Saturday, July 24, 2010

Symphony. Prairie. Geekery.

Last weekend, we headed to Conner Prairie for the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra's Sci-Fi Spectacular, featuring George Takei. I know, right? How cool is that?

We brought some wine. This is Dragonsleaf Red we picked up during our trip in the fall at Imagery Estates. We figured the dragon part was fitting.


The folks in the stripey green chairs to the left of Bill had large plastic wine glasses and a fancy table. We had ball jars and a blanket.


And some local cheese.


Obviously, there was only one t-shirt I could wear.


Because it was a Sci-Fi concert, there were some interesting characters in attendance.

Boba Fett? Boba Fett? Where?


The stage. The crowd. The storm clouds.

We got scary-midwest-stormed out at intermission, but not before we got to hear Mr. Sulu admonish Darth Vadar for his lack of diplomacy.


It was a very unique night.

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Summer excitement...

WE GOT WOOD DELIVERED!

I was giddy with excitement when the truck full of wood pulled into our driveway. It's been a bit difficult finding wood this season and prices are a bit higher than last year. I won't lie...it's been a bit stressful.

So, it was awesome to have the wood guy come with his big ole truck of split, seasoned (mostly) wood. It was even more awesome when he pushed a button on the truck and it dumped all the wood out without human intervention. Last year, it took us over an hour to help unload a trailer.


This is 5 ricks. I don't really know how much that is. Cord... face cord...whatever. It's about 3/4 as much as we used last winter in the two stoves. Fortunately, the wood guy is coming back at the end of the week to deliver more.

Unfortunately, we've got to stack all this wood this week so he has a place to leave the next load. (I was going to say "dump the next load" but that sounds kinda bad, eh?)

Also exciting is the start of a new shawl. They're never very pretty while they are being knit, but I know some day soon (or in 6 months), I'll get to block it and it will be wonderful. It'll look something like this.


The shawl is to distract me from these socks, which are boring me to death.


And these socks which are pooling unacceptably.


But, I expect there will be little time for knitting this week. I'VE GOT WOOD TO STACK!!!

Monday, July 5, 2010

Turkey pen

Last week Bill built a small barn yard for the turkeys. They're ready to go outside and eat up yummy ticks, but we'd still like a little control over where they go, so now they have their own little pen.


We also clipped their wings. This was absolutely as terrifying as it sounds. Bill was in charge of grabbing and holding the turks, while I cut the feathers on one wing. With just one wing cut, they can still hop up a few feet, but they can't fly over our fence and on to the neighbor's roof.


At first, of course, they didn't know their wings were clipped and they kept trying to fly away from us, resulting in hilarious nose-dives. Ok...it was mostly sad, but a little funny.

We can really see the difference between the jakes and jennies now (I think those are real turkey words?). The males are developing waddles and snoods, while the females' feathers are becoming lighter in color.


Sadly, the day after these photos were taken, we found one of the males dead. We suspect an evil-doer dug under the fence and killed him. I've read lots of reports of people loosing whole flocks in a single afternoon, so we're glad it was just one. We don't think it was a sky monster like the one that got a hen last year - the turkeys are much bigger than the chickens now and the dead guy still had his head, unlike our hen who got hit.

Today the turkeys spent the day safe in the barn and Bill filled in the possible entry under the pen with cement. Hopefully the 13 that remain will be a lucky number. No more unintentional turkey deaths!

The baby chickens are doing great. Photos soon! We think we can start telling their sexes. We ordered straight runs of some birds, which means the chicken packers pick a random handful and throw them in the box - it is cheaper and more adventurous that way. Unfortunately, of the 6 wyandottes, it looks like 5 are males.

Also doing great...socks: