Crazy Dangerous Review

It's been awhile since my last posting ... but I have another review to conduct, book courtesy of BookSneeze. I recently read Crazy Dangerous, by Andrew Klaven. This was just what I needed at the time. I'm not talking about the material, but about the adventure. The main character, Sam Hopkins, is pegged as a loser, an easy target for the bullies around him. Unfortunately, he pulls a stunt that lands him right in the thick of the bullies that really do stick him between a rock and a hard place. His new crowd, the guys that were really out to beat the tar out of him, are into some pretty bad stuff. However, Sam essentially has a great heart, allowing him to befriend someone he never thought would get under his skin. He finds himself defending her to the point of getting himself into a world of trouble. Also, in doing so, he learns just how odd she really is, but he learns that she knows the truth of what is really happening even if she can't articulate it in ways uneccentric, regular people just don't take the time to understand.

This was an odd book, and easy read, and I could recommend it to those looking for a bit of suspense and action. It is geared toward young people, but does include violence and sketchy subject matter. As it is a "Christian" book, (and I say that loosely because there wasn't much on that subject but dealing with living essentially the right way versus giving in completely to living as a bully and not standing up for the weak), the points were pretty obvious. I was pretty sure that Sam would end up doing what was right. This book was pretty obvious.

Death on Deckers' Acres

It's been a rough couple of weeks. T-Bone came down with bloat and the vet eventually told us we shouldn't bother sinking any more money into these calves. He said that he most likely had an abcess on his lungs and probably wouldn't make it. Chuck had died the day prior to general poor health. He tried hard, but he just wasn't going to make it. I think he might have been sick from the get-go, but we'll never know. T-Bone died a couple days after the vet told us we shouldn't bother with him anymore. It was pretty sad. Sirloin is doing well, now weighing in at around 170 lbs. He's a nice big fella.

23 pheasants hatched, but one by one, they died off. Now there is only one in the bin. I never saw signs of any fighting or pecking. I did have a bit of trouble with the lighting, and they'd crowd eachother. Perhaps we'll get the chance to buy another bunch of eggs in the near future.

We did buy 2 more dairy beef cows. One is actually a cow! A girl! They are twins, which is why we got the girl. She's what they call freemartin, meaning she's a she most likely born with male parts. Her twin is a little bull, and when you have one of each sex in the womb they share the same placenta and the makings of their reproductive parts get mixed up. She'll be infertile, which is why we got her. Her name is Tenderloin. The little bull's name is Porterhouse.

Porterhouse

Tenderloin

Pheasant Mama?

Saturday I was at the Ravenna auction waiting to bid on a dozen Maran eggs. They were a mix between blues and cuckoos, which I really didn't want, but I had to get them for a friend of mine. The eggs I gave her didn't work out. It looks like they only made it about 10 days before giving up and dying in the eggs. I say I didn't really want them because I was hoping for another breed of chicken like Americauans or Barred Rocks. I ended up buying Americauna chicks for 25 cents each and was sold some Campines (white egg layers, pretty chicken) for 25 cents each. It was a good day for buying chicks, not such a good day for selling them. There were quite a few people there, they just weren't buying the chicks. A man behind me was also bidding on the doggone eggs. The bid got up to $6.50, and I stopped. It was getting to be too much and I didn't know where the eggs came from. I wasn't 100% sure of the viability to go that high for chicken eggs. The only ones I would have gone higher for would have been black copper marans. I ended up losing on the eggs, but took home about 15 adorable chicks. I still had an egg problem. Someone reminded me I should call Randy, the guy who sells amazing chicks of all sorts, both at the auction and on Craigslist. So later that day I made the call and agreed to meet him at 6pm on Sunday.

Mother's Day went by pretty quick between church singing, the message and later the Hume Home service. Then it was back home for a quick lunch and the painting of the picnic tables. Kellie about turned green! I rototilled my garden until I nearly ran out of gas. Then I almost fell asleep in a chair in the sun. It was so beautiful.

It was time to head over to the poultry farm. As it turns out, Randy has quite a nice setup. He has about 4 rows of bird housing with everything from rare green pheasants to polish chickens in them. He is very careful about his breeding, being interested in the best of the varieties he has. In other words, out of two roosters of a particular variety, he kept the larger one to breed with his hens. He also cross-breeds color varieties of chickens to get a larger, better bird of the color he wants. He has turkeys as well: royal palms, red bourbons, blue slates and bronzes. He has high quality birds, and any chicks I've purchased from him at the auction have a very high survival-ability rate. I was impressed with his set-up. His birds are happy, not at all overcrowded, and the pens are clean and well-kept. I'm looking forward to the eggs hatching for my friend.

Chris informed me this morning that the pheasant eggs were cheeping and pecking holes in their eggs. We have 29 eggs that are getting ready to hatch. Just a minute ago, I learned that I'm a pheasant mama! I'm so excited! We're going to release them when they get bigger, and hopefully, we'll be able to see wild pheasants on the farm as well. Oh, the birds that Decker's Acres has been able to raise! Now if the calves would just get healthy and stay that way, I'd be happy!

Dreary Weather and Calves

When you have sick calves, the dreary, damp weather isn't very helpful. The calves have been battling pneumonia for the past few weeks, and it's getting old real fast. They don't want to eat much with the weather being so icky. It's dark and dampy and drizzly, and they just don't want to eat. We've been trying to get them three bottles per day to get them healthy and bulked up a bit. The additional food was supposed to help them pump up their health so that they don't get the pneumonia again. Two of them had shots from the vet that were supposed to ward off the symptoms for two weeks. One didn't want to eat late last night, and the other didn't want much and had to be pretty much forced. This morning the one that didn't want food late last night ate fine, but the other one I tried to force feed, but he didn't take much. He did want to eat hay, however. That I could not figure out. We'll see how they are when I get home. Perhaps they'll be hungrier, or perhaps I'll find the hay manger is half empty.

On a more pleasant note, during a cease in the rain yesterday, we let the ducks and turkeys out, mostly to get them out of their muddy, poopy pen and out in the grass for a bit, and also to see how the ducks liked the slugs. The ducks loved finding all those slugs. They have no idea just how many slugs they can have to eat, and all the better as well, because I don't want to lose any more goats to deerworm. Anyway, below are pictures of Kellie surrounded by small turkeys and holding little Leonard, and one picture of our lonely little turkey chick. I'll probably move him tonight.

yesterday ...

Yesterday was bad enough being about 40 minutes late for work because I couldn't find my keys! How pathetic is that! I had to take Chris' truck and park way in the back. My umbrella was in MY car. When I walked into work it was downpouring rain, and I was drenched by the time I reached my desk. My jacket was still damp when I left to go home. The workday was busy, and it was a relief to pick Kellie up from school and head home. Unfortunately, my phone died on the way, and even more unfortunately, Chris had been trying to reach me because Chuck, one of the calves, was doing very poorly. He had his mom pick up some medication from the vet for the calf. I administered the shot, and by the time we went to bed he finally wanted to eat.

The turkey egg with the chick pecking a hole in the wrong place finally hatched. Since it seemed to be taking this one so long, I told Chris that he could help it with the membrane part if he wanted to. The doggone thing is all wrong, however. It won't get off its back, even when you put it over on its stomach. Its feet are curled and won't straighten. Right now, we've just tried to keep it comfortable and have helped it get water, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to go against everything I stand for and put it out of its misery when I get home. There is one other egg laid at the same time that hasn't started to hatch yet. I don't know what the deal is. It doesn't smell yet. Then there are four other eggs that should start to hatch today or tomorrow. There are four more that should hatch tomorrow.

Being a farmer is real hard sometimes. Animals get sick, some die and there's nothing you can do about it. Produce doesn't work out. I vowed the summer after we moved to this farm that I wouldn't ever do corn again because I had so much trouble, even with birds swooping down and snatching up the seedlings! For crying out loud, there's an entire field of corn at their disposal! I did corn again last year, after taking a year off, and it worked out! I was amazed! So even with plants, farming is hard. Last year I had amazing vines for my squash and pickles, but I didn't get much yeild. It's hard, but I wouldn't trade the lifestyle and the lessons my daughter and stepson are learning. There is a lot of hard work that goes into all this, but the payoff, when it works out, is huge. We pray for the calves to grow to be healthy and yummy. We pray for the goats to deliver their kids safely. We pray for the ducks to grow strong and love slugs. We pray for the chickens to lay great eggs, and we pray for happy healthy turkeys. Finally, we pray that our children learn and grow and do their best with their schoolwork and that they are a shining example of Christ.

Last Thursday, April 26, was the birthdate of our newest little Pygmy goat - we'll call him Leonard for now. I went out to the barn to do chores early Thursday morning and found that Ginger had drastically changed from just being pudgy pregnant with a big, growing udder, to a more streamlined goat with the kid visibly not on her side anymore. It was obvious that the kid had moved up into the birth canal. There was definitely shape in that direction. She also wasn't interested in eating anything, which is completely unlike Ginger. She might be our smallest goat, but she is a voracious eater. It came time for me to get on my way to work; Chris had already left for his job. There would be no one home to help Ginger if she had trouble with the birthing. I worried and prayed all day. On the way home, God provided a verse for me to stop worrying - you know, the one about the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, admonishing us not to worry. My first stop when I pulled into my property was to go out to the barn. William, our Nubian wether, is in the same pen with Ginger. We have a nesting pair of large hawks near our property. I thought that if Ginger kidded that he would help protect the youngster if those hawks got close. Well, William came walking into the barn when I did. Then Ginger stuck her head in her door. I couldn't tell if she was still big, and I didn't see a kid. I put some hay in their manger, and she walked all the way in and this little fella came in a moment after her. He was plump and dry and very healthy. She had to have had him within hours of me leaving for work. The front half of him looks like daddy Freddie. The back end of him doesn't look like either parent. Already, he's bouncing around and getting into mischief. Yesterday he was trying grass for the first time! At age 4 days!

Saturday we had three turkey chicks hatch. Sunday it looked like we were going to get a fourth and a fifth, but the fourth one died mid-hatch and the fifth has made his hole in the wrong place. He's still chipping away at it. Another egg was making pecking sounds last night. It would be a little early for that one to hatch, but I've learned that our turkeys, anyway, seem to hatch at around day 25 or 26 rather than 28. Also, turkeys have to be warm for their first week. I've found that the chicks I get from the auction, or even those that I've hatched, don't need to start their first couple days as warm as turkey chicks do. Turkey chicks also start to feather out much faster than chicken chicks. It is interesting. Right now, I have 29 pheasant eggs and 4 turkey eggs in the incubator. I have about 6 more turkey eggs in the hatching incubator which is in the bathroom. Also in the bathroom is a bin with a heat lamp for the young turkey chicks. We tried just a regular lightbulb overnight, and I'm amazed that didn't do the trick. They did need a heat lamp.

Also, we bought a kiddie pool for the ducks. They don't worship the washtub as much, now, but they have started to worship the pool! It's awful funny seeing four ducks laying around it with their bills hanging over the edge and three ducks swimming around in it, with one of the three being the Indian runner.

I'm looking forward to getting home and seeing my farm and spending time with my critters. I can't wait until I can tell if my 2-month-old turkeys are hens or toms. You'd think I'd be able to by now, but I can't. I did just think about checking for spurs, so I'll be doing that this evening.

The calves are sort of doing better. Two have been sickly with pneumonia and diarhea, but we might be getting over that. We're trying to feed them more, but we'll see. In a few weeks they'll have hit the 2-month mark, and we should be over these troubles. It will be a relief.

Book Review - Called to Controversy

I read Called to Controversy by Ruth Rosen, the daughter of the founder of Jews for Jesus, Moishe Rosen, courtesy of BookSneeze. I really enjoyed it. The book inspiried me, and it also brought home the mysterious workings of God in our lives. It’s funny when you read about how something happens to someone else in their life that is dedicated to what God has in store for them, and you see parallels in your own life and the lives of others around you. My family has opportunities to serve God and often we follow right on through like Moishe and his wife did when they learned that Jesus really was the Messiah. It’s inspiring to see the entire plan of God laid out (this is something always clear after it all when you look back on things). Moishe Rosen and his family are amazing people. They are outspoken, firm believers in Jesus and willing to do anything to reach others so that they, too, know the love of Jesus. The networking involved in this entire journey is just amazing to see laid out before you, as is the entire learning process as far as what worked and what didn’t work so well. Moishe Rosen did a great job in his life learning through trial and error what worked and what didn’t. There are great evangelism examples in this book. I do highly recommend this read for someone who enjoys reading about the life journey of a person, for someone who would be interested in evangelism, for someone who just enjoys a good historical read or for someone looking to be inspired. It’s called "The Unlikely Story of Moishe Rosen and the Founding of Jews for Jesus." It is a very unlikely story indeed.