Mother Nature has started to tease us with longer daylight, extra warmth, and signs of rebirth. Birds are chirping, daffodils are peeping out of the ground, and a trip outdoors doesn’t require 6 layers of clothing. Spring is near and life is good.
This week, like all others, brought no shortage of good and bad. I take both in stride, learning from the bad and cherishing the good. Here’s a glimpse into this week’s highlight reel….
Mail from Friends
A portrait of Eleanor! This was by far the highlight of my week. There is nothing better than getting a hand-drawn card in the mail from one of my very favorite farm friends. The little boy who drew this came on a goat hike a month ago and had an instant connection with Moe the minute she walked out of the barn. The two were inseparable the entire walk, and tears welled in his eyes when it was time to leave. Since then, Moe and I have corresponded with him and his family via snail mail, and they even joined us on a goat photo shoot (goatoshoot) last week. I feel so grateful to know such kind and caring people (young and old) who love our goats just as much as I do.
Here he is pictured below, one hand always on Moe’s back.
Chicken Coops Under Siege
Monday morning I opened the chicken coop to find carnage. A predator (presumably a raccoon) had come for a late night snack and killed two chickens. To spare much of the gory details, I’ll summarize by saying that the chicken coops have slats in the floor, so raccoons will reach up through the slats and try to pull chickens through by their legs. Unfortunately their bodies do not fit through the slats, so the results are miserable. Raccoons have good memories, and will become repeat offenders. I see this happen a lot in the summer time, and the only way to stop it is to fix the problem.
So Monday night I tried to move as many chickens who were roosting on the floor of the coops to higher ground, but didn’t get them all. Tuesday morning, same situation. This time there was also one survivor, pictured above. Betsy, as I now call her (because every needy chicken needs a name, of course), has a chunk of her breast gnawed out, as well as a limp leg. I sprayed liquid band-aid on her wound and moved her into the chicken infirmary so that she won’t get harassed by the other ladies (did you know that chickens are total savages and won’t bat an eye at pecking the wounded to death?). Despite her physical limitations, she is in good spirits, has a steady appetite, and shows a will to live, so I’ll keep rehabbing her until she can move back in with the flock.
To prevent further night-time attacks, I’ve taken to moving every. single. chicken. to high roosts in the coops so that they can’t be reached through the floor slats. Chickens remain stationary in darkness, so once they’re moved to a new roost, they’ll stay there the rest of the night. There’s roughly 70 (out of 367) that get moved every night, which is quite the chore at the moment, but worth every bit of effort if it can prevent mangled chickens.
Orion’s Jaunt
During the winter the goats live in a mobile house across the street from my house, which makes for easy access for feeding and watering during potential winter-y conditions. But on the weekends they move down to our main barn where they wait to go on goat walks. On Sunday afternoon after our last weekend walk, I let the goats out of the barn to walk back up to their goat mobile. Goats are herd animals, and don’t like being separated from each other, so I don’t usually have to worry about any single one of them wandering off.
Well. I made it up the hill to the goat mobile and no sooner had I put them in their pen that I got a call from my uncle asking if I was missing a goat. A quick look around and I realized that I was in fact missing a goat. Orion. If you’ve been on a goat walk, you will know Orion to be not the brightest bulb in the bunch. He is a big ol’ softie, but slower than most in mental faculties, and we love him for it.
So sure enough my uncle says that Orion’s trying to follow a family who’s out for an afternoon walk up the hill. So I headed down the hill to grab him while my uncle and the surprised walkers escorted him in the proper direction. The poor boy must have been distracted by something, probably food, when we left the barn for our pilgrimage, that he completely missed the fact that we left.
All is well that ends well, and the family out for an afternoon stroll was delighted to be joined by a goat for part of their walk.
Maple Syrup Season
One sign of Spring is the installment of the sap buckets on the Maple trees around our farm. Sap season is in full swing, and the weather of the past few weeks has been moderately good for production.
We are often asked if we sell our maple syrup, and here’s the full explanation:
The Roseberry Family of Sterling has been tapping our Maple trees for 40 years. They put in all of the hard work to install buckets, collect sap, and boil it down into syrup, and kindly share some of the final product with us. They don’t produce enough syrup for us to sell from our farm, so as a next-best alternative, we offer maple syrup from our good friends, the Heins family, of Sunny Knoll Farm in Westminster for sale year round in our stand. We hear from our customers all the time that it is some of the best maple syrup they’ve ever tasted, and we’re proud to support another hard working farm family by offering their best product at our stand.
A full blog post on the art and science of maple syrup production is coming soon…
Eleanor Update
So many of you have fallen in love with Eleanor and inquired about her often. We’re really feeling the love, and pass it all on directly to this sweet little goat. I am happy (and slightly ashamed) to share that Eleanor is thriving, and becoming quite the spoiled goat of the household. She sleeps on my bed at night, and I have completely house-trained her, which I didn’t know was even possible with goats. I think she’s just extra-smart…
You’ll also be happy to hear that she has acclimated very well with the rest of the herd, and they are much more respectful of her now than when she first arrived. It is so cute to watch her interact with the other goats, especially Orion (mentioned above) who is extra-gentle when playing silly goat antics with her.