Cosumne Gal

I'm just waiting for the electrician (Bob says that's all electricians do - make you wait). But there will be lights inside the barn, a light over the door, and some plugs inside so I can have a heat lamp, or a fan. There will be a switch in the house and a switch in the barn, so I can turn the lights on before I go out there, and turn them off when I get back inside.

There will be no water faucet inside, that was an option but I decided against it. Right now every faucet on the place is leaking and has to be replaced. I don't want a leaking faucet inside this building.

Here is a picture of the inside, standing at the door and looking out the back. That pipe thing in the middle is conduit...waiting for the electrician. When he is finished, pavers will be laid for the alleyway floor.


It was hot yesterday afternoon. I went out at the hottest point and checked to see if the new building, because it has a tin roof, would be too warm. It wasn't, there was a nice breeze going through it. There are big trees that shade it most of the day. (Conversely, there are big trees that could fall on it, but we won't go there.)

I'm in for a lot of work now, handling all the oldest chicks, which are the ones hatched in March, to weigh and photograph them and see which to keep and which to sell. There is an auction next weekend, so I have to get busy with that.

There are just a handful of eggs left in the incubator, all from the ancient hen and the dwarf hen. I doubt many will hatch, they are small and are very difficult to incubate. So, hopefully, there will soon be an end to chicks in the house and I can stow all that stuff away, give the house a thorough cleaning, and live like a regular human being again.

Well, except for the malicious cat.


This was the third roll of paper towels he mutilated in a week. The first I left on top of the pellet stove when I was cleaning. He jumped up and "caught" it. The next two he took out of the cupboard. Opened the door and snatched them. Now I'm keeping paper towels in the oven. It diminishes the handiness of a paper towel when you can't just leave a roll of them in the kitchen, when you can't grab one easily.

Now that he has no towels to shred, Wesley is going after the roll of toilet paper in the bathroom. I have to keep it in a drawer. That is not very handy, either.

Bob and Anna picked peaches last weekend and made the mistake of leaving them on the kitchen counter. They're round. You can't leave round things on the counter because Wes knocks them off and then rolls them all over the house. Mangled peaches. Luckily they were just going to make cobbler anyway.

Gardening in Sloughhouse is pretty easy. Everything that comes in contact with the soil grows. And it usually grows to gigantic proportions. We don't plant regular fruit trees, only dwarf trees. Even the dwarves grow too high to pick their fruit.

We had a bad frost early last fall and it killed back some of my marginal trees: two lemons and an avocado.

The carpenters were gone all last week. The chicks that need to be moved to the new building are getting bigger, and louder, and slightly smelly. I may go nuts soon. How will you know, you ask? How would that be different? I talk faster. But you won't hear me. I type faster, but you won't know that either. Guess you'll have to take my word for it.

While I'm waiting to move chicks, more have been hatching.


This is a mound of white Old English babies. I had only hatched a couple of early ones. This is my single actual batch of OEGB, they all hatched on the same day. They look like they came out of a cookie press, all of them are identical. The Old English are so easy.

The few eggs left in the incubator now are from the Dwarf OE, from the Ancient OE, and from my Best of Show Dominique bantam pullet. She has turned out to be a dud in the mom department. These special eggs are all very hard to hatch, so I'm not expecting many more chicks at this point.

It was fairly cool this past week. I watered the yard really well, pulled a lot more weeds, and tried to keep busy outside so the mess inside wouldn't bother me as much.

On another note, Wesley is settling into a new role — he is becoming the self-appointed caretaker for Gollie and me. Biscuit comes to the front door to be fed about twice a week. (Don't know where he goes on his off days.) When Wesley sees me heading to the door with a can of food, he grabs my foot and holds on. "Don't, don't open that door! Don't feed that monster, he could KILL you!!!" he seems to be telling me.

When people come to visit, Wesley is very diligent about checking them out. I think he's searching for concealed weapons. Why else would a cat try to climb someone's pant leg and get into their pocket?

Last night the "man of the house" found a new job — providing for his family.

You know that meowy noise cats make when they've caught something and brought it to your front door? Well, Gollie and I were almost asleep when Wesley came down the hall making that dreaded noise. He stopped on the rug at the side of my bed. "Look, look," I imagined him saying. "I've brought you both a midnight snack."

I was afraid to turn on the light, fearing he'd somehow gotten into the chick brooding room and caught some Kentucky Unfried Chicken.

Then I thought, maybe it's a rat or a snake or something really disgusting that managed to get into the house. And maybe it's still alive and it's going to crawl into my shoe or slither under the bed.

Aaaaaack! Aaaaack!

So I turned on the light.

It's the 7th day of work and the new little building is almost finished. This is the back side. Seven days! Can you believe it? I barely can. Have you guessed what this is yet?

It's my new Chicken Palace.

I have been shopping around for the past year, trying to figure out what sort of building would serve my purposes. I have looked at prefabricated Tuff Sheds, at metal carports, and tried to find a carpenter - or ANYONE - who knew something about building things and could advise me.

I do know people who are capable of that, but they've never been very helpful. Only if you want to wait for 5 or 10 years to get the project half finished. The last carpenter guy I hired, for the back porch project, showed up about half the time he said he would, showed up late and left early, and complained a lot while he was here.

I have never worked with tradesmen like the wild Ukrainians. Vladimir has been up early every morning to be at Home Depot when it opened, to get the materials for the day. He is a master bargain hunter. Look at this receipt.


Every place where there is a minus (—) is where he talked them down. "This 2x4 has a ding on the end," he'd say, "could you take $3.00 off?" For the inside paint, he got two gallons of Glidden for $9 each. But, while he dickers for materials, he doesn't slack on quality work. This little building is built like a brick s--thouse.

At least a few of these 160 chicks I've now hatched had better be worth putting in this 5-Star chicken house.

So, right now all there is to do is finish painting, put the mesh on the windows and inside, and run the electricity to the building...yes, there will be lights! The trench is already dug for the wires. Roman did that. He's one of Vladimir's nephews, an 18 year old who smiles all the time and works like a trooper.

This is the other carpenter, Aleksandr. He finished his part of the project last night and is off to a "real" job this morning.  


For anyone in Northern California, these two fine fellows will be available for your jobs in the fall, when the construction season slows down.

I've been sticking close to home for the past week. I helped a little with painting and drove to town for supplies a couple of times. In between, I sat in the flower garden and pulled weeds. I wanted the yard to look nice because this weekend is a new festival at the Corn Stand.


I might put on my green shirt and see if I can help Amanda with the 4-H booth.

Meanwhile, in the house, the latest batch of chicks are growing. The ancient little white hen started laying again about a month ago. About half her eggs have hatched, so that will hopefully give me some white Old English bantams to show this year. I can't believe that old gal just keeps going.

Gollie and Wesley are still bickering and trying to settle into a new pattern of cat dynamics without the steadying influence of Velcro. Gollie hides a lot. Wesley has taken over Velcro's old bed, he keeps his toys there, too.


The entries for State Fair are due this week. I hate State Fair. I want to show there, but this is the time of year the birds start molting. Entries are due now, but the fair isn't until the end of July, so it's hard to tell which birds will have a full set of feathers by then. Last year I entered 6 birds and didn't take any.

Oh, and I went and saw the play "Wicked" with my friend Lauren on Tuesday. What a wonderful production! The sets and costumes are so creative, I already knew the story from reading the book a few years ago, so I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how the sets were made.

It was hot here today. I am not one to watch the temperature gauge, it's not like I have any influence over it. When I step outside and get blasted by hot air, I just go through my list of chores to keep the yard and the animals comfortable.

Today the plants were wilting.

This is an agapanthus. You can't kill it if you try, so I wasn't too concerned about it, but I did give it a drink. The hydrangeas also looked very sad. I wasn't too worried about them, either, I had just flood watered them yesterday. They are drama queens, you know?

The cats were also wilting.


Carla laid in the shade on the rocks and did a lot of complaining. I would have hosed her off, but I doubt she'd appreciate that like a dog would.

The chickens all seemed to be doing okay. Last year there were a couple of days when I caught the ones in the warmest pens and dipped them in a bucket of water. They liked that. But it wasn't that hot today.

The pigeons stayed cool. I gave them a tub of water and a sprinkler to play in.


Isn't there a wonderful assortment of colors now?

It was a bit cooler in the house. The whole house fan pulls in cooler air at night and the house stays okay all day. Even so, Gollie was passed out in front of an open window, using a cool rock as a pillow.


Wesley was on high alert all day, trying to protect me from the Ukrainian carpenters. When they came in the house to discuss building plans, he managed to bite both of them. When they walked past the window, he would growl.

I don't share his opinion, I think they're really nice fellows, and they worked hard all day out in this heat. Which is more than I can say for Wesley.

She had been having problems for the past two weeks, heart problems I think. I promised her two years ago, after a traumatic trip to the vet, that I'd never take her back, that she could just die peacefully at home. Wesley helped keep watch, he was often at her side. He would have licked her ears, but she'd have none of that.


For the past year, her favorite place was her bed under the dining room table. Every morning the sun would shine on her there.

This morning for the last time.

Last week was "old home week." It was a time for reflection and revisiting, and discovering what's been happening in the lives of people who seldom see each other.

First, Bob's dad's family had their annual cousin's reunion. When John and his siblings grew up, relatives still visited each other often, so the cousins pretty much grew up together. They have lots of stories in common, and even though I wasn't part of that, it's fun to hear them talk. I was struck with how different it is today, lots of cousins barely ever see each other. Their new "families" are friends at school, at work, or on the internet. While the older generation was sharing memories this weekend, the teenagers sat on the couch, bored looks on faces, cell phones in hand.

I don't criticize them for that. I remember being bored to tears as a teenager when I was forced to attend a family event where everyone asked embarrassing questions (embarrassing to a teenager). Okay, maybe it wasn't so different. I usually sat on the couch, but with a book in front of my nose. My own "kid" did not attend his family's reunion. He'll figure out someday that it's important to know your relatives, but that time hasn't come yet.

The very next day was the 15th annual Sloughhouse Families and Friends Reunion. It was held at the local elementary school. Not the one that most of us attended, it was torn down a couple of years ago and a new one was built. Sloughhouse is one of those places that everyone holds dear to their heart. Even people who only lived here a couple of years and then moved on remember it fondly. Some of us never moved on, and we see each other at the store, or at the Corn Stand, or maybe the feed store once in a while.

I don't go every year, but I did this year. I saw two "kids" I went to school with that I haven't seen since 1960. What a shock it is to see an old person when your last memory of them was in 8th grade. It's like being a time traveler.

I'm not one who remembers all the little details of things that happened in the past. That's what my brother is for. I'm more interested in broad concepts. The thing that I came away with this weekend is confirmation that a person's adult life has very little to do with what happened for him in school. As a parent, we get all tied up in our child's test scores and teacher comments on report cards. OMG, if junior gets an "F", life as we know it is over! He'll never amount to a hill of beans, the teacher pretty much said so. What to do? What to do?

The school years are not just stressful for kids. I recall being much more stressed as a parent, worrying about my kid.

Well, here's the reality: Everyone pretty much manages to live and do just fine. Academic success is an indicator of nothing. Nothing! So don't stress over it. Teach your kids how to work, how to make things, how to be a good friend and care about themselves and others. The rest will take care of itself.

Someday when they're old, the "kid" who was at the top of the class will be reminiscing with the "kid" who was at the bottom of the class, and they'll find that the lasting memories are of friendships and fun times.