Lazy W Marie

Carpeing all the diems in semi-rural Oklahoma...xoxo

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friday 5 at the farm: bison trivia

Hello friends! We’re winding down another work week, and to cap off all the chores and cooking and cleaning and gardening and errands and bee stings and intense office hours (not for me obviously) and general toil, how about a quick Friday Five?

It occurs to me that not all of you have visited the actual dirt-and-hooves Lazy W, so you don’t know all of our animals personally. Well, in the coming weeks I’m gonna try to fix that. They are each so lovable and interesting, and we have learned so much just by living with and caring for them.

One of the most unusual creatures here is a young male bison. His name is Chunk-Hi, and he pretty much has us wrapped around his little hooves. Here are five things you might not know about bison, as taught to us by Chunk.

Our beloved Chunk-hi, male bison, four years old in this photo. Gentle giant. xoxo
Our beloved Chunk-hi, male bison, four years old in this photo. Gentle giant. xoxo

 

And yes, for the record, we usually call him a buffalo. It might not be scientifically correct, but we don’t get too worked up over that. We have more important things to fret over, like the cost of sugar for the welfare bees.

Okay.

Bison-buffalo facts:

#1. They start off as calves looking completely different! They are born with a gentle little hump, but still their body shape is much closer to a traditional cow compared to how they look as adults. And bison calves are a golden, caramelish, yummy bronze color, not dark and nearly black like they are later in life (thought that color scheme is also striking). I’ve always understood this coloring would help the babies stay concealed from predators in the golden prairie grasses that grow in this part of the country, their native land. Seems legit. Calves are woolly, curly, and 100% precious. Those eyes! They stay like this for several months, about as long as they nurse their mamas. In Chunk-hi’s case, it was about as long as we bottle fed him.

Jessica was almost 12 that summer and indispensable in helping me keep the bison calves full of milk! They learned to love the sight of the big plastic bottles and would suck on our hands for a long time after each feeding. Very sweet bonding time.
Jessica was almost 12 that summer and indispensable in helping me keep the bison calves full of milk! They learned to love the sight of the big plastic bottles and would suck on our hands for a long time after each feeding. Very sweet bonding experience.

#2. Buffs (see? I call them whatever I want) are skittish. Despite their enormous size and mass, despite how dangerous they can be, these animals have extremely fragile sensibilities. You can hurt their feelings by looking at them the wrong way, and especially young buffs will jump and bolt at a sudden noise. Our Chunk-hi has stiffened his nerves over time, but still it is not unusual to see him running for his life, high speed away from Mama Goose, who is basically a mean and bitter old woman. You can tell a buff is upset by watching his body langiuage. For example, and I do not know if this is true for regular cows, a tail raised stright up in the air is bad. Real bad. I call it the exclamation point tail, and it means he is on high alert, and you should be too. Just give him a cookie and stand your ground. Do not run. Walk slowly away, sideways if possible, without giving the appearance of retreat. Which brings me to my next point of bison trivia…

#3. They love cookies. I mean, LOVE them. We have an inside track to rejected Nabisco product, so every few months the farm is restocked with about a million packages of Oreos, Triscuits, graham crackers, you name it. Once upon a time I would eat a lot of that myself, but you know… Running. So now they all belong to our animals. Chunk’s favorite is probably Chips Ahoy, and I don’t blame him. Even slightly out-dated, those things are good. I’d pay big bucks to see him use his hooves to dunk a sleeve of cookies into a big bowl of milk. Visitors to the farm are usually game for feeding him sweet, crunchy treats, and they always get slobbered (bison are profuse slobberers) and sometimes gently bit.

Nabisco, if you are reading this, would you like to sponsor our farm? Our buff loves Chips Ahoy. So much.
Nabisco, if you are reading this, would you like to sponsor our farm? Our buff loves Chips Ahoy. So much.

#4. Bison also love to be loved. Like any creature, they need loads of affection and attention, and they also thrive on good philosophical conversation. Chunk loves to have his fuzzy, oblong ears stroked and scratched. He loves to have his eyes cupped and play gone-gone peekaboo. And he loves to press his massive forehead against the wire fencing so you can scratch him riiiiiight there, thank-you-very much. It helps that a bison will eat a big meal then go sit in a sandy wallow to digest it and perhaps chew some cud, because this is prime time to chill with him and just talk things over. Get it all out, you know? Catch up with each other. He is not in a hurry during cud time, and he appreciates you not being in a hurry, either. Sometimes he even lets you paint his horns fun colors.

Handsome was working in his car shop one winter afternoon when Chunk was probably three years old. The overhead door was open. Chunk snuck up him and was rewarded with colorful paint stripes. The look on his face. I cannot get ENOUGH of it!! xoxo
Handsome was working in his car shop one winter afternoon when Chunk was probably three years old. The overhead door was open. Chunk snuck up him and was rewarded with colorful paint stripes. The look on his face. I cannot get ENOUGH of it!! xoxo

#5. American Buffalo are shed machines. Each winter they grow these thick, truly impressive, impenetrable manes and full body coats of water-resistant, woolly fur. It keeps them warm and indifferent to the ice storms and heavy rains. Chunk actually seems to enjoy snow. When he was a baby he would run and flip around in it just like a kid. But when the days warm up, of course, this incredible heavy garment is a problem. So starting in the springtime he begins to let loose the fluff and we find great big heaps of it all over the farm. He rubs against trees, fences, and horses, much to their chagrin. He lets me scrape him with a plastic garden rake. And it hangs in tightly woven, continuous sheets off of his barrel belly. Native American legends tell us that if a bison “gifts” you his fur, in other words, if he releases it to your hands easily when you have not sought after it, then he is lending you his magic. And buffalo magic is very special. I’ll write more about that another time.

Chunk-hi's first winter. He had just sprouted little tiny buffalo horn buds! When I first posted this photo to my private Facebook page, people didn't know what he was. Someone guess a groundhog. : ))
Chunk-hi’s first winter. He had just sprouted little tiny buffalo horn buds! When I first posted this photo to my private Facebook page, people didn’t know what he was. Someone guessed a groundhog. : ))

 

Bison shed
Bison shed

 

So there you have it! Five things you might not have known about bison-buffs. Do you know any fun trivia you’d like to share? Do you have any questions we can try to answer? Have you been to the W and taken photos with Chunk? If so I would be SO HAPPY if you posted those to this blog’s Facebook page. How fun. We love collecting happy memories.

Thanks for joining me today! I wish you a beautiful, restful weekend filled with exactly what you need.

Tune in next week for Marathon Monday stuff, an Alfredo recipe, a chicken photo shoot, and more.

“You can lead a buffalo anywhere he wants to go.”
~old adage we try to never forget
XOXOXOXO

august hive inspection

What a perfectly gorgeous day we had last Sunday for a bee yard inspection.

Maribeth and her husband Dean visited the farm, and we all had the nicest time laughing, trading stories, eating a long, leisurely, family style dinner (the first time she and I had cooked together, which was really fun!) and of course loving and admiring the bees.

Well, she and I loved and admired the bees. Our husbands have bonded over a general distaste for or at least mistrust of the buzzing, swarming creatures. They talk a lot about “hot hives” and how they need to be controlled or punched in their little faces because of the mowing difficulties they present, and both men complain good naturedly about how much money their wives spend on sugar for bee yard welfare efforts.

Now you know. Beekeeping is sometimes a controversial topic in marriages.

By the way, dinner was scrumptious. We feasted on roasted garlic-lemon chicken, fried garden squash, and this beautiful tomato tart, also using fresh garden produce. If you have not yet tried Edie’s tomato tart, please do so pronto. It’s prime time for fresh garden tomatoes, and this flavor combination is a sure bet. Just use your favorite pie crust recipe and have some fun. We loved it! Zero leftovers.

 

http://www.lifeingraceblog.com/2014/05/fresh-tomato-tart/
http://www.lifeingraceblog.com/2014/05/fresh-tomato-tart/

 

Okay. The bees.

There was really good news and surprising news.

The good news is that both hives are thriving. They are free of wax moths and all other problematic invasions. They are multiplying like crazy. And they are pulling out foundation on most, nearly all, of the frames. There is lots and lots of brood in each of the colonies, which is evidence of a queen, though we didn’t exactly see either matriarch. That’s okay.

Also, we didn’t even need to smoke the bees. Maribeth paid them a lovely compliment by calling them “exceptionally gentle.” Swoon! I know this is irrational, but that felt as good as if someone had paid my own daughters a compliment for their good manners or something. As if I personally have a single thing to do with the bees’ temperament. How ’bout we just catalog that warm fuzzy feeling among the many ways our friends and family have described the Lazy W: peaceful, life giving, loving. This is our dream.

Okay. More good news is that there’s a little honey in each hive, which means the bees are working toward a winter supply.

This also points to the surprising news, however, which is that there is not as much honey there as I had thought. If you’ve noticed me mentioning here or on Facebook that on warm days I can smell honey from the garden gate, that’s true; but perhaps it’s more the comb or the nectar warming up that makes that lovely perfume. And the glossy cells I’ve seen while stealing a quick peek inside the hives are not surplus honey at all. It’s very little compared to how many bees are populating the boxes. They will need every bit of that and more to survive the winter.

So. I will not be harvesting honey this summer, and our “welfare” feeding efforts will continue. I am totally, one hundred percent, whole heartedly okay with this, because the bees are happy. We have survived the first season with two new colonies. I have learned more. And, thanks to my Dad’s carpentry skills and generosity, I’m better prepared for the future this time. Maybe I’ll even learn to make splits or catch swarms.

 

dad building bee boxes

 

beekeeping for dummies

augbeeinspect shows glove

 

augbeeinspect shows so many bees

 

augbeeinspect shows drawn comb

augbeeinspect shows capped brood

 

One of the funnest parts of Sunday’s inspection was witnessing the birth of a baby honey bee. Can you even imagine the minuscule, delicate sweetness of that moment?

We caught it quite by accident, having noticed among so many crawling, working bees, their hineys up to the sun, one little bee face. A very tiny, pale one. Look in this photo below, how you can see the bees buried face down in the cells, working, hineys up to the sun…

 

auginspect hiney up with sticker

 

Well somewhere on one of the frames we noticed a small, pale face instead of a hiney, and it was so obvious, so different, we froze all activity to watch. How I wish we had video to share or even one photo of that amazing moment, but try to forgive us because we were both dressed to the hilt in bees suits and veils, and operating smart phones with heavy gloves is tricky at best. All hail National Geographic, right? And just try to get honeybees to pose artfully for you. It is really truly not happening. We didn’t know until much later which photos turned out.

So as Maribeth and I watched silently, this speck of a creature chewed her way out of a snug, waxy cell, emerging very slowly into the fresh air. She was surrounded by busy bees (forgive the cliche) who just continued their work as she birthed herself. Another bee was chewing out of a cell adjacent to hers, and we were captivated.

I just wanted to share that with you. It was certainly a gift, to see her born. I tried relaying the joy to Handsome but he was still pretty wound up about the cost of sugar.

To round out this memory, here’s a quote from The Secret Life of Bees…

A true beekeeper. The words caused a fullness in me, and right at that moment an explosion of blackbirds lifted off the ground in a clearing a short distance away and filled up the whole sky. I said to myself, will wonders never cease?

Thank you so much, Maribeth, from the bottom of my heart. You will never know how much I appreciate your gentle encouragement and generosity with your time and knowledge. We love having you and Dean as friends and mentors, and I love that you have helped me resurrect a family tradition. It’s the most beautiful thing.

Celebrate your progress, friends, and be sweet.
XOXOXOXO

 

 

friday 5 at the farm: rainy day photos

What a long, luscious drink we’ve enjoyed in Oklahoma this week. Several inches of soft rain day after day, a drought buster they’re telling us. Cool temps, too, which is such a welcome relief even if you love summer like I do. I have spent lots of hours just walking around the farm, letting my bare feet squish in the mud (watching for copperheads and frogs of course), smelling the ozone freshness, letting the dripping wet crepe myrtles baptize me as I walk through them. Every little aspect of beauty is turned up a notch, and I love it so much I could cry. So for Friday 5 at the Farm this week, how ’bout just some quiet rainy photos.

 

farm rain sweet potato vine

The sweet potato vine here is threatening to choke out Instagtah,
but his jazz music will eventually set him free.
It always does.

farm rain ladder

I am thrilled with how the Great Vine-Relocation Experiment of 2014 is turning out.
About half of them died, as expected, but what remains is so robust.
Isn’t that how life goes?
And I love how the pumpkins and watermelons look on this old ladder,
all drapey and rustic.
Also, it encourages limbo games in the garden.
I just don’t have enough limbo in my life. How about you?

farm rain hives

Oh the bees. The bees. The bees. I love them so much.
Wednesday night my Dad and I built some cool boxes and frames
for the ever-expanding colonies,
and today I am painting those boxes with beloved song lyrics.
In a week or so I’ll have a more complete update for you,
once Maribeth and I do a good inspection.
But overall they are doing great. I am so happy and thankful.
Honey harvest soon, friends.
On warm days you can smell it almost from the garden gate.

farm rain pond view

This is probably where I spent the most time these past few days.
The pond is rising steadily, and my eyes cannot get enough of the beautiful sight.
So often this area of the farm is low and muddy, desolate feeling.
But it also holds so many happy memories. For example…
When Jocelyn, my firstborn, was about twelve,
we had a fantastic rainstorm that caused the pond to rise past the banks.
Fish of every variety were actually being pressed through the sandy berm there
and emerging in the west field on the other side of the pond. Onto the flat ground.
She found them while playing and carried them in buckets back to the pond, for hours.
Eventually we all helped her, and she was so happy. We all were.
She laughed and laughed, catching those slippery fish and returning them to the water.
Over and over and over,  smiling and laughing.
She was so little herself, not yet a fish out of water.
That was an unbelievable seven years ago.

farm rain llama print

Last but not least, a llama hoof print in the mud, filled to the brim with cold rain water.
It is decidedly heart shaped, which is the obvious choice for such a loving creature.

The sun is scheduled to return today, but probably not much heat. So I expect everything to yawn and stretch and be on its best behavior for a few days, plants and animals both. These days are so charmed. Life is so beautiful, so mysterious and surprising even with the rain.

Happy Friday, friends! Thank you so much for stopping in here again.

The best thing one can do when it’s raining is to let it rain.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
xoxoxo

fence repair & a naughty bison

Our little buffalo has nearly destroyed the outermost fence of the front field, which is a problem for so many reasons. Mostly, it makes the neighbors nervous. And this is definitely gun country, and nobody needs nervous neighbors.

I’m usually not a fan of alliteration, but this time it seemed unavoidable. Sorry.

So yesterday afternoon Handsome and I went out in the pickup with his bag of fence repair tools, a sledgehammer, and a heavy spool of barbed wire. We started working while Chunk-hi and Chanta were up in the shade shoveling back a big pile of soft hay.

Eventually the bachelors finished their hay and sidled their way over to us one at a time, just to see what Mom and Dad were up to. Chunk-hi was especially affectionate to me. He snuggled and snorted and let me scratch his fuzzy ears and steer his massive, carved-wood horns, all from the safety of the truck’s open tailgate. I swear, as long as my feet are not touching the ground, he never tries to get silly with me. If I am on a fence rail or sitting on the tailgate or whatever, he is gentle as a kitten. Plus, yesterday he was in a mellow frame of bison mind, clearly not the frame of mind he had been in when he did whatever he did to the fence. What the zoos might not tell you is that these creatures are extremely moody.

As I snuggled Chunk and accepted big, snotty kisses from his square leathery nose, Handsome continued pulling and hammering the swayed fence panels. He straightened and rewired and shored up yard after yard of double-thick perimeter fencing, incurring bloody gashes and bruised knuckles all the while. Besides playing with the animals, my jobs were tool delivery and moral support.

The noise of fence repair must have triggered Chunk’s guilty conscience, because soon he left my lullabies and face snuggles to wander away from the pickup and sneak up on Dad.

“You’ve got company,” I said to Handsome, although he is less in need of buffalo sneak-attack warnings than his wife.

Handsome glanced over his left shoulder, looked straight at Chunk, and said, “Yeah you did this didn’t you?”

I swear to you, gentle reader, this simple admonition stopped that buffalo in his guilty little tracks. It’s a tone of voice thing, just like with human kids. These animals read us so well, and they do want to please us. They also like to destroy fences, though, so you see the problem.

For the next half hour or so I played with Chanta, the big golden paint horse, and watched my husband and our five-year-old whirling dervish as the front field fence (ack! more alliteration!) was righted. Handsome was mostly crouched over, muscles hard and gleaming in the sun, back turned to Chunk-Hi who just stood there looking terribly guilty and awkward. The funniest part of the scene was listening to my husband muttering a long, even stream of reprimands at the 2,000 pound creature not six feet behind him.

“I can’t believe you did this again. Why? Why can’t you just play with the four-wheeler we gave you? Why do you have to do the one thing I tell you not to do? Do you know what will happen if you get out in the road? You want us to believe this was Chanta, but it has your name written aaaaallllllll over it.”

That last one was my favorite.

Also, have you ever tried not laughing while someone is really angry?

Well, Chunk just stood there and took it. He endured one scolding after another, occasionally swinging his fluffy head to look at me. He’d blink open those beautiful eyes until the whites shone in clean circles beneath his thick black lashes, like he was pleading with me, “But Mooooo-oooom…”

So I raised my voice with mock sternness, “I don’t know what to tell you, Chunk. You know better. Stop destroying the fence and you won’t be in trouble with your Dad.” What else could I say? Sometimes, no matter how cute the kids are, you have to act like a united parental front. That’s what the books say.

Chanta, meanwhile, stepped closer to me and reminded me I was supposed to be rubbing his horse neck and quietly singing him Beatles songs. He assured me of his innocence in this fence mangling episode, and I chose to believe him. Isn’t it also common for the “good kid” to swoop in for extra attention when a sibling is in trouble? Yes. Yes I believe so.

crazy eyes chunk april 2014

 

So the front field fence is now finished (dang it!) and the bachelors are back to their happy selves, eating hay and accepting cuddles. The neighbors can relax for a while at least. And my gorgeous husband will have a few days to let his knuckles and muscles recover.

Audience Participation:
Have you ever been caught speaking to your animals like they are naughty children? Have you ever had a pet who seemed hell-bent on senseless destruction? Can you think of a non-alliterative way to say “nobody needs nervous neighbors?” Or “front field fence is now finished?” Help me help myself.

Hug Your Buff. He’s Sorry.
XOXOXO

mid july garden update

Ah, July in the world of slow foods.

It brings me food for my table and food for my soul.

Every day lately I can walk outside and fill my arms with zucchini, tomatoes, herbs, eggs, cucumbers, eggplant, and blackberries.

 

july 2014 harvest

The harvests are steady and plentiful, blemish free, delicious.

july 2014 eggplant

 

This summer has been a dream.

More rain I think than even the rain forest dares to dream of.

Hot, sunny afternoons that energize the plants and animals.

Cool evenings and mornings to relax them again.

Even the insects that normally make me a crazy person, well… No biggie. So many of them have drowned or just can’t keep up with the vitality.

 

july 16 2014 purple morning glory

The morning glory vines have taken over several spots in my herb garden and vegetable yard, but I don’t really care.

Who could argue with this color and form? How much is too much of this?

One of the best parts of each day is walking out early enough to see them still twisted in velvety little packages, only to see them later in the morning, spread open to the sun and boasting that deep, sexy hue.

july 16 2014 pumpkin bloom

And with a bumper crop of pumpkin, squash, and zuchinni vines, I have a plethora of gorgeous star-shaped blooms like this.

So many are dotting the compost heap that I am considering a meal of flash-fried squash blossoms.

To me this seems very Julia-Child-meets-Miranda-Lambert, and I groove that.

july 16 2014 garden view from bottom

Lest I only show you close-up photos…

Here is a view of my Three Sisters patch, compost heap, and raised veggie beds, looking uphill from the bee hives.

You can see plenty of grass growing between it all, but that’s a good thing.

To me it means fertility and moisture.

The corn stalks will get serious before long, and the green beans are so close.

Beneath all of that thick, glossy life are buried fish heads, in keeping with the Native American tradition.

july 16 2014 lifting bee boxes

Ah, the bees. The Lazy W Honeymakers.

Because this summer is such a dream the bees have multiplied like Tribbles on Star Trek.

They are possibly outgrowing their hives already, and you can smell the golden treasure from quite a distance when the lid is tilted open.

july 16 2014 heavy bees frames

Chances are good that we will be robbing honey soon.

And adding supers.

And counting every single sweet, sticky blessing.

july 2014 watermelon

 

The gardens. The bees. The chickens…

Mid-July is a spell and a climax all at once.

It heals me from the hurts of life and nourishes me in ways nothing else can.

In all of this I plainly see the hand of God and can relax. Trusting His timing, His mystery, His power.

This constant growth and harvest is everything I need to be reminded of the cycles and goodness of life.

 

He who grows a garden still his Eden keeps.
XOXOXOXO