Ah, Peace & Quiet

It’s pretty quiet around our place.  Not literally, of course, but in the sense that not much has happened as of late.  In literal terms, it’s anything but quiet.  Howling huskies, squalling pups, clucking hens, and a babbling baby all conspire to ensure that silence only occurs for short periods in the dead of night.

It’s winter, so our world revolves primarily around … dogs!  A return to more seasonal weather had us headed up the West Fork again, where we found the recent cold snap and snowfall had vastly improved trail conditions.  The dogs all ran well and little Icy got her first taste of the trace.  Paluk’s pups are four weeks old and as cute as ever.  I get endless enjoyment from asking Brandi which one of them she is going to keep.

“So, we can keep a puppy?”

“No.  It’s just a thought experiment.”

“Oh.”

The chickens we got from our smokejumper bro Rogers haven’t been producing any eggs.  They got a little traumatized by the inevitable dog v. chicken encounter which occurred the very first day we had them on the property, but they still offered up an egg a day for a week or so.  Now they aren’t producing at all.  I’ve asked around a bit and it seems they aren’t unique in this.  My buddy Sells’ urban flock in Missoula isn’t producing either.  He is running heat lamps and we aren’t, so that doesn’t seem to be a significant factor.  I should do some more research online, but I will probably just wait until spring when the days get longer and things warm up and see what happens then.

Despite my best efforts, I have more or less come to grips with the fact that the dogs are going to take up a lot more space than I had originally imagined and that their presence is going to seriously hinder our ability to host other livestock.  I’m really none too stoked to come walking out the back door to find four of them hanging from the neck of a shrieking sheep, so abstinence is the best policy there.  I still maintain hope for a couple of weaner pigs and a cow, but I've finally accepted that flora may be more the focus than fauna in the near term.

I’ve been doing some reading about food forests and garden design and I’m pretty excited about planting some fruit trees and berry bushes this coming spring or fall.  I’m thinking about taking a pretty loose approach to gardening this year and basically just throwing seeds wherever there is some bare dirt.  I would really like to put some bulbs and native shrubs in as well, and I’m really interested in starting some hops on the fence around the dog yard.  But as with everything, how much I can accomplish will largely depend on the availability of those two scarcities, time and money.

Keegan turned one last month and has become upwardly mobile.  His favorite thing in the world is taking hold of a pair of fingers and marching back to the bathroom to fetch his toothbrush.  He can crawl, pull himself up on the furniture, and stand no-handed for a half second, but he has a terrible habit of not going all the way to the ball and is always pulling up short and having to reach in.  We’ve been working on fixing that.

A glorious thing about one year old Keegan is that he speaks.  Not English, but a language that is entirely his own.  He often sits there and rattles on to himself for minutes on end.  You can’t understand a word of it, but he knows what he's saying.  I don’t know where he got it but he’s quite the orator.  He loves to spout off some longwinded tale and then finish with Keegan’s patented “I Approve” salute, which is always worthy of a laugh.

So that’s what I mean when I say it has been pretty quiet.  No sonic booms or explosions.  Just a dull roar.