Saw-Whet Owl!

holy smokes, i wish this little guy was alive! when i crossed the driveway this morning, a big black crow had this guy in his talons, and dropped him in the driveway. i swooped in and grabbed him away from Mr. Evil Black Bird and he was warm and soft, but totally dead.. one of his eyes looked left and one looked right, i'm pretty sure that's not how he was supposed to look... but maybe.



they are very shy pygmie birds and are not even seen much at all, ever, probably not even by their prey. i'm very excited to have them in the area, and will do whatever i can to get them to move in.. he's so totally cute! let me know if you see any more!

New at home

Besides the general mouse invasion, the new roof on the outside green house, and huge effort at really not getting any new plastic bag wrapper crap in the house, is a new mail box distribution box thinger beside the front door. if you get your mail here, if its not too cold, too wet or too windy, it will be in your cubby box.

Random Facts

there are 18 tires in the barn, 40 chickens, 2 sheep and a lamb, one goat and 3 geese. I know who the animals belong to, what about the tires?

one square foot is considered 'free range' for commercial chickens. by that standard, ours are 'world range'?

the chickens are back in egg production, we have three dozen eggs in the big kitchen, please help yourself. it costs 4 dollars to make a dozen eggs. if you'd contribute in grain or cash if you eat eggs, the girls would appreciate it. there's a little jar for money in with the eggs, and the grain bins are in the barn.

Scratch that.. Saturday morning, Alberta and Badger left with Kyja this morning to a new home and hopefully greener pastures in Walden! Good luck guys! Thanks for hanging out with us.

My dog is a poop connosseur.

of all the gross things in this world, why is it that the most disgusting, grossest thing on the planet comes in the cutest, sweetest orange package?
my dog eats poop. she is pretty careful not to eat her own ones, but she sure does clean up the yard. she doesnt eat old crusty poops, neither does she enjoy loose, wet ones, she follows jade around at 7 am waiting for the freshest second breakfast in the world. hot steamy poops from the 'dark dog'. some grass and some leaves may be included for ruffage.

i went in to the basement this morning to gather wood, and left the door open for a few seconds while i took something out to the barn, and came back in to find both dogs had been down and had a pee on top of where the big hunter husky had peed night before last and ALSO pooped and eaten eachothers poop already, though it still smelled bad down there... the ghost of the poop lingered in the room. now they are innocently sleeping here beside me, quite contentedly curled up on the couch.

why are dogs so gross? and then the come sniff you and lick you just as if you are the most awesome human ever, knowing they have just licked something else really disgusting, seriously. how is it that they can get away with it? they shed mercilessly, eat the trash randomly, strew it all over the house, pee on stuff, eat books and clothes and are still sitting on the couch like queens and get all dejected when there is no room for them to sit where it is most warm and most cozy. why? why do we love dogs so?

What is the impact of idling on our environment?

well, when i was recently in jackson hole, wyoming, i was asked not to idle my car, and encouraged to pass the word about idling and its impact on the environment.
since then, i've done some research... and would like to share these articles with you. please consider your impact and individual situation, and perhaps you can see an opportunity for change
in our habits at home.

in jackson, there is a fairly aggressive movement to 'ticket' idling cars with a card that indicated the hazards and dangers of idling. in some cases it's very effective, most car drivers are pretty shocked to come out of where ever they were to find a ticket or paper of any kind on their vehicle. some were very offended. some took it well and were embarassed, and vowed to change habits... in some cases, ticket issuing people have taken the initiative to actually shut off idling cars. one such was a car spotted at a grocery store idling in the parking lot. the ticketing individual, a friend of mine, jeff, actually shut off the car... what he found out a few moments later was that it had great difficulty in being started every day and the owner needed to push start it... and upon coming out of the grocery store, he was super bummed out to find his car not running. Jeff helped him get it going again and felt like a heal for trying to be helpful to the greater good. so with balance in view and the weather and ice on the windshield in mind, please be thoughtful about how long you warm up your car.

At Stowe Mountain Resort, a new policy has just been instituted to have no idling at all on property. This prompted me to think more seriously about my own impact at home.

here are a few easy facts that are expanded upon in the following articles.

1. 10 seconds of idling is the same as shutting off your engine and restarting it, so if you are going to wait more than 10 seconds in your car, please shut it off.

2. modern cars do not require engine warm up time. they are electronic and heat very quickly.

3. cars' interiors heat up faster with the vehicle in motion.

4. the wear and tear on the engine is increased my idling the vehicle.

5. idling impacts the environment in a huge and painful, unrecoverable way, and our bodies directly with asthma, cancers, and lung disease.

Please take a few moments to look through some of these articles:

Idling is even illegal in some vermont cities: http://www.cedo.ci.burlington.vt.us/legacy/projects.html

http://www.edf.org/page.cfm?tagID=22292

http://www.epa.gov/NE/eco/diesel/index.html

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-127168257.html

Lets get this started

My Earthwork Home News

On this wet autumn day, i feel a bit like one of the kids in the cat in the hat. i'm sitting where i can be found if i'm sitting, listening to the rain pour down. what to do today, what to do? then an idea occurred to me... find a friendly place to share ideas, information, news and images, we are a big family, all of us who live or have lived here... lets keep in touch, keep informed and share home news.

So here's the idea: a blog about our home and whats going on here, we have so many people who pass through and around and by this place... we all travel on independent schedules and often just completely miss one another. I thought it would be good to keep in touch, up to date and current with whats happening in our individual lives, our families, and then past that to the former residents and past that even to extended family, to share if we want to, what we are up to here in this sort of farmy, sort of hippie place that is more or less hard to describe unless you are familiar with a hamster habitrail house.

I've set up a gmail account and blog access which you will receive with the link to this site.

I'd like to invite you to use it and not share the account access, but certainly the blog itself.
This first one, i'm publishing, and would love input, but the content should be related to you as part of this family, to your work, to articles about the earth, places you've been or want to go or ideas that you have to share. It will be a forum for house announcements and discussions of upcoming events and all sorts of things. If you do an update, please let us all know! It should be kept healthy and informative, and not dogmatic or preachy, if it diverts from the original theme, those posts will be pulled.

what do you think? are ya in?