Search Results for: fence

While I was away in Wyoming my friend Cyrena, who is my official farm-sitter when I can’t be there, was kind enough to bring Kiki and Grace to be in the nativity pageant at my friend Cristy’s congregation. Unfortunately the pictures and video from the actual pageant did not turn out well, but here’s one of Cyrena in her shepherd’s costume with the goats. Apparently Grace, normally wanting to be the center of attention, was a bit frozen with stage fright. And of course they pooped on stage too. We anticipated that though and they’d laid down plastic and hay just in case.


Two new colonies of bees have been ordered for Spring. One for my old hive, and one for the new hive I built with the viewing window in it last winter. I’m very excited to get that colony going!

Winter is a lazy time on the farm. All the animals are bored. The goats are getting fat. Our wether has been very erratic this winter so far, and we’ve had extreme temperature ranges. This seems to be making Princess Kate, my Tennessee Fainting Goat, particularly stiff-legged, and she’s walking around like one one of the Queen’s Guard’s in the Royal British Army.

The chickens fly out of the fenced area to free-range, but discover there’s not much out there to eat either this time of year. So I find myself going out several times a day to throw them some cut up apples or kale or scratch grains just to keep them well fed and give them something to do. I’ve been scouring the bargain rack in the produce department at the grocery to find past-prime bargain produce to give them for treats. The bananas are a particular favorite, and the goats adore pears.



One of my beautiful Buff Chantecler is molting and looks rather miserable right now.


And while Corn Flakes the rooster is getting more lovely by the day, what started as a small garbled crowing in the coop in the morning is slowly, day by day, developing into a full-blown crow. He’s not crowing often at this point, so for now he can stick around.



It was Christmas time last year that Melina and Cissy went away to be bred. While I thought about breeding Melina again, and possibly breeding Princess Kate to a more traditional dairy goat for a meat/dairy cross, I guess I still haven’t recovered from the loss at birth of my Cissy and the strain of bottle-feeding Kiki and Grace from birth. I still have time to breed them should I change my mind.

We had to stop and say hi to this buck. He was in a chain-link fenced-area in the middle of an industrial area. Why he was there and who owned him wasn't clear. He didn't have any friends, but as soon as we stpped him out of the car we could see why….he stunk to high heaven! Bucks (un-neutered male goats) have the most awful smell. But he was friendly and so excited to have visitors that we ended up feeding him half of the fresh pineapple we'd just bought. Taking photos through a chain-link fence was challenging as well. He had magnificent horns and a beautiful long beard. Unfortunately his hooves hadn't been trimmed in years though.


Texas was full of vultures; turkey and black, but we haven’t seen nearly as many as we’ve moved further north and east.


This adorable pack of dogs appeared to be running free and wild, and they were extremely skittish and camera-shy.


These happy dogs were playing out in a field with their Basset Hound friend. They were so cute!



Apparently cows don’t mind sharing their field with vultures.


We’ve seen a fair amount of snowy egrets and great blue herons, although so far the heron’s have avoided being photographed.


These adorable goats were clearly somebody’s pets. They looked more like African Pygmy than Nigerian Dwarf’s, but they were adorable.


We’ve seen a lot more horses since we left Texas, and the largest population to-date has been in Mississippi. Half the houses seem to have a horse or two in their front yard.


Driving through the flat farmland of Arkansas yesterday we saw tons of hawks. This guy was hunting for his lunch on a telephone pole roadside.

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.

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.

On Saturday Amanda, Evan and I drove up to the Lebanon County Fair after we went peach picking. I was hoping to find a few lovely chickens for sale, as there usually are some available at these things. Some of my favorite chickens have come from county fairs: Sadie, Lucy & Laura, my original buff orpington’s, and Mr. & Mrs. Pocket. However, we were very sad to discover that not a single chicken there had a for sale on it’s cage. There were some very nice looking chickens there though along with some other lovely creatures.

Anybody that’s known me for a while knows I have a love of camels. I met this one last year at another fair, and have made other camel friends in my journeys. There was my camel friend in Kentucky, and then there was my camel friend up in Maine last year. Just look at those lips! So kissable.


And those eyes!


Jim lives in fear that one day and there will be a camel in the back yard. He might put his foot down at that. They are terrible fence breakers, and I read last year that a woman was killed when her camel, who I guess loved his owner, suffocated her when he tried to ‘get fresh’ with her. Geesh. What a way to go.

Then there were these adorable baby goats. They were saanen nubian cashmere goats. Look at those spots! And wow, were they soft. If Amanda hadn’t been a little grumpy by this point one of them probably would have come home with me. Grace and Kiki would not have liked that.

Then we went on to the poultry house.

I have to say that after all of those chickens in cages, it was nice to come home and see my girls all happily roaming around.