help but submit it.)

You can read more about this steer in our freezer:
I Met My Meat
I Met My Meat II

“Frederick, would you like to play another game of Parcheesi or are you ready for a movie?”

“Another game, Bea. It’s not as much electricity,” Frederick said to my mother.

“Oh really?”

“Yes, I don’t want it to global warm. Bea, do you know that spring is getting warmer and I don’t want it to be that warm.”

~~~

“Bea” recounted the story and wondered if Al Gore had dropped by Frederick's charter school today.

“I don’t know, but if stories are true about Al Gore’s electric bill, he hasn’t missed many movies.”

~~~

Hey, we don't just yap about it, from the amount of electricity we've cut out of our lives, we could probably watch movies until the Earth burns up.

In our part of California we enjoy all four seasons but of course none really start when the calendar says they will. Winter starts in October when I start the first fire in the woodstove. (Someone suggested on this blog that I cannot hunt bear in winter since they are hibernating. “If a fire is in the woodstove, it’s winter.”) Spring begins when we have just about had our last fire of the season.

Here are some key signs that spring has begun:

• Someone mistakenly leaves a window or door open over night and it doesn’t really matter.
  
• I lose my sweater regularly because I keep taking it off.
  
• Mom is ready to move seedlings from the greenhouse to the garden.

But the key for me is that the road to the High Sierra is open and I can return to my redwood office. It’s been passable for a couple of weeks but the Sheriff promised me a ticket if he found me up there. Today Frederick and I will take the 30-minute drive to the Giant Sequoia grove, the Trail of a Hundred Giants. I’ll pack lunches, a computer for me, and a project for him. We’ll work for the better part of an hour (just to say we did) and spend the rest of the time exploring. My husband will be home trying to figure out how to sell a book from this website. It sounds like a great deal to me. :)

Diane posted days ago asking for an update and, finally, I’ll pop out my head to say that I’m still here and actually doing fairly well. I work two to three hours each day on my data business. On occasion I work zero hours on data. The rest of the day I work on yard work, lie in a hammock, or watch the latest from Netflix. Most days in my pregnant state I do wonder how the human race has ever perpetuated itself.

My mental state is pretty good but I expect that is in large part due to my schedule. On the one time each month that I venture from my place here in the Sequoia National Forest to civilization, I do get a bit frazzled and overly tired. My solution: don’t go.

After months of “not going,” I have had a bit of cabin fever, a strange thing to have in the summer. I’ve been complaining over the last week about being a shut-in. I suppose we should all be careful what we wish for. We are actually packing the car now (I’m on a break) to find fresher air in the Los Angeles basin. That is a sentence that I would have never thought I would ever form, but here we are.

I’ve mentioned that forest fire is our biggest natural threat here and that the local rangers tell us “It’s not a matter of ‘if’ but ‘when.’” We a due west of the Clover fire burning in the Golden Trout Wilderness and further east to highway 395. Weather patterns are bringing us quite a bit of smoke and socking it in. The Clover fire is no threat to us now and it is unlikely it will become one. However, we did have some excitement early yesterday morning when a grass fire started about three miles away on Forest Service land. We could see the smoke plumes and the air got much worse. We had our evacuation list ready but luckily did not need to pack the cars. The fire was within a mile of a ranger station and half of the local population (all employed by the Forest Service) descended on the fire within minutes. The fire lasted for about three hours before it was put out completely. It did add a good bit of smoke to our smoky air.

My weather-watching uncle called us this morning and offered us refuge from the smoke. He says it may clear by Saturday and we considered waiting it out, but my lungs hurt a bit, my son has sudden allergy symptoms, and my husband has a mild case of asthma. I figure we can cure a few symptoms and cabin fever at the same time. My uncle and aunt live north of San Diego and should have great air tomorrow. Today we’ll seek refuge in the Los Angeles area. I hear they have places called "restaurants" and "stores." I'll have to check those out.