Lincoln Park Farm in the Zoo

Fingers crossed that this link works.  That's our Cameo, looking cleaner and nicer than she ever has here on our farm...  With her 7 happy piglets.  I need to figure out a day to visit the zoo in Chicago to see my girl.  :)

Squeal of Fortune | Lincoln Park Zoo 

Squeal of Fortune | Lincoln Park Zoo Piglets were born this week to an American guinea hog sow at Lincoln Park Zoo's Farm-in-the-Zoo.

Laura

Kittens

Six cuties, eyes opened, doing adorable little cat-hisses in unison when the dog trots out to the silo with me.

On a sweltering day, inside the house and out, they are a cute distraction.  Mama cat is doing a wonderful job,as always.  

 

Laura

Mustard for grazing

The fencing around the side and front of the garage is finished!!!  Just in time.  The garlic mustard and weeds are much higher than knee-high...  

First thing we did....  Let the sheep in for a bit of grazing.  Not too much, since they are not used to such rich grazing.  

It's funny, I can hear people slowing down on the busy road out front, as they spot sheep inside the fence near the road...  Hopefully they don't cause an accident!

Before pics with the garlic mustard taking center stage, a pic of the nightshade that I am still ripping out after 6 years (poisonous, DEADLY poisonous!!!), and the sheep enjoying the bounty of weeds.  We made the gates able to open into a right-angle to latch together at the drive-way's edge, so that the sheep didn't need an extra gate cut into the existing fence-line.  

I am so glad we are making progress!!!  The area will be grazed down to the ground, dead branches and weedy trees will be cut for a nice summer bonfire, and by fall, I should be able to reseed with pasture grasses and clover for next year's better grazing.

 

Laura

Virus-free. www.avast.com

Busy days

Yesterday....  My daughter and her baby daughter rode with me, three hours north, to my parents' house.  Not to be confused with a full vacation, mind-you...this was a vacation combined with the smell of pig and barn wafting forward from the back of my fairly new Traverse...  I had an 8 week old American Guinea Hog boar in the back of the car, being delivered from Bea and Lawnmower's brood to his new owner (who was driving from 3 hours NORTH of that location to meet us in my parents' driveway!!!)  All went smoothly.  I gave away my cat carrier to the lady, because otherwise the piglet would have ridden back for 3+ hours (and at least one stop for gas/snacks/bathroom break) in a cardboard diaper box on an 8 year old's lap...  The piglet stayed right in the carrier, settled on the front seat, safe and sound for his continued trip north.

Last night, there was a treat that I didn't expect.  My Mom has been helping to sort through cherished keepsakes from the house where her parents lived, and we carefully unwrapped so many beautiful things, while my mother told the history of those items and shared them with Carrie and me.  It was very interesting to hear why certain items were special to her and her sisters and brother, and how things were chosen...  Lots of gorgeous and unique items that will eventually be displayed in my Mom's house, where we grand-kids and great-grands can learn the history of my grandmother's collections.

Today...  The REAL reason for the visit/livestock swap, or at least the reason the trip had originally been scheduled.  

My Dad and I drove 1 1/2 hours into Minnesota this morning to pick up a new Southdown ram lamb, who will be one of my herd-sires this fall and into the future.  He....is....gorgeous!  Very nice, good shape/conformation, beautiful eyes rimmed with delicate white eyelashes, creamy and fine-textured wool...  

I had sent a deposit back in December or maybe January for a ram lamb from a breeder in Minnesota.  Pedigrees were compared with what I already have here...  Photos of the potential parents were pored over.  I had remarked to the breeder, Sue Wiegrefe, that it felt like looking through a Christmas toy catalog as a kid.  Her sheep have a certain look, and open- rather than wool blind- face, very well-bred and just what I was hoping to introduce into my own flock of already nice Southdown sheep. 

I sent in my first choice request, with a second-choice in case the first ewe had ewe-lambs.  She did have twin ewe lambs, but I am quite thrilled with my second-choice result, from the daughter ewe of the first-choice mama.

An hour and a half back with a lamb in a dog crate in the back of my car, and we had lunch together at Mom and Dad's, then packed the Traverse to head back to our farm.  My daughter and my granddaughter slept a bit of the way.  It was a good trip.

Little Caleb the lamb is settled in a stall in the barn, and I decided to let one of our weaned ram lambs be his companion.  Instantly, the sad bleating stopped,some tail sniffing formalities had to be done, and they were friends.  The weaned boy from our flock had recently been in that stall with his twin brother, so this felt comfortable to him, and little Caleb had a new friend and wasn't all alone in a strange place.  I know it breaks the quarantine rules, but our lamb had been the odd-guy-out without his twin brother, so this works well.

While I was away, I didn't have cell phone reception and getting e-mail was not as easy as usual.  

I came home to multiple message "pings" on my phone when I restarted it, and found some exciting news on e-mail as well...  

In missionary news, our friends George and Shary had sent a beautiful letter for us to share with quite a few of our mutual church friends who held a plant sale and fund raiser to raise money for a certain aspect of ministry in the country of Cambodia.  We had just found out this past weekend that the total amount had been granted/raised/given through many different ways, all because of the love that our church family is willing to share generously with so many.  Without going into greater details here, this was a beautiful, unexpected blessing to give thanks for.  It was such a privilege to share the letter of thanksgiving from our friends who are currently in Cambodia with our friends who worked and prayed here for just such an outcome.  God's blessings are certainly not limited to what I experience on this little farm, that's for sure.  

On a lesser scale, but still carrying quite a bit of excitement in it's own right:  Cameo the Guinea Hog had her babies this morning at the Lincoln Park Zoo.  There are 7 little piglets, 4 males and 3 females, being attended to by their excellent mother (and all the vets and assistants on staff at the zoo).  

Photos of Prairie Plum Farm Caleb, and of me with Caleb "ready to roll" in the back of my van... And the pics that Pam at the zoo kindly sent to me, of the newborn piglets as they were discovered this morning by the earliest and very excited staff on the scene.  

 

Laura

Reclaiming the yard

So many projects have been undertaken here in the past 7 years.  

This sequence of photos from the front yard tells me that yes, we ARE making progress.  :)

The view from the street may still look overgrown, and there is the area on the other side of the driveway by the garage that is being fenced in now, but THIS shows me that we are making a difference.

We started the fence line around the front north and east edge of the farm in 2014.  Finished it in 2015 when the Westenburg boys were here for a week.  

Grazed Bessie the cow and then the sheep/goats on it for what was left of the summer of 2015 and for most of last year...  Seeded with some orchard grass and clover last fall.  

Re-seeded this spring with more pasture grasses and clovers.  Bessie's fertilizer bombs have exploded into thick and very healthy clumps of clover, her legacy to the farm in the form of beautiful, composting stuff...

The garlic mustard used to be waist-high.  The blackberry thickets sliced our skin as we tried to harvest the tiny, not-so-juicy berries.  The gooseberry bushes were in too much shade to ever give us much fruit.  There was nightshade (DEADLY poisonous nightshade) hidden in the weedy growth.  The mulberry, buckthorn and walnut saplings have mostly been weeded out or girdled effectively by the goats...

You can see a real difference in the growth and management of the area this spring.  The house and it's great historic features can finally be seen without needing to push through bramble thickets or wade through Queen Anne's lace and invasive garlic mustard...  

The house is an upright-and-wing style, with beams in the basement that supposedly date back to the 1860's, with those tiny windows in a row at the top where the old attic/sleeping area used to be.  There was at one time a chimney on the very corner of the house, which likely brought heat upstairs to the attic where (historically, although there is no written record that this practice applied to THIS house) children might have slept as close to that warmth as possible in the winter.  The base of the chimney and some of the old bricks are still surfacing in some areas, where the dirt gets disturbed by heavy rains or by dogs digging after chipmunks...  (It's rather exciting to find the old chunks of coal or bits of old pottery as we walk through after any of the spring rains...)  

There is still some trimming with a hack-saw and maybe even a chain-saw to be done, but slowly, ever so slowly, we are reclaiming this tiny property and making it ours.   

The beauty that was hidden under all of the wild and weedy growth is finally coming to light, once again.

 

Laura

Silo Surprise

Our little mama cat was waddling yesterday morning, as hugely pregnant as she's ever been.

By evening, she was twirling her tail under Taffy's nose, and the baby bump was conspicuously missing.  

With the help of a flashlight, I located these little cuties in the silo, all tucked in and safe.  

She has always had four.  This time there seem to be five.  And the solid black one is a new thing.  

The scruffy gray long-hair tabby male has been hanging around and even going boldly into our barn, so I am sure he is once again the vagrant father.

Sooooo cute.  If they are still safely tucked in under the board today, I'll pick them up and get some better photos.

This is such a relief.  The 2 year old daughter of the mama was also pregnant, due a month ago.  She went missing a few days after she was due to have the kittens, and we haven't seen her since.  Last year, she was the one who abandoned her kittens in various unreachable places on the third floor of the barn, let them die, and then nursed her own half-grown brother for months instead of caring for her own babies.

The experienced mama knows where it's safe, and her kittens are always something special.  Stay tuned for close-ups and progress!!!

 

Laura

Her bags are packed...she's ready to go....

Cameo arrived in Chicago!!! 

 This morning, one of our American Guinea Hogs was loaded/lured into the largest dog crate I've ever seen. The Lincoln Park Zoo staff hoisted it into their large van, and away she went. (Photos taken behind the barn, and then after loading in the zoo transport van)
I got the call about 2 hours later that she is in her new surroundings, the keepers are pleased with her calm demeanor, and she is settling in nicely. 

She is going to be in the Farm in the Zoo section, at the free public zoo in Chicago.

 Good luck, Cameo! Have fun in the big city!  Don't get too spoiled with the vet staff waiting on you every day of your stay...  And the much cleaner living space than if you were here at home...  And the adoring Chicago-land public, oohing and aahing over your babies...  And all the extra attention that a friendly pig might receive at a zoo with animal lovers on the staff...  

Well, maybe you'll be glad to come back in a couple of months, to your mud wallow and the relative peace and quiet of the pens behind the barn...

 Babies due: June 1st.  If that date comes and goes, then 3 weeks later.  But we're pretty sure that what we witnessed nearly 4 months ago was a successful effort on the part of our boar, Lawnmower...

 If anyone visits the Farm-in-the-Zoo at Lincoln Park Zoo, please send pics of the mama guinea hog and her babies! I'll post the tales of her adventure here.

 

Laura