We’re traveling right now, and have limited internet access, so I’m way behind anything done online!

Saturday we took a train trip in West Virginia, along the New River.

The leaves were turning, but not as spectacular as we’d hoped for. I’ll get more pictures up later from our travels when I have better internet access.

In the meantime, That’s My World for today, and if you want to see other people’s worlds, check out the following:

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That’s my world Tuesday is a new meme to show off your part of the world. This is the first issue and my first time joining in.  I had hoped to get my picture in early on,  but my internet provider was down most of the day.

I’ve looked at some of the pictures from other people’s “corner of the world”, and they are breathtaking!

However, since this is about my world, my picture will be a little more prosaic.  When I look out the windows, I don’t have an ocean view, or see a big sweeping vista showing mountains.  There is no Disney World next door.  Instead we are bordered by a subdivision with close to 50 houses, a creek, farm and blacktop road.

When I look outside I don’t see boats in a river or ocean, or wild animals like moose and bears.  What I see most often are LOTS of guineas.

This bunch is taking it easy in and around the sheep’s shed.

We have other farm animals, of course, but for today, it’s guineas.  There will be time enough on other “My World Tuesdays” to show other animals and scenery from around the farm.

So there we are for today, and welcome to That’s My World!

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Having raised guineas for years, it never ceases to amaze me what a bundle of contradictions they are. They can do some pretty smart things, but most of the time they act like they haven’t got a brain in that little bitty head of theirs.

For instance, every night they fly way up in one of the walnut trees to roost, coming to rest on branches 30-40’ off the ground. Yet, during the day they’ll run along side a 4’ fence, up and down, up and down, and can’t figure out how to get to the other side.

However, while they can’t figure out to fly over a little fence, they’re smart enough to use a concept of team mothering. Most of the time around here, a couple of guineas will have side-by-side nests. When the keets hatch, they both take care of them. In fact, quite often their whole sub-group looks after the babies, with three to seven adults looking after one bunch of keets.

Now they can be very good mothers, but they can also be very mean mothers. On one hand if a hawk passes overhead the keets will hide is the grass while the adult guineas go running off in different directions, trying to draw the hawk’s attention away from the babies.

On the other hand, the adults go zipping along all day, and if those little keet legs can’t keep up, too bad. They just get left behind. Seems kind of mean, cause on the average, only half the keets survive and thrive. Yeah, I know, survival of the fittest and all that, but it still seems mean.

Saturday we were surprised to see that although it’s getting colder, a couple of the guineas had 7 or 8 new keets of the little-bitty-no-bigger-than-a-golf-ball variety following them around. Obviously newly hatched, they could barely keep up with Mama Guinea.

And following the usual pattern, the next morning they were down to 4 keets. Somewhere along the line, the rest just didn’t keep up. Mean mothers.

Then yesterday evening when I went out to do evening chores, I went walking towards the shed only to hear a lot of peep-peep-peeping at my feet. Looking down, I finally located the little keets hiding in the grass. Since I happened to have my camera with me, I thought, “Oh cool! I’ll just get some close-up pictures of these little guys.” Ha! I just thought I was going to get some pictures.

I squatted down close to them and brought my camera up to focus in when all of a sudden….

Something slammed into the top of my bent-over head and knocked me on my butt, leaving a few trails of fire on my forehead and in my hair.

I sat there for a while shaking my head, and finally tumbled to the fact there was Mama Guinea scurrying off with all her little keets. To her way of thinking, I had gotten too close to her babies. She thought she needed to defend her keets from me, and the best way to do that was to slam into me as hard as she could while raking me with those wicked claws of hers.

Dang! Did I mention guineas can be mean mothers? My head still hurts! Guineas may not be very big, but when one slams into the top of your bent-over head, it gets your attention!

You can bet when I went out this morning to do chores I made sure I didn’t get between Mama Guinea and her babies, and all picture taking was done from a distance.

Since I didn’t have sense enough to stay away from those babies last night, I didn’t want Mama Guinea knocking out what little sense might be left in my head this morning!

Cause you know, guineas can be mean mothers.

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Yesterday I went out to do the morning chores wearing shorts and a tee shirt.
Today when I went out to do chores, I wore jeans, a long-sleeved shirt and a light jacket.

It is past the middle of October, so I guess I should expect this to happen.  A cold front and a little rain moved in during the night, but I don’t think the rain amounted to much. 

I’m afraid this weekend won’t be as warm as last weekend either!  Since it was up in the 80’s last Saturday, after all the hay was in the quonset hut, I decided it was time to give Toby a bath.  I’d put some “spot-on” flea meds on him a few days previously, but he was still polluted with fleas, digging and scratching almost constantly.

I used cold water from a hose (or hose pipe as one of my southern born & bred friends says), but Toby didn’t seem to mind.  He loves to play in the water anyway, and seemed to enjoy being scrubbed all over.

And at least now he’s not scratching at fleas!

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Okay, so technically we don’t actually make hay while the sun shines, as our farm isn’t big enough to warrant buying a hay baler. Instead, we buy hay from someone who sells small bales, as they are much easier for us to handle.

It’s not always easy to find good quality hay in small bales, because most farmers bale the great big rolls of hay. I reckon finding people to work in a hay field during hot summer weather is rather difficult these days, and big rolls of hay can be handled by one guy with a tractor and the proper equipment.

However, it’s still good to get hay while the sun in shining, because you don’t want wet hay! Storing a bunch of wet hay is a good way to a) end up with moldy hay, or b) set your barn on fire.

Obviously, moldy hay isn’t good to feed the animals. And just as obviously, you don’t want the hay to catch fire because it was wet. Sounds a little weird to say storing wet hay can result in a fire, doesn’t it? It’s that good old spontaneous combustion thing!

If you’re not familiar with the phenomenon, it happens because wet hay can create a high relative humidity in the air around it.  This allows plant and microbial respiration in the hay which generates heat, elevating the temperature of the hay.

As the hay gets hotter, the microbes die which causes “oxidative chemical reactions” that increases the temperature of the hay even more. Once the temperature gets to 140 to 150 degrees, the process accelerates and by the time it hits 175°F (80°C), farmers are advised to call the Fire Department.  No kidding!

If the hay temperature gets to 212° (100°C), the process is too far gone to stop. The temperature rises rapidly at that point and the hay is almost certain to catch fire.

Of course, a lot of things affect if and when this happens, but the critical factor that starts it all is wet hay. So there we have it, the reason why it’s good to make hay while the sun shines!

And the sun was shining brightly this past Saturday when we got our hay. It took The Farmer three trips to get it all hauled. The guy selling the hay helped him load it at that end, then when he got home, The Cave Geek and I helped unload it. 

Actually, I only rolled a few closer that fell short of the storage hut. The men did most of the work, while Toby and I watched. That sounds like a pretty good deal, doesn’t it?

 The Geek became quite adept at tossing those bales into the shed so all The Farmer had to do was toss them on the stacks.

It’s tiring work, and when the bales quit flying through the air, Toby went in to inspect the new pile of hay.

He and The Farmer are best buddies, so while The Farmer rested from his labors, Toby kept him company.

And now we’ve got hay to feed when the grass dies back during the coming winter. It feels good to be prepared!

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Yesterday morning when I went out to do chores, I noticed Miss “My Pad is a Purple Bucket” was still in the chicken pen.  Well, there’s reason for the saying “up with the chickens.”  They’re usually out foraging at the crack of dawn, and there she was, still in the pen.

Her little chick was huddled down underneath her.

When I got up close, the little chick went running around, but the mother hen never moved. She was dead.

The little peep looked so pitiful trying to keep close to the mother. It would go out every once in a while and eat some cracked corn I threw on the ground, but would go running back to scoot under the mother hen’s body every time another chicken came close.

I’m guessing the hen just died of old age.  We’ve been losing one of the girls from our foundation flock every now and then.  As you can see from her white feathers, she was getting old.  In her prime, her feathers were all that golden color.

The Farmer disposed of the mama hen last night, and I have the chick in a cage on the back porch.  I feel sorry for the little mite.  It keeps peeping for a mama that isn’t going to come back.

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The water is down, and the tree is now long wise in the creek instead of across it.

Toby helped me check things out, but he wasn’t brave enough to jump in the water today!

The top of the tree is still spanning the width of the creek bed, but another bout of high water will break off a lot of those branches as they dry out and get brittle.

It’s still cloudy today and looks like we could get more rain. I guess that would be good, as we’re still way behind on rainfall averages. It just plays havoc with my work cause of the “rain pain”. Such is life!

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