Saturday Market Story for May 12, 2012

Although it makes for a fair bit of work, we love raising chickens for their gorgeous eggs.  We often get asked what we mean when we say we have free range eggs and it usually causes us a little bit of a chuckle.  There seem to be many terms and definitions circulating now but we don’t play word games. Our birds are truly free ranging.  We have over three hundred chickens that meander over about fourteen acres here.  I am sure that makes us a fairly inefficient egg producing facility but it is nice to see them busy all around the farm.

When we first moved to the Upstate nearly fourteen years ago we wanted chickens.  They were just a fixture at my childhood home in Ohio and we’d even had a few in the suburbs where we lived in Florida.  We went to a flea market where someone suggested we could find a pair.  I carefully picked out two pretty hens and waited for the fellow to crate them up in an old box from a liquor store.  When we got home and opened the box we realized that he had swapped out one of the chickens so that it was not the gal I had chosen.  We named her Oops and loved her anyways.  From then on we only ordered our chickens from Murray McMurray Hatchery in Iowa.  We always order their day old chicks and raise them up here on the farm.  The children were delighted the first time we handed them the pretty catalog and told them how many chickens they could pick.  I don’t recall how many different breeds the children chose but we started with lots of colors, sized and personalities and have kept it that way since.  Although we’ve always leaned toward ordering chickens classed as heavies who are good layers, we’ve also slipped in everything from a few Phoenix roosters with long flowing tails and a tiny Golden Seabright hen who was barely bigger than a pigeon.  Mrs. Seabright lived to be about nine years old and was a precious gal who, as a little old lady, went to sleep on her roost a good two hours earlier than any of the other birds. 

We currently have about two dozen different breeds of chickens.  They range in age from several months to six or seven years of age.  We do not cull our birds when they stop laying but allow them just to live their lives out here.  Again, not an economically good plan but after all that they have given us it is hard to do otherwise.  We are accommodating a fair number of old ladies who eat, nap, take dust baths and perhaps lay an egg a week.

The hens have four different buildings that have nesting boxes in them.  The two main buildings that they use have fencing around them but the fencing has huge chicken-sized holes in many places at the bottom so that the birds can come and go without the goats and sheep entering the yard to eat the layer feed we always make available or allowing the dogs to raid the nesting boxes.  A good number of the hens come and go throughout the day but there are some that never leave the huge bird yard.  They are content to scratch around the yard, nap under the oak tree or in the doorway of the house where a nice breeze always seems to be blowing and take turns arguing over who gets which nesting box.  The main building has over 50 individual nesting boxes but there seem to be some preferred spots.  The gals who want to set for a while prefer a nest box with a view out the door.  In the cool weather they want to be in the nest boxes against the south wall where the sun warms them and in the heat of summer they prefer the boxes closest to the fans.  There are often two gals pushing at each other for the same box.  Others will sit quietly on the roost waiting for their favorite spot to become available.  There are a few hens who don’t care much one way or the other, even just hesitating long enough to lay their egg on the ground and keep scratching for something interesting. 

Gathering eggs can be interesting as well as slightly treacherous.  If you notice my right hand and arm you may see small bruises and scratches.  Some of the hens peck as I gently reach under them to pull out the still-warm eggs.  Others not only peck but will pinch, twist and hang on for a second or two just to make a point.  I currently have a Buff Brahma hen who marches up and down the perch in front of one set of nesting boxes.  She threatens me as I begin down the row, ruffling out her feathers to look big, squawking and sometimes grabbing at my arm. Most hens simply let me reach under and then readjust themselves in the box after I pull my hand out.  And then I have at least four hens who are my favorites as they will stand up when I begin to reach into the box.  One will even glance down to be sure I am finished before puffing out her feathers and settling back down.

We feed a simple layer feed with no weird additives or antibiotics.  We have found that we just don’t get sick chickens and attribute that to the fact that no one is crowded unless they choose to huddle up with their buddies.  They range around so always have plenty of fresh air, exercise and green grass.  We have a great arrangement with the Hyatt who saves their daily kitchen prep scraps in the cooler for us.  These cans of peelings, stalks, leaves, rinds and other goodies add even more to the daily diet of grasses, bugs and interesting windfall fruits that they glean here.

Jeff and Kim of Iszy’s Heirlooms are precious friends who also contribute lots of goodies for the birds.  We get the bulk of their cull lettuces, tomatoes and anything else from their farm that the birds will eat.  We have laughed about getting our eggs tested for their lycopene levels in the thick of heirloom tomato season when we feed several bushels of tomatoes a week.  Years ago when we first started feeding tomatoes I would find myself checking birds often to try to figure out who was bleeding.  As soon as I picked up a sticky bird I would realize that the funny red on it was simply tomato flung around in the frenzy of discovering a new basket poured out on the yard.  But the mother in me always needed to check just in case!

I visit the birds many times each day and process many eggs.  Our middle child, Eric, started a small egg business when he was a boy and we took it over when he began to work a full time job.  I enjoy our daily chicken routine and it is always a treat when those eggs are appreciated by our wonderful egg customers.

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Saturday Market Story for May 5, 2012

This has been a busy winter as I was blessed to be artist in residence for seven weeks in a Spartanburg school district.  I taught weaving to 3^rd through 5^th graders while telling lots of farm stories.  As it turned out, one of the farm stories evolved as I was in a school in January. 

I got home from school at three each afternoon and immediately changed clothes and walked the farm.  This is the time that I would feed the dogs and gather eggs.  One Monday afternoon as I walked outside I noticed that Baloo, one of our livestock guardian dogs, seemed to be wandering down in the woods.  Baloo is a delightful fellow that we acquired a few years ago.  He was a six month old puppy who was people shy.  He had been raised in a pasture full of goats with his mother, many siblings and a few other dogs.  In order for his owner to sell him to us, Baloo had to be lured in with food and snatched.  He was so shy that when we were bringing him home from North Carolina he laid as low as he could in his kennel and did not even wimper.  He is three quarters Great Pyrenees and a quarter Kangal.  Ironically, his father is the son of a very expensive line of dogs that we’d looked at a few years ago but chose not to invest a few thousand dollars in.  We did not know that when we went to look at the pups but were fascinated when the owner explained the story of his stray genetics.  We were just pleased with a healthy working dog and liked the fact that the Kangal influence meant that we would not have to deal with the matted hair that so many Pyrenees develop.

 

Baloo quickly warmed up to us and has turned out to be a great dog with one fault.  He has no respect for fence lines.  He avoids electric fences but has learned to climb gates.  One of the first things we did with him was to have him neutered so he is a mellow boy who gets along with all of the other dogs.  He visits them in their individual pastures most every day, racing around and playing for a while and then returning to his favorite place to nap in the barnyard.  I have watched him climb a gate to help one of the Anatolian Shepherds with their duties.  One of his favorite jobs is to bark at the hawks that like to make slow looping passes to check out our free range chickens roaming throughout the farm.  But Baloo rarely goes all the way back to the woods.  That is why I was a little surprised to see a big fuzzy white dog walking the edge of the tree line as I did my usual walk around after school that afternoon.  Baloo is an obedient fellow so I called his name a few times and began to count sheep in a side pasture.  In a moment Baloo was by my side.  I was surprised as I hadn’t heard the clang and thump noise that accompanies a trip over a gate.  I glanced to the woods thinking I must have misjudged how far away he was when I called for him.  The big fuzzy white dog was still at the edge of the woods.  The Anatolian Shepherds have smooth white coats and a different gait so I knew it wasn’t one of them.  I realized immediately that I’d better start locking up my own dogs so that I didn’t have a fight with a stray dog that seemed not to be threatening any of the livestock.

Each of our dogs is very territorial which is a good instinct when it comes to guarding livestock in a pasture.  It can be a challenge when it is necessary to move the dogs around.  Even the best of friends fight when they are not in their own pastures.  I carefully shifted dogs around to pastures or into barns where they would not see the stranger.  I called my sweet husband at work to tell him that I had a stray dog in the woods and was going down to try to catch him and then grabbed a lead rope out of the stable.  I started back to the woods.  The big stray noticed me and loped up the hill.  I was cautious as I didn’t have a clue about the dog’s temperament.  As the dog reached me he dropped to the ground.  I slowly reached out with the rope thinking that perhaps I could gently trap him.  He raised his head and waited for me to put the rope around his neck and then politely stood and walked to my side, ready for me to lead him somewhere. 

He was thrilled as we walked through a pasture full of goats.  He seemed so happy to be with livestock.  I was a little apprehensive that he would walk through the back door of the old barn with me as he was not familiar with the building but he was quite the gentleman on the lead, carefully following me in with little coaxing.  I took him into the stable and examined him.  His hair was matted and he had some sort of wound on the side of his head.  I knew better than to poke around at a wound on a strange dog.  I prepared a bowl of food for him and put him alone in a stall with it and a bucket of fresh water.  He was a bit underweight for his size but otherwise looked healthy.  He tore into the food but wanted to rejoin me as soon as he was done.  He was an enormous cuddly fellow, wrapping his front leg around my leg and leaning into my side.  He whined when I left him to go back to the house.  Over the next ten days I visited him in the stable often, frequently moving all of our dogs around so that I could take him for a walk among the goats.  I asked him each day where he belonged but he never had an answer for me.  I spent a fair bit of time gently picking blackberry brambles out of his pretty white coat.  He even sat patiently for me to brush him.  One time when I tried to clean the wound on the side of his head he reached around and gently grabbed my arm in his enormous mouth.  He was tenderly telling me that he didn’t want me to do that.  And he loved when I let Baloo into the stable for a time of wrestling and play.

The dog had no collar so we took him to our vet only to discover that he was not microchipped.  My sweet and patient husband went to every farm within a few miles to ask if they were missing a dog.  We called all the local vets and humane shelters.  We placed an ad and a gentleman answered it.  His dog had been gone for a few weeks.  He lived about forty miles from us but it would not be unheard of for the dog to have been rescued or given a ride to end up at our place.  The fellow came out and was disappointed that the dog was not his. I kept my students updated on each day’s developments with the dog.  They loved speculating on his story as they did their daily weaving projects.

We eventually discovered that there is a Great Pyrenees rescue group in town and contacted them.  We were asked if he had a double dew claw indicating that he was a purebred Pyr.  He had the double dew claw.   He was a fabulous dog.  We knew from the outset that we did not need to add another dog to the six livestock guardians we already have.  We were also adamant that we would find his owner or a very good home for him.  The gentleman from the Pyr rescue was in constant contact trying to help us find his owner.  When we finally convinced him that we could not keep the dog much longer he came out to the farm to meet the dog.  He was taken with the well-mannered and gentle giant who had found us. After a few more days of checking and paperwork we surrendered the dog to the rescue.  The fellow who runs the rescue decided to foster the dog himself and temporarily named him Ivan.  The next day the gentleman brought his assistant with him to meet the dog.  She agreed that he was amazing and the dog took to her immediately, letting her walk him around the front yard on a leash.  They left all happily squeezed together in the front seat of a small pickup truck. He sent us several follow up reports on Ivan as he continued to look for Ivan’s home.  We also continued to watch lost and found lists but never came up with anything.  We were invited to visit Ivan in his new home and are confident that he has found a great place.  We will just always wonder what kind of journey he had been on and how it was that he ended up in our tightly-fenced back pasture. 

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Farm Story for October 22, 2011

Deb Potter, Merciful Hearts Farm
deb@mercifulheartsfarm.com, mercifulheartsfarm.blogspot.com

It is hard to believe that our terribly hot summer has come to an end. We had gotten into the routine of watching the livestock lay in the shade while we scurried around to keep water troughs full. We also fed a lot of hay as the drought kept our regular grass from growing. Now it is time to begin thinking about our winter routine. And a big part of that winter routine is also feeding hay. We are very blessed to have a few good hay men who work with us to guarantee that we have hay available. As we’ve been using square bales this year we’ve stored most of our hay in the old barn. The old barn was on the property when we moved here thirteen years ago. There was also a three sided shed in the pasture we use for the donkeys as well as a nice Mennonite-built stable with five big stalls and concrete walkways. We appreciate all of the buildings but the old barn has certainly become a special place since we’ve been keeping it stacked full of hay.

We have mostly used the stable when we needed to house livestock. The old barn does not have a true foundation so that there is a gap between the bottom of the walls and the ground around it. That gap is great for letting a nice breeze through on a warm day but sure lets the cold air in on a nippy day. At lambing season that can be a problem as the tiny lambs nap in the chilly breeze. They are also subject to unwanted visitors. There is no point in trying to keep chickens out. They either wander under the barn walls or hop through the big opening above the half door at the back of the barn. We do not allow the chickens around the newly born lambs as the chickens peck at them, finding the dangling pink umbilical cord a tempting target. Some of the older sheep mothers will stomp and push at the chickens but most do not. We learned during our very first lambing season that it is better to double up ewes and lambs in the stable than to let the lambs risk a chicken attack. Although we’ll occasionally lock up a cow or adult goat temporarily, the old barn is mostly storage.

The dogs have dug out ruts to make it easier for them to slip in and out. Unfortunately the dogs have dug some holes right at the base of two of the doors so that we have to step carefully in and out so as not to twist our ankles. The pits are even more challenging when we cannot see where we are walking because we are carrying big bales of hay in to stack. I tend to be careful the first dozen or so times through the door and then my mind wanders and I trip in the hole, usually falling forward onto the bale I am trying to carry. I am alert for most of the rest of the unloading after a good scare.

Since the first hay cutting in spring we’ve kept the old barn almost totally full of hay. We do have one set of chicken nesting boxes in the old barn where I gather eggs daily but the hens have also gone about making plenty of new nests in the hay. I have found a few and check them regularly for eggs but whenever we are climbing up high to move hay and find eggs we feed them out to the dogs. The enormous Anatolian Shepherds love to climb the hay bales in search of their own eggs. They get an extra treat when they can corner a hen up on the bales. She will scream and spread her wings before jumping down in a cloud of hay dust and feathers. The dogs will jump off of the top of the bales trying to snag the hen in the air. The hen rushes out under the gap at the floor and is gone while the dogs go back to exploring. On a few occasions I’ve entered the barn to find a tumbled down mess of a dozen bales or so. The dogs are large enough to throw a stack of bales off balance and then ride the crashing pile to the floor. We have only had one fatality from these mishaps. I found a dead chicken under a bale pile. Although there is a slim chance it died from natural causes, my best guess would be that it was a victim of many eighty pound hay bales tumbling down.

I like to keep a water bucket filled in the old barn just in case a dog or goat spends much time inside. The scattered falling hay recently turned our bucket into a nice rat trap. The bucket ended up right next to a few bales. Some of the hay scattered from the bales ended up floating in the water bucket. I imagine the rats who had been busy eating the remaining oats out of the oat hay couldn’t tell the difference between the bales they were scurrying across and the hay floating on the bucket. One morning we found five rats drowned in the water bucket. We cleaned the bucket and disposed of the rats but right before bedtime I scattered some new hay in the water. There were no animals inside who needed to drink from the bucket. The next morning there were three more dead rats. I tried again the next night but did not catch any more rats. I doubt the rats wised up so prefer to think we put a good dent in our rodent population.

Just two weeks ago I was thrilled to find a big hunk of shed off snake skin next to the water bucket. The size of the piece of discarded skin that I found made me believe we have at least one five foot long black rat snake living in the old barn. I am thrilled! We much prefer the snakes to help control rodents rather than to have to put out traps (other than my bucket, of course) or poisons.

Right now the stable is a safe home to twenty two new layers. A friend wanted to order some chickens but only wanted a handful of them. The standard chicken order for newly-hatched chicks that will need to be shipped is twenty five. The fellow ordered Buff Orpingtons but only wanted a few so we bought the remainder once they were two weeks old. The pretty yellow birds now have their own stall in the stable where they scratch in the dirt and practice perching on a few cement blocks piled in the corners. These past few nights they have all appreciated the heat lamps that hang in the center of the stall. We had to move a few hens who had slipped into the stable out because we found that they had flown into the chick stall and were making trouble. There were two young hens who were taking turns holding the little ones hostage while the hens ate their feed and drank at their waterer. The big hens had plenty of their own food and water but I believe they were enjoying being bullies. I noticed one of the hens pecking the little ones on the tops of their heads every time they tried to leave the corner. Those two were swiftly removed from the stable. I imagine they are now picking on someone their own size in the old barn.

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Farm Story for October 8, 2011

Deb Potter, Merciful Hearts Farm
deb@mercifulheartsfarm.com , mercifulheartsfarm.blogspot.com

Pavl, our white crested black Polish rooster, is getting in trouble again. He seems to have a death wish. In the past I’ve told you about his near drowning and other run-ins with most everything on the farm including me. This week he has been at it again. He has his own little harem in the stable. We had to move him into the stable because the other chickens pull the feathers out of his crest which leaves him with a bloody bare head. We’ve given him an entire stall which is quite large and has a lovely window. He has the company of a few hens and three ducks that have been injured or also get picked on. They are a ragged little bunch but are safe and well tended now. Pavl does not always stay in his stall as he loves to fly up into the stable rafters and then jump down into other stalls or into the main section of the stable. He is ordinarily a happy little man in his own world.

I am accustomed to seeing Pavl sitting up on his windowsill and crowing in the morning or just watching the outside world in the afternoon. He usually peeks for a while and then jumps back into his stall but this week I realized that he has decided to start exploring. I don’t know how long this has been going on but in the past whenever Pavl has gone on an adventure it has resulted in a fight with another rooster, a near escape from a dog or some other episode that has ended in a rescue.

On Monday I went into his stall to feed and water everyone. I always glance to see where Pavl is before I step into the stall as there have been plenty of times when he has been in a foul mood and has flogged me with his huge spurs as I’ve stepped in. This time I did not see him so I glanced up at the rafters to see if he was hanging out overhead. He was not there. He was also not in any of the adjoining stalls. I had not seen him as I walked back to the stable. The dogs walked with me and they did not look either startled to notice him or guilty for perhaps having attacked him.

I walked outside to start my hunt. The first thing I came across was a long gently curved shiny black rooster tail feather. Since there was only one feather I knew it was not necessary to panic. When a dog does grab a chicken there is a big pile of various-sized feathers left behind as the bird pulled away. I continued to search. I found no more feathers but I also did not find Pavl. Sadie, one of the Anatolian Shepherds, was walking with me. She was a few feet ahead of me when she looked up and began to trot in the silly not-quite-a-puppy-anymore lope that indicates silly enthusiasm. Sadie trotted over to Pavl who was huddled tightly in a corner where two sets of pasture fencing came together. He was in a little bit of a dip so I had not noticed him. Sadie distracted him while I swooped in to grab him up. He slipped past both of us. Sadie now realized that we had a chase and became even more excited. I did not need her help anymore so grabbed her by the color and led her to the tractor shed where I could lock her up. She whined as I walked away to track down Pavl once again.

He was in the middle of the barnyard. I tried to calmly walk him into a corner again but he refused to play, weaving back and forth but staying out in the open. I have said before that a chicken has a brain about the size of my thumbnail but it is still enough brain to make a successful chicken. This successful chicken would not be caught if he couldn’t be cornered. And I’ve got plenty of proof that it is not easy to corner any creature when I am working alone. It was obvious that I did not need to waste any more time trying to corner Pavl. I did realize that he was no longer happy outside and was looking for a place to go that was not a corner. I was able to walk toward him and gently guide him back toward his window. He would not jump in let alone look up toward it. He was too busy keeping an eye on me. I realized he did want to go back in but was in too big of a panic to figure out how.

The stable has a large door on each end. One of the doors had a few goats sleeping in front of it so I decided to walk Pavl around toward the other door. When I had him almost there I ran ahead of him and flung the door wide open. It took a few more loops around the barnyard before I was able to maneuver him toward the open door. Just as I realized that the goats were up and heading our way, Pavl made a run for the door. I ran up and slammed the door behind him just barely beating the herd of goats who were hoping to force their way in for a quick rampage through the things they aren’t supposed to climb on in the stable. I ran around to the other door, slid in the stable and opened the door to Pavl’s stall. He took his time strutting in to rejoin his harem. I have no idea how many more times Pavl has gone off on a toot this week. I did notice that he is down to a single long tail feather so it is a pretty good bet that while outside one of the dogs has at least given him a good chase or he has tangled with another rooster.

I probably only lost fifteen minutes or so chasing Pavl around the barnyard but it is amazing how many of these little episodes in a week add up. It is rare that I walk out to gather eggs, simply gather eggs and then return to the house without stopping to do something else.

Little Joey, the stray cat that the children brought home from Apple Island about eight years ago, has decided that he wants to live in the stable. Last winter he had taken to following me out there as I made my late afternoon trip to gather eggs and to feed the dogs. A few days a week he would follow me almost all the way to the door than take a quick turn, jump through Pavl’s open window and meet me at the stable door as I opened it. I often add a bit of canned dog food to the dogs’ dry food and Joey discovered that if he was there as I opened the can I would let him lick at it as I scooped out the dry food. I then got soft hearted and began bringing an occasional can of cat food along. I would lock him in the stall where I do my dyeing and let him have his can there so that the dogs or chickens would not bother him. Now he has moved into the stable almost full time and I feed him a can of cat food there every afternoon. He has found lots of nice places to snuggle up and nap and seems to enjoy stalking the chickens but never risking a chase. Unfortunately, Joey has started walking on my table as I paint my dyes on the wool. He has overturned a few dye jars and tangled plenty of cellophane. I had to lock him in the tack room to do this week’s dyeing after trying just to push him out of my way. Just another little bit of time that I’ll never recapture but all our animal friends are just so amusing. I am beginning to think it is time to put a sturdy screen in Pavl’s window though!

Farm Story for September 24, 2011

Deb Potter, Merciful Hearts Farm
deb@mercifulheartsfarm.com , mercifulheartsfarm.blogspot.com

Fencing is a wonderful thing and we depend on it. But sometimes it is as much a hassle as anything. This has been a week of fence events. Years ago I learned the expression “If a fence won’t hold water, it won’t hold a goat.” I have repeated that to many folks, most often those thinking about getting a few goats one day.

Many of the fence problems we tend to think of have to do with fencing that allows a creative or persistent animal to escape. The broken 2 X 6’s remind me that this time of year the fellows are warming up for breeding season as they practice using their heads to break through fencing that might keep them from the girls. There isn’t much point in repairing those boards until breeding season has passed as the fellows just smash at the new boards in their way. Fortunately the woven wire fencing behind the boards usually slows them down. I did laugh this spring when I was talking with another farmer about lambing season. I mentioned that we had been lambing for several weeks. He had yet to have his first born. I told him that just proved that he had better fencing than I did.

Al had to take the chain saw to a tree that recently dropped across the electric fencing farther down in the woods. He often checks the level of charge on the fence and if it is not very strong he walks the fence line until he finds a spot where either branches have fallen down or weeds have grown up. This time last weekend’s high winds had caused a huge chunk of old tree on the neighbor’s property to drop down and compress the fence. The wires smashed on top of each other get grounded out so that the fence is no longer “hot”. A good fence clearing resolved the problem.

Our much-needed but torrential rain has caused another fence problem. The rain came down so fast that the rushing streams carried leaves, sticks, hay and other debris over the bottom wire of a few fence sections. That must be fixed by walking the fence with a hoe and pulling away the wet muddy mess. We know what spots to check for that so once the rain clears we give it a quick clean out.

Now this week we’ve had a few funny fence problems. I’ve mentioned before about the horned goats who push their heads through a hole in the woven wire fencing and then find they cannot get their horns aimed at the right angle to draw their head back out after they’ve snacked on whatever looked better on the other side of the fence. We have a few perpetual offenders who get stuck. They have learned that once they are stuck it is best to just sit down for a while and wait until they hear the house door open. The moment they realize one of us are coming out they begin to bawl to get our attention. They have so much confidence in us that as soon as they see us coming their way they quiet down and simply wait for help. Well, at least three times this week I’ve had to help a polled (hornless) sheep get her head back out. It seems she can wedge her head slowly through by wiggling all kinds of directions but when she goes to withdraw her head the sticking point is the bony orbits of her eyes. It is one thing to help a goat wiggle its tough horns around but it is just not a good thing to squish and pull on one’s eye sockets. It is a slow process and I usually end up with a slightly-smashed finger or two as I try to protect the eyes while gently pulling the welded wire that makes up the fencing.

On Tuesday the little gal managed to shove her head through a space in the cattle panel that “tightens up” one of the sections of board fencing. I noticed her as I walked out to gather eggs. I patiently attacked the problem while a few of the goats either watched my work or shoved on me for some special attention as I was squatted down trying to gently angle her head so that it would fit back through the hole. I just couldn’t get it. The sheep was not helping. She kept pushing forward as I was trying to gently pull her back through the hole. When I went to the other side of the fence to push her back through the hole she insisted on pushing even farther forward. This is common sheep and goat behavior. In fact, we learned long ago that if we wanted a stubborn goat to go forward we simply had to push on its forehead as if we were forcing it backwards. It would fight us and end up going exactly where we wanted it to go.

Since it was Tuesday and I had a class to teach in the afternoon I gave up on manipulating the sheep’s head back through the stiff wire of the cattle panel. I walked into the stable, lifted the enormous bolt cutters off of their spot on the wall and nipped the wire. The wire is stiff enough that I still had to bend it to get the sheep’s head out but she was finally free, I pushed the wire back to its original place and went on to gather eggs. These are the things that make a simple chore turn into a half hour event.

We’ve also had a problem with one obnoxious goat forcing her way through a bit of loose wire fencing to get into a stall that is now holding bales of hay. She gets in, nibbles for a while but then cannot go out the same hole she came in as the wire that she pushed out of her way to get in is now pointing her direction and threatening to shred her should she push back out. I’ve opened the door and removed her many times over the last week. I did try to repair the bit of fencing but that didn’t seem to work. That very evening Al found her and a few friends all wedged into the hay-filled stall just chomping away. This is the exact hay that they are fed in abundance daily but it seems more appealing when forbidden. So I had resolved to fix the fencing the next day. I went about my daily routine, having forgotten about the hole. At the end of the day I had a kid in the barnyard bawling for its mother. I realized that she may be inside the stable so went to find her. She was in the hay stall. She began bawling at me. I went to open the door next to the hole in the fencing but it would not budge. I had to go around and open another door to let her out. That is when I discovered that she had knocked several bales down. I shifted a few around so that I could let her out. That is when I noticed that one of the bales had tumbled down at an angle that it blocked the hole that she had been using to push into the stall. I left that bale just where it was and, until we feed out all the hay in that stall, will let it be the repair for the gap in the fence.

We work regularly to keep up with our fencing and are never surprised with the funny predicaments we find ourselves and our creatures in. It is just another one of those challenges that are part of the farming life. I guess it keeps us from becoming lazy or complacent. It would just be easier if the biggest fencing problems did not pop up on a nasty rainy day or as the result of trees coming down in one of our famous Carolina ice storms.

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Farm Story for September 17, 2011

Deb Potter, Merciful Hearts Farm

deb@mercifulheartsfarm.com , mercifulheartsfarm.blogspot.com

I really missed Saturday Market last week. I loved being at the Indie Craft Parade and the great sales will certainly help tremendously with winter hay money but I guess I’m just in a routine where I look forward to being on Main St. on Saturdays.

From about midday Thursday until late on Sunday I did not spend the usual time around the farm as I was busy either with preparations or actually downtown at the Indie event. Al kept up with my farm chores while doing his own and still having time to give me a hand with set up, break down and selling. It wasn’t until Monday that I was reminded of how much some of my creatures missed me.

I was exhausted so was still in bed at about 6 a.m. when Al came in from doing the first chores. He’d let Sadie, our youngest Anatolian Shepherd, come up to the house with him. I awoke to find her on the floor as close to my side of the bed as she could get. I didn’t realize she was there until I swung a foot out of bed and stepped on her. I let her spend the morning in the house with me. She followed me from room to room, laying down when I started a project like felting soap or working at the spinning wheel. Although it seemed she was napping, the moment I headed out of the room she would open one eye, watch carefully and then follow me to the next destination. She came outside with me but rather than run off as usual when she entered the barnyard, she continued at my side as I watered livestock, gathered eggs and fed chickens. By the end of the afternoon she was apparently convinced that I would not be disappearing again and has mostly resumed her normal routine.

The Lincoln lambs, Buddy and Inky Dink, have also spent a lot of time attached to my legs since I’ve been back to my regular schedule. Both boys have grown out their beautiful long curly locks to the point where their heads are big fuzz balls. Buddy seems to enjoy it when I hold his head in my hands, brush the long locks out of his eyes and kiss his forehead. Both boys are quite long legged so I hardly have to bend down to fuss over them. Inky follows Buddy closely so I’ve had to be careful when I am walking through the barnyard and am about to turn as one or the other has been underfoot. They usually ignore me when I am in the stable dyeing fiber but this week I’ve noticed them checking on me by “maaaaaa-ing” until I speak to them. That contents them or about fifteen minutes. If I haven’t come out of the dyeing stall by then they speak again. They have accidentally found themselves in the wrong pasture more than once this week as they’ve followed me in, gotten momentarily distracted and I’ve moved on without them. Fortunately all of the livestock guardian dogs are familiar with them so they are safe if I leave them behind.

We have been slowly transitioning the new pullets to the great outdoors. It is best to move them right at bedtime, deposit them in one of the buildings along with some other hens and hope for the best when everyone wakes up together the next morning. If a new chicken joins the established group in broad daylight the regulars will harass her. I did try to move a few during the middle of the day last week. I was hoping that if I moved several together that they would go about their business without any problems but I was mistaken and I knew better. The older hens immediately cornered one young gal and then just stood there daring her to move. Fortunately I’d stayed outside to watch what would happen. I hauled the poor pullets back to the stable until later in the day. I tried putting them outside as the hens were roosting for bedtime. The next morning I found the new pullets together outside simply scratching around. They are definitely staying together and the other hens don’t seem to care.

We did have one white pullet who went off on an adventure. We do have chickens almost everywhere in small groups around the farm. This little gal somehow ended up all the way at the bottom of one of the sheep pastures that runs along the neighboring woods. I caught a glimpse of a very bright white chicken as I was calling up one of the dogs to feed her. I walked all the way to the bottom of the pasture to find her wandering back and forth between the pasture and the neighbor’s trees. There were no other chickens in sight. I could not catch her. I am usually pretty good at cornering and catching a silly chicken but there were no real “corners” I could work with in the pasture that is fenced with high tensile wire that she could easily slip under. There is one more chicken-catching trick but even that wouldn’t work. If you step away for a moment and then quickly step back at the hen with arms extended wide it will often flatten out on the ground as if ducking from a hawk. When I tried that, this silly gal took off running across the open pasture, a move that would easily make her hawk dinner. I mentioned it to Al that evening and he promised to look for her. He came in to say that he couldn’t find her. I figured she had either come up the hill and rejoined the other birds or had disappeared altogether.

The next morning she was back out again. I tried one more time to track her down but every time I got close to her she slipped under the fence and into the nearby poison ivy and underbrush. On Al’s last round of checking everyone out before bedtime he found her roosting up a small tree. He grabbed her and returned her to the stable. We will move her out again with another batch of birds later. Perhaps next time she’ll decided to be sociable and hang around the other girls. It seems there is always something to keep an eye on here!

The rescued squirrel did move on to a safer rehab program. We’d gotten him to the point where he had added solid food to his numerous bottle feedings each day. We were worried that even if we rehabilitated him to the point that we could release him we would merely be turning a slightly tame squirrel over to our own cats and dogs. That just didn’t seem right. Katy was able to find a fellow who regularly does squirrel rehab so the little guy was delivered to him. I guess that is one less creature to fuss over in my day.

I have spent much of this week dyeing, spinning and felting to restock for Saturday Market. I’m also trying to figure out how I can teach a few knitting or felting classes once market is over for the season. I love being a farmer as there is no such thing as a boring day.

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Farm Story for September 3, 2011

Deb Potter, Merciful Hearts Farm

deb@mercifulheartsfarm.com , mercifulheartsfarm.blogspot.com

We started about 90 new laying hens back in May. We get our newly hatched pullets from Murray McMurray in Iowa. The day the chicks hatch they are packed up and air freighted to our post office. I get a 6 a.m. phone call from the post office telling me to come get the live freight. I rap on the side door at the post office and they hand out my peeping box. Often I can see a beak or feather poking out one of the many air holes on the sides of the cardboard box.

I race the box of birds home and gently transfer each one into a big empty water trough under heat lamps in the stable. As I transfer each little gal I dip her beak in the water dish and then set her down near a shallow pan of feed. We then spend several weeks raising the girls out. This year we were not so quick to move the girls out of the stall in the stable. As they outgrew their first water trough we drug in another one and split them between two troughs. As they outgrew the troughs we transferred them to the nice dirt floor of the stable. The big window in the stable has a nice screen so that nothing can sneak in to snatch one of them but they still get fresh air and sunshine. And as the girls continued to grow we removed about a third of them to another stall. The two stalls are adjoining with just bars along the top wall. Not all of the hens we moved over stayed in the new stall but since some of the birds in the original stall began roosting on the stall wall at night and apparently jumping off on the wrong side of the wall the numbers remained pretty even between the two bird rooms.

My sweet husband feeds and waters the girls first thing in the morning, I feed and water them at least twice more in a day and he checks them one last time in the evening. The bigger they have grown, the more we’ve talked about moving them to the world of “free range”. We have waited a little longer than we ordinarily would because of the crazy heat. The stable has a great ventilation fan and the concrete floors in the main hall seem to keep the building a little cooler than the outdoors.

Well, the girls have really been ready to go outside for a few weeks now. We usually move them out at the end of a day. The new chickens get along better with the older ones when they just happen to wake up together one morning rather than if they are wide awake when meeting strangers. Between the heat and the very busy days I’ve had lately, I’ve just neglected to initiate the “let’s move the chickens” evening.

I was thinking about that just this morning as I finished the mid-morning feed and water check. I finished caring for the stable birds and walked on to the building where most of the nest boxes are so that I could gather the first round of eggs for the day. A hen anxiously pacing along the top of the nesting boxes caught my eye. It was one of the young White Orpington hens from inside the stable. I looked around for more young hens, thinking perhaps that Al had moved a few outside at bedtime last night. I called him to ask. He had not moved anyone.

It would not be a stretch to think that she’d made it out of her stall in the stable and into an adjoining stall with an open and unscreened window. Had she jumped out of the window she would have crossed paths with at least one of the livestock guardian dogs, a few sheep, a goat or two, a cow and plenty of other chickens. I imagine she kept wandering until she found the largest accumulation of chickens who love to hang out in the building with the nest boxes, lots of food and a good water supply. I also imagine she ended up on top of the nesting boxes to escape a nosy and perhaps unpleasant hen who wanted to know why a newcomer was invading her territory.
Since we were planning on moving the hens out soon anyways it made no sense to pick her up and put her back in the stable. I also didn’t want her to be the outcast in the group so I made what I felt was a good decision. I put down my partially-filled egg bucket, walked back to the stable, swooped up two more hens that looked just like my little wanderer and brought them out to her. One of the older hens immediately ran up to one of the newcomers, rapped her on the head with her beak and trotted away. I lined all three Orpingtons up on the top of the nest box and went about gathering eggs. I guess we’ll try to move more girls out tonight just at sunset and hope everyone can get along in the morning. There are many aspects of running a farm that are like running a nursery school!

I have spent the majority of my week continuing to make items for the Indie Craft Parade. I have only a few more days to be ready as it is the weekend of the 9th. I have spent many hours out in the stable in my little dyeing studio working away. I love that my studio is in the stable as I have plenty of company as I work. The two stalls full of young chickens are next door so I hear them talking to each other. I have two sheep and a goat who insist on being in the stable whenever I am there. I am also joined by at least one of the livestock guardian dogs but often all four who have access to the barnyard join me. They love to nap on the cool concrete floor and compete to see who can lay down closest to the fan. Little Joey, one of the cats from the front of the house, always follows me to the stable if I go in the late afternoon as he’s learned that is when I feed the dogs. We feed dry food to the dogs but I always add a little canned food or some scrambled eggs to make it a little more appealing. For some reason Little Joey has decided that if he is in the stable when I get there he should get first bite of whatever goodie I am adding to the dog food. I feed him but then quickly remove him if I am also doing dyeing work as he likes to join me as I work and just has too much fun walking along the seven foot lengths of cellophane that I use to wrap my yarn in after I have painted on all of the dyes.

I have felted many, many bars of soap in a coat. I’ve also spun up some more yarn and felted lots more pretty flower pins. I love to work with our sheep’s wool, especially when I can walk right out the door and let the beautiful creatures know how much I appreciate their “product”. Once my preparations for Indie Craft Parade are over I will start the process all over again as we’ll still have another month and a half of Saturday Market. I have numerous bags of wool to continue to keep me occupied over the winter and before we know it we’ll be back to spring shearing again. It is a pleasant cycle.