Pretending to Farm

Observations from a Farm

Pretend or Otherwise…

Three dozen eggs per day for a family of five are slightly excessive.  I truly should check our cholesterol level and that of our neighbors since we have become aggressive egg pushers.

Also, after becoming a family of egg pushers, it is best to send your children to do your trafficking.  Adorable looks and youth go a long way when raising someone’s risk of heart attack and stroke.

Roosters crow all damned day long, not just in the morning like that pretender “Chanticleer.”  Also, if you turn on a porch light at, say, 3 am, they crow then as well.  Our neighbors cannot be happy with us.

When a chicken catches a moth or other bug, he or she is so proud of his or her rare accomplishment that said chicken runs cockily (no coincidence in that gem of vocabulary) around the coop until another hen or rooster steals it away.  The moral of this story is: Don’t savor your insects until they’re swallowed.

Upon the purchase of turkey poults (baby chickens are chicks but young turkeys are poults), each person you know will ask if you are going to eat them.  “Only if we don’t like them,”  I answer.  “What else would you do with them?” they ask.  Should I ask if they plan on eating their dogs?

Little Bo Peep was damned irresponsible.  Sheep really do wag their tails and are quite visible. 

Two shakes of a lamb’s tail is a very inaccurate measure of time.

When you name a goat Bill Withers, “Ain’t No Sunshine When She’s Gone” will get in your head more than you would like, great song or no.  Now, with the addition of “Lucky,” the alpaca, enter “Twinkle, twinkle lucky star.”  Thank you, Merle.

Ruminant poo is plentiful, smaller than jelly beans, and impossible to pick up.  It needs to be scooped daily.  This, however, does not mean I do this.

A tractor is an indispensable piece of farm equipment.  I sure wish we had one.

Alpacas represent a cruel contradiction of life.  They are adorable, furry, and teddy bear-like.   You want to hug and love them all the time.  They, however, do not like to be touched.

And finally…

When you continuously attempt to get love from and give love to your alpacas, get little purchase, and watch one of your alpacas bring up spit in preparation for a goo-filled strike, it is time to leave the ruminant pen. Don’t ask me how I know.

The Alpacas are Here!

The trailer backed carefully into the driveway, two heads warily peeking out, wondering where life had taken them now.  Dana crawled in with them, attached the rope to their halters, and led them carefully into the yard.  What a thrill!  They are beautiful, far surpassing their photos.  Their rakish hairdos frame large soulful eyes that watch every movement, catch every nuance.  As they look at you, they hum quiet tunes of apprehension. What has brought us to this strange land of dirt and cactus, goats, sheep, and more chickens than any one family should own? To add to the confusion, the hounds bellow from the small yard, isolated to avoid physical contact, but the sound fills their ears and you can see the anxiety build.  The humming crescendos until it is a constant chorus.  It’s lovely.

                                       

The ruminants (or remnants as my friend Karen likes to call them) come to greet them, but Charlotte freaks out, runs wildly away , jumping and clicking her heels. Bill Withers, on the other hand, walks proudly up and becomes  goat ambassador.  Here’s where we eat, here is our water, don’t even think about touching my cob with molasses.  He inserts a head butt for good measure and the relationship is settled.  Elora Dannon and Pearl follow his lead and all is good in goat land.  The sheep, however, have yet to declare detente.

Early morning has come and I cannot sleep for wondering how the boys are doing.  I stumble out of bed and slog through the yard to see them lying together, seemingly comfortable and as well-adjusted as one could expect.  They perk up at my presence and the humming returns.  The ruminants, knowing this is meal time, run to the gate, and as I open it, Tumalo and Lucky (as we have renamed him) follow their lead and come into the big yard.  Charlotte runs ahead, seemingly relieved to be out of close quarters with the aliens, but the rest stick together, following the path to breakfast.  We pull the hay cart up to the feed shed and fill it with alfalfa and hay.  (By the way, it would help tremendously if alpaca and alfalfa weren’t such similar words.  I will be forever calling the boys alfalfas and giving the ruminants alpaca to eat.)  We fill the manger and all share their meal as if it is something they have done every day of their lives.

All is well with the world and I am filled with awe of these beautiful creatures. 

The House Chicken...

...Or Why Everyone Should Have Pet Poultry with Whom to Watch Television.

Flopsy, a Buff Minorca hen, would growl at us every time we would gather her eggs.  David (husband) felt sorry for her; said we should let her obey her instincts and become chicken mom.  Did he listen to me when I suggested we at least wait until the weather was warmer?  No, of course not.  So Flopsy sat on her eggs while we catered to her every whim with extra scratch, her own personal water dish, and a custom laying cage built around her to keep the other hens out and protect the chicks to come.  Now, the gestation period for chicks is 21 days, and around day 18, Flopsy was darned sick of sitting on those eggs in her cage, custom or not.  Did I mention it was the middle of winter?  Despite her incomplete instincts and frigid(for Scottsdale) temperatures, two out of ten eggs hatched.  One chick died immediately but another, who we named Strawberry due to the strange anomaly on her back, was peeping away and safely, we thought, tucked deep in her mother’s warm wing.  However, the next morning when we checked on her, she was cast off to the other side of the cage, cold, and near death.  In response, I did the only thing any self-respecting surrogate chicken mom would do and stuck her in between my breasts to warm and revive her.  She came to life, she peeped sweet nothings to me, proclaiming (more anthropomorphism) her undying devotion to me, her savior.  I gave her sugar water, chick starter mash, and boobs.  But by mid-afternoon her peeping slowed, and by eight that evening, she went the way of her sibling and died in my bra.  I cried and cried.  The twins, David and Robert, cried with me, while David, Sr. looked on with a sympathetic lump in his throat and maybe a little guilt.  It was awful.

The next day, still sad from the loss of Strawberry, I sat down at the computer, brought up the Murray McMurray Hatchery website and ordered 25 (minimum order) new chicks,  Cochins with feathers covering their feet, Polish with feathers sprouting wildly from their heads, Phoenix, guaranteed to grow six foot tail feathers.  They were beautiful, and entirely impractical.  I loved them! 

Five weeks later, tragedy struck again in chicken world.  We found a Golden Lace Polish dead in the brooding coop, blood oozing from its tail.  We thought perhaps she had a strange disease but that evening we found the other polish near death, with chicks viciously pecking at its wounds.  Cannibals!  They had fallen prey to their baser instincts and become cannibals!  Apparently, some chickens do this, jealous chickens, I think.  The golden polish pullets were just too pretty and they couldn’t stand it so they had to eliminate them.  Mini-series have been made with lesser plots.  Once again, we geared up the chick rescue machine; though this time my breasts were off limits.  We brought her inside, dressed her wounds, made her a home in the cat carrier and she lived! 

Today, Medusa lives happily in young David’s room.  She peeps and chirps and flits around the Taj Mahal David, Sr. built for her.  I suggested we use the bamboo poles left over from last year’s garden to construct a simple cage but big strong and talented carpenter man would not have it.  Chicken wire stretches in between 2 x 3 boards, sawn in half and rebonded to stretch and hold the wire. A roost fills her sleeping quarters, and a gate with hinges and clasp lets her out for her daily sun and exercise.  But the best part about it is…

The casters to roll it into the living room so she can watch television with us at night!

It’s 8 pm, do you know where your house chicken is?

Introduction

Last December, my husband and I were in our bedroom speaking with our kids about one thing or another when I heard an unusual sound coming from the living room.  Upon investigation, I found our two Shetland sheep, Cookie and Charlotte, nibbling on the newly decorated Christmas tree.  A door was not shut properly and I suppose (excuse the anthropomorphism) that they were curious where it was their humans and dog friends disappeared to and, as part of their exploration, found some yummy greenery in the process.  I could try and pretend this is the oddest thing that has happened here at Rancho Laurena, our hobby/ pretend farm, but it is not.  With this writing, I shall attempt to chronicle our experiences and hopefully send some amusement your way in the process.

We moved here to the outskirts of Scottsdale, AZ, two years ago this Memorial Day Weekend, frazzled and dejected by rat race life in San Diego and desiring something more than living life by getting through each day.  Since I was a small child, I have wanted to live on a farm.  Somehow through teenage angst, college binge drinking, married life, and childbirth, farm life desire has remained, sometimes as the deep recesses of my subconscious, but it has stayed.

Here we are these two years later and life is good.  A roll call of our animals includes three Angora goats (for their mohair and love), two Shetland sheep (for their wool and love), 50 plus chickens and turkeys (for eggs and love), and the four dogs who were with us when we arrived (just love.)  Throw in four hamsters and a cat, oh, and the house chicken and I think that’s it.  Are we overwhelmed?  Sometimes.  Are we happy?  Fulfilled?  Unimaginably so.  Nothing puts a smile on my face like going into the “big yard” early mornings and letting the sheep and goats out of their pen, feeding them their hay as they jump up to tear it from my arms, then heading to the chicken coop to scratch them, gather eggs, and fill their water.  The turkeys are next.  Bourbon Reds, Narragansetts, Blue Slates, and Black Spanish, heritage breeds ordered from Murray McMurray Hatchery, and eight in all.  Currently, they are in the beyond cute stage.  They peep, peep, peep and run up to me for fresh food and water, and, yes, the love thing.  This is how I start my days and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

My goal is to write daily, after farm chores are complete and before the love buzz wears off.  I will endeavor to keep it up and keep it interesting. 

Here’s a start…

Guess what happens tomorrow?!  The alpacas are coming, the alpacas are coming!!!