I came home to an empty chicken feeder at the front door and a note from my roommate that said, “I found this in the back yard, see email for details/picture”.  Its kind of horrible, but I’m laughing my ass off…

Blanca with her head caught in the chicken feeder

It is halfway through January and already I can hear the songs of springtime at the farm.  Croaking tree frogs, hungry lambs, finches and robins calling to each other… Our winter was a little disappointing this year and I hope it doesn’t mean we’ll have swarms of bugs this summer.  I just hate bugs. 

My goats are NOT singing yet since they are too fat and lazy to even get up to eat at night.  They are very pregnant.  This month they can lounge and order “stall service”, next month will be a different story.  If I were a betting person I would wager 7 baby goats are on the way.  WAY more than I’d like, but less that are possible.  Poor Blanca is the biggest.  I’m not really sure what is inside that belly of hers.  Last year she had twins, but both died – one still born and Little Joe who was premature, but stuck it out for about a week.  She wasn’t ready to be a mama last year anyway.  But she was an excellent milker all season!  I’m hopeful she will have better luck with her kiddos this year, but they are only a means to an end.  I WANT THAT YUMMY SAANAN MILK!!!

It is the first year kidding for Coco and Crema.  Crema is probably *technically* too young, but I’ve been giving her loads of food to make sure she gains enough weight.  Coco is looking large.  She has always been my most healty doe – and the most beautiful.  Such a beauty.  I can’t wait to see what her kids look like.  The sire is a bit of a scrappy little grunt.  Hopefully her line is stonger.

And Carmen.  What can I say about my sweet Carmen that I haven’t said a hundred times before.  She is such a good girl.  Last season she had some problems with her delivery and raising her kids.  Blanca ended up nursing them for most of the season.  I didn’t intend to breed her this year, but nothing can stop horny goats from getting together… so here we are   I’ll talk to the vet this week about her symptoms and see if there isn’t something we can do to help her out.

Once we have all the funny babies delivered I’ll get some new chicks to play with as well.  I always think I have enough chickens, but I always want more in the spring.  This year I hope to find some interesting banty varieties.  They are little and make little eggs – like a quail egg (for the foodies out there) but a chicken.  The other chicken experiment this year will be to see if I can hatch any eggs myself.  Well not MYself, obviously… I’ve never had a rooster before so this year I should be able to let one of the girls go broody and see what that brings.  We’ll see what the girls think.

With new babies and spring planting come visits to the farm – my favorite   Let me know if you’d like to come meet any of the new additions.  Weekends only, please. 

Sadie

Hi everyone,

My blog has been broken for a little while now and just got around to fixing it this afternoon.  I kind of went backwards when I re-posted them so they are all a little out of order.  But I put some of my favorites at the beginning

Farmer Sadie

I bought goats for my farm because I thought they would be a great little group of employees. They could eat all the stuff that grew too big while I’m at work and in the process give me some good fertilizer for the nitrogen-baron fields. Except that the goats don’t really do that (turns out sheep would have been a better choice) and mine were almost completely un-tamed when I bought them. So Lola, Rico or Dulci have been on my farm in a fenced 2 acre field for almost four months and I haven’t been able to get within three feet of them the entire time.

Things are getting better though. They are talking to me when they are hungry and for the most part will let me be in the stall with them at breakfast. The smart kid at the Yamhill County Fair told me what I needed to do to get them back into shape – physically and attitudinally. It involves restricting their freedom and food availability. The trick is making sure they know you are the “boss of them”.. according to a 9-yr-old’s 4H exhibit. Okay, not exactly my style, but the blackberries are growing quickly and I’m feeling like a reject ’cause my goats are the only ones in the entire universe that aren’t friendly.

The other day my goaties were giving me some sass so I threw a few apples into their area. They started gnawing on the golf-ball sized drops but couldn’t bite into them. I cut some up and threw them in, too. For being as flighty as they are, Lola didn’t even flinch when I accidentally clocked her in the head with one the pieces. I gave them some alfafa cubes and blackberry vines that night to see what they liked. Those little piggies ate everything I threw in there! I am quietly hopeful that after it cools down a bit more I can get them locked up in the stall for a couple of weeks and finish the job. The journey of a thousand days…

originally posted 08/23/05

Lately I find myself and my guests saying things I never would have thought would come out of our mouths. Here are a few that came up this week:

• “There is no fence that can contain a horney goat.”
• “Ever since I hit that waterer with the truck, its been nothing but trouble.”
• “Well at least there isn’t a cow on my front porch”
• “Idle hooves are the devil’s playground.”
• “I think soap-making has made me hungry”
• “Arghh!! Fu*k it. Fu*k it, and fu*k you” (said mid-project all around the farm)
• “I realized very early on, this farm is no place for dainty women”
• “I’m just glad the goat didn’t die.”
• “Man… I look GOOD when I’m clean!”
• “I wonder how long that chicken was *in* there?!”
• “Carmen honey please, you’re standing on the chicken.”
• “The irrigation system is fine. Its the gravity that’s the problem.”
• “I didn’t mean to tackle your dog like that. She was just stressin’ me out.”
• “Listen you useless meat sack. I AM triming your hooves.”
• “We’re practicing planned parenthood here. If I’m not breeding, no one is.”

We just crack ourselves up! I’ll keep a running log…

My new favorite place is the Wilco Feed Store in McMinnville. Besides being ENORMOUS and full of tools I need, the people there make me silly happy. Lately, I’ve been dropping in there a lot. I pull up in my big pick up, park sideways across two spaces (no power steering) and wander in to buy the one part or piece that will help me finish my project.

This weekend I came in wearing my dirty jeans half soaked from the leaky spigot project (turns out that replacing a shut off valve on a pipe while the water is running… not the best idea). The old woman flower-waterer gave me the MOST disapproving look when I walked past her. I actually laughed a little on my way by. All the while I walked to the back of the store for the 1/2 inch – not 3/4 inch – fitting, and all the way back to the register I watched the other shoppers, who were all trying not to look at me.

What I love about the feed store clients is we all have a common look to us. We all come in there between noon and four – when its too hot to do anymore fieldwork – with our clothes and faces covered with dust. Usually you can see streaks on the face where sweat has been wiped off, and handprints on the jeans where the sweaty hands were dried. One guys I saw had so much dust in his hair it stood straight up and looked like a powdered wig. My favorite guy wore his hat in the field, but took it off to come inside. He had a pronounced dirt line halfway up his forehead and spotlessly clean glasses.

I am approximately 40 years younger than these guys and a woman, but those are pretty much the only differences between me and the other customers. The expression on all our faces is a cross between exhaustion, pain and sleeplessness. We nod in a neighborly fashion as we pass in the aisles. Periodically we engage each other idle conversation or exchange ideas for irrigation or tool selection. When I tell them how my pants got wet they laugh a little and shake their heads. Like zombies we stand in line and sound like dumb hicks at the checkstand asking about the price of chicken feed and t-posts. My people.

Originally posted 09/06/05

My family would never describe itself as white trash. Nor would most white trash people describe them that way, but there are definite – shall we say – habits the Wilsons and Danforths have that put us in a questionable light.

• We eat brie, but we eat it with our hands. In fact most food eating is done with our hands if given the choice. When I was younger I prided myself on being refined and growing beyond this habit, but since moving out to the farm all of the “refined” has fallen to the wayside. I was recently half way through the second course at a very nice restaurant when my sister had to remind me to pick up a fork.
• Pick-ups are for using, not for showing. I don’t think I have voluntarily washed my truck in over four years. At some point the windows get too dirty to see through and the gas station bug-juice wash just doesn’t cut it any more and I have to get real with the hose and sponge. That happens about once a year.
• Laundry and dishes should be cleaned for company, but not for family. Okay, so undies and socks get washed regularly, but things like shirts and jeans can really go for much longer than most people think. The jeans I’m wearing right now, for instance, were washed about a week ago and after I scrubbed the ckicken poop off the right thigh this morning, they were as good as new.

I clean up pretty good, but I have to admit, the moments I enjoy the most are driving in my ‘67 Ford truck down a dirt road while eating Cheetos and smoking a GPC Light, or cracking open a cold beer before (and after) mowing my three-week tall dandilion lawn… barefoot. Hell Yeah!

Originally posted 08/26/05

I never thought I would have so much fun raising chickens. When I picked up my little chicklets on April 1st the entire dozen fit in a small cardboard box. Today, four months later, they are practically full grown hens and I couldn’t fit them in a box if my life depended on it.

The three golden pullets are nearly identical, *I* can’t tell them apart anyway. They are all named “HennyPenny”, aka. “The HPs”. There is one Barred Rock I’ve been calling “Dot” cause she’s so all-American, and the four Auracanas are names “Six through Nine”. That is the order in which they enter and exit the hen house. Interesting enough, that is also the order of their coloring, light to dark. Together they are my little Tean Girl Squad.

There is a lot of chitter chatter with my Girls. Every morning starts with a, “Ooo.. now are you going to give us some of that yummy chickie scratch? How about some grapes? Is that a bug, I just love eating bugs. I left you a pretty little egg in the box so you had better give me a nice treat. Did you see what Six did a second ago? She is so bossy…”

This morning Dot left me her second egg ever. It is small and freckled – just like her. It is also much lighter in color than the others. She is still working out the kinks of new motherhood… it had two yolks and the shell looks like old person skin; all wrinkled up around the top and bottom. She’ll figure it out in time, I have no doubt.

Originally posted 8/26/05

The farm has taught me that no matter how much I want to do or get something, there is a 90% chance I won’t get it. For instance, a few sunny days in a row would be wonderful so I can mow the lawn and dry out the basement. Every morning I wake up, check the weather, cross my fingers, do a sun dance, say outloud three times “I AM SOLAR POWERED” and still… rain.

This is a good lesson for anyone; the art of rolling with the punches. It brings creative thinking, patience and a kind of zen few people have. In the past two months I have had a leaky roof, flooded basement, wormy cats, a dead goat, broken cars, over-budget projects, weeks of overtime at work and countless other small disapointments. Solutions to all problems were found, alternate plans have been made. But it does wear on the soul a little tiny bit.

The hardest part for me is when something looks like it will be what you want, but turns out to be something entirely different. Whether it be a job, a lover or a bright ray of sunshine peeking out from behind a gray rain cloud. That ride of indifference to hope to disappointment is the most challenging part in this place so far. A few people I know have decided to cut the “hope” part out so they never feel the “disappointment” part. It makes much more sense to me now than it ever did. But how does one keep from being stuck in the numbness of indifference for too long?

So.. about coyotes. When I moved out here I assumed there would be many wild and dangerous creatures around. Up until a couple of weeks ago, I hadn’t seen anything but a rather large White Owl and a few Red-Tailed Hawks. My neighbors Ahti and Lena told me there were a pack of coyotes (pronounced KY-otes) in their back yard all the time. That isn’t especially surprising since they live on 300 acres of un-fenced flat land just at the base of some of some large, treed hills. Since I hadn’t truthfully heard an alive coyote in my life I asked if the dog noises I somtimes hear might be coyotes. They laughed and said, “Dont worry, you’ll know them when you hear them.”

The very next evening the fire alarm in town went of around 3am (its the kind of town where a siren goes off at the station, the volunteer firefighters drive into town, then go to the fire). Apparently, the coyotes took the sound of the siren as an invitation to sing-along. There were at least 10 of them and it sounded like they were right outside my open bedroom window. They howled, yipped, barked and growled at each other for about 2 minutes. In that short timeframe here’s what I did:

• awoke and bolted up in bed so fast I got a little dizzy
• thought, “where are my cats? did I lock the chicken’s door? do coyotes eat goats?”
• realized the side gate was WIDE open from mowing the lawn that day
• criticised myself for not having bought a shotgun yet
• pondered how well that one yelping sound can freak the crap out of a sleeping person
• committed to improving my animal security (and buying that shotgun)

I sat there half-asleep in bed for 5 minutes or so before I heard the new kittens under my window make a kind of growling noise. It was their first night out after having been locked in the basement for a week (post-spaying) and I still sleepy and had decided they were being eaten by the noisy predators. So I jumped out of bed like it was covered in thorns and ventured outside with the conviction of a woman who just spent $150 on vet bills.

If there were any coyotes out there, I’m sure they were struck dumb by the sight of this crazy woman in her tank top (no undies) wandering around in the middle of the night with a flickering flashlight in one hand and baseball bat in the other muttering, “I hope I don’t get eaten by wild dogs, I hope I don’t get eaten by wild dogs…” The gate closed with much difficulty, and the kittens scurried back to the basement with some encouragement. Needless to say, I didn’t get much more sleep that evening.

I haven’t heard them since, but I find it a little un-nerving knowing they are out there. At the same time, it is humbling knowing there is a creature so closely among us who, when given the chance, could take me down without even breaking a sweat. So the cats begrudgingly sleep inside now and the goats and chickens are penned up nightly. Art Farmer – 1; Pack of Wild Dogs – 0

Originally posted 09/15/05