The Goats are Messing Up the Barn

Dear Farmer is in the midst of a frustrating situation.  The Goats are being goats.
They are climbing his hay like mountains and while doing so, they are making a mess of the hay.
The Goats are jumping and romping up the steep cliffs of the bales as though it were nothing.  They bounce around like they have anti-gravity-hooves.  They are healthy, happy, and energized Goats.
Gone are the days of Dear Farmer having the barn all to himself, the hay remaining neatly stacked until he fed it...the Goats are terrorizing his solitude.  The Goats seem to have no concern for the neatness in the hay bales.
 Dear Farmer is aghast!
He comes inside at night shaking his head and moaning..."my hay.  they are wrecking my hay bales..."
The Wife looks at Dear Farmer.
She has two children hanging on either leg, snotty smiles and giggles.  She is holding a baby who needs a diaper change(again).  The living room is covered in legos and children. An art project is strewn out on the table with more children.  There is lots of activity inside the house.  Yelling, laughing, thumping activity. Happy and healthy, energized children.
The Wife offers to Dear Farmer, "I'll send the children out to the barn to help you clean up from the Goats."
 Dear Farmer actually looks around, at the Wife, at the house, at the children.
"No...I'll go clean it up later." , he says.
And Dear Farmer goes back out to his barn...and the Goats.  It's really not that bad of a mess down at the barn.

Dear Farmer is Getting New Glasses...or... The Family is Laughing Uncontrollably...

Dear Farmer, after not being able to read the small television screen, having to find the "sweet spot" while reading books, and his glasses breaking beyond repair...finally consented to going to the eye doctor.
The last eye appointment he had was three years ago.  Why doesn't he go every year?  Well, he doesn't like to spend the money...and they always prescribe him new lenses.  Hmmmm...being a farmer that NEEDS glasses to see...well,moving on...
So the Wife made Dear Farmer an appointment and sent him on his way.
Dear Farmer was impressed with the new technology the doctor had!  The doctor took a picture of his eyeball, and was very impressed with his healthy eyeballs!  Then he did the actual exam...
The doctor flashed up the first card...Dear Farmer squinted and squeezed, but he read the card.
The doctor told Dear Farmer,"Don't try so hard.  Just glance and read."
The doctor flashed the next card...Dear Farmer didn't squint or squeeze. Dear Farmer glanced up and read,"E, T, G, B, A."
The doctor's response: "You can't see it.  Those were numbers."
(Insert family rolling with laughter!!!)
The doctor asked Dear Farmer about farming, and fencing, and picked his brain on sheep pastures. The chatter softened the blow of reality...
Dear Farmer has a wonderful healthy eyeball that needs glasses...he now needs bi-focal glasses.
The glasses will cost more than before, but he'll see better than he used to! Once he gets used to those new-fangled progressive lenses.

So you want to be a farmer? The Reality of Being Organic and Sustainable

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it comes dressed in overalls and looks like work."
-Thomas Edison

If you thought that recycling made you sustainable and organic meant that you didn't use deodorant, then we're a shocker for you.  We take that to a whole new level!!!(Yes, we do use odor protection.)
Sustainable means we put up enough hay in the summer to feed the herd in the winter, and we're planning on growing the grass again next year. So we mow it when it goes to seed-head.  It's not a nice lawn look all year.  Sometimes during the summer it may look quite shaggy-depending on rainfall.
It means when there's an apple tree in the field, we pick it and sauce it so we have food in the winter. We don't complain the apples are the size of your thumb. Sometimes sustainability can take on the same look as common-sense...a chicken gets used four different ways. First as a vet for the cows as it cleans the pasture, next as an egg layer, third as a stew bird for dinner, and lastly as chicken broth preserved for later. We use the sun and air we breathe to dry our clothes, for light during the day and that "fresh air" smell on our sheets.
Everything that's sustainable is hard work, there's no skating by.  Burning wood for heat means cutting the wood, splitting the wood, and stacking the wood-sometimes in the coldest day of the winter.
But it's so worth it!
Organic means we don't use anything God didn't create for fertilizer, animals, and food.  We use our own animals to fertilize the pastures, then give them a dose of watered down compost for good measure.  We don't breed animals to have the biggest body-parts for show or production, we take them as God made them and use them right. That's why our goats have horns, cats have claws, and chickens have bone and skin!  We let the animals eat the grass, the apples, the leaves, the herbs-and we don't peel back an ear of corn for them.  This is the way God meant it to be.
Before you think this is all daisies and roses, can I be quite frank?  Because of this life we live...there are things you may want to consider...wear mud boots(real ones, not fashionable ones) to get to the door. There's chicken poop everywhere.  Why? They have wings, they fly any where they want to.  That means to the house, not just in the barnyard.
There's a goat who will greet you at the car door, and will gladly display for you how she can urinate on your foot and poop all the way to the front door of the house.
The cats like to leave "gifts" everywhere.  Dead mice, voles, ground squirrels, chipmunks...
Be prepared for dirt.  The windows are open in the house and it coats the furniture...really, I dusted it off six times today from the dark wood piano!  The dirt covers feet, shoes, clothes, and gets under nails.  It sticks to the cobwebs created overnight, and onto the faucets where children were washing it off.  It doesn't matter how we attempt to get rid of it, it comes back. A magazine cover will never show the reality of farm life dirt.
The mess. There's a plethora of misc. tools, equipment, toys, and vehicles that don't run. The reality is, we're busy staying alive, there'll be a time to make it all clean(when the dumpster is here), but right now isn't that time.  So, if you're OCD(which I find I am) take a deep breathe and close your eyes as you walk past it. The mess won't change the taste of dinner, and it also won't make the photo shoot for the magazine cover(thankfully).  So just move on. Lastly, prepare yourself for a new brand of sweat.  I promise, we do use odor protection, but it doesn't help the amount of sweat we produce.  It doesn't matter what time of year it is, there's hard physical work we're doing.  Whether it's under the hot sun or bundled in the dead of winter-people around here are sweating!  No need for aerobics class, we pitchfork hay around for hours. Snow-shoeing and cross country skiing are means for checking the fence lines.  Walking miles is a form of transportation, not relaxation. And when you see people standing around this kitchen with dripping hair or frozen hair and wet shirts and socks, covered head to toe in dirt and poop-laughing about the day they just had...know that they've accomplished the "Organic" label that went on that product in the store. AND LIFE IS GOOD!

The Chickens Are Coming! The Chickens Are Coming!

Farm Rule #100: It's going to be a warm day when: the chickens come up to the house!

At 7am the Wife sighted the first chicken up on the deck.  She knew this meant it would be a warm day...

She turned off the furnace and turned on the blowers.

She doubled up wood inside the house so we could get the woodstove piping hot and (hopefully) open windows to get fresh air.

Then she smiled and told Dear Farmer that she was glad that spring is on it's way!

 Dear Farmer broke the news to the Wife that the temperature is only to be at 38F today.  38F!!!!  That's just above freezing! 

But...but...but...the chickens are at the house!  That means it's going to be a warm day...is 38F warm?

...maybe it there will be sunshine....

The Farm-Boys Cut Wood

Today was one of those unusual days this time of year..clear blue sky and enough warmth to make you think spring wasn't so far away.
It was also unusual because we had all our farm-boys home, Honorable Sons 1&2, the Keeper of the Flame, the Pied Piper, and the Farmer's Shadow.  The bigger boys had returned home for a day of woodcutting...a labor of love for their parents. The day went smoothly, the little Farm-boy Trio had the opportunity to keep up to the bigger brothers and they had great joy in working with the BIG BOYS.
The wood is stacked in neat rows, enough for the next few weeks.
Later that night we all sat down to dinner together.  No electronic devices, just home-cooked food, and home-cooked humor.  The dinner table was happy, the house was warm, and the parents were blessed.  A truly wonderful way to end the day.

Welcome the new Groundhog!

While Dear Farmer was preparing to do chores this afternoon he had the opportunity to witness a "waterbirth" by Yellow tag #1.  Of course, this first time mother would choose the day that it's raining, snowing, and icing all at once to give birth to a little calf in a sludge puddle.
Dear Farmer had to get the pair into the barn, which is quite the chore when the weather is as it was, and set up with water and hay.
Dear Farmer, calf and cow were all covered in sludge from head to toe(or hoof),but everyone's now in the barn dry and safe.
The Wife called the calf "Groundhog", appropriate for the day and because we've done this all before.

Farm-Boys Do Not Clean a Bedroom

Go ahead and tell the Wife all you want to about making boys clean their own bedrooms...it's nothing she hasn't told herself....however, the Farm-Boy Trio's bedroom was so BAD there was just no way she was going to ask for, require, or wanted their help. The bedroom needed an adult size heart of a prison guard, the adult size muscles, and a mother's love.
Just to give you a little taste of what the Wife has found in the Farm-Boys' bedroom in the past, here's the ugly side:

• a dead vole in a jar under a bed-pillow (which the Wife was told, it's not dead, it's just sleeping)
• molded chimichangas stuffed under the bed (when did we last eat chimichanga's???)
• hardened banana peels in the closet
• underwear worn by a boy who didn't make it to the bathroom soon enough...under the pile of clean clothes.
• dead worms (they assured the Wife they were dead and dried when they came into the room, it was a scientific discovery)

this is just a few...the ones that made it onto the short list....

What kind of mother are you? A mother who has happy healthy children, who had a disgusting bedroom.

So now the Wife gave the Farm-Boy Trio the choice, "You may go outside and play with your goats, or work next to me cleaning your disgusting bedroom."
The choice was unanimous to go outside.  And for the entire four hours that it took the Wife to clean the bedroom spotlessly wonderful, the Farm-Boy Trio played outside with their goats.  The goats loved the attention, the Wife loved the solace of peace while cleaning, and the Farm-Boy Trio loves the clean bedroom.  No disgusting discoveries were made during the cleaning this time...and once again the Wife is on the war path that the bedroom should NEVER look like that again!