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Many people will tell you that turkeys are not that bright.  I am here to tell you that those people are absolutely correct.  Last week one of our baby turkeys got a scratch on her foot.  A tiny little scratch, not even a single drop of blood.  But a scratched foot is sort of itchy, and sort of red.  So what's a baby bird to do but peck at it relentlessly until the whole foot is gross and bloody and raw?  Ew.

So we brought said baby turkey inside for the morning and wrapped up her foot (feet, actually, because by this time she had started attacking both) for protection.  We don't usually name our birds, but sometimes they name themselves.  Meet BandAids:

BandAids picks at the bandaids, but the ones we have are crazy sticky so she's staying protected.  We had to keep her inside for a few hours to make sure she hadn't managed to pick up an infection, and the only time she stays quiet is when she is sitting on a lap or a shoulder [Note:  turkey on shoulder + earrings == DANGER].

Given her druthers, BandAids prefers to sleep inside my armpit.  Ideally inside my shirt, but she has scratchy little claws so I put the kibosh on that right quick.  Apparently it is just like sleeping under a mom turkey's wing.

This is my life: Drupal, PHP, CSS, mom to small poultry.

We're raising turkeys this year (instead of chickens), and we have a hodgepodge of heritage breeds.  From squinting at pictures on breeder websites, I think we might have some Black Spanish and some Narragansetts?  Who knows!  We'll figure it out when they're older.

Baby turkeys are really great because they do everything very intensely.  If they are hungry, they are STARVING.  If they are sleepy, they will fall asleep right where they're standing.  Including in the food dish.

They are officially 9 days old right now and have just about doubled in size since we got them.  When it's sunny out we put them outside (inside a chicken-wire fence) and they spend the entire time twirtling happily and eating grass.  They also play a fair amount of turkey football, which looks like this: "I have a dead leaf!" "Gimme!  Now I have a dead leaf! I will run around like a crazypants." "Oh HO now where is your leaf?  In my mouth is where!"  and so on.

This morning one of them learned that if he flaps juuuuuust right he'll end up standing on top of the food jar.  From there it is only a short leap to freedom (AKA "the living room floor"), and no good can come of that. Stay inside your brooder, little guys! You'll be banished to the duck house soon enough!

Here's our first morning glory of the season.  You might think, isn't it late July?  And to you I would say:  we are way up north.   Our plants don't get that whole "April showers" thing; instead they get late-April snow.  So a lovely blue flower like this one is nice sign of summer. 

We are also full-up on bee balm (pretty!), oregano (tasty!), and so so many peas and green beans.  Curiously, not very much of our peppermint and spearmint came back this year, but we do have an overflowingly large patch of catnip.  Which would be great if we were (or had) cats.  Alas, instead it is just pretty and not so tasty to humans tongues.  Yeah for gardens and growing things!

The nice folks from Independent Power were here yesterday installing our new inverter, after the old one was killed by lightning.  It was cloudy when they arrived, and then it started pouring.  There is something funny about solar guys working in the rain.

Our inverter is made by Solectria, and in the course of the rain yesterday, our new warranty card got all wet.  We have to let it dry out and then send it in, because it says right on there "Warranty not valid until this card is sent in". 

Really, Solectria?  Is it 1985 down in Massachusetts?  You're known for your fancy web-based solar monitoring systems; it's crazy that I have to fill out this little paper card just so someone at HQ can type my info into a database.  This is what webforms were made for!  (In fact, Solectria, please contact us if you need help setting that up).

In other news, the rain is scheduled to continue for another few days.  Good things that love the rain:  the beans, peas, carrots and other tastiness in the garden!  Bad things that love the rain:  the weeds in the garden! 

Up where we are located, commonly called the "North Country" or "North of the Notch" in New Hampshire, or the "Northeast Kingdom" if you look across the river to Vermont, broadband service is.... well, let's just say limited.   Public-access computers are few and far between:  our local libraries have a couple each, but libraries are generally open during business hours and, at least in our town, bear the brunt of budget and cost-cutting measures.  One thing we do have lots of is volunteer fire departments.  Within 30 minutes of webmeadow HQ there are 3 small town libraries, but 16 fire stations.

Turns out that West Virginia is in pretty much the same situation as rural New England.  So the creative-thinkers at non-profit Future Generations got a federal grant to put public-access computers into the volunteer fire stations in WV.   Volunteer fire stations often serve as de-facto community centers (the picture at right is our local fire station, right in the center of town and sharing a parking lot with the church and grange hall), and bringing broadband to fire stations is a good plan in its own right -- these are people in charge of emergency services.  They need to be able to give and get information quickly.  Our own fire station didn't even have phone service until a few years ago.

Read the whole story of the WV Fire Station computer centers at PC World.

And the computers are running Linux!  (Because it's cheaper, and for basics like web browsing and word processing there's no learning curve.)

And in an age of moving-to-the-big-city this helps bring young people back in direct contact with their Volunteer Fire crews.

Win-win, win-win-win!  A really cool project, and one that could be awesomely implemented on a broader scale.

A quick rundown of the rest of the summer:

Do you remember how we decided to get reject roosters this year?  Man, that was a terrible idea.  They were very beautiful, and very loud at 4am.  We kept 2 of the (female) Wyandottes for extra eggs and it turns out they lay tiny eggs (maybe 1/3 normal size).  Makes for very cute fried egg sandwiches.   They are completely looney and we have named them Tuck and Roll.

They prefer to sleep in the trees rather than inside the birdhouse.  The funny thing that you can't tell in that picture is that they are all piled onto a crabapple tree that is only 4 feet tall.  The branches sort of bend over when the birds are on top.

We had a bounteous garden which netted us 14 (14!!!) watermelons, 58 delicata squash, 41 cucumbers, 1 zillion tomatoes, 400000 green beans, and countless other tasty treats.

We did a bunch of hiking, including a very well-timed trip up Blueberry Mountain right in the midst of the harvest season.  We brought handheld peach pies, and then augmented with the fresh berries.

And now it's fall!  We also built a bunch of websites -- you know, our jobs -- and now that we have a bit of breathing room we'll post about those in the upcoming weeks!

We have an amazing garden this year at webmeadow HQ.  Remember our pals at Old Shaw Farm?  They had a bunch of leftover seedlings at the end of spring that they were kind enough to give us, including 22 very healthy tomato plants.

The tomatos are going crazy, and today I was wandering about looking for any early ripeners.  Instead, I found my mortal enemy:

If you are not familiar with the vernacular name "those little bastards", you may also know these dudes as Tomato Hornworms.  They are huge, and these guys will eat an entire tomato leaf (audibly, even!) in less time than it takes you to say, "eeewwwwwwwwwwww".  (The plant in question is some sort of variety of ground cherry -- papery husk like a tomatillo, and when it's ripe it tastes an awful lot like a mango.)  According to their wikipedia page, they glow under a blacklight.  That doesn't make me feel any better.

Hey, did you know that one of my birthday presents last year was a microscope that hooks up to the computer?  So I brought this guy upstairs and had a photoshoot.

Mouth of doom!!  The white things are half-leg, half-mandible, four-fifths GROSS.  I can only guess that dots in the upper right are some sort of eye.

Look at those toes!  I also got a picture of a big ol' caterpillar butt crack, but I will spare you because this is a family blog.

Then I fed it to the chickens.

The chicks are slowly getting weened.  Mom is going off with the other chickens, ducks, and goose at the pond during the day, leaving the chicks at home to fend for themselves.  When everyone is together again in the late afternoon/early evening, she still watches out for them by nipping the bigger birds that get too close, but she's no longer saving food or actively hovering over them.

Indeed, on Tuesday she became testy and nipped many of the chicks who tried to snuggle up to her at night.  Currently, she only allows 4 or 5 lucky chicks snuggle time throughout the night (remember less than 5 weeks ago, when 20-30 chicks fit?), and certainly her patience for being stepped upon is approaching zero.

The ducks are now comfortable with the chicks, which is easy to see because they no longer stare wildly at the wee birds, nor do they run away when a chick approaches.  Another clue is the newly laid duck and chicken eggs sitting in the chick space.

Becoming a little older, larger, and getting more freedom, that's what weeks 3 and 4 were about.

The older chicks continued to snuggle with Mom as much as possible, though they also became more curious about the outside world.  During week 4, we opened up the chick fencing so that they could roam wherever and whenever they felt the need, but we kept the opening small enough that only they could fit back through for non-adult R&R.  Much running ensued.

The youngest chicks in the holding cell become bigger, more active, and very into sunshine.  The injured chick recovered nicely, and after we returned her to General Population, we turned her box into a space to sleep in and jump upon.

Notice that the same box from last week looks substantially smaller next to the growing chicks!
The chick on top of the box stood in the sun for a quite a while.

During week 4, we moved the youngest chicks outside, in their own fenced space to prevent Mom from pecking at them.  Since they didn't get Mom warmth, we gave them a warming light.  They did quite well in their own outside space, getting big and developed enough to begin blending in with the older chicks.  In week 5, we let all the chicks mix!

Week 2 of Chicks 2010 was filled with drama, rejection, and healing.  

Day 3, the day after my last post, Broody rejected some of the wee chicks, and they died in the cold night.  This was a bit shocking for us, as last year's adoption of chicks (and 3 turkeys) worked quite well.

Regrouping, we purchased more chicks on Friday, introducing them to Broody very carefully that evening.  While she initially nipped the small chicks that were peeping (since the week-old chicks had stopped such infantile behavior after day 3), it was dark, so she calmed quickly.  The next morning, however, we sufficiently disturbed Broody mom (while checking on the smallest additions) that she began noticing and again nipping the day-old chicks.

We made an emergency evac. of all day-old chicks, placing them in a warm alternate location (aka, the holding cell).  One of the chicks couldn't use her foot after getting pecked by Broody, so we gave her a smaller recovery space (and a playmate) right next to the rest of the chicks -- we're happy to report that she's almost healed.  Everyone has been warm and growing nicely, so we'll attempt to reintroduce them to Broody mom at the end of the week.