Pig prints.

It's been about two and a half weeks now that all the animals have officially been in the barn.

The barn is not 100% finished but the critters really don't care if the trim is on or not. 

There have already been some wonderful reasons to have the critters inside my barn,  chores have gotten so much easier! 

I'm more and more excited, as I realized every new aspect of how much easier it is. 

Just a minute ago, in fact, I'm still out of breath as I type this, my new reason to be so grateful for the barn came about like this.

 As I was pouring my coffee waiting for my last load of wash to finish before I head back outside.

I noticed something strange in the driveway. 

It was a pig!

the dog didn't quite know what to make of it, as he backed away from the approaching pig.

Now I probably don't even need to tell you this, but the pig is not supposed to be in the driveway! 

As I curse something that I will not repeat here, grabbed my coat and ran out the door.

I was trying to figure out how I was going to get him back into the pen. 

I start calling him the way I do when it's suppertime,  miraculously he came running, turned around on his heels and started running up the driveway.

I Raced For The Barn, opened the big door, dumped some grain onto the floor and he came in! 

I shut the door behind him and usherd him back into his stall and I was done! 

It has never been so easy to recapture an animal before. 

So along with being thankful for many things this year, family, friends and my barn are top 3! 

Happy Thanksgiving.

I do so love my barn!

The farmhouse.

If you google farmhouses, you will get photos of quaint rustic showplaces.

Even though they contain elements of farms, this is more of a stylized way of decorating than a true farmhouse.

Please understand before I continue, that I am not lumping all farmsteads into this, I am merely speaking of the ones I am accustomed. 
There are extremes in either direction. Farmers are human, as with anyone else, there are messy ones and clean ones.

The realities and challenges of keeping up a farmhouse are different than the average bear.

Someone who lives in town walks out to the car, in a garage or their blacktop driveway, and goes to work wear, unless they work at a slaughterhouse or hospital etc, the worst dirt they come in contact with is probably public dirt.

Then they go home after their long tiring day of doing whatever it is they do, to a relatively clean house where they probably make dinner and watch some TV before retiring to bed, as the dishwasher hums away, to do the same pattern over again the next day.

This, however, is not reality for farmers and farm homes. 

Even though we very rarely leave home we are very often not in the house. 

We wake up and down a Fast breakfast and go out to do whatever work needs to be done which is usually seasonal dependent and often dirty. 

We returned home exhausted at lunchtime to have a quick meal and a ten-minute break (or if you're lucky a 20-minute nap) and return out into the wild of our 130-acre backyard to continue with what we had started that morning. 

We then return home in the evening potentially cold, almost always filthy and exhausted where then, a hot shower is taken, you fall into bed and hopefully, have a full night's sleep. 
The next day, wake up and do it again.
Although our jobs differ from day to day depending on what needs to be done. 

This leaves very little time to clean up the mess that you make when returning home at lunchtime from, whatever it was you were doing beforehand. 

Even though our farm is clean, (what I mean by this is we do not have junk piled everywhere, we do not leave our animals living in filth,) but we're still a farm, driveways are dirt, our homes are heated with wood. 

This combination leads to Mud, dust, small stones, and sawdust on our floors pretty much all the time.
I would like to tell you that I take time every week to vacuum and wash the windows, but that is not reality. 

There are so many other things that need to be done the housework takes a back seat.
Now, please understand that we're not living in squalor and filth with dirty dishes piled to the ceiling and garbage in the corners.
 I am way too organized and OCD to have that happen. 
It does mean there are dirty clothes in the bathroom and mud on the floors there's sawdust underneath the wood pile because honestly, we have a woodpile in our living room and no I'm not kidding!
 How else do you think we feed the fire in the middle of the night?

We have muddy boots sitting next to the wood stove and as the snow and mud drys up and falls off, its then on the floor.
We have dog and cat hair everywhere, we have many coats that smell of cows hanging on The doors.
Our vehicles are splattered with mud as are the carpets inside them. There is just no way around this, no matter how clean of a person you are (trust me I am a neat freak!) at some point, you need to put this aside for the reality of a farm.

 It took me awhile to get to this point where the pig spilling their food it didn't bother me and make me want to run in with a shovel and clean it up. 
Living with animals is dirty, our dog rolls in smelly stuff at least twice a week, he comes in with his muddy sloppy sponge-like paws as we come in with our large heavy work boots.
 Our Floor is, well, you wouldn't want to eat off them that's for sure. 

Farmhouses are filled with love and kindness and good food for certain, but that's not the only thing lurking around the corners. 

I swept our floor this morning after giving my husband a haircut and I had a dustpan full of dirt that looks like I went outside to dig a hole.

It's also dependent on the seasons.
 My husband likes to say you can tell what season it is just by what is coming out of our boots.
 During the summer it's hey chafed, that gets everywhere, (and I do mean everywhere! 
At some point, I would like to challenge Victoria's Secret to team up with Carharrtt to make a hay-proof bra, but that's for a later post.)
 In late summer and fall it's harvesting of grains, so we'll come home covered in dust and chaff which will be falling off of our socks as we take our boots off.
 In winter it's snow and sawdust everywhere.
 In the springtime, well, all you Vermonters are very familiar with our fifth season, mud!

Sometimes will have several mud seasons in the spring, between all the freezes and thaws.
That is by far when our house gets the very worst!

 It doesn't help that we're sugaring as well and really only come home to sleep and shower. We eat all our meals in the Sugar House
 We're there almost all day.
My husband calls it our spring home.

 The house really does take a backseat, instead of being home mopping our floors we're at the Sugarhouse mopping its floors. 
So whether you enjoy chaos or are a neat freak as I really truly am on the inside.
As you're reading this potentially sitting in your lovely neat living room that is mud, dog hair and manure free.
Be grateful for a moment, because you don't have to clean a farmhouse.

Butchering day.

Butchering an animal, regardless of whether you raised it for that purpose or not, isn't easy!

Even though I had raised this steer for two years, with the full intention of butchering him, it was still difficult on the day of. 

That evening as I went to do chores and only Daisy and the calf was left, it was sad.

This does not mean, I'm not going to do this with the next calf that I am raising for that purpose.

This doesn't mean that I don't feel anything.

 It's walking a balance of knowing that you're raising animals for meat, and still caring for them and making sure they're happy and loved.

 It's not done without feeling, and it's not done without respect!

Now, I have talked about butchering before, when we butchered Yum-Yum the pig, so I'm not going to go into the same Spiel I did last time. 
Instead, I'm going to talk about what happens after.

It's a little bit different between butchering the pig who was getting very mean, or butchering an animal that was just a pain in the butt. 
(He was constantly dumping the 45-gallon water trough.)

I firmly believe, he knew it was coming.

Because he escaped three times in the two weeks leading up to his butchering date, we found him in the garden feeding himself on anything that was left unpicked.

This was Daisy's first time losing one of her offspring, so I was mostly worried about how she would react.

She was penned out of sight of the butchering and with a big pile of hay to keep her occupied, this does not mean she did not know what was going on. 

You can think I'm crazy if you want, but animals are smart, they know long before it happens.  Animals understand a heck of a lot more than most people give them credit for.

The next afternoon I proceeded to let Daisy into a new section of the pasture, where Duffer hadn't been. Also a few days later we moved her into the barn for the first time.

Some change for her, when something like this happens, is perfect.

 It was obvious that she was a little sad at first, but she has perked up since and is enjoying being in the barn, she has her other calf with her for now. 

Bovines are herd animals, as are goats and sheep, having one member of a herd taken away can cause a true emotional upset, if not handled correctly.

 All in all the butchering went well and I'm very proud of how healthy and high-quality my steer was.  Hopefully, he'll bring some delicious meals to our customers, where they can make wonderful memories over the dinner table. 

After all, it is my goal to nourish and bring happiness.

Thank you, Duff.

The joys of farm dogs!

I love dogs!

Top two favorite animals, may even be #1.

I had my first dog when I was 2 and haven't gone for long without one in my life.

I could regale you with tales of all the wonderful dogs my family has owned, but I will save that for another time, right now I want to tell you about our current loves.

Rye is a newcomer to the farm, he has been with us about a year. 
He came to us as a birthday gift for my grandmother, at a year and a half old he had never seen a cat or cow before. 

His first few hours with us were shaky ones. When sitting on the porch with Super Farmer and my Grandmother, Rye slipped and fell off the porch.
 (I should add that Rye is a BIG dog, we are talking 126 lbs here)

well, Rey slipped off the porch in the rain, he hit the electric fence in the fall, and he panicked understandably. 

As my husband tried to help him back onto the porch the cat attacked Rye. 
The poor pup shook for a good half an hour. 
My husband brought him inside and Grandmother feed him dog cookies until he calmed down. 
Now that was not a good way for poor Rye to learn about the fence or cats, but life is like that on the farm, sometimes you get thrown into the deep end.

Poor Rye still hasn't forgiven sweetie the cat, he associates that pain of the electric fence with sweetie the cat.

 A few weeks of barking at the bovines, unsure of what they were.

He tried to get the pigs to play thinking that they were some sort of odd hairless dog.

Every once in awhile he bounds after the chickens but has settled in well.

Our dog Jax, is around 3 and has been with us for two years.

He is 50lbs of a great dog!

He goes everywhere with us, to the point that when we recently had to leave him home when attending an agricultural conference, we were surprised the next day.

He had so much spunk he was outrunning the ATV!
 It made us realize what a handful he could possibly be in a different living situation. 

Farm dogs get tons of exercise, we are outside working on our sugar woods or baling hay or fixing fences almost every day and the dogs are always with us. 
They run and jump and chase squirrels and have a wonderful time. 
 He is a retriever and full of energy, very smart and inquisitive it makes me wonder if he would be a different dog under a different living condition.

There's no doubt in my mind that there is a little pug on someone's sofa snuggly warm somewhere and he is thrilled to be there and if you put him down on the farm he would probably be overwhelmed and miserable, but not our dogs!
 Farm dogs jobs differ from, breed, size, and personality.

 As a general rule having a dog running around your farm is just a wonderful deterrent to Predators that would be a problem to farmers.

Farm dogs have a wonderful life there are all sorts of smells and interesting things to find, dig up and piles of Goo to roll in, grossing there humans out.
 We love our families three canines as much as a member of the family. 
Be it the 126 pound Rye the 50-pound Jaxs or the 6-pound Pos, we love them all!

 I don't think our dogs would trade the life they have for anything else. I'm very proud that they are well-trained, healthy and happy. 
It fills my heart with joy just have them around. 

Farm girls!

I am very proud of who I am.

Not just because I'm a good person and I do my best to be, but also because I'm a farm girl! 

Farm girls are amazing creatures we can still be soft and lovely but also strong and tough as nails. 

There's a fine line to walk when being strong enough to throw around bales of hay and sacks of grain that weigh about 50 pounds.

Fix fence and fight a bovine off if need be, wrestle a Pig into submission.

 Catch chickens when they get out, But also be a girl with pretty eyelashes, soft hair and perhaps even designs on her nails.

 I know this may seem contradictory but it really is a farmgirl's way. 

I know some farm girls don't believe this, they throw themselves into the work as if they were one of the men, trying to prove themselves. 

I've seen this many times over, However, I don't believe it's the way we should be.

We are still girls after all. 

This doesn't mean we are not capable of hard work and keeping up with the guys, but it does mean we are made differently.

Our bodies function differently, our muscles work differently. 

I may not possess the strength my husband has but that doesn't mean I can't get the work done. 

If I truly can't do it and I'm risking hurting myself to push through, I will ask Super Farmer for help, but I'm smart, maybe I need to do it a different way than he would! 

Part of a farm girl's beauty is her ability, her strength, her no quit, I can do it attitude.

Now I, as I'm sure many other girls want to feel pretty and attractive. 

                    I also, as many other girls, struggle with body images now and then.

Remember I'm not a little skinny girl, I work hard, I have actual muscles and because of my family genetics, I'm big-boned and broad-shouldered regardless.

 It's still nice to feel feminine. 

I have a closet full of high heels and dresses, granted I don't get to wear them very often but sometimes I wear them to the grocery store because, hell, I want to! 

Women are wonderful!

 We can do amazing things that men can't and we shouldn't try to make ourselves alike to men.

 We should just be the very best woman we can be! 

To all, you farm girls out there keep working hard, remember to wear gloves!

Sad News

Life is hard. 

This is probably not surprising to you. 

No matter what walk of life you are in things are difficult, they go up and down, ebb and flow. 

This is not a complaint of what we've been through, it is not asking for any sympathy, I'm just going to give you the facts. 

The facts are sad.

Our brood sow Primrose came down with an illness on Friday afternoon, she didn't want to eat her food. her tail was droopy and she seemed lacking any interest in anything.

Now a pig not wanting to eat their food is pretty surprising, and a bit concerning!

A call to the vet was made but it was late in the day and I did not have time to receive an answer from them.

Of course, this had to happen over a long weekend.

Saturday morning she was laying in her house and answering me when I spoke to her, but not much else.

My concern grew, I called several other vets none of them were open and had any emergency services for anything other than a small fluffy cat or dog. 

I, being desperate, called one of my pig farmer friends and ask them advice. They gave in abundance, by Saturday evening I got her to eat some supper, she was even excited about it! 

I hoped things were improving. 

We suspected she had ingested some fencing, we had recently changed where her paddock was and there was some old chicken wire buried under the ground that I did not know about.

She had symptoms that seem to go along with this illness.

I was able to get her to eat supper again on Sunday and thought we were out of the woods.

Even if she had ingested some fencing, pigs are very tough!

If she was able to pass it or throw it up, as her body was trying to do for her, she may well recover and be alright. 

As you all know this is a pig that I had no intention of butchering anytime soon so I was rather fond of her! 

She was a good mother and a friendly pig, pretty easy to work with.

By Monday evening she was going into the muscle convulsions that go with Hardware disease, the term for when a cow or pig or other animal does ingest some metal of some kind.

In cows, it can be helped with them being force-fed a magnet.

Also because a cow is a ruminant and has 4 stomachs, a veterinarian can perform a local anesthetic procedure and remove the metal. 

Pigs are built more like humans and this cannot be done for them.

I talked to a good friend of ours who knows a lot about Veterinary Care and we decided she needed to be put down.

This is was very hard decision for me to make and I cried profusely while making it. The decision was made that she must be put to sleep before she suffered in any prolonged way.

As we were preparing to take action she passed away on her own accord.

This was very heartbreaking to us as it has been a tough year for our farm, and this was just the icing on the cake! 

We rushed her babies into the barn to remove them from any contamination just as a precaution.

The vet has since visited and everyone has gotten a clean bill of health along with a tetanus shot just in case.

I will always remember Miss Primrose as one of my favorite pigs, she was kind and beautiful and will be sorely missed!

Her daughter is shaping up to carry on her bloodline and her kindness on our farm.

Rip Primrose. 

What you talking about?

When strolling into our local grocery store on a Friday afternoon.

I was planning to stock up on non-GMO popcorn and lightly salted potato chips, for a much-deserved movie marathon weekend after three straight weeks of work. 

I absentmindedly look up with the large lettering on the front of the building and I saw many pigeons that gathered there, without thinking about it I start cooing to them, as I would any other animal on the farm. 

One by one their heads popped over the edge of the large letters looking down at me like, "what you saying?" 

I then noticed strangers were looking at me very bizarrely. 

I realized they were all looking at me like I had three heads because, well, I was talking birds!

  I shut my mouth and quickly went into the store. 

It's become so normal for me to speak to animals in my life, it is second nature now. However, it can also seem very odd to the General Public. 

I can imitate many different animals and birds.

here is the list of sounds I can do well,

Horses.
 Dog.
 Chickens (not roster).
 Goats,
 Pigs.
 Many wild birds.
 Cats.
 Gerbils.
 wolfs, coydogs.
 Human babies (oddly enough.)

Here are the sounds I try imitating.
well, the animals answer at least, but I think I don't sound just right.

Turkey.
 Dove.
 Pigeon.
 Rosters. 
Sheep.
I know, I know, I'm odd.
I'm okay with that.

Chickens

If pigs are the comedians of the barnyard then surely the chickens are the spoiled entitled children. 

If you place anything down for a moment they automatically think that you've brought it out for them. 

They will travel anywhere into the barn even if it's not their area. 

They do not move out of the way of the tractor backhoe or other vehicles until the very last moment! I have seen my husband backing up the tractor and a chicken moving out of the way just in time for the very large back wheels to brush its tail as it leisurely steps out of the way. 

This causes some serious problems when doing construction work around our new barn. 

It has been a very bad week for the chickens on our farm. 

We have two hens with chicks at the moment one clutch of four and one clutch of three.

(a group of baby chickens born at the same time are called a clutch or brood, the baby chickens themselves are called chicks.)

 Since we have been preparing to, and pouring the cement floor in our barn the chickens, babies included, have needed to be kept closed in their homes. 

This is not only frustrating for the chickens but it is also frustrating for us, because it means they need to be fed more because they are no longer free-ranging. It also means that their pens get dirty a lot faster, which is not healthy for them and difficult for us, because they need to be cleaned out much more often. 
For the safety of all chickens involved and for the well-being of our new cement floor, it was better they stayed in for a few days.

Here's what happened, we spent two days grading the Barnyard and preparing for the cement, setting up forms and all that entails. 

The first day we had the chickens out but as they were running around underneath the tractor and backhoe, I decided to leave them in the next day. 

Chickens seem to think that any new ground you dig up with the bucket or backhoe is purely for their benefit to find new bugs, so they run underneath the bucket with only a few inches to spare, sometimes even less. 

With this in mind, I was thinking about when we pour the cement they would be running over to see what this new grey stuff is, and was there any insect in it for them to eat? 
They would be crushed by the weight of the cement as it comes off the cement trucks spout.

After it had been poured I knew they would be walking on it, which would leave chicken footprints in my entire Barn floor, as well as the cement potentially burning the skin on their feet.

My other concern was for the babies, much more innocent than the adult chickens and substantially smaller. 

If you think it's difficult to see a little Golden Chicken under your wheels when driving the tractor, attempt to do this with a little baby that is about the size of an apple. 

We have one chick that is gray and very much looks like the ground, in fact in a photo, we couldn't find her. 

As fun and amusing as chickens can be there also slightly on the annoying side, as I have already stated they think everything in the world is for them!

Every coffee cup you set down, every Pig pot, everything that they could possibly reach, get to, eat, scratch or nest in they will. 

This is led us to the chicken's wars, that my husband had to put up with last summer. 
The chickens were eating everything in the garden. 

My husband actually had to put an electric fence around the garden to keep them out. 

Or my Hayloft, they nest in, poop on and scratch lose my hay. 

Not healthy for the cows eating it, also annoying for me. 

First, we put a baby gate at the top of the stairs, this worked for a while. 

The chicken poop on my steps was getting deep. 

They then learned to jump over it. 

(Yes, chicken are birds, they can fly but domestic chicken tend to keep flying to a minimum)

Next, my super farmer husband put a chain-link gate at the bottom of the stairs. 

This help until the chickens learn to jump/flutter onto the steps from the back.

So this leads to my uncle putting kicker boards on the once open stairs, And a board along the railing because we knew that was the next mode of entry. 

This has seemed to fix the problem. 
However, we did not know that there was a chicken already nesting up there. This is the hen with the 4 babies.

We brought her down and popped her into a chicken condo and she hatched out a healthy brood. 

I could go on about the chicken wars, but I think you get the idea.

As good, egg layers and bug eaters chickens are they are not the Einsteins of the barnyard. 

They are equal part joy and frustrating.

A Micro Farm tour

Please enjoy these photos, a close up look at the farm.

I hope you enjoyed this micro-tour. please come again.