A Most Unusual Walk

My almost-twelve year old and I went on a walk yesterday.  We stopped to pet our favorite little dog at about the mile and a half marker, and met her owner.  He says he doesn't tie her up, because she just showed up one day, and he wonders if her owner will find her (she's been living with him for 3 years or so).  So now we know her name.  Coco.

On the way back down we met the lady who has a "Farm Fresh Eggs" sign out.  She took us for a tour around her place (greenhouses, outside garden, chickens, sheep, and cows) and loaded us up with oregano, butternut squash, brussels sprouts, and beet starts and a bag of lettuce.  I told her I would bring her a few taro huli next time I am up the road.  I don't have a lot of starts to share this year.

Someone has been stealing her sheep and apparently, selling them on craigslist.  She found out who it was, so that is a relief, although the sheep are long gone.  She has St. Croix-Barbados mix.  They look more delicate and more white than mine.  I told her she could borrow Calico or Sam if she wants more color next year.

Our son drove to work today for the first time.  He is very patient about calling home when he gets places (it was his idea) to calm me down.  He is deviating from his usual route as he wants to practice with the Cross Country team at the Bayfront today.  I saw the confusion in his eyes when his dad was giving him directions - so I told him since I had to bring his brother down for gym today, I would meet him at his work and he could follow me to the practice location.  He knows less about his town than I did when growing up, because he never really had the opportunity to walk all around town like we did growing up.  There isn't a good bus system on this island like on Oahu, so the kids were a lot more dependent on rides from parents.

I made some mango-lemon marmalade the other day, along with daikon-carrot pickle.  Today is baking day for this week - french bread rolls for sandwiches and cookies.  Better get off the computer and do it!

Red Letter Day!

My son got his license and his first checking account.  Good deal.

Spot doesn't seem to be feeling well today.  He really hates it when I debride his dog bite.  It sure is taking a long time to heal up - which is making me even more mad at those dogs.

I had a long day.  We drove out to Pahoa in search of shorter DMV lines, but the one person who gives road tests for driver's licenses out there was out sick.  I decided to pay the registration out there, since we'd driven out so far.  The guy gave me the wrong month sticker;  I looked at it and thought, "Oh well, he must know what he is doing."  I should have asked, because we drove back into Hilo to check if they had any testing spots open and while we were waiting, the DMV guy called me and told me I had to come back to exchange the sticker.  It is quite far in another direction from our house.

The whole time, we were driving the kids' car - which is 19 years old and the AC is so broken it blows hot air and there is no way to turn it off.  Hot air on a summer day - not fun.  Anyway we left the house at 6:30 and got home at 1 pm and then I had to go deal with that gnarly wound on the poor lamb.

Sweet Potatoes and my List

I planted my sweet potato slips that my niece brought - they look like they are adjusting.  I am pretty excited and hope they grow well.  Last time I planted some they got 1) run over by the tractor and 2) the survivors got hit with some kind of virus.  I planted these new slips in a different spot altogether that has never had crops before; the last bunch was planted in an older spot.

Sally the c-section is blatting away and has come out of the woods, so she is looking good.  Elvis's sore foot cleared up on its own, so it looks like my diagnosis of bruise was right which is a relief - he didn't show signs of foot rot or even an abcess, so I was hoping.

My tomatoes and cucumbers are pumping out enough to keep us supplied with a daily dose, and the eggplants are a week out from harvest or so, and the peppers are setting fruit.  It is time to start looking at starting new plants and figuring out what else to grow!  The taro mala needs to be weeded and mulched, and I can start taking a few leaves for luau chicken (yum).

If my son gets his license tomorrow, I can have more time at home - I got plenty of praying done on my twice daily treks to town, but not much gardening or canning.  I would like to get some more marmalade put up, some kimchee cucumbers, daikon pickles and some ready made meals like stew and chili for the fall, when I go back to work.  I also have a few more rooms to clean from top to bottom.  Only 4 and a bit more weeks until I report back to school.  I have quite a list of things I would like to do before then.

Wish the Boy luck tomorrow morning.  We're heading into Pahoa early so he can get the lay of the roads, then heading for the new police station there to take the driver's test!  I am proud of the kid - he wrote a program to analyze genetic material (not quite sure what it all is, because he just took the formula the biologist gave him and wrote a better program for it - so he can't explain the biology behind it well enough for me to understand), and his boss, the biologist, wants him to write the paper as the principal author and with the PhD as a second author - and they are going to submit it to a professional journal.  I am not only proud - I am a bit envious.  He is 16 and hitting one of my secret (well, not anymore) life dreams. Genetic biologists could be using my son's tool to analyze DNA fragments all over the world.  That is just cool.

Spending the Summer

Spending the summer mostly driving and waiting, it feels like.  I can't wait for my son to get his license, although sending him off that first time alone is going to be scary.... I drive him to work in the morning, come home, do a few chores, and then drive out again to get him.  I drive this very old car that will be his to drive so he can practice, but the heat is permanently on in the car.  

We've had to fix various things on it - a brake light was out, the ignition was broken (you had to hot wire it to start it), today the fourth gear went out, but it was just a fuse, the side view mirror was stuck in a position where you'd have to be under five feet tall to use it, the muffler had a hole.  My husband taped up the hole with muffler tape and over the last couple of weeks, he and our son fixed the other little things so it could pass a safety check.  I was a bit embarrassed when the inspector said, "You really are supposed to FIX the muffler, not just tape it..." I told him we really do have an appointment for it, but my son is dying to take his driver's test, and this is the car he can drive best....and he passed us.  Phew. 

My niece called when we were waiting for the vehicle inspection, and she drove down and gave me some sweet potato slips - some native Hawaiian varieties - a couple of yellow ones and a the local purple one.  There aren't any Okinawan ones, though - I like those for the leaves, mostly.  I need to get those slips in the ground tomorrow. 

Today, I buried a chicken that, I presume, a dog got.  I made sure I got in the dogs' faces with the dead hen, seems to have worked because the rest of the hens made it through the day.  I couldn't find that hen last night - I think my dogs thought since it was night and all - it must be okay.... I planted some lilikoi I had started in a pot.  I put it up against the waiawi near the pasture.  I also planted some red ti leaf that I had rooting in a bucket of water.  It was a native plant kind of day, I suppose.  

Sally has come out of the bushes to re-join the flock, so she must be feeling better.  The incision site seems to be healing well.  Little Spot is still gritting his teeth, so his injury must be a bit sore - he might need a little banamine or aspirin.  The vet says sheep need banamine IV, which I am not comfortable doing - horses can take it IM, so I guess I really do need to try the baby aspirin instead.  Poor little guy.  

My daughter is doing fine; we stopped at the doctor this morning to check her pulse, and all is well - looks like no weird cardiac syndrome for, praise God.  

Post Injury

The Dorpers are doing fine, in spite of their various injuries and their mad escape into the woods (read jungle) at the back of the land.  As it is actually sunny today, I let them all out this morning and will pull them in for dinner early to give shots, etc.

Elvis has a sore foot; I don't see any signs of rot, so I think it is a bruise.  I am trying to soak him with epsom salts like I would a horse, but he is rather difficult.  He seems quite sorry for himself and wants to be babied.

I am not doing a great job at taking a vacation, so I guess I am continuing to blog.

Off to the Hilo Farmer's Market today and to walk around downtown with my eldest while the youngest attends a birthday party at a beach park.  I am just closing my eyes to all the stuff that needs to be done around here - the girls need a little girl time today.

Almost Biblical

I have been living the story of the Good Shepherd rather more often than I would like this week.

Sally and Spot made a run for it last night when my husband was letting the chickens in.  We ended up looking for them for nearly two hours in the pouring rain, sludging through mud and puddles up over my rubber boots with flash nights and a rapidly growing soggy can of feed.  It felt like we examined every blade of grass and tree in the five acres of pasture, but they were nowhere.  I was so tired (I had only had time for  two scrambled eggs and a banana at 7 am, and here it was 8 at night) by the end, I thought I could just happily lay down in the wet grass and mud and sleep well.

I kept thinking about that dog bite on the lamb and that suture line on the ewe and what a night in the cold and wet would do.

Turns out, it did nothing.  My husband found them in the morning, right where I thought they would be last night and they joined the flock when they came out for breakfast.  We brought the whole gang in this afternoon and I was able to give them their penicillin shots and spray them with fly spray and antibiotic solution.

It's been a wet, cold summer.  I am ready for sun. At some point next week, I need to drag the family to Kona (long drive) so we can get into some sun and swim in the ocean.  There are beaches on this side - but lately, no sun at all.

Update on Ewe, Ram Lamb, and Fainting Child

After the ewe didn't seem to be progressing, I took an exploratory feel.  There was no lamb at all in the birth canal, and the pelvic bones were so tight I couldn't even get into the uterus.

Unfortunately, the voice mailbox for the large animal vet was full so I couldn't even leave a message.  I took a chance and tried a small animal vet down in town - I knew they took unusual animals because two of my former students work there as vet techs.

They agreed to see the ewe and so I just threw the dog bitten ram lamb in just to make sure everything was going well.

Meanwhile, in the back of my head is this calculation - ewe who will certainly die without help and kid who's fainted and is probably okay, but maybe it's something awful....On top of that, three of my four kids were in Hilo at various locations (friend's homes, work, etc.) and needed to get home.  Stressful, to say the least.  Figuring out who needed what help in what order was challenging.

By the time I got the ewe to the vet, the lamb was in the birth canal, but it was firmly stuck and the most determined tug of war between the vet tech and my self holding the ewe and the vet pulling on these giant hooves couldn't dislodge him.  I gave the go-ahead for a very expensive c-section.  It doesn't make any financial sense, but there was the chance that there was another live lamb (there wasn't);  I actually think if the vet were at the farm I would have just had her put down, but somehow the decision was different in front of a pet vet and a kid I taught from sixth to twelfth grade.  I asked to see the dead lamb after - he looked like a two week old lamb in size.  Just huge.

I appreciate very much that the small animal vet took the sheep in - but it wasn't terribly confidence inspiring to see him looking up how to do the c-section on the internet!

The good news is Sally is up and eating, I have plenty of penicillin and syringes and sharps, and so far we are not seeing bloat or the types of breathing difficulties that might mean pneumonia.  Spot (the dog bite victim) is also chipper and eating, and although me with a bottle of antiseptic spray and a needle in hand isn't a favorite sight, he is quite a patient little fellow.

I am taking my daughter into the doctor later - the only available appointment was at 2 pm, which actually works out to get my son from work (he is programming for the USDA - he's 16! I am pretty blown away), my other son from his friend's (he stayed a second night because it was easier), etc. etc.  Summer is turning out to be busier than the school year.  The bright spot is all these veterinary issues are happening when I actually have time to babysit sick sheep.