Farewell old trailer

We bought this horse trailer in the first few months after we moved out here in 2002. It came as part of a package deal with Katherine's horse Buddy. The horse died at the ripe old age of 30 in 2008, but the trailer, which is 1970s vintage, kept rolling along .... until last week.

Mike used it to take chickens to the processor down in Arthur, which is about a two-and-a-half hour drive. When he came home, he was backing up the trailer to park it when one of the wheels fell off. Apparently the bearings self destructed. So, it will soon be going to the scrap yard.

That old trailer served us well over the last 13 years. It carried goats to goat shows, and chickens and turkeys to the processor, as well as lambs, pigs, and calves. We used it to pick up our Irish dexter cattle in Missouri and to bring home Beauty the Jersey and her calf Beau last year.

It is time for us to move on, and we'll be purchasing a bona fide livestock trailer to replace it.

Grocery shopping, homestead style

It just occurred to me that when most people shop for groceries, they go to the local store and buy whatever they need or want. But when I want meat, it means planning months in advance. At the moment, I'm thinking of buying some day-old cockerels to raise for meat. My chicken experiment yielded us five live mutant chickens, and of the eight heritage chicks I purchased, only two are roosters. We do have plenty of stew hens in the freezer, but there are some recipes where young chickens are needed. If we get chicks now, we'll have chicken in three to four months.

This past spring, I was talking about trying a new breed of pig -- Gloucester Old Spots. I am perfectly happy with the Tamworths that we raise, but I thought it would be fun to try a different breed. From weaning to processing pigs, you're looking at six to eight months. The GOS are more expensive than Tamworths, and unfortunately, I took a little too long thinking about it, and the piglets were all sold.

In January, I decided what vegetables we wanted to grow this year. Some were started in my basement and transplanted, and others were direct-seeded into the garden. We are still planting seeds, in fact. Just yesterday, I had the first fresh peas, which are heaven to the taste buds. I always hated those mushy things in cans, but peas fresh from the pod -- eaten right there in the garden -- are one of my favorite foods. And they're more special because they're only available this time of year. This morning, I was reading on another blog about mindful eating, and I think one of the things that makes me more mindful about eating is that we eat seasonally. When you haven't had a favorite food for six months or 11 months, you are completely present when you finally get to eat it!

Although this type of "grocery shopping" might seem like a lot of work -- and why bother? -- it makes life simpler. It is easier to eat healthy. Rather than having to think about our food a lot when we're ready to eat it -- is it organic; how many calories; how much fat -- we think about it ahead of time. In addition to knowing that the meat was raised in a healthy environment, we are also not tempted to over-indulge. Since a pig only produces about 12-15 pounds of bacon, that's all the bacon we have for a year. We're not eating it every day. It's one of those special occasion foods, usually reserved for birthdays or other breakfast celebrations. Our freezers are full of all sorts of meat, fruit, and vegetables, so when we're ready to fix dinner, we have what we need readily available. Big food corporations have deluded us into thinking that they've made our lives easier. But have they really? Yes, we can eat whenever and whatever we want, but unless we put a lot of thought into the consumption, we can wind up paying for that convenience with our health.

A little southern girl in the 1960s

Whenever people ask if I grew up on a farm, I always say no. Well, that's not 100% true, but I really don't think it counts for much that I lived on a farm until I was only three years old. I have exactly two memories of that place, and since one involves coming face to face with a snake, it's a miracle I ever considered leaving the relative safety of the burbs. So, here's a little treat -- pictures of me with my father when I was a toddler on our south Texas farm outside of Refugio. When I told him we were moving out to the country in 2002, he looked at me as if I'd told him we were moving to Mars, and he said, "What do you want to do that for?" Unfortunately, I couldn't explain my reasons very well, and he died a few months later. There have been a lot of days when I wished I could ask him a question out here. Although he only had a sixth grade education, he had a wealth of agricultural knowledge prior to industrialization.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming -- If you missed yesterday's post, be sure to page down and sign up for the give-away! The deadline is Monday night.

Front fencing completed!

For several years, we've been talking about the need for a fence across the front of our property, and we finally did it. I should say that Mike finally did it, since my help consisted of recommending a picket fence. I thought that it would work well for keeping the birds on our property, since chickens don't exactly fly over a fence. They usually jump up on top, then jump down. With pointy tips, I thought a picket fence would be the least accessible for them.

With the addition of this fencing, it means the entire front of our property is fenced off from the road by either woven wire or a picket fence, making it much harder for any of our animals to get into the road and meet with the same sad fate as Willie on Monday. The gate is hard to see in this picture, but it's covered with a mesh that will make it impossible for animals to go through it. Right now it is kept closed with a small bungy cord, but we will be getting an electric opener for it, which will be similar to a garage door opener, so we won't have to get out to open the gate when it's raining.

Trouble happens in threes

I was the last one up this morning, which is pretty typical on a Sunday. And with Daylight Savings, I lost an hour of sleep that I would have liked to get back. Unfortunately, 'twas not to be. Jonathan didn't get a chance walk Mom's dog, Joy, before he left for church so I had to get up and do it before she had an accident. Once I was up there seemed little point in going back to bed, so I headed outside to do chores.

Imagine my surprise when I walked out to fill the goats' hay feeders and saw the llamas standing in water at the bottom of the middle pasture. I had thought llamas were slightly sensible creatures who should have realized they needed to retreat to much higher ground when it started flooding -- but no, they were at the bottom of the pasture standing in water that was probably 4-6 inches deep, with water up to 2 feet around them.

I immediately ran down and took my shoes off to go in. I'd been in this situation before and didn't know how long the llamas had been standing in the frigid water. The air temperature wasn't too bad -- probably around 50 degrees at the time -- but because of the time of year, the water felt around 33 degrees. I didn't walk more than 4 feet in (and 2 feet deep) before I felt like my feet and calves were going to freeze off. I quickly got back out of the water, put my socks and boots back on, and headed back to the barn, hoping I would think of something while I finished chores.

Well, right when I finished chores I heard Sovalye, our livestock guardian who is currently locked up in the barn, whining very loudly. I looked over at the stall he was in and realized that he had ripped down all the chicken wire that had been covering the bars. I wasn't sure why he would have done that but he seemed very upset. After finding a collar and leash, I took him outside for a walk. I pretty much just let him lead me where he wanted to go, as I didn't have a preference, and we eneded up by the sheep pasture. You've probably heard my mom say before that sheep hardly, if ever, make noise. I heard a very upset baaing coming from the bottom of their pasture, which surprised me, as their pasture doesn't flood and I couldn't fathom what could be the matter.

Squinting my eyes (I didn't have my glasses on), I saw that Snuggles, our Southdown Baby Doll wether, appeared to have gotten caught in some baling twine. We just got a large circular bale of hay for the sheep, so that we don't have to take half a bale out to their pasture every day, and Dad tied a tarp over it yesterday with baling twine. Unfortunately, some of the twine and come down and caught Snuggles to the point that he was almost choking himself, it was so tight. Thank goodness Sovalye decided we need to visit the sheep!

As Sovalye and I walked back to the barn, I tried calling Dad and Mom, who are off at a seminar about apple trees (I think). The only thing I could think of, since I absolutely did not want to go in that water again, was to take the inflatable raft to get to the llamas, and try to get them to move through the water to dry land. (Although how exactly that would have worked, I'm not sure.) I deposited Sovalye in the shed with the momma goats and their babies so he would have some company, and headed back to look at the llamas. One of them had moved about 10 feet from their original spot, where the other llama still was. However, he seemed very unwilling to move more.

Dad called me 10 minutes later as I was contemplating exactly how to get the raft blown up. He didn't have any other ideas, and neither did Mom. After dragging the raft about 300 feet into the barn, I really didn't want to try to blow it up, so I went out to look at the llamas again. Surprise! The pasture had drained some, and they were standing on semi-dry land, though still surrounded by 2-foot-deep water. However, knowing that I would be able to stand on that semi-dry land once I reached them, I was more willing to wade across. Once again, I stripped off my boots and socks and started across. It wasn't as deep as it had been earlier, and I found slightly higher ground, though the water was still above my knees for much of the 100-foot walk. By the time I reached them my feet had started to go numb, which was a blessing for the most part, but made me worry about all sorts of things -- like if it was possible my toes would turn black and fall off before I made it out of there.

When I reached the llamas, they were not at all happy to see me. They aren't the friendliest, and I had to grab the smaller one around the neck to try and put a halter on him. I finally got it on, but as soon as I tried to start dragging him across the water, he planted his legs firmly on the ground. Unfortunately, the halter wasn't tight enough and he was able to pull out of it. I was so terrified that my toes were going to fall off that I started chasing them to try and put the halter back on one of them. Eventually, after about 2 minutes, I was able to chase them into the far pasture (they both jumped the fence) and onto dry land. They seemed improperly ungrateful for my sacrifice. Walking back to the house, I didn't even bother to put my shoes or pants back on (which had fallen off after getting soaked), as my feet were so numb they didn't really notice the cold.

Once inside, I hopped right into the shower. All of this activity makes me a little sad -- I'll be going to college this fall, and as much as I'm glad to get away from this craziness (this is not the first time I have crossed frigid water to save animals), I think part of me is going to miss it. I was just accepted to the College of Engineering (Electrical Engineering major) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as a transfer student, and that is probably where I will be this fall.

Update on Coco's babies: They seem to be doing well, momma is making lots of milk, and the babies are getting enough food. We'll be keeping a close eye on them, as we seem to have trouble with quads, but for now they're doing well. There is a possibility that two of the bucks and possibly the doe are polled -- if so, that means there's only one possibility for daddy: Draco. Naughty boy! We'll be able to tell for sure in a few days.

Plants vs. animals

Once again (or twice or thrice), we are facing a challenge in balancing free-range animals with production of fruits, vegetables, and flowers. When we first moved out here, we had no idea why our tomato plants never produced any ripe tomatoes. We'd see some little green tomatoes on the plants, but there were never any big ripe tomatoes. After two complete growing seasons, we realized the chickens were eating them all!

The following year, we fenced in our garden and discovered the benefit of having chickens in your garden -- they love tomato worms. So, season three's tomato crop was cut short when the tomato worms completely defoliated the plants. The next year we learned that DE (looks like white powder, but it's crushed skeletons of microscopic sea creatures that will cut the outer skin of soft-skinned insects) kills tomato worms. Woo hoo!

If you've been reading for a month or so, you know that the goats have pretty much wiped out the apple orchard. We learned our first year that the goats loved nice new little saplings after they almost killed a pear tree, so we realized they would have to stay contained in the pasture. However, these past couple years, we've had a few little goats who do not respect the electric fence, and they walk right through it.

Now, I have four baby grape vines sitting in my living room, and when my husband asked me where we were going to plant them, I suddenly recalled hearing that turkeys love grapes. I can also tell you from experience that turkeys love peaches, which is why we ate no peaches the first year our peach trees produced fruit. The trees were small, and the peaches were at "turkey buffet" level. I'm wondering if grape will always be at turkey buffet level. We have to plant these grape vines somewhere -- and six more vines will be arriving in the mail soon!

I've also realized that many of my daylilies are sheared off at the ground. It finally occurred to me that it must be the work of the geese. We've had daylilies for five years, and no one has ever done this before. The geese are new, and I find them guilty due to circumstantial evidence. Executing five geese is out of the question, so I'm going to put floating row covers over the daylilies until they get started. Hopefully, by then, the geese will be too busy feasting on grass to notice the daylilies.

Finally, remember those 144 tomato seeds I planted in little pots? (It was more like 300 seeds in 144 pots, but I don't want to sound too picky.) Anyway, we have these wonderful shelves with fluorescent lights in the pump room. I went in there yesterday to find the tops of many of the tomato plants snipped off! After some discussion and deductive thinking, we've come to the conclusion that there is a rat in there who is eating them. Ugh! We put two of the barn cats in there last night, since we don't have a rat trap; but we didn't see any evidence that the rat was executed last night. I don't think any additional tomato plants were injured though, so maybe the cats just forced him into hiding?

I can't recall ever having this many problems in past years. Yes, we've had an occasional issue with the needs of plants and animals clashing, but in addition to the very real problem of my tomato seedlings and daylilies being attacked, there is also the future issue of the grape vines to consider! I know chickens and sheep don't bother grapes, because there are vineyards in California that use chickens for natural pest control in their vineyards and sheep for natural grass cutting. I am considering putting the grape vines out by the hayfield. But I am wondering, do deer like grapes?