Author Archives: Joel

Finally got a day without much wind. A little chilly but I worked up a pretty good sweat anyway. I just wanted a moratorium on the airborne chicken shit. The old straw – soaked, compacted and at best half-rotted – … Continue reading →

😀 Stolen from Peter’s place.

Boy, it’s one of those mornings not fit for man nor beast. Not all that cold, high thirties, but the wind, my god, the wind will just knock you down and freeze you to the ground. I ain’t stepping one … Continue reading →

Heh… h/t

On a small shelf on the wall next to my oven there are three items – a pot I use exclusively for heating water (because of the excessively hard water: If you saw the inside of the pot you’d understand) … Continue reading →

I hauled out three wheelbarrow loads of straw just from the top layer I could rake up. Then I start digging. I think I went a bit overboard with this “deep compost” thing, or maybe it just doesn’t work well … Continue reading →

So when I do so on March 8, it shouldn’t be taken as a comment about the #DayWithoutAWoman. Every day at the Secret Lair is a day without a woman, unless Landlady drops by for coffee. There’s about a million … Continue reading →

If everybody falls for the ol’ reliable left/right false dichotomy, and then they all boycott all the things that annoy them, wouldn’t that essentially bring all commerce to a whoa? In one generation we’d be back to chipping flint and … Continue reading →

Thick wool socks, is what. That was the winter of 2008, the coldest and most isolated winter I spent at the Gulch, and it’s odd to recall that it was actually my third winter here because I was so hilariously … Continue reading →

I hadn’t realized it before today. But I tore up my rotator cuff sometime in October I think, and since then haven’t really done any work at all. Now the shoulder’s feeling much better and D&L needed hay, so we … Continue reading →

Quarter after seven on the first decently cold morning of this freakishly warm month. Uncle Joel wants a YUUUGE fire in the woodstove while he drinks his coffee. Except there’s a problem… Dammit, Little Bear! A week or two of … Continue reading →

or, Who Says California Politics Can’t Be Fun? A Republican legislator and Vietnamese refugee was dragged from the state Senate floor Thursday morning when a Democratic leader ordered her removed after she tried to criticize the late Tom Hayden, a … Continue reading →

Though I doubt that’s the way he thought about it at the time. In catching Seymour to bring him to the Big Chickenhouse, I never considered making it a fair fight. He’s a big boy, with spurs and a beak … Continue reading →

I got nothin’ this morning. Here’s some Weird Al.

New Hampshire Governor Signs Constitutional Carry Into Law 12/50. And I laughed when somebody first suggested “Vermont Carry” as an achievable goal. Good thing I’m never right about these things.

I’m down to two hens in the Fortress of Attitude. This time there was blood. It’s always the same pattern; all the hens but one get along fine with Seymour. But the smallest becomes terrified of him. He starts persecuting … Continue reading →

It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more compleatly deprive the nation of it’s benefits, than is done by it’s abandoned prostitution to falsehood. Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a … Continue reading →

I’ve had moments like this. Not on a motorcycle, but… You might need to click on it. Stupid gifs. You can see the moment he takes his mind off the game and starts taking bows. Nemesis Follows Hubris.

This story is like six years old, and yet timeless. Having been a motorcyclist myself, I have always been in complete sympathy with people who agitated against helmet laws – even though I always carefully wore a helmet*. There is … Continue reading →