Author: Bill Radford
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Blog: Speaking with the Animal Whisperer
I talked this week with Herbert Aparicio, aka the Animal Whisperer. He’s teaching a class in April titled “Raising Backyard Chickens.”I’ll have some of his advice on raising chickens in an upcoming column. But I also wanted to know: Why is he known as the Animal Whisperer? It’s even mentioned in the class description.He was…
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The Country Life: How does your garden grow? With horse manure? Cow pies?
When you have as many animals as I do, you deal with a lot of, well, crap. On a recent Saturday morning, I cleaned up mounds of horse poo in the corral, then cleaned out the rabbit house (where the rabbits insist on doing their business instead of out in their pen) and, finally, armed…
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The Country Life: Saying farewell to the Colorado winter
In a few days, spring will officially begin. Of course, springtime in the Rockies can be hard to distinguish from winter at times. Blinding snowstorms could strike. Bitter cold could sting. Still, it certainly has felt like spring (or even summer) in recent days. So with that, I thought I’d say goodbye to winter in…
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The Country Life: Want to keep bees? Get educated first.
Spring is coming – and for some people, that means the welcome arrival of bees. It appears a lot of folks in the Pikes Peak region are interested in beekeeping: Last weekend’s day-and-a-half session of the Pikes Peak Beekeepers Association’s 2015 Beekeeping School was filled, as is this coming weekend’s second and final session. And…
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The Country Life: A new chicken in the flock -it’s like high school all over again
We have an addition to our chicken flock, courtesy of the Humane Society of the Pikes Peak Region. Our flock has consisted of six chickens we got as chicks two years ago – five hens and an unexpected rooster. Now we’re up to seven with the recently adopted hen. By the way, if you’re surprised…
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The Country Life: What to do with your horse crosses over the Rainbow Bridge
This is not a pleasant topic. But it’s a question pretty much any owner of horses or other large animals – llamas, goats, etc. – will have to face at some point: What do you do with the body when your animal dies? It’s not a goldfish you can send to a watery grave. It’s…
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The Country Life: Dream of a barn is two sheds closer to reality
We have a barn! Well, sort of. Almost. A “pre-barn,” really. I wrote a column in December containing my Christmas wish list; topping that list was a barn. We have 3½ acres of pasture, but as I noted, there was no home for horses when we moved in. So we had a run-in shelter constructed.…
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Blog: German POWs were in the Pikes Peak region, too
Tuesday’s Country Life column on Jerry Kaufman’s memories of German POWs working on the family farm in Nebraska during World War II resulted in a torrent of emails and phone calls. Some of those were people with stories of their own; others called or emailed to let me know that Fort Carson – then Camp…
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The Country Life: Life down on the farm – with German POWs
A recent column spurred Jerry Kaufman of Black Forest to send me an email that included a few memories of growing up on a farm in Nebraska. In the email, Kaufman matter-of-factly mentioned Italian and German POWs working on the farm during World War II. Wait, what? German prisoners of war? Working on Nebraska farms?…
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The Country Life: From coffee table to slow feeder box
Our horse, Nikki, is kind of a pig when it comes to dining, tossing her hay every which way as she scarfs it down as fast as possible. Nikki also has long had digestive issues, particularly diarrhea, sometimes so bad it runs down her back legs. (I apologize to those reading this over breakfast.) These…