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I overslept on Sunday, so the rooster got a stay of execution until next weekend. There are certain things I don’t want to rush and the idea of plucking a chicken a ten o’clock at night sounds like a bad idea. I’d try to give him the axe during the week, but my evenings are going to be taken up with moving my junk from my parents’ garage to mine. This is the result of a garage sale gone horribly wrong. My parents made out ok, but all I ended up doing was restaging my junk to their place instead of directly to Goodwill. Feh. S’alright. At least it’s going.

Certain things you hate to part with because you think you’ll want them later. Furniture is high on the list because you know the replacement cost is going to be steep if you want a new recliner/bookshelf/end table. Our place in Chicago was about the same size as the place here, but we don’t have much of a basement here (the term is “Michigan basement”, which is a euphemism for a hole in the ground around which there’s a foundation) so all the basement furniture has been cluttering up the barn. Also, at least one room here isn’t finished yet (the term is “summer kitchen”, which is a euphemism for an above ground Michigan basement), so all that furniture is moldering in the barn. Finally, we have “good stuff” we’re saving for our daughter about to graduate from college. This is also slowly decaying in the barn.

Combine this with the detritus of a Plastic Age Youth (one day, I’ll bill McDonald’s for Happy Meal Toy Storage) and you get lots of junk piled up in the barn. Thus, the garage sale sounded like a great idea. Except that no one seemed to like my junk. I can’t imagine why. It’s fine junk. And one man’s junk is another man’s treasure, right? Not in Allegan, apparently. In any case, Goodwill gets a call tomorrow. There will be no “call from the governor” to stay the execution of my mismatched end tables, mostly functional brown recliners and all those broken plastic toys. I wonder if the rooster would have sold.

Farm tidbits: still no real rain; temps in the 90s all this week; Uptown doing fine; ducks have discovered the water trough.

I bought a round bale yesterday. My first round bale ever. I felt like I was cheating on the 336 square bales stacked in the barn, seduced by the busty curves and tawdry cheapness of the round bale. If that sounds oddly erotic to you, you haven’t been subjected to the dry, sultry heat of SW Michigan this summer. The temperatures aren’t all that bad, but the lack of rain is something else. My pasture is shot. Even the “long grass” pasture that I just opened is pretty lame. The only thing still green are the weeds with long taproots. Thus, $25 for a round bale sounded like a steal. I may even lay in another 50 square bales before everyone realizes that there won’t be a 3rd cutting and that the 2nd cutting is tiny.

Uptown continues to do well. Cath and kids are out of town at Cath’s mother’s place. I’m left to change fly strips in the coop and stain wood trim for the back room. Friday night we took our 8 year old boy to buy the last Harry Potter book at midnight. We missed most of the fun, but had to go to 3 places to find it. He was the youngest there by far, but he’s read all the books in the series and with this being the last book we wanted him to be able to “experience it”. (That sounds like such Yuppie crap, but there it is.) It is a phenomenon that I don’t expect to see repeated soon/ever. Kind of like the summer of ‘77 when Star Wars first came out. Each generation has there own touchstones, I guess. In 50 years he’ll be able to tell his unbelieving grandchildren about it. “People lined up around the block for books?” and “Grandpa, what are books?”. Well, hopefully not the latter!

Yaro gave birth to her first calf yesterday (Friday), a 60lb heifer we named Uptown. For those of you wondering why we would name an animal that, consider that the alternative was “UIC-Halsted”. You’re supposed to tattoo a code on the cattle’s ears. Every year has a letter assigned to it. Last year was “T”. Thus, we named our bull calf “Thorndale”. This year, it’s U. You don’t have to name your animal after the year letter, but it’s a fun exercise for us. Besides, Thorndale was better than “Thirty-Fifth/Archer”. We’re also trying to name them after El stops, you see.

For those of you familiar with the Chicago Transit Authority’s train lines, you’ll realize that there is no “Uptown” stop, but we felt the cheating was acceptable since UICHalsted would have meant I’d have to retell the above paragraph 9000 times. Ugh. Joe Walsh once said of “Walk Away” that “If I’d known I’d be playing this song the rest of my life, I would have written a different song.” I chose to write the different song from the start….trust me…it’ll make sense later and you’ll have this zen-like moment of clarity on the ride home and then the brake lights in front of you will come on and you’ll lose it. Eventually, you’ll realize I am a genius, too, but that might come after the ride home.

In any case, she’s a healthy, beefy little heifer who seems very bright and alert, just like her Mom. Cath is beaming and I’m ecstatic that I can keep her since she’s not related at all to our new bull. If we’d had a bull calf, we might as well have named him “TBone” or “FreezerBeef”. Explaining it to the kids next year would have been difficult, too. “Tbone? He’s what’s for dinner!” Now I can postpone that conversation a little while longer.

We had a number of friends over from Chicago this weekend. A good time was had by all. Also, lots of BBQ chicken, pancakes, and beer were had by all. I’ll have to run a marathon this evening to work any of it off. Still, it was well worth it. Good friends are rare enough in this world. Especially friends who will battle the south end of the Tri-state. I think the whole construction project there is a ploy by Mayor Daley to keep people from leaving the city to spend money elsewhere.

Of course, everyone who was here last year marveled at the improvements. Those who hadn’t been here last year marveled at things like chickens. The rooster obliged them by charging at least one guest. He’s a dead cock walking. As soon as I finish all these leftovers in the fridge I’ll introduce him to Mr. Handaxe. Then, I will introduce myself to Mr. Unpleasant Task and the Pluckers, which is not a Classical Guitar trio. Frankly, I expect it to be messy, but rewarding. You know, the way a sculptor starts with a block of marble and reveals the inner figure within it. Only with giblets.

In the meantime, I bagged a possum with the live trap last night. We’ll see if any more cat food goes missing again soon. This is the kind of thing that makes denizens of the city gasp with a mixture of horror and delight. I’ve gone beyond that to merely groaning inwardly. It’s nice to know that the $55 live trap purchase is being validated though. Plus, I got to show the possum to our littlest before work this morning. She didn’t think it was as cool as the raccoon.

I went out to the barn this morning to release our chickens and agoraphobic ducks from the coop, when I saw we’d trapped our first raccoon in the live trap. It looked a bit smaller than the three others we’d aced.No chickens, turkeys or ducks were harmed. The raccoon was apparently content with the suet cake in the trap and some cat food on the way in.

I let it go on the way into work. I debated the ethics of this, as the animal might now be someone else’s problem, but I don’t own a varmint gun and couldn’t think of a “humane” way to dispatch the animal before work. Cath told me her father used to drown them at his farm. I asked, how’d he do it? She said, “We had a pond.”

I’ll make sure to dig one over the weekend.