Leslie VS Parasites

Oh yeah.
the battle is ON! I am equipped now with Parasite killing meds, probiotics, and salty stuff to take mineral baths in. No more of this losing weight, diarrhea, sick, grossness.....
Time to DiE parasites!!!!! I've had enough of your shit (so to speak). I am bigger, more awesome, and gonna win.

And I have a little special dedication song for them.....
Dedicated to myself and the enemy who lives inside me! lol



BTW--- ten years ago i took the same natural parasite killing substances (black walnut hulls and Chinese wormwood) and it made me a bit.... mean (angry?) for the duration. Please excuse me, while i go in and out of stability the next week (or 3).

XoXOoXO

My Ducks! xoxo

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Ducks are fast becoming some of my favorite critters around the Luck Cabin. They are loyal, hilarious, self preserving, self sufficient, lay the best tasting eggs in the world, they take naps with me when i lay down in the sun, and they enjoy the company of chickens.
*
This video is somewhat mundane, but it makes me so happy to watch them - they make me smile and laugh every single day!



PS.... wanna see something that is total hilarity and so wrong :::
GO HERE and watch baby ducks blowing in the wind!

XOXOxoox

Building A Frog Habitat in the Pond

One of the reasons I was not sure if i wanted ducks is because I knew they would eat up my tadpoles, reducing the amount of native frogs I have in my pond. Before the ducks ever arrived I had started to build a frog safe place along the edges of the pond - by taking small dead hemlock trees and piling them up. Still though, i have way less frogs then normal because much of what i built was moved, decayed, or gawd knows what during the winter freezes..... and the ducks came in to massacre what was out in the open. I was excited to still see in some of the hemlock habitats i built, tadpoles and a group of frogs all in one space. So i took that spot, and made what was a froggie shack, into a frog multi-plex mansion!

I layered and extended the branches further out into the water, while also extended further out onto the land connected... putting more small branches on top of larger ones. Like building a debris shelter, a skeleton of a home.

The smaller tiny branches, block the ducks from getting under there.... and so they avoid that spot, and ravage the rest of the pond. Now to fix the pond leak.... omgawd!

Xoxoxox

Throwing ROcks on the Frozen Pond

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My personal search for spring time.
I have been doing this since the pond froze in November. Some of the big rocks I threw slowly sunk in over time (temperature changes), and were swallowed up. None have cracked the ice. I believe when I throw a rock into the center of the pond and it cracks, spring is here.



xxoxox

Watercress, from grocery to pond

When it comes to food and saving money I can be one of the most oportunistic shoppers ya eva' met. Not that I am the lady who pulls out all the coupons and holds up the line cause the half of them are expired- I am the lady who is secretly looking for produce that will keep on giving. Produce with seeds in it that I can plant (winter squash, apples, pears, avacodoe), root veggies (like turnips, rutabaga, radishes, beets) I can put the tops back in the ground to later eat their greens and get seeds from them after they flower, I even plant the bottoms of my onions and eat the green stems that grow back out.
My latest grocery find though has me majorly stoked! Watercress... organic watercress being sold not at the health food store but at the regular ole' grocery... watercress that still had it's ROOTS.
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I bought the watercress straight up to plant in my pond, mushy spring water spots...
I searched around my pond for a good soggy place to plant those roots in the ground, in hopes to have watercress growing in bunches over the next few years.
I dug a hole easily with a stick, you can see the water seeping into the hole...
Looking bee-U-Tee-ful... now i can pick a few greens off to eat and let the rest make a home here.
I love LoVe LOVE grocery items that keep on giving. :)
Do any of ya'll do this too, with grocery foods?
UPDATE:::
Thanks to oko box reader Jason for pointing out that this is a different kind of Cress then watercress, it's called * upland cress * and does not grow in the water like watercress. It grows on land.
Go to Jason's Blog, he has cool as hec pictures of animals he caught on one of those special motion cameras!

xoxox

Quack, Quack!

My ducks! These are the two duckies my uncle gave me for my birthday...
brown and beautiful. He said he at first thought he brought me two females, but by the time he left my cabin he thought he may have brought me a male and a female. And ya'll know what that'll mean...
DUCK BABIES. Which will make me totally cry cause baby ducks always make me cry with the powers of their cuteness.
This breed of ducks (which i have no idea what they are called cause my memory is about as good as one of those peeps in a nursing home with dementia), they lay alot of eggs. Like over 300 a year! The only catch is ducks don't really lay a nest of eggs in a regular place, so when you want to find the eggs it's like a easter egg hunt everytime. :)

JuJu the donkey seems to be uneffected by the ducks for the most part... especially since they are not in the gated area with her and the chickens. Beyond the gate she understands it's a free world, where she doesn't have to stomp ya. Plus, ducks can swim.

Xoxoxox

Mud Wrestling in the Luck Pond

It didn't start out that way... it always starts out innocent, with a finger, a wellie boot, then a toe. Next thing ya know, your legs are sinking and your knees are covered in mud. Then someone pushes you down in the mud and your face is splattered....... then IT'S mutha' freakin' ON! Mud Wrestling!!!!! Mud Zombies start coming towards the other people who are watching in surprise, to pull them down into the dark skanky smelling muck........ dirty loves company!

There was plenty mud slinging, mud being shoved down other people's pants, mud squished just for the lovely feeling of squishing it... i think someone even put some in their own pants to see what it would feel like if ya poop'ed yourself! That is what good times are about. :)

Swimming with the snapping turtles didn't last long though...

This is the kinda girl gang you don't wanna F with. trust me.

Thank gawd for the outside shower here at the cabin which actually has warm water - but only a little bit so we all piled in to wash our clothes and faces off before the warmth ran out!

YiPPpeeeee Zipppppieee!

Xoxoxox

Do Tadpoles Get THIS BiG?!

um, what the hec? I have tadpoles in my pond that are bigger then most frogs!?!! This big honkin' tadpole pictured above is at least 4-5 inches long, and let's just say it's head is huge/wide. And I have seen others like this so big I thought they were funny tailed fish.

See in the picture below, there are some grown normal sized tadpoles in the upper right hand corner, and in the lower left hand corner the dark shadow making a ripple in the water is the giant tadpole! That big one could eat the others for a lite snack!!!
Have ya'll ever seen or heard of these ginormous tadpoles?
xoxox

(Partial) Life Cycle Of The Tadpole

It's cool when nature let's us see the process of conception to birth right through the clear water... unlike a human embryo/fetus which will always have the air of mystery blanketed by a belly- even with our fancy ultra sound.

I have been watching the tadpoles in the pond closely - from being just dots in the bubbles, to when the bubbles began to look melted and the tadpoles kinda poke around in the goo...
And now they have big fat heads, long skinny tails which will soon turn into tiny feet made for hopping! They are able to swim around in their tadpole herd and move from spot to spot freely because all the bubble goop is gone. They wade in the most shallow part of the water still though - I haven't seen anyone stray from the group.
The frogs they will become are really freaking huge... One big guy in the pond is so large that when he jumps into the water the splash is so belly-floppin' hard that the water has hit me in the face from up to five feet away!

Xoxox

Frog Mating Season (tadpoles!)

I tried so hard to sneak up on the spring pond full of mating frogs... i walked quietly and slowly from far away, trying to stop in between each step so I would not be noticed. The frogs were loudly making all their spring time mating calls, which is enough to make me feel warm inside already. From a distance I could see their heads above the water, floating on the surface and singing their love songs - at first it looked like turtles, the way they float with just their nose poking out the water, and these frogs are quite large.
But as soon as I got within 3-4 feet of the tiny pond, they one by one started darting down to the bottom.
This brave one, was the last to go from their relaxed floating, to the unknowable abyss below.
I then noticed right next to the lone ranger, was tadpole eggs already starting their process of life!!! How cool is that?
Like abstract art, or really the mimic of how all life starts... beautiful dots just riding beneath the surface of the water.... I couldnt paint a cooler picture.
XoXo

Tell Me How...

...Something like this happens? This is a natural spring fed pond, very tiny but in the spring time it is full of tadpoles and froggies, lots of critters come to drink here. Right now it is slightly frozen, with these frozen circles on top.
Does anyone have an idea how these circles are created... from underneath or from above?
This may be the most beautiful & serene thing I have seen winter make so far. Yep, even more then all the ice sculptures.

XoXOoo

Creating A Sustainable Dream Part 3

Do ya remember this drawing I did back in November, a sketch of my sustainable dream? I drew it on a tax record for some random land on HWY 209 in Hot Springs and made a list above the drawing of things I wished for... asked for? Required?... in order to make myself a totally eco minded, organic, animal friendly, surrounded by wildlife home. Now look at the cabin below that I found for sale...
Even the porch with the overhang, and stove pipe for the wood stove coming out the roof is in the exact place I drew it - the windows are too. And the shape, the size, and the house is raised off the ground. The roof pitch is in the direction I drew it too, to hold a loft which this cabin does have. Plus it's off HWY 209 in Hot Springs just like the tax record I drew on. But what is even freakier.... there really is a pond near the cabin just like in the drawing!!! So I am going to share my secret wish list with ya'll, and compare each item to what this place has::: The wish is on the left side, and the reality is on the right side!

1. 10 acres or more --- 8 acres (surrounded by other large wooded properties)
2. Variety of land type, wooded, flat, sloping, steep --- all of the above
3. Pure drinking water, creek, spring, pond --- all of the above!!!
4. Sustainable & stable lifestyle --- um, check (fish in pond, get chickens, gardening with ease)
5. Open space for donkey and chickens --- there is an overgorwn cleared spot... nothing the donkey, chickens, me and a goat can't fix.
6. House, old cabin, or place to build a cabin --- rustic cabin 600 sq ft.
7. under $100,000 --- asking price $99,000
8. Organic gardening area big enough to feed myself --- see #5
9. Adjoins nice eco neighbors --- yeah, Llama and sheep farms next door
10. Easy access for getting groceries brought to me, social life --- this one is so-so... ? Who wants to bring me groceries or come for a visit... :)
11. Good dirt --- check, the area is like one giant pure forest with nearly no development for miles and miles
12. Safe for MCS --- yep.
If I can get this close to my list for a house I am thinking I should go ahead and start drawing pictures of myself holding giant wads of cash $$$, winning lotto tickets, with giant abundant gardens all around me. :) Oh, and driving a car again!

Xoxoxoxo