Topsy turvy

We are getting more exercise than we have had for years.

This is not a bad thing and dear Ebba enjoys showing us all the scary aspects of our village. We never knew that we lived in such a state, in such a Dickensian novel. Ebba is not frightened of mailboxes and that is nice. It makes collecting the post a bit dignified, at least. (A long time ago I had a horse that never stopped, suspecting every mailbox he saw of foul play. You had to be impressed by his tenacity in this matter, if nothing else).

Jokes aside, Ebba is doing better all the time; it's just hard for a dog, when all the stuffing has been knocked out of you. Being a complete sweetheart helps and she certainly is one of those. She feels a bit big to us. Why I don't know, as we hang out with Mindy, Mandy, Molly and My, but maybe it is because she is inside our house. Ebba does not believe in the concept of "the long way around" so she moves over things. One stylish leap and the sofa in the middle of the room is tackled, one mighty leap and the shopping bags in the kitchen don’t get her this time either...

Ebba is a young dog with a healthy dose of energy, so it's just for us to grab the nearest bottle of multivitamins and get our act together. We already love her to bits.

Living in the middle of nowhere helps when you take on a frightened dog that is starting to see life as a bit of fun, again. No one next door to complain when Ebba finds her tail highly entertaining at 10pm or when she gets the giggles over the fact that she gets to be in our bed. You just have to wait it out and enjoy the fact that she finds her inner puppy to be in good form, although the timing could be better. At some point I have to tell her to stop, as we do need some sleep in our home. My socks seem to amuse her a lot, too and bits of cucumber can be found under mats....

Why Ebba feels the need to chew on my arm is a mystery she does not share with us. Maybe I am a safety blanket or her teeth feel extra active when we go to bed, we don't know. She does have bones for chewing on scattered around the whole household and my socks...

When Mr. Chip arrived, a long time ago, the company Lumene had a series of skin products made from birch tree extract that I really liked. Mr. Chip was a young fox terrier with a good sense of smell so why I had to walk around smelling like a Finnish forest, was beyond his comprehension. He got so obsessed with this problem that I had to swap to the less forestry line of skin lotion. Now I worry that Ebba might be obsessed with calendula and bees....

It's still early morning. Ebba is asleep on the sofa, stretched out and gathering strength for this day that will slowly start. Our dear sheep are munching away in the stable. I gave them some hay at 6am, as it's raining outside and we don't have to hurry in the morning. The hens will get up with the light, so only Monty is awake, tooting out into the darkness.

It's lovely when the blanket of autumn settles over us again and leads us towards Christmas and a new year. Summer is the best time for our animals but I do feel we all deserve to enjoy some of the mellowness of autumn, too. Ebba is chasing flying leaves, the hens get a break from egg laying and our sheep get to part with their heavy coats of wool. And we all get to start thinking of making Christmas presents...

My dear husband is the playgroup leader for our happy dog, so he does not get much of a break. He does seem happy enough, though, so I'm not worried.

Happy wintertime to all and everyone!! Be well and eat chocolates, it helps....

Some say that cats are not affected by SAD (seasonal affective disorder), whereas dogs can feel the darkness depressing. Cats apparently mirror their owners emotions, so if its people are sad, the cat slows down too. We turn on the therapy lights and hope that everyone will feel the benefit of them. Mice and men....

New friends

We have three new hens in the stable that arrived a week ago. The first day was an introduction day for them, touring their home, tasting all the different food bowls and some general chit-chat. Our own hens were outside, muttering horrid things about me, and my bad management skills. It all seemed calm and nice until Lotta the hen turned up to lay an egg. It was unfortunate that it was her as she has been on edge since her chicks, Matti and Maja. Lotta walked up to the new team, fluffy as a grouse and waited for them to run. Instead the three, much larger birds just grabbed her by the neck and shook her. I intervened and decided that "the new girls" would have to stay separate for a while longer. Lotta was not hurt but her pride got a bit dented. (The truth is that we all felt that she had it coming, the way she has behaved all summer).

A week later everyone has settled in nicely. The latest arrivals are hybrids; they make much larger eggs than ours and are charming birds. They look like three characters from a Jane Austen novel, all airs and graces. They have great taste in food, like to potter and have lovely singing voices. I keep expecting them to pull out their needlework at any minute, while they wait for Mr. Darcy.

They have a long wait ahead of them as they took one look at our dear Monty and decided he was no Mr. D. Little Matti is fascinated by the ladies and keeps bobbing up to squawk at them. Then he gets shy and hides behind a tuft of nettles, practicing his yodeling technic. I found three large hens staring at said tuft, wondering how on earth they had ended up here, in the back and beyond... I tried to comfort them by pointing out that they are only staying for the winter. If all goes well, as we truly hope it will, they will move back home in the spring. In the meantime we just have to make the best of things.

Inside, our home is slowly being turned upside down by our new friend Ebba, the dog. To describe her is difficult, at the moment. It's all bones, angles, long legs and huge eyes, but eventually she will grow up to be approximately the size of an Alsatian, with a thicker tail. Ebba arrived on Thursday so everything is new to her. She seems to be as kindhearted as Mr. Chip but almost everything else about her is different to our dear friend in heaven.

The policy of "no dog in the bed" went out the window on Friday morning when Ebba leaped up and settled herself politely in our bed. She is so thin and long at the moment that it's fine but once she builds up her strength, it will be like sharing a bed with an elk. Dear husband pointed out that as her life so far has not been all roses and festivity, Ebba needs this time to build up her confidence. (Dear husband is also a wet blanket when it comes to waifs and strays...). The sofa is fine for napping and Ebba has her own chair for lounging, in the evenings. This one is next to dear husband so that she can check the news on the internet, too...

Ebba is about one year old and was in need of a new, kinder home. More food and general care is needed too, so we will try our best. She is frightened of practically everything, from people to tall trees. She tries hard to be brave and is slowly letting go of some fears, becoming more of a puppy, every day. She likes to fall asleep holding my arm in her mouth, while mumbling about her day in a happy sort of way. She pulls on her lead and then sits down to apologise for her bad behavior. We are trying our best to make her feel at home and judging by Ebba's tail, we are not doing so badly. Yesterday the tail started wagging as a tail should do and we celebrate peeing outside by eating cheese. (We are going to keep a small dairy farm going, by the amount of cheese this young dog eats...).

We tell her about Mr. Chip when we light the candle on his grave and we feel this was the right thing to do. Our leg muscles are in dire straits, as walking is now slightly brisker than it's been for some time. Thankfully we have one brilliant asset, for this particular sweet dog to enjoy. Ebba gets to run freely, without the danger of getting frightened and running away, in our fenced field. It is unused by the sheep, but loved by the dog and dear husband as a playground. Our dear sheep are still convinced that getting a new dog was a very bad idea, so we have to work on that problem. All we can say is that it feels good to be able to give Ebba a new chance to be happy. We are sure our leg muscles will be up to all these brisk walks, come Christmas time.....

I just read that dogs don't like rain because the amplified sound hurt their sensitive ears. I also read that dogs have a third eyelid called a haw to protect the eye and to help it remain moist. These are two things I did not know about dogs. What I did know is, that they bring joy to a home and are good company on walks. They are quite sweet to like us too....

Autumn chores

We are having tremendous fun, preparing for winter, the hens and I. The henhouse (read the whole stable) is being turned into a hen playground. New climbing frames, a basket and wooden box filled with hay as resting places, the big sand box is back in one corner and the stable sofa is looking for a good spot. The only space in the stable that we are not re-arranging is the sheep pen.

As my constant worry has been the amount of dust created by flying hens, the sawdust had to go from the hen's loose boxes. Hemp has been my first choice as a replacement bedding. Eric had chopped hemp fiber in his new home and it looked really good. It's quite a chunky fiber and I think it will be good once our small birds have grown up a bit. They like to make sleeping holes in the sawdust and I fear they would need small spades to dig down into the hemp bedding. I might be wrong and I should have asked dear Eric for a digging demonstration. (Small spades dotted around the henhouse would look adorable, but maybe not....)

So we tested linen fiber instead. Linen is called flax in America, just to confuse the matter... It comes in smallish bales and when tipped out it smells heavenly. It looked like someone had gone berserk with a pair of scissors, chopping up linen stems. It was not as thick as chopped up hay stems but it still felt like small needles, when walked on, barefooted. The funny thing was that it was so slippery that it was like walking on ice. I could just picture our hens gliding around, bumping into things and breaking their legs. Plus the small sticks would make them itchy...

So we mixed the linen with a bale of peat and that seemed to work. The slightly damp peat softened the texture of the linen sticks and made the base firm enough to stay put. The smell of it all was not as fresh as sawdust but not as boggy as peat on its own would have been. My concern is that we should not support the peat industry at all but dusty lungs are not good either.

The hens loved their new bedding. First they tried eating it all, as hens seem to do with most things. The linen must have been tasty but after a few beak full’s of peat, they stopped munching away. Then they started digging in it and that worked well. Little Ulla made small sleeping nests in it for her naps and Matti just tried to turn it all, for some reason. So far it has not been very dusty but that can be because the peat is not yet completely dry.

The only downside with our new bedding is the colour. Peat is dark brown and our mix makes it glow with beautiful silver sticks. I clean out all the mess in the mornings and now I look like a very tired mole, trying to find small hen droppings, amongst all this. It takes forever and I will be as cross-eyed as a worried sheep, come spring. But it will be worth it, if it's less dusty for the animals...

Mindy, Mandy, Molly and My are now so fluffy that they look like wooly clouds. Mindy has taken on the look of a polar bear, floating about and Mandy is not letting me brush her coat at all and looks grim. I'm allowed to brush her head and clean her eyes but that's all. This makes her look like her body belongs to someone else. It's looks very peculiar and I'm dreading what we'll find, come shearing time. Probably a family of squirrels and some trolls.... Dear Mandy has always had a sensitive skin so it must hurt, when the brush struggles through all that wool. I might have to try feeding her some treats in between the brush strokes. Anything to make her look a bit less like the creature from the deepest forest, come to visit.

Between Mandy looking grim, Monty still looking for some of his new feathers, Henrika missing all her tail feathers and me wearing my new, slightly too big woolly hat, we are not making a pretty picture. Add dear Katie, with her still slightly crooked neck and we are ready to be taken on by the Samaritans... My dear husband looks a bit alarmed when he sees us all but he seems to be built of stronger stuff than this. We can only hope...

Molting season in a henhouse makes everyone look a bit scruffy but we are getting there. I can't blame anyone else for my hat, as I made it myself but at least it's very warm. And good looks are not everything, says Monty, although that tune will change once he finds his last, new feathers. Then he will be off chasing the hens again and the quiet time is over, in the village.

The sun is still warm, if you find a sheltered spot. I have my coffee outside in the afternoon, sitting on the lawn. It takes our sheep about five minutes to locate me and that means four soft noses trying to get into my coffee cup. They are convinced that I am hiding treats amongst the coffee. Molly then hangs around my feet, literally, munching away while the others give up and graze a bit further away. When I get up to go, there is a pattern of two Crocs shoes on the lawn. No posh café can beat that for fun! (Molly knows I have dry bread in my jacket pocket so by hanging around, she gets bread first). I love our funny, odd-looking sheep...

We have a huge house-fly buzzing around the house. I just learned that they live between 15-25 days. They taste the food with their feet and as they can only eat liquids, they spit or vomit on whatever they tend to eat. Oh goody!

Have a fly free week, all of you. 

Kindness

I have been thinking about teasing and bullying lately. The Why and What for, to be precise. The world seems to be focusing on negative thoughts and deeds and political elections are all about fighting it out in public.

Hens’ starting to pick on each other is a sign of winter to come, around our yard. After a summer of light and space they are now starting to gather in groups when going in to the stable earlier, in the evenings. This results in bickering and down right pecking amongst the hens. As I can't stand the hierarchy system and the hen pecking, I always get involved. This leads to all the hens getting upset with me for meddling. As it breaks up whatever was brewing amongst them, it can be seen as a positive result to the situation.

While we have this, sometimes loud, interlude, our dear sheep stand staring at us, cross eyed with fatigue, just wanting to have their dinner and to go to sleep. I do feel for our four ladies, having to share their home with fourteen loud birds. Our sheep can also be loud sometimes but they hardly ever pick on each other. Mindy, Mandy, Molly and My never bullied Mr. Chip either. Molly could get a bit exited when she met him, but she never pushed him, thank goodness. Molly's broad forehead could easily send a bigger dog flying...

So I was completely taken by surprise by our sheep, when we had a lovely English bulldog visiting us, the other day. I thought our dear sheep would take one look at him and scamper. What they actually did was rush up to him, heads held low and then My did a warning jump in front of the very polite guest. They have never done that to a dog before. Maybe they miss Mr. Chip and wanted to inform the world in general that no new dog was welcomed here or then they did not understand what he was. The only one to behave with style was the dog, our lot came out as neighborhood thugs, from this encounter.

We have a little roe deer that comes to visit us regularly. It's tiny and it seems to spend the days alone. Firstly, it was our apple trees that interested our little guest, but now our four sheep seem to be as interesting as the fruit. It's funny to watch our fluffy sheep follow every move the deer makes and then slowly move towards the stable for safety. If Mindy looses her nerves, they bolt.

The roe deer is no threat to our sheep but it's a stranger and that's enough to rattle them. The deer just follows them calmly for a while and then carries on with its day. (I see to it that there are apples to be had for the small guest. It can't reach very high so I'm the tree shaker...). The hens do not mind the deer. They are busy digging up all and everything so one more four legged creature is no problem to them. It does not steal their worms and that's all that matters...

So training hens is back on the agenda, a sign of winter to come. We were asked if four hens could come and stay with us through the colder months ahead. I do believe it could work but we will close off some of the henhouse for them, just to be on the safe side. As I've said before, you never know with hens.

What we are to do with our dear sheep and their lack of social graces is another question. We can't really start taking them to town to practice being amongst other people and their animals. It would be fun though... I do believe that one should not take nastiness in any form so I will carry on meddling amongst our lovely animals. They really are kind souls, they are just a bit tired after an active summer. Aren't we all?

I read that Bulldogs are one of the few breeds whose tail is naturally short, straight or screwed and therefore not cut or docked. The disposition of a Bulldog should be calm, even tempered and kind and their demeanor should be pacific and dignified. Our guest had all of this plus an appreciation for good cheese. He seemed to be all heart and that's what matters at the end of the day. Be well and buy a reflector of some sort. Autumn is here....

Going for a visit.

The Eurasian Magpie, Pica pica. 

I look like a red-eyed monster. Crying does not become me and I have now stopped. We all feel the loss of our dear Mr. Chip and wish he could come back. I, for one, think getting a new dog soon’ish would be a difficult thing to do. We got a bit spoiled with Mr. Chip so no dog could take his place right now. The problem is that life without a dog is not complete.

Two days after our sad day something or someone scared our hens. Katie the hen, who always seems to be running, must have panicked and ran into the barn wall. This resulted in a leg injury and a very stiff neck. The poor little mite was so chocked that she rested for two days without complaints. We had walks outside in the sun, Katie sitting in my lap nattering away like a little squirrel and looking interestedly at the other hens. Her neck started to mend but her leg did not carry too well so she balanced herself with the aid of her right wing. Katie ate as much as before and drank enough water to keep her going, so we just had to hope for her to get better. I felt, right at the beginning, that she was too unwell to carry on but my dear husband gets the hens and said that it was not as bad as it seemed.

Two days later dear husband was proven right, when Katie greeted me by the door, waiting to get out into the greener world. She did not risk hanging around so she flew out, over my head and told me that she was better and I was to stop fussing. We had to monitor her progress for some days but by the end of the week she was back with her friends, digging up what once was a flowerbed. It really is nice to be wrong, sometimes....

Little Ulla went missing twice, this week.

First time was when Katie got injured. All the hens went into hiding and I managed to find all but Ulla and her mother Pippi. They had got separated and it took some time to get them back together again. The next morning all hens were a bit jumpy and all of a sudden they rushed back in to the stable and Pippi managed to loose Ulla. I searched for two hours and when I was thoroughly stressed out and convinced that the fox must have popped by, Ulla came out from her hiding place.  There I was rushing around, calling and searching, four equally stressed sheep helping me look for her and Ulla just wanders past, bold as brass. I was ready to take up flower arranging and it was only 10am....

So to put a bit of a silver lining to the week, I went to visit little Eric.

What a treat that was! He is certainly not little any more and he is so beautiful that he is a joy to watch. His kindness has risen to a whole new level, too. (He also lives like royalty...) I brought his favorite chick-hood rice meal with me to see if he remembered it. He immediately started feeding this to his hens, one rice corn at a time and did not eat any of it himself. Later on he apparently ate the rest but his first concern was his ladies. He still looks a little goofy and sweet, to me, but he is now sporting golden wings and blue, green tail feathers and a very proud look on his face. He knew who I was, he made his normal greeting sounds but he did not seemed fazed by my presence at all. He just showed me around and got on with his day.

I did tell his mother Pippi, when I got back home, that she should be really proud, though. Little Eric is a credit to her and all of us in a way. It takes a whole henhouse to raise such a sweet cockerel as dear Eric. And he still looks cool enough to wear Converse trainers...

Autumn is well on the way now and it feels like we have storms, rain and sun, all in one day. Huge flocks of migrating birds are passing by, gorging on berries and hen food and then moving on. It all feels a bit nostalgic but at the same time we are glad to help out. We are once again running a pit stop for birds that certainly need all the energy they can get for their journey ahead. Our friends, the magpies, run a security firm, monitoring their every move. The magpies chase the bird of prey that flies by, so we are big fans of the crow family. They get their fair share of food, too.

Mindy, Mandy, Molly and My are eating apples. They plod from one tree to the next, munching away. I was told that apples aren't good for them but hopefully they have strong stomachs as we have fruit trees scattered all around the place. I do try to take away as much fruit as I can but they always find something to eat. They do look happy and peppy so fingers crossed.

The Eurasian Magpie, Pica pica, is known as one of the most intelligent bird around. They can organise themselves into gangs and use complex strategies when hunting. They also gang up when confronted by predators. We have seen this many times and we are very grateful to them for their input.

Happy October everyone! Let's hope the month ahead is a less heart wrenching one... The autumn colours are stunning this year here, back and beyond....

P.s. My sister's friends, the otters, are doing well. I spoke to their amazing caretaker who told me the otters have  doubled in size and the sister is a just tad bigger than her brother. They eat a kilo of fish a day and have started playing with water. My dear sister did a good job, saving these two. We can't wait to meet them again in the spring....