Since I’m one of those people who need sunshine on a daily basis, and tend to be somewhat melancholy when deprived of it, I naturally project those feelings onto the critters. Or at least, that’s how I rationalize buying more exotic, expensive treats during the rainy months – the poor things are depressed! How can I pass up Happy Hen Treats when I walk down the aisle? Harvey and Christmas found themselves particularly uplifted this week after I happened upon presliced, pre-packaged apple slices at QFC. A five-pack was on sale for fifty cents at QFC, so naturally I loaded up. I didn’t even worry about the rapidly approaching expiration date, given the population of our backyard. Christmas has already learned what’s coming when I reach into my pocket and she hears crinkling. It’s a little disconcerting when she tries to get the package while I’m trying to open it, but I figure she’s just extra hungry. I have to confess that while dispensing her apples treats the other day I had one of those blinding flashes of insight when I realized I’ve become a certified crazy bird lady. It hit me as I was biting the apple slices into smaller pieces (to compensate for her beak size) and spitting them into my hand, then dumping them into her bowl. Since I’m basically regurgitating her treats for her, I might as well do the chicken dance around her food bowl while screeching ca-CAW, ca-CAW. But she really does love apples, so you know I’ll keep doing it.

I really need to find a treat the ducks love, because they’re starting to quack jealously when everyone else is grubbing on Wheat Thins and they’re standing around with empty beaks. The only thing I’ve found that they come running for is watermelon, and that’s out of season. Gene won’t even consider having some specially flown in from California, no matter how many times I remind him that I don’t ask for much. I’ve tried frozen peas and carrots, bits of bread, canned corn, and apple bits, but so far they just spit those morsels out and quack sadly. They love Wheat Thins, but I’m worried the sharp edges will hurt their little throats, since they don’t have teeth to chew them. And I don’t care how far I descend into my crazy bird lady persona, I refuse to pre-chew a cracker. That’s just wrong. Maybe I’ll try bran flakes. I’ll have to add that to Gene’s shopping list.

Had I known in advance about Cecil,
I would have brought a real camera.

I’ve also added a critter to my personal list of must haves, which if you’ll remember includes quail, peacocks, and pheasants. And this new obsession is Abigail’s fault, because she knows how quickly I fall in love and she’s the one who took me to the Bug Museum in Gorst. While she and her three-year-old daughter looked around at all the critters on display, I spent my time gazing longingly at Cecil the Sulcata Tortoise. After a long chat with the museum curator, I learned that Cecil will live approximately 100 years, he’s a vegetarian, and he’ll grow to about 150 pounds. His demeanor is calm although he loves to pace, and his poo generally takes on a log-shape form. (I ask all the important questions right up front). I’ve already drawn up plans to convert the Bunny Ranch into a duplex, with the new tortoise taking up the fully enclosed, heated, sun-roof equipped lower level, but Gene said he simply insists on getting The Installation – aka Garage Brooding Resort – finished first. I asked him when he planned to get started on it, but he was so focused on thinking about the project that he didn’t answer me. At least I’m the only one who left the Bug Museum empty handed; Abigail bought a fire-bellied frog for her 8-year-old son’s new bedroom. The frog came in a neat aquatic habitat consisting of a clear acrylic lidded box filled with about a half inch of water at the bottom. A little plastic island was floating inside, with a palm tree glued to it. The island was a little disconcerting, both because it is clearly one of those styrofoam trays that small portions of raw hamburger meat come packaged in, and also because it had a fake ceramic frog glued to it. I tried to convince her to get two frogs, but she wanted to do some research first. Mostly to make sure she wasn’t doing the equivalent of putting two Siamese Fighting Fish in the same bowl, I think.

Shy wants to know if you like see-food.

In less exotic news, Fiona and Shy have come to a somewhat uneasy peace, at least during meal times. I’ve mentioned before how this farm seems to have a bad epidemic of grass is greener syndrome, because Shy is now convinced that the goat grain is delicious, and Fiona loves her some alpaca chews. Shy is slowly emerging as the alpha critter, in that he now shoves his head in the goat feeding station and chows down on grain, totally ignoring Fiona’s protests. If she gets too annoying, Shy will take a particularly large mouthful of grain, lower his head to about a foot off the ground while looking up at her, then blow chunks of it all over her face. I’m so gonna try that next time someone gets pushy at the buffet.

I don’t even have a good excuse for not posting in two weeks….mostly my time has been spent looking out the window, sighing heavily, and grinding my teeth as I watch the ducks floating around in the huge puddles forming in the backyard. We’re going to have to move Christmas’s chalet before it floats away; this year’s flooding is much worse than last years. Luckily for her, I elevated her floor last year, so the rubber mat is up on pallets and she stays warm and dry despite her new lake front property. Harvey, on the other hand, returns to the Bunny Ranch every night looking rumpled and fussy. He definitely shares my opinion of the rain, and it’s making him cranky. The other night I brought out his customary treat when he came hopping home, and he glared at me because it wasn’t Wheat Thins. I thought he might appreciate fresh zucchini slices, but apparently not. I braved the rain storm again, swapping out the offending slices for a fresh carrot. He glared at it, then glared at me. After a third trip back to the house, I offered up a freshly dug potato, which earned me a glare and a heavy bunny sigh, but at least he ate it. I guess I need to go stock up on Wheat Thins.

The chickens spend all their time either partying under the winter enclosure or in Harvey’s Bunny Ranch. I love looking out the window and seeing twenty of them crammed in there. Harvey doesn’t seem to mind, and the chickens have gotten used to him. They truly hate the rain, and tend to look pretty miserable when they get caught out in it. Last week, I thought they needed some cheering up, so I splurged on “Happy Hen Treats” at the feed store. Thank god the family-sized container of freeze-dried meal worms sports a huge ‘not for human consumption’ label on the front of it, because they look so tasty I might have been tempted. Not.  Definitely worth the $16, though, they come running when I shake the container.

On one of the rain-free days last week, I was helping Gene move the fence line back to enlarge the pasture area. And by helping, I mean I was standing there using my formidable backside to prop up the fence while he pulled it tight. I must have stepped on a slumbering wasp, because I suddenly felt a simultaneous burning and chewing sensation on my upper leg. I’ve never encountered a wasp before, and my initial thought was somehow a spider had crawled up my leg. My very next thought was that I couldn’t see Nugget on her usual perch; my pants have never come off so fast in my life. Fiona tried to help remove the offending garments by grabbing a leg and running off. Not my finest hour, chasing a goat while pantsless in the middle of the afternoon. On the plus side, as I ran past the shed chasing the goat I saw Nugget, which made me feel a bit better. Then Gene checked out the bite mark, and I felt a lot better when he declared it wasp inflicted.

Gene, with Abigail’s assistance, spent his weekend building Shy an alpaca cabana, the latest addition to his unending list of projects. It’s a three sided structure attached to the goat’s shed, and it has a heat lamp and a feed and water station. Shy has yet to go in it, even in the rain, but Christmas and Woolimina love it. Christmas hangs out there during the day, and Wool beds down in it at night. I’m sure once we hire a towel boy, Shy will have no problem hanging out in the cabana. At the rate the yard is filling up, it will be a pool-side cabana in no time.

Other than that, not much is new here on the farm. The chicks are still happy in the garage brooding facility, and I have taken it upon myself to design what I now refer to as The Installation — a state of the art, six-foot tall, fully enclosed brooding resort. The bottom three feet will be plywood, topped by three feet of framed chicken wire. There will be roosting bars all the way up, and a plywood roosting platform at the top of the wall. The front wall will be hinged, and open in the middle for ease of cleaning. I also wanted to put in a live tree with branches for hopping and perching, but Gene squashed that dream by telling me if we put a tree in the box, then the chicks will get used to roosting in trees and not go into the big coop at night once they’re outside. While I had to concede his point and erase the tree from my blueprints, I did remind him to refer to it as The Installation rather than merely ‘the box’. He just stared at me, but I’m used to that. The key feature in my brooding resort is a pond feature that hangs below the floor level, with a removable cover. That way ducks can grow up in that half of it, and when we don’t have ducks we can cover the pond. I thought that particular detail was genius, and probably enough to earn me a scholarship at the architectural school of my choice, should I choose that as my next career.

Have you ever found yourself trying to remember if it’s lamas or alpacas that spit? Turns out, they both do. And alpacas have freakishly good aim. I’ve had a lot of luck convincing Shy that it’s safe to come over and eat grain or hay out of my hand, but somehow he always knows when I’m about to grab his collar and the chase is on. Mostly I’ve had to grab him in order to adjust his blanket, since either he or a pesky, jealous goat keeps chewing the straps in half. Usually he gives up pretty easily, but sometimes I have to enlist Abigail’s help. The two of us then slowly back him into a corner, and then he just gives up and allows us to hold him. If we’ve chased him too long, or bothered him too much, Abigail and I learned the hard way that when Shy starts burbling like an old Mr. Coffee machine he’s about to launch a counterstrike. Now when he starts percolating, we know to duck.

I’m not sure if it’s the changing weather or what, but contrariness seems to be contagious this week on the farm. Last night, I watched Harvey hop back into the Bunny Ranch after a hard evening’s partying, so I went inside and got him his usual bedtime snack. Fearing he might get tired of Wheat Thins, I added a fingerling potato from the garden. There’s a trick to delivering Harvey’s bed times treats, since it’s dark outside and hard to see the spiders who cohabitate with him. If you turn too far to the right after entering the Bunny Ranch, you walk into Horatio’s web, and too far to the left will bring you face to face with Esmeralda, who is about three times Horatio’s size. When I bent down to deliver Harvey’s treats, I took my eyes off the bunny for a split second to make sure my butt wasn’t backing anywhere near Esmeralda’s spacious abode.  Either Harvey got tired of waiting for his crackers or he mistook the base of my thumb for his potato treat, but ouch. That bunny can bite. At least he let go right away, unlike Claire, who used to hang on for the ride.

Harvey has also taken it upon himself to excavate various tunnels throughout the greenbelt behind the pasture area. He’s strong enough to actually bend fencing, and has done so in numerous places. If you listen to him in the woods, he makes so much noise if you didn’t know any better you would start wishing you were loaded for bear. He also hollowed out an area underneath the circular composter, which got overrun by blackberries this year. He ate his way underneath it, which caused a sort of vaulted area to form. Not content with just the area underneath it, he excavated all the way back into the brambles. Since the composter was strategically placed next to the compost pile, one of the chicken’s favorite bug hunting areas, guess where they’ve started laying? I haven’t been able to reach the pile of eggs I’m suspecting is back there somewhere, but I did see a chicken crawl out of the tunnel making what Gene and I call “egg screeches”, which is their proclamation to the world that an egg has just entered it. For the last few weeks, I’ve noticed that I haven’t been collecting any tiny sized eggs from the nesting areas. I just figured that the eggs were getting larger, but now I’m worried there’s a huge clutch of them in the bramble tunnel. Gene’s going to have to let me know what he finds in there.

I should have seen this coming, but the weather just had to pick Shy’s makeover date to turn colder. The day after he got sheared, Gene came home in the morning to find him shivering out in the pasture. Obviously that broke my heart just a little bit, so I went out that very afternoon and bought him a designer blanket to wear until his wool grows back. Or until it gets warmer, whichever comes first. Since I couldn’t find a store in our area that carries high fashion alpaca outerwear, I had to settle for a foal blanket. Shy hasn’t quite forgiven us for the whole filing of the teeth without Novocaine thing, so convincing him to get within grabbing distance took a little work. Gene drew on his old skills of breaking horses, and within minutes Shy was happily ensconced in his new coat.

Abigail cuddles aren’t optional.

Since then, we’ve corralled him a number of times, just to give him pets, treats, and holds. He’s back to eating out of my hand again, now that he knows I’m not going to inflict fashion on him every time I come near. The only other thing I want to do is add some sort of flap to the butt area of his coat, because his rear view is still disturbing, and in my opinion equipment should always be kept in some sort of tool shed.

Speaking of equipment hanging out in plain view, it’s just about time for little Wesley to go live with the boy goats down at Abigail’s pasture. The first couple times I thought Wesley was just playing with poor innocent little Leia, but no, he’s clearly practicing his more adult skills. Despite being rather indecent at times, Wesley is still the cutest goat ever. He loves to climb in my lap whenever I sit down in the pasture, and he usually falls asleep in my arms. I’ve been letting all the critters graze in the back greenbelt, and Wesley has found a new favorite place to nap back there. During what will probably be one of the last truly sunny days of the season, Wesley took the kind of epic sunshine nap that makes you want to lie down right next to him and take one yourself. I think that’s why I spend so much time out in the back watching the animals; I’ve never been more at peace than when I’m surrounded by napping goats and softly cackling chickens.

But apparently having too much peace in one’s life is a bad thing, because just when I’m enjoying the sight of happily foraging chickens, Marley has to ruin it by playing mind games with me. I’ve been lulled into a false since of security lately, because Marley hasn’t launched himself at the back of my legs in at least a month. Instead, he’s started doing something infinitely more terrifying. He will sneak up behind me, then start twining around my legs like a cat. Then he’ll sit on the toe of my boot and stare at me. It’s like he’s daring me to shake him off. I can’t tell if he’s genuinely trying to be loving and sweet, or if he’s debating whether he should go for my face. So far I just stand there until he moves; being the optimistic type I’m assuming he just wants to cuddle.

Gene has been spending a lot more time in the back yard lately, since he’s got a new hobby. And by hobby, I mean he’s joined me in one of my most epic battles to date, Battle Rat. Winning Battle Mink on behalf of the remaining ducks had one unfortunate downside – by chasing off the minks, who eat the rats, the rats have taken advantage of the void and filled it with more rats. Gene’s not nearly as upset about their presence as I am. In fact, he tends to look forward to dusk with a kind of maniacal glee that makes me glad I’m not a rat. The lengthening shadows of night will find him perched on his backyard blind, pellet gun in one hand (complete with new scope) and beer in the other. He’s invited Abigail’s husband down for a shoot off, but so far it’s been a solo operation. I want to get him a little rat-shaped stencil so he can keep track of his kills on the shed door, but I’m worried he’d run out of space too quickly.

Today was makeover day here at the farm! I spent the entire last week making phone calls to find a shearer for Shy, and his new stylist came over this morning. She needed help holding him during the haircut, so I had to wake poor Gene up at the crack of dawn to manhandle the alpaca, since I’m fairly useless in the holding on to stuff department. Shy spent the early morning hours perusing the fashion magazines, and finally decided to go with a completely shorn look. Since he has a brand new, happy place to live, he wanted a brand new look to go with it. The whole grooming process took about an hour, since Shy had three years worth of wool, toe nails, and teeth to get rid of. Alpacas have similar teeth to horses, in that they keep growing. Poor Shy’s teeth had never been taken care of, so he couldn’t eat right or move his mouth properly, and his nails were so long in back he walked funny. The clasp on his collar had actually rusted shut, and it was so matted into his coat that we would have had to cut it off anyway, even if the buckle worked. The people that we rescued him from insisted that we return the collar, so I’m going to mail them the pieces of it, along with a photo of me hugging a happy, content, taken-care-of Shy and flipping off the camera. Gene picked out a brand new, wide purple collar for him to wear, and I think Shy actually tries to show it off, he’s so proud of wearing something new.

Even though I couldn’t help with the shearing, it was still a fascinating process to watch. The shearer tied ropes around his front and back legs, then stretched the ropes between a tree and a post while Shy lay down. He didn’t seem to mind it overly much, since lying down is the alpaca’s go-to stance when confronted by a threat. Gene held his head while she cut off enough wool to make it look like a woolly mammoth spontaneously molted in the backyard. Shy being our first alpaca, I was totally unfamiliar with their anatomy, especially when it’s uncovered by three years worth of fuzz. As soon as he stood back up, it became readily apparent that he is still intact. His equipment, as it were, looks disconcertingly human in both size and appearance. He also has a distinctly separated butt, topped with a disturbingly rat-like tail. Seriously, looking at him from behind is unnerving. The shearer said most people leave the wool on the tail, and now I know why. I’m considering sewing him a pair of pants.

At any rate, Shy is a completely different alpaca after his beauty treatments. The goats and sheep barely recognized him when he went back into the pasture, and he walks and eats normally again. He seems much, much happier.

In other farm news, you can definitely tell at a glance that fall is already upon us. Summer’s scattered watermelon rinds have been replaced by pumpkin husks, a treat which the chickens love. Watching them shove their entire heads inside to pick out the seeds is endlessly amusing, at least to me. Even the latest crop of young chickens flock to the pumpkins Gene chucks off the deck for them.

Since the weather is starting to turn, Gene finished building the new woodshed, which is really cool. Today I finished relocating the wood pile from the side of the house to inside the shed, a task which took forever, both because I had to do it one-handed and because I had chicken helpers. The only reason Gene let me anywhere near that particular project is because the wood is so dry each piece weighs about as much as balsa wood, although the merrily tunneling bugs added some heft. Each time I lifted a piece off the ground, the area was immediately filled with at least 15 questing, hungry beaks. I suspected that woodpiles were home to things other than wood, but wow. That was like an Old Country Buffet for the chickens. They have an amazing ability to twist their beaks into tiny openings and mine out the termites, or whatever delicacy dwells within. It gave me a great idea for a chicken exterminating business – I could just slap some diapers on the hungriest birds and let them loose in a bug-infested house.

And speaking of bug infested, I complain about this every year, but with fall comes the spiders. The hundreds and hundreds of yard spiders. I’m not sure if it was the drought, or the temperatures, or what, but this season spawned some monsters. I let them be, mostly because they have turned Battle Fly increasingly in my favor. Most of them have names, as they tend to pick a spot and stay there, just getting bigger and bigger. I’ve found naming them makes them slightly less terrifying. Juan lives on one of the side gates, Henrietta dangles from the lamp illuminating the duck pond, and Michael is the reason I no longer, under any circumstances, go inside the chicken’s winter enclosure.

None of them can hold a candle to Nugget, though. Abigail chose that name for her because she resembles a chicken nugget in girth and coloration, and for this reason I’ll never eat a McNugget again. Nugget has made her home underneath the goat’s porch area, and spends her day clinging to the side of the window. I don’t think her web will support her weight, or she’s so lazy that she just waits for bugs to come to her. And she must catch a lot of them, because she’s like National-Enquirer-should-know-about-this huge. Every time I go out there I expect to see her snacking on a bird. I took her picture (you’re welcome, Bess Bess), but it doesn’t do her justice. I thought about asking Gene to hold up a dollar coin next to her, because her body is about that circumference, but I figured she’d just snatch the coin, throw it back at him, then demand his wallet. And if I were Gene, I’d give it to her, cuz damn.

What an amazing week it’s been here on the farm! Abigail learned of an alpaca who needed a new home, so we all piled into a car to go for a visit.  When we met Shiner (named for the black patch of fur surrounding his right eye), he seemed unhappy and lonely. From what I could gather, he had free range of about 5 acres of land, but no one ever paid attention to him. The worst part was he had no herd buddies, and alpacas hate to be alone. The closest I could get to him there was about ten feet away. His owners said he was really antisocial, but we could tell he was just depressed. He was way overgrown, and looked like he hadn’t been shorn in at least three years. Anyone who is at all familiar with me and my inability to say no to rescue animals already knows where this story is headed….right into our backyard.

It took us a day to line up a method of transport for him, after Gene wisely cancelled the U-Haul trailer reservation I had made. Abigail made some calls and was able to borrow a proper horse trailer. Shiner was surprisingly eager to load up, and when Gene led him into the backyard, it was almost magical watching his disposition change as soon as he saw all our critters. We’ve had him for one day, and he’s already eating orchard grass out of my hand. I’m still not used to looking out the window and seeing Shy sitting out in the pasture. He looks, and walks, like a huge woolly mammoth. If we taped a long trunk to his face, he would look exactly like Snuffleupagus. It took a few hours for the goats and sheep to get used to Shy, but they all sleep next to each other now.

But Shy wasn’t the only critter that got rescued this week. Two days ago we transferred Abigail’s 12 chickens from the garage brooding facility to her coop. Early the next morning, one of her goats opened the coop door and chased all the new chickens out. One of them ran under the fencing and disappeared into the woods. She called me for chicken wrangling help, and we ended up tromping through the woods with huge fishing nets, thinking that would be the easiest way to catch a tiny chicken hiding in the brambles. It took us three hours and lots of bush whacking, but Abigail was finally able to yard the chicken out from its hiding spot inside a rotting tree trunk.  Our eight chicks were also evicted from the garage brooding facility and relocated to the big coop. They are quite a bit braver than the last generation of chickens – these guys went exploring on the first day I put them out there. I bet it’s only a matter of a week or two before they start joining the flock at the base of the deck at treat time.

In farm news, we are just about done with the canning season. It’s a good thing we started early, because I’m in another cast now, and canning one handed is quite difficult. On the plus side, Bess Bess is here for a visit so Gene can teach her how to do it. My favorite thing that we’ve canned so far is watermelon jelly. It tastes exactly like a Jolly Rancher, and is amazing on toast. The only thing left to can is another batch of plums, and probably some more apple butter. Then Gene needs to build another few bookcases to store it all!

Fall is rapidly encroaching here on the farm. Gene helped me plant flowers in the pots on the back deck, just to help maintain the illusion of summer, but there’s no denying the low-40s temperatures at night. I’ve been frantically trying to get all my autumn chores done before I’m back to being a one-handed farmer next week; my “to do” list is so long that basically all I’ve gotten accomplished is sitting out in the backyard with my camera, thinking that I should probably start on it.  Canning is the one thing we’ve definitely kept up with – blackberry and raspberry jelly, tons of pickles, peach and apple butter, salsa, and dehydrated apple rings all grace the storeroom shelves. This weekend we’ll finish up with the apple butter, and try doing some pickled carrots. Hopefully they’ll be some carrots left for the jars, because they somehow keep ending up in the Bunny Ranch.

Even though it fusses me mightily when Harvey goes on his adventures (he’s now up to two-day romps, and has earned the nickname Bender Bunny), I can’t imagine denying him his taste of freedom. I would love to somehow tag him with a GPS tracker, just to see where he spends his time when he’s not in his bedroom. I have a feeling that come spring, the indigenous wild bunny population is going to increase in both numbers and in bulk. I’ve gone outside several times at midnight with a flashlight, calling him in the hopes that he’ll come hopping home. It works most of the time, and then I find myself picking carrots by the light of the moon, assuming he’ll want a snack before retiring for the evening. He came home one night with two ticks attached just below his left eye, which I guess is better than an “I heart mom” tattoo. Pulling them off was surprisingly easy, since I just had to distract him with a carrot long enough to yank them off with a tweezer. At first, I thought he had somehow gotten a seed pod of some sort embedded in his face, since the bigger tick was gray and bullet shaped and I don’t spend time theorizing about what a tick would look like should I run into one. When I pulled it out and took a closer look, I have no shame in admitting that I screamed and threw it, tweezer and all, as far as I could. I was not expecting the seed pod to be capable of waving tiny little legs in my face when I went in for a closer look. Speaking of waving things in my face, it actually had a face. I was not prepared for that. Then I went inside and changed clothes, just in case the tick fell off onto my clothes when I was winding up for the tweezer toss. I almost dropped trou right there in the Bunny Ranch, but at the last minute decided that if I did that, a neighbor would certainly pick that time to drop by to borrow a cup of sugar.

In non-vermin related news, three incubator eggs hatched! Out of the 24 I put in there, I candled them all and unfortunately only three were actually fertile. But if you separate the fertile ones from the non-fertile ones, that’s a 100% hatch rate! The chicks are super cute, but all three have the same disconcertingly large eyes that Broody Mama’s earlier chicks had. Broody Mama, who has just a few days left until her clutch is scheduled to hatch, was joined in the shed by Broody Mama Too, who is likewise sitting on a clutch of eggs. They both have between 12 and 15 eggs crammed underneath them, so with a 1/4 fertility rate, I’m anticipating a total of maybe 6 eggs actually hatching. (Don’t bother checking that math, because I pulled those numbers from a region somewhat south of my brain. Nerds.) Gene is running out of time to build the nursery addition to the new coop, because the brooding box in the garage is at maximum capacity with the three new chicks in one section, and the twenty month-old chicks in the other.  He also has yet to put the second story I’ve been requesting on the Duck Mansion, since those five ducklings are growing at a startling rate.

Wesley and Leia, the baby goats, are starting to lose their “kidness” and look like proper, albeit miniature, goats. Their horns are starting to come in, and they perfect their headbutting technique constantly. Oddly enough, Woolimina and Wesley seem to have bonded. I’ll look out the window to see Wesley rubbing his head up and down Woolimina’s nose. It’s the cutest thing ever. Woolimina being loving and social is kind of like trying to photograph Bigfoot, though – you never see it when you actually have a camera. Wesley loves pets, and comes bounding up to anyone who walks into the pasture. Leia is more like her mama, Buttercup, and only consents to cuddles after you’ve chased her around the pasture and scooped her up. I’m trying to change that behavior with my usual barrage of treats. Watermelon bites were the golden ticket with Woolimina – she comes running up to me and nuzzles my hand every time I go into the pasture, and only runs away once she’s eaten whatever I brought her. The one time I went in there without any treat, she backed up a few paces and lowered her head like she was about to gore me with her “special” horn – the one that’s broken off and sticks straight out, rather than curving gracefully back over her head like the other one. I like to think she wouldn’t actually impale me over lack of treat dispensation, but I’d to hate to be wrong.

It’s been a week of relative peace here on the farm, thank goodness. No predator sightings, no major disasters, just frolicking baby goats as far as the eye can see. Wesley and Leia have fallen in love with the ramp Gene built two years ago; they spend hours jumping up on it, then sliding back down. The two babies have actually started playing together, at least when their mamas aren’t looking. Buttercup and Ariel have decided for some reason that the other goat’s baby is a terrible influence on their precious little one, so if one gets too close to the other, headbutts ensue from all directions. Everyone else has adapted well to the pitter patter of little feet; Christmas makes her trademark grumpy turkey sound whenever one gets too close to her, but I have yet to see Wesley or Leia dangling from her beak. The kids pretty much steer clear of the ducks, which is odd considering Wesley’s favorite sport is sideways hopping right at any chicken who wanders across his path.

Wesley and Leia aren’t the only wee ones in residence right now; two days ago I found a guy on craigslist selling what he advertised as “one to two month old” ducks. Since I need to re-establish my laying population, since ducks eggs are one of my best sellers, I figured two-month-old ducks would be perfect, since they start laying at four months. Obviously getting four-month-old ducks would be ideal, but I’m not made out of money. Nor, apparently, are mink attacks covered by home owners insurance. Anyway, so I convince Gene to drive me all the way out to Seabeck to pick up these five ducks.

I’ve noticed a trend with some of the folks I’ve dealt with on craigslist – most seem to lack basic knowledge about what they’re selling. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of people have been wonderful, and have even started following my blog. This guy, not so much. What he described as months old ducks were in fact not more than five days to a week old, tops. We’re talking fuzzy headed, size of a half-dollar, still in the “peep peep” months away from laying anything stage ducklings. That didn’t stop me from taking them home, though.  I have to say this for the craigslist guy, though, neither one of us can bear the sight of mama duck’s reaction to her ducklings being hauled away in a big fishing net, so I came home with mama duck too. All six have fit right into the crazy farm life, but I did have to add some more swim rocks to the pool so the tiniest duckling can get out.

I did have a bit of a scare last night, though. After finishing my evening chores and plugging in the night light for the ducks, I noticed that Harvey hadn’t put himself to bed yet. He usually heads back to the Bunny Ranch before dark, so I started to get uneasy when I saw his bedroom was empty. Come midnight with still no Harvey, I put on my headlamp and set about to tromp through the woodline to find him. Have you ever worn a headlamp in the woods? For some reason, the beam of light illuminating at that particular angle turns everything familiar into creepy, Friday the 13th, vampires hiding behind every tree sort of woods. It also has the most unfortunate side effect of magnifying the size of all the orb spiders that have apparently taken up residence around our house. I quickly settled for bawling, “Harvey, come home!” in the general direction of the woods from the relative safety of the deck. On the plus side, I learned that the eyes of white moths shine fluorescent pink when you shine a flashlight at them. How cool is that? Harvey stumbled in sometime this morning, presumably after last call at the clubs. I found him nursing a hangover underneath the deck steps. I gave him a cucumber treat to try and rehydrate him, but he asked for it in Bloody Mary form, and added that I probably didn’t need to talk so loudly. Shortly after Sean Paul and Marley began crowing in his vicinity, he grumpily (and unsteadily) wandered off to bed.

In chicken news, I have decided that those little pink leg bands should be pulled from the market. I check in with the chicks numerous times throughout the day, so imagine my horror when I realized the legs of three chicks had started to swell around the bands. They are supposed to grow with the leg, but for some reason that didn’t happen. Gene was able to cut the band off, and we used Neosporin to help calm the swelling. They all seem fine now, but I felt like a horrible chicken mama. To compensate for the lack of identifying markers on them, Abigail came down and together we dyed the left foot of each of her chicks purple with food coloring. I figure if the food coloring wears off, then Abigail can just get new chicks, and I’ll keep all those.

Princess Buttercup, not to be outdone by Princess Ariel, had her kid last night! BC has always been something of a party night goat, so she waited until almost midnight to give birth to Princess Leia, which forced Abigail and I to check her out by flashlight. At least this time I was somewhat prepared; I spent the previous afternoon laboriously crafting a door to the goat’s bedroom, so that Buttercup would have her own separate nursery area. Gene was at work, so what would have taken him approximately five minutes to do took me almost two hours. Part of the problem is I can’t really hold power tools effectively any more, but the bigger problem was I didn’t feel like finding a tape measure so I eyeballed how big the door should be to cover the hole in the shed wall. Shockingly, I had to recut it four times, on the big scary table saw no less. You think I would have learned my lesson and measured where to hang the hinges, but you’d be wrong. Another half an hour and multiple screw holes later, I pronounced it good enough. Gene can fix it on his day off, but for now at least it keeps curious goats and sheep out of the nursery area.

Wesley and Leia get along well, but the same can’t be said of the two new mamas. The very first thing they did when I let them out this morning was check out each other’s nursery area, presumably to make sure the other one wasn’t situated in more posh quarters. When the two found themselves in the same nursery, another headbutting competition ensued. Sometimes it seems like I’m running a daycare, rather than a farm. It doesn’t matter that each goat mama gets her very own water bucket, her very own scoop of grain, and her very own pile of hay. The other goat’s provisions always seem fresher and tastier somehow. I’ll be glad when the wee ones are big enough to go back into the pasture with Woolimina and Fiona, because between the two nurseries in the front and Broody Mama’s nest in the back, we’re running out of room in the old coop to store the feed and tools.

I’m really excited to see how many of the eggs in Broody Mama’s latest clutch hatch. This time I was careful to only give her eggs laid on the same day, so the odds are pretty good that most of them should be viable. Gene said I could only let her sit on five, so of course she’s sitting on a pile of ten; I figured what he meant was he wanted five chicks, so I figured ten eggs would help achieve that goal. Between Broody Mama’s clutch and the 24 eggs in the new incubator, Gene wanted to know just what I planned to do with all those chicks. I told him that was really more his problem, since he’s the construction half of this enterprise. To take our farm to the next level, obviously he needs to build another brooding box area. I’m glad he asked, though – that means he’s trying to plan ahead.

I would put them all in the garage brooding box, but that’s currently full of 20 two-week-old baby chicks. Eight of them are ours, and the other twelve we’re fostering for Abigail. This time we opted to put little pink bracelet bands around her twelve, since last time I fostered her chicks I cried when it was time to give them back. For some reason, Abigail is convinced that accessorizing them will make it easier to hand them over when the time comes. She can give them pedicures, necklaces, and tiny little tiaras – I’m still gonna cry when they go to their new home.

Hopefully having potentially 34 newly hatched chicks will help mitigate that loss. Plus, I put two Pekin eggs in with the chick eggs in the incubator, and there’s nothing more cheerful than fluffy yellow ducklings. All the survivors of the Minkacolypse are doing pretty well, considering the amount of chewing they took. Two of them, Topsy and One Eyed Willy, still have a fair amount of recuperating to do. I went through the Duck Mansion area and added all sorts of accessibility upgrades, including a big pile of swim rocks in the pond to make it easier to get out. I’m still helping Topsy with her physical therapy, and putting her in the pond daily for guided swims. She seems to be walking a little better now, but she still tires easily. I’ve added a covered patio area to Gene’s ever expanding to-do list, because I want her to have a dry place to nap come the rainy season. He also needs to figure out some way to heat the pond, because last year got pretty cold. Now that we’re in the therapy duck business, we have a certain standard to uphold. 

The last two weeks here on the farm have been filled with beautiful, magical moments, and equally heartbreaking ones.  First and foremost, I would like to take this opportunity to announce that I’m a grandma! Ariel finally definitively answered the is-she-or-isn’t-she pregnancy question by presenting us with a perfect kid, whom I immediately named Wesley upon seeing his cute little face. Ariel didn’t exhibit any signs of impending birth, so when we got back from the butcher facility (more on that to follow), I was startled to see her standing next to her baby. I think I missed witnessing the birth by just a few moments. Wesley already loves to cuddle, and has fallen asleep on my lap several times. Ariel lets me and Gene do whatever we want with him, but if anyone else comes near Wesley, she lets loose with an appallingly loud squall.

I spent hours yesterday sitting out in the pasture area watching Wesley learn how to walk. Considering he was born around noon, I think he was doing a pretty amazing job of getting around. Fiona, Buttercup, and Woolimina left the new family alone for the most part, except at feeding time. Fiona got jealous when I gave Ariel her very own scoop of grain, and her very own pile of hay, so I had to move them outside the gate for a bit. Buttercup got annoyed that Ariel was outside the gate and she wasn’t, so she started headbutting her through the gate. Good thing Gene builds things to last, because the two kept that up for about 15 minutes before I finally put Ariel and Wesley to bed in the old chicken coop. I figured the last thing Ariel needed after giving birth not even 6 hours ago was trying to win a headbutt competition.

RIP, piggies. May the Great Trough in the Sky always be filled with treats.

I was exceedingly happy that Ariel picked yesterday of all days to have her baby, because prior to that momentous occasion I was pretty sad. In addition to Wesley’s birthday, yesterday was also Bacon Day. My intention was to say goodbye to the pigs in the morning, liberally dispense their parting treats so they didn’t enter the next life hungry, and then hide in the house until they were gone. Instead, after the pig hauler showed up with the horse trailer, I got to participate in the pig rodeo. Abigail and Keith had come down when the hauler arrived, since the plan was for them and Gene to go to the butchers with the hauler to decide what cuts of meat they wanted. And because everything on this farm seems to happen at once, the installers from Viking Fence got there at the same time to fence off the front of our property. One of the installers, a self-professed “city kid”, took one look at the five of us chasing snorting pigs around the mud-filled pen and decided he wanted in on that action. For many, many reasons, the pigs did not want to go in to the horse trailer, and Abigail had the bright idea of putting a fat kid step in front of the trailer so the pigs could climb up inside, rather than having to hop up. Apparently the only time the pigs like to hop is when they’re trying to bite me, but more on that later. Once they were safely loaded, I gave them some treats to munch on for the road trip, and we all set off for the butchers, with the exception of the fence installer. Once we’d picked out the different cuts of meat, Gene, Abigail, and Keith decided they wanted to go see what went on behind the scenes. I opted to stay behind, and found a sunny spot to sit by a picnic table which conveniently had a cute Boston Terrier named Gator tethered to it. Gator was a great distraction, and I’m happy to say I only cried once throughout the entire process. I have to admit I got pretty choked up this morning, though, when I got up at dawn to do the morning chores. Out of sheer habit I started to grab the hose to fill up the pigs water bucket, and the site of the empty, lonely pen made me sad. Luckily I’m easily distracted from my emotions, and letting Wesley out of his bedroom cheered me right up.

I figure I got off pretty easy during the five months or so we had the pigs, seeing as I only got bit once. Of course, Princess picked the worst possible day to take her chomp out of my leg. And I didn’t even do anything to provoke it, except for perhaps not dump the bucket of grain fast enough for her liking. That morning, about a week and a half ago, I had gotten up to let the ducks out. I knew something was wrong immediately upon stepping outside, because I’m usually greeted with impatient quacking as soon as the ducks hear the sliding door to the deck open. I ran over to the Duck Mansion, and five of them staggered out, all bloody and ruffled. When I opened the box, I found four poor dead ducks, including our three new ones. I was absolutely heart broken. I woke Gene up, and his daughter happened to be there that day as well. We did what country folk all over the world do when presented with that situation – we all grabbed guns and sat out there until the killer came back. Gene gets credit for the kill shot, of course. But in my defense, I was shooting one handed, non-dominant, and I’m pretty sure my bullet scared it into Gene’s line of fire.Turns out it was a mink, and it had gotten in through the roof of the Duck Mansion. Normally I abhor killing of any type, be it pigs or minks, but in this case I didn’t even feel a guilty twinge. Not only did it kill four of my beloved ducks and injure five others, the mink had also killed most of Abigail’s chickens several days prior. I was all for beheading the mink and sticking its skull on a pole in front of the Duck Mansion to serve as a warning to others, but Gene brought it down to Abigail’s instead, since she wants to have it taxidermied. (Did I just make up a word?)

The five wounded ducks were immediately checked into the hospital in the guest bathroom (again, visitors, best to bring your own towels to our house. I’m just saying.) and Abigail and I cleaned up their wounds. Actually, Abigail mostly did the cleaning, and I did my best not to throw up. I’m not a very qualified surgical assistant. Gene and his daughter put hardware cloth over the inside of the roof, so nothing is getting through it ever again. Three of the ducks got checked out of the hospital a few days ago, and I’m going to put the other two outside today. I think the poor Rescue Duck will always have a limp, and the boy Indian Runner will probably lose vision in one eye, but since they were eating and drinking and fairly content, given the circumstances, I couldn’t bear to have Gene put them down.

Although I’ve been a hobby farmer now for a couple years, the novelty has yet to wear off. I still get excited by the sight of a particularly beautiful flower bloom or tiny vegetable just beginning to form, and I still fall in love with my critters to an extent that I never thought would be possible. I know I can’t prevent every tragedy, and I can’t protect every one all the time, but the heartbreaking moments pale in comparison to the sheer joy of seeing a baby chick hatch, or a baby goat taking his first wobbly steps. I wouldn’t give up those moments for anything.