The Happiest Post Ever

Death is in the air at Lone Tree Farm. It may just be fog but I have the distinct feeling that it is cold, wet, slow moving death. No idea what I’m talking about? That makes two of us.

It has been about four days since anyone has seen Alex, one of the farm cats. The feisty little feline explorer spends a lot of his time wandering all over the farm keeping the packrat population down whilst the others largely stay on the back porch waiting to be fed. I’m told that whilst it is no unusual for Alex to miss the odd meal when he is cleaning out the hill cabin, it is unusual for him to be away for so long. Wendy tried calling for a while but the little guy hasn’t shown up. We did hear some Jackals very close to the house a few nights ago. It’s possible that they got him. Holding out hope that he is still alive would be more naive than optimistic at this point. Godspeed little buddy and remember, in animal heaven, everything has wings. All the more food for you my friend, all the more food for you.


Staying with the theme of death (don’t worry things will cheer up in a paragraph or so) two of the chickens also passed on. Their heads fell off. Well ok, we chopped them off. I was wondering if I could actually go through with killing an animal as I felt it would be total hypocrisy being a keen carnivore and yet unable to kill what I eat. Wendy assured me they were both ‘cocks, which don’t lay’ though which strengthened my resolve. I wouldn’t want to kill pleasant chickens but I gladly take out a couple of lazy assholes (please don’t leave any comments explaining what is meant by a ‘cock’ here, I know already, and for the record, Wendy called them roosters. I just like typing cock. Cock). It wasn’t really a very nice job so I’ll spare the weak stomached among you the details. It didn’t put me off chicken which, considering I’m not an idiot who thinks chicken grows on trees, is not all that surprising. It was still very interesting to see a chicken got from this...


To this...

'You say Alex is missing?'

We cooked one and froze the other for later, which we might need if the turkeys don’t come back. After my last shot at a turkey, they all disappeared. We didn’t see a single live turkey all Thanksgiving, and believe me they were out there. I could hear them mocking me with their little turkey voices, ‘come and get me’ they would chortle, and I would run to see them but they were gone. So anyway, I’ll shoot one of them soon and then I’ll be the one laughing. Well maybe not laughing, that would be a little ‘odd’. Like the beginnings of a serial killer ‘odd’.

Squeal piggy!

Other activities this week have been very wholesome and include the likes of more carpentry, bread making, and horse riding. Wendy showed me her recipe for bread a few weeks back so I’ve been poncing around the kitchen like an old lady baking bread. Real men bake bread. I have actually attempted to make the process manlier by making the loaves look cool like the one I made to look like a skull, or my very popular Stego-loaf with real stegosaurus-like... stegs. I got some requests this time. Wendy asked if I could make a horse loaf which was a stupid suggestion. How the hell am I going to make a loaf look like a horse? I’m not Leonardo Da Baker. Jeez. Plus horses are kinda girly unless they have a cowboy on them, or lasers coming out of their eyes. So I decided to go with a horse’s head instead.

As you can see, its shit. It totally lost its shape when I baked it. A lesson learned; don’t ask Wendy for loaf ideas. I had also asked Jeff before he left what he wanted in the next batch and he excellently suggested a space theme for his loaf. Well Jeff left, so he wasn’t around for the maiden voyage of the USS JEFF.


It has all mod cons including a soft fluffy interior and a nice crusty outer shield array. Basically, its a loaf. My own experiment was an attempt at a tartan pattern.

Baking experiment leads to Frankenloaf

Yet another bump in the road to bread mastery.

We took the horses out for another ride, which was fun. It was the first time we’ve been riding since I got my new boots, and I convinced Wendy to teach me how to ride ‘western style’ so I could look totally the part. Of course, I still had to wear a ridiculous old riding hat that looked like a huge boob on my head, and in-turn made me feel like a tit, so I guess that constitutes a pair. It was a long trek and I got to see lots of the area up on the ridge, I’d have seen a lot more but it was foggy. One thing we saw lots of was turkeys. The little buggers had been hiding, they know exactly what time of year it is and had been setting up camp further up the ridge. There were dozens of them. We could have probably thrown a rock into the middle of the group and nailed one. Sadly there were no rocks within easy reach, so we rode on, and the little voices began again.

We eventually reached Wendy’s fire truck. You don’t get an explanation here because it is too much typing but Wendy actually owns an old fire truck from probably the 1930s-40s. It doesn’t run and is in a complete state (unless they used to use rat shit to upholster car seats in the 1930s, in which case it was in mint condition). We took some pictures for me to put up here and started back to the house.

Peter is clearly jealous here

We gave the horses a good exercise on the way back by ‘loping’ some of the way, which is the western name for canter apparently. Shuna, the horse I was riding, was very happy to lope but being a very clumsy horse she was tripping over herself quite a bit so I didn’t push her. I didn’t fancy trying to gallop down the hill on my face.

The last bit of news is that we finally got to put a huge window into the apple shed. I say we but it was actually done by a friend of Peter’s who is a very good carpenter and managed to take a huge chunk of wall out without the building collapsing on us, which was a bonus. I didn’t realise that I was lacking shots of that side of the shed until there was a huge hole in it so you’ll have to make do with just the after shot.


So there you have it. Its nothing but death and construction around here. I’ll leave you with Pepe, another of the farm’s cats, trying to re-enact a scene from The Thing.