Thankful

Its been a sort of funny year, 2010. Lots of stark raving good and some pretty serious lousy too. Our family tradition is to make "Thankfulness pictures" to share before dinner, but this year they seemed too... much. We needed a new tradition, one that would sum it all up without the obligation to gush. (Gushing, by the way, is fully appropriate at Thanksgiving. I can do it. I love doing it. But for extended family, gushing just didn't cut it this year)

And so, the Thankfulness Pinata was born. We stuffed it with anonymous notes of thanks. And then bashed it with a baseball bat.
The kids thought this was a lot more fun than obligatory art. And the grown-ups too. And when the bag finally cracked open, all our THANKS spilled out onto the damp fall dirt and the kids rushed them as if they were candy.

All fun aside, here are some things I am truly thankful for:

My husband, the calm in my storm and the true heart of this crazy lifelong enterprise.
The kids, each so much who he/she is it makes me cry sometimes
The extended family and friends that bless our days
Work. Hard, meaningful, often joyous work.
My other work, writing. I am thankful I've been able to carve out the space for my inner space.
The everyday comfort of our hilltown home
Dogs, sheep, chickens etc etc
The luck and hardships that led me here to all of this

Happy (slightly belated) Thanksgiving!

Eggless

Maggie's Farm takes this free-ranging thing seriously. Our 30-some chickens hang out under the porch and on the porch, in the barn and pasture, under the apple trees and, if the kids leave the van door open, IN the vehicles (yes, it's happened. Really). They are happy birds, lucky to be engaging in full-time poultry politics. (Chickens are born politicians. Anyone who's spent any time around the coop can imagine them in little powersuits nodding and "yes-ing", and jockeying for position.)

But they've quit laying eggs.

There was a period of diminishing returns-- 3 or 4 eggs a day in September and now, zero, zilch, bubkus. (I have no idea how to spell bubkus) They have a light in their coop to stave off the afternoon darkness. They have food and fresh air and water. They have lovely nest boxes full of comfy shavings.

But.... Nothing.

Now, many of our hens are elderly. "Fancy Feather" and "Chicklee", "Sandy" and "Rangey" are over 7 years old now. But there are also many younger hens who have no good excuse.

I wonder if the non-egg laying is a silent protest. Our male-to-female poultry ratio is terribly skewed at present. We have about 8 young and cocky roosters, survivors of this summer's fox attacks. As roos are wont to do, they sneak around waiting to catch the biddies away from the flock. Jaguar, our dominant rooster has his hands (wings) full fighting them off.

Now, I'm all for converting these young roos into chicken soup. But my better half has a bit less enthusiasm for this project. He started it a few weeks ago when I was out of town, managed one rooster before he lost his resolve and called it a day....Yes, he's a softy :)

And so, while we lurch through endless "what to do with the roosters" debates, the hens continue their protest

And we go eggless.

This is the Farm... a poem

This is the farm, cozy and still, all hunkered down at the top of the hill.

This is the dog who looks after the farm. She crouches and tends and keeps it from harm.

This is the yard the chickens destroy as they scratch and they bask and flutter with joy,

watched by the dog who looks after the farm. She crouches and tends and keeps it from harm

This is the coop where seven roosters crow. They scuffle and tussle, step on each other's toes,

beside the yard the chickens destroy as they scratch and they bask and flutter with joy

watched by the dog who looks after the farm. She crouches and tends and keeps it from harm

These are the sheep that graze in the sun. Growing fine wool is about all they've done,

under the coop where seven roosters crow. They scuffle and tussle, step on each other's toes,

beside the yard the chickens destroy when they scratch and they bask and flutter with joy, watched by the dog who looks after the farm. She crouches and tends and keeps it from harm

These are the fences all broken and crashed, when trees topple over, the best ones are dashed freeing the sheep that graze in the sun, growing fine wool is about all they've done,

under the coop where seven roosters crow. They scuffle and tussle, step on each other's toes, beside the yard the chickens destroy when they scratch and they bask and flutter with joy, watched by the dog who looks after the farm. She crouches and tend and keeps it from harm

And this is the barn where stray poultry roost, strutting and preening and leaving their poo, beside the fences all broken and crashed, when trees topple over, the best ones are dashed freeing the sheep that graze in the sun, growing fine wool is about all they've done,

under the coop where seven roosters crow. They scuffle and tussle and step on each other's toes, beside the yard the chickens destroy when they scratch and they bask and flutter with joy, watched by the dog who looks after the farm. She crouches and tends and keeps it from harm

These are the apples before the first snow, all spotted and ripe and ready to go

stored in the barn where stray poultry roost, strutting and preening and leaving their poo. beside the fences all broken and crashed, when trees topple over, the best ones are dashed freeing the sheep that graze in the sun, growing fine wool is about all they've done

Under the coop where seven roosters crow. They scuffle and tussle and step on each other's toes, beside the yard the chickens destroy when they scratch and they bask and flutter with joy, watched by the dog who looks after the farm. She crouches and tends and keeps it from harm

These are the shepherds all weary and maxed, doing their chores as the new moon waxed

heading out to the barn where stray poultry roost, strutting and preening and leaving their poo. beside the fences all broken and crashed, when trees topple over, the best ones are dashed freeing the sheep that graze in the sun, growing fine wool is about all they've done

Under the coop where seven roosters crow. They scuffle and tussle and step on each other's toes, beside the yard the chickens destroy when they scratch and they bask and flutter with joy, watched by the dog who looks after the farm. She crouches and tends and keeps it from harm

Fall Harvest

Autumn is a beautiful time of year, but for us at Maggie's Farm, it can be a little sad. Autumn means the rattle of leaves and slick roads, snow grown thick over the pastures, the coop with a cold white hat of ice. It means water will freeze in the buckets and need to be kicked out and refilled eternally. Kids' mittens go missing (one from each pair) and the snow (avert your eyes if you are squeamish) encases layers of dog turd and toys.

Autumn is also the time of harvest.

We had a pretty good crop of pumpkins this year-- a first! And too many cucumbers (have to learn to pickle them one of these years) and many, many pig-planted tomatoes.

Our apples, unsprayed for two years now, are sorry looking things. But they do provide for a bounty of pies and crumbles.

We also have lamb, or ram anyway. A few weekends ago, we "harvested" Rahm, our Icelandic ram. Rahm was two years old, but with a strange ancientness in his bearing, his slow and careful gait, his propensity to plop himself down under the coop or against the barn and just sit all day like Ferdinand.

Rahm had scurs, the kind that curved straight back towards his skull and needed frequent trimming. Dan and I spent many a Saturday afternoon wrestling poor Rahm to a sitting position (Not easy as he was a complete chub) and going at those thick scurs with a branch trimmer or, when this failed, a hacksaw. Yes, there was blood, lots of it. Also Rahm's hooves grew freakishly fast, requiring even more ram wrangling. Every time we'd do the trimming thing, I'd say something like "Poor Rahm, I feel so bad for him.

We ought to just put him out of his misery and eat him." But, gutless farmers that we are, we left the big guy be.

This year, though, we'd sold all the lambs and most of the sheep, and our freezer was growing kind of light on lamb. We had one ram lamb, Ewok, a beautiful solid black with (so far.... knock on wood) no offending scurs.

We knew that with the turn of the seasons Rahm and Ewok would start up with the ramly-ram posturing and butting and that the three remaining ewes (Copper, Acorn and Penny) just needed one boy around.

We decided that we might as well eat the big, hard-to-care-for, scurs-growing-into-his-head one.

As you might recall, we've tried a few different slaughter methods. Our first ram, Gus, a nasty bugger, was slaughtered and butchered by our barber Dwayne (Yes, it IS that small a town). And the year after that I had a horrible experience with driving a vanful of sheep to a slaughterhouse. Last year, we had a mobile butcher come out to "do" our pigs and sheep more humanely. But the butcher wouldn't come out for one sheep, and Dwayne retired a few years back. What to do? Perhaps it was time to "man up" (Hate that expression) and do the thing ourselves.....

Um, no.

Lucky for us, we have some very kind friends (Thanks you guys!) who are also small farmers with more expertise in butchering and all the tools too. Dan and Adam went down to the barn with the rifle and meat saw and ropes and hooks and all sorts of terrible implements, while I hung out with the kids (Yes, this is pretty much my role when it comes to slaughter). A short while later, I ventured down to watch a bit. A short bit. As the caul fat was pulled from Rahm's gut cavity. (Never thought I'd be doing THAT back in my vegetarian days). Then Adam's wife, Emily, and I took the all kids (6 in all) to a local fundraising event for the high school athletic teams.

Later we had a barbecue (Not sheep,mind you. Definitely too soon for that.) It was, for me anyway, the easiest most pleasant slaughter day yet.

But still, the feel of fall-- endings and lapsings, chill winds and more to come-- lingers.

Magical Chicken

I've mentioned the fox that's been lunching on our chickens, yes?

Well, it's been pretty quiet lately, owing to our keeping all of the chickens cooped for a long stretch of the summer. All of the chickens, that is, except for this small white hen who we've named "The Magical Chicken". Here she is:

She doesn't like the coop.. or the barn. She disappears at night, re-appears walking the fence line like a sitting duck (bad poultry metaphor, I know). And-- here's the really remarkable thing-- she hasn't been eaten!

Where does she go? How does she avoid the jaws of our resident predator? I have no idea. Once, I found her high in the rafters on the outside of the barn, once in an open shed that had been home to our trio of pigs, "The Daves". She is a cagey little thing, zig-zagging across open spaces, never drifting to close to the woods.

Our older hens (These girls are six now!) are more sedate and trusting. I've seen them gather into a ruffled little knot and gawk as the fox mows one of their sisters down. Not so with "The Magical Chicken". Long before the fox shows, she is up and out of there!

Perhaps, we have some natural selection going on in the barnyard and before long we'll have a flock of super-smart fox-detecting rafters-roosting chickens.

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