It's the time of year again, the short period when the Mason Ditch shuts down for maintenance.
Well, there were no babies for Babs this week. I'm not sure what this means. It could be she's not pregnant but would like to be. Or it could mean she got pregnant a week later when she revisited Buddy. Or perhaps she just likes the idea of a baby box. I don't think rabbits can have hysterical pregnancies.
There are going to be baby bunnies here on the farm! Despite Buddy Bunny's lack of experience and a wayward sense of direction, he achieved what he was meant to do and created soon-to-be-born progeny.
Like the returning sunlight after the solstice, joy is beginning to once again creep over the farm. Bear is finally recovering from Moosie's death.
A few warm afternoons and all of a sudden everything is thinking spring has arrived. Of course, "warm" is subjective in this case. Since New Year's Day morning chores have required me to walk out in temps below freezing.
I'm sitting at my desk, looking out the window at thick dark clouds. Rain, or even snow is predicted for Christmas day. That has me thinking about moving my truck across the road. This is because I didn't move my truck last year when we had an unusually heavy snowstorm for New Year's Eve. I was stuck on the property for three days because snow became ice and my driveway has a steep angle. Not that being stuck at home is a hardship. This year, I took the prediction seriously and stocked up for everyone. Lord knows I won't starve to death, and neither will my animals.
Well, I did it. I got Radha her own puppy. This past week Bear hasn't been able to play with her at all and she was clearly bored.
I finally got the first rabbit tractor finished! Is it perfect? No, it's definitely a prototype, although I fully intend to house a rabbit in it. However, it has square corners and is solid, and light enough to be pulled easily across bumpy ground. And it is so completely covered by wire (some of it pieces I hand wove together) that I can't imagine any predator in the world breaking into it. This includes Radha the puppy, who is at the top of my predator list.
Hey, if cats can have their own word for a situation gone seriously wrong, then sheep certainly deserve a word to describe yesterday.
That's right. It's weaning time. Yesterday afternoon I locked the seven little lambikins into one of the alleyways, away from their mothers. No more sheep milk for them!
Yes, I'm borrowing from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, but that snippet is the only piece of poetry (if that's poetry) that I know, and I kept repeating it today, "Chins" being the way I was saying the shortened breed name for my new rabbits.
Once again, I'm going to offer a couple of updates before I start talking ram lambs. That's because in my last post I mentioned that Moosie was hurting again.
I know, I know. I mentioned I was installing new fences last week, but with the chaos of that day, I didn't really appreciate what I'd managed to make happen. Now that a week has passed, I think...I hope...no, I'm certain this was exactly what I always wanted.
Of course, it wouldn't have taken much to improve on last week, but I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth.
Summertime, and the living is easy.
First, a turkey update since the black hawk just interrupted my blogging by trying to take a baby turkey. Tom's girls laid about three dozen eggs and settled down to brood at the beginning of May. It was bad from the beginning.
No, not the puppies, although they are growing by great big leaps and bounds. Only two weeks ago they were cute cuddly not-very-heavy things. Now I swear they weigh twice what they did when they came and are all legs.
Before I get to today's post I want to do some updating. The puppies are doing very well. They have mastered "sit" and the art of herding chickens and sheep, when they are not herding dogs.
I gotta ask. Are these not the most stinkingly cute critters you're ever seen? Ducklings! I got ducklings and it's not even Easter yet.
I thought I had them. But N-O-O-O. I have burrowing chicks.
First, I apologize that this post is a day late. Work came out of the woodwork yesterday, chores and tasks falling over each other, all needing to be completed NOW.
I intended for my new chicks to arrive a few weeks ago, but their delivery date coincided with Oak Creek making its foray onto my property. Fortunately for me, I heeded the warning of the USGS and put off delivery until "sometime in early March." "Sometime" turned out to be Friday.
It started with posts on Facebook. Folks from my local area were sharing maps of the predicted storm. It looked like a lot of snow was going to come down in a very short period of time.
Most of the time I love living next to Oak Creek. The water tumbles merrily in the cool shade of the tall trees as the otters hunt for crayfish.
Before I get to the dog part of this story, I thought I'd update you all on my newly completed brooder coop. At last, after sorting through all the many bits and pieces of this and that cluttering my barn, buying as little as possible and when necessary from Restore, the coop is done and the barn is clean.
If you remember, oh plucky reader, the last time I got chicks--the Brahmas--was two Januarys ago. For their first two weeks they lived in an old cast iron tub that had dirt in the bottom and was covered with several hardware cloth-filled frames to prevent cat intrusion. This worked really well. Not only did the cast iron tub have round corners, thus preventing chick death from all of them trying to squish into a square corner (a strange chick behavior), but the heat lamps warmed the cast iron which radiated even more heat back at the chicks. However, with thirty chicks they very quickly outgrew that small space and I soon moved them outside the barn into a thrown together pallet-and-baling-twine built coop inside a chicken run.
OK, be kind, dear relatives from Duluth. I know you sneer each time I mention it, but I have snow!
The conversion of Lonely Girl from pig to sheep is now complete, at least in her mind and much to Tiny's complete aggravation. That aggravation is complicated not just by Tiny's certainty that Lonely Girl isn't a sheep, but because the pig (She-ig? P-eep?) treats her the way Lonely Girl and her porcine sisters treated June the Cow.
It's that time of year and four out of my five piggies are now gone.
"Really?!" I said, my head tilted up to the gorgeous blue sky on Thursday morning. I was limping again, having tweaked a tendon even though I don't recall stepping wrong.
Saturday evening, June gave me the spotted heifer I wanted so much. My first inkling that all was not going to go well was when I saw Little Iris's hooves appear.
Sigh. There's no calf yet, at least not outside of June's body. All the signs are there. Her tail's loose as are the muscles around the birth canal. Her pin bones are low, her bag is filling up, and every day there are gooey strands wrapped around her tail. That cow! I swear she's doing this on purpose.
For those who don't know the story, there was once a beautiful and talented weaver in ancient Greece named Arachne. She was so talented that the goddess Athena, also a weaver, challenged her to a weave-off.
The other day I sadly swept a small, dead, completely desiccated toad out of my basement. I love my toads. I love them despite the fact they make the weirdest sound of all the creatures on the farm.
That cow! Remind me the next time I decide to buy a cow that I need to ask if she was raised by other cows or raised by humans. I definitely prefer cow-raised cows.
Our Monsoon season opened with a storm so powerful that it sent a flash flood right through my property.
It's official. I'm not selling the farm. What makes my decision official? I bought piglets.
Over the past eight years (and this month it's officially eight years that I've been a co-owner of this property), I've only once seen a beaver. That was about five years ago in July, no less. I was standing on the porch when all of sudden Moosie, then just a pup, went racing down to the Mason ditch. I watched as he walked along the ditch bank his attention on something in the water.
It's only been a few years since I last had dairy cows on the property, but in that short time I completely forgot how awful the flies are. However, before I get into discussing the pestilence of flies, I need to get you caught up on general cow news.
And how am I certain that summer has arrived? Because on Friday the temperature got over 100 degrees while Saturday brought us a lovely all-day rainstorm. It was overcast, drizzly, and cool, and I had all the windows open. Welcome to summer in Northern Arizona.
You know how some people are shoe fanatics, or have shelves full of bobble-heads, or collect those theme plates? Well, I've decided I'm an animal-aholic. It's for this reason that I stay away from the "Farm and Garden" section of Craigslist.
I wasn't a helicopter parent with my kids, and I'm not a helicopter farmer when it comes to my animals.
That title should read More Sheep Tales, but it's been a week of sheep giggles for me. First up is Mari, who has made an amazing turnaround. I had her sheared ten days ago. Like her father Cinco, that wool of hers is a throwback to the Hampshire side of the family. Unlike most Dorpers, who shed their hair (Dorpers have hair, not wool), Mari has wool and it just kept getting thicker. So as I did with Cinco, I hired a shearer.
I've never owned a dumb farm animal. That's not dumb as in unintelligent. From the cows to the pigs to the turkeys, every one of my critters has proved capable of figuring out how to get what they want. That includes opening gates, breaking down fences and crossing hot electrical wires.
I'm getting to this post late today because I wanted to finish the last bits on the coop so I could take a proper picture. And I did, both finish the coop and take a picture. The wooden structure is now wrapped in hardware cloth and chicken wire. There are a pair of wheels at the back of the coop although I haven't yet strung the rope handle at the front that allows me to move it. A technicality. It's well and truly done.
As you, my patient readers, may recall I recently stretched my "I can build it" muscles and added flooring to my stairway. In that process I conquered my fear of a table saw. For more than forty years I'd been haunted by the two missing fingers on my first father-in-law's hand. He had removed them while using a table saw. I need all ten of my fingers to do my job and I know very well that I am a certifiable Klutz. That, and nothing else, is what has kept me from venturing too deeply into the massive workshop that fills my front barn.
For the record it turned out that six sheep is better than simply sufficient. Having just the new moms and their babies has been both peaceful and easy. Tiny only calls now when one of her babies is lost (this usually means on the wrong side of a fence) or she wants me to open a gate.
Tiny, as usual, was late but efficient. Her lambs finally made their appearance on March 28th. At birth both of them were larger than Mari's little guys. That didn't stop Tiny from pushing them out one right after another with less than 5 minutes in between.
I was surprised by lambs again this past week. That's not to say I didn't expect to have lambs toward the end of this month. It's that I didn't expect those lambs to come from Mari.
Before I get started, I'm here to report that it seems I now have semi-domesticated ducks. This morning when I reached the turkey coop to release Tom and his girls, the boldest pair of ducks was sitting outside the coop waiting to be fed.