A Requiem to Beethoven

Our farm lost a hardworking friend today.  Our rooster, Beethoven, went lame in one leg earlier this summer, and under the waning full moon of August he finally succumbed to old age.

A rooster is the spice of life to those of us who keep chickens.  Showy, full of personality, each bird is an individual to himself. 

Roosters can be mean ol’ critters.  Strange as it may seem, this isn’t always a bad thing.  A rooster’s job is to look after a whole flock of hens and aggressive roosters will take on anything, even a large man or a tractor. 

I was once cornered by a bad rooster named Sugarman who didn’t want me cutting grass near his girls.  I was finally able to dismount from my John Deere lawn mower after help arrived some 30 minutes later.  I still have the scars from his spurs on my leg to prove this encounter!

Beethoven came to us as a chick only a day old.  Our breeder mistakenly put him in with an order of all female birds to be shipped to us from Iowa.  It isn’t until he was more than 3 months old that we discovered our “chick” growing hackles and beginning to crow and we had a new rooster in our midst. 

Beethoven was a sensitive and creative bird, and he had a unique sound to his crowing, as he struggled to push his call through his windpipe.  His crow came out sounding like the opening 5 notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.  This is how he got his name.

Two roosters don’t ever work in one area.  One rooster will always kill the other, and we worried about the young bird a lot.  But as Beethoven matured into a cockerel, Sugarman declined into old age and infirmity.   The timing of both gave us the opportunity to move Old Sugarman, now docile from senility, out to a barn where he the safety and space to live out his life in peace. 

With Sugarman gone, Beethoven proudly took up the mantle of head of the chicken household.  A sweet-natured bird, he would never become the strong protector that Sugarman had been, but he had a good eye and was a strong lookout--always ready to warn the girls of trouble with his uniquely distinguishable call.

All mornings on the ranch began with Beethoven’s crow.  This truly marks the start of our day.  Conventional thought is that roosters crow at sunrise, but this isn’t really the case.  On our farm, Beethoven always started his morning at 4:30AM.  We could sleep through this when we wanted, or could use his crow as an alarm clock when the day called for an early start. 

This didn’t always work for our city visitors, though.  Guests would almost always comment on how good they sleep until awakened by the cock’s crow.  “It’s zero dark thirty, for Pete’s sake,” was a favorite complaint.  We just laugh and say welcome to farm life, friends!

Beethoven went quiet when his lameness set in.  A cloak of silence is what keeps a less-than-healthy prey animal alive in a world of predators.  After 4 years of working as overseer of our flock, Davis and I became Beethoven’s tenders. 

Over the last 3 months, Beethoven was fed and watered, housed and nurtured, honored and safely kept as befitting of all the loved animal beings on our ranch. 

We started this last day together, he and I.  Beethoven spent the early hour sitting on my lap eating corn from a feed bowl as we watched the sun rise over our East pasture this morning. 

Then, by noon, his spirit had flown.  He was gone.

Some of the best parts of living the Wide Open life revolve around the fact they’re we’re surrounded by nature and wildlife, the earth and the sky, farm animals and pets of all kinds.  Conversely, these are also the hardest parts of living the Wide Open life.  It’s a life filled with the constant reminder that everything and everybody has a season in the circle of life.

Use your time well today, my friends….

   

- Sanne Collins

   From the Ranch in Florida

Stressful Day Comfort Food – Cheese Quesadilla Recipe

My Stressful Day Comfort Food Cheese Quesadilla is a wonderful combination of quick, easy and tasty; making it the perfect meal to serve on a night when your heart’s not really into cooking!

Stressful Day Comfort Food Cheese Quesadilla

You’ll Need

Large cast iron frying pan

Metal spatula

Ingredients

 Corn tortillas

 Butter

 Sliced or Shredded Cheese – Cheddar or Monterrey Jack

 Salsa and/or Sour Cream for Serving

Optional add-in ingredients ideas

Apple

Avocado

Cilantro

Spinach – Diced

Onions – Diced

Mushrooms – Sliced

Scallions - Sliced

Tomatoes - Diced

Hot Peppers/ Jalapenos, etc  - Diced 

Chicken, beef, pork, shrimp, etc. in small strips or bites

Instructions

1 - Set out all ingredients.  Cut, slice, dice, shred ingredients as necessary.

2 - Warm your cast iron frying pan over medium high heat.

3 - Sprinkle a few drops of water in hot pan.  If it sizzles, it’s ready.

4 - Lightly butter one side of a tortilla.  Place it upside down in the center of hot pan.  Using a spatula, quickly flip the tortilla over to the other side, and back again, repeating until there is melted butter on both sides of the tortilla. Let the tortilla sit in hot pan until bubbles form in the tortilla.

5 - Add Cheese to 1 side of the tortilla. Allow space for the cheese to melt within the tortilla.  You do not want so much that it will spread all over the pan.

6 - Add any additional ingredients such as those in the list above such as herbs, peppers, tomatoes etc. 

7 - Fold the the tortilla in half – Make sure you’re moving the side without the cheese.  Move the folded cheese taco to one side of the pan to continue melting the cheese.   

8 - Add a second lightly buttered tortilla to the pan and repeat the process.

9 - The quesadilla is done when you can press down on it with utensil and it easily responds. 

To Serve

10 - Plate and serve with salsa, sour cream and perhaps a small side salad.

What’s Been Keeping Me Busy Lately

Love Those Wide Open Spaces is a blog designed to follow my daily life as a freelance writer and rancher.  It’s a life full of constant change and a wide scope of interests.

Freelance writing, by its definition, requires the ability to write on a variety of subjects, to juggle many assignments during the times of plenty, and to fill the void when checks are slow.   That said, I’m always writing.

Much of my work is done for others such as corporations, websites, or articles penned under another’s name.  I’ve sold the rights to these works, so they can’t be shared. 

However, many of my projects are available under my own name and can be read right here on the web.    

You can click on either the site or the story below to see them.

Check out what’s been keeping me busy lately!

Rural Florida Living 
How to Become a Nuisance Alligator Trapper in Florida 
Florida Honey Bee College and the Art of Beekeeping
Famous Floridian Friday - Stepin Fetchit, the Original Black Movie Star 
NW Florida Office of FWC Seeks Volunteers for their Bear Management Program  
Florida Outdoors - What You Can See in August 
The Ozello Trail - Let's Do Some Driving! 
Florida Outdoors: What You Can See in July 
Mosquitoes in Florida
Florida Outdoors - What You Can See in June
Florida's Honeymoon Island State Park - Unspoiled Gulf Coast Barrier Island Beach

City to Country - A Rural Florida Adventure     
We Learn What to Look for When Buying Hay  

A Field Full of Babies

Love Those Wide Open Spaces 
Pasture Cutting Season in Florida
Writer's Schedule Interrupted
The Cycle of Life on a Ranch
Revisiting a Florida Classic 
The Snow Birds Begin Migrating 
Citrus Season Recipes from Florida  
Gleaning in the Groves 
This is My Brain on Writing 
Mudfest in Okeechobee 
Trading Treasures - Pepper Jam

Florida: Just For Fun!
Things to Do This Weekend in Florida - Friday, March 22nd thru Sunday, March 24th, 2013 

Sanne On Squidoo Blog 
The Top 10 Reasons to Publish Articles on Squidoo 
Squidoo's New Scorecard - A Change I Like!  
Squidoo Locked Me Out! 
Write for Squidoo or Try Something Else? 
What are Squidoo Points? 
How to Market Your First Article on Squidoo  
Ping Your Squidoo Lens 
How to Publish Your First Article on Squidoo  
Publishing on Squidoo - Design Your Profile 
How to Write for Squidoo - How to Prepare an Article for Online Publishing on Squidoo 
Write Biographies on Squidoo 
Looking for a Subject? Ideas for Writing Online  
How to Tailor Your Squidoo Article to Your Audience  
How to Get Traffic to New Articles on Squidoo
What Can I Write About on Squidoo?
Have You Squidoo'ed? 

@SanneCollins 2013