Disrepair

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you've probably noticed that things have been a little.... scattered lately. The problem extends beyond blog inattention, I'm afraid. Fences need fixing, nest boxes lapse into poultry trainwrecks, broken eggs and displaced bedding, general ugliness. Sheep have taken to free-ranging

(Here's Rahm on the wrong side of the barn wall...)

And this very barn has been befouled by foul. Not pretty around here these days.

Why?

Well, one explanation is busyness. We are working (quite a lot) and have been away. There are, all of a sudden, three elementary school aged kids around the farm with their own social commitments, camps, activities, etc. When do we keep up with chores, exactly?

Another explanation is flagging interest. It's been about 5 years since we started farming and while we love the animals, the somewhat self-sufficiency, the lifestyle aspect, it's not the adventure it once was. The first or second or 15th time we had to trim Rahm's horns or treat a sick ewe or scrounge food for pigs, was exciting. But now we know what to expect.

It might be a sort of general failure. We have not figured out how to make the sheep affordable or how to provide more than our own meat and a few vegetables. (We regularly buy everything from cereal to snack bars to milk, ice cream and bread from the supermarket). The pigs were a success, but Dan (having been part of the slaughter process) is not ready to do another round, and they were a serious time suck. Ditto for the turkeys, minus some of the slaughter issues plus a whole lot more of a mess(!)

Lastly, there's the "itchy feet" factor. Every 5-7 years or so, I get a bad case of "let's pick up and try something totally different". Often, this "different" involves a shiny airstream trailer and a great swath of Wyoming badland, but it can take other forms as well-- 6 month canoe trips, desert islands, etc etc. To compound this state of "itchy-feetness", Dan's work is largely mobile these days... The dream seems within actual reach! (Of course the kids-- as they have often told me-- are TOTALLY NOT INTO this idea, and neither is my charmingly home-happy husband. But still.....

So here we are on Maggie's Farm, the rich summer of 2010 starting to slip from our grasp, the apples (and peaches!) ripening on the trees, our reduced flock happily free ranging, chickens glorying in their dust baths, white faced hornets building a fortress under the eaves, tent caterpillars amassing their downy nests in out front yard trees, the dirt road alternately a dusty mess and a swamp, mint grown out of control in the herb garden

...and a hundred unplanned tomatoes plants offering their hard green fruit in the former pig pasture.

Pumpkins have also sprouted in the fertile land of former pigs...

Everything more or less in a state of wild disrepair.

Not sure what'll be happening around here next, but I'll certainly let you know.

Been away...

I'm sorry I'v neglected this blog so badly the last little bit. We went on a three week long trip (!) to Newfoundland to celebrate my better half's half century birthday.

It was the longest we've been away, well, ever. But we have the most wonderful farm-sitters and so returned to the same number of chickens and sheep and dogs, all healthy and relatively happy. No news on the fox, maybe he also went on vacation!

Anyway, here's the trip-- from the perspective of my footwear:

Western Brook Pond

Sunset at River of Ponds

Rockhounding at Port au Port

Chillin' with the kids

Wading in Flowers Cove

Out of the Loop

That's me. I didn't realize that blogging custom requires me to post 7 (7?) things about myself that you might not know and also pass the award along to a few other bloggers.

I feel sort of silly, missing that info somewhere along the way.

Anyway, here goes...

7 Unexpected Things About Me:

1. I have another blog. Its a writing blog, totally unrelated to farming (www.lesserapricots.com)

2. I've written two as-yet-unpublished novels (also totally unrelated to farming)

3. I am one course short of a bachelor's degree in Anthropology

4. I spent one awesome summer as a volunteer Archaeologist in Northern Nevada

5. I have never been to Europe

6. I grew up in Florida

7. I once rode across the country on the back of a motorcycle.

Jeesh! That was sort of painful.

Now to the fun part:

I'm passing this award on some other farmy bloggers:

Lisa at Notes from Zone 4 (http://www.mackhillfarm.com/page/2/)

Carol at Red Dirt in my soul

http://blog.rimrockenglishshepherds.com/

Skepweaver from The Shambles at Highland Butte

http://skepweaver.wordpress.com/

Well's Tavern Farm

http://wellstavernfarm.wordpress.com/

Enjoy!

An Award! (and update)

Look here:

I got this cool award from my friend Ariel over at http://arielswan.blogspot.com/

Ariel is part of my writing life rather than my farming life, but she DOES have some terrific chickens (all with literary names, mind you) and her blog is terrific. You all should check it out!

Anyway, I feel sort of guilty about the award because I haven't had much to say lately....

So, I guess I should use this as an opportunity for an update:

We have moved ahead with our plans to "disperse the flock" sending off two rams (Dodge and Charlie to be herdsires) and four ewes (Leela, Daisy and their ewe lambs) Two more ewes (Elba-- Copper's ewe lamb-- and Diamond) are leaving this weekend.That should bring us down to three ewes, a ram, and a ram lamb.

...And that looks about right for us. For now, anyway.

We'd been planning on sending Acorn to a wonderful farm in central Mass but are having second thoughts. in fact, perhaps we've been a bit too hasty in the "let's get rid of everything!" thing.... In retrospect, the decision had a spring cleaning feel-- also there was the cost (less of an issue with 4 sheep) and the worry (also less of an issue with 4 sheep).

And then there is the Copper factor.

(Sorry about the repeat Pic)

I didn't realize quite how attached I was to our flock until I received an offer for Copper... well for for Copper's lambs with Copper along for the ride. The offer was from a good and forthright farming fried who was clear from the get-go that he was interested in the lambs, not the 9 year old ewe still nursing them. Though it was exactly what I'd wanted, I found I was hemming and hawing about this deal.

And that's when it hit me. Copper was our first ewe. She arrived when our farming dream was in its infancy, a four year old with a lamb at her side. She was the foundation, the sensible, matriarch, the "brains" of the flock as much as our dear lovable, accident prone Acorn was its "heart".

And although it's TOTALLY ridiculous to turn down an offer for her, I did.

And so Copper is staying, along with Penny and probably Acorn, and one ram-- either Rahm, who is so fat and mellow at this point he appears to be sleepwalking

or Ewok, Copper's beautiful black ram lamb, who's rise to herdsire will put the old dame into retirement.

The odd ram out will be ramchops. (Yes, I know it's weird to bemoan someone else eating our ewe and then turn around and casually drop the M-bomb (M as in "Meat") but then, this is one of the great farming ironies.

Not so fantastic

Yesterday, I awoke to the muddled screeching of chickens (If you've ever heard a panicked hen, you know exactly what I'm talking about) looked out my bedroom window to find a FOX-- long, lean, surprisingly tiny, angling after Dionysus, one of the non-cooped roosters. An inhuman warning issued from my throat, sort of a growl-bleat-scream, and the fox swiveled its beautiful head, fixed those yellow eyes on the house a moment, and melted into the tall weeds. Gone.

So now-- 30 some chickens later-- we know for sure. Our predator is a fox.

We've considered trapping it but have been told it's likely feeding pups and, being incurable softies, we can't quite fathom displacing a mama. (Yep, I know this says something unfortunate about our farmer-ness as does the fact that we can't slaughter or even sell off our old ewe, Copper, because we've had her so long.)

The other option is keeping the chickens cooped. We've done this for a few days-- the Maggie's Farm version of "Move along folks, nothing to see here." but felt so sorry for the free-ranging flock that we let them out again today.

And guess what? There she was, the not-so-fantastic Mrs. Fox, creeping along beside the back fence. The guinea fowl saw her first, started up a racket as only they can. (Up until now, we hated those %$$#$@ guinea hens, but they've been worth their weight in eggs now that there's something beyond crows and dogwalkers for them to screech about) Dan went to check on the situation and the fox melted away into the weeds again.

"I think," said our 8 year old, "Our chickens are going to go extinct."

Any suggestions?

Massacre!

Ah, Summer. Lazy, sun-dappled days, marble-sized apples waving on deep green, breeze-tossed branches. Summer is finding shapes in high cumulus clouds, cookouts and creamie stands. It's watching those spring babies come into their own.

At least that's what you hope for.

But on Maggie's Farm, summer 2010 is more like a horror movie... a chicken horror movie. Something has been picking off those aforementioned spring babies left and right.

It started with the youngest chicks-- barely past fuzzy stage. We noticed a few of the brood were missing. Okay, we thought, chicks are fragile. Anything could have happened.

Then came a morning when we found the bodies of six young chickens scattered about the barnyard like windblown socks off the line.

We eyed adolescent pup Milo with suspicion. After all, he showed some interest in the fuzzies.... Milo spent a few days on a long leash, the words "NO! LEAVE IT!" raining down when he so much as looked at the birds.

But then the Mama hen, Pearl, disappeared. And, having fled, tail between his legs, from Pearl's defensive onslaughts, Milo wasn't a likely suspect in that particular murder.

Luka, for all her difficult traits, is gentle with the livestock, keeping a protective eye on her flock as any self-respecting sheepdog must.

So she's not a likely candidate. And Maggie-- after the infamous guinea massacre-- has figured out that herding does not generally involve teeth. (You can teach an old dog new tricks after all.)

So the terror was not homegrown.

Once the fuzzies (and mama) were out of the way, the adolescents started disappearing. Nearly full grown, this crowd hung out at the edge of the woods, far from the coop and the mature flock. We'd been offering them up to friends and neighbors there were so many of them!

... and then there weren't.

And now it appears ALL but two or three of them have disappeared. Whatever is taking them it's quick, bold. And super hungry.

We think it might be a hawk-- Dan found a hawk over a few chicken bodies in the woods-- but then today, I made a gristly discovery: a half eaten chicken up against the fence right beside the barn. I'll spare you the gristly details, but I don't think a hawk would hang around long enough to eat THAT much.

Most of the usual suspects-- foxes, racoons, fishers-- are nocturnal. But the massacres seem to occur in daylight, broad daylight. When the guinea hens start up their ear-shattering warning calls, I run out to check but its always too late. Another chick has bitten the dust.

So what the heck is it? And how do we remove it?

I suppose we're lucky it's taken the predators six blissful, free-ranging summers to figure out we had fresh meat on the wing, but this is little consolation.

We have two new hatches today-- brand new fuzzies still in the nest-- and it'd be nice if they could make it through this brutal, blood-drenched chicken-graveyard of a summer.

Fallout

Been an interesting week in Western Mass. We had 20 minute storm that managed to knock out power for much of the area, blow up our water heater (causing a propane gas smell that had the fire department out first thing in the morning), and topple about 15 trees around the place. But we were pretty lucky, some of our neighbors had a tree fall through their roof, squashed cars, sheds, the works.

The power's back now, though, for us, hot water is still lacking....

Here are a few local pictures

Perhaps sensing our storm-induced vulnerability here on the farm, we had a midnight visit by a pack of coyotes. They yodeled along the fence line very close to the flock. The dogs went nuts, of course, barking and lunging at the windows and the pack dissipated.

However, the sheep decided the lower pasture was too close for comfort and busted loose in the night. Morning found them in the yard, the orchard, every which place... all safe and sound. They are now in the upper pasture (more or less...)

In other news...

Marshmallow/Darth Molly has moved to the coop. Here's her introduction to the flock...

And to Luka...