Only a farm girl knows

There are some things only a true farm girl knows.

I was reminded of this when one of my very best friends stopped over this weekend when I was doing chores. She accompanied me into the hay loft not having seen it finished.

She was immediately thrown into a fit of joy.

We inhaled deeply the smell of the fresh pine siding and sweet smelling hay. Exclaiming, ooooh it smells so good! She proceeded to toss herself onto a bale and revel in the joy of the hay loft, with a sigh of Peace.

I smiled at her, knowing exactly how she felt.

The hay loft in our old barn where I grew up was one of my favorite places.

If my grandmother couldn't find me she would check the big old pine tree and the hay loft.

Chances were good that I was reading a horse book in one of the two.

I would build an armchair out of square bales of hay and read about horses with the soft sounds of the animals downstairs as appropriate background noise, and one of the best cats ever (Toby) on my lap.

I had not realized how much I missed that until we started building this new barn.

I could live up there, bed down in the hay and devour a good book!

Ahh, hay loft joy!

The proof is in the bruises

As a farmer, it's an important part of the job to maintain good fences. 

Tuesday morning when I was feeding the pigs it was painfully obvious to me that the fence is in excellent working condition! 

As I was feeding Yum Yum, she was getting very impatient, pushing on the bucket, trying to get me to pour it faster. 
The result however was she was tipping it away from the food dish toward me and the ground. My attention was fully on the bucket and her, trying to get her to stop so I could pour it straight into the dish.

  In the midst of this, I accidentally hit my knee on the electric fence. 
Now I've done this many times in my life and it hurts!

 It makes you jump and possibly curse. 

This, however, has never happened to me before. As I hit my knee on the fence, the button on the back pocket of my jeans hit the field fencing at the same moment. 

The electric current was attracted to the metal button, so instead of the jolt going down my knee and looking for the fastest path to the ground, "like my foot" it went for the metal button. 

Through my knee, up my thigh into my hip and out my booty, to the field fencing, then to the ground. 
It snapped so loud it was like a branch breaking.

Now as I said before I have hit an electric fence many times in my life, but because of the path this jolt took and the metal being included it HURT! 

I yelled like the pretty chick in the first scene of a bad horror movie.
 I limped my way back up to the house to inspect the damage. 

It left a path of small bruises up my leg and a welt on my tush.

 My hip has been aching ever since. 

In case you don't know how an electric fence works here's the skinny. 

The charger when attached to the smooth wire, sends a pulse through the wire.
 It is strong enough to send this through multiple wires for miles. 

When a bovine hits the fence they get a shock.

Between the bovines thick skin and fur, they get an unpleasant zing, that keeps them from running into the fence. 

For some reason, the path this took when I touched the fence was so painful, that it is not anything I will try to repeat. 

I am usually content hearing the strong click, click, click, sound the charger makes when it's sending out the pulse, However, it is nice to know the fence is working so well, despite my bruises and no, you don't get pictures!

The secret life of pigs.

As I picked My way through the half icy, half muddy pig pen this morning I was thinking about how misunderstood pigs are.

For example, many times over I have heard that they are, dumb, dirty, and smelly! 

Well, I have grown up around pigs and let me tell you that this is the farthest thing from the truth.

In fact, pigs are clean and smart critters!

(Don't tell Daisy but I think they might be smarter than bovines.)

Proof, pigs like to wallow this is true, but they wallow in the summer for good reasons. Wallowing in the mud does three things, it keeps them cool, it protects them from bugs and is nature's sunscreen.

 (Yes, pigs can get a sunburn)

A myth I would like to debunk is, pigs don't wallow in poo!

Pigs, when given the chance, will pick a bathroom spot, they may even have more than one. Everyone in the sounder of swines "that is the correct term for a group of pigs." will use this designed spot, from what I have seen, the bathroom is usually downhill from the house. 
They never go to the bathroom in their sleeping area. 

Bovines will drop poo bombs where they stand. I have seen them Go in the hay they were eating, on each other, and in fresh bedding, then proceed to lay in it. 

Pigs only stink when they don't have enough room to stay clean.

Dumb pigs indeed!

Pigs are also mother natures rototiller, they not only eat fruit, vegetables and plants but they also dig in the ground and eat grubs, roots and sometimes even minerals deposits. They were made to take advantage of everything the earth has to offer for food. 
They have been known to eat carrion as well. 

Pigs have a way about them that reminds me of dogs but not completely. 
I know it sounds contradictive but it's the truth!

A friendly pig that is well raised will come when you call them, They respond to their name and play with toys.

I have seen pigs pick something up with their mouths and shake it like a dog would. 

Pigs even bark, although it sound's completely different from a dog, it is also a lot more threatening than a dogs bark. 

Pigs have a lot of vocalization to communicate.

They can be the meanest little buggers too.

All tho that's all linked to personality and how they are treated.

The nicest pig in the group can turn into a pig version of Kujo if left to starve. 
Hungry pigs are mean pigs!

I like pigs, as babies, they are almost too cute to stand. 

A litter (or drift) of piglets will make you laugh until you cry!

As if they were a flock of bird's they run full speed as a pack, they stop on a dime and with one oink from a member, take off in another direction. Hench "drift."

Pigs are unpredictable, funny and strong.
They are mean and sweet, a contradiction in a blanket and high on my list of favorite animals.

Burrrrr!

No matter how much you love your job there are some moments when you just don't feel like doing it, Sunday night was one of those nights for me I had a wonderful relaxing Sunday with my super farmer husband, we'd watched some entertaining television and it was windy and snowing and cold.

 I very much did not want to travel out into the driving snow and do the chores, but alas my animals needed me and this is the life of a farmer. I strapped on my heavy snow boots and headed out to the barn. 

Now I can handle cold pretty well I'm a Vermonter for Pete's sake, it doesn't bother me very much but last night was cold! The kind of cold that makes your nose hairs freeze immediately and your sinuses ache, my fingers in my gloves were so cold that they actually hurt.

 The piggies crawled out of their warm straw filled house just long enough to eat there warm slop, then crawled right back into their house again. It took hot water to defrost everyone's water bowls, I must say the cracking and snapping of the very thick ice was slightly satisfying. 

Even the bovines with their thick fluffy coats did not stay out in the wind very long, they booked it back into their nice warm shed with their thick bedding of straw as smart bovines do. 

They were not so keen on going into their shed the other night, however, which is baffling to me since it was zero out and it had snowed. First thing in the morning when I went to do chores there were some bovine snow angels. 

This is caused by Daisy the cow and Duffer the steer deciding to sleep outside in the snow, what possessed them to do this I will never understand since their house was warm and dry and full of straw freshly fluffed that morning. Goodness only knows why they decided to sleep on the ground. 

The next morning the outline of where they had lain and melted the snow had turned wet and when they vacated the spot, the cold turned the wet into a glassy ice again, so indeed they were bovine Ice Angels. Sorry for not having a photo.

Hey, why is your pig bucket glowing?

I have been thinking a lot about small things that can change your life in unexpected ways.

For instance, when giving a friend a tour of our new barn, I opened the hay doors in the loft to show her the lovely view. She looked down at the ground and said: "isn't this dangerous?" Her words of concern were like a shock of ice water because I have lived with hay doors since I was two years old, I was taught to not lean out them but never gave falling much thought until her question. Now this got me thinking how many hay door-related injuries have there been in the couple of hundred years barns have been around? A kid, a grown-up, a dog even? How many ways do we get so comfortable with something that could hurt us? In farming, I think a lot more often than other things. I think about this every time I push the bovines hay out the door and watch it fall to the ground. I wonder about the possible accidents over the years and wonder the percentage of farmers who got hurt this way. Perhaps I am better off not knowing.

The other change in my life that unexpectedly effect my day to day chores, is I cut my hair! An early Christmas gift from my Grandmother, my long time hairdresser and friend suggested that we take all the old unhealthy stuff off. I told her to go for it and never expected my hair to be as short as it is. Now I am not so vain that this bothers me, it needed to be cut and it will grow back. However a day or so later I discovered a problem with this. My hair was not keeping my headlamp on anymore! My hair is short and soft and healthy, therefore no help keeping the headlamp or hat on my head. Both a problem when it's cold and dark. Carrying the pig buckets out to their pen, only to have the headlamp strap sliding up making a hair crown until it finally pops off my head, missing a sloppy landing in the pig food by a hair. (Excuse the expression) Now, I am not sure how much help the light would be submerged in the goop. Although I suppose a pig bucket lantern could be useful. 

Glowing pigs may not be tho.

Ice is not nice.

We all know that ice is not nice. When you look down and see ice on a surface that you're about to embark on, you better have ice skates strapped on otherwise it's not going to be a fun trip. Well, consider doing this on a slope in heavy Boots while carrying buckets full of water or grain to your chosen destination, in my case the pig pen. I have been doing this for weeks now since we had that snow followed by rain which then turned into a nice thick layer of glossy ice. Our driveway has been like a luge lately and we've had to do a lot of walking up and down the hills instead of being able to get the vehicles up there. Not much fun after a trip to the grocery store. That is the challenges, and frustrations of living in the country. 
Chores are even worse, everything I need to feed the animals is all up and downhill. It makes you very tired and by the end of the day, I am sore and achy from my muscles being so tight as I walk gingerly with the thought " don't fall, don't fall."  It would be bad enough to fall and hurt whatever body part I happened to land on but the real possibility of falling while carrying the pig slop or two large buckets filled with water make it very unappealing. There's a reason they call pig food "slop" It is generally unappealing and wet. On top of the fear of falling myself and getting drenched in slop, there is also the fear of one of the animals getting hurt. Example, Duffer the steer who is young and naughty, thinks that it's very, very fun to knock over the water bucket when it's half full (and by the way half full about 20 gallons, yes he is strong enough to do this.) So when he spills 15 to 20 gallons of water in front of the gate where everyone convenes it makes a lovely sheet of ice, as I dust sand around for the fifth time this week, I tell him he deserves 50 lashes with a wet noodle for this and he only blinks at me with his long black eyelashes. (Now before you call bovine protective services, know that the wet noodle threat has long been used in my family by parental figures when a youngster does something naughty, but not truly punishable. This was usually met with giggles from the youngster). 
The last thing we need is for a bovine to hurt themselves. My fears were also magnified this morning when I went to fill the aforementioned water pail to find droplets of blood in the fresh white snow this caused a moment of anxiety inside me that I cannot truly explain to you. But after finding out that it was just Duffer accidentally cutting one of his facial warts, I was no longer worried since the Vet told me that the cure for these was to cut them off anyway, and to think I almost became a Vet. Ahhh, I need coffee now.

Christmas on the farm.

 I must preface this with disclosing to you that I have an eggnog hangover. The sad part is that there's no alcohol involved with this hangover, never the less I had to drag my butt around the barn to accomplish chores this morning. Here's the thing about Christmas on the farm, the critters don't care if it's a holiday or not they want to be fed and watered and mucked out regardless of my plans to celebrate the day. So off I go to the Barn with my work coat over my red holiday sweater and good jeans. (That just means no holes.) While everyone is cozy and warm in their houses knee-deep in gifts with fuzzy slippers on and a mug of something hot in their hands, farmers everywhere are strapping on their muck-covered boots and doing what we do every other day of the year. Most often we don't mind, but there are moments when you are picking poo out of a stall when you think "why am I doing this?" Then, to restore your love of farming one of the cows rubs their head lovingly up your arm in appreciation or the dogs are playing and run across some ice and are suspended in a moment of animation as they run full bore and do not gain any ground (True story happened today. I laughed so hard)  and you remember why you love this life so much!

 Another thing about being a farmer on Christmas, you find the funniest things in your stocking. I, as I'm sure many other wives found on Christmas morning, fuzzy Sox, lip gloss (I love my chicken poop lip junk) and the press on nail stickers that I love so much (They last two weeks even with what I do) but one of my favorite stocking stuffers was my fencing tool! I have never had one of my very own, I'm looking forward to the hours of time this genius tool will save me. The other things my wonderful husband left me under our tree was silky pink pjs and a new shiny hay fork. Now this may seem like one of those gifts like a vacuum or an iron, things most wives would frown at receiving unless it was on their wish list. Not me! Not this farm girl there was nothing that could have made me happier than my husband thinking of something to make my life easier. An odd combination of gifts, so me!
Happy holidays!