Farm Tales

One of the many things I learned from my road trip earlier this year is that I need to have an intermediate step between suburbia and a huge ranch in Wyoming.  Along with the issue of finding a job in a state like Montana and Wyoming, there was the issue of experience living on a farm, the reality of being a long way from the people and friends I am close to and whom I rely on to help me when needed and finally, the realization that so much of what I am looking for is right where I already am.  That should help explain my decision to stay put for awhile despite my previous vocal determination to make a change, move to the wild west etc.  Thus the 3 acre mini-farm.  

Let's face it, although I'd like to think otherwise, I am more city slicker right now than farm hand!  Most of my life has been spent living in cities or just outside cities.  This was evident when my dad and I, flying by a farmstead on the way to my house a few weeks ago, oohed and aahed at all the white chickens in someone's pasture.  The next day, my mom, who DID grow up on a farm, sent me a snickering text to let me know those were not in fact chickens, but rather young turkeys.  Once I slowed down from 55mph (well over the speed limit), I saw that she was right!  I now call them the churkeys and harbor fantasies of reappropriating a few to my little homestead.  Looks like I have a lot to learn! 

My first frustration with the farm came when I tried to use this:

This is about what mine looked like.  I can't show you a picture of mine because I mowed my grass once with it and promptly sold it.  Not only did it take eons to mow my 3 acres with, it did not have a vacuum system so I had to spend another few eons to use the equally ancient sweeper to pick up all the grass.  I immediately got the sweeper stuck in a ditch, necessitating making my dad walk to the back 40 to push me out.  Once it was full, I could not back that thing up without jackknifing it to save my life.  I finally threw up my hands in defeat, leapt off the mower in frustration, spraining my ankle in a mole hole and told my dad I would trade tasks with him while cursing roundly.  Once he picked himself off the ground from his hysterical laughing fit, he kindly finished the job and I immediately started searching craigslist for a new mower with vacuum system installed.

Voila!

This one doesn't show the vacuum system but it's the new one.  Definitely inspires more confidence and takes about 1/3 of the time to mow now.  

Then it was on to the chicken coop.  With the purchase of a staple gun, my dad and I fixed up the coop and added some bird netting to keep the wild birds out, my contractor added what we fondly call the "French doors" to the shelter, I bought feed, pine shavings, straw and mealie worms and am anxiously awaiting my 5 girls which I am getting for free from a friend of a friend who has accumulated too many birds.  Hopefully Lola won't be having chicken dinners.  One of the most useful books I found in educating myself on the chickens is this Kindle download:

Laugh if you will but it was filled with basic, excellent, to-the-point info' on raising chickens.  I devoured it, if you will excuse the pun.  I am now onto Vegetable Gardens for Dummies.  My mom may have mentioned it's a shame they don't just have Farming for Dummies and I could cover it all in one.

All my yard projects are keeping me more than busy and one of the things I have learned with this whole undertaking is that the list never ends.  Each weekend, I make a doable list of projects, don't do them all in one day and when I'm done, I'm done.  Otherwise I would spend every waking moment enslaved to my house and land because the projects are endless.  I want to enjoy the process and the property, not feel guilty for every moment I'm not working at something.  I spend a lot of time just sitting on the deck or in the hammock, enjoying the dogs, the quiet, the space and the view.  It's been fabulous.

Sunset view of the mountains.

PB, exhausted after a long day of play.

That's also about what I look like after a weekend of work.  I have been hauling rock, weeding, tilling, planting, cleaning and organizing.  But I always said I would be thrilled if I could spend all day outside, working with my hands and doing physical labor and it's all I hoped for.  

But as with any endeavor involving the outdoors, there is trauma at times too.  My hot tub has been attracting a little tree frog and despite what appears to be an impregnable cover, it somehow manages to get under the cover.  I have rescued it repeatedly as I have no wish to have boiled frog's legs.  I moved it back to the ponds and it keeps reappearing under the hot tub cover.  Several days ago, while checking the hot tub, I discovered that somehow, without seeing the poor fellow, I must have let the cover drop right on top of him thinking he had finally left because there he was, squashed flat as a pancake in the corner of the hot tub.  I let out a squeal of horror, plugged my nose as he reeked and cleaned him up.  Thus the first animal funeral was held on the farm.  Life on the farm is tough at times! More anecdotes to come....