We have reached a new milestone in farming. Our livestock is reproducing itself.

I went out to let the chickens out this morning and almost stepped on the Buff Orpington hen (she is the same color as the straw). She pecked at my foot and got all ruffled, and as I was apologizing to her, I suddenly heard an unfamiliar noise.

"cheep cheep cheep cheep"

I looked down and there was a tiny little Buff Orpington fluffball peeking out from underneath the hen (the rooster is also a Buff Orpington).

I then ran into the house and upstairs to wake up the husband (and yes, I am aware that there is a persistent theme in these blog posts of me running in and waking the husband up with some momentous news or another) and tell him that we had a chick! A chick! How did that happen? Where was she hiding it? And what are we going to do with it? And how are we going to keep it from being pecked by the 20 other chickens?

At which point he said, "No more questions until I have had some coffee."

I think the husband suspected something was up, because I went out Thursday night to collect eggs (he was at fire training) and he told me when he got home that some of those eggs might be bad because she's been sitting on a bunch of them and wouldn't let him have them. She's been broody for a while. I just don't know where she was hiding the egg that hatched.

The husband put a wooden box in the coop so that the mama hen has a place to hide the chick. Maybe we will just let her lay eggs in there and set on them. She is the biggest of the hens and quite protective, so I know she could handle a bunch of babies. And it will be nice to have chickens to replace these when they stop laying eggs.

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My MIL asked for a picture of the fabulous row covers that the husband built to cover the lettuce and tomatoes. Here you go:

The tomatoes are nice and cozy inside:

Center

It has been pouring here for the last five days. I did want a salad last night, though, so I put on my boots and my Carhartt jacked and slogged over to the garden to get some lettuce. It's nice and toasty under those covers. I am kind of worried about my grapevines. Conventional local wisdom holds that the grapes do better if water is withheld in the fall, giving them time to go dormant before it gets cold. It's kind of difficult to turn off nature's overhead shower, though, so they have gotten a lot of water this week. At least (according to the husband) it is not supposed to freeze.

I'll keep you all posted on how well the row covers work. We are still kicking around the idea of putting up an 18' x 24" greenhouse.

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I went for my annual physical exam yesterday. My doctor pronounced me "in excellent health" and then asked me how I felt about getting a mammogram. The last mammogram I had was in 2007. Yes, I should not have gone four years without getting a mammogram, but the last time I had one, they insisted on taking a bunch of extra views of the left side. There are three cysts on that left side. I know exactly where they are, and they are visible on all my previous mammograms. At about film #15 (which I already thought was way excessive) I asked them what they were looking for. "We don't know," the nurse said, "but we want to see what we can find." They would have continued on with the fishing expedition, except that I pitched something of a fit and a few minutes later found myself in a room with the radiologist explaining to him why I don't want excessive radiation exposure. I don't even allow x-rays of my teeth at the dentist. I have had more than my fair share of x-rays in my life, and no one can assure me that all that radiation exposure is not why I ended up getting leukemia. I am not going down THAT road again.

Interestingly enough, the radiologist agreed with me and not the nurse (who would happily have taken another 15 films), so they stopped. And I refused to go back. I don't do well with nurses who lecture me about the need to allow them to take as many films as they want while completely disregarding my feelings on the subject. However, I understand that mammograms are prudent (and I type oncology reports all day—I know what happens when you ignore things hoping they will go away), so I am scheduled for a mammogram next month. I will probably not resume a yearly mammogram schedule, but I don't think I am going to go four years between again, either. We will see. In any case, we're going to have a discussion up front about limits on mammogram fishing expeditions just because you want to see what you can find.

When I was having chemo at the Cleveland Clinic, they would send us down every Monday morning for chest x-rays. Aside from the fact that it was a totally demoralizing process (they would take everyone from the floor down to the basement at the same time and line our wheelchairs up outside the Radiology Department), I was not convinced it was necessary. I confronted one of my doctors about the need for these weekly chest x-rays. He said they wanted to make sure we didn't get pneumonia. I said I wanted to make sure I didn't get another potentially-incurable disease. A few days later he came into my room and demanded to know if I had been fomenting revolution on the floor, because apparently one of the other patients had also balked at weekly chest x-rays.

I've often wished I could read what the doctors wrote about me in my charts after I was done having chemo, because I am sure it would have been hysterically funny. I was not a cooperative patient. But hey, I am still here, and still fighting with doctors.

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Work was much better this week. I have the most patient account manager. I probably would have fired me long ago for making bonehead mistakes like forgetting to include the cover letter to the report (but only some doctors get cover letters and only for some reports—there's that rules things again). I really do enjoy getting up every morning and doing this. The hard part is finding time for things like grocery shopping and going to the bank and cleaning and cooking. I do go to town, but it's usually really early in the morning or in the evening when nothing is open. The husband hasn't been able to work this week because of the monsoon, so yesterday he cleaned the house. That was a huge help. I still have beets to pickle and I've been throwing the tomatoes into the freezer until I have time to get them all out and make salsa. We bought a second freezer. The first one, which is in the basement, is full to bursting with garden bounty. We got another freezer, which went out in the garage. That's going to get filled with a side of beef purchased from the neighbors, and hopefully a deer or two (or an elk if we get really lucky).

So that's all the news from this part of the country. I am glad it is Saturday. I am going to work a bit, but I am also going to take the day and catch up on some things. And maybe tonight I can sit by the fire and knit.