(Intro: More and more folks, even those in urban areas, are raising chickens. The difference between a fresh and a store bought egg is night and day. Plus, they’re fun to have around. Here are some notes from Sherman Shifflett, a regular CvilleBuzz contributor, about his experiences raising chickens. By Sherman Shifflett Except when I was in college and in the Army … [Read more...]
More Gardening Tips
Sherman Shifflett Crows can be devastating in a newly planted garden of corn. The best suggestion I have is to keep them out is to place a string 3-4" over the cornrows when you plant, using stakes at each end of the rows. Crows (grackles too) will not stick their heads under the string. I've never seen squirrels pull up corn and I have plenty of the "tree rats" around. One thing I … [Read more...]
Love Is In the Air
Want to know what love sounds like? Open the windows, close your eyes and listen. Birds. You’ll hear lots of birds calling to one another, seeking a mate. Robins are chattering, doves are cooing, finches are chirping and bluebirds make that chur-lee chur chur-lee call. One bird in our backyard that I wish would sing more is our Red-bellied Woodpecker. Instead of chirping to find his mate, … [Read more...]
Grackle Attack
I’m an amateur birder, and as such, I suppose I should love all birds. Unfortunately, I don’t. Grackles. I despise them, and right now, my back yard and bird feeders are under attack. Grackles are among the largest of the blackbird family. They are not attractive birds, they have an irritating song (if you’d call it that), they hang in huge flocks and they eat everything in sight. When the … [Read more...]
Downy Woodpeckers
When my son was a little boy, his name for Woody Woodpecker, the cartoon character, was Woody Pecker. Funny, but when one of our children misnamed something like that, it stuck. Grits, today, are “grips”, a la my youngest, Laura, and biscuits are “bisticks, as my oldest, Angelin, said as a child. So when we see a woodpecker in the backyard or at the feeder, it’s a woody pecker. I believe my … [Read more...]
Don’t Fence Me In
I’m preparing for the coming garden season. I’m ordering seeds, testing the soil, planning my early and late plantings and mending fences. Mending fences? Yep, that’s the only way I have been able to salvage some of the fruits of my labor. Deer, you know. Back yard gardeners, you see, have a deer problem. More than drought, more than a late cold snap, more than a swarm of locusts, deer … [Read more...]
Chomping at the Bit
My fellow backyard gardener, Bill Hitt, orders seeds from multiple catalogues. As a result, he’s on every gardening mailing list in North America. The postman needs a wheelbarrow to get the catalogues up his driveway. I, however, am on just a few lists but already my contacts are sending me seed catalogues. I am beyond ready to get seeds in the ground and to get my garden going. Another fellow … [Read more...]
Lots of Finches
If you haven’t seen any finches at your feeders lately, it’s because they are all over in my yard, and I mean all of them. I have never seen so many finches. They are like a cast of thousands in a Cecil B. DeMille epic film. The finches I speak of are house finches. Some confuse them with purple finches because the male house finch has a reddish tint. The females are rather ordinary looking … [Read more...]
Snow Is Good
Snow is a good thing – not only for all the school children who relish a few extra days off to break out their sleds and toboggans, but it is an essential element in growing flowers and vegetables. We “Backyard Farmers” need snow to turn out a successful harvest come summer and fall. The recent snow will blanket our gardens and when it melts – we assume it will melt eventually – our small plots … [Read more...]
Our Juncos Are Here
When I was a boy, back before Interstate highways and air-conditioned vehicles, we played games in the car to occupy time and take our minds off the fact that it was hot as hell and we weren’t going very fast. One game we played was Guess My Pretty Bird. In the game (usually played outside), someone with a cup full of water doused whoever guessed the name of the bird he or she was thinking of. … [Read more...]
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 35
- 36
- 37
- 38
- 39
- …
- 42
- Next Page »