Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Last weekend Gary and I raked pine needles and refreshed the chickens nest boxes with it. The horses kept poking their heads in and eating all the hay before, so we thought maybe pine needles would last longer. Well, the hens must be happy! Five eggs yesterday and the first white egg from our spangled hamburg hen, to boot. We have been planning to make lots of chicken jambalya if they didn't start laying soon, so maybe they have redeemed themselves now ;)

In other news, Gab's brown recluse spider bite has almost completely healed and it doesn't even look like it will leave a scar. This is excellent news because this bite was on her forehead! She did get the standard medical treatment for it, plus I had her keep a clay pack on it most of the time during the early stages. The clay contained herbal tincture of myrrh, goldenseal, comfrey and cloves as well. I think a person may also gain some resistance to the venom, because this one reacted less than the bite last year.

Zack has started the driving part of his CDL classes and he is thrilled - he feels like this is what he was destined to do with his life, loves it as much as he loves hunting. Now that is saying a lot for him! He did say it is very hard to learn how to make turns, but he will get more practice on that today.

The horses have been in my new garden. I must finish the fence this weekend, even if I have to go out in the ice to do it because they'll tear up all the work we did last weekend if I don't. There's nothing growing in it for them to eat, they just like to check out all the new rows...and three horses walking around in soft ground spells disaster.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

This may be a stupid question but,
What about Aloe Vera? What about planting some there? We grew it in pots before. Grew Great. Just wondering because I just used it on just about everything tonight as I am welding burned, wind burnt, sun burnt, cut up, dry skin, rusty cuts, etc.
(a typical week for a farmer.)
Always a reliable stand by for me.
Maybe folks will blog this.
Farmer Steve.
PS
put an high power electric fence around your garden, solar powered, outside the small animal fence.

Roxann said...

I love aloe vera and have some in pots, too, but i keep it in the house. It would probably not survive the winters here outside. The kids use it a lot too and know they can just cut off a peice whenever they need some for burns, cuts, etc.

Those electric fences you describe sound like just what I need! Must put that on my list of things to get.

Thanks for visiting, come back soon!

Anonymous said...

Do you have a lot of recluse spiders there?

Roxann said...

yes, we do have a lot of brown recluses here. lots of black widow's too, but those I don't normally see in the house. The main problem with the recluses is that you have to remember to shake out clothes or hats that have been in storage - both of Gab's bites resulted from her grabbing riding gear out of the storage room and putting them on without checking first.