Since I can’t post about my farm critters when I’m gone, I figured I’d post about other interesting ones that I find.

Although we saw a number of cows, goats and sheep today on our drive, we stopped at a place that had a small farm behind the store. We got there as the sun was getting low on what had been a very grey and rainy day. There were noisy Guinea Hens yelling at me to leave, and there were a surprising number of lovely roosters and very few hens. It’s possible that the ladies had already gone to bed for the night, as my experience has proved that the hens go to bed before the roosters. The roosters flew up into the trees to roost for the night. Around back we came across a paint horse and two donkeys, who were all desperate for our affections as I’m guessing this time of year there’s not a while lot of traffic through this store (it was pretty much in the middle of nowhere).

I can’t wait to see what I come across tomorrow.

We’ve had quite a bit of gloomy, steel gray skies around here the past few days, which aren’t very good for farm photos. It’s also been very warm for this time of year, so the animals have at least been enjoying that. Despite the warm weather, the goats are getting their thicker winter coats and are feeling very soft these days.

And one of the chicks that I had ordered this summer was a barred rock rooster. I ordered him because after seeing them again at the agricultural fair this summer I just couldn’t resist. They are so beautiful. This was one of the roosters at the fair.



Since there was one chick that was dead on arrival of the package, I’d never been certain if that might have been my rooster or not. But sure enough, the other day when I was out at the farm I noticed that one of my barred rock chickens was getting the distinct longer tail feathers, his comb was bigger than the other barred rock’s of the same age, and the neck feathers were becoming longer. I think it’s going to be my rooster! I’ll keep you posted as he develops.



In the meantime, my other rooster is looking more rooster-like every day.


And finally, I’ll show you photos of two of my hens. I have so many beautiful chickens, but when you carefully look at their feathers, it is really just astounding how beautiful their feathers are. Nature is so amazing.

Next Saturday morning at the crack of dawn my sister and I leave for our yearly Sisterly Road Trip. I am beyond excited for this trip.  We started the tradition two years ago with The Crafty Farm Sisters Great Plains Road Trip driving my vintage travel trailer from Wyoming to Connecticut. Last year we journeyed to North Carolina to attend The John C. Campbell Folk Art School; I took a class on spinning (wool, not bicycles), and she took a class on turning wood bowls on a lathe. This year we decided on another road trip. We fly in to Austin, Texas, and will be renting a minivan and driving home from there via Atlanta. You can ready more about the upcoming trip in an earlier post by clicking here.


We didn’t go to the John C. Campbell Folk Art School until February though. Right around this time last year my sister and I attended the 3rd annual Young Farmers Conference at The Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculturein Pocantico Hills, NY. Stone Barns is also home to the very well known restaurant Blue Hill at Stone Barns owned by Dan Barber, a leader in the sustainable and humane farming movement.

Because of our Southern Road Trip this year we won’t be able to the 4th annual conference, Reviving the Culture of Agriculture,  held December 1 and 2, but I wanted to let you know about it in case you wanted to get on the waiting list (unfortunately it is sold out already), or to put it on your calendar for next year.

It was an amazing event. I have attended all kinds of seminars, classes and lectures over the years on all sorts of subjects. This seminar, by far, was the most interesting one I have attended. Maybe that’s just because it’s a subject I’m so interested in, or maybe it’s because it was really good. The speakers were invigorating, the classes were informative, the setting (an old Rockefeller estate turned farm education center) is beautiful, and the people were so friendly. It’s attended by not just people from all over the United States, but by people from all over the world. I did find the seminar a little heavier on the gardening side of farming rather than the livestock side, but I’m hoping that will change over the years. Dan Barber gave the opening remarks, Bill and Nicolette Niman of Niman Ranch were keynote speakers after lunch the first day. I had already read their  book, but their speech was absolutely fascinating. Other keynote speakers included Wes Jackson, President of The Land Institute and more.

You can find out more about the conference or about Stone Barns by checking the link above. If farming is something you’re thinking about doing, or are doing already, you might want to add this seminar to your calendar. Because they are trying to reach the people struggling to bring small farms back to this country, they keep the cost of the conference very low, which is great.

However, there are all kinds of conferences and classes available to people looking to learn more about farming or the sustainable/humane food movement. A quick search on the internet yields many choices. I’ve listed some good ones below:

The Northeast Organic Farming Association offers all kinds of classes and conferences, including  ‘The Modern Homestead’, workshops in farm design, organic poultry workshops, the MOFGA’s Farmer to Farmer Conference and so much more. A wealth of farming information is on this site..

The Midwest Organic & Sustainable Education Service (MOSES) hosts an Organic University and has all sorts of useful information.

Farm to School offers information and classes on people wanting to learn more about the farm to school programs and the farm to table movement.

In Washington State they host the Harvesting Opportunity conference as well as providing all sorts of useful agricultural and farming information.

But if traveling isn’t your thing, you can even take farming, agricultural courses or animal-specific courses online.

 

I haven’t posted much on the farm lately because frankly, it’s a pretty quiet time of year. Two weeks ago the kids and I spent a few hours cleaning the penned area up for the upcoming winter. There were still lots of wood post remnants from the fence construction laying around. Of course my wheelbarrow decided that was the perfect time to get a flat tire.


And I cleaned out the small old coop now that I’ve got everybody transitioned over to the new coop. There are still 3 hens that go to sleep every night on the old coop’s porch, but they don’t protest when I scoop them up and put them in the new coop every night at lockup time. And there are 4 idiot chickens that spend the night out every night. For the life of me I cannot figure out where they are hiding, but every morning they’re out there blowing me a raspberry for fooling me again. One night they’ll be sorry when old Mr. Foxy comes calling.


And I raked the whole yard up and filled in some holes from chicken dust baths that were really turning into craters. Of course no sooner had I done that than a chicken comes over to dig it right back up.


The yard looks so much better now though. I wish I’d done that about 2 months ago.


And this chicken is too lazy to fly over the fence to free-range. He’s free-ranging the lazy way.


I got a nice shot of my eggs the other day. I want to do a linoleum print of them in their cartons.


And I just found out today that Kiki and Grace get to be on stage! My friend Cristy asked if they could be a part of her church’s nativity pageant in a few weeks. Unfortunately we will already be in Wyoming, but Cyrena volunteered to bring them to and play shepherd for the play! She’ll send me photos so I can post them from Wyoming. I always knew they were stars. Grace certainly acts like one.

I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time, and now that I’ve got the chickens all sleeping in one coop I finally got my chance.

Below is a video of the morning farm feeding routine. Now there’s a lot of subtle things going on here that you need to look out for. First, there are 3 adolescent chickens that spent the night outside so they’re running around before I even open up the chicken door. I don’t know where they were hiding, but I’m sure glad Mr. Fox didn’t get them. Second, when I open up the door to the chicken coop the same chicken is always the first one out. When I open up the door to Melina and Princess Kate’s stall, Melina comes right out to eat. So do two of the three chickens that insist on sleeping in the goat house every night (one is broody so she stays on her eggs). Princess Kate, who is a Tennessee Fainting goat, sometimes gets so excited at mealtime that she has a fainting spell. This faint seemed to be particularly long though and Melina moves from her bowl over to Kate’s before Kate can even come out. Then you’ll see the goats all wandering back and forth eating from each other’s bowls, and then finally you’ll see Kiki squeeze into the chicken door to go and have a quick bite of chicken food.

It is becoming more clear every day that this chicken, below, is not a hen but a rooster. No crowing yet though. He’s becoming quite handsome. If I could just get a rooster that didn’t crow and was nice, I’d be so happy!

Today was a big day on the farm. Not only was the weather spectacular (reaching almost 70 degrees), but the truck showed up with a new shipment of farm food. That always gets everyone excited!

But the really big news was that I merged the tribes, which is what I like to say when I merge two coops together.

My beautiful new coop was way underpopulated. At night I only had about 20 or so chickens in there. There are the 3 crazy chickens that sleep in the goat house, but they don’t seem like they’ll be changing that anytime soon.

Yet my old coop, which was only meant to be used as a brooder coop for when they were small, was housing over 30 almost-full-grown chickens every night. They all managed to fit somehow, but it was pretty tight.

Now chickens don’t like change. It takes days for them to adjust to a new coop. I’ve gone through this so many times I knew what to expect. Before I went out for afternoon activities with the kids I locked the chicken door in the old coop, blacking their access. I also hung a heat lamp (although any light would have done the job), in the new coop. I was hoping this ‘beacon of light’ would guide the young knuckleheads into the new coop as it started to get dark. No such luck.

Sure enough, when I got home and the sun was starting to get lower in the sky, all the adolescents were huddled outside the door and on the porch of the coop wondering why they couldn’t get inside. India, Evan and I spent the next 20 minutes chasing confused chicken around, picking them up one by one, and stuffing them though the chicken door. They seemed to be perfectly happy once I popped them into the new coop though.

Only two stragglers remained un-catchable. Here they are out in the dark (I used a flash).

I finally ended up letting them into the old coop for the night as I gave up trying to catch them after about 10:30 tonight.

Once everyone seemed settled in to the new digs, I turned the bright light off but put a night light in there so the newcomers could find their way around if necessary. Yes, I really did put a nightlight in my coop.

The animals are thrilled that all of the snow is all melted from our freak October snowstorm. I was disappointed though because I was scheduled to go farm hunting up in Litchfield County today with the kids but it got postponed because most of those poor people still do not have power from last Saturday’s storm. The power companies have promised to have most people restored by Sunday! We will reschedule and do it next Saturday or Sunday.

I was outside the other day and caught Grace in such a strange position that I decided she was giving ballet lessons to Kiki.

And that’s the way it is today here in my strange little world.

Today I was heading out to the grocery store, but stopped to collect eggs from the farm before I left. I have a large galvanized pail in the yard outside of the fenced area that serves as a general water bucket for free-ranging chickens and my dog. As I was heading back to the house I noticed my dog looking into the pail. I looked in a saw a chipmunk, barely alive, and paddling slightly underwater with one foot. I quickly grabbed a piece of wood nearby and fished him out of the water.

It was quite cold out last night and it was a chilly day, so besides almost drowning, this little guy had to be suffering from hypothermia. I carefully put him up on my gas grill that was right there, and ran into the house to get a towel. I wrapped him up in the towel and quickly brought him inside.


He was barely alive. In fact, I thought he’d actually died while I was holding him and had to give him a little poke to see if he moved. He did. Barely. I carefully rubbed him a little dry with the towel, but quickly carried him up to my bathroom where I put my hairdryer on the low/warm setting and set about drying him off and warming him up. As I was blow drying him, I was also carefully rubbing him dry with a soft washcloth to aid in drying and to get his circulation going again.



When I got one side pretty dry, I carefully rolled him over and dried the other side as best I could.



When he was pretty dry all over, I wrapped him back up, grabbed my heating pad from the linen closet, and carried him downstairs. Bullet, who personally felt responsible for helping aid his rescue, was waiting to greet him.


I turned the heating pad on low and grabbed an empty box from the garage and cut a few small air holes into the top. I set the heating pad in the bottom of the box and covered it with a washcloth. I lay the chipmunk in the box, taped it securely shut, and set him in my bathroom where I shut the door. In case he gnawed his way out while I was at the grocery, I didn’t want him tearing up the house.


I finally headed out to the grocery store, and anxiously returned to check on my patient about 45 minutes later. Hoping for the best, I took the box out into the driveway before I opened it.


Before I’d even opened the box completely, the chipmunk jumped out and scurried off. He ran so fast that this is the only photo I could get as he departed.


But if I zoom in on the photo, you can see he’s alive, and looking like he had a good blow dry!


You know how you always see drowning victims throwing up after they’ve been saved? Well, when I was carrying the box back in the house, I looked inside and there, in the corner, was a little pile of cracked corn. Cracked corn is part of the scratch grains that I give to the chickens every day, and our yard has become a favorite foraging ground for every chipmunk around. Since I hadn’t left any food in the box for him, he’d obviously thrown up the cracked corn that he’d eaten that morning.


So, I feel as if I’ve done my good deed for the day. Maybe for the week. And that chipmunk has a crazy story to tell to his friends around the woodpile tonight.