So who invited Irene up for the weekend?

No, Irene is not my mother in law(who might I add has not been here in over a month)

If you haven't heard, Irene is the hurricane churning up the east coast.

I have friends and family up and down the coast, they are all in my thoughts as we brace for this one. Especially my uncle who lives on his boat and has been docked in the Chesapeake Bay for the summer. It has been a long time since Massachusetts has seen the likes of Hurricane Gloria and Bob, that was 20 years ago. I was a carefree kid, I didn't own a house, animals or have kids to worry about. We just worried about getting to the Packey in time to get home before it got too bad out.

Usually when we get hit with a n'oreaster or hurricane it is the Cape and Islands that get hit. Listening to the news this week Rugosa Rose Farm and Tilley's Nest have been in my thoughts. I met them both at the Chicken Workshop I went to.  Rugosa Rose is on the Vineyard, not a great place to be in a storm.  So to my surprise when I turned on the news today the path of the storm has changed and it is heading my way, right up central and western MA.

We will be battening down the hatches, securing lawn and deck furniture. We will be storing water for us and the animals since we have a well.  We just took delivery of our 14 cubic foot freezer.  We will be freezing blocks of ice to ice our food if we are without electricity.  We have a lot of chicken in our freezer we don't want to lose.  We have access to a generator if worse comes to worse.

Just out of principle I will not be buying water or bread.  That makes me crazy.  Around here when a storm is coming and people have to buy bread to last them the next year.  I will fill up my gas tank, gas for the grill, gas for the chain saw and have a little cash on hand. We live in a rural area so we are usually stocked up with anything we may need. 

We plan to put lots of fresh shavings down for the girls on Saturday since they will probably be locked up in the coop all of Sunday.  We will have lots of fresh cut grass for the chickens that we will put in clumps in their coop.  That always makes them happy and will help them pass the time while being shut in.  We have shutters for the windows of the coop that we will screw shut to keep the heavy rain and wind out.

 Now onto other news...

I am happy to announce that the chicken formerly know as Foghorn Leghorn has a new name...

She is the red on the right and her name is Big Bossy and you can also call her Miss Bossy.  She is our top girl and has really taken to her name.

 Big Bossy loves PC, she will watch him to see what he is up to.  In the picture below he was going out to get some kindling for a fire, she just kept watching him to see what he was doing. So cute.

Here's hoping that Irene decides to go out to sea and spares the east coast.

Stay safe and take care!

The Fox in the Town...

 

Not to start off topic, but pictured above is

Pheobe 'Buff'ay our Buff Orpington(formerly known as Buffy)

 

Now on with the fox...

We have a fox...my brilliant child thought he would fend off fox

attack with a Red Rider BB gun, yes the same kind of bb gun that Ralphie could 

barely shoot his eye out with.

Luckily the fox fled without incident.

We have been letting our girls free range under our supervision.

With hawks, coyotes and now fox we have been worried

about losing a girl or two.

I went to the coop...the girls were expecting their afternoon romp.

I had to explain, "we have a fox in the town".

It just makes me smile when I say that.  When PC was a little guy he

loved the movie The Fox and the Hound but he would call it 

The Fox in the Town. We would always make up jokes and stories about the 

Fox in the Town. Now... not so funny if that fox in this town is going to eat

my girls. I guess a fox in the town is better than a fox in the hen house at this point.

In other news, I have not been absent from to blog world due to an extended bender 

from Friday night...I have been exhausted though due to the owl living in the woods 

behind my house. Sunday night there was a good hour of non stop hooting.

Then last night again but the hooting was interrupted by the squealing death of some animal the owl caught.

It sounded like a rabbit...yes poor Thumper.  I was telling my husband that it was a 

rabbit.  I recognized the sound of the screaming a rabbit makes.  I grew up around a lot of animals, rabbits included. Rabbits scream or squeal when they mate.  

That's a sound you don't forget.

PC asked how I knew it was a rabbit. I explained that the rabbit made a noise that they usually only make on special occasions, he said, "like Christmas?" I said, 

"something like that..."