Halloween

Halloween
Originally uploaded by baseballpajamas

...Before heading out trick or treating. My favorite costume here? The 5 year old girl, near the center, dressed as a "goth strawberry" (her description).

We're back home now, with 5 of these boys (plus Fergus and Norah), riding the waves of emotion that comes with frequent infusions of sugar. I'm exhausted. And miles to go before I sleep.

There is a kind of lull right now as they watch a movie--oh wait a minute, one of the boys just came downstairs in a state of dismay (Lauren is running interference). But it is relatively lull-ish with the movie happening. Still, I'm unusually stressed.

Mostly Lauren and I are standing around tonight unsure what to do with ourselves--half listening to everything that is happening, ready to intervene if necessary, but not too soon, aware that it would be ideal to prevent bloodshed, or even tears. But also aware that these boys work a lot out on their own, at school. Still, I feel like I'm working in the ER, waiting for trouble to burst through the double doors.

Apples From 2 Houses Away

Apples From 2 Houses Away
Originally uploaded by baseballpajamas

We just made the first applesauce from my new hand-crank food mill (it's still hot!).

The picture does NOT do this applesauce justice.

It's lovely, tangy, sweet.

I'm glad the kids and I followed up on the hand-lettered (with fading marker on office whiteboard) sign:

"PYO Apples. Organic. $10 a bucket--25 lbs."

Nobody was home when we went picking, so we left the ten-spot pinned to the little bulletin board in their breezeway, with a note: "Thanks for the apples." And that was enough. Thanks again, Chappells.

30 Years Ago Today

Thirty years ago today, in a dorm room in Bellingham, Washington, I drank one beer for every year of my young life.

Not advised.

Jim could perhaps provide a picture.

Thirty years ago in someone else's life (most likely somewhere in New York State):


Appropriated, but not frivolously, from Jamie Livingston's Photo of the Day.

Date Night

Date Night
Originally uploaded by baseballpajamas

(Before Jane Campion film)

TV Sales Pitch

This is how Woot.com is selling a 19" LCD television today:

"The official government story says there was no boy in that balloon. But a growing number of Americans are demanding the truth about what really happened on 10/15."

There's more. But it will be gone at midnight.

Cartwheelies

Cartwheelies
Originally uploaded by baseballpajamas

Music Club Night at the Black Door

Bad-Ass Rooster

I know, I know, enough with the chicken talk. But look at this bad-ass rooster. This is the chicken-with-attitude that we sent away to live with Shawnee (who took this picture) a couple weeks ago.

"Don't friggin' THINK of messing with me."

Egg Sizer

We got another egg this morning, the brown one in the middle. We
happened to be there just as she (one of the barred Plymouth Rocks)
got up. We HAD been wondering if she was a boy, based on the size of
her comb.

Not a boy.

The bluegreen egg is from a friend's mature layers, set here for size
comparison.

Surreal Vermont Chicken Doings

An unidentified chicken expert, left, and Barre Town animal control officer Justin Pickel remove a cage containing chickens seized from the property of Kathy Rubalcaba, right, in East Barre on Wednesday afternoon.

JEB WALLACE-BRODEUR/TIMES ARGUS


Police raid the roost in East Barre
Lawyer squawks over 'warrantless search'

By David Delcore
TIMES ARGUS STAFF - Published: October 8, 2009
BARRE TOWN – Just when it looked like the tale of an embattled East Barre chicken farmer couldn't get any weirder, it did late Wednesday afternoon.

Accompanied by an unidentified self-proclaimed chicken expert, police swooped in and scooped up four apparent roosters – three of them too tiny to crow – and drove off, leaving Kathy Rubalcaba to ponder what had just happened.

It was the latest maneuver in the fight over Rubalcaba's homegrown chicken-and-egg operation on her quarter-acre lot, which has raised the ire of neighbors in the residential area who have had to listen to her roosters' constant crowing.

The rooster raid capped a dizzying day during which Rubalcaba's lawyer, Daniel Richardson, said he sought without success to persuade town officials to wait for today's hastily arranged 1 p.m. hearing in Washington Superior Court before taking any drastic action. The focus of today's hearing will be a newly filed motion that Richardson had hoped would prevent the town from enforcing its Sept. 17 order limiting Rubalcaba to a single rooster until after her appeal is heard.

However, when two police cruisers and a van pulled up outside Rubalcaba's Church Street home shortly after 4 p.m., it was clear that Richardson's efforts to postpone matters had failed.

Police Chief Michael Stevens and two of his officers – one wielding a digital video camera – were joined at the scene by the town's animal control officer and a woman who would identify herself only as a "representative of the town" who professed to know something about chickens.

Asked for a warrant, police said they had none and were acting solely on the order of the selectboard. Based on that order, police ignored Rubalcaba's repeated requests that they stay off her property and out of her chicken coops and pens. They politely but firmly and repeatedly instructed her to step aside and allow the woman, whose name and qualifications they would not disclose, to inspect her chickens.

At one point Rubalcaba insisted the woman might track contaminants into her chicken coop, prompting the town's expert to tie plastic shopping bags around her shoes as a precaution. A visibly frustrated Rubalcaba was prevented by police from accompanying the woman into at least one of the enclosures that house chickens on her property.

It was a surreal scene that played out while some of Rubalcaba's nearest neighbors and most vocal critics watched quietly from a distance and a couple of her friends peppered police with questions from close range.

"How many guys do you need to take two roosters?" Tom Taylor asked. "They brought a SWAT team."

Taylor, who raises chickens in Northfield, also questioned the credentials of the woman who was hunting for roosters on Rubalcaba's property Wednesday afternoon.

"They're hens," he said of two smallish birds that the woman placed in the cage that she later drove off with.

Ann Horsman, a self-described chicken farmer from Moretown, also wondered why the woman had singled out the young birds.

"These are chicks," she said. "Unbelievable!"

Contacted at his Montpelier office after the raid that left Rubalcaba with one rooster – her prized Welsummer – Richardson said he was in the process of amending his complaint based on what he characterized as a troubling turn of events.

"This was a textbook warrantless search," he said. "I've yet to come up with a (legal) basis for the town doing what it did."

Attempts to reach both Town Attorney Michael Monte and Town Manager Carl Rogers for comment were unsuccessful Wednesday.

Richardson said he spoke with both men before the raid, but claimed he was unable to talk them out of what he called a premature power play that may have violated his client's civil rights.

"The town is acting a bit like a bully," he said. "What this did is prove a bunch of grown men can intimidate a single woman."

Richardson said Rubalcaba, whose fledgling business is called Layed In Vermont, won't take the town's actions lying down.

"We're going to move for sanctions, we're going to move to have the chickens returned, and we're going to move to have this whole thing tossed out," he said, reiterating Rubalcaba's consistent claim that she needs three roosters to maintain the three breeds that are the foundation of her enterprise.

Although the simmering chicken dispute may seem inconsequential, Richardson said the issues at its core – property rights and due process – are anything but.

"These are the building blocks on which democracy is built and our rights our tested," he said. "This is quickly moving into the realm of scary."

Rubalcaba said the rooster raid was par for the course on a day that began with an aborted attempt to slaughter nearly three dozen roosters she removed from her property Tuesday afternoon to substantially comply with the selectboard's order. Rubalcaba said she took the roosters to Taylor's farm in Northfield, but because the well there hadn't been tested she couldn't have the roosters slaughtered and USDA stamped, as she had hoped.

According to Rubalcaba, the roosters were taken to Morrisville, where they are to be inspected and slaughtered today.

The Hens Lay an Egg!

Our first egg!

Quick Trip to Owl's Head, Vermont

I stole an hour and a half today to buzz over to Groton State Forest and take a vigorous 5 minute hike (literally; the trail is only 2 tenths of a mile) to the top of Owl's Head. I couldn't stay long, because I had to rush back to pick up the kids at school, but it sure was pretty while it lasted.


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Chicken Developments

Three chicken developments here this week:

1. Our (most) obnoxious rooster, Black Hawk, went to live with Shawnee. I think she would like to keep him, but so far she is kind of sitting on the fence. He might end up going to Freezer Camp if he doesn't shape up.
2. The cattle corn around here is being harvested day and night, and the trucks are buzzing back and forth to the farm with loads of chopped corn plants. The unexpected side-effect: our chickens keep wandering into the road in search of truckish windfall. This seems to amuse some of the people driving by and irritate others. One guy stopped by yesterday to say, "Do you know your chickens are in the road?" Well, yes (I had just been watching them). I apologized, and he asked if I wanted help getting them back to my lawn. I demurred; you can't really herd chickens, near as I can tell (I DID toss some scratch for them over by the garage, which kept them out of the road for awhile).
   
3. Speaking of being on the fence, the chickens have discovered the rail fence, and they've been hanging out there, watching for Leaf Peepers and suchlike predators of the North.

Florida Balcony sunset

Florida Balcony sunset
Originally uploaded by baseballpajamas

She's everywhere that I'm not I'm not.