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.