Little Moe

Little Moe with the gimpy leg

________________________________

Rebekah tagged him  little Moe with the gimpy leg within the first couple of days after we got him. (She loves to quote lines out of old movies and said it was  from  Home Alone 2)

We’re raising 60  baby chicks this summer to butcher  in conjunction with 5 other local families.   free range and organic grain to supplement  their caloric intake.  We’ve had them now for 18 days.

While the other 59  chicks will run at the first hint of danger,  Little Moe will just stand there…..one thousand one, one thousand two… before he hobbles away,dragging his right leg behind him. burying his little body into mass of other baby chicks in the corner of the  room.

You’ve no doubt heard of the term “pecking order”.  There really is such a thing in the animal kingdom.  It comes from the chicken house.

Chickens really do establish who is the top dog (or chicken) in the flock.

Guess who’s @ the bottom of the pecking order?

Yep.

Little Moe.

I’ve always had a tender spot for the underdog  even back  in school.   While I was not low man on the pecking order,  I was certainly not at the top either.  Which in large measure why I do not  have many fond memories of my time in school.

I hated school.

It got worse once I hit 7th grade.

I can still remember  Ray, Randy, and Jeff pushing Greg out of the locker room with nothing on but his  jock strap.  Where the teacher was I have no idea.  Our locker rooms were right down the hall from the student center…

imagine  getting thrown out  into plain view of a  group of your peers with  little or nothing on…..

Another thing  the bullies  loved to do was come up behind you when you least expected it and pull your  gym shorts down.  they called it de-pants-ing…  Luckily, neither of those things ever happened to me, but I lived in constant fear of it happening from 7th grade right up until my senior year.

There was a girl in our class…Her name was Debbie Cooper. Kids called her “De-coop”    She was from a poor farm family.  She’d developed early, was somewhat over weight, wore thick horn rimmed glasses.  Gary  loved to harass Debbie…until she’d take a swing at him and then he’d laugh.

We had another girl  named Denise.  Pretty.  Transferred into our class  when we were in 6th grade.  Her mom had died and her dad was doing the best  to raise 2 girls and a boy.   I can still remember sitting in our 6th grade choir room, looking outside while another class of 6th graders were   outside for recess.  Gary  (yep, same one)  came up to Denise and pushed her down into the snow.   Where were the teachers????

Denise was shy .

All she wanted was to fit in. Somebody tagged her with the nickname “Scarecrow” ….

 

Imagine being a girl with a nick name like Scarecrow.

Want to close with  a short plug for an excellent book on this topic of bullying and emotional abuse.

Frank Peretti tells his true story  in the book he’s titled The Wounded Spirit

It is a must read for anyone who has been in the receiving end of this sort of thing.

____________________________________

Getting back to little Moe.  I’ve already decided we’re going to keep him long term….

Any thoughts or experiences on this whole issue of pecking orders and bullying?

As always thanks for taking the time to read my stuff.  DM

_________________________________

Update 4 hours later.…just brought my tomatoes in for the night.

I’m in the process of “hardening” them…In case you’re new to gardening,   these tomatoes were raised under a grow light in the basement and the cell structure in the plants is not strong enough to handle the wind and elements initially, so for a week or two before I finally plant them in the ground, I set them out during the day, give them a controlled exposure to the elements.

At night I bring them back inside and allow them to recover….unfortunately, a couple of the plants were really  tested today and two of them snapped in half.  My mind instantly went to this blog post about adversity and while some adversity is good for us (as Trish pointed out) making us stronger,  it is possible to  be broken long term…just like this:

Brandywine tomato plant snapped off by the wind  today

2 trays of tomatoes just in from a day of adversity.  Tray on the right doesn’t look to bad.  Tray on the left had a harder day.

Grandpa you were wrong

Don’t

Surrender

Your loneliness so quickly.

Let it cut more

Deep.

Let it ferment and season you

As few human

Or even divine ingredients can.

Something missing in my heart tonight

Has made my eyes so soft,

My voice so

Tender….

from the poem “My Eyes So Soft”  by Hafiz

_______________________________________________

For years I’ve  been intrigued by the issue of loneliness.

I’m very relational, and on those occasions where the winds of loneliness did  blow through my soul I HATED  it.

Yes, even when you’re in a great marriage, on occasion a person still can experience the angst of loneliness.

On the morning of my wedding I stopped by my grandpa’s house after I got my hair cut to say “Hi”

He’d been married for over 50 years by this time.

We talked about marriage.

 He told me : “After three months,  it’s all work”

He gave me the impression, the romantic feelings I was feeling were not going to last.

That was 33 years ago this weekend.

4 children later….

We still like to hold hands,

Read to each other

and  are very much in love

Mrs DM is taking off on a trip to help out with the grand kids tomorrow.

She’ll be gone for 5 days.

I miss her already.

If you’ve been a reader of my blog for very long, you know I’m a big U2 fan…

Some couples have a song that captures their relationship…

here’s ours….

The picture below was taken on our 25th anniversary.

We still look pretty much the same today.  Mrs. DM’s hair is a little more gray and mine,

well, I don’t have  as much.

Still rock’n after 33 years.

Baby Chicks

I got a phone call 6:30 AM Thursday morning from the post office.  Our little peepers were in!  Come and get them

Our new Chicken shed in transit.   Found a John Deere wagon running gear on Craigs list for $200.  Ended up spending another $184.00 on 4  good used tires.

I saw a set up like this on a local CSA.  The birds free range during the day and spend the night in the shed, so as not to be eating by coyote’s , racoons etc. @ night.

I had the new chicken shed all set up with two heat lamps, 2 feeders, and a new waterier.  The day the chicks arrived it was windy and cold…even with the heat lamps I was concerned it might be too cold for the chicks so I did what any farmer would do trying to keep the baby animals alive…brought them into the house.  In this case, our living room

I was talking with  Janaan a farmer’s wife earlier this week.  She told us, her husband had brought, baby pigs, chicks, sheep and even a baby calf into their  basement to get them started.

60 baby chicks are in that box just waiting to get out

Here’s what they look like when you pop open the lid

baby chicks spending the night in our living room under the heat lamp

Yes we really do have 60 baby chicks in our living room.

At the water cooler

eating some tasty organic chick starter

birds eye view

Whatch you look’n at???

Here’s some pictures I grabbed of the Internet to get an idea what the chicks will look like when they mature:

Silver- laced Wynadotte

black-australorp-rooster.

Rhode_Island_Red_Rooster

___________________________________

What I would really like to look into now is growing our own non-genetically modified chicken feed for next season…any of you reading this ever come up with your own chicken feed  recipe?  Talk to me.  We have an acre and 1/4 of ground behind the barn just sitting there doing nothing.  DM

______________________________________

Update 4/20/2012  This post originally appeared on my other blog last week/ (it has more to do with things around our acreage)  Let me know if you’d like a link to that blog and I will get it for you.  Thought some of you might get a kick out of the little baby chick pictures. DM

The Sinkhole Syndrome

If my private world is in order, it will be because I am convinced that the inner world of the spiritual must govern the outer world of activity

_________________________________________________________

The Sinkhole syndrome

The residents of a Florida apartment building awoke to a terrifying sight outside their windows.  The ground beneath the street in front of their building had literally collapsed, creating a massive depression that Floridian’s call a sinkhole.  Tumbling into the ever-deepening pit were automobiles, pavement, sidewalks, and lawn furniture.  The building itself would obviously be the next to go.

Sinkholes occur, scientists say, when underground streams drain away during seasons of drought, causing the ground at the surface to lose its underlying support.  Suddenly everything simply caves in, leaving people with a frightening suspicious that nothing – not even the earth beneath their feet – is trustworthy.

There are many people whose lives are like one of Florida’s sinkholes.  It is likely that at one time or another many of us have perceived ourselves to be on the verge of a sinkhole – like cave-in.  In the feelings of numbing fatigue, a taste of apparent failure, or the bitter experiences of disillusionment about goals or purposes, we have have sensed something within us about to give way.  We feel we are just a moment from a collapse that will threaten to sweep our entire world into a bottomless pit.  Sometimes there seems to be little that cane be done to prevent such a collapse.  What is wrong?

If we think about it for very long, we may discover the existence of an inner space 0f our private world- about which we were formerly ignorant.  I hope it will become apparent that, if neglected, this private world will not sustain the weight of events and stresses that press upon us.

Some people are surprised and disturbed when they make such a self discovery.  They suddenly realize that they have spent the majority of their time and energy establishing life on the visible level, at the surface.  They have accumulated a host of good and perhaps even excellent assets such as academic degrees, work experience, key relationships and physical strength or beauty.

There is nothing wrong with all of that . But often it is discovered almost too late that the private world of the person is in a state of disorderliness or weakness.  And when that is true, there is  always potential for the sinkhole syndrome.

We must come to see ourselves as living in two very different worlds.  Our outer, or public world is easier to deal with,.  It is much more measurable, visible, and expandable,.  Our outer world consists of work, play possessions, and a host of acquaintances that make up a social network,  It is the part of our existence easiest to evaluate in terms of success, popularity, wealth, and beauty.  But our inner world is more spiritual in nature.  Here is a center in which choices and values can be determined, where solitude and reflection might be pursued….

….Our public worlds are filled with a seeming infinity of demands upon our time, our loyalties, our money, and our energies.  And because these public worlds of ours are so visible, so real, we have to struggle to ignore all there seductions and demands.  They scream for our attention and action.

But there is a private world in every one of us.

A world that may be as infinite in size as we perceive our public worlds, to be.

From the book Ordering Your Private World by Gordon McDonald

__________________________________

I  DM read those words in 1987 as my personal world was on the verge of a   sinkhole collapse.

I was 29 years old.

to be continued…

Adrenal Exhaustion and stress

“A calm and undisturbed mind and heart are health and life to the body, but envy, Jealousy and wrath (anger) are rottenness in the bones.”

Eastern proverb

______________________________________________________

I hit the wall emotionally back in 1987.

I felt like I was in a vice,  crushed between several ” self-induced” pressures.

It was a watershed time in my life.

Of late, I’ve read a couple of blog posts  that took me back to that time in my life…I wished I could sit down with each of those writers over a cup of coffee and visit…Since that’s not probably  going to happen, I thought I would do the next best thing..post a portion of a chapter on stress  that one of my daughters is currently reading ..it’s from the book  The Anxiety Cure by Archibald Hart

Chapter 10  Dealing with Overstress

Stress!  Some hate it; others love it.  If you love it, it is more than certain that you will die from it.  Stress is both exciting and painful.  It exhilarates us and gives us energy to achieve, but at the same time, it causes an accelerated wear and tear on our bodies….

Our culture does not train us to manage stress.  If anything, it capitalizes on our stress.  Do you want a promotion in your job?  Then you have to work harder and longer than your nearest rival.  Competition is the name of the game and, if you don’t play the game, you lose….

So what is stress?  Let me suggest a few examples:

Stress is being stretched beyond your limits.  Whenever you are confronted with challenges that you don’t seem to be able to cope with or demands that you don’t have the skills to deal with, your system goes into emergency mode…..

Stress is overextending yourself without adequate time for recovery.  If you have a series of crises in your life where one thing upon another is thrust upon you, your stress level will increase very dramatically.

Stress is believing you can do more than your human frame can take.  Remember my earlier engineering analogy using the term “duty cycle”?  It applies here.  Electric motors have a duty cycle, if you recall, that indicates what percentage of time the motor is designed to run.  If you use it for longer than its duty cycle, it will burn out.  That’s a fact of engineering.  No engine or motor is designed to run all the time without a break – without some sort of rest.  Remember that the human body is no different.  In fact the human body has a much lower duty cycle than most machines.

Adrenal Exhaustion

…it does not happen overnight but progresses through a series of stages.  In the first stage of fighting stress, the adrenal glands tend to overproduce.  They produce high amounts of adrenaline, noradrenaline, and cortisol.  As the stress keeps going, the glands begin to expand their production and can begin to feel overtaxed.

The second stage now beings as the glands  begin to temporarily under-function.  You will find that the adrenal glands “crash” because they are depleted.  This leaves you feeling fatigued a lot of the time, especially when you let down at weekends or in the evenings.

If you are healthy, the third stage now sets in.  Your glands compensate for coming up short and begin to rebuild themselves, adapting to the higher demand by actually enlarging so as to compensate for the higher demand for their service.

If the high level of stress continues, a fourth stage sets in.  The glands again eventually exhaust themselves and remain in a chronic state of under-functioning.  At this stage, they can oscillate between over producing  adrenaline, causing panic or mood swings like depression, then crashing and under-producing adrenaline the rest of the time.  With insufficient stress fighting hormones, you will tend to have  difficulty handling any stressful situation.  You will feel as if you are falling apart.  At this point, your stress tolerance is exhausted…..

How can you know if adrenal exhaustion has set in?  Here are some telltale signs:

A sense of chronic low stress tolerance

Frequent feelings of fatigue

Repeated bouts of depression, especially when you stop work or try to relax

Worsening allergies or asthma

Cravings for substances that provide stimulation

Addiction to caffeine.

How do you recover from a chronic state of adrenal exhaustion?  By consistently working at lowering adrenal arousal to allow your system to “reset” itself.  Your body needs time to heal and to adpat to a lower level of functioning.  Here are the general guidelines:

Simplify your lifestyle and reduce stress to the absolute minimum./  Take up a hobby.  Get lots of fresh air and sunshine.

Increase your sleep to a minimum of between 8 and 1/2 to 9 hours a night.  (I’ll have more to say about this in chapter 14)

Eliminate all stimulants, especially, caffeine, as well as nicotine, alcohol, and recreational drugs.  These play havoc with your body’s chemistry.

Eliminate all  foods that may disturb your digestion or cause allergies

Supplement your diet with vitamins such as B-Complex C and E

Take yourself less seriously and treat life more respectfully…

__________________________________

End of quote.

Back in 1987  I  (DM) made radical lifestyle choices to bring my life back under control.  I hope I never find myself under that much self induced pressure and stress.  As a former people please-er, I ruthlessly guard my free time….my evenings and weekends.

There is more I could tell you,  but since you didn’t ask, I’ll stop here.

ps  there is a great self evaluation stress  test in the chapter I may post if anyone is interested…

pss.  More than once, I’ve heard some zealous fool brag about burning the candle on both ends as if somehow God was pleased with their fervor.

He doesn’t need our “burning out”   Why do you think he created us with the built-in  need to sleep a 1/3 of our lives away?  I think it’s so we’ll have less time to screw things up.

So to all you driven workaholics.  (I can say this because I was one)

Relax

Build some margin into your life.  (make sure you click that link if you’ve read this far)

You’ll last  longer.

As always, thanks for reading along. DM

___________________________________

Update 4/14/2012 

Here’s that stress test Wa Makeri:

Telltale signs of too much stress

 How can you tell if you have too much stress in your life?  Here is a baker’s dozen of important symptoms.  Look at these telltale signs and give yourself the following scores:

( 0)  if you never experience this symptom

(1) if you experience it say once a month

(2) if you experience it between once a month and once a week

(3) if you experience it often (more than once a week)

1.  Do you experience headaches of any sort?

2.  Does your heart pound, feel irregular, or skip beats?

3. Do you feel a lot of muscle tension or stiffness in your joints?

4. D you ever feel dizzy or lightheaded?

5. Do you get sick often (colds, flue, or throat problems)?

6. Does indigestion, nausea, or other stomach discomfort bother you, or do you suffer from stomach ulcers?

7. Do you have difficulty sleeping, falling asleep, or waking up too early?

8. Do you typically have to wake up to an alarm still feeling tired?

9. Does your mind become very active and race a lot?

10. Do you grind your teeth or does your jaw ache?

11. Do you become very excited when you engage in challenging activities?

12. Do you get angry quickly or feel a deep sense of injustice whenever things go wrong?

13. Do you suffer from high blood pressure or elevated cholesterol?

Results:

     If you scored between 0 and 8 you probably have little or no stress.  Seek help only if one or two points of discomfort bother you and especially if you answered yes to question 13

A score of 9 to 15 indicates a fair amount of stress.  If any of the symptoms has been around for a long time you may need help in getting rid of it.

A score of 16 to 30 indicates a high level of stress.  You could benefit from professional help

If your score is more than 30, your stress level is extremely high.  You should seek professional help right away.

Spring In The Country

I could not believe my eyes…

There they were, popping out of the grass in our orchard this past Wednesday evening.

Grey Morels….

A month early, no less…

close up of a morel I  found this week.

You’d be proud of me.

I resisted the temptation to pick them all,  and went to find my wife.

It felt like we were on an Easter egg hunt, only we were looking for mushrooms.

By the time we were done, we’d found over a 100:

They may look gross to the untrained eye, but boy are they tasty

They sell on craigslist around here for  $40 a pound.

In case you’re interested, here’s how I prepare them:

Cut them in 1/2  (sometimes little bugs like to hide in the hollow middle)

Then I soaked  them in salt water over night.

Rinsed them in clean water when I got ready to fry them.

Dip them in an egg wash

Then I put them in a baggy with crushed Ritz crackers and Johnny’s Seasoning Salt (shake)

Fry in real butter…

Yummy!

_________________________________

Apple Trees

There are   60  semi dwarf  apple trees on the East side of our house and another 20 on the West side…

They are in full bloom this week…

Wild bee pollinating in our orchard

Just like the rest of the plants this year, the apple trees are a month ahead of schedule.

I am gradually coming to the place where I think I may build a bee hive.

So far, the wild bees have been doing a pretty good job of pollinating the trees….

We’ll see…maybe next year.

_________________________________________

Wild Asparagus

This morning I came across some more “edible landscape”

Wild asparagus…

Wild asparagus

I can’t stand the stuff myself, but Mrs DM loves it….

___________________________________________

Grant Wood

My favorite Grant Wood  painting  is “Spring in the Country”

Remember American Gothic?

Yep, same guy…

Local boy too.
Turns out he was a prolific artist.

Sometime when you have a minute, Google his name and check out some of his other work.

We probably have a dozen of his prints scattered throughout our country farm house.

I feel like I’m living in the middle of that picture this week….

Several of you live in urban settings..

I know  it can be kind of stressful….

so tonight is my humble attempt @ bringing a little country to your door.

g-nite. 

DM