I just really like the illustration work on this ad. I wonder who did it…. really nice!
Pin It
It was Sunday afternoon… and the skies finally got dark and rumbly and the sound of thunder got closer and closer. Miss Julia and I were texting back and forth silly things, like how they were sitting in their driveway just tempting the rain to drench them. I considered a naked run out to the pig barn just to get some rain. We were being silly… but then it started to look less like a good rain storm and more like a serious blow… the winds started to kick up and the lightening was striking… I heard Cody scream and I knew we had to get the animals in from the storm. All it takes is a frightened pony to wreck a fence in panic.
So I called to the girls and Maggie was already on her way out the door. Jessy was getting her shoes and I went out in my slippers, not even thinking, just worrying as the storm approached. Slippers can be replaced, a flock of sheep, much harder!
Maggie had disappeared in the dark, and I thought she might be way in the back, trying to get the herd back into the middle yard, and ultimately into their barn, but she was no where to be seen. So I rush out there just as the first drops were hitting. Everyone was waiting at the gate and I didn’t even need any grain to convince them to follow me to the barn, they were leading the way. Cody was particularly frightened, dancing about, his eyes big and wild. Then a saw lightening hit a tree way in the back pasture and I knew why he was nervous. We hurried on our way.
Just as I got everyone into the sheep barn, the heavens opened up and it started to pour. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much rain in such a short amount of time! It was deafening, even in the two story building. Just pouring down. The sheep huddled around me, milling and just touching my hands and legs with their muzzles. They were scared. I totally understand the whole shepherd thing, the connections with Jesus as a shepherd to us all since I have gotten my own flock. Normally, they do as they please and are skittish and funny, sometimes wanting attention, sometimes not. But once things get a little hairy, they want me. They want me to lead them to safety, they want me calm and collective and they draw from that energy. The boys, Fergus and Angus, especially get very affectionate when they are scared. The want chin rubs and head pats and they wag their little tails non-stop. Even Molly was bumping my leg, huddled up close as the thunder cracked overhead and the winds blew the rain sideways into the open barn door in the back.
I managed to get the side door closed, with a piece of twine and a little luck. It was blowing so hard, it was hard to hold onto the door. I made a mental note that we should put a handle on the inside of the door!! It was hard to get closed without something to hold on to. Once in, I went to the little nailed in gate that seperates the sheep barn from the poultry barn in front and was happy to see Maggie just getting in the doorway. She had gone back to the house to get her birthday poncho… haha…. and now she was drenching wet and probably weighed 30 pounds more! That Mexican wool poncho she adored was streaming water off the bottom!
We could hardly hear each other speak from the pouring rain on the metal roof of the poultry barn. She came down towards me, since I was locked in with the hoofstock and we chatted a minute or so. She was worried about the turkeys in the big barn since the rain was coming from the west and the big side door was open. So she was going to go and check on them. I told her to stay away from the open and from under the big trees, and wished her luck. She’s a stubborn thing and she was going to do it anyway. Might as well give her my blessing.
Just as she left, I realize that Jessy is out in the yard, rescuing the meat chickens with a dog crate and a stick!
It never ceases to amaze me just now much my girls have matured and blossomed out here. This past year has been amazing. They are such wonderful kids. Jessy…. afraid of chickens… was out in the nastiest storm I’ve seen in years, first trying to get them under a laundry basket and inch them across the yard to safety and then gave up on that plan and got the dog crate from the screen porch and was herding the frighten, drenched nuggets into the crate, one at a time and then trundling a bunch at a time off to the poultry barn to let them loose and go after more!
Well, I braved a run from the sheep barn as the rain was letting up a bit. Said farewell to my little sheep and pony friends and dashed off. My slippers were soaking wet, and mostly just protection from the little rocks and twigs that were strew about. A heard a crack and a big branch from the maple tree in the middle yard broke free and came tumbling down! I got to Jessy as she was lugging back the last crate load to safety. She was laughing and just totally soaked! We got into the poultry barn and watched the poor little nuggets as they shuffled and shook their drenched feathers… oh they were so pathetic looking! Jessy had come out into the screen porch to check on her bunnies and saw the ten birds huddled in a corner, with rain from a missing piece of gutter, just pouring down on them. They seemed paralyzed with fear and just couldn’t figure out what to do, so they stayed there, as the waters were rising. She couldn’t reach us, so she knew she had to save them… I’m so proud of her, even with her fear of the large birds, she couldn’t let them drown.
As the rain finally began to lighten a bit, Maggie came from the back and announced that the turkeys were fine. She had gotten the doors shut and most of the free range flock was in their roost room as well, so she closed them up, too. Everyone was battened down and hatches were all covered! We sat in the poultry barn, on the big cement table for awhile and just watched in silence. Thank goodness we got this rain, we SO needed it! You could almost hear the grass singing in happiness as it soaked up all that was offered. All around the yard were huge puddles, the rain had come down so hard and fast, even the parched earth couldn’t soak it all in! I hear we got almost 3 inches of rain in that hour. I can imagine it!
Well, once it let up enough, we ambled back to the house, stripping off soaking clothes and getting into clean, dry new stuff and then we realized, the power was off. Oh no…. and then we realized that our hatching eggs where getting colder and colder! We had one chick already hatched and another trying to hatch. I knew my neighbors had no power after a call, and then called my friend Bill, who lives about 10 miles away. He had power and said bring it over.
By the time we got there, the temp in the incubator had dropped so far. We got them warmed and going again, but I wasn’t sure it would be okay. But there wasn’t much else we could do, it was a casualty of the storm. He watched them all night and in the morning, another had hatched and we had to help the last one out of his shell, he had been trying for over 12 hours and still had not gotten free. We thought he was dead, but he wasn’t and I’m glad to report, the little fellow is still alive, though his one leg is very weak. Two of them hatched and they are a fiesty little pair…
Stormy and Thunder are the active crazy chicks and little Lightening is the weak legged one. He’s all dark. I think he might get better, every day he seems a lot stronger. He’s determined to live, so we’ll give him the chance. I might use a little bandage and try and straighten and strengthen his little leg for him. He’s eating and drinking, so I think that’s a good sign.
But, unfortunately, I think we lost over 38 eggs because so far, no more have hatched. And it’s been three days. I am going to give them another day or two but I really think we’ve lost them. So disappointing! I think we are done incubatoring for awhile, until we can afford a good Brinsea incubator. It’s just too hard to loose them for various reasons! And I think we are just going to order a bunch of female chicks from our favorite hatchery…. Meyer…. they are having some specials on mixed assortments of heritage chicks, all females, and free shipping. Can’t go wrong with that.
But I do love to watch the little guys hatch!
Well, aside from the eggs, and a few downed branches, everyone fared well and we can see the grass just starting to green a teeny bit! We have made sure the hoof stock is staying in the barnyard pasture and not in the middle to give the middle yard a good week or so to grow back! I so love to see the beautiful green grass instead of dead brown parched earth. We are slated for a few more days here and there of late afternoon thunderstorms with this heat and we will welcome them all! This storm saved the farm for sure, but we’re not out of the woods yet. We will need a little more in the coming week or it will just get burned out again! Here’s hoping!!!
Pin It
We knew the heat was coming. Over 10 days of high extreme temperatures. So I asked the girls if they would chip in and we would work like mules for the last cool day, Tuesday. We just had a bunch of things to get done and of course, they said yes. We knew that we had to get the majority of the projects done because 105 degree temperatures just do not work well with us.
The picture above is of Nickel, one of our new roos. You can see just how burned out the grass looks… he is walking around in our middle yard, which is pretty much our back yard. It’s all burned out and just looks awful. I gave up watering a week ago. It’s a lost cause. Been trying to move the hoof stock around some but we just didn’t have the proper fencing to do the job well.
First order of business was to clean out the big barn well. Our plan was to move the turkeys out there, in a new pen that would be bigger and out in the sunshine and air more than our brooders. They are ready for it. The three heritage birds are 8 weeks old and the younger poults are 4 weeks old. They are still too young to be totally outside, but they were growing so fast, they were filling up the brooder!
Since the poultry barn coop had totally worn down all the grass and vegetation in their yard, we dumped all the compost and straw in there for them to play with. Chickens love to scratch, so throwing a couple wheelbarrow loads in their yards gives them days of entertainment and they really distribute the material around. Argent, the roo, seems very happy about the delivery for his ladies.
The garden coop in the morning light just seems like it’s been there forever! So glad it’s working out nicely. Maggie is working on a cool ramp for them, since they are not the most agile of birds!
We had managed to save up a little bit of cash to get 100 feet of fencing. And today I was planning on creating a real barnyard enclosure, a mini pasture of sorts right around the big barn and the little coop. Perfect to get the hoof stock off the middle so that if we got some rain it might actually grow up a bit. So we set that up today, ultimately stringing up 150 of good strong fence. We still have about 500 feet left to go. We’re trying to get it done as quickly as we can, but fencing is expensive and this is our slow time of the year. So we just keep at it.
With the buildings and some existing fencing, this day’s activity opened up an area about 150 by 100 for everyone. It’s a little greener, still dying, but longer and hopefully will give them something to chew on for awhile. We need rain so badly. Just can’t imagine it was only June… What will July and August bring?
Once we let everyone out, they were so happy and we didn’t hear a single baaa or whiney all afternoon. They were all fat bellied and lounging in the afternoon sun in no time. I am hoping that they clean up the weeds that are popping up all over and I suspect they will after they nosh down some of the last grass.
The turkeys seem happy with our little turkey pen. They are in the big barn with the pigs. It’s hard to show exactly, but if you were take a big rectangle and cut it in half, that is the pig pen area. And then take the other half and cut it in half and that is this turkey pen here. So far so good, only one escape attempt when Cody Pony pushed on the fence panel and bent it. Needless to say, he has been evicted from the barn area and a gate was installed at the feed room door. He is like the reincarnation of some master mind criminal. He’s very smart and very clever.
This picture sort of helps to explain it. The pen to the right of the pigs is the turkey’s little chamber. The pigs area is 14 by 18 and they seem to enjoy the space pretty much. They can rip around and get a good amount of speed and they have an area for their potty and a mud hole by the waterer and a place where they like to sleep back in the corner. Soon we will be making them an outside yard as well, but that will need a little more help since we are going to dig a ditch and fill it with concrete rubble and then fence it, so they won’t root under the fencing. My mantra for this year is NO MORE ESCAPEES…. I do declare… I think that livestock LIVES to try and make a fool of you and your containment efforts. They are constantly considering this plan or that plan as they sit and contented chew away at their fodder. I guess, what else do they have to think about? How cute the ram is? Whether they like the color we painted the fence? What’s for dinner? Haha… nope, it’s hey, how can I get over there and eat that grass. Pretty much that is the whole reason for the old “grass is greener on the other side” cliche. Invented by sheep and goats and ponies.
This shot is from the feed room doorway. Looking into the turkey pen and over back into the pigs pen. We love cattle panels…. they are delightful! I would like about 25 of them to just sort of magically appear in our yard. That would be wonderful!!!! They are just so, so, tough and nice and uniform.
We call this area in the big barn, the feed room, but really, it rarely has much more than a couple pails of hay and chicken feed in the winter. We have converted it more into the free range flock’s roosting place at night. It’s hard to see but we moved their ladder to the left of the room and there are some low old shelves on the right of the room that they like to sit on. They are up high and they like that. Seems to work out nicely. In the pig area is the big side doors and we can pull those tight and snug at night and then locked up this big heavy door to the right of the picture and secure everyone up tight.
We took the time to get all the junk out and organize all the tools. And just did a major tidy up. Put down a little more sawdust. This area has a concrete floor, but with a little bit of shavings down, it makes it MUCH easier to clean up the chicken poop from roosting. And it just keeps the place a little more tidy. I would like to paint the walls at some point, but that will probably wait until it cools down some. And of course, when we get the 2,786 other higher priority chores done. Maybe 2018. Maybe.
Remember the little wheeled coop that Jr. made for us last year? The one that we have used here and there as a temporary coop or a holding pen for meat birds, that sort of thing? Well, with the addition of Sheldon, our new barred rock boy that came back from his urban placement, we really needed another little flock/coop. And I got to thinking, this would be a perfect roosting spot for him and perhaps his brother Martin and a passel of hens. (To be acquired…) But again, we needed to make it safer. So, we had a couple pieces of scrounged plywood and we nailed them to the bottom. We raised it up with some pallets from our pallet fence, which we dismantled in anticipation of our more permanent pasture fencing, hopefully to come. And then we moved it to the sheltering side of Gideon’s sheep shack. So it will get protecting from driving rain and hot sun.
I managed to score 30 feet of chain link fence for $15 on Craig’s List. Yeah! That’s a deal. Tough sturdy fencing! We will be pounding in a few posts and setting up a nice little yard for them under the big locust trees. Nice and shady and full of a half year’s barn compost! They will have a good time digging and scratching and turning that over for us.
Imagine that you have a little gate from the left corner of the little roost shack, and then fencing going out and down almost to the corner of the sheep barn. And then over to the pallet fence that is buried in the tree. There is about ten feet of fence at the end of the area, so ultimately the yard will be about 10 feet wide at the end and then about 15-20 feet up by the coop, and then 30 feet long. I think a perfect enclosure for a pair of roosters and maybe 8 to 10 hens. We are going to also reinforce the coop a bit more, add more protecting sides to it and a stronger roof before winter. So far, Sheldon approves.
Now, some day, we’ll have this super pretty, nicely fenced, totally functioning farm. With lovely water troughs all over and good solid tube gates and beautiful stalls and feeders. And swings and sitting places and lots of flowers and lilac bushes and all that. But the reality it, we’re not made of money and we have to make due and be creative at times while we work on the ultimate vision of the farm. So when we can be resourceful and save a little coin, it’s a good thing. Like take this extra waterer. Yep, it’s a cooler that we found on trash day! It was in perfect shape, just had the lip snap off. A little scrubbing and it was a perfect water trough for the sheep in the barn yard. They have a lovely big trough up near the house, and water buckets in the barns, but I wanted to have something in the back for them so they wouldn’t have to walk so far to get to water in the heat. It’s the perfect height for my little Shetland sheep and Cody has no problems slobbering in it. The chickens like it as well. It will do until we can get a nice big one for back there. Gives us a little time to find a used one or a good deal at a garage sale or farm auction.
We have bigger plans for all sorts of things, but it just will take time. We aren’t able to just use a bunch of credit and go nuts to make this a Bob Evans farm, so it’s clawing and creeping along, trying to upgrade as we can and make things workable, then tolerable, then nicer and then awesome! And it makes every project finished, seem so much more rewarding.
Thankfully, we got a ton done and nearly everything on the list. I would have liked to get Sheldon’s yard done, but the ground is SO hard from 5 weeks of no rain, and it was getting to 7:30 and we were tired and hungry and just ready to stop. We’ve been trying to do little things in the morning before the heat gets really bad, so that will happen soon. Probably even tomorrow. In the meanwhile, we just keep at it. And enjoy every minute of it!!!!
Pin It