Maydays

May has been a real humdinger, I tell ya.

I managed to get the garden planted the first weekend of the month, only to have another freeze roll through and murder the cucumbers, zucchini, and a few tomato plants. On top of that, the newest members of our little farm — also known as the Seven Dwarves — discovered they were small enough to squeeze their fuzzy little booties through the garden fence. They happily ate every seed I planted along with the burdock shoots that had started coming up.

Feathered freaks of destruction and mayhem.

The plan is to buy a few replacement plants to make up for what got eaten, but I haven’t gotten around to that part yet.

We also bought four dozen fancy chicken eggs with hopes of hatching out some new additions to the Dekker Peckers. Eight hatched. Well, technically nine hatched, but only eight survived. That’s a horrible hatch rate, so either someone has a lazy rooster or we stuffed too many eggs in the bator at once. The world may never know.

You may remember from the last post that we dispatched the extra roosters and kept Larry.

Fucking Larry.

This little asshole had his special four or five hens he treated nicely while being an absolute menace to the others. He’d jump on them, yank out feathers, and dig his spurs into their backs hard enough to cause injuries. He had twelve hens — the perfect ratio — and somehow still turned the whole setup into Fight Club.

Dennis insisted it was “just rooster behavior,” but it wasn’t behavior I was interested in tolerating. Was he going to teach the younger roosters that this was how you handle the ladies?

Nope. Because Larry went to axe camp.

We currently have no active rooster, and things have calmed way down. The girls are happy, laying again, and their feathers are finally growing back. In hindsight, I probably should’ve kept two roosters so Larry had some competition. I made it too easy for him, and he became an arrogant cock about the whole situation.

Quail, Chaos, and Tiny Poop Chutes

In quail news, we finally figured out how to sex them.

Turns out we were trying too early, which explains why we weren’t seeing the telltale white foam everyone talks about. Once they’re old enough, you flip them over and gently squeeze their little poop chutes. If white stuff comes out, it’s a male. If nothing comes out, it’s a female.

Nature is magical.

We ended up with eight males and nine females. We kept one male with the girls and separated the rest. For a few days, it sounded like a bird sanctuary over here while the males screamed their lonely little hearts out for the ladies.

After a couple weeks, Dennis processed the extra males. We stuffed them with jalapeños and cream cheese, wrapped them in bacon, and grilled them. The result was a delicious piece of bacon wrapped around a tiny bird carcass with meat tough enough to qualify as cardio.

Maybe they were chewy because they were roosters, but honestly, neither of us likes the taste enough to justify the effort of raising them for meat. The eggs, though? Those are fantastic, especially boiled. So we’ll probably just keep the hens going and hatch more later if we need to replenish the flock.

The Great Tennessee Drought of Fifteen Minutes

Apparently we were in a drought for about fifteen minutes.

In reality, I think we went maybe two weeks without significant rain, which around here is apparently enough for people to start speaking in hushed, apocalyptic tones.

“What do ya think is gonna happen with this drought?”

My first instinct is always to ask if they’ve ever visited somewhere like Arizona, where the landscape looks like God gave up halfway through creation. That’s drought country. But instead, I nod along and agree that we’ll all probably perish if it doesn’t rain soon.

And wouldn’t ya know it — it rained.

Not only did it rain, but it’s scheduled to keep raining for the next ten days. Huzzah. Drought over.

The cloudy weather does play hell on the solar setup Dennis installed, though. On a good sunny day, we can run the dishwasher, washing machine, well pump, and about half the house off the panels. On cloudy days, we rely on the battery backup and hope the sun decides to cooperate again before we drain everything.

The whole process has made us painfully aware of how much electricity we actually use and when we use it. Still, there’s something deeply satisfying about sticking it to the electric company after watching rates climb year after year.

We haven’t tested the system during a major outage yet, but I’m confident it’ll do fine. We definitely need another battery, though. Unfortunately, as more people panic about the looming energy crisis and turn toward solar, equipment prices have nearly doubled since we started this project.

Just like everything else.

Possums, Failure, and Ike

Wildlife rehab season is picking up.

So far, I’ve had eleven possums and lost eight of them. The licensed rehabber I’m learning from tube-feeds the babies and sends them over once they start eating on their own — apparently so they can promptly die at my house instead.

I was about ready to throw in the towel when they finally stopped dropping dead on me. I’m still amazed at how fragile possums are.

Ike was the first baby I tube fed. He arrived super friendly and immediately decided I was his emotional support human. He loved riding on top of my head or inside my hoodie. His favorite spot, however, was inside my sports bra, which would’ve been adorable if it weren’t for the deeply unsettling sensation of tiny possum hands near my nipples.

You know possums have thumbs, right?

I later paired him with a slightly bigger female in hopes he’d become less attached to me and more interested in being wild again.

That did not happen.

Now when he hears me coming, he scrambles out of the tent, climbs the cage like a tiny prison inmate, and launches himself directly onto me the second I open the door while the female hisses from the shadows like a feral cryptid.

So yeah. I may have accidentally acquired a pet possum.

As you can imagine, Dennis is thrilled.

Books, Roller Coasters, and Insurance Fraud Vibes

I’ve read a few decent books lately.

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver was an entertaining, easy read that felt painfully relevant to modern life. It dives into poverty, addiction, and how quickly people can spiral when life keeps kicking them in the teeth.

Funny Story by Emily Henry was a fun romantic comedy — not usually my thing, but it was light, easy, and entertaining even if the plot was predictable from outer space.

Then there was James by Percival Everett. A friend told me it was good.

She lied.

It wasn’t terrible, but it left me with a lingering “I call bullshit” feeling the entire time. The ending especially felt like the author hit his word-count goal and just wandered off into the woods.

I also finally went to Dollywood for a friend’s birthday. We’ve lived here over ten years and somehow never gone. If you know me, you know I generally avoid large groups of people like they’re carrying plague blankets, so I’d been dodging Dollywood for years.

But honestly? I had a great time.

The park was clean, easy to navigate, and packed with flowers and surprisingly good landscaping. We rode almost every roller coaster, including Lightning Rod — which I’m fairly certain was designed by engineers who asked themselves, “What if anxiety became a physical structure?”

That thing goes 73 miles an hour and gives you “air time,” which is coaster enthusiast language for temporary soul evacuation. At several points, I was convinced I was actively leaving the ride and entering the afterlife.

Meanwhile, my friend was laughing.

Psychopath behavior.

My favorite ride ended up being Wild Eagle. It felt more like flying than dying, which is apparently my preferred thrill level.

Insurance Companies Are Not Your Friends

Here’s something I learned recently: call your insurance company and ask for a rate review every few years.

Our homeowners insurance through Liberty Mutual had crept higher and higher until it eventually surpassed our mortgage payment. Every time I called, they’d blame fires, floods, inflation, and the alignment of the planets before knocking a couple hundred dollars off and acting like they’d done me a favor.

Then one day I got one of those junk mail flyers screaming YOU’RE PAYING TOO MUCH FOR INSURANCE.

Turns out… I was.

One phone call later, a very sweet lady named Cortney saved us $8,500 a year by switching us to Allstate.

Eight. Thousand. Five. Hundred. Dollars.

Apparently loyalty means absolutely nothing anymore except permission for companies to slowly bleed you dry while smiling politely.

Lesson learned.

Goodbye to Peaty and Moose

We lost Peaty the pretty kitty to the forest mafia a couple weeks ago.

She was wildly adventurous and routinely appeared in places no cat had any business being. Peaty preferred staying out all night, partying like a tiny furry rockstar, and generally ignoring any safety recommendations from management.

She’ll be missed.

And then, on the 20th, we lost Moose.

Moose the pug developed an abscessed tooth that caused one side of his face to swell. We took him to the vet, where they kept him overnight and planned to remove the tooth the next morning. He didn’t survive anesthesia.

Pugs are notorious anesthesia risks because of their breathing issues, and we’d avoided putting him under for years because of it. But eventually there wasn’t really a choice.

It’s strange how quiet the house feels now without his constant snoring, farting, and shadowing my every movement. Moose was the ultimate Velcro dog. I genuinely don’t know if I remember how to go to the bathroom without an audience.

The extra gut punch was paying nearly $1,500 to bring home a dead dog.

Bloodwork. X-rays. More bloodwork. The anesthesia that killed him.

I know I’m not the only person who’s been through this, but it’s hard not to notice how much grief costs. Human healthcare, funerals, veterinary medicine — all of it seems built around the fact that when people are scared or heartbroken, they’ll pay almost anything.

Still, I know they were trying to help him.

They gave us a little clay paw print and a clipping of his fur afterward. I almost told them if I wanted hair, I could’ve just vacuumed the car, but I appreciated the gesture.

I spent most of the day digging through rocky soil with a breaker bar and shovel until we finally buried him beneath the rhododendron with Macey, Dexter, and Korky.

Pebbles and Popinno didn’t seem to care much when we laid Moose beside the grave before burying him, but Maggie sniffed him all over and pawed gently at him. Maybe because they’d spent so much time together riding around with me. Maybe he owed her lunch money...

Either way, the house feels different now.

Quieter.

Some months feel like they last a year, and May was definitely one of them.

There’s been loss, frustration, laughter, new beginnings, and enough chaos to keep things interesting. But that’s country life for you — one minute you’re planting tomatoes, the next you’re burying a dog you loved with your whole heart.

Still, the garden keeps growing, the rain keeps falling, and life keeps moving whether we’re ready or not.

I’d love to hear what you all have been up to lately, so leave me a comment and catch me up on your world.

And thank you, as always, for reading and sticking around for the madness.