Cat Trap

 

There are a lot of feral cats in New Zealand. Our farm has more than its share. As you know, I am a cat lover and I hate to see these scrawny animals slinking around unloved, unfed, and alone.

So when I found a wee gray kitten scarfing down the premium cat food from Smudge’s bowl, I tried – in vain – to make a friend and thereby adopt a second cat. Smudge was not in favor of this and made her obligatory hissing noises while standing at attention as the kitten eyed her nervously.

Well, the kitten hung out with us for a few hours and then disappeared. I saw it again near the barn and tried again to make friends. No deal! So I went to Dan. He knew of an extremely expensive cat trap that would humanely trap the cat thus enabling me to perhaps tame the kitten. At worst it would help us corral the other feral cats and get them off the farm. And, yes, I did have a plan for their removal. I was going to drive them to the SPCA and they could try to find homes for them.

I don’t know if the plan would have worked or not. I never had the chance to find out. As you can see by the picture, the “cat” trap only trapped rats. So far we have gotten 5 rats in 5 days. Can’t do better than that! We are ecstatic here. We’ll trade feral cats for disgusting rats any day.

 

By the way, this picture of Smudge is while she is watching the rat in a trap which is located just underneath the window of my grandson’s bedroom. This window is next to the pipe that leads  up to my rooms. Perhaps now the rat convention in the eaves over my head will stop. I can only hope – and rebait the trap.

Eggs. Eggs. Eggs

 

When I was younger – much, much younger – I thought  all eggs were clear whites and pale yellow yolks. When I got to New Zealand I was thrown by all these bright, bright yellow scrambled eggs. Little did I know that eggs were supposed to look that way.

I present to you one of the 7 or so eggs we get each day from our totally chilled chickens. They scratch happily around the paddocks after their morning feed of horrendously expensive seeds, have a morning tea break of our breakfast scraps (without egg bits; might have been a relative), an afternoon tea of more scraps and then a night feed of more seeds.

This keeps them near home, docile (no pecking or scratching at me) and producing wonderful eggs. And therein lies the problem. They keep on laying; day after day after day. I don’t much like eggs and won’t eat more than 2 a week, add about 4 for baking and I only consume about a day’s worth of production. What do we do with the other 6 days at an average 7 eggs a day? We try to feed them to the kids.

This hasn’t worked out too well. They are up to their eyeballs in eggs and have staged a mass revolt. What do you do when a 1 year old, a 3 year old, and a 5 year old revolt? Not too much. Remember, these ages are not known for their rational interchanges. Pretty much they stick to the basics.

“NO!”

“I’m not hungry.”

“I want something else.”

“NO!”

Yael and Dan try to eat their share and more but we are still left with several dozen a week. We can’t sell them; legal constraints. We can’t eat them. None of us can stomach even the thought of yet another egg salad lunch. So we give them away.  Now these are great eggs from great chickens. Organic feed, no supplements, no hormones, no additives. Just great  eggs. And they are free! So why have our friends started edging away as we come up with yet another carton of eggs? I don’t know. If I can ever catch up with them, I’ll ask them.

Losses

We seem to have been on a losing streak lately. Stone Tree Farm is reeling from its losses. The little lamb in the middle there is still mourning her lost ram twin and I am sure the flock as a whole is grieving as they ponder the disappearance of 5 ram lambs and 1 fat, barren ewe. On the plus side, the lamb chops are delicious.

We ended up having one of our Angus steers converted to meat as well. It was pretty horrific. We had him with our neighbor's freezer bound steers in our holding paddock and those steers were beyond wild. They broke our fence, raced over a mile down the main road, terrorized the owners of a horse farm, and managed to gouge, cut and maim our steer in the process. He was too badly injured for recovery so when the butcher returned, our steer went as well. (I use the word 'return' because the butcher and his assistant had tried to help Dan corral the steers but finally said that the steers were too wild for them and left). Our poor neighbor came back from work to angry horse owners, dazed Dan, and destruction. Loss: 1 steer.

This is one of my deeply-adored roses. See what has happened to it? Birds, that's what. I keep it covered with netting at night and when I'm away from the farm but the birds peck right through. New Zealand is really, really tough on gun ownership but if I show the authorities this picture perhaps I could get a license and hide out in the garage waiting for my marauding birds. Below is a picture of a rose bush they have not yet demolished. Note the difference.

Loss: 2 rose bushes.

And finally, the loss that has hurt me the most. I was pretty torn up by the end to our gentle steer but yesterday one of my egg-laying pals got too adventurous and stuck her neck in the possum trap. Rest in peace, my friend.
Loss: 1 chicken.

Until next time.

The Great Duck Debacle

When I was in grade school we had a positive deluge of "thinking" arithmetic problems that went something like this:

John and Mary had twin boys. They decided to drive with their new twins to visit family. The trip usually took 7 hours. John filled the car with 19 gallons of gasoline. How far did they travel?

I never had a clue about any of them. If you are staring bemusedly at the above problem, you know how I felt. So bear with me as I try to explain our great duck debacle. Hopefully, it will make more sense that the math problems.

We went to a nearby duck farmer who grows duck eggs commercially. For obvious reasons he didn't have much use for male ducks. Most he sold to Chinese restaurants in Auckland but he saved out 10 prime ones for us. We bought them and took them to the market garden. They escaped from the market garden. Well, 9 did. One we had already  dispatched to make us a duck dinner.

So here we have 9. Then 2 drowned!! Now we have 7. Dan and Yael had been very busy and had not had time to kill the others so the ducks had pioneered their way up to the pond and had settled in nicely. Several weeks later, Dan and Yael hike up to the pond to dispatch the remaining 7 ducks. Several hours later, they are soaking wet, irritated, and clutching 6 droopy ducks.

These ducks are killed, plucked, and two are cooked. The other 4 are in the freezer. The ducks on the table smell great with my patented orange juice and honey glaze. Strangely, no one seems very hungry. Dan eats corn flakes, Yael pushes the meat around and leaves it on the plate. I (who had carefully not watched when the ducks were killed) ate well. The kids decided they didn't like duck. They never tried it. So I had 2 ducks that I consumed over the next few ducks.

Now if you have done your math, you know that we still have one duck unaccounted for. Sort of. The last any of us ever saw of him, he was waddling purposefully down our driveway headed toward the duck farmer's place. I hope he made it.

Til next time.

Chaos

There has been so much happening that I don' know where to start. So I guess I'll start with explaining this picture. The sheep are in the shearing yard waiting to be shorn, de-tailed, and castrated. The 2 steers are curious. Our 3rd steer is staying far, far away. I think he knows what's next.

What's next is cutting out the rams, non-producing ewes, fat ewes, etc. and 1 steer (the one that doesn't seem curious at all) and moving them down to the quarantine paddock where they wait for the home kill truck to come and turn them into dinners. Hopefully, a lot of dinners.

The sheep move placidly to their fate. So does our steer. One of our neighbors has decided to piggyback onto our home kill (a common practice; we've done it ourselves) so he wants to move a steer in with ours. Doesn't happen. His steer resents it - mightily - and Dan, the shearer, his dogs, and our neighbor all end up with 2 of the resentful steer's buddies in our paddock with him.

Dan is none too happy. The steer is "wild, very wild" and most of his morning has been spent trying to get him into the paddock. But worse lies ahead. The next morning Dan goes down to oversee the home kill (I never go near it; I want to enjoy my meat without the memories). He doesn't come back for, like forever. When he does, he is shaking he is so upset.

It turns out that the wild steer and his wild buddies broke down the paddock fencing, raced around terrifying our steer and  bolted out the paddock down the driveway, down the gravelled road and a full kilometre away to the main road. In the process they tear up some horse paddocks (Dan says the woman there was semi-hysterical and was not placated by his explanation that these weren't his steers). The home kill guy and his assistant were gamely racing around trying to help.

The neighbor had gone to work all unaware of the drama unfolding behind him. He was mortified when he heard about it but Dan was not into any blame game.  It wasn't his fault; it just happens. A wild steer is a fearsome thing and these had literally charged Dan and the home kill team. They finally got them back into the neighbor's paddock but it was too late for the home kill guy to do his thing. They couldn't manage to separate out our poor steer (Dan and Yael tried several times) and he was left bewildered and bleeding from the other steers' horns and the barbed wire.

Here is where a bit of explanation is needed. Yes, we raise the steers to be killed and eaten. They aren't pets, they're food. But, and it's a big BUT, we want them to have as good a life as possible while they are our responsibility. This means free ranging, never shutting them in dark, dank stalls, real grass to eat and fresh water to drink. We use no hormones, chemicals, etc. on them and generally speaking they are calm, gentle giants who die without any trauma. They literally never know what hit them. And that's the way we like it. So when a steer we raised from a youngster for over a year and half is mauled about like ours was, it is painful for us as well as him.

Dan wanted to take him back into our paddocks and let him recover but he was too beat up and so the home kill guy came back 2 days later and put him out of his misery. For those 2 days we tried vainly to get near him to assess his injuries, etc. but we could tell that it was just adding to his stress so we finally just went down there several times a day to be with him.

All in all, a very miserable week on the farm. And I'm not done yet. Stay tuned!

Who Knew?

The other day we bought 10 ducks for our consumption. These are they being deposited into the market garden in the above picture. We thought we would eat them over the next few weeks starting with immediately and processing (killing, defeathering, etc.) them and then freezing them. I wanted them in the market garden so they could eat snails, slugs, etc. and fatten up while helping me prepare the garden for the Spring planting.

They had another idea. Their idea was no killing, no eating, and no confinement in the market garden. It all started when I drove past the day after we bought them (and killed 1 for that night's dinner table - it was delicious). We were down to 9 ducks but when I glanced over from the car I could see that the gate had collapsed and the ducks could leave at any time.

So I went down to shut it. I could shut it all right but the ducks ran at a rapid waddle straight out the gate before I could get there and dived into the stream runoff from the pond above. I tried to catch them and herd them back into the garden. You try it some time. 9 ducks; 1 human, and water to slip into and hide in the reeds. The ducks won.

For the next 2 weeks we were all up to our eyebrows in work, kids, and lambing season. The ducks lurched about in the red, red barn paddock undisturbed and frankly, little thought of. I didn't even bother counting them each day as I went down to water the steers. There were always a few who wouldn't be with the flock but in the water somewhere.

How true that was! Dan found 2 dead in the stone water trough!! They had drowned. I still can't believe it. They drowned!! Who knew that ducks could drown. Not me.

Til next time.

A Fish Tale

I came back to the farm last Tuesday evening laden with goodies from the apartment. Dan had given me the kitchen scraps for the compost pile, the table scraps for the chickens and  a broccoli for me. I plopped everything on my kitchen counter and went to bed.

In the morning I composted the kitchen scraps, gave the chickens the table scraps and ignored the broccoli. Big mistake! The rest of Wednesday was spent running errands, etc. But when I got back home in the late afternoon, every square inch (or metre as they say here) reeked of fish - old fish. I did the bloodhound sniffing thing and circled in on the broccoli. I lifted it up and lo and behold there lay a fish head happily rotting away on my counter.

I muttered angrily to myself (expletives deleted) and gave the fish head to its intended recipients: the chickens. You can see how thrilled they were at this largesse. That is the ignored fish head on the right.

 Thursday I spent in Auckland and when I got back I was too tired to track down the continuing fish smell. I figured it was lingering since I had the apartment shut up. On Friday morning my disillusionment was complete. The fish smell was pretty darned strong. So I did the bloodhound thing again and finally found a large pool of fish blood that had spilled down the back of the counter and pooled on the floor underneath. It was big enough for Smudge to swim in. All I can figure is that the fish head was frozen on Tuesday, thawed on Wednesday and dripped, dripped, dripped. I'm not sure about the time line. Whenever I question Dan all that happens is that he has another laughing fit. Wasn't that funny to me.

Until next time.

Yay, Spring!

Things are looking up around the farm. Today is warm and sunny. We even had 1 day last week that also was warm and sunny. It has me itching to start propagating seeds and it has spurred our chickens to greater egg-laying efforts. They now average 6 per day and even Dora contributes her bit. That is Dora looking the opposite way from the other chickens at chow time. She also has not figured out the whole roost thing and will squat and drop her egg in the mud, on the coop floor, etc. The other chickens now treat her with distain but not the active hostility that caused her to be featherless and henpecked (sorry, I really, really couldn't resist).

The sheep have been busy too. Laying lambs, not eggs. So far we have 21 new lambs and had only one death. I am concerned about Starlight and her twin black lambs. They seem spry enough but are awfully thin. Everybody else seems to be thriving. Dan has agreed to move the flock (all 50!!) into the new barn paddock which has the horse stalls and greater protection from the elements. Also I will be able to keep a closer eye on them and see if they need some kind of intervention.

I have been watching but don't see much nursing going on. I just hope that they get enough of what they need that they will be able to move into grass eating and start filling out. I am not sure what the problem is but this is Starlight's 3rd year and it may be her last. I'm not sure how I feel about that but this is a farm and we do raise the sheep as meat. But on the other hand, Starlight was my first lamb and the only one I named. Well, I'll just wait until I figure out what is the least painful option for me and go from there.

Until next time.

Better Butter

The above picture is compliments of my son. The massively yellow thing is real butter made with real raw milk. Remember I told you that he had made it once before and it took forever! Well, this week he tried again and it only took a few minutes. A bit of reflection told us that the difference was that the butterfat was very, very fresh - only a few hours from udder to us.

It also tastes good. I prefer my butter with a bit of salt added but since the shaker is on my table, I add some when no one else is around. We are becoming so successful at feeding ourselves that we are thinking of ways to try to recoup some costs. So far I have come up with a bunch of ideas that have been rapidly shot down. My latest is growing Manuka wood and starting some bee hives. It seems that Manuka honey is a superfood and has great health properties to it. Sounds good to me. Unfortunately my son (the same one who made the butter) pointed out that I have to carry an ephedrine kit since a bee sting could kill me. Perhaps being surrounded by hundreds of bees is not the smartest possible life decision. Still, if I had life insurance, they could make out all around.

So I am back to dreaming of raising ducks or meat chickens. Right now our egg chickens are putting on a splashy display of 5-7 eggs per day from 10 chickens. Pretty impressive since they aren't supposed to lay in the winter. Luckily the family loves eggs (I don't). I will eat them but I don't go out of my way for one.

The steers are still porking up even though the grass is not too good but winter will come to an end soon and I shudder to think how big they'll grow once they get into new grass.

In the meantime the Suffolk sheep continue to do their duty. We are up to 14 lambs with 6 of them sets of twins. That comes to 11  Suffolk moms. We are waiting on the other 3. And then it should be the Romneys turn. The Suffolk were covered by a Romney ram but hopefully the Romneys waited for the stud Suffolk ram. I'm not sure though since 1 Romney has already given birth and not a Suffolk characteristic to be found in her offspring.

All in all there is abundance all over this farm. I just have to figure out how to make some money at it. Perhaps I could offer the farming experience for a day at $100 per  head. Some lucky people could weed, feed chickens, mend fences, shovel manure, chase ewes, haul water and pay for the privilege. Perhaps I need to refine the concept a tad.

Til next time.

Yes, They Were

In answer to my question of a few blogs ago: Are they or aren’t they. Yes, they are, or were, pregnant. We had a pretty hectic rain storm the other day and I didn’t get into the back paddock for 2 days.

 

When I did, it seems that my timing was impeccable. One ewe stood up rapidly, obviously ready to protect her young. And young they were. The umbilical cord was still dangling and one of the twins’ eyes were still shut. My untimely intrusion was not viewed with aplomb. There was serious bleating, shifting of hooves, and a rallying of the other members of the Borg. Those sheep really stick together!

So I waited 4 days and went back again today. All 5 of the lambs – 2 sets of twins and a single – were prancing around and the mothers were much more laid back. Not laid back enough to let me come close but one lamb had not gotten the memo (or wasn’t old enough to read) that I was Darth Vader and came right up to say hello. A furious Baa was enough to send him/her racing back to Mom.

 

It is cold and rainy and life is beating me up these days but I still thrill to watch the tiny lambs and marvel at them and their stalwart Moms. I sometimes think that this farm is saving my sanity. It feels magical to me and when an inquisitive lamb gambols over wanting to be f riends, I know I am one of the luckiest people on the planet.

Stormy Weather

We have had a spate of bad weather topped by the worst storm in 10 years. This monster had gale force winds, heavy rain, and cold temperatures for THREE days. I used to hate writers who wrote in caps but having lived through the storm, nothing else conveys the immensity of it. The above picture is of the solid metal bench that the wind blew over.

First of all you have to remember that we live on a farm. Our toilets flush, our water runs, and the stock are watered by a pump – an electric pump. Guess what happens when you don’t have electricity for 3 days. Yup, you use buckets of rain water to flush the toilets. That gets old real fast.

Without electricity you can’t cook. You can’t heat the house. My heat pump is useless. The big house’s wood burning fireplace has an electronic something or other so we couldn’t use that. The hen hearted of us – the kids, Yael, and I – beat feet back to the apartment in Auckland which did have power.

Dan, the intrepid one, stayed behind. But after 3 days of having been told by the power company that:

The power would be back on within 2 hours 

The power would be back on within 4 hours

The power was on (it wasn’t! Did they think we wouldn’t have noticed?)

Dan decided to take matters into his own hands. He went driving the back roads of Warkworth until he found a crew working on the lines and convinced one of the men to stop by our pole at the end of his shift. Turns out that all the rest of our area had had power the entire 3 days.  All we needed was for this true gentleman to flick a switch and we had power.

With all that going on, I had not been keeping eyes on the sheep. The result was that when we moved them to a new paddock, I noticed that some of the Suffolk were bulking up. Now I can’t swear they are pregnant but they certainly look it. Do you agree? Perhaps we’ll have a bumper crop of lamb chops after all.

 

Are They Or Aren't They?

 

Remember the old Clairol ad “Does She or Doesn’t She?” Asking if some luscious (usually) blonde dyed her hair? You probably don’t if you are under 60 and/or are not an American. However, it became a slang expression back in the day and I use it now.

Are they or aren’t they? Pregnant, of course. These are the Borg (aka Suffolk sheep) in the paddock with the Suffolk ram for several months. As I have said before, he avoided them like the plague and I think the results speak for themselves. They sure don’t look pregnant to me!

The Romneys, on the other hand, are becoming a tad rotund. Perhaps their wool just grows thicker, or they are eating fatty grass but there is a definite difference. I would have taken a comparison picture but I am still persona non grata and they bolt at the sound of my crunchy little footsteps. Since I think they are facing motherhood, I don’t want to scare them any more than they already are. So you’ll have to take my word for it. The Romneys (with whom the ram spent all his time and energies) are porking up big time.

Last week we moved all the sheep from paddock #1 up to the new barn paddock so I could keep a closer eye on them. Did you notice the ‘we’ in that sentence? Yes, I finally had something more to do than just stand there by the car and stick out my arms like a scarecrow when the sheep rushed by.

Oh, Dan wanted me doing the scarecrow bit but events overcame him. He has been fighting a sinus infection for several months and when he had run up and down paddock #1 about 5 times (okay maybe only 4 but I stick to the 4), he decided he couldn’t round up 29 sheep by himself. He was just too wiped out. He had to call for help.

And who was providentially standing by her car, arms akimbo? That’s right, little ole me. Well, I hustled on over, flashed a smirky grin and stood in my scarecrow pose in the left side of the lower paddock, effectively cutting off the sheep’ prime escape route.

Dan herded them down the hill, panting only slightly. They began to wheel to their right preparing to bolt when the 3 lead ewes lifted their heads and saw…wait for it! ME. Hah, the moment was sweet. I was not just a straw-filled face any more. Remember, all 29 of those sheep have a mental image of me as Torquemada. They want nothing to do with me. They were a broken flock and trotted out to the driveway without even a token bolt movement.

Dan shouted a “Great” at me as he loped after them. I am taking that ‘great’ as referring to me.

Until next time.

Smudge Suffers

So far Smudge has been the perfect cat for me. She is a mighty hunter; consistently bringing me mice, rats and small rabbits. All with their heads daintily removed. This makes it very easy for me to tell that they are DEAD. I have taught myself (it only took one lesson of stepping on a squishy rabbit carcass) to turn on lights when going to the bathroom at night. And you should see my shuffle/slide that avoids any sudden encounters with previously alive animals.

So when my hunter cat started hanging around the house I got suspicious. Normally she is gone most of the time. She always spends a few hours in the early evening curled up at my feet but the rest of the time she drops by for snacks and is out again patrolling the barn (home to an endless array of mice) or stalking through the weeds after rabbits.

I couldn’t fathom this domesticity until I looked out my window a few weeks ago and saw a calico cat sitting in our driveway. And not just sitting but very much the cat “in charge of all she surveys”.

True, Smudge is a hunter but she is not confrontational. When a 3-year-old decides to hold kitty up by the tail, Smudge just oozes her way under the bed and continues her nap. It is my contention that this calico came, saw, and conquered.

So for the past few weeks Smudge has been much more the home cat. But I began wondering one afternoon when it seemed that she was doing an awful lot of snacking. I was really engrossed in a book and I can’t see the food bowl from my chair so I didn’t pay too much attention.

And then I got up and saw a wee black kitten calmly chowing down at the snack bar. While I was trying to figure out what to do, in comes Smudge. With a huge howl she lunges for the kitten who has obviously been here before. Quite speedily she darts to her pre-selected hiding home and there she remained.

My 5-year-old granddaughter, Alessia, was due to spend the night with me. She was fine with having a stray kitten under the bed and Smudge seemed okay with it too. As long as the kitten did not venture toward the food bowl.

So we all went to sleep. Except the kitten who made a dash for either the food bowl or the door (they are next to each other). Smudge screamed and a riotous good time was had under my bed. I finally ended the confrontation with the application of a broom. The kitten fled, Smudge following and I crawled back into bed. Alessia, naturally, slept through the whole thing.

In the morning it was obvious that Smudge didn’t want to talk about it. She lazed around with a hang dog attitude most of the day. This changed however by afternoon. I was climbing the steps (I still can’t figure out how that tiny kitten managed those steps) and heard a very strange staccato sound. Cautiously (I have learned that anything can happen on a farm) I stuck my head through the door and saw 3 of my chickens pecking furiously at the cat food. Smudge was sitting in the corner well out of beak range.

First, how did the chickens manage the stairs? Second, did Dan leave the gate open again? Third, how do I get rid of them and fourth, how thrilled am I to have to clean and disinfect my floors (chickens are not house broken)?

With fried chicken recipes running through my brain, I grab my trusty broom and literally sweep 2 chickens down the steps, across the driveway and through the open gate. Answer to #2, yes he left it open. The 3^rd chicken was of hardier stock and refused to be broomed. Lunging and diving, I finally caught her, raced down the stairs, and hurled her over the gate.

When I got back, Smudge was drooping over the end of my bed. She pretty much has been doing that ever since. I am thinking about buying a couple of mice and letting them loose in my room. It may give her some incentive to shake off this depression.

Catching Up

 

I guess I have a lot of catching up to do. To start with, all of us have been battling the cold that never leaves. I thought it was supposed to be 7 days from start to finish. It has now been more than 21 and counting.

To add to my distress, I caught some kind of chicken thing from cleaning out the coop without a mask. Who knew? Now that we have 10 chickens, there is a lot to clean and I guess a lot more pathogens (or whatever they are). Take it from me: wear a mask. The cold was irritating; the chicken germs were toxic. I was pretty darned sick and I still had to stagger out to minister to my flock.

 

 

Speaking of the flock, there is more to dumb Dora than meets the eye. Or less, actually.  She has lost almost all her neck feathers and most of her tail feathers. I felt really, really sorry for her since I thought that the other chickens were picking on her. Nope. She was hell on wheels going for the seed and the others kind of gang up on her to keep her out. So she is now not only too dumb to find the coop but scrawny and ugly as well.

The egg production is down as we head into winter. Everything changes with the seasons. It is part of the continuing fascination of a farm. Grass stops growing, it starts raining, and it gets colder. When I lived in Washington, or even Prescott, these were changes that barely impacted me. Now, this means that our source of raw milk is compromised. The organic  dairy lets its milk cows ‘rest’ for 2 months before introducing them to the bull. So what do we do in the meantime?

I wasn’t too keen on raw milk to begin with and we had a scare here in New Zealand with one dairy being closed down after making its customers ill. I feel better overall but since the raw milk directive came at the same time that I finally had my tooth pulled and got rid of the ‘massive’ infection, who can tell which (if either) is the determining factor. But I don’t want to go back to store bought milk. I am sure that that is not a good option. Perhaps Dan can strike a deal with the dairy farmer. We’ll see.

There is one winter change that I am looking forward to. I get a heat pump installed in my room this week. I can’t wait. It doesn’t actually get too cold (compared to North Dakota) but it is very damp which makes life a little less pleasant. So with the heat pump organized, I can settle in to do some of my indoor chores. Or not.

Open Door Policy

 

Here at Stone Tree Farm we believe firmly in an open door policy. I don’t remember which President originated that US foreign policy but Google tells me it was under Sec. Hays’ watch and I think he worked in Teddy Roosevelt’s administration.

All I can say is that Teddy never had to deal with sheep. When the Suffolk ram came to visit (euphemism for impregnate), we were very cordial. Gave him the run of the place so to speak. He repaid us by leading a revolt out our open gate. Sunday night one of our neighbors called to say that some of our sheep were roaming the shared driveway and some had ended up in one of their paddocks.

Yael went up to the paddock to see how many were there and I, like a fool, took a flashlight to see how many remained in the new barn paddock. Tip of the day: if you lose some of your guests, don’t try to find them in the pitch black of night armed only with a flashlight. If they don’t want to be found, they won’t be. All they have to do is shut their eyes to be invisible unless you literally trip over them. Needless to say, I didn’t find very many. But I did manage to shut the gate which some gremlin had opened.

Then I drove down to the main road looking for signs that any sheep had escaped in that direction. Clue = sheep poo. No poo, probably no stray sheep. Yael and I took turns checking the house and reassuring the kids and then back out to see if we could spot any of our flock. We couldn’t and finally arranged with our neighbors that they would call us in the morning before they left for work and we would move our sheep from their paddock.

Farmers get up early. Even farmers with day jobs so we were rousted out literally at the crack of dawn. We tossed the kids in the wagon; Alessia and Jesse were still in their jammies but for some strange reason Naavah was fully dressed. That kid is a walking miracle.

So Yael goes back up to the paddock to roust the sheep and I drive down past the gate to block any escape route down the mountain. And then the kids and I wait. And wait. And wait. And the frustration level inside the car rises. Jesse is screaming lustily; the girls are arguing at the top of their lungs and I have had enough. I figure if I drive a short way up and down the driveway, perhaps Jesse will calm down.

And perhaps he would have if I hadn’t run the car into a ditch. I hadn’t thought those kids could scream any louder. I was wrong. I was also absolutely furious with myself. Yael had warned me that the grass was slick and now I had to face her and tell her that HER car was nose down in an invisible (to me) ditch.

So I haul out the kids, carry Jesse (no lightweight, believe me), pull Naavah along by her hand and watch Alessia stomp her way up the hill in her feeted jammies. Couldn’t have been too much fun on the gravel with only a piece a flannel on your feet for protection. She never said a word. Takes after her mother!

I put Jesse in his cot (the only safe place) give the girls some comfort food and take my car to find Yael. It seems the sheep don’t want to leave our neighbors’ place and don’t. I tell Yael about her car and she is not pleased. She is also remarkably restrained. Breeding tells! The neighbor goes to haul out the car with his Ute (New Zealand for truck) and I crawl miserably back to the kids who have recovered completely. Oh to be young again.

Dan comes up from Auckland after his meetings, gets on his quad, takes Yael and in a remarkably short time has rounded up the sheep and put them in the back paddock. Unless the gremlin wants to traverse our entire farm, he’s not going to open this gate.

So the sheep are in a ‘time-out’ in the back paddock and I am to try to supervise the ram and check on the Suffolk ewe that is limping badly as a result of running into a wire fence as she ran away from Yael. I suppose it serves her right but she is still pathetic.

 

While I am in the paddock, I also try to check the water trough. That’s the blue thing peeking out from the Suffolks’ legs on the right. You can see why we call them the Borg and the Suffolk ram goes nowhere near them. They are pretty confident that I won’t challenge them but they are wrong. I do and the water is fine. I have to confess, I am not warming up to these Borg, oops Suffolk as I should.

New Arrivals

This is a blog alert. If you don’t want to hear about me bragging about myself Stop Reading Now!

 

Too late. You’re in for it now. On Friday we got our second batch of Brown Shaver hens. Charlie delivered our 4 new egg layers himself and we all (the humans anyway) settled in for a nice cup of tea and a chat. We had a wonderful time while the 4 hens remained squashed in their carrier in a driving rain.

Finally it stopped raining and we went out to free the feather wearers. They were very bedraggled but worse was in store. They had their wings clipped and were tossed, gently, into the paddock with our original 6 Brown Shavers. The new group are a deeper brown and are easy to differentiate but Dan insisted on banding them anyway. Needless to say, this was not shaping up to be their favorite day.

Now this is where the bragging comes in. My 6 hens sprinted to greet!! the newbies and proceed to peck them into submission. Charlie raved about how healthy they looked; what fine birds they were; how magnificent were their surroundings. Not bad praise for someone (ME) who had never touched a live chicken in her life before we bought some. The new Brown Shaver is the one on the right; always a bridesmaid.

Two days later, the newbies remain cowering in the coop while my “gentle” little friends patrol the yard like its Alcatraz not letting any intruder through. The closest thing these poor creatures have to a friend is my cat, Smudge. She has decided that, as a New Zealand cat, it is up to her to ensure fair play. So she has taken to sitting up on a fence post and chirping threateningly if things get out of hand. She has been remarkably effective and I have hopes that eventually they will integrate.

My hopes for our 2 sheep flocks to integrate are almost gone. Perhaps the next generation will be more kindly disposed. As you can see from the picture, our Suffolk sheep cluster together in a surly mob watching the borrowed Suffolk ram fraternize with the Romney sheep. Truth to tell, he appears to much prefer their more laid-back life style and I have yet to see him climb the hill and approach the Suffolk.

 

This does not bode well for our hoped-for Suffolk lambs but to my mind it shows excellent taste on the part of the ram. Or perhaps It’s just that he has honed his self preservation skills to a sharper point. I wouldn’t want to risk my well-being on the Borg either.

Individual Animals?

First off, my apologies for the pictures. I can't figure out how I ended up with them all grouped together but my computer wizard isn't available so I hope you can separate the pictures into their proper segments since I can't. Chicken picture with chicken paragraph, steer picture with steer paragraph, etc. Got it? Great! Sorry about that.

My two granddaughters have decided that a special treat is spending the night with Grandma. A treat for whom? Anyway, I have now had occasion to observe each of them up close and very personal and it started me thinking.

Naavah, the 3-year-big girl, sleeps flat on her back with arms and legs splayed out. She may appear petite but somehow leaves Grandma a scant few inches of mattress. Alessia, on the other hand, curls up in the classic fetal position and its Grandma’s turn to spread out.

Two children raised in the same basic environment by the same parents and yet even asleep are very different. That goes for their personalities as well. And it goes for our animal kingdom too. Or mostly.

My hens are 6 distinct individuals. I have Dora who struggles with severe short term memory loss. Don’t look for her in the picture. She hasn’t figured out where the feed is yet although I have scattered it in the same place every day for 9 months. When it comes evening and I go to the coop to feed them again and shut them in, 5 are right there in the coop. Guess which one is crouched nervously in the path, head darting around.

 “Gee, Terry. I know the coop’s around here somewhere. I just can’t find it. Can I follow you? I just know I’ll be able to figure it out tomorrow.” But she never does. I secretly find her rather endearing.

The hen in the middle with the horizontal white stripe across the tail is  the Sargent-Major. She allows nothing and no chicken to interfere with the strict hierarchy under which the chicken kingdom thrives. All except Dora, of course. Even the Sargent-Major has thrown up her feathers in disgust and pretty much ignores her. Lots of personalities in the coop.

There are distinct personalities in the steers as well. We only have 3 but one is the leader with his tag-along follower (Gomer) who is glued to his hip. The leader has horns and this seems some sort of macho symbol for the abbreviated herd. He decides when they go to water, how long they drink, and when they leave. He calls time for morning breaks and bedtime. The third steer follows, but slowly. In the picture Mr. Horns has just moved away from the water hole, closely followed by Gomer. Lazy Bones will wait just long enough to make it clear that he’s a male with his own sense of importance and then he will amble off after Mr. Horn. They seem to have worked out détente.

Where my theory falls down is with the sheep. The Romneys are an amiable breed. They amble along each doing her own thing. They don’t even pay that much attention to their own lambs. They only time they work as a unit is when the enemy (me) approaches.

Along with the Romneys, we have acquired a flock of Suffolk. We were making the wise choice. Suffolk are meat sheep and very tasty meat it is too. They have narrow shoulders so lamb fairly easily and often have twins. In 3 years our Romneys have only given us 1 set of twins.

But these Suffolk are sheep of a different sort. They not only work as a team, they are clones of each other. They move as a unit – always! I never see one ramble off on her own. I admit to being somewhat intimidated by them. I have seen all 14 fan out across a paddock and literally munch in unison as they move in formation across the field.

I’m not the only one intimidated. The Romneys ceded the field within the first week of the Suffolk invasion. The Romneys drink when the Suffolk are done. They lie outside while the Suffolk hog the barn. And most importantly, they leave off grazing and lope away if the Suffolk decide that they want to eat there.

Next week we bring in the Ram for mating season. Should be interesting!

Creepy Crawlies

 

As you can see from the above picture of my late-lamented basil plant, we are having a problem with bugs here at the farm. The drought continues to linger and the bugs are thriving while the plants, trees, etc. are dying in record numbers.

So I am not an insect fan. In fact, there are a number of insects I actively dislike, even hate. I hate white tail spiders (I almost lost my left leg as a result of being bitten), I hate flies, and I actively dislike most creepy crawlies. But why? When I get right down to it, why such a visceral reaction?

Part of the reason is that all my adult life I lived in air conditioning, with screens separating me from the wicked outdoors and the exterminator coming with his monthly sprayings inside and out. I never actually experienced the real world. I never was bitten by mosquitoes, spiders, assorted multi-legged creatures or harassed by swarms of flies.

The farm is way out of my comfort zone and with the increased insect level this summer, I have red lined on several occasions. We all have had huge welts from mosquito bites. I have captured spiders trying to nest in my hair and we have watched the cataclysmic failure of our garden.

But philosophically what’s changed? Nothing actually. We had a mini invasion of locusts, overwhelming numbers of flies, etc. but that is normal throughout history. I am the oddity. I am the one that is trying to become acclimated to nature in my old age. It strikes me that my grandchildren are having the privileged upbringing that I was denied. They have the farm and are face to face with reality with every bee sting. Unpleasant but certainly preferable to living in an sterile environment where you have no connection with the world that surrounds you, nurtures you, and sustains you.

Until next time.

Autumn

 

It is Fall. Or as they say here, Autumn. This season has always been one of my favorites and here is no exception. I have to get used to the fact that very few trees change color with the dramatic intensity of New England, or change at all for that matter. There are lots of ferns and palms here.

But, Fall/Autumn usually signals the end of the summer drought. Usually does not mean always. And in this case, we are still waiting. We had the remnants of a cyclone over the weekend. High, high winds and some rain but nowhere near enough. Smudge (my cat) and I huddled indoors and I cheered myself with the mental image of a lush vegetable garden revitalized with all that rain. Turned out there was little rain; it just sounded like a lot when it was being hurled at my windows at 120km.

That’s too bad because I really needed cheering. We were without power for more than a day. That means no water (the pump runs by electricity), no computer, no computer games, no internet, no email, no tv, and no cooking. I got pretty tired of peanut butter sandwiches. I also ran out of bread but didn’t dare open the freezer to get another loaf. Why? No electricity to run the freezer and I couldn’t risk letting what cold air there was out. I also couldn't read because there was no light. I did doze a lot.

I had plenty of time to prepare for this cyclone. The weather alert system in New Zealand is very sophisticated. It would have to be since this is still an agrarian society. So I moved the sheep to paddock #3 which has the gully and lots of willow trees to protect them. Luckily the temperature didn’t drop because they had been shorn only a week before and so didn’t have their usual protective wool.

The steers were already in the paddock in front of the new barn, which is the perfect one for them since it too has a gully and a protective ring of trees. I have to say, though, they didn’t seem to need it. On the rare times when the winds died down enough for me to see out my windows, I glimpsed those steers standing oblivious to the elements and eating.

The chickens were safe in their coop. When it was all over, I noticed that my egg numbers were up. Puzzled I watched as several chickens marched determinedly into the horse stalls. There, under my bemused eyes, they took turns laying their eggs in a haystack. So now I check the hay every morning as well as the coop.

One side benefit is that I finally found that can of shellac I had lost 3 years ago when I fell off the hay stack while painting the inside roof. We had finally used enough hay to get down to ground level. And there it was not 2 feet from the new eggs. The worry had been that it had spilled and tainted the hay. It hadn’t and it didn’t.

Until next time.

It Better Be Butter

Now that we have switched to raw milk, a whole new world has opened up for us - led, of course, by the ever questing Dan. It was he who noticed that Yael and I (and by extension, the kids), were skimming off a lot of the cream for a less robust milk. For those of you who asked, and I was amazed at how many there were, Yes! I am still drinking only raw milk, and No, I have had no side affects whatsoever. But I can't accustom myself to all that cream. So I take a lot of it out and so does Yael.

Dan, who gets up in the wee hours to head to the dairy to get the milk as it emerges from the cow and drives 45+ minutes each way to do it, was a tad upset. Then, naturally, he settled into finding a solution that would work for all of us. He drinks a ton of the stuff, replete with cream, and is still losing weight. Go figure.

Anyway, he researched butter. Yes, that is a picture of butter that he made from our rejected cream. He gave me a the ramiken full that you see and hauled the vast majority back to the family in Auckland.

It astonishes me at how far down the road to self-sufficiency we've travelled and how far we still have to go. If, indeed, we decide to do so. The milk is great and I promise I will keep you updated on any health improvements I might have.

By the way, does anybody know of an old fashioned wood milk churn I could buy - cheap? Dan spent hours at the electric blender and I figure if we are going for self-sufficiency, we should try to eliminate electricity. Right? I'd volunteer to churn but this darned shoulder of me acts up and I'll just have to pass on this one.

Reaping the Harvest

The picture above is my dinner, picked just 15 minutes before cooking. I will add a hamburger made from our steers and have a completely farm-fresh meal. Pretty impressive, hunh? I’m impressed. I’m impressed that anything grew to maturity in the market garden since we are inundated with snails, insects, rats, possums, birds, etc.

All in all, things are going pretty well. I have scattered pictures of my roses here to show that they survived the possum onslaught. I am leery of saying that I’ve cured the problem, but so far netting the bushes at night has kept the possums away. And moving them closer to buildings appears to have deterred the birds.

 

We are still trying to figure out the water leaks but have been very fortunate that we have gotten some rain. Enough, anyway, that I haven’t had to water the vegetables too often. The plants in pots are a different story. The sun is so intense that they need watering at least every other day.

I have been fairly nonchalant about the sun. At least I was until Sunday. Alessia had spotted a sheep acting sickly and when I watched I saw some signs of fly strike so Dan and I herded the flock to the quarantine paddock and I stood around keeping sheep from escaping while Dan checked each one. Luckily there didn’t seem to be any fly strike but my exposure to the sun was too much. I was wearing my hat and sun block but got a bit of a sunburn on my arms. Aloe took care of the burning but I will be more alert in the future.

 

The chickens continue to under produce and over eat. We are going to buy 3 more in a few weeks and the timing is perfect. Next week it is time to clean out the layer of wood shavings and I plan to do a complete housecleaning then. Those chickens are poor tenants. You wouldn’t believe how they trash the place.

I am not sure where the shavings will go; the market garden compost heap makes the most sense. When I first read about leaving the shavings for 6 months, I was sure they were crazy. It would smell to high heaven. But it doesn’t. In fact it doesn’t smell at all. I rake it around the coop every morning and things stay pretty static all day since the hens prefer being out and around. When I let them out in the morning, the shavings are in a totally new configuration and the raking begins again.

Right now all the steers and sheep are gathered in paddock #1. They like each other’s company. I often see one of the lambs grazing peacefully within inches of one of our massive steers. And they are massive. I can’t believe how big they’ve gotten and how quickly. They are the sumo wrestlers of our mountain. All other steers pale in comparison. And they make great hamburgers!