Just after one am this morning I woke to the shrill sound of the smoke alarm. I was groggy, and screamed for Mark (he had conked out on the couch) I yelled “it’s the fire alarm!!!” I ran down the hall and yelled at the kids to get up! Lula scrambled out into the hall, Bean took a few moments to wake up, but once she realized what was going on, she was at my side in a flash. I didn’t smell any smoke — but there was an over-powering odor in the air — what the heck was it? I shuffled the kids down the stairs to the front door and it hit me like a blast in the face:

SKUNK!!!!

Yep, a skunk sprayed so close to the house that the fumes set off the smoke alarms! Never a dull moment in this country living. And Lena a.k.a. Devil Dog is not much fun to be around today. Although she must have saved the chickens and turks from certain doom, she had gotten the worst of it.

Chicken poop + puppy = Ewwww!!!

We can fix this.

Step 1: Wash puppy:

Step two: try not to get tangled up with puppy:

Step three: Give puppy a stern “talking to!” Bad puppy! Sit puppy! Sit, sit, sit!

Wait a minute puppy! No puppy, don’t shake! I can’t get away!!! No! No! Don’t shake!

Don’t Shaaaaaaaaaaake!

Puppy Revenge!

Funny: Hearing a weird goofy sound coming from the chicken house that sounds like something out of a “The Farmer Sez” toy.

Not so Funny: Realizing that two of the “guaranteed pullets” you got from big box farm store are not pullets but roosters.

Funny: Realizing that even though your garden has been decimated *again* (yep again) you will have at least something homegrown and local this week: chicken stew.

Not So Funny: Realizing you have to break it to the twins that Nancy and Bess are not girls after all.

Funny: Watching your USMC husband hopping around, chasing two roosters around the yard with a .22 in a thunderstorm because you are too scared to catch the darn things because they scratch and bite and darned if you are going to ask your kids to catch their babies to send them to their doom. And husband wants to shoot them instead of chopping off their heads because he doesn’t want blood all over and headless roosters running around creating CHAOS!!! And USMC husband wants to shoot them in the thunderstorm because he doesn’t want to freak the neighbors out with a gunshot and thinks the storm will mask such gunshot. You bet.

Not so Funny: getting in an argument with the big box farm store manager because you feel like you got gypped because these were definitely not sexed birds but straight run because you are pretty sure there is at least one other rooster in the bunch and that would make the chicks you got half female and half male. And you have invested time and money into these birds expecting layers that will be producing for some time to come and your kids are attached to them and on and on and on. And then the manager goes, it isn’t our fault but our supplier’s fault. So I need to take it up with their supplier? After BIG BOX STORE was the ones who guaranteed these birds? Whaaaaa???? That just makes me mad. Poor customer service always makes me mad. Needless to say I won’t shop there anymore. I end up getting mad everytime I go in there. I should know better.

Funny. Homegrown roosters shot by USMC husband and all cleaned and skinned and tidied up and brought to you to put right into a pot look remarkably like regular old chicken from the store. Not gross at all. And you know where this bird came from, and know it has led a very good, pampered life up until the time it was chased around the yard by a man with a .22.

Every bit of this will be used from dinner tonight, to homemade stock to be frozen and used all year along. Especially when we have those horrible winter flu episodes. I can’t think of anything better. And no I am not going to let that make me feel better about big box store. They still make me mad.

I have declared war! War on hail. War on bugs.

Yesterday, as a black cloud rolled over, I ran out and did this:

I sat inside and watched as quarter-sized hail rained down. All the plants made it through.

Then, this morning, I noticed the return of the squash bugs. I hate those things worse than anything. So, to entice the twins to assist in my search and destroy mission, they are allowed to say a “bad word” for each squash bug they squish. This is the only time ever they are allowed to say a “bad word” — and as such,  they are squishing with gusto. Call me a bad mommy if you will, but in times of war, all bets are off!

The theme song from the “Six Million Dollar Man” keeps running through my head, when Steve Austin is almost dead but the voice-over is saying: “we can rebuild him . . .” My garden isn’t bionic, but I have managed to scrape together some odds and ends from the various big-box stores around town to re-plant a few items I don’t like to live without:

There are rows of quick crops planted as well: spinach (Mark standing by with the .22), lettuce, peas, beets, turnips.

Of course this doesn’t replace the new variety of tomato I was trying out courtesy my “Minimite” homesteading friends who live in Nebraska. I raised those babies from seed and they were all flattened. Ditto the patch of egyptian walking onions from the same friends. Hopefully those, as they are perennial, will come back.

Gardening up here in the Black Hills is certainly a challenge. Since 2001, there has not been one year without strife. The first year it was a wildfire that forced our evacuation for a week, and the end result was an untended garden in the midst of drought. The next  five years brought drought, drought, drought — with a fear of our well going dry if we dared water too much. Two years ago the drought broke, followed by a flood that was worthy of Noah — it even lifted the asphalt from our highway leaving a gaping hole where the road used to be. Last year I was besieged by squash bugs — nasty, nasty creatures. They decimated the garden in no time.

I am nothing if not A: a glutton for punishment or B: determined to make this work somehow, some way.

Good thing I don’t actually HAVE to rely on my garden for all my produce. One hailstorm is all it takes to reduce everything to shreds.

The entire garden. Gone.