Chickens!!!

One of my many lifetime goals--besides taking the Lord of the Rings tour of New Zealand, hiking the Appalachian Trail, living in Kauai, learning another language, and watching my daughter score a goal in the women's World Cup--is to be completely self-sufficient so my family can survive the impending zombie apocalypse. This would include enough solar panels and wind mills to generate our own energy, a full-size garden with the knowledge to can certain staples to get us through harsh winters, and livestock to provide us with the dairy and protein my family needs to survive--and barter with in exchange for protection from the local militia. I'd mention the huge underground bunker I want to dig with an escape tunnel leading down to the river, but that would make me sound crazy.

Since we aren't allowed to raise cows or goats in the city of Knoxville and my relatively small plot of land (you could call it the 'Liebenow Compound') wouldn't support them anyway, I decided to get some egg laying hens. I go through a lot of eggs. They are the perfect food to eat by themselves, or as part of so many other dishes like quiches, frittatas, pancakes, potato salad, fried rice, egg salad, cakes, or most important of all, cookies.

I know next to nothing about raising chickens though. You would think I'd know more. My family lived on a small farm for four years in western Washington. At one point, we were raising 75 chickens for both meat and eggs. But this is when I was only 5-9 years old. My father did the complicated stuff like purchasing the chicks, raising them in a brooder, building the coop, finding the right feed, bedding, nesting boxes, yada yada yada, a lot goes into raising chickens. The main thing I remember is having to clean out the coop with its awful stench, searching for eggs in the hay bales of our barn, and also catching chickens and bringing them to my father so he could behead them. They really do run around if you cut their heads off. Oh by the way, if you're at all squeamish hearing about the death of chickens, this may not be the blog post for you. Maybe you should rethink that trip to KFC too, you hypocrite.

So, Betsy and I did exhaustive research on the subject of chickens, including interviews, web searches and buying relevant literature such as this book:

Because the Idiot's Guide to Raising Chickens is too hard to understand

We thought we had a handle on it. We read that book inside and out. We decided to convert Grace's old playhouse to a chicken coop by just adding chicken wire to the windows, and an extended run stretching from the porch out into the yard. I thought buying chicks would be too hard because you have to make a brooder and keep their environment safe, clean, and warm. Not to mention you have to wait 5 or 6 months before you get your first egg. So we went to a local farm and got three nice birds that had just started laying at 18 bucks a piece (if you want to make money as an urban chicken farmer you have to  think long-term).

Introducing Martha, Henrietta, and Razzle-Dazzle

The family immediately became fond of our little flock. We each got to name a chicken. Mine was Martha. Grace's was Razzle-Dazzle. Guess I'm kinda lame in the naming department. They started laying immediately. We had a couple eggs the very next day. After only 5 days, I had enough eggs to make quiche. Our dog, Lilly (may she rest in peace), was extremely interested in causing the chickens harm, but they were safe in their pen. We just kept predator separated from prey and relaxed, knowing that our egg factory outside would keep us swimming in egg yolk for years to come.

We made her spend the night with them. Am I a bad father?

Then, disaster struck the Liebenow Compound. Betsy and I were inside the house sitting on our couch, peacefully going on with our lives, when we suddenly heard a piercing scream from the back yard.

"THE CHICKENS ARE DEAD!!!!  THE CHICKENS ARE DEAD!!!!"

Grace ran in the room, arms waving madly, eyes wide with terror. Betsy and I dashed outside to a horrible scene of carnage in the chicken run. Feathers everywhere. The foul stench of death filling my nostrils. Two mangled, nearly unrecognizable corpses lying where they'd been blissfully scratching minutes before

R.I.P. Henrietta and Razzle-Dazzle

How could this happen? Our sheltered lives had been violated in a primal fashion.

They had so many years of egg laying in front of them

Sorry, did you say you wanted a closer look or you don't want one?

It was obvious that the fault for this poultricide rested on my shoulders. I used small staples to attach the chicken wire to the frame of our run. The predator was easily able to lift the wire and get at the birds. I pridefully thought Raising Chickens for Dummies had taught me everything there was to know about chickens, even as I ignored the underlying message: I am a dummy!!!

But who, or what, could've done such a thing? This was an attack in broad daylight. Most predators do their killing at night. We live in the middle of the suburbs, less than half a mile from a Target, a Starbucks, and a shopping mall. There are no wolves, there've been no fox or coyote sightings. Other people in our neighborhood had their chickens taken by a hawk, but we had chicken wire over our run. Could a hawk have lifted the chicken wire, gone inside the run, killed the chickens and retreated in the middle of the day? Also predators like that usually stick around to eat their prey. This seemed to be killing for the joy of it. Some manner of serial poultry killer. We have a chain-link fence around the yard. No dog ever comes back there. Even rabbits and cats feared our back yard because of Lilly.

I know what you're all thinking. "You actually ARE a dummy, Brian! The dog did it!!" Well, smarty pants, here's the hole in the wire:

Lilly couldn't fit through that hole. We tried to get her through because we had the same suspicion but her bulky body couldn't make it. And we were pretty sure she was in the house at the time of the crime.

Wait. Hold on a second, where was our third chicken?!? We had three, right? Was Martha still out there, hiding or in pain and unable to reach us?!? Detective Grace spotted a trail of feathers and followed them to our back fence where we discovered the final, mangled body. So, whatever terrorized the chickens in their pen chased poor Martha down until she could run no more. I'd like to think she didn't suffer. But, who am I kidding? It was most likely unspeakably painful and horrifying up to the end.

Trail of feathers. Grace will soon be publishing C.S.I. for Dummies

For the past year, there've been more theories about who, or what, killed our chickens than guesses about JFK's death. Was it a vindictive neighbor? A homeless vagabond with an odd hatred for chickens? A previously unclassified mammal that looks like a cross between a snake and a howler monkey? An alien life form that resembles a giant worm who killed our chickens on behalf of earth's tiny worms? Those are all valid theories.

So that was it. Our experiment with chicken farming was over. My hopes for surviving the zombie apocalypse were dashed in a flash of feathers.



Until now...

Immediately following our trip to Aspen, we vowed to give it another shot. This time, we decided to raise our hens from day-old chicks because they're so adorable and they only cost a couple bucks each.  A co-op about 30 miles away gets new ones every Monday, so I drove out there that afternoon and picked out four of the cute little buggers.

Sure it's cute now, but in a couple months it'll be big, smelly and ugly

You're supposed to make its first day stress-free, but screw that!!

"So that's what a chicken nugget is?"

I think the chick liked it, but it was just another indignity for the dog

They're supposed to be in a relatively small box or cage called a brooder until they grow enough feathers to live out in the elements. We converted an old pink tote, set it up in the garage and hung a heat lamp over it to keep the chicks warm. We also put food and water dishes in there, which they were kind enough to poop in constantly.

Hopefully, they don't mind the color pink

We had to start thinking about the coop. Grace's old playhouse didn't seem structurally sound anymore. We needed to do this right so we bought a nice coop at Costco. My mom happened to be visiting from Germany and kindly offered to help me build our coop. When I say she offered to help, I mean she did most of the work because I cracked a rib in Aspen and I'm not supposed to lift anything whenever it seems like work...I mean until I'm healed.

The box says you can build it in 5 easy steps!

Here I am giving sage advice to my mom (she's an engineer)

And here I am basking in the glory of my mother's efforts

Betsy pantomiming how we'll look when we find eggs in ~5 months

Hopefully, they won't grow to be this size. I locked her in for the night. Am I a bad husband?

So far so good this time. It's been about 4 weeks and with the weather heating up, they'll be ready to transition from the brooder to their new coop soon. 

Already getting feathers in. Does that one look like it would kill me in my sleep?

While Betsy was at work on Sunday, Grace and I had the chicks in their coop a few hours to get them used to it. Late in the afternoon, some dark clouds started rolling in and I heard thunder, so I started moving them back in the garage. One of the dark ones--we haven't named them yet; don't get too attached--did NOT want to be caught and carried back to its tote. It managed to hop over my clumsy grasp and run into the yard. So there I was, limping in circles around the new coop, while this unbelievably quick pullet stayed just out of my reach. It evaded every attempt by Grace and I to catch it and started running along the chain-link fence. Then, as I got closer, it desperately squeezed THROUGH the fence and I probably would've lost it forever if I didn't catch hold of one of its feet and haul it back into the yard. Only having one hand, I couldn't switch my grip to carry it more gently, so I schlepped it, holding just one foot, back inside. When you hold them by their feet, they often go limp, so Betsy arrived home right at that moment to see me carrying a seemingly dead chicken in the direction of the garbage can. Hopefully, this incident doesn't foreshadow things to come...

Snowmass, Part 3

Sorry if you're tired of hearing about our trip to Snowmass, but I had a lot to share and I thought it might be easier to digest in three (relatively) shorter posts than one loooong post. So I wanted to devote this one to talking about how I ate. Most of our meals were provided for us in a large ballroom at the Westin Resort. They had two buffet lines, offering a great assortment of foods for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I just took my Blendtec pitcher through the line and dumped my food straight into it.

Everything is blurry in Colorado...or maybe I can't take a picture. This is part of the breakfast buffet.

In general, breakfasts were much better than lunches and dinners for eating gluten-free. They always had eggs, breakfast potatoes, and bacon/sausage. On a couple mornings, they even had omelet bars. For lunch, they often only had ham sandwiches wrapped in aluminum foil, a salad, and some type of soup. Not the greatest offerings for a gluten-free tubie. Dinner was hit or miss. I can't complain because my meals were paid for, although we had to pay quite a bit for Betsy and Grace to eat with me. The staff at the Westin were all awesome. I can't say enough good things about them.

Omelet bars are fabulous

After I got my meal, we found an outlet along the wall of the ballroom, close to our table. I plugged up the Blendtec and hit the "Soups/Syrups/Fondues" button. It was loud, but the din in the dining room was loud to begin with, so we didn't make a scene.

Doesn't my little Blendtec look lost and forlorn?

Blendtec's Wildside Jar TCB (Taking Care of Business - Seinfeld reference)

After eating, I brought my pitcher to one of the wait-staff, and they ran it through their dishwasher for me. They recognized me from last year, so they were used to catering to a tubie.

We ate most of our meals with friends who we first met at the sports clinic last year, Mike and Courtney. Mike is a blind veteran. He was an Army medic. After going blind, he got the military to pay for him to go to law school. He became a blind, Buddhist lawyer. Yes, you read that right. He's a blind, Buddhist lawyer. They should make a TV show or an awful movie starring Ben Affleck about that, right? 

Mike is a great guy, full of funny stories. He serves as a part-time judge in Arizona right now. He also does a lot of pro bono work. For instance, a gentleman asked Mike to represent him after he was sued by his landlord for "allegedly" mooning him. Mike's brilliant defense? The landlord didn't know for sure who had mooned him because he couldn't pick the offending hindquarters out in a lineup. The guy got off free of charge. 

Courtney always accompanies Mike on his trips. She is Mike's 12 year-old daughter and was really awesome about playing with Grace all week.

Mike is sitting on the far left. Courtney is in the middle, next to Grace, who is wearing a bright pink hat.

Here's a picture of Grace with Mike's seeing-eye dog, Dobson:

Dobson is old and nearing retirement. He was easily distracted by food

One of the really cool aspects of this trip is seeing all the amazing service dogs and hearing about all the ways they help veterans. We got some pictures of a few of them. Grace wanted to show some pictures at show-and-tell in her class so she wrote down the dogs' names. Here's Onyx: 

Onyx is a guide dog; purebred black lab

And this is Doc

Doc is a seizure dog

Introducing Albus:

Albus, "picks up stuff, takes off socks and gets [the owner's] wife"

And Mogul:

He turns on lights and wakes up his owner when he has nightmares

This is Koby:

Koby is an emotional therapy dog

Sorry about the poor quality of the picture, but this is Rocky:

According to his owner, Rocky, "does everything!"

One of the dogs even got out on the dance floor during the instructor appreciation dance:

Don't know this stud's name, but he had some moves

That was just a few of the dogs we met during the week. We even met a service dog at the Aspen airport on the way home. I thought, with the passage of the law legalizing marijuana in Colorado, it would be a smart move for them to have drug dogs at the airport to catch all the people bringing their legally purchased pot brownies home. However, this was just a dog to detect explosives. So, if you're thinking about bringing your wacky tobaccy home with you after your getaway in the Rockies, go for it!!!  (don't do that--you'll probably get caught--then you'll blame me)

His name is Qualls. Grace may have had explosives in her hair.

So, I was talking about eating before I got on the blind lawyer/service dog tangent. Here are just a few pictures of me eating in the Westin ballroom.

Tuesday breakfast

Tuesday lunch

Tuesday dinner. I should really try different expressions.

Wouldn't it be fun to squirt a syringe-full at other people? A new type of food fight!

Wednesday dinner I think?

Here I am with Jake.

Hi Jake

Jake was one of our team leaders last year on team Head Wall. He works at the VA office in Denver and he's been volunteering at this event for over a decade. His father, also a team leader, has been coming to the clinic even longer. Jake and Grace had a constant game all week trying to sneak up on, and scare, each other. Jake was much better at it.

I mentioned that lunches weren't all that great in the ballroom. On one such occassion, when I was a little pressed for time because I had to get out to the ski slopes, Real Food Blends came in really useful!! I mixed mine (Salmon meal) with a Carnation Instant Breakfast to boost up the calories and it turned out fantastic!

Real Food Blends selfie

On a couple occasions, they didn't offer meals in the dining room. Instead, they had Taste of Snowmass, where all the restaurants in Snowmass Village offered an entrée and desert--I think I talked about this in my first Snowmass post. In those cases, I brought my food back to the hotel room and blended it up there. This wasn't ideal because I always forget to bring dish soap on these trips, and I hate having to clean the Wildside jar and my syringes in the bathtub. But, I made it work.

Friday's blend...last day :-(

On the way home, I was worried about bringing a Real Food Blends meal through security because it's 8 ounces of liquid. They are usually ok with Ensures after I flash my tube and tell them I have no other way to eat. I didn't have the Real Food Blend in the box though. It was just the gray pouch. I think next time I'll try keeping the box out and taking it through. I'm really afraid they'll make me throw it away though! Anybody else get a Real Food Blend or Liquid Hope through security? Here I am in the Houston airport during our layover:

One of the few times we let Grace eat McDonald's. She was excited.

So ends another successful trip to Colorado. Some great memories and we are already counting down the days until the 2015 Winter Sports Clinic!!

The enormous Snowmass chair

Snowmass, Part 2

Sooooo....where was I? Ah yes, I just talked about the first two days of our awesome trip to Snowmass and how I'm #1 on Adam Sandler's speed dial. That was Sunday.

All the veterans are expected to either ski or snowboard two days--plus there's a short "race" on Friday. We also had to take part in two alternate activities during the week. They offered a variety of activities like sled hockey, curling, scuba diving (in the heated pool), or trips to hot springs or to Aspen. Monday, I was slated for an alternate activity and I chose to cross-country ski, just like last year. 

It's hard for me to keep my balance on cross-country skis, so my instructor (same one I had last year) set me up in The Slider--pictured below. My instructor--Bobbi from New Mexico--actually invented The Slider and was a wealth of knowledge on adaptive skiing and snowboarding. It worked well for me, and I didn't have any falls over a two-mile course. However, I was tethered to Bobbi the whole time, in case I got out of control and needed to be stopped. I really prefer doing these activities on my own, so I think I'll try snowshoeing next year to see if I'm able to do it solo.

"Four skis gooood; two skis baaaaad" (random Animal Farm reference?)

After skiing, we were served elk stew by, fittingly, the local Elk's Lodge. They had a generator at the site but my Blendtec probably would've overloaded it, so I got my stew to go and just had water and talked with some of the other vets. I noticed a backpack at one table that said "Air Force Football" and "WAC Champions" on it. I asked the owner (a dude about twice my size named Jeff) if he went to the Academy and it turned out he graduated the year after I did.

Jeff became a Combat Controller in the Air Force. Forget SEALs and Green Berets; in my opinion, Combat Controllers are the real badasses of the military. They get imbedded with SEAL teams and Army A-Teams so that the Army and Navy can communicate with Air Force planes flying in the area. So, they have to go through all the training the other special forces teams do, in addition to learning how to be air controllers in the field. Anyway, Jeff did all this training, became a Combat Controller, then he was recruited to join the AF Office of Special Investigations (OSI; the AF version of NCIS, if you're familiar with that show). 

Jeff deployed to northern Iraq to conduct missions for the OSI. While he was there, he got in a car accident and sustained a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). I actually found quite a few TBIs among the veterans in Snowmass. It can be a very debilitating injury. Jeff also began to show early signs of Multiple Sclerosis (MS). The Air Force decided to retire him in 2006 and right around this time, Jeff's wife was diagnosed with stage 3 lymphoma. Piled on with this, Jeff has PTSD from his Iraqi deployment. Crazy, right? How much can one guy take? He was taking it all in stride, though. He ran the Marine Corps Marathon in 2012--he told me he fell down about 10 times and was all bloody at the end. He's trying out to compete in the 2014 Warrior Games. He's also planning to hike 60 miles in 24 hours on May 30-31 to raise money for Team Racing for Veterans (R4V). Team R4V inspires and empowers disabled veterans through fitness. Jeff's fundraising page is here if you're interested: http://www.crowdrise.com/1VTforR4V/fundraiser/jeffhaugh. He convinced me to do it with him, so I'm sure I'll be writing more about it later.

Jeff Haugh, USAFA class of '99, talking to some weirdo

Vodka is awesome at high altitudes...I mean water! Water...what did I say?

My first day of snowboarding was on Tuesday. I was fortunate enough to have one of the same coaches I had last year, Michelle. Michelle is originally from Australia but now resides on Vancouver Island, Canada, where she mostly works with Autistic kids while doing a little snowboarding on the side. She is a terrific coach and really knowledgeable about adaptive snowboarding. My other coach was a skier (nobody's perfect) named Jim. Jim lived in Aspen most of his life so he was really familiar with the mountain. He'd also worked a lot with the adaptive equipment I was using.

Last year I was tethered to my instructor the whole time I was snowboarding. Just as with cross-country skiing, this was so my coach could stop me if I started getting out of control or started to fall. I likened it to tandem skydiving: kinda cool in its own way, but I prefer the thrill and freedom of doing it on my own. So, this time I tried using an outrigger. It's sort of a little ball or ski on the end of a cane I use for balance while I'm boarding. First, I tried using the ball. It worked pretty well, but it's mainly for boarding at lower speeds. When I got going fast, it kept getting caught in the snow (there was a lot of powder).

I tried holding an outrigger in my weak hand too, but it was useless

Then I used the regular outrigger. At first, it was hard to get used to; you have to make sure the ski is pointed the same way you're going. You can also point the ski in the direction you'd like to turn to help you go one way or the other (I had some trouble with left turns last year). Once I finally got used to it (actually not until the last run I took on Friday), it was awesome!!! Just to have that feeling back of surfing freely down the slope was incredibly uplifting for me. I am so thankful to Michelle and Jim for helping me get there!!!

My outrigger

This is on Thursday. Michelle got video on Friday, but she hasn't sent it to me yet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsLkvYWbBXs

I did get injured on Thursday. I fell backward down an icy patch of the slope and hit my head on the ground. I was wearing a helmet, but I saw stars. Michelle got worried about me and decided to call the ski patrol to take me to the clinic. So, ski patrol guy shows up, asks me how many fingers he's holding up, I say "eleventy," and they strap me into the yellow sled so they can drag me down the mountain behind their emergency, light-flashing, siren-ringing, snowmobile. One of my friends, a veteran with a TBI named Steve, happened to be there when it happened. He promptly texted another friend of mine, Mark back in Knoxville (I've written about him before) who apparently got the idea my fall was much more serious and told his wife I had sustained my own TBI. It actually wasn't a big deal; I was given some ibuprofen and got back on the mountain after lunch.

My other injury during the trip happened on Friday and was WAY more serious, as you can see from the picture:

I won't cry I won't cry I won't cry I won't cry I won't cry

I was snowboarding on my last, really awesome, run and fell on my weak arm wrong. I didn't even notice the mortal injury until a couple hours later. By that point it had swollen to the size of a small marble, I was starting to get lightheaded and babbling feverishly. Betsy decided to get X-rays just to see how much of my hand they'd have to amputate. As it turned out, I had some complex condition called a "brewz." I don't know medical jargon so I may have gotten the spelling wrong. If I die from this, please tell Grace her daddy was brave.

My other alternate activity that week was snowmobiling. I'd never been before so I was pretty excited about it. On the way there, we saw a herd of elk:

"Don't stay at the Elk's Lodge! It's a trap!!!!!"

Once we arrived, they had me put on their Night Rider helmet. 

Where's my ride?

To make the snowmobile go, you just press on a lever with your right hand. So I could have driven it by myself, but unfortunately the brake lever is operated by the left hand so I had to have someone ride behind me in case I needed to stop. Snowmobiling is fun. Really beautiful scenery. The drawbacks were: it's really loud and since we were in a large group with one course, we ended up getting backed up in a long line. I was behind 10 other snowmobiles and couldn't really go as fast as I'd like.

Wouldn't get much use out of it in Tennessee though

Perfect Colorado Scenery

On Wednesday night, Grace and I let mommy rest in the hotel room and went to the ski/snowboard instructor appreciation dance. It was hard to get Grace off the dance floor.

She just held my hand and kept twirling around and around and around

She ended up getting schooled on some moves by Michelle.

Grace had a dance-off with my snowboard instructor. Sorry I'm such an awful videographer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pl-6fbA2UuQ

She also danced with one of our Team Leaders, Jessica. I think I mentioned before that all the veterans were split up into teams, according to our abilities. So, all the wheelchair-bound vets had their own teams and the blind skiers were in a couple teams. I was on Team Head Wall. I don't know what our main issue was; we had some guys with MS, TBI, PTSD, and random people like me. Every team had about three team leaders who helped us get to our events and dealt with any problems that arose. This was Jessica's first year at the clinic. She's a college student in Grand Junction, CO, and was a great help to us taking care of Grace.

Just look at Grace's cute dimple

I think I'll stop the blog post here so I can devote the next one to talking about how I ate during the trip. Once again, I have to be that guy....To Be Continued....

Oh, I've got my own page on Facebook now. Take a look at it and give it a 'Like' if you want. Is that pretentious to have my own Facebook page? Maybe if all my "fans" were fake Facebook accounts I created...but I wouldn't do something like that...Nope, all my 374,527 fans are living, breathing people...

https://www.facebook.com/Travelingtubie