Good Bye

Dear Friends,

I am very sorry to have to tell you that I have decided to end my blog. I have loved describing my life on the farm and from the comments I have received, I gather that you have enjoying hearing them. Thank you so much for being such an important part of my life.

Terry Lord

A Coordinated Attack

It has been a challenging morning. Have you ever noticed how we use the word 'challenging' to mean horrible, disastrous, or just plain lousy? I mean all those things and more. So much more.

But first a little background to set the stage. These chickens - all 10 of them - are rapidly becoming my least favorite animals ever. They have dug up our yard, our gardens, etc. etc. They run everywhere; they poop everywhere; they never come when called. I have spent way too many of my declining years (all right, it FEELS like years) chasing them down at night. They lay eggs in every inaccessible place in 4 acres.

So we finally sequestered them in their chicken coop and the surrounding coop yard. We also clipped their wings: AGAIN! They didn't like it. They were vociferous in their protests. It reminded me of Chicago in '68. I think they were most upset at losing access to their shrine to the dearly departed Auntie Hen. You may remember that we had a hen whose curiosity led her to stick her head in the possum trap. History will record that curiosity killed its first chicken that day.

A few weeks back we reinstated said trap into the driveway verge and ever since we have had hens sitting at the shrine. First they dug a really, really big dirt hole. Then they assigned hours and each chicken takes her turn at sitting reverently at the shrine. Now that they are cooped up, no shrine vigil. Religious rage fuels their every squawk.

We have also been doing battle with a nest of rats under the coop. The rats don't seem to bother the chickens but they do bother us. So we set a trap for them. No rats, but to date we have trapped (and disposed of) 4 hedgehogs. The last hedgehog was dispatched this morning. Cue a rising screech of horrified hen sounds.

I walk to the coop to try and calm our feathered friends. As I bend over the fence, one 'friend' flies up into my face, talons out and voice on high. I reel back and hit a tree resoundingly with the back of my head. As the chicken lands and I start shaking my pain filled head, a rat runs over my foot. Now I could have been hallucinating, after all I just got a concussion from the tree collision, but I could swear I heard "Farmyard friends 1, humans 0" and a heartfelt cheer from the coop enclosure.

Two hours have passed and so has much of my headache but I have hauled up the proverbial white flag. The farmyard has won; I will spend the day inside. Better yet, I will spend the rest of the day in bed. Going to bed at 10:30 in the morning sounds just fine to me!

Pear Shaped in Paradise

Friday is my busy day. The family is up from Auckland for the holidays but Yael is commuting back and forth for her job. That leaves the extensive cooking/baking on Fridays to me. Since we don't cook on Saturdays, I need to double up.

For 6 days of the week, I meander around gazing at the gorgeous countryside; chasing chickens, inspecting stock and thoroughly enjoying what has to be one of the most beautiful spots in the world - one might almost call it 'paradise'. Very little happens and the days roll by. So little happens that I have been mulling over whether or not to cease writing this blog. Nothing much to tell.

And then there was Friday! I was busy cooking oatmeal raisin cookies, baking bread, preparing a chicken, sweet potatoes, potato salad, beets, and supervising Dan's brisket. Busy, busy, busy. The kitchen is hot, hot, hot. Dan leaves to move the steers down to our farthest paddock and returns to say that our neighbors have put a new bull in the next pasture. A big bull, a bossy bull intent on marking his territory, and a bellowing bull. We will have to check our fences and our poor, wee steers several times a day. Whoopee, just what I needed.

By the time dinner rolls around and Yael has survived another horrendous traffic trip, I am beat. In between child care, cooking, and monitoring the sheep in the front paddock, I am pretty wiped out. Jesse asks, yet again, where my cat is. I have no idea, I am just glad I have been spared the incessant rescue efforts I am usually involved in.. "No Jesse, don't pull her tail. No Jesse, don't pick her up by her ears", etc. The last time I remember seeing my cat was when I gave her a new, veterinarian recommended flea and worm medicine.

I assumed she was hanging out in my room away from the heat and from Jesse. And she was. She was lying on my chair, mere inches from as profound a mess of vomit as I have ever seen. It covered a major part of my hassock. (I am sort of pleased to report that the evidence is that she had killed another mouse.) So, majorly not happy, I clean up the mess and reassure myself that Smudge is not dead. She's not but lay there inert for at least 12 hours. Not a medicine I plan to buy ever again.

While I am playing hospital orderly, I keep hearing strange sounds from my bathroom. Remember, my apartment is over a 3 car garage and has a very large bathroom. And a flight of stairs. I know, I know, you're busy saying "Duh". But the stairs bit is important.
Finally, I go to investigate. The door is pulled almost closed which is unusual since I always leave it open. Make that "used to". From now on it stays closed.

Why? Because once I forced open the door it was to find a scene of great devastation and a frantic chicken scratching at a window. The chicken is at the window. It has hit my mirror which has fallen sideways and knocked my ironing board over. The ironing board hit the side pole of my clothes rack. (No, I am not making this up!) The clothes rack fell over, forcing the door to close. On its way to the window the chicken managed to scatter all my toiletries, hair clips, bands, and jars to creation and back. Ever tried to pick up 100 bobby pins? Not easy.

So I went from cleaning up cat vomit to cleaning up chicken poo, hair gel, and assorted other things. Yes, I managed to capture the frantic fowl and return it back down the stairs where I tossed it (a tad vigorously but it flew) into the chicken yard. So my paradise comes complete with a cat with a delicate digestive system and flying chickens who climb stairs. Perhaps its not quite paradise after all.

How Did She Know?

Yesterday had been a good day. I hadn't lost anything; broken anything; or messed up in any significant way. So I made myself a celebratory dinner of mutton, asparagus and baked potato. I was still congratulating myself as I prepared to step into the shower.

And then my perfect day fell apart. Literally as I was sticking my toe into the water, I heard a loud, plaintive BAAA from under my window. Really loud!! As in "I'm not in my paddock. I'm here in the driveway." And she was! 'She' was an almost grown lamb who desperately wanted back to her flock.

The problem is that she could bolt, run down the driveway into a neighbor's property or even down to the road and cause havoc with the traffic. And it would all be my responsibility. 

So I pulled a raincoat on over my wetness (and bareness) and ran sockless in my farm shoes into the garage. The sound of the garage door opening sent the lamb into a frenzy and down she ran. Off our driveway and 2/3 of the way down our shared driveway. I got in my car and followed. I parked beyond her and jumped into the too tall grass and waded my way up to her. My idea was to herd her into the paddock through the driveway gate.

Unfortunately that gate turned out to be locked and I didn't have the key. I did have grass up to my navel (did I mention it was wet grass?) and was distinctly uncomfortable. Anyway, at this point the lamb bolts back INTO our driveway, I run back down to the car, and drive past her to open the gate into the area before her paddock. 

This is the area claimed as their own by my chickens who bolt themselves at this unexpected opportunity to race into my garden and destroy all my baby flowers. So then I drive back and secure my neighbor's gate and our gate to the main driveway. All this time the  lamb is loudly protesting her enforced separation from the flock. 

"Aha!", I think, "I've got her now. All I have to do is herd her into the chicken yard, open the far gate to the paddock and shoo her in." Oh, the best laid plans...etc. I get out of my car and start moving her. She moves all right. Back down our driveway to the closed gates. I sigh with relief a tad too soon. She bellies her way under the gate and dashes back down the road.

Reread the first few paragraphs. It all happens again! Finally I get her back into our driveway and this time I back the car up against the gate so she can't scoot through. This works and she darts into the yard. I shut that gate behind her. She runs over to the brush next to the barn and I open the gate into the paddock preparatory to shooing her through.

Wrong again! She bolts over the brush and falls into a gully on the other side. She is trapped; the other 46 sheep are not. They curiously start poking their heads through the now open gate. I spend the next few minutes racing back and forth keeping the flock away from the gate and trying to extricate the lamb. I finally fall into the gully myself as I push the lamb out. As I thrash around trying to get out, she saunters calmly through the paddock and rejoins her family.

As I get back into the shower, wincing at all my scrapes and bruises, I have one question. How in hell did that lamb know I had just eaten her grandmother? And was this a purposeful revenge? Okay, make that 2 questions.

Til later.

What Is a Warkworth?

First, an two-pronged apology. The first is for not including a photo on this blog. The reason is simple. I "upgraded" my Windows and now cannot download my photos. Just assume that my photo of the growth of the chicks has occurred. The second prong is that I have not written for some time. My computer crashed and my rotator cuff still bothers me. Still, I'm sorry.

Okay, here is this month's update. All the older hens have been humanely dispatched to the great scratching ground in the sky. We waited literally months but no eggs equals no hens. The 10 chicks appear thrilled to no longer be terrorized by the big bullies.

Our 3 steers are not working out well at all. They came puny and remain puny. Not too puny however. When Dan and Yael tried to treat them for possible parasites/worms, one crashed through our fence and romped off with our neighbor's herd. A second smashed the gates. The third took his medicine meekly. It was an unbelievable drama to get #1 back and I personally can't wait for him to become hamburger.

Anyway: What is a Warkworth. Warkworth is the small town I live in. In the summer months (which is what we have now in the Southern hemisphere) our small town is overrun with tourists and weekenders. It is almost impossible to find a place to park. If you are one of the blessed few, the parking is free. (I told you it was a small town!). I have a book club meeting on the 1st Wed. of the month - today - and after much circling and muttering I parked in a 10 minute space and hoped the parking police were busy elsewhere.

About 20 minutes into the meeting, a librarian ran over and whispered that the traffic guys were getting a cup of tea in the break room before grabbing their hand-held computers and sashaying forth to spread a little Xmas cheer.

Three women recommended that I park (as they do) in the nearby supermarket lot. They assured me that they had never had a problem. Well, I was stuck so I took their advice. After the meeting was over I went into the supermarket to buy something. Guilt is a powerful force. I met all 3 women in there also buying stuff. No wonder they'd never had a problem. Neither would I if I continued to shop there. But that's a small town: the parking is free but scant and those of us who live here feel guilty about taking advantage of the shops and buy things we don't really need to say thank you.

You just have to love New Zealand and the small town mentality. At least I do!

Because I Deserve It

No, friends, I am not dead but with both shoulders out of commission with rotator cuff injuries, there were times I wished I were. Anyway, that and bad weather and sheer laziness explain why I haven't written for six weeks. Oh, and the fact that there was nothing to write about!

That all changed today. In my down time we acquired 10 baby chicks. These chicks need a lot of TLC and are thriving as you can see. However, yesterday we moved them from the breeding coop to the big coop. What happened to our 9 chickens that had been occupying said coop? Well...

Chicken food is expensive and in order to justify that expense, the chickens have to lay eggs. From 9 chickens we were getting 2 or 3 eggs a day. This went on for several months. Finally it was time to declare that we no longer had chickens as pets. Then I had to discover which chickens were still laying. Not easy but eventually I caught 3 actually sitting in the laying boxes, marked them with Naavah's finger paints and the rest were doomed to be fertilizer. Dan did the actual dispatching of the hens; I did the crying.

But we moved on, sort of. After 3 weeks of chick sitting, I was ready to move them into the big coop. This meant displacing our 3 remaining hens to the small coop. Not as bad as it sounds since the weather is nice and our fowl range free all day anyway. So we made the swap - we chased chickens, blocked hen attacks and nurtured the hell out of the little ones.

Today I cleaned out the old coop (what a fun job; 3 weeks of chicken poo, etc.) and was trudging back into the garage for yet another trash bag when I spied the cat trap that Dan had stored in the other bay of the garage. Lo and behold, we had trapped a possum. And not just any possum but one who had left its weight in poo and wee all around and under the cage. Now I figure the genetic possum pool has just risen by several points because this one had obviously been born without any brain whatsoever. It must have snuck into the garage while I was cleaning the coop and darted into a cage that didn't even have any food to entice it. What a loser! Or was I the loser?

Anyway, I now had to finish the chicken coops and then dispatch the possum and clean the garage. And now I am going to have the world's longest, hottest shower. Drought be damned. I deserve it.

New Ventures

One of the most important things today's small farmers can do is to keep trying new things. Above you see our latest attempt: Bee Hives. Now don't get the wrong idea. We know nothing about bees and even less about bee keeping. Naavah, 4 year old grandchild, had to educate me on the number of eyes bees have. 

Anyway, here we go with another joint effort to keep things humming (sorry!) here at the farm. What we've done is contract with a beekeeper who situated his hives on our land. He will have responsibility for the maintenance, gathering, etc. In exchange, he keeps us lavishly supplied with honey and takes the excess for himself.

This works well for us. We don't sell anything we harvest, reap, or grow here. But we do eat exceedingly well. Our eggs are for us, our meat is for us, and now our honey is for us. What we do get is the knowledge that the kids are eating the best food in the world. No  preservatives, no hormones just organic everything. I am very proud of Dan and Yael for their commitment to giving the healthy best to their kids. After all, these are my super, exceptional grandchildren and only the best will do for them.

Til next time.