| Sometimes it takes having other people ask the right questions before I realize how much has been accomplished on our little farm in the last 3 years. Friday of last week was the date of Jeremy's 5th grade class' field trip to.....our farm. It was great, the kids were well behaved and very interested in all the animals and what I had to tell about farm life, and the adults were very quick to position themselves in the most helpful spot (example: The temporary sheep quarters and the temporary pig pen are next to each other, and one dad quickly saw that the piglets were trying to nibble the socks and shoes of the girls who were trying to feed the sheep! He nodded in that direction and headed over while I was rationing out the sheep feed to other students.) Very helpful!
Sunday was the smaller gathering of junior high youth group kids and 3 of their leaders. Again, it was a nice get-together, the girls especially were thrilled with the animals, and one girl even told me how to saute the morel mushroom which was found growing under the white pine grove.
The questions were good ones: What made you decide to move to a farm? (A lot of things, starting with the desire to change the pace of our lives and do something fulfilling and healthy, coupled with the illegal chickens we had in Palatine, and the wealth of information in one book: Carla Emery's The Enclyclopedia of Country Living.) Was this a working farm when you bought it? (No, it was set up as a woodworker's show-case and shop.) So, you've brought in all the animals in the last 2 or 3 years? (Yes) Wow, that's a lot of animals! (Yeah, I have to agree). Did you ever milk a cow before you got yours? (No, and Bessie hadn't been hand-milked, so we stumbled through it together) What was the barn like when you bought the place? (Empty!) So, you built all the nest boxes and set up everything to be able to have chickens, pigs, sheep, cows....etc? (Well, yes!) You've done all this in 3 years? (Yeah, I guess we have accomplished a lot!)
THAT was a good question for me to hear my own answer to. Everything was empty. The barn was not set up for animals, whether milking cows (it IS an old dairy barn) or chickens needing roosts and a place to lay their eggs. We've been working harder than we ever would have in Palatine, and progress is being made. It's hard to see the progress when you know each item on the 2-page list of things to do, and that there are probably 2 pages more than that of "to-do's" if you just took the time to write it all out! (Better not to write down that much.....too discouraging!)
Some days I look around and I love everything I see here. Other days, I still love everything I see here, but I have to fight off the overwhelming urge to despair because of all the projects that still need to be done. There are always a dozen things "in process" and another dozen in "thought process" (and another dozen that I can't quite put into words at that moment in time).
*The blueberry bushes that a friend kindly planted in our front garden for me still need pine-needle mulch. After 3 weeks. But they are doing fine, especially with all the rain. **The cow fencing needs to be restrung on newly-situated T-posts. I want to re-work the area it takes up behind the barn, so that the cow pen takes up less of the prime pasture-land and more of the shaded area under some large trees (where grass for grazing will not grow.) It's been half-way re-done for weeks now. Ruby has found out that she can duck her head under the one electric wire strand and let herself out into the pasture (the wire isn't connected to the power supply). This is potentially bad for Ruby, because she should always be respectful of electric wire, and never think she can test it and get away with that testing. ***The turkeys have discovered that, since we didn't get up a permanent wall with a door between their space and the rabbits' half of the blue shed, they can perch on the worm bins under the rabbit cages at night. Not a big deal, and not very high on the priority list when piglet housing and moving the sheep to the back half of the new cow shelter is much more important.
And then there are days where I feel like I've failed my many farm-animal-responsibilities and there's nothing to do to reverse the situation. We discovered (too late!) that a duck was waterlogged in the small livestock trough and was probably going to die. I wrapped her up in some loose straw to pull some moisture out of her feathers and to retain any body heat. She still died. The reason? It was my fault, in a way. I moved the trough and forgot to put some rocks back in the water at one end so that a chicken or duck could get out if they fell in. Little things like that can be overlooked, and the learning is harder by trial-and-error. It really can be life-and-death on a daily basis here, and sometimes it's my fault or negligence that caused it. No-one asked what lessons I've learned along the way (all three years of it so far), but that would need to be one of them: Always think through what could harm or kill one of your animals and do what it takes to prevent that scenario. Sometimes you still can't prevent it. What I don't understand is this: Ducks can float on ponds for hours and hours, and they have oily feathers that repel water. Why did this one get so waterlogged that she didn't survive?!!! Sigh! (For Diana and Luke: She was not one of your ducklings from last year!)
Every day it's a choice of priority, and sometimes we get it right. Other times, like moving the trough, it was the priority that day a few weeks ago, but I didn't think through the precautions that might be needed until there was a tragedy.
Back to the questions asked by our guests: One good question was "Where do you see yourselves 10 years from now?" My answer? "Not back in suburbia, but I think we'll outgrow this little farm in a few years. Ideally, the land around us could go up for sale AND we'd have the money to buy it. But if not, I've been thinking that we could give up the really nice house we have here in exchange for more land and a good barn (and less house)." Our guest was satisfied with that answer, and....it's the truth. I love the house and the property here, but it's not such a long-shot to imagine more land and less house somewhere else. There would still need to be trees, birds, wildlife..... Maybe a small creek with frogs or crayfish. Maybe a small pond with toads and polliwogs. Maybe a hay-field where we could grow our own hay and graze our animals (and not pay someone else for all of that!) The future of our farming venture remains to be seen, but it was so nice to be reminded, through the questions of our guests, how much we've learned and done since taking the leap of faith and literally "buying the farm". :)
Laura
http://dykstrasfarm.blogspot.com/
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