Weekend errands and Isis in Crisis

Another weekend has come and half gone, but your blogger blogs on. It has gotten cold in Kansas again, with temps in the upper teens this morning as I got up before church to do minimal chores. Carrying water to the waterfowl (despite the pond being open) so they could eat their morning grain, letting the birds loose, and feeing the dogs and cats was accomplished before leaving for church. At least we have hazy sun today, despite the cold weather. It is good to sit here in the house and smell fresh-baked peanut butter cookies and look through the window at the hens running back and forth. The Old Gentleman, Beau, has come through into the yard to graze for a while, while Lacey the little horse wanders slowly around. She is getting medication daily, and we notice when the ground gets hard again she has more trouble.

She is not up to coming into the yard to graze with Beau, but stands just outside the horseyard in the pasture, or walks to the henyard and back slowly. She is up, though, which is more than we thought would happen.

We have another patient here, the lovely Wyandotte hen Isis, who has been sick for over a week now. We have her in the isolation cage, with a warm light on her. Husband has felt her for an eggbound egg, but we can't feel anything, though he has had success with moving them in the past. She grows weaker by the day, but we cannot bear to put her down, she has been such a good girl. We were given five Wyandotte hens two years ago by my friends Nancy and Paul, and have gotten many wonderful brown eggs from them. Clea was lost in the dog attack last March, but Isis, Pandora, Sprocket and Lola have formed the core of our Big Bunch, with their daughters Brownie and Birdy, and their two friends Rosy and Ruby, the production reds. We are medicating her, but when a hen won't eat and drink, the end is probably near.

In two weeks is the first poultry auction of the year, held in the sale barn area of a small town near here. I will go that day, and try to find four more hens for our flock, so that we can give eggs to our local feed bank all summer. Any hens who come here are pets, not for eating, but we have always shared their eggs, and want to do so again this summer. We have raised our own replacements for the last few years, but have decided no chicks for this one summer, then maybe we will go back to raising them in the future, once our scholar has gone off to college.

Yesterday on errands I was able to snap two more of the schoolhouses that I see in my travels. One, the White School, dates from 1929. It sits at the edge of a business area in Lawrence, and was for sale recently, though we can't tell if it sold. It was converted to a residence or offices, but does not appear anyone is using it now. The other, the Admire School, is a mile from us, at the southern end of our gravel road. It sits at a crossroads, and is made of native limestone. A young carpenter began restoring it a year or so again, and now appears to have moved in. We love to see it's lights on in the evening now. One of these weeks I'll go to our local historical society and do some research about the little building that dates from the 1880's.

This afternoon will be spent quietly, doing a little laundry and scrapbooking. I'm looking forward to the Oscars this evening, though I will probably get disgusted with the "stars" and turn the channel. It's hard to equate people who live as if there is no tomorrow and what is happening in the "real" world around us now.