Category Archives: Colorado Daily Life

Sly Skunk Slinks into Chicken Coop

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Last night we heard a bit of a ruckus. Britton didn’t want to lock the chickens all the way into the little coop because they wake up at 5am (when the sun comes out) and want out into the yard -which means one of US has to wake up at 5am on a weekend to let them out. So we opened the windows at night and figured we’d hear anything if something tried to attack them. Well, we did! AND unlike the last time which coincidentally was almost a year ago to the day, we got a good look at the culprit. It was a skunk!


Skunks move in undulations but are not very fast so we got a couple good photos

You would think we could smell him coming, but we couldn’t! I always thought skunks stunk just in general, but they don’t! Although when Britton was trying to get him to leave the yard and he threw something at him, he did raise his tail -a warning that he was prepared to spray- which made Britton high tail it away from him! He did not want to be taking a bath in tomato juice! The skunk, unlike last year’s predator (who we think was a wild field cat) couldn’t scale the fence and was trapped in our yard.


You can see the skunk next to the AC in the garden with my freshly planted peppers (click pic to enlarge)

The chickens were all understandably freaked out, as skunks are natural chicken predators. Although, I have heard that they don’t usually go after the full-grown chickens and prefer eggs and chicks to a big ol’ hen that they can’t carry away or eat all the way. But, if they can get a hold of them, they will try to kill them and then just eat the head and blood which is what happened to some of my chickens when I was a kid.

So after all the commotion, the chickens were standing in the yard with their heads stretched high and eyes wide open near our back porch. The young ones were still safe in the greenhouse and we managed to wrangle all three of the older ones back into the coop and lock it shut.

At least they are all big, healthy chickens that make a fuss if anything tries to bother them. I think it would be a good fight if it was just one skunk against all of them. But I’d rather not find out!   And I’d rather that our backyard not get skunkified either! 🙂

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Plentiful Peppers (and Other Things)

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An intern at work has a family farm in Evans and he brought in two huge tray-fulls of pepper starts. They all look really healthy and hardy. He told everyone to take as many as we wanted. I took about 30 plants! Britton and I planted them all around the garden area yesterday and in the front flower garden too. I’ve never had too good of luck with pepper plants, but my mom says to just put grass clippings around the base of them to keep the humidity high near them and they will do well. We’ll see! I love peppers, so I hope it works out!


The pepper starts in the garden


One close up


Here are the three not-so-baby pullets under the tree staying out of the rain. We’ve named them: Omeleto (Omelette 2), Barock (the Barred Rock), and Little Foot (the smaller version of Greenfoot).


Flowers are still blooming like mad

 

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Cheap Tix to Cheap Trick

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Every year here in Greeley (at least for the last 80 or so) we have a July 4th celebration put on by the Stampede.  It used to be a community “potato festival” as that is what was grown in this area..Potatoes.

Somewhere along the line a private company took over ownership of the fair.  Since then it’s turned into a bigger and bigger deal.  They run the parade every year, the rodeo and the island grove park carnival.   One of the benefits to this is they draw in some pretty big names in music. They’ve had Def Leopard, Kid Rock, Keith Urban and numerous other acts.

Last night we had tickets to Cheap Trick and rode our bikes to the fairgrounds.  Blue Oyster Cult opened up for them.  I think we were the only people that rode our bikes.  The people watching the gate kind of laughed as we rode past them and bypassed the $10 parking fees.


Ticket Stubs

The fair has increasingly gotten more and more expensive.  I’d imagine back in the days of the Potato Fair it was pretty cheap to walk to the park.  They’d have some games and maybe a baking contest.  Now it’s $10 to park your car and another $5 just to get into the park.  A Turkey leg will cost you $8 and a lemonade $4.  That makes the regularly priced tickets to see Cheap Trick($17) not so bad in comparison.   We got them for $5 which is usually the cost to just walk around.  Not bad!


At the show! You can see the meat packing plant in the distance

The concert was pretty good.  We recognized a few of their songs from the radio and there were a few people that seemed to know every song.  I am sure this was a pretty big deal for them.

We got an “Indian Taco” (that isn’t really a taco and isn’t Indian either) as we walked around the food court.  We ran into a few people that we know and then watched the concert.  Overall it was a fun night .

Walking around the fair grounds after dark

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Greeley Freight Station Museum

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We think Britton has West Nile Virus. He’s had a headache, fever and body aches for a couple of days. He decided to stay home sick and work from home Friday. He’s been feeling a little better but still kind of strange he says. Anyway, since he was in Greeley I asked if he would meet up with me and my co-workers down at Lincoln Park for a free BBQ meal the Greeley Stampede was putting on. I don’t know if it was to butter us up because of last year’s new policy to charge admission, but I’m always up for free food. Some people said they may not charge admission this year (2011), but according to their website they are still planning on it.  In any case, it was actually pretty good for a bbq and fun to see all sorts of people from Greeley come out! We even ran into one of the people who used to rent the basement bedroom from us, our friend Bob!


With some of my co-workers -Andrew, Marjorie, Kelly and me

Since we were downtown we thought about and  decided that Saturday morning we should ride our bikes down to the Farmers Market since we hadn’t been yet this summer. So we did! There really wasn’t too much in the way of local produce yet, but we picked up some tamales and a pretzel. Then I thought we should swing over and visit with my friend Michelle who works at the Greeley Freight Station Museum! Britton’s grandpa used to have a huge set in his basement, so I thought Britton might get a kick out of it.


The Building for the Train Museum

It is located right next to the Farmers Market Square, or the old Train Depot (680 10th Street). The museum building looks like an old warehouse or something, but inside it houses 20.5 scale miles of miniature railroad track and lots of mini trains that are set in a scene in Oregon in the mid 1970s. There are a total of 2,000 train cars!


In this part you can see logging and an old Greeley Monfort Feed Lot Train Car

For the set, the attention to detail is unreal and must have taken the staff and volunteers a ton of time to put together. In addition to all the mini trains, there’s also a full size caboose that you can climb in and check out. From what I understand a lot of this was the private property of the former owner of the Greeley Tribune (Greeley’s newspaper). When he sold the paper and a few other newspapers, he ramped up his train set. Eventually he decided this was something that the public should see and started a museum. It is set up to eventually become a Greeley public museum when he dies.

We had a lot of fun and thank Michelle for letting us visit it and her!


This is the city scene…down the street you can see my face in the mirror like a billboard -lol


Me at the Greeley Freight Station Museum


Britton in the train museum

 

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