Ep. 18 - Late Freezes & Tick Diseases

It's almost spring time.  It's been warm, but the weekend is calling for freezing temps. Tyler and Anna talk about how to protect plants from cold temps.  Anna discusses Alpha Gal and how to protect yourself from ticks.  Tyler warns about ALT Asian longhorn tick that can spread disease to cattle.  Some stories of times they had to go to the hospital.

Transcript

Here we are doing another podcast. It's that time again.

Yeah, the weekly time.

The weekly time.

How have you managed daylight savings time this week?

It's been all right, I guess. I don't know.

I did pretty good Monday, but Tuesday it hit me. I had to leave and it was pitch dark. I drove in the dark for a while. I didn't like that. But the evenings are so nice.

Yeah. It's, I don't know. It's been fine. I haven't been outside. It's been kind of raining.

It has been raining. We needed it though.

I got a story to tell about like what I've been doing at home, like trying to start a new hobby. And it's.

You're starting another hobby.

It's real.

I'm suspicious.

It's real nerdy. Not you. I don't think anyone would expect. What are you doing? Someone like me. But you know, we went to Hobby Lobby over the weekend and I was walking around and like I go check out like the models, like the plane models and the car models. And they've got like the Gundam models, which is like this anime cartoon, but they also have kits and you can put these models together. So I kind of looked at them and I've been eyeing them for a while and I was like, what?

Today's the day.

I'm going to try one of them models. And it's one you like got to clip out like the pieces with like a little pair of pliers. And so I started working on that Tuesday night, I guess. I was going to start putting it together. not soon into it, I think I lose a piece. Like I'm putting pieces, little tiny pieces. And it's neat how these little pieces that you clip out can move. Well, I thought I'd, I'd like, thought I'd put it together wrong and I like took it apart and it like fell on the ground and I couldn't find it. And it's like, if I didn't have a piece, well, it's it won't go together. And I just started it. So we like, I go like through everything, take all the cook seats off the couch, look through there, notice it's dirty. So we clean that up. Then I lift up under the couch. Have you ever looked under the couch?

Yeah, that's an interesting place.

Lost. Hey, I thought I lost that.

Hair things. Hair.

Yeah. Well, we clean all that up. No piece. Go to look in here. And then I, we clean, I vacuum that whole area. Don't see that piece. And I was like, okay. And so then I go through the investigation of, well, if I flicked it apart like this, It could have gone that way or it could have gone that way.

Let me go to the crime scene.

Speaking because it wasn't right there in front of me. There was a little piece that fell, but I picked it up, inspected it, and put it away. Well, or put it back in the box, go to looking. And I got Lauren and the kids looking for this little tiny piece. I'm like, it looks like this. And then I'd throw it on the ground and be like, see how easy that is to see? It's just like that. Keep a lookout. So then I'm like, well, you know, when I flung it, who knows where it went? It could have flown over here. It could have flown. And I was just like, well, whatever. And so I put it up. But that's how we spent Tuesday evening. And then yesterday, I was just kind of like, I think I'll, just look one more time, like look at the box, make sure before I chunk it, because it ain't no good. And they were having like a 40% off sale, so that kind of was an incentivized, I was like, that's pretty reasonable, I'll try it. And so I go and look in that box, and I And I looked at the pieces again and then I pick up that piece and I was like, there it is. It's like it was attached to the piece that I dropped right there. And then, and so it's been a whole day like looking for it. And it was there the whole time. And it was still attached. So then I spent last night kind of put it and started to put it together.

Well, at least you got a cleaner couch now.

Yeah. what have you got going on? I'm working on little robot models.

What I got going on at home.

Sure.

We've been building flower beds at our house. So moving rocks, moving some dirt. Brandon had cleaned out where we feed the cattle several years ago and it just kind of sat in a big pile. So we went and got some of that. So that was really nice dirt. And then we make our own chips. So we covered everything with chips. So I planted 5 different colors of peonies.

What kind of chips? Like corn chips or not.

I make our own chips. In this context, wood chips like mulch.

Yeah, you got a wood chipper. Corn chips.

Fritos in my house is little dog feet.

It's like, surely there's a better way than putting out, you know, making, I guess you're making a lot of chips. And it's like, we got so much. What are we going to do with them? Let's use them as the mulch in the flower bed.

God.

We had taco nut and Brandon went overboard making the corn chips.

Yeah, no.

So you're making wood chips?

Yeah, making wood chips. So that's our mulch. And we had put that down last year or the year before, just trying to cover the soil and to keep it from just splashing. And a lot of that's had a lot of breakdown. So it's been good organic matter. So I'm waiting on my hydrangeas to come in April. And they're white ones, so we'll see if they stay white. The white ones are supposed to stay white.

Throw in like a gardening tip in there, that is like why mulch is good for, because you mentioned like you put it there to keep like dirt and stuff splashing. Well, imagine in that dirt a bunch of little microbes, probably some pathogens, and then that splashes up on your plant. put that mulch down when you're watering. And we shouldn't be overhead watering anyway. We should really lower, do drip, just to keep that splashing from going up onto our plants.

I never thought about that.

It is gardening season. People are probably planting. They may be having a bad time here in a couple of days.

Yeah.

So have you put plants in your planter?

No, these were all, everything I was talking about, I've done bulbs.

You've just bulbs.

So they're all, you know, they're all underground and we have very thick mulch layers, so they should be good.

They'd be fine.

But my fruit trees have been, one of them has not blooming, but leafing.

Bud swell.

Bud swell, I guess, yeah.

Which one?

The apple tree. The Arkansas black.

Okay.

The pear's been thinking about it.

So. What we're talking about, it's going to get below freezing. We've had spring weather, nice warm, and it's technically not even spring yet, is it? What's the first?

I think it's, is it March 21st or 22nd?

I think so. we've kind of had a, you know, warm, late winter here. The trees are waking up. I'm looking out the window right now and I can see green. on trees they're kind of they all have a lot of them have something they're swelling up the buds starting to break so in the case of say fruit trees or trees that are blooming our plants that are blooming right now and we have cold weather I looked and on my app it said it's going to get down to 27 I think was the low.

Mine had said a lower temp, but I'm hoping that's not the case.

Yeah, you told me 19 degrees earlier and I said, well.

We'll have to worry about it.

Yeah, 19 degrees, not a lot many people can do about that. So, but why?

Yes, mine says the low for Sunday night is 19 and the low for Monday night is 19. The high for Monday, it says it's 38. So we'll see.

We'll see. But so we're get we've got freezing temperatures and plants starting to bloom. What do you do in that situation? If you can, you want to cover them. If they're, you know, they're small plants, you know, put throwing some plastic sheet of plastic over them. What they'll do like in strawberries is they'll cover them up. with like a piece of plastic, clear plastic is fine, but we're just trying to create a layer that say it's going to get 19 or it's going to get 27. So say it's going to get 27. If we can keep right there low at the plants, cover it and keep it maybe getting, you know, 33 degrees or maybe 30 degrees, 30 degrees, we may even end up damaging some blooms. So depending on the stage that the blooms are opened up, if they're still pretty closed, they're a little bit more tolerant, probably like low 20s is what they could handle without getting damaged. If they're more open, like apple trees, if they're blooms, like 30 degrees, they'll get damaged if they're opened. Strawberries a little bit, I think they're a little bit more tolerant, like 28 degrees for their blooms. So if we can keep it above that temperature that the blooms get damaged, maybe we can get less damage. I've seen for like peaches, which probably a lot of peaches are bloomed out right now. It was like at 27 degrees, there was like, I think a 30%, what I was looking at the article, like they'd had a 30% loss. And then at 24 degrees, they got like a 90% loss. So if we could, cover them somehow, protect them, cover them with a sheet, cover them with a blanket, you want to do that if it's easy to do. What if I've got, a big 15 foot tall peach tree? Well, if you, how farms do it, we have like a sprinkler system and they'll hook it to a generator or hook to a tractor. It's run by a PTO and they run that tractor all night and sprinkler system going all night. So if you wanted to try like sprinkler going, you know, out in your yard, sprinkler going all night, hitting water all over those trees throughout the night, that water will freeze on there. And create an insulation. So if water freezes at 32 degrees, well, if it creates that layer, it's not going to get, below 32 inside there. And if peaches get damaged at 27, we're protecting them that way. You know, if it gets extremely cold, you know, 19, that's maybe close. But those are the types of things. I've heard of people, they, you could even run like a smoke barrel creates smoke. That may be easier for folks where you, get a big few barrels of wood and you stoke them and that smoke will create, keeping it a little bit warmer. It's not like, the plants are around the fire. We're trying to generate smoke so it stays a little bit warmer within that area with the smoke being there. Those are tips. What have you tried?

I was wondering, so I've planted a few fruit trees. I planted a couple mulberries last week and then a replacement Asian persimmon and then a few blackberries. So the blackberries, they'll be easy for me to cover They're not bloomed, but they do have some leaves.

Leaves probably not going to be.

Not going to be a big deal.

Yeah, not a big deal on the leaves. They could tolerate it. And they may get damaged, but they'll just produce more leaves. And just leaves back out. Yeah. The other day I saw a video of a guy doing tomatoes and he's putting, he'd cut out a bottom of a bucket, put it in the ground, plant the tomato, and then cover, mound dirt around it. And I was like, I don't know. I'd like to see it because even at that point, your soil temperature would have to get out.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking.

Yeah, because I've had that. That's what I think happened. Planted some tomatoes and I don't like tomatoes. I don't eat them, but I like to try to grow them, you know?

The tomato saga with you.

And like they just sat there. I planted them like early before the last frost date in like April and like covered them. made sure they didn't get froze. But then after the last frost date, like April 20th, they sat there for like two or three weeks, the same size. And once it got up, 80s, they took off. And so I think that was a soil temperature thing. I don't know.

I've never, when, not that I've been much help gardening lately, but we've typically never got our tomatoes in the ground before May. And people would only be, if any ahead of us, a week ahead tops.

Yeah.

And we had planted sometimes a month later.

Yeah, I think that soil temperature for the warm season vegetables, I think, you think you put them out early and it takes time, but I think the soil temperature still got to get to where it is. So back to the mulch thing. You can mulch to increase soil temperature early. And a mulch will also help keep the soil temperature cooler later in the summer. It helps with water retention. So mulching everything is a good idea. And it also helps with weed control.

Now, when I mulch around a tree, is there a certain method?

Yeah, you don't. So you don't want to do like a volcano method. I see it. Not so much around here, but I see it a lot like people or some other agents sharing it that it goes on in their counties, a big deal. And what they're doing is like they'll put so much mulch that comes over that, what is that called, where the tree comes out of the ground, like the hump, what is that, the basil? What is that term? Look it up for me while I'm talking. So you don't want to cover up that roots how they come out of the ground, that root swell and then goes up into the tree. If we cover that up, that tree will create roots within there and can girdle itself and kill itself. And they call it a mound volcano or a mulch volcano. And it's where you mulch pretty high up on the stump of the tree, the trunk of the tree. You say it's the root flare.

Yes.

That's what we're settling on. The root flare, like so what people will do is they'll mulch over that, create a little mulch volcano. And like so if you're watching on video, say this is where the root flare coming out of the ground and this is the trunk of their tree, we're piling up mulch like up here on the...

Really, kind of high up.

Like high up. And again, it'll start trying to create roots there because that kind of needs to be exposed to air. I've heard like to breathe and they need to breathe, I guess is what you'd call it. But they'll create those roots and girdle themselves. So when we're mulching, we want to leave, mulch around that root flare at where it comes out the ground and not over that. Make sense?

Yeah, it does.

Okay. What else you can do and what are you going to plant there?

Like I said, I've got white hydrangeas coming. I've planted dahlias, peonies, lianthus, some lilies.

Lianthus. What's that look like?

That's that purple in the lianthus.

The Liatris.

Liatris. Yes, Liatris.

Like we did out here.

Yeah, I love those. So I got some of those. Some hollyhocks and I need some more shade tolerant. I'm planting some caladiums and a bleeding heart in a more shaded area. And then I've been taking my husband's grandma's tulips and they came up really well. They were very, it was like the ground was impacted. They were encroached and the bulbs were tiny. So I've moved them and they've, like I said, they've done wonderful being in a new space for the room.

I need to study on that. I need to learn more about like those ornamentals, what they are, what they look like. Just think you could, I think I could be a good landscaper. I've had a little bit of experience.

A little bit of experience.

Yeah.

Well, my thought was, I was trying to go by height. So I have my taller, my tallest item, the closest to my porch. And then I was going to go down by height towards my sidewalk. And then Brandon laid out everything on his AutoCAD and then we put stakes and then I had like a measuring tape. So I knew the area of where that plant should be. So it should be, I think, up to five feet. So we laid that out just exact, gave enough breathing room for our porch. and then I put my bulbs out and I had them measured. So in theory it should work great, but I did kind of have like a...

You have to do like a picture, see like if...

Yeah, see if it worked out. Well, I had to do things differently once we've got everything laid out, things I couldn't necessarily put exactly where I'd thought. And then I did have kind of an odd no man's land in one of my radiuses. because the, so I don't, so that landscaper would have more benefit there. But where I did my hydrangeas, they're in like a perfect L basically. But when we did the, we did the radius visually. And so it left me an odd triangle of space from where I had my peonies transitioning to where the bed got bigger. So I planted just something random in there. So it's interesting. It'll be nice. Thankfully, everything I planted, I can move.

Yeah.

So if it's not a good ideal spot or...

There's this little spot like out in my yard. I noticed and it's like all this, it looked like a bunch of white. Like I was like, what is that? And I walk out there and it's a bunch of little flowers and it's wild pansies. Have you ever seen those?

Wild pansies.

They're like little purplish white flowers.

Yes, Whitney picked one for me.

I was like, what is that? It's like a whole bunch of.

I think all of those are, I know there's certain kind of flowers like that are really important for butterflies, but I don't know if it's, I don't know if it's the pansy. I think it's like wild violets that are very important.

I think it's, what is it? I think it's African violet. Is that?

Well, that's indoor. There's some wild ones, but I'm not sure what they are.

These are the wild violets. They're a violet, but they're like kind of out in front of our house. I kind of made a little flower bed and it, that's all like, if I just let it go, like that's what starts popping up in there. Right now I've got a lot of purple dead nettle and chickweed. I've been kind of cleaning it out, but I need to get some mulch.

Brandon's got a bunch of dirt in the front yard and the goal is to have a very nice front yard.

Yeah, I think that'd look good.

Yeah, I did very little in this part. Wendy and him got a bunch of rocks popped up and she drove the skid steer and then he's gonna try to, he made his own land plane with his welder and some angle iron. And that worked really well in another area. So the goal, and then this fall, we're hoping to put out some pre-emergent. I really, we were looking at the yard and we thought, man, we really should have done something in the fall for those weeds coming up.

Yeah, my little demo thing. Did I show you a picture of that?

I think so, yeah.

Of Jerry out there, Jerry's. Yeah, that was neat. Just weeds. We'd sprayed a weed control demo, hoping to control something else. And then it, not knowing this fall, we controlled a lot of like cool season annual weeds that are by spraying it like in November. And I was just like, that's neat.

Yeah. We're gonna have to work on that.

But you got any ticks yet?

I've been getting, we've been getting ticks all winter at our house. Ain't no ticks on you.

Ain't no ticks on me. No, I haven't got a tick yet.

My dogs have had ticks. We've had ticks. Well, speaking of ticks.

The blood suckers.

Yes. So I had an individual come in and they just recently got diagnosed with alpha-gal.

Who's that?

Well, I'm not gonna say.

What? I mean, who's the who's the alpha gal?

It's not a woman. It's a syndrome.

Alpha gal syndrome.

Alpha gal syndrome.

Is that like the best? It's the best girl syndrome.

No, it's not a good syndrome.

And you're a gal.

Oh.

People, so I'm joking. If you can tell, I'm not making fun of people because I understand what you go through if you have alpha gal.

I wonder why it's called Alpha gal.

I'm sure it's like the first gal and there's some sort of that gal's some sort of scientific term.

Yeah.

And it's the first one. I don't know. I'm guessing.

That sounds good. That sounded smart. It's a type of food allergy in which people are allergic to red meat and then and then other products for mammals.

Like who was it that had it and they just like they can't. They can't even go in there and breathe it in, right?

Yeah. I forgot what the person, we had someone come in today and was asking about it. And I forgot how she phrased it when you're in the room or the area where say this person was having an issue and they were grilling hamburgers. So, but not every, apparently everyone reacts differently with alpha-gal. And so some, have it are reactive whenever they're around the airborne particles, whereas others aren't.

But even like touching it, I imagine.

Yes, because that one individual who couldn't be around it in the air was getting sick from making products with tallow.

Dang.

And it was before they knew and they were, she was experiencing really bad headaches and just, you know, just overall feeling terrible.

Okay.

And so Before I get going into more what it is, we're trying to understand more about it in Arkansas. And so Dr. Araghi has a survey. It'll take you 10 minutes tops. I've done it. And it's trying to understand the needs in Arkansas for alpha-gal education programs and understanding what we're dealing with here. Because the person that came in today, there was not a lot of information that she felt that was researched based and she trusted that she could go off of for, boom, you have this. Now you have to change all these dietary choices. And then, and we'll hit more into it, but what's very scary is there's mammal products and a lot of things that aren't just obvious. Like Of course, this steak is red meat and I don't need to eat that. But if I have a pasta that's enriched with mammal gelatin, I could have a reaction to that. And that may not be explicitly named in the contained statement.

What kind of reactions do people have?

So of course, like trouble breathing hives, dizzy, lightheaded, it says you can even drool or not swallow, full body redness, warmth, flushing, swelling, like a typical allergic reaction for the most part. But what's scary too is there's kind of a, there can be a delay or when you get bit by that tick initially, it may take a few months before you start having issues if you've gotten alpha-gal from, and it comes from the lone star tick mostly in the United States, not always. And so it may take a few months and then you may have ingested that and it may take a few hours for you to have symptoms. And so you're not really sure what you've eaten that has caused these symptoms if you've not been diagnosed with alpha-gal yet. And that's going to require a blood test.

Yeah, so definitely want to be careful. Like if you're going to be outdoors, I'd want to take spray up.

Yeah, that's a pretty big concern.

I hear more and more people getting that.

It went from I only knew one person to I could probably name 5 to 10 fairly quickly. And that's with just people I know in our county.

Yeah. So there's a survey.

Yes. So we have a survey and we'll share it again on our page. And there's a QR code.

Probably adding the QR code right here.

And so. if you would please take that survey. And that doesn't mean you have alpha-gal. You have someone you know that has alpha-gal or maybe you know very little of alpha-gal. That surveys for everyone in our communities to try to get a better understanding of it. Or if you don't know anything about it, understand that you don't know. And we need to educate more about the possibilities of that happening. And I'm excited about this because I would love to have some research-based programming that we can take to our communities that are really starting to get hit with this. So what do we do when we have it? And then, what can we do to prevent it? So of course, you're not going to be eating red meat or mammal products. And so living in the South, you're pretty prone to it because what do we have year-round? Ticks. And that's common misconception that they hibernate or they're gone in the winter.

I've seen it before. It's seen tick like, it was like January, February.

When Brandon got tick fever, it was from a tick bite in January.

Oh, my little tanny boy, he had that. That's what they thought he had, his tick. I don't know. I don't remember what it was, but it was he got all stiff. It's some sort of tick fever, I think is what they ended up thinking.

There's several different kinds of tick-borne illnesses.

Yeah, I had one one time, like, I thought it was from something else. I thought it was like pneumonia. Like my lungs were hurting. And I was like, oh no. I've done something and finally went to a doctor and they're like, I think you got a tick fever and gave me some antibiotics and it helped.

My grandfather went undiagnosed for a long time and it caused permanent nerve damage in his face. And it took a lot of doctors and going to a specialized place to figure out that that's what it was. That's what caused it. And so ticks are bad news with these illnesses. It's bad news. So what can you do? Obviously, if you're a person that loves the outdoors, you're going to have to work hard on preventative care. Or I would hope that you are considering preventative care because I don't necessarily want to stop being outdoors. But you can do some things for your yard where you're getting rid of that bushy edge or those shrubbery edges or leaf matter and things like that to kind of protect your place from being a a good habitat for ticks. You can, of course, do granules and things like that. But overall, if you're going to go out hiking or in those places, you're not going to really be able to, you know, you're in their habitat. There's nothing you can do to stop that.

You're not going to stop being in their habitat. I mean, there are products that you can.

Absolutely. And so.

I think, is it permethrin?

Well, I was going to go through that because they have some different kind of rules for each. And so I've seen a photo before of a local guy that had his pants tucked in his boots and then he had duct tape where the sticky side out and they were kind of making fun of him, but it works. And so that's one of the recommendations is tucking long pants into your socks, wearing long sleeves, hat, gloves to protect that easy access of your skin. And then so if you want a repellent that's actually strong enough to work for ticks, it's going to have 20% or higher concentration of DEET. And I've got another sheet here and I'll read some other products. So if you have children, of course, you want to avoid their hands, their mouth, their eyes. And then as far as permethrin, you're going to apply that to clothing. And my husband has permethrin pants. We call them tick pants. So it's infused into there.

They made it a big deal at the national wet contest in Tennessee. Like some kids were like using that formethrin that has to dry on there. So they were like spraying it on, leaving their clothes outside all night.

Yeah.

It rained.

Oh no.

Oh no. But we got some, we used some DEET. But every time we'd stop, they were like.

Making sure that you.

Make sure you inspect yourself.

Well, and if you're not as into DEET, I went on the CDC has a preventing tick bites and EPA has a search tool also, but they named DEET and multiple other, but they also named oil of lemon eucalyptus. So I would get on the EPA if you're not as sure about DEET, but you want something that works, then you're going to have to find something on there that actually works that you're good with using. Because if you're not going to use it, then it's not going to be much good for you. And so wear clothing to help you make sure that whatever spray you're using is going to actually work. So 20% deed or higher, permethrin on your clothes, and then You can look for that oil of lemon eucalyptus and go to the EPA for that. Like I'd mentioned, tick proof your yard. You need to tick proof the pets because that's usually who's bringing in the ticks to us is our pets, our dogs. And it says shower as soon as you can when you come indoors. Be careful when you're removing the ticks. So they suggest tweezers and try not to crush them.

Yeah. And if you, right behind the our like right.

Yeah, near its head or its mouth, but you don't want to crush it where the head's like stuck. And then it says that applying an antiseptic can help prevent illness. So I don't know if that means alpha-gal specifically, but any type of illness. So antiseptic where the bite is. And then, of course, The CDC gave us a nice little graphic on checking for ticks. So that tickled me a little. I know there's a song or two out there. So where are ticks prone to be? So under the arms, in or around the ears. So that's where Whitney's had several. Inside the belly button. I remember somebody got one stuck in their belly button. Back of the knees, in or around hair, around the nethers, around your waist area, anywhere there's like a clothing band. Or things like that.

Does it say the Nethers?

No, it doesn't. I didn't want to say what it said. Anywhere like you've got a band seems to be your favorite part, like a sock band or your underwear band or anywhere they can get a good bite in on you.

The Nethers.

The Nethers.

Well, now I kind of want to know what it said.

It said, yeah. I don't know. I didn't think I could get through it saying it like that.

Oh.

But you know what I mean. the places that ticks like to be. And, you may have to check each other for ticks. That could be a good activity.

Brad Paisley wrote a song about it.

He sure did, yeah.

Or how he'd like to, I guess.

Yeah, he did.

What else are you going to tell us about ticks? I could talk about ticks.

Yeah, I had a story about ticks. It's not a funny story, but I went turkey hunting one year and I think it was my first turkey I ever got. And I had it in my car. And then I went to get it out after I left where I was hunting and I got to home or wherever, or my mom's. And that thing was covered in ticks. And my car got infested. with ticks from that turkey. Now, I didn't think about a turkey having something like that. And so my car had ticks for a little while.

Yeah. I was just going to say, like, there's also the Asian longhorn tick that, like, cattle producers, livestock producers need to be worrying about. They found it. It's kind of a new tick that showed up that what's crazy about it is it like can clone itself essentially. Like it doesn't have to, they're all females, doesn't have to breed and it can reproduce asexually and they can be thousands of them. And then they also spread this disease, thyleria, cause issues and that.

And we've talked a bit about thyleria on the podcast.

But just even farmers, keeping your cattle out of wooded areas, keeping them out of.

Shrubby edges.

Shrubby edges. Using, probably want to use insects, the insecticide infused ear tags.

It would be hard to check all your cows for ticks every day.

Probably want to have like a rubber, some sort of back rubber that has insecticide in it. What are you thinking of?

Have you ever seen a video of those cows, like in a dairy and they've got this like big brush that moves? And there was this cow that it kind of backed into it. had an itch in a certain place. And that's what I was thinking of. Sorry, are you talking about like between gates you can put those?

Yeah, like somewhere, like say you've got a, where they're going to use it every day, that they are having to go through this back rubber and we just.

You don't see those as much anymore. You don't see that.

And even like a back rubber, you'd probably want to do like what they're showing with research now, some sort of like drapes. You like my hand motions. I'm doing the robot. That's why. You listen to it and then you go watch the video so you can see.

Yeah, I'm going to see how Tyler's hands are.

His hands, because I don't know what to do with my hands.

So maybe some of those things need to make a comeback.

Yeah, but I think I was mentioning the flaps, they're still infused with like pesticide, insecticide that'll repel them ticks.

Man, ticks out there causing problems.

Ticks out there causing problems if you want to use control them in your lawn using, I think, bifenthrin products would be good because they have a longer residual and they've got granules.

Yeah, we built our house a couple years ago, but coming to the new house, I didn't have any little chickens a little harder, but I finally got a hit on them.

You gonna get any more chickens?

Yep, I am.

I was thinking you doing, is Whitney doing poultry chain?

She's doing poultry chain and broiler chain. And I was thinking about the last time we raised broiler chickens. I couldn't eat chicken for a week after that. We, me and my mother-in-law did, butchered 50 chickens in a day. It was a long day. We skint, we skint, skint them, skinned them.

You ever had to go to the hospital for anything?

I had an unexpected appendix removal in college. I've had a baby. I've had to have my eyeball taken out of my head and a muscle stretch. But I've never had to go to the I have a, I'm trying to think what's the proper thing to call it, a palsy. and I saw double vision, but I would lean my head over to correct it. And so they had to stretch a muscle in my eye when I was 6.

With the phone.

Probably don't need to leave that in there. That was kind of awkward. You probably weren't. I shouldn't have been like, I had to take my eyeball out of my head when I was a child. I don't think I've ever gone to the though.

Well, why I brought it up is because your mother-in-law.

Told you a story you did not know.

Well, you hear a story about something and that brings through my mind when I broke my arm. Like I didn't remember like going to the hospital. I remember on the way to the hospital, my mom crying and I'd be like, mom, what's wrong? And she's worried because she thought they thought I'd broke my arm. And that's what Karen had said was they weren't sure if I'd broken my arm, but they took me to the and got there and it was broken. And I was like, I do remember what I was doing. So I was a little kid. I don't remember how old, but... I think you're a pretty little kid.

You were pretty little.

I was a dumb little kid. Okay. And this probably, all kids are probably this way. This is how kids think. So it was during blueberry season, my parents, they were in, we were at the blueberry shed. They were in there grading berries and there was a bunch of equipment and stuff stacked tall. And I remember like there was some piece of cardboard that was shaped like wings, like I could maneuver it that was shaped like wings.

You're kidding me.

You're kidding. And I'd been watching a lot of Batman. And so I climbed up on the top of something and thought I could fly. And so I jumped off. And that's how you broke your arm. That's how I broke my arm.

Do you know why they thought you didn't break your arm?

No.

Because apparently you were jumping all over the bed at the hospital or the chairs. And that your mom, according to what I've heard, was that she was like, there's no way he's broken his arm. And you had, you just were high energy.

Yeah. And then I remember one.

There's Karen.

Yeah, another time, like during blueberry season, like I was staying up at my grandma's house and like she had this couch. It's in the living room, in the middle of the living room. And like the TV's up on the wall and like the back of the couch is like facing the TV. They'd pulled it out for some reason. And again, dumb kid thinking, I wonder if I'm strong enough to like rock this and flip this couch over. And so I like rock it and flip over and like my head somehow gets trapped underneath and the couch tips over and like falls on my head. And so I bit my lip And I mean, I bit it nearly all the way through, but I remember like walking to the blueberry shed and blood's just going everywhere. And I remember like my uncle Fred was the first one that saw me coming and he like, was like, oh no, like jumped down and like ran out there. And I mean, I had a bump on my, like a scar, a bump on my lip.

How were you for that?

I don't know, 8, 9. But I remember I had a scar on my lip, like a bump for a long time till I was like in college. But it's not really there anymore. And then I guess one more dumb kid story that I did. And then if you have any, you can share about being a dumb child.

Yeah.

So this one was more of a dumb teenager, maybe?

There's probably a lot of those.

I don't remember how old. Too old that I shouldn't have cried like I did. But I remember we were, I think it was a Sunday because we'd got back from church and oh, somebody, my sisters had these little like magnetic earrings. Like you could, or they weren't really, you didn't have to pierce your, but you could take these magnets and stick them. I, they two ends, like the magnetic piece and clicking them together and taking them apart. And I was like, and we were at home. And so I was like, what if, I wonder what it'd look like if I stuck them and made it look like, stick them in my nose and made it look like I'd pierced my nose. Well, I like stuck them on there and let it go. And like immediately they shot up here. Oh. And I was like, I was like, Oh no, I don't like right in there. Oh, dad.

Oh. I made your dad was proud.

And he's just like, What? What's going on? What's going on? I was like, I got madness. I got madness stuck on my nose. I don't know what I'm doing. I want to stick on my nose. And I was like, We're going to have to go to the hospital. We're going to have to go. Because I couldn't. I kind of tried to get them out and they were too past that I couldn't get them out. And I was like, who else is going to get out? But dad, he had like a big magnet and he's just able to like, really break them out and pull them out.

That's kind of cool. But you're just going to do your noise.

Whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop. So that's how I, that's how it was. Ready, ready? Yeah, so that's how I was a dumb kid. You got anything? How did we go after that? After I told my story to you, you'd said something.

I'd said something mean about Sheila.

Yeah, dumb child, done dumb stuff, but I'm not the only one, but it's not for me to tell stories on other folks, I guess.

On your siblings.

Yeah. I got, well, don't want to give up.

I can tell by the time I fell out of a tree.

Yeah, what happened?

I was a very energetic child, if you ever had the pleasure of dealing with me. And so my great-grandmother had this huge oak tree and I climbed up a fence. I loved climbing trees. Like I'd probably climb way too high. And I was climbing and I was upside down, climbing, you know, kind of like a squirrel or monkey or whatever. And my mom's cousin was over there telling me I shouldn't be climbing in the tree. And about that time, I fell like, I don't know how I was 7, 8 feet out of the tree. And he caught me. Like he saved me from hitting the ground. And I don't think it felt very good for him to catch me. But my mom had a wedding quilt made for both of us when we got married. And they... Wait.

Who caught you and who got married?

Let's specify. Okay, Cousin caught me, but I married a non-related individual. Jimmy caught me, but I married Brandon.

Yeah. And so you were talking about when you and Brandon got married?

My mom had a wedding quilt made when me and Brandon got married. And Jimmy and Paulette made a quilt block with a guy catching A girl falling out of a tree. Thank you for clarifying.

Yeah, because I would hate for that unfortunate Mrs. K. like you and your cousin were married.

No, I, oh my, what a way to go.

Because that's a good ending.

Yeah, it added a lot all of a sudden.

Like I thought of the like the worst Christmas ever that Taylor had to spend in the hospital, but We'll save that for another time.

That sounds terrible.

So we'll end it on Anna didn't marry her cousin.

Thanks.

Yep.

Thanks. See you next time.