Tibits About Everything

There is a knife's edge of wind battering the farm today. I can smell snow in the air.

The chickens stayed in the barn. Sony, the rooster, brought the stragglers back in before I closed up the door. I spent last evening in front of the fireplace - with the fire going. I had no desire to leave the farm, but we were out of dog food. I bought a 40 lb. bag of Black Gold at Rineyville Feed. The dogs are very happy.

The neighbor is shooting - which drives the dogs nuts. He must be practicing for Deer Season - Kentucky's top sport behind basketball. Even women hunt here. I have a girlfriend who brought us enough elk meat to keep us for a year. Great stuff. I can't tell it from beef.

Christmas shopping? Sorry - I'm not braving the crowds. Our main drag is nicknamed the "Dixie Dieway" which is apt this time of year. I'm going to stay out of the stores a few more days.

The announcement has rippled through the Authonomy community: Amazon has just announced the Amazon Breakout Novel Award for 2010 (ABNA). I'm wondering if it would be worth the effort.

Recycling experiment - turning old drafts of my manuscript, and old newspapers, into chicken bedding. The chick brooder - an old water tub - currently houses 6 little chicks hatched here at the house. I was worried when I took them out to the tack room that they would get chilled and die. So I shredded an old manuscript and some newspapers into little diamonds.

So far it appears to be working very well. There is a two inch layer of material - mixed with spilled feed, hay scraps and some sawdust. When the bedding is nasty, it goes through the manure spreader and onto the pasture. Until then it needs stirred so it will compost. The chicks handle that task very well. 

The big plus is that I don't feel guilty about printing out a copy of the manuscript when it is going to become fertilizer.  This brings me back to the 'hammer*' theory of fertilizer. I'm hoping that one day, all my farm musings will become a non-fiction book.

Stay tuned.

* The hammer theory: If you give a child a hammer, the world becomes a nail. Once I bought a spreader, everything becomes fertilizer.