Opie's blind chicken-the pig names her Henneth but Opie calls her Pickles

A post shared by Katherine Dunn / Apifera Farm (@katherinedunnapiferafarm) on Apr 24, 2018 at 2:25pm PDT

Our latest Apiferian is a one eyed blind chicken. Opie immediately seemed to understand the chicken was unique. When she first arrived, I kept her in a bunny hutch on the floor of the barn where Opie, and his other pet chicken, and some Buffs, could get to know said blind chicken. Now Opie is feeling pretty full of himself these days, with Spring air, and the fact that he now seems to have not one, but two pet chickens. He made it clear in this video not to bother his new blind chicken!

He had not even named the first pet chicken, one of the four Buff Orpingtons who I took out of the flock to be away from Father, the Barred Rock rooster who is very rough on the girls. The Buffs don't tolerate him, but this poor hen would cower for hours in a corner, so I took her out. Then the other Buffs began separating out from the Barred Rock girls. The Buffs were here first and were grown when the Barred rock hens arrived as chicks. So be it, the Buffs now live with Opie, Sir Tripod and Else in the front barn, and the Barred Rocks live with Father in the other side of the barn. You gotta go with the flow.

So when my friend asked if I might be able to take her one eyed blind chicken, how could I say 'no'. Blind, one eyed? It's right up the Apifera alley. I had met the chicken formally at my friends home, where she was working hard to get the chicken back in good enough health to return to the flock. We don't know what happened, but she thinks a predator, perhaps a hawk, freaked out the flock and this hen damaged her eye. Whatever happened, she was in my friend's care in her studio for weeks, so she was really personable and used to being handled since her eye was being cleaned daily. But her land is different than ours, and she feared the hen was a sitting...er, duck...to prey, and I suspect she was right.

When I first took her out of the crate on arrival, I thought,

This chicken is not long for this world.

But as you know well, I am often wrong.

I knew she had been in a cage for many weeks, so it was clear she was a bit wobbly. Her beak was long, as were her toes. But she just seemed off. She would lay down and tuck her head down. I know that could have been a defense too, but she was thin and you know once a chicken, in my experience, and I am not a chicken guru, but once a chicken gets really sick it seems to take a lot of them. Her 'good' eye was also goopy, and her wounded eye was like a Marty Feldman eye and really weird looking. After about for days of cleaning it, I noticed a piece of straw stuck there in the ooze, pulled it out, and magic, the eye just exploded with liquid. Sorry for the graphics, but not only did the chicken seemed relieved, so was I. Now that eye is sort of there, but dark. She is definitely blind, as she runs into any objects that are new. but she knows her area now.

In fact she was laying an egg every now and then-a beautiful brown one. I put her in her bunny hut at night but each morning she comes out and free ranges. She knows my voice and comes to me, and I still hold her and clean her eyes. I love that I can do this. I have missed personable chickens, which I had many of out West. For some reasons, my hens here have been less personable. But the Buffs, free from Father, are warming up.

Well, it was time to name that chicken.

"Pickles," said Opie.

"One Blind Mouse," yelled out Wilbur the Acrobatic Goat.

"I've been called her Henneth," said Earnest the pig, as he napped.

Well, the pig is often right, so her name is Henneth. But Opie still calls her Pickles. It is after all, his chicken.

Opie and Henneth, er, Pickles

On arrival, I put a harness on her, thinking the hens might peck her eye

Old else, with Henneth

Her right eye now deflated

My waistline has a plan of its own but I can help an old goat

A post shared by Katherine Dunn / Apifera Farm (@katherinedunnapiferafarm) on May 8, 2018 at 9:33am PDT

I have tried and finally succeeded in getting a quick video of old Else coming out of the barn in the morning. The elder, crippled goat has seemed to come to life after winter -–who of us hasn't?–and I get such a good feeling when I see how content she looks coming out to go to the orchard pasture where she, Opie and Sir Tripod Goat spend much of the summer.

Else's front leg is getting more and more bent. She reminds me a bit of Stevie, our beloved very crippled goat we had out West, in the way she moves that front leg. She arrived really thin but has put on weight by feeding her twice a day away from other animals, with minerals. For her age and breed though, she's doing okay.

When I come upon her as I did later this morning after chores, sunning, it just gives me great inner peace. I can't save the world from destructive powers out of my control, I can't win every argument with the angry masses online [and I don't try], I guess I'll never have a book deal and my waistline has a plan of its own, but I can work in inside the fences of Apifera that protect us all from The Noisy But Necessary Road to Everywhere [aka Maine Route 32], trying to make an old goat comfortable, giving her a feeling of safety and permanence. Each day and night her routine is, well, routine. I have always understood the importance to animals, and us humans too, of an understood routine. Sure you go out of the routine sometimes, but a daily knowledge of what is going to happen, and not happen, brings calm to the animal and barnyard. That knowledge has worked well for me all these years. It also means when something goes wrong, the entire barnyard knows.

If you like the work we are doing hoping old/special needs animals, please consider a donation to our non profit. Thank you!

Stanley leaves, Stanley returns

Last week I noticed that Stanley J. Catfish was not at morning feedings which is the norm. Since they came, the two cats have been a bonded unit, where one is, the other follows.

But I didn't think too much about it, and went on with my feedings. Still, it was not right. After all the ferels and barn cats we had taken on out West, I knew they often disappear, sometimes for many days, a few weeks even, and return unscathed. And sometimes they don't return.

I just knew it was odd that the two were a unit, unlike the cats out west, who were part of a huge clan and separate barns, so they had more interdependence from each other.

I waited a few days, and lost hope, and posted about it on Instagram. I think it was two days later, and there he was at breakfast. I was so happy to see him. He must have thought I was nuts because I sang to him, discussed his where abouts, gave him a lecture [oh yea, cat lectures really work, right?] and sat with him too, looking to see if there were any wounds on him.

The night of his return, he was extra hungry at dinner I thought, and I sat with him while he ate, pushing the bowl with my finger, and then touching his head. I'm trying to tender them both up in time for autumn rabies shots-it would make it much easier for everyone including them.

This morning at feedings, after being back one day, he was not there.

So Stanley J. Catfish must have a double life, a really good reason not to be around for a free and easy meal of stinky cat food, which he devours when he is present. I wondered if he might be onto a female somewhere, since he was only neutered about three months ago and it supposedly takes about 6 months for their wanderlust hormones to dissipate after neutering. Or maybe he is just napping, maybe he is ill and wants to be alone...maybe he has a pickup out in The Wood and he drives away to a cabin once a week. He might even have a passport.

Such is the mystery of the barn cat.

I was thinking though how quickly I had lost my hope when he left. I have been through this so many times, but instead of taking the 'think positive' route, I just accepted pretty quickly an eagle or fox got him, thinking he wasn't that worldly as other ferels I've known. I wondered if I'm losing my touch, my innate gut feeling-something we all have for sure-but I practice at listening to my intuition, and I wondered if I wasn't listening, or what had made me so doubtful this time.

I don't know. Maybe it's that death is everywhere there is life, and sometimes, especially on a small farm, it is best to acknowledge, and move on or one can go crazy worrying, wondering, imagining what happened. Was it a quick kill, was he stuck somewhere, had he been hit...on and on.

I'm not sure what the lesson is in what I just wrote. But I do know, as always,

Nature knows more than I do.

So does the darn cat.

Guarding for dinosaurs and wild bear

White Dog waiting to be set free in the lower pastures, which are not ready for animals yet since they are wet, and some are being reseeded and limed. He's perfectly happy though, as long as he has a job, which he always does-right now it is guarding the paddocks from wild bear and dinosaurs.

Poem for Boone

Boone and I had a great workout this week. We rode over to a nearby corral and worked out together. It felt so good. And he was really in sync with me, which made me feel like we are getting back to each other. I wrote this poem some time ago and came upon it today.

Wind blowing through his mane

up onto my hands which hold two reins loosely.

We ride, or I ride and he carries, down a gravel road

chunks of itself missing

after log trucks rush by with their fallen victims.

All around us, before us and in front of us,

lay fallen leaves, dead on arrival.

He stops to ask me with his ears and a twinge of his neck,

"May I have one?"

"No," I say with tight leg, "we still have a ways to go."

And we move on,

the flies sitting in the corners of his eyes

which he blinks away, only to have them return seconds later.

With each gust of wind I watch his mane's journey,

left, then right, left, right again.

I lose my sense of place as I watch,

waiting for the course strands to settle again.

We near our destination,

a small valley with abandoned house,

nothing left but an old satellite dish,

and a gate falling down, bent in age.

The hay has been cut, bundled and hauled off to old barns

leaving us this empire of grass, and a backdrop of ancient trees.

We hear the true collaboration of trees and wind

with branches and space humming, hissing, and groaning .

It's not a greeting, or a playful song -

It's a resonance.

Ignoring skin, it sinks down into the flesh and then the bone,

while the heart skips beats trying to keep up.

Haunting, it reminds of a past time

that we can not get to.

I strive to give you the little things

I have been designing, writing, producing and publishing my own illustrated books now for many years. I do all the layout, concepts, art and writing. I have been working with an offset printer for my books with larger print runs, but with "Little Tulip" I am using a well respected printer that does smaller digital runs. People ask me why I didn't use Amazon [Create Space] and my answer is: control of the little things seemed iffy. And I do not want to sell my books on Amazon, I much prefer to do it in my humble one-book-at-a-time way, where I can hand wrap each book and sign them. If you've bought a book from me, you know what I mean.

There are little things about books that I can remember as a child, and I want these surprises in my books. One of the most important and fun things for me to work on, and it is usually the last thing I do, are the 'end sheets'. Remember when you were little and you opened up "Winnie the Pooh" book, and on the inside cover there was a colored map of Pooh's world? Those are end sheets. And when you do print-on-demand books at Blurb, or Amazon, you get blank end sheets for your hard cover books.

Blank end sheets? That's no fun.

So that is a little thing you have to look forward to with all my books-illustrated end sheets. I'm showing you a glimpse of the front end sheet for "Little Tulip". I'll save the back end sheets for your surprise.

We are 1/2 way funded but I will be getting production going soon. There is a limited run of this book, only 151 copies will be made. This is a teeny run compared to my other books in which I usually pre sell 300-500. S0, if you want one, it is best to pre-order today.Why am I doing such a small run this time? It allows me to produce the book without a huge out of pocket for the printing so I don't carry debt. It also is a storage issue. And, as importantly, these smaller run books will allow me to get some ideas off the table and in your hands as a book. I will still do 'bigger' books but these are going to be a great addition to my line.

It's a hard cover book, illustrated and will come sitting inside a linen case.

And if you pre-order, you might take home a piece of art from the book. There is also a reward level if you want a book and you also want to offer some extra money for my indie publishing efforts.

When I'm with an animal, I check my intentions

Muddy is going on nine later in the year. He is still very athletic and most, including vets, think he looks much younger. But I've noticed in the past six months or so he is getting the old dog look. Sometimes I think I see Huck when I look over at him. They were five years apart in age but out of the same parents. I did that on purpose, knowing someday Huck would leave us, and Muddy could carry on, in his own way of course. The two dogs were very different. Where Muddy could run all day, especially with his frisbee, Huck became a lay-around-and-just-be-me-lab, pretty much when Muddy showed up as a pup. He played, but it was as if he thought,

OK, good, they have reinforcements, I can relax a bit now.

I spent all day and everyday with the Huck, and when Mud came along, Huck sort of became more of my at-your-side-guy. When we moved to Maine, Huck was still healthy, although gimpy, but by the next spring his behavior and changed a bit. I saw deep thoughts in those brown eyes, and he began sleeping away from Mud, by my side at the bed. When I found the large mass on his neck, which came on quickly, I knew something was wrong. It was a wasting cancer, and we helped him on his way. He was 12. It was a horrible goodbye for me and Martyn. "End of an era," as Martyn said.

Muddy is a talker. He talks in a series of lip movements, lip curling, and yawning words. We walk together and he loves that. He seems so very happy when he sees me put on-not my Muck boots-but my hiking shoes.

That is the thing about dogs, they just want to partake in simple, but important, rituals with their owners, like a morning walk to sit by the cove a spell. They could care less about my aging face, but are completely tuned into my intent of the moment. They pick up on that, which is probably the best training lesson I can remind myself of with any animal-check your intentions with an animal, because they sense it.