Freestyle Homemaking: June 2020

Sunday, June 21, 2020

Farm Fresh: Rainbow Blossoms

With all the rain this week the garden is looking verdant. I cannot believe the colors on these hydrangeas. It is just jaw dropping -- so beautiful in their variation.

And the azaleas are happy too.

The old blueberry bushes that we transplanted from our friends' house more than a year ago are looking very full, though still not terribly tall. Lots of berries to look forward to on this one.

The josta berries that I divided and transplanted to the orchard are recovered and fruiting.

The second year branches of the fig tree that survived the cold are already fruiting!

My perennial herbs are a bit of a wild rumpus this year, but the maintenance has been easy relative to the beauty and herbal goodness so overall I am happy with it. I harvested and am drying a bunch of stinging nettle this week. We are also rooting several dozen mint plants (mint is supposed to deter rats) to be planted near the duck and rabbit houses.

The St John's Wort is just starting to bloom. Evening primrose has become like a weed between the pavers. Brother M just weeded them out for me 2 weeks ago and here they are again.

The kids an I worked on clearing brambles on the far side of the barn this week. It was much easier than the front yard - since it is all fairly new growth. We uncovered yummy wild raspberries as we went along, picked them, and then kept hacking away. The plan is to finish clearing it back to the big trees so that hubby can regrade the soil, dig out a big old stump, and mow it. Then I will plant elderberry bushes just in front of the tree line. Elderberry bushes can handle part shade and still flourish. Ideally, the elder will fill in and be more manageable than the wild brambles.

Strawberry the cat loves to hang out in this part of the farm. She looks like she might be high on catnip...

Despite my anxiety over pollination in the high tunnel, the tomatoes are fruiting well and getting so tall.

I can see why people prune them and string them up vertically. They seem to love the heat inside the tunnel.

Perennial geraniums were such a fabulous discovery to me last year. I am so glad to see them back this year.

The brussels sprouts were looking so good, but now something is eating the leaves.

The squash have taken over most of the rows of sweet corn. I am going to have to thin them out to give the corn a chance to catch up. If the first round of corn seeds had germinated I think it would have worked out perfectly. Now the corn is 2-3 weeks behind the squash.

Miss Sadie's diligence paid off and she hatched 7 ducklings. That makes 10 ducklings this spring.

Right after they hatched I thought she might not be caring for them well enough and almost put them in a brooder in the basement. I checked on them every hour until I was satisfied that she was not leading them into danger and was keeping them warm. The first picture is just after they hatched and this second picture is from today - they are one week old. They have mostly been staying near the nest in the barn.

Farm Drama: The Extermination Begins

The exterminator came on Monday and told us that things were going to cost a bit more than he originally thought since we have a large property and he needed more traps to cover the area. He came back on Saturday morning and put out 9 bait stations. "How are these different than what we were already trying?" was my big question... not because I begrudge him the money that we are paying him, only because I want to know and NEED to know that this is finally going to work.

Turns out that there are several differences:

1). The "homeowner" level of rat poison takes multiple bites/meals in a row to work on the rats, whereas the professional poison works after the first bite.

2). Pro level poison is better quality and more attractive to the rats.

3). He will leave it out for 30 days (more patient than I was) and then come back for his first of three follow-up visits. One visit every month or so. He said that these bait stations are about 95% effective. Usually during the first follow-up visit he will see a lot of activity -- a lot of the poison will have been eaten in the popular stations (each bait station contains enough poison to kill 30 rats). By the second visit he said that the amount of bait consumed should be a lot less and by the third visit he should see no more activity. In case he does still see activity or the rats ignore the current bait - he has a very expensive "soft bait" poison that he will use to finish the job. So it will take longer than I was hoping for, but it sounds like he has a lot of experience with rats. He says that out in the country we should be able to get rid of them completely. It is people who live closer to downtown/urban areas that have a lot more problems getting rid of rat infestations.

It will be so nice not to see all these dreaded holes and piles of dirt in the rabbit house. I guess one positive outcome of this experience is that it should help us build the aviary more securely. I won't do wire flooring since it is a huge pain for harvesting the compost/cleaning the floor of the house. A concrete pad would be lovely though unrealistic because of cost. I think a perimeter of wire mesh about a foot deep around the aviary should do the job nicely. Hopefully, rats won't be a recurring issue. The exterminator said that he is seeing a lot of rat problems this year because we had such a mild winter.

It rained off and on all day Saturday so hubby spent some time following up on the mystery of how the rat got into the laundry room in the first place. He used an endoscopic camera to explore the dryer vent and also a small opening around the water pipes behind the washer. No droppings in the dryer vent, but we found an obvious pile of them inside the wall beyond the water pipes. Droppings make it easy to follow the rat's trail. We know he was under the fridge and under the washer, but there are no droppings in the basement. So how did he get into that wall? One theory was that he could have come down through the attic.

The kids were very excited to see this attic space since it was a mysterious part of the house which they had never seen before.

Hubby was searching for any sign of rat droppings. He found TWO snake skins, a few trails of mouse droppings, and only a tiny possible group of rat droppings. We know that the rat was not a roof rat, but rather a Norway rat, so it was kind of a long shot but gives me some peace of mind anyway. It was super hot up there - no one would want to make it their summer residence. And the possibility of snakes? Well the skins could have been up there for 20 years for all we know. At this point snakes seem a lot nicer housemates than rats. They don't carry many diseases and they eat rodents. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" philosophy totally works for me in this case.

So the mystery of how the rat got into the laundry room remains unsolved. Hopefully there wont be any repeat performances that allow us to figure it out. We can just fill the opening around that pipe and call it good.

Baby A's Life: One Month Old!

Hard to believe that baby A is already a month old. We have been having such a good time getting to know him.

He has a clogged tear duct and that is making his eye a little goopy. Nothing new for us as parents since several of out other kids have had that.

He had his first bath on Friday. Hubby's friends from work gifted us with some fancy baby bath equipment. MUCH nicer than anything we had with the other kids.

Baby A seemed a little skeptical at first, but quickly settled in to enjoy his first bath. Pretty typical for this chill little guy. The bathing kit came with this nice rubber scrubby. It is perfect for baby's cradle cap head.

The first bath revealed lots of cradle cap and/or dry skin. This is also something that our other kiddos all had. I put some coconut oil and a soft hat on him that night. It already looks much better.

Sunday, June 14, 2020

Family Fun: 80 Days

80 days. The kids left the house on Friday for their first outing in 80 days. They had forgotten what the road looked like driving into town.

Some thoughtful friends in the ward invited our family to use their pool on a really hot afternoon (just us). The kids and hubby had a great time and the 4 hours flew by.

They told me that daddy helped them invent a new game called "tippy tippy" -- involving tipping over boats.

They jumped off the diving board so many times. And our friends bought them pizza since they didn't get to bring us dinner after the baby was born -- so kind of them!

Farm Drama: The Rat Saga Continues

The battle against rats on our farm continued this week. We had a small victory mid-week with one rat whose tail was caught in a trap. I have been praying that we will solve the rat problem and had some inspiration this week while watching "War Farm", a documentary about farming in Britain during WWII. Rats are a major source of expense and waste on farms and apparently they had specially trained rat exterminator girls that traveled around helping farmers in Britain during wartime. I listened carefully to what she advised the farmer and learned that rats are neophobic. This fear of new things is what has been making it seem like they are too smart for all of our traps and poisons. It also explains why we just happened to catch a rat by the tail after that trap has been in the duck house for almost two weeks. It became familiar enough that he was willing to step through the milk crate, though not head first into the trap.

Thursday night (3am on Friday) I was nursing baby A and getting him back in his crib when I heard a lot of banging around in the kitchen. I tiptoed downstairs to see what was wrong and hubby told me that he heard a rodent scritching around under the fridge. Hubby set up some cardboard boxes to try to catch it when he moved the fridge. Instead of being caught the rat darted out toward the laundry room (which we had determined was likely the entrance from outside based on droppings under the washing machine). Hubby had closed all the doors in that hallway though so the rat raced down into the library. I had to hit it with the broom to keep it from running toward me. Eeek!
We barricaded the doorways into the library with some benches and then hubby started inspecting and moving the furniture, finally moving the couch. The rat ran out full speed toward the barrier and easily got around it. At that point I started to panic because the rat could have gone anywhere on the first floor other than the library. I had been standing in front of the stairs so at least I knew at least he wasn't up there. We began a meticulous search of the first floor. I was just praying that we would be able to find it and get it out of the house. Otherwise, I knew I would never be able to sleep and would probably have to take the kids and go sleep/live in the car until hubby found and got rid of it.
It took forever to find it.
Finally, hubby's careful persistence paid off and he found it at the opposite end of the house, wedged between the wall and the cupboards attached to the wall in the toy room. The space was no larger than an inch wide and he was crammed in there. I couldn't believe it when hubby said that he was back there. Since he was stuck in such a tiny crack I thought the most straight forward option would be to kill him while he was in there, then move the cupboards and clean it up. But we had no guns or bows that could do the job. I suggested we make a spear with one of my rabbit butchering knives. So hubby stood on one side and slid the homemade spear between the cupboard and the wall while I used a dowel and banged against the wall on the other side to try to shoo the rat toward the spear. It was terrifying. He was incredibly fast despite the narrow space and I had not counted on the fact that he could CLIMB the wall. Eventually the rat decided my weapon was less threatening and ran out over my booted feet while I screamed.
Hubby vaulted over things in the toy room and the den determined to keep the rat in sight this time. He successfully followed it to its new hiding place behind the black pantry buffet. By this time it was about 5 am and I was nauseous from lack of sleep and the trauma of a rat running at me in my house. Hubby had sweat dripping off his face from his exertions. The rat stayed put under the cupboard while we put up our third offensive. By then we knew that the rat could jump several feet into the air so we used folding tables and a coffee table laying on its side to surround the buffet cupboard. We had brooms and sticks and a bucket ready. The plan was for hubby to scare it out from his side toward where I was standing ready to "pin" it with my broom and then he would put the bucket on top. After about twenty tries of the rat running toward me and hurling itself against the side of the folding table wall, we realized that I was not nearly fast enough to pin it with my broom. I suggested that we fill my side of the barricade with all the rat size snap traps that we had in the house (3 traps - since most were outside). Then when the rat hurled itself against the barrier he landed near a trap and his tail got caught. He pulled the trap with him under the cupboard and we thought we had him until we pulled the trap out ready to put the bucket over him and he yanked his now bleeding tail out of the trap. We kept at it - chase the rat out, shoo him toward traps, again and again, until finally he landed his foot in a trap and we were able to get the bucket over him.
Shaking and panting from our efforts we victoriously put thick cardboard over the bucket and carried the rat outside to finish him off. I was supposed to slowly slide the cardboard back just enough so hubby could wallop him with a 2 by 4. Somehow the rat freed his foot and sprang out of the bucket just as hubby was pushing the board into it. He ESCAPED into the woods. Hours of traumatic effort and the result was just an injured rat outside of our house. But at least he was outside and hopefully he will never want to come back?!?
I am not brave about rats. I was trying hard to be brave and managed to make it through all of our efforts without breaking down. But it was hard to sleep for the next couple nights. I think I have some kind of mild PTSD as images of the attack kept playing in my mind.
On Saturday morning I went outside to check on some things and had a happy shock -- my girl Icy brought me a prize:

She killed a groundhog/gopher/woodchuck/marmot (lots of names for it depending on where you grew up). Yay! We had seen her stalking them, but they mostly stay around the edges of the yard outside the dogs' fence.

We gave her lots of praise and pats. She was so proud of her prize. I am sure that she knew how pleased we were with what she did. Shark was jealous.
Later that day I needed to clean out the rabbits' poop trays. Normally this is not too scary for me, but after all the rat trauma this week I made hubby stand by while I pulled out some trays that I could see had some diggings around them. And sure enough we found another nest of rat babies. Ugh. We had to pull the whole row of cages out. These babies were bigger/older than the ones we found last time and they tried to run away. At least one escaped out the side, but we had the shovel handy and managed to kill four of them on their way out.

Needless to say, I am ready to call a professional and pay for some help at this point. The exterminator is coming on Monday afternoon. I REALLY hope he has some good advice/skills to contribute because I don't think we can take much more of this.

We implemented some preventative measures based on what we have learned so far about the rats. And we have a couple more that we are trying this week. We cleaned out the garage and moved all the feed and hay/straw out into the high tunnel. We have been storing feed in metal trash cans for years now, but with the covid quarantining we have been buying more than usual (more than would fit in the cans). We will make sure that it all fits in the trash cans from now on, though we haven't seen any damage to any of the feed bags at all. Mostly it is one less possible food source close to the house. AND the kids inevitably spill some feed when they are doing their chores. This way it will be outside and easily disintegrate in the dirt of the high tunnel. Eventually we will store it in the aviary... when that is built.

We also learned that norway rats like to build their tunnels under structures that act as a roof for their upper level of tunnels. Hubby raised the rabbit cages up on bricks so that now none of the poop trays are against the ground.

And starting this week we are feeding all the animals in the mornings instead of at night. Feeding them at night was a good incentive to get the birds to go in their houses for the night, but it means that the bulk of the feed is put out just before the rats become active. The hope is that by putting feed out in the morning it will be all but gone by the time the rats are out.

Baby A's Life: Week 3

Baby A had a good week. He fell asleep during church today and has been sleeping really well for a newborn.

He is starting to stretch out more - his legs don't automatically spring back to fetal froggy position as much. He has still been having some reflux issues with his nursing, but we are working through it.

And he seems to love looking at his surroundings more every day. He has a little rash on his face and will be taking his first bath some time soon. I like to try to wait as long as possible for that since some of our kids have the same eczema issues as hubby.