will wonders never cease?

It's snowing again today, for the second time in a week, and the second time already this winter. I can't begin to express how unusual this is for us. It's not that we don't ever get snow - we do. We get it once or twice a year, and almost always in January or February. This area had its first white Christmas in something like thirty years. For a girl raised in the north, I can tell you it was quite a thrill!

This strange weather feels like a harbinger. I have the feeling, deep in my gut, that the coming year will be different. I'm not sure quite how, but I get the sense that it will be a pivotal year, not just for us, but for the world. Perhaps it's because it is the start of a new decade or because our world seems perched on a precipice, as if we're all collectively holding our breath waiting for something to happen. Don't get me wrong. I don't think the world will end, or civilization as we know it will fall apart - nothing as dramatic as all that. I just think that this time next year, when we close the doors on 2010, we'll all have seen things we never thought we'd see. We'll experience a fundamental (if ever so slight) shift in our perspective. We'll all come out the other side just a little bit changed.

* Disclaimer: I don't make predictions or claim to know what the future will hold. This is simply one woman's opinion, based on instinct and nothing more.

every day is a mixed bag

I'm learning that there's no such thing as a good day or a bad day on the farm. Well, they're rare, in any case. Every day seems to bring with it a (mostly) balanced mix of little successes and failures, catastrophes and strokes of brilliance, pleasures and annoyances.

We've started letting the Margenes out to free range. They're about four months old now, and nearly as big as the big girls. It was time for them to taste freedom, to make their own way in the world. Time to kick them out of the nest, as it were. When I opened the door for them for the first time, it was quite a show. A couple of them tentatively stuck their heads out to peck at the green grass just across the threshold. Suddenly there was a rumbling from the back of the house...a few over-eager girls started flapping their wings madly, annoyed by the slow progression forward. Finally their pent-up enthusiasm could no longer be contained, and they all came bursting out through the door in twos and threes, semi-airborne, wings fluttering, as if shot from a cannon. They looked like Fourth of July artilery shells with feathers and beaks.

When you first let young pullets out to free range, you can expect some losses early on. They're novices at this, you see. No street smarts. It takes some time and a few misfortunes for them to get the hang of things. We lost one overnight last night*. It seems she didn't make it back in before we closed the door, and went unnoticed behind the house in the waning daylight. I discovered a sad pile of feathers up against the back wall, where she must have tried to settle for the night. This is what I mean. You can expect some of this in the beginning. At least one or two will unwittingly venture into the dogs' yard and not make it out. Another will wander off alone, never to be seen again. As badly as I feel for these poor early casualties, they serve as a warning to the others. Chickens aren't stupid. They learn what to do and what not to do.

My dismay over this finding was tempered by another. This:



I swear I looked at these plants yesterday, and...nothing. But today...today we have broccoli! Well, we have itty bitty broccoli, but...still. Broccoli seeds are incredibly tiny. Broccoli plants are enormous. This never ceases to amaze me. It's just incredible that something so small can contain so much. I've never attempted to grow broccoli before, so this discovery thrills me. Such are the endless tiny dramas of farm life.

See? Mixed bag.

* Tara's Law of Poultry Attrition : Whichever breed of chicken you own the fewest of, or whichever is most rare will be the first to perish, virtually without exception. If you have 50 Barred Rocks and ONE Silver Spangled Hamburg, guess which one will be the first to meet an untimely end? This rule also applies to whichever particular bird is your favorite. The one I lost last night was a Buff Orpington, and while they are not rare, I had only two (out of 50-some-odd total chickens). Now I have one.

Winston

Meet Winston.



Winston bears the honorable distinction of having survived two rounds of layoffs. He has, in fact, been promoted, and is carefully supervising his future underlings here.

When you find yourself with excess cockerels (and who doesn't, from time to time?), the process of choosing one to keep around is...interesting, and far from scientific. There are all sorts of considerations. You consider his looks - is he handsome? Big and Beefy? Tall and Slender? Short and Stocky? You consider the attractiveness of his feathering, and the overall robustness of his stature. Good health and longevity are important, after all. Being easy on the eyes also doesn't hurt.

You pay close attention to his behavior, too. Does he have a bad-to-the-bone attitude, or is he a gentle giant? Is he attentive to the ladies? Does he force himself on the poor girls? Does he keep a watchful eye over them and offer them the best tidbits? You want a caring rooster, don't you?

You'll find yourself studying all aspects of his personality, real and imagined. You'd swear that one seems to have a sense of humor. One thinks he's cock of the walk. Another is shy, and defers to the rest. You consider what sort of offspring they'd make, too. You think about whether they'd be a good match and if they'd give you a beautiful flock of purebreds, or a yard full of mongrels.

In the end, however, you wind up choosing the one that just fits. The one that gives you a warm fuzzy feeling. The one you feel most attached to, even if the reasons are illogical and hard to justify. You choose the one you love best.

Hmmm.

The Farm After One Year

Holy smokes, it's been a year since we moved to the farm. A bit more, actually. I was thinking yesterday while hanging laundry (I do a lot of good thinking then) about what we've been through, how much has changed for us and what we have on the horizon for the coming year.

I'll be honest, our first year was hard. We really went full-throttle. We plowed forward through a swirling haze of excess enthusiasm, self-imposed deadlines, enabling co-conspirators, emergency repairs and do-or-die home improvements. We lived through the hottest, most miserable summer with essentially no air conditioning, and spent most of a cold, wet, windy winter with essentially no heat. Did I say "windy"? We learned that the wind blows steadily at about 30 mph from November to April. We learned that doing farm work in 30 mph sustained winds inspires foul language. Doing farm work in 30 mph sustained winds when it is ALSO COLD is positively soul-crushing. And I can't tell you how many times I've collected laundry from all over the yard after it was blown off the line.

All of that is balanced by the good, though. We've enjoyed cool evenings when folks in town were still cursing the heat, wildflowers in virtually every season of the year, and moons so large you can't help but stare, transfixed. Listening to coyotes singing in the nearby trees while the setting sun lights the pond on fire is unearthly. Watching a Blue Heron come in for a slow landing will take your breath away.

When we first moved to the place, it was wild. There were feral dogs running the property, the grass and brush were practically impassable and mud daubers were squatting all over the inside of the house. We found shed snake skins in the closet. It was a mess. Now, a year later, it's still a mess, but it is comfortably lived in. We have reclaimed a good portion of it and made it ours. The small barn that once was piled high with junk now houses actual animals. This time last year, we had thirteen chickens - today, we have something like sixty. Or eighty. I've actually lost count. Fourteen chicks and thirteen ducklings were hatched on our farm, and it was amazing every time. We've lost birds, too - enough now that it makes us annoyed rather than sad. We've put up fencing and more fencing. We've moved the same lumber pile two or three times. We planted a garden, harvested, moved it and planted it again. We've been slaves to the milking schedule. Two new dogs joined our little family and one left it, having done everything she could for us. We have gone to great lengths to protect our animals' lives so that we may later kill them for our own meat. We have wrestled with the irony of this. What a year.

I must be honest again - looking ahead, I fully expect the second year to be hard as well. It will be different, though, and I'm filled with hope and eager anticipation as we start the next leg of this journey. It was exhausting to do so much right away, but at the same time, we feel better knowing that those things are now behind us. We will be no less busy, but our projects now will be mostly chosen, and will hopefully provide more for our comfort than our survival. We rest more easily, though, knowing that if it does become a question of our survival, we can handle that too.

Last night at dinner we were discussing how different our life is now. If we still lived in town, we'd be sitting on the sofa watching TV all the time, wondering what to do with ourselves, and cursing the lousy traffic on the way home from work. We traded all that for lots of hard labor, tons of chores, acres of mowing, long commutes, no social life. We also traded all that for quiet, for letting the grass get as tall as we want, for goats that wag their tails when they see us and for chats with Very Old Men at the feed store about the weather. Would we go back? No way.


P. S. It would be unfair of me not to point out that this endeavor has belonged to my husband as much as to me. When I asked him to share his thoughts and experiences for this post, he simply stated the following:

"I'll deal with snakes, raccoons and coyotes the rest of my life before letting an HOA meddle in my business."

Bless him.

things turn up

One of the craziest things about living in the country, I think, is the way that things just appear, seemingly from nowhere. For instance, we went out to our truck one afternoon to go to the feed store or some such, and there was a jaw bone laying in the bed. Likewise, yesterday, while I was emptying and refilling the water pan for the birds, I found this lying in the bottom:



I've never seen this ring before in my life. We seldom have visitors, and it looks to be child-sized. None of our visitors have children, so I can't even guess where it might have come from. Furthermore, I found it in the bottom of a water pan that we dump, rinse and refill EVERY DAY. It was definitely not there yesterday. These sorts of finds lead us to all manner of speculation. We know that animals are the root cause - wild and domesticated - but we can't ever be sure what animal left the item in question, or when, or under what circumstances. I couldn't say whether this ring was dropped by a startled raccoon, or whether a duck picked it up from somewhere else and left it here. I certainly can't guarantee that it didn't pass through a digestive tract somewhere along the way. As for the jaw bone, did a hawk or a vulture drop it? Was it left there by some overly curious critter in the night, in trade for a more enticing item? And what animal did it originally belong to, anyway? Did the animal that left it there also kill it, or has the it changed hands (paws? talons?) many times over?

We will never know. Perhaps I'll start a shoe box labeled "Farm Curiosities".

It's quiet around here...

I'm alone on the farm this week.

That sounds ridiculous to say, considering that I am in the company of four dogs, four goats, three rabbits, five ducks, innumerable chickens and one crabby cat. But I am the only biped. The only one here with thumbs. I was a bit worried that I wouldn't be able to handle things. I was afraid that something would go wrong and I wouldn't be able to fix it, but so far that hasn't occurred. I imagine that given enough time, something eventually would go wrong, but fears about being by myself for just a week seem now to have been overblown. I have made it halfway through the week without any need for a tool, a bullet or a phone call, and that feels like a small triumph to me.

P.S. Sorry for the lack of pictures lately. It's literally too hot to stand outside for any non-essential reason, and frankly there's nothing inside worth taking photos of.

P.P.S. Rabbits really hate it when you soak them with the hose.