Red Dirt Farm and Studio

Snow is on the way.  A hush is in the air, that stillness that always seems to come before snowfall.

Orange blossom honey drizzled in my tea.

   So here I am a week in on the most annoying cold; savoring lots of tea and honey in hopes of soothing my throat.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We have had a week full of beautiful red sky sunrises.  I sit in my chair sipping my coffee and marveling at these wonderfully beautiful sunrises that slowly burn the sky with dazzling red and pink streaks that turn to purple and then blue.  Nature is a wonderful thing.

The house addition is moving along this week.

In an attempt to save some money, Mr. Cottage has spent days, being one with jackhammer and chisel, pulling out the incorrectly laid ( by the first tile contractor) tile mosaic inlay on the master bathroom floor.  He also pulled out the cubbies in the master bathroom and touched up the grout in the guest bathroom.  This all moves at a slow pace, he still isn’t steady on his feet since his surgery – he easily loses his balance and he can’t bend over and work, so he has had to do most of it while sitting on the floor.  But, he is getting it done.  Our new tile contractors will be back at a later date to finish tiling the floor and re-do the cubbies in the shower.

 

The plumbers were out this week.

  We now have water over in the addition.  They installed shower faucets, and the bathtub fixtures for the guest bathroom, although the spigot was broken when it was taken out of the box, so a replacement has been ordered.  They installed the toilets that were purchased 3 years ago and have been stored in the barn all this time.  I have to tell you, it all feels really exciting.  They carried the vanity up to the bathroom that has been in the box on the front porch for months on end.  It was a tight fit getting it up the stairs, we are so glad they were able to do this.  Before leaving the plumber made a point to find me and tell me how nice he thought our bathrooms were going to be.  He told me he knew we had been through a lot getting to this point and he thought we would be happy with the bathrooms when they were completed.

I thought that was just the nicest thing.

 

For the guest bathroom, Mr. Cottage will have to make some cuts on the vanity shelving to make it fit around the plumbing fixtures.

Meanwhile, he installed the barn style light that goes above the vanity.

I ordered faucets and fixtures for all the bathrooms this week.  Some, of which are here, most should be delivered later.

The upstairs master bath vanity will be delivered in a week or so.

We waited all day yesterday for the bathroom vanity for the downstairs master to be delivered.  After several phone calls and hoops jumped through the thing was finally delivered last night at 9:00 pm – yawn.  I’m not used to staying up that late.

   This morning Mr. Cottage put it in place.

Three years ago, I purchased lights off the clearance rack at the hardware store, for the upstairs master bathroom.   I paid only $15.00 for them, score!  Mr. Cottage installed them this morning. I’m known to be fickle, maybe I don’t like them as much after all this time.  So many of these details were purchased so long ago, I forgot what they looked like.  The toilets – I forgot what they looked like too.  They were a pleasant surprise – like getting a gift all over again.  Anyway, once we get all the fixtures and hardware in – the plumbers will return and set the vanities in place and get all the rest of the plumbing hooked up.  After waiting all these years to have this happen, what’s a few more weeks –  it’s excruciating that’s what it is, oh the anticipation of it all.

 

The New Sheriff.

A few weeks ago, our horse farmer neighbor was up visiting and during our conversations, he mentioned that his old mares had been grumpy and fussy with one another.  He said his wife went out and got a male horse, she believed a male would settle them down.  Much to his surprise, he said it worked the mares had calmed down.  Well, I just stored this conversation away in mind.  I admit I don’t know anything about horses.

 

Here on our little farm, I had been noticing our hens were all of the sudden not getting along.  Feather pulling, pecking and chasing each other and just being mean.  Not the normal  “it’s my food I saw it first” thing that goes on all the time.  I was starting to get concerned – I knew it wasn’t overcrowding, our flock size is down considerably.  Could it be that a new rooster would help keep down the moodiness?

After Stanley Roo passed away a few months ago, we agreed that there would be no more roosters.  I was quite hesitant to share my thoughts with Mr. Cottage, but I did.  I mentioned the horse story from the neighbor and he said he had been thinking about it too.  We decided that as much as we didn’t want to grow the flock at this time, we missed having a rooster which provided us that sense of added protection for the girls from predators.

I began researching rooster breed personalities, not wanting to bring a known aggressive breed here.  Raising a rooster from a chick does not guarantee they won’t turn on you and become aggressive, but it does help.  The problem was in order to get a rooster chick from a breeder I would have to get chicks too and I didn’t want to do that. Also, if I went the chick route, it would be months before he would be up to leading the flock. I turned to my local online chicken support groups looking for a solution.

  There it was – a post from a woman looking to rehome her rooster.  She didn’t want him to go to a soup pot, which is where most roosters end up.  To further his chances of not being adopted, he had deformed legs.  No one wants a rooster with deformed legs.

 

There we were in the car driving an hour to rescue a deformed rooster, never in my life did I think I would be doing this.  Mr. Cottage agreed, perhaps this was another one of my hair-brained ideas, but we were all in.

Please join us in welcoming our new rooster – Wyatt Earp is his name from his previous owner.  We are uncertain if his leg deformity is from an injury or if he was born that way. He looks like he has knocked knees.  He is clumsy, a bit like me, he trips over things easily.

After a period of time in quarantine, he has joined the girls free ranging.  Wyatt is a bit awkward in the loving department and hasn’t learned to be assertive enough to protect or lead the girls yet, but he did warn them of a hawk the other day.   I like his name, but it doesn’t roll off my tongue too easily for some reason.  I called him the lawman the other day, which inspired Mr. Cottage to call him the sheriff, so that name has kind of stuck for now.

He does look a lot like our beloved Stanley Roo, the same barred rock breed.  I hope that we will develop as wonderful of a relationship.

We are glad to have him here, we missed hearing the crowing of a rooster.  The girls – well they are happy too.

 

Thank you for stopping in.

xo Kim