History lesson

We knew when we bought our Schuyler Lake property that it has a long history, one that is in many ways related to the history of where we lived in New Jersey. Not the least of those similarities is that William Cooper, of Cooperstown fame, father of James Fenimore Cooper, is equally famous for his actions in Burlington County NJ and Philadelphia PA.

I met Darryl Grubner on Facebook, of all places. We both agreed that Facebook is good for something! He is a relative of the Herkimers and Tunnicliffs, and his grandmother lived in the house at the end (or is that the entrance?) of our driveway. Turns out the current owner of that house is also a relative of those families.

So we had a meet and greet with Darryl (on the right) and a few of his cousins, and Edward Heinrich (left), director of the other Herkimer Home, a State historic site along the Erie Canal in Little Falls.

We met at the Polly House in Schuyler Lake which houses the collection of the Exeter Historical Society. I was happy to go through the papers looking for anything to do with our property. Aside from the house next door (sort of) the Herkimer family cemetery is almost at the border of our property on the far side. We succeeded in climbing the hill and viewing the remaining gravestones. The ones for Hendrick and Abraham are apparently missing.

A shout out to Erin Hugick for her caretaking of the cemetery property. When Hub and I were up there years ago, you couldn't even see the gravestones for all of the weeds.

 

Duke in the new old coop

We spent some cash money fixing up the yellow shed/big coop out front. A mink got in there over a year ago and killed off most of the chickens.

I have 5 hens in the Omlet coop, and 6 real Legbars in the garage. 

Tonight we picked up a handsome gentleman named Duke to be the new caretaker of our ladies. He’s not sure what’s going on, but we hope he will be happy with his new harem. 

We didn’t tell him he is the test of the new security system. If he can make it through to Sunday evening, he will be introduced to 5 new beautiful ladies. 

The Garage Legbars will move to the Omlet and hopefully follow shortly after. 

Little Falls, legbars, cat wars

We took a ride up to Herkimer to donate some dog goodies to the shelter. Because they wouldn't let us go back and rile up all the dogs (lucky for us they said no) we continued our ride to Little Falls. We wandered a bit, did some antique perusing, and had some lunch.

The little chicks are now big chicks even though they still peep like the littles. It is a bit odd that all 6 of them look like Cream Legbars, one of my favorite chicken breeds, when they were supposed to be Easter Eggers. EEs are a mixed breed and they would normally all look different. AND real legbars would be a lot more expensive. Nice mistake if that's what it was!

We hope to have a newly restored big coop by the end of the week so that we can move these teenagers to a bigger home than the dog crate they are in now.

Martin and MonkeyCat get along just fine most of the time, but the youngster still likes a good wrastle now and then. This is the staredown before the big match.