Pourdown

I just came in from feeding horses and chickens, but stood outside with my dogs for a few extra minutes in the downpour, and marveled at the perfect silhouette of the huge old elm tree in the fading dusk. Light like that isn't possible without the rain to suffuse the glow.

I should not be left unsupervised

...at any sort of livestock show. Yesterday morning it was the Boston Poultry Expo. I just went to look, I swear. I was hoping to find that someone there raised a particular breed of dual-purpose chicken that I am interested in acquiring, a hard-to-find breed called Blue Orpington. Buff Orpingtons are everywhere, and Black Orpingtons are fairly common as well. Blues, however, were nowhere to be found. My intent was merely to make a connection and acquire some chicks or mature birds at a later date. Seeing no Blue Orpingtons in the show cages, I wandered on outside to the parking lot where there were birds for sale. Still no Blue Orpies. But, sticking out like sore thumb was one lone blue bantam Aracuana chick in a cage of ducklings. Sooooo, long story short, I bought it. And because you can't raise a chick alone, I got four Cornish Giant chicks too. Little chick blue is henceforth to be known as "Storm", because I don't know, or care, whether it is male or female. The Cornish chicks are named Potato, Carrot, Onion, and Gravy; and are destined to become dinner.

Cornish Giants are a purely meat bird, and if allowed to keep growing past slaughter weight they quickly reach a point where their legs and hearts cannot support their bodies for a normal chicken life. So they are frankenbirds, not what I envisioned raising on this here piece of earth but they're my first try at raising my own meat, and I hope it will help to know that if they are not slaughtered, their quality of life would be horrible. That's my theory, anyway. I'll let you know if it works out that way three months hence.

Here are the little fluffballs, comfortably ensconced in the brooder box:

Tornadoes to Rainbows

In 24 hours, no less. I spent yesterday afternoon and evening hunkered down in my basement with my doggies, waiting for the world to be rearranged. Thankfully, me and mine were spared. Other towns just to my south were not so fortunate. Utter devastation. This isn't supposed to happen here. Sure, every year we get an EF-0 or EF-1 twister that blows the lawn furniture around, maybe peels some shingles off a few roofs, but nothing like this. This was no joke, and I'm glad I took it seriously. I did come up a few times, thinking it was over, but each time I did a new warning would be issued in minutes, the 2nd and 3rd wave storms following the same path as the first. Intense is not strong enough a description. I've heard surreal used a lot today, I've used ugly, usually capitalized - UGLY! It was that.

My neighbor, braver and/or more foolish than I, actually saw the tornado, in the distance, from his upstairs window. I saw enough warning signs in the sky and clouds as the thunder began to rumble that I closed the horses up tight in their shedrow and was not surprised to see the tornado warning as soon as I got back inside. I also saw, through the opaque basement windows, the light outside grow dim and take on that greenish-black color of a bad bruise. If I never see that tint again it will be too soon.

This was not my first tornado experience. Naturally, tornadoes are my one phobia. I dealt with this throughout my childhood by educating myself about them as much as possible. I probably should have become a meteorologist. So I already had a plan and knew just what to grab when the warning came up on my screen. Dogs, flashlight, cell phone; check, check, check. Grab 'em and go. I was anxious but not scared. I felt prepared. I am more freaked about it now than I was at the time. Probably because I have been looking at pictures all day, letting the what-if's run through my head.