Iceberg Farm

St. Anthony, NL Iceberg

Iceberg in St. Anthony, NL

Iceberg in St. Anthony, NL

The beans and garlic may not be doing very well this year's growing season, but have you seen the icebergs off St. Anthony!  Amazing!  There are hundreds, including the Petermann Ice Island. My friend, who is an amateur photographer, has allowed me to use some of his awesome images that he captured over the last few weeks.  While the photos do give the viewer a good idea of how may and how big some of the bergs are, I am sure it doesn't compare to being there in person to see them, feel the coolness from them, hear them crack and break, and smell them.  My friend told me that people in St. Carol's have been kept awake at night with the crashing and banging of the breaking ice.  It must be unbelievable to be there.

What a great summer for tourism at the Northern Peninsula.  Funnily enough, in the news last week, a woman from the United States was on the radio complaining of not seeing a single icebergs in the Twillingate area when she visited there this past month.  Why wasn't she directed to St. Anthony?  Not only were there tons of icebergs up around St. Anthony, but there were killer whales swimming about, and lot of seals on the floating ice too!  In fact, there were so many tourists in the St. Anthony area the past few weeks, the gas station had run out of fuel, restaurants in the area recorded best year yet in sales, and there were absolutely no vacancies for accommodations in the area. Maybe the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador should look into promoting that area of the Province a bit more aggressively in their tourism ads.  Never been there, myself, but I think that is about to change.

Thanks Chris Patey, for your awesome photographs. If anyone would like to view his work, especially the icebergs around of late, check out his Facebook page (www.facebook.com) as he has allowed access to it for a limited time so that he can share a piece of St. Anthony with everyone. I have posted a few here to give you a taste.

Jacob Two-Two!

Jacob Two-Two is a pre-teen boy character created by Mordecai Richler, and who my boys watched as a cartoon when they were little.  He always said things twice, hence the name Jacob Two-Two.  Gonna start calling myself Jacob Two-Two, because I can't seem to mow the lawn once; always have to do it twice because the fine days are so few and far between, the grass is too long to get it all in one mowing.

After 8 hours of gardening.

After a full day in the hot sun of mowing, it is finally done, front and back.  7 p.m. last night, I was able to sit on the step with satisfaction knowing I don't have to mow the lawn anymore for a few days!  I just hate to see grass left on the lawn and love the look of it trimmed nice and neat.  Maybe it's a psychological condition I have that I need to have neatness and order however I can get it in my chaotic life.  Whatever!  I saw a man on Newfoundland Drive, in the spring, vaccuuming the road sand off his lawn!  No one knows how many times I contemplated doing that in the spring but people would think I had more than psychological problems if I did that!  I would love to do it though.

Great weather! Now I can relax for a bit today, and maybe take in some of the bands at the Festival of Friends.

Warning!

Never check the oil in the lawnmower while it is running!  I found out the hard way!  Had a thought that it may be low on oil because it sounded sluggish, so, I unscrewed the oil cap and got splattered with specks of black oil.  I just rubbed it in and used it as sun tan lotion, which also gave me a bit of colour too!

Goats!

Billy (God rest his soul) as a kid!

Mario (God rest his soul), Billys dad.

Daisy (God love her), Billys mom.

Let me tell you the story of the goats, and not the Mobile goats either! Melanie, my niece, and her boyfriend, Mark, live on Colonial Street, how are ya!  If you can picture this, they had two goats there as pets.  They were Mario and Daisy.  They kept them in the back yard of Colonial Street!  I know, I know. How on earth did they manage that.  Well, they did but they asked if we would take them because I think the goats were making noise and the neighbours were complaining.  Never mind the smell! Anyway, it was pretty exciting when we got them. The grazed all the time and had such a good life here in Logy Bay.  They would go on the lawn and in the compost, and cars would almost crash coming down the road with drivers doing double-takes as they realized there were goats on my lawn.  They always stayed around the yard though,and at night, headed for the barn.

Mario and Daisy gave birth to two kids while I had them.  The first one was Billy, and almost a year later, Maisie came along.

We built an enclosed pen for them eventually, and they seemed happy enough. However, circumstances change and the were beginning to be a lot of work for me, so Melanie and Mark, having moved away to Nova Scotia, made arrangements for Lesters to take all the goats to their hobby farm until Melanie and Mark returned in a couple of years. 


So there I was, bringing the goats to Lesters farm, on a sunny Saturday, with four goats in the back of my SUV.  We lured them into the back with food, and they stood very quietly as we drove through downtown. I got many strange looks when people realized I had four goats in the back seat.  We managed to get them to Lesters and they have been there ever since.

Daisy is still alive, but Billy and Mario are dead. Mario and Daisy went on to have another kid when I had them.  It was a female which we named Maisie.  She is also alive and well and living at Lesters (Maybe that is where Elvis is too).  Mario and Daisy got pregnant yet again (I think they are Catholic goats) and had twins while living at Lesters, a black one and white one, males. They were so cute as kids.  We named them (at least I did) Bobby and Teddy.  Bobby died too, so now there are Daisy, Masie, and Teddy left at Lesters.  They may be moving to Logy Bay, but I still havent decided yet.

More Blue Eggs! Yay!!

Blue egg amongst the brown ones.

 What a nice surprise to find a blue egg in the nest every day.  The blue ones are slightly smaller than the rest, and pointier!  Weird!  They look so pretty.  I am saving them up so I will have a full dozen of blue ones.

Today, I put the culprit, I think, in the cage I have in the hen house, and I will leave that chicken there for a few days to see if she is the one laying the blue eggs.  I am just very curious.  Again, that odd chicken has a very small comb and no wattles so because it is different from the rest of the chickens, I think it is the one laying the blue eggs.  We will see.

Hmmmm. Where am I gonna put the goats!

 Yes, thats right, I said GOATS!  Melanie and Mark are home now and have three of their pygmy goats at Lesters on Pearltown Road.  They have been, I guess, fostering them while Mark and Melanie are away at school.  I am contemplating taking them back, as I had them a few years ago for a couple of years before we got the chickens.  They are more work than the chickens, but I am thinking, maybe they will keep each other warm and entertained over the winter.  BUT, I am also thinking, if they get out of the pen once, my plants are history.  All my hard work gone to goat feed.  They are quite entertaining to have as pets though.  I think if I can get the hen house (barn) straightened up, I am leaning towards taking them.  Gotta see if I can wrangle me a carpenter first.

This is my Silkie. Getting fairly big now.

Peek-a-boo! I cannot look at the hens sideways, and they squawk their heads off.  Especially the rooster.  Today, when I put the odd chicken in the cage as part of my experiment, I had to grab it by the tail feathers and do a bit of wrestling before I got a good grip on it. Well the rooster flipped out! He was clucking and crowing like there was no tomorrow.  I felt like saying to him, go lie down!  I think I did say that to him, but he just would not listen.

Blue Egg!

Blue egg I discovered today.

Same blue egg, but it is difficult to see the colour in that light.

Same blue egg. Experimenting with camera settings.

Blue egg again!

And finally, that same blue egg with its siblings!

I could not capture the colour very well with my little, old digital camera! I was very surprised to see a blue egg this morning, and excited for the ones to come when the Ameraucanas begin to lay in the fall.  I still am not sure exactly which hen laid that, so I will begin my experiment tomorrow.  I am going to cage one chicken for a few days in the dog kennel until I see it lay a blue egg.  I feel like Rumplestilskin waiting for the poor girl to spin straw into gold!

Hey, did you see that sun today!  The pavement was actually dry in spots! When it dries up a little more, it will be time to mow the lawns again! No rest for the wicked!

SNOW!

This actually looks inviting!

I figured if I showed images of snow, I wouldn't be too bummed out about this rain, drizzle, and fog!  My God, have you seen the like! The chickens are even going stir crazy!  Woke up this morning and looked out my patio door and there were 5 chickens looking me in the face through the glass!  The wind must have blown the hen house door open last night and there they all were, large as life, free-ranging all over the place!  I would have left them be for a while but I am only now getting  a few berries on the plants and those critters would have destroyed them in no time.

So there I was, barely awake, in my bathrobe, rubber boots on, trudging through the long, wet grass, chasing chickens trying to cajole them back into the hen house!  They were all soaking wet, nervous as cats, and squawking every time I looked at them!  I tricked some of them into the hen house with a handful of rolled oats and they followed like I was the pied piper.  The babies were not biting though, and they stayed out around the yard, all four of them fretting all at once, together.  I got the adults in and closed the door, then chased the little ones around until I managed to get them over the fence.  Wet feathers stuck all over my hands and bathrobe! They aren't quicker than me........yet though.

Anyway, they are all back in their quarters now, safe and sound, and me too, with a hot cup of tea listening to Cool Jazz on the Coast.  The only thing missing now is that cabin in the snow up there, with a fire crackling inside!  I'll have to plug in my little fake wood stove,  turn on the electric flames, close my eyes, and use my imagination!

Strawberries!

Just picked - ready for a salad.

Well, my strawberries are small but they are very sweet and tasty, I must say.  There seems to be about this much as in the picture, ripe every day and what I have been doing is just stopping between mowing the lawn and picking at the walkway, to snack on the ripe ones.  I am going to try to collect a few, freeze them, then save them for jam or some other dessert.  This year, the strawberries are growing a lot better than last year. I hear John Lester is having a good crop too!  He said they are having a longer growing season with the lack of sun.  Anyway, I can barely keep my little patch under control; I cannot imagine managing the fields of strawberries he has!

The raspberry bushes I have look like there are a lot of berries on them, but the plants are kinda frail-looking. We will have to see in a week or so.

I am looking forward to picking berries later on in the summer and early fall.  I like to go for the cranberries that grow along the cliffs just up from Marine Lab. Lots of blueberries and partridge berries down that way too.

Apronful of berries!