Vet Visits, Oh Boy.

This week began with a battle of wills between us and the grown up chickens, specifically John Adams. Due to our good nature and desire to have the happiest chickens known to mankind we have been letting the Adams Family out in the chicken run regularly. It is a little early to trust them completely as free rangers yet and a chicken is a tasty treat for a hawk or stray dog, but we capitulated to the crowing and let them have some protected outdoor space. All was well on the farm so Ed and Nate sped off to Lowes for some supplies and testosterone-laden discussion. Upon their return Kaitlin and Gayle were running around like chickens with their you know what cut off trying to get Mr. Adams back in the pen. Talk about an opportunist. As soon as the boys left he decided to party like chickens do and sprinted laps around the chicken coop followed by the girls.

The exercise ended in a mild altercation between Ed and Mr. Adams, and lets just say Mr. Adams lost when he had to tap out and concede the wrestling match. Some chicken thinking and a few fence adjustments should correct the problem.

The new chicks are doing very well and growing so fast you can see them as they sprout new feathers. In a week they have quadrupled in size. We are especially proud of our “Rare and Exotic” freebie from the hatchery. He/She was included as a surprise with our order. Chris has identified it as a Japanese Phoenix variety, although we are unsure of its gender. There are over two hundred varieties of chickens in the United States. We have named our new friend Superchicken due to its dominance and exhibition of superior intelligence over the other babies. For fun and entertainment Ed will catch crickets and throw them into the brooder box with the twenty-five babies. Total mayhem ensues as all twenty-five race around the box like atoms in a molecule stealing the tasty treat from each other. It kind of resembles what would happen if a fifty-dollar bill blew across the floor at Kmart during a blue light special sale. Anyway, Superchicken is currently undefeated in cricket racing and has consumed the prize every time.

On Thursday we had quite a scare when Woody showed up with an injured right leg and couldn't walk. He wouldn't come for food or to go outside and winced in pain when we tried to look at his paw. We decided that it was his right front wrankle (wrist/ankle) that was bothering him and set out to determine the cause of his pain. When asked Woody wasn't clear about exactly what happened (typical of teenagers) so we had to reconstruct the incident by gathering evidence and piecing together a good timeline for the time period prior to his lameness. After thorough investigation and a rather costly visit to the vet we decided that Woody was lying on the couch and realized that Gayle was on her way upstairs to take a little nap. In his haste to join her he fell off the couch and landed wrong, injuring himself to the point that he is on bed rest and anti-inflammatories for two weeks.

Now, I realize that I do have a tendency to be cynical, but come on. This isn't a union shop. We don't work our staff too hard. Why would someone need to exaggerate an injury to get time off on bed rest? He could have worked to make it look like he was injured doing something heroic couldn't he? I guess the stress of moving from suburban prince to rural farm hand may have been too stressful. I'm sure a vacation request is on its way.

This week we are installing the most important modern farm implement that any farm could have and every farm should have, a hot tub. The hot tub is important on the farm. It keeps the farmer in the right frame of mind and actually moving after riding the tractor for too long or listening to the goats complain incessantly about EVERYTHING. There is bound to be some allegations of unfairness, since the hot tub club will be exclusive to people only, but we will cross that bridge when it comes. Besides, you can bet that if the farmer has an orthopedic issue and gets bed rest for two weeks that the goats and chickens will be filing a grievance in no time.

Now, how to duck proof a hot tub....?

Birth Announcement: It's a girl, and a girl, and a girl.......

 Persistence and/or obstinance have paid off on the old farm and we finally can count our chickens. (They’ve hatched). They arrived early Thursday at the now somewhat infamous Mount Ulla, North Carolina post office and our postal contact and chicken advisor Jennifer again called for us to pick up the new peepers. In our extensive poultry research we learned that the appropriate term for a group of chirping females of the chicken variety is “biddies”. Go figure. The upside of ordering day old chicks as opposed to eggs is that you can order all hens so you don't have to deal with rooster issues. The down side of ordering all hens is that it has significantly swayed the hormonal balance in the barnyard. All twenty-six arrived in good shape in a cardboard box. Apparently even the Postal Service has a heart for baby chicks and doesn’t run them through a piece of automated handling equipment that folds, spindles and mutilates very effectively. We now have twelve Barred Rock hens to add to our four “adult” hens living in the chicken coop as well as thirteen Buff Orpington hens and a free “mystery rare and exotic chick” of the breeder’s choice. Chris identified the loner as a Japanese Phoenix chick. The males (roosters) in Japan could have tail feathers up to twenty feet long. Chris is hoping it’s a rooster. Gayle wants to know who’s going to keep that tail clean.

The chicks are shipped as soon as they are hatched and have not eaten or had water yet. The first task is to teach the little orphans how to drink water. Since Chris has been drinking water for quite a while and Ed only drinks Dr. Pepper and rarely ever shares, it was Chris’s job to instruct the class. After a little effort and some issues with a couple of class clowns the babies decided that drinking was good and they would continue to practice. The marbles in the pie pan are to keep them from drowning. They are all living in a one-room brooder box with a heat lamp for the next four weeks until they grow adult feathers and can deal with cooler nights in the coop.

While the babies were napping we decided that the big birds had been in solitary confinement for long enough to learn where home is and that we could let them out in the chicken run for the first time. It was a popular decision among the flock and they were happy to scratch around in the dirt looking for something interesting to put in their mouths. After watching them and the goats for a while we decided that animals would not do most of the gross things that they do if they had opposable thumbs, but God must have created them without thumbs for our entertainment. Woody and Charlotte were very interested in the big chickens that are a bit taller and much more aggressive than they are. It is probably a good thing that the dogs don’t know they are dogs because the inevitable confrontation between John Adams and the pups ended in the dogs leaving rapidly and very insulted. I should have warned the dogs that not everyone likes to have their butt sniffed on a first meeting. Live and learn.

Farmer Art continues to heal and will be back to his old self in no time. The goat girls are doing well and were treated to a worming and a new salt lick this weekend. They weighed in at forty-five pounds each and are half way to becoming our first attempt at animal husbandry. There has been discussion of pigs and cows recently, but Gayle just plugs her ears and starts singing show tunes really loud when the topic comes up. Ed keeps reminding her that we need to have all of the animals that came in the Fisher Price farm because that is his earliest farming memory, although he recently found out that chickens don’t really have a square hole on their bottom so you can stick them on the fence post. Maybe that’s another “mystery rare and exotic chick”

Why Did Old MacDonald Sing?

It has been a busy, hectic week. We have been anxiously waiting for news regarding Farmer Art’s condition after his recent mule melee. The news is good and bad. Art returned home over the weekend after a week in the hospital. He has three broken ribs, a broken left collarbone and a looming date with a cardiac catheter lab. His head injuries have healed to the point that they are not critical. The problem with the collarbone and rib fractures is that they really cannot be immobilized, so every movement is extremely painful. Please continue to pray for Art.

We spoke to Art’s wife Brenda and asked if Art knew what happened. He has no memory of anything that occurred from the time he started messing with the mule until he was in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. I told Brenda to remind Art that he promised to give us his nicest tractor. It didn’t work. Apparently even after a head injury he would remember that.

Our new flock of four hens has not started laying eggs yet but we do expect them to any day. For motivation we purchased some brown ceramic eggs and placed them in the nesting boxes in the chicken coop. I think this might be the same theory as running the water when you are trying to potty train a toddler, but I’m not sure. As of tonight nothing from the girls, but old John Adams has been practicing his crowing…A LOT. We are very happy that we put thermo pane windows in the coop now because even with the coop all closed up and the windows in the house closed we can still here him. He’s like a concert pianist trying to perfect a concerto. He practices at least eight hours a day. I hope the hens find it endearing or he may be evicted from the commune. He is getting louder but we are concerned that he is spending too much time with the girls. His crow actually tails up at the end as if he’s asking a question or confused. We hope he is not confused about his responsibilities on the farm. A rooster that doesn’t rooster is soup.

Brad and Mia’s cows next door are growing fairly quickly. The plan is to raise them for the rodeo. They will be roped by cowboys a few dozen times and then sent back home. I’m not sure what the long term plans are for them. I think the way you train a roping calf is by sneaking up behind them and whispering “LOOK OUT” or something like that in their ears so that they become overly neurotic and easily spooked. (This works on little sisters also). Then you wave pictures of cowboys and large crowds of spectators in their face while playing loud hard rock music in eight-second intervals. By the time they get let out of the gate at the rodeo they are absolutely crazy and run around at full speed kicking and thrashing. I know this is how they do it because I read it on Wikipedia. We are planning on having a few beef cows in the back pasture in the future but they will be the thick, juicy kind of cows, not the crazy ones.

The Milwaukee goat girls, Laverne and Shirley, have not attempted an escape since their first outing and have become very friendly to all of us. They know how to get Chris to take them for a walk and tie them out where the grass is greener and when Gayle calls the dogs or the cat the girls always answer in unison. They hate to be left out of anything. We will take them on their first date when they reach eighty pounds or so and hopefully the birds and the bees will be working that day.

We are very appreciative of the warmer weather and the longer growing season and still cannot get used to the climatic disparities between Cleveland, Ohio and Mount Ulla, North Carolina. Only an eight hour drive but a world of weather difference. We look forward to our first and probably only snowy day sometime in February, but for now we will have to settle for days like these.

Feathers, Feathers, Everywhere.... Finally

Wow news travels fast and boy is everyone excited. These folks heard the news that we FINALLY found some occupants for the chicken mansion. Yep, that's right, real live poultry. Chris worked for our good friend Art again this week and shared our feathered frustrations with him.

At the end of the day Art offered to help us get a start with some good looking, very healthy Barred Rock hens and a young Buckeye rooster that is just finding his crowing voice. We picked up the whole bunch Sunday afternoon and they are now living in their new home and adjusting to being spoiled like the rest of the inmates on the farm.

The week started out with some fun and frivolity when the neighbors that live to the south of us came over to tell us that Laverne and Shirley, the goat girls, had decided that they were bored and let themselves out to take a walk. Chris and I tracked them through the cornfields down the street where they finally ran into a fence. We caught up with them while they were arguing over which way to turn next and "persuaded" them to rethink their night on the town and come home. Goats are known for their Houdini-like abilities, and after some observation we realized that they had escaped by climbing onto the goat house roof and jumping off over the fence. Apparently they really needed a night out. After some re-engineering with a sheet of plywood their roof climbing capability was eliminated. Maybe they are practicing to be reindeer when they grow up! We wouldn't want to crush their dreams so we will let them go on pretending they are not goats.

We had a visit from Chris's friend Tom Nickel this week. Tom lives in the old neighborhood and goes to school at Malone College in Canton, Ohio. Tom learned a little about farm life and took Chris for a night out in downtown (or uptown) Charlotte. We are a little concerned that Tom will never eat beef or soybean derivatives again after we shared some commercial food production truths with him. But then again, being an average twenty-one year old, he probably forgot all of his concerns an hour into the eight-hour drive when a Taco Bell appeared over the horizon. I'm sure he will survive somehow.

This week was spent working on the gardens up front where we planted some horseradish roots and some strawberry plants for spring. We have also been reworking the electric fence to give the goats a little more protection from predators. Apparently stray dogs and coyotes don't like 60,000 volts tickling their busy little paws or noses. Ed's Uncle Rob called with some much appreciated good advice about goats and plowing and general farm etiquette. We also calculated that we could milk the goats to the tune of 300 gallons of milk a year, one little squirt at a time. But still the most rewarding accomplishment of the week was finally starting our egg and chicken supply.

Now is that a handsome looking fella or what!?...

PS. We received a call late this evening that our good friend Art has been in an accident with his mule. When we left him earlier today he told us that he was going to be working with the mule and that he was concerned about the hazards. He has a broken rib and punctured lung as well as a serious brain contusion. He was admitted to the hospital and is sedated. Please pray for Art. He is a strong Christian and has been a great help to us and a good friend to Chris. We will let you know how he is doing as soon as we know more.

The Chicken Saga Continues

For those thousands of concerned blog viewers that have been on chicken watch anxiously awaiting the arrival of our Buff Orpington chicks we have a definitive resolution to incubation stress, although the outcome may be difficult to accept. If you have young children reading along you may want to put them to bed or divert their attention. After much calculation, planning, engineering, design, construction and late night egg rolling we have determined that a critical thermostat malfunction on the level of NASA's bad space shuttle o-rings has caused the first batch of forty-eight eggs to over-heat and suffer a critical failure. While a good hatch rate is normally 95% and we would have been satisfied with an 80% hatch, our zero hatch was a difficult loss to overcome. Upon inspection of our digital thermometer's maximum and minimum readings we realized that our low was too low and our high was conducive to omelets, not live chickens. I never thought it could happen to us. It's always on someone else's farm. I wasn't sure if we would recover from such emotional devastation.

We mourned our loss for the customary forty-five minute time period and continued on to plan B. (It's actually probably plan W or X, but we can't even remember where the chicken chase started.) Back to our favorite farm tool, the Internet, we went. We were very happy to find a local monthly poultry auction not too far from home that was coming up Saturday morning. So the calendar was duly marked and we again were chicken hopefuls.

In the mean time we were graced with a wonderful visit from the Simmerer clan of Westlake, Ohio. The Simmerers are a stout bunch not unfamiliar to the ways of the road warrior and an eight-hour drive is like a walk in the park for them. They made the over the mountain southern trek and arrived at the farm at 4:30 a.m. on Friday morning. Rick, Ruth, RJ and Rachel. Their camper blended well with the 53-foot semi trailer in the front yard and the neighbors didn't even notice all the goings on. Late Friday it was agreed that the men would go to the chicken auction while the girls toured the greater Mount Ulla area and visited Kaitlin in Huntersville.

Saturday came early, but the men were committed to filling the chicken coop, so off they drove deep into farm country. (Even deeper I mean.) The auction was all that was expected and a crate full of Barred Rock hens was identified and marked for attention at the appropriate time during the bidding. After a two-hour wait as the auctioneer peddled trailers full of land fill quality merchandise and miscellaneous live stock and related items the chickens finally began to come to the podium.

We patiently waited as box after box of some seriously distasteful looking poultry went by, but our target purchase had not come up yet. With only ten or so items left Ed got impatient and got up to look for the soon-to-be-his Barred Rock hens only to realize that he had been back-doored by some underhanded auction scalawag and the chickens of his dreams had disappeared. Obviously some high level corporate dealings had gone on outside the accepted auction channels and the opportunity was lost forever. Within seconds the auction was over and Ed, Rick and RJ were left to review their purchases, still reeling from the dirty chicken dealings. The day was not a complete loss though because Ed has a serious auction disorder and came home with a couple of rakes for the chicken coop. Oh,.... and two female Nubian milk goats. Meet our newest additions to the farm family, Laverne and Shirley.

These two fine specimens are six months old and are relaxing in the old dog pen behind the house. Goats are very social and fairly intelligent. Our next plan includes attempting to teach the goats to cluck and lay eggs.

The Pursuit of Happyness (For Chickens)

When we began the process of moving from Ohio to North Carolina we recognized that there could potentially be changes in our day-to-day activities and interactions with our neighbors and acquaintances. In an effort to bridge the gap between the Southerners and Northerners we have started to research linguistic patterns and diction differences relative to geographical, cultural and socioeconomic disparities. You may have noticed the fruit of our labors above. As we continue to adapt to life with the indigenous inhabitants we will share our verbal discoveries in a section we like to call "The Countryfied word of the day". We hope you can all learn along with us.

We are again realizing that our internal calendars are not accustomed to southern timing. While up North, friends are talking snow and beginning to wear cold weather clothing, Chris has been harvesting some of the vegetables he planted in the end of August. No, those are not beets. They are radishes THE SIZE of beets. And yes it is still warm enough here to be out all day in a sleeveless T-shirt and the sky is almost always that blue. I may never get over it. Gayle has again moved her front porch decorations to better serve the neighbors and all humanity. If she keeps this up I am going to start passing the house when I come home because I don’t recognize it.

The chicken coop is ready for our McNuggets to hatch. They will be here in three days, so we stop rotating them today. We need to give them time to figure out which way is up. I can only imagine that getting rolled over inside that tiny shell every eight hours for three weeks is like being hung over with jet lag and falling down the steps. The CIA may want to consider using this method for interrogation if they aren't allowed to water board the bad guys any more. Once the chicks hatch we lock them down in the coop for three or four weeks under the heat to keep them warm until they grow their big bird feathers. After four weeks old they can go out into the chicken yard and "free range" all they want. Our job at that point is to watch them and try to decide who looks like a good egg layer. We will keep eight to ten good "Pullets" to lay eggs. The rest will get to go on the Colonel Sanders ride at Ed’s Fun House. The hens that stay on the farm will get to live in the nicest hen house this side of the Mason Dixon line, complete with real cedar branches (naturally rot resistant) for roosting rails and central air (a retired kitchen fan).

To go along with our chicken dinner we would like a nice white wine, so, we planted grapes. As it turns out our soil needs help to grow vegetables but is perfect for grapes. There are some rather large wineries North of us and some varieties of wine grapes grow very well. We have planted two varieties of seedless eating grapes this fall but will plant two or three rows of wine grapes next year.

We are getting ready for another two or three "Nate" (see previous blog) fire this weekend when Rick and Ruth Simmerer and clan visit. We are looking forward to sitting by the fire and roasting marshmallows and then treating our radiation burns. We have a feeling that someone is coming during the night and dropping off scrap lumber and yard waste. Naturally, being a retired firefighter, Ed recognizes the hazards involved in combustible woodland materials lying around and is always prepared to promptly correct any of these hazardous situations.

Woody and Charlotte recently graduated to mans best friend level five and have been allowed to stay loose in the house if we leave for a while. They have also been adapting to large space roaming rights with only an occasional drift across the boundaries into the neighbor's perimeter. All was going well until today when Thing1 and Thing2 decided that it would be good times to explore the overgrown part of the woods and find things to eat that are not appropriate to be eaten. They returned when called with extreme guilt and certain that they were going to be busted back to level one subservient canine. Woody had managed to find some type of burr that when attached to curly dog hair is next to impossible to remove and both deviants had consumed something that made their breath smell like they were backwards. So, off to the tub for a major scrubbing and then the punishment that these dogs fear more than being left behind when we go for a car ride.....the toothbrush.

"Farm Livin' is the Life for Me..."

This weekend the boys had a little “hoot-nanny” while the girls took a trip to Asheville about two hours from here. Gayle was attending classes to become a Doula there and Kaitlin went along for the ride so she could snap some pictures in the mountains. Shortly after the girls left the boys hosted some of Chris’s new church friends for a birthday party. Kristen was turning twenty-two and wanted to have a bonfire to celebrate. Of course Ed and Nate would not want to disappoint one of Chris’s good friends by denying such a request, so, off they went rounding up fuel for said fire. There are a lot of things to use for fuel on the farm and before we knew it we had built a two Nate fire. Much like a yard was defined as the distance from the Kings fingertip to his nose, the fires around here are measured in multiples of Nate’s height (approximately six feet equals one Nate). By midnight we had disposed of all of our scrap lumber from the chicken coop and cleaned out a portion of the woods as well. Lots and lots of BTU’s. It was a welcomed diversion after the boys put in some long days of work. Nate and Kaitlin and Chris have all been putting in their time laboring and cultivating and are very appreciated.

The chicken coop is all but finished for our soon to arrive poultry pals. We just have to run electricity for the brooding lamps and we will be dining on soufflé’s and quiche in no time. At least the girls will. Ed and the boys will be thinking about what to do with their first million dollars from selling organic free-range chicken eggs. (It would actually take one hundred chickens thirty-nine years to lay one million eggs, so no one is quitting their jobs quite yet.) The coop should be very comfortable for our egg-laying princesses though, however many eggs they lay.

The old tractor was brought out last week to brush hog the weeds from the future pond. The weeds were so thick that we couldn’t see what we had to deal with. A brush hog is an attachment for the tractor that looks like a large lawn mower but is as vicious as a shark attack. It cuts down weeds and small trees, mulches, rids the property of snakes and undesirable rodents and even pulverizes rocks. A regular horticultural landscaping exterminating wonder. We were pleasantly surprised to find that the slope and grade should be excellent for building a pond. The finished product should be an acre or more and will store water for livestock and irrigation.

And for those of you that have been following the saga of our hatching soap opera (One Peep to Live or Days of Our Hens) we are happy to report that on further examination, with the use of Ed’s homemade egg candling apparatus, we do have chicken progress. Based on our data and recalculation of gestation and incubation calculations (this time with the correct dates) we should have peepers by the fourteenth just in time for the Simmerer clan to visit from the Great White North. We do unfortunately have to share the news that our well traveled eggs that accidentally made a side trip to Cleveland before coming to the farm are showing fewer than expected probable hatchers. But on the upside those that do hatch are going to be tough as nails and may not use the term “Ya’ll” or “Youinz” frequently in conversation. Not that there’s anything wrong with that….

Chris did get to spend another day on the Apple Tree Farm with our friend Art. Some branches came down on the pasture fence and Art and Chris needed to repair the holes before Art's Angus went AWOL. Throughout the day Chris noticed that the relationship between Art and his cows was much like a game of chess. Art continually tries to fool the cows into going where he needs them to while they continually attempt to circumvent all of Arts efforts to control them. The day was filled with Art muttering about the stupid cows under his breath and Chris laughing at their antics. Art again sent Chris home with goodies including two varieties of grapes for the "vineyard" and some flowers for Gayle. We are really blessed to have a friend like Art that has been farming for thirty eight years to keep an eye on us. I wonder if Art is almost at his millionth egg.....?