So You Think YOU Had a Bad Day?

Mine started at 6:00 a.m. - yeah, that is before the sun is even up.

I go into the barn before breakfast or my first cup of coffee, stumble to the feed bins, feed the calves and take Bess, the pig her food.

Bess gets to stay in the pasture all night with the cows and is sort of a "guard dog" pig at night. Then in the morning, I feed her in her pen and she stays in there for a couple of hours. Reason being, the little baby chicks that are about a month old now need to get some outside time and I am not certain if Bess would eat the baby chicks. So a few hours each day, Bess is locked in her pen so the baby chicks can scratch around outside without fear of getting eaten by the pig.

Okay, so the six baby chicks are out and about and the two mother hens that are still playing mommy are watching over them. All is right with the world at that moment.

I go back in the house and cook breakfast which the hubby and I devour in a few minutes. After that, we start working on the new pig pen, which is double the size of the one that Bess is in now.

So far so good.

We are getting the panels built without issue until we reach one of the corners. Somehow, we miscalculated the angle and it is not square. So we pull out the posts and dig new post holes.

Yes, digging post holes manually with a post hole digger sucks. It sucks worse when the ground is wet and my husband slides on the mud and lands on his "assets" in a puddle of cow crap mixed in with pig crap. I really thought he hurt himself, but he said he didn't. (He's going to be bruised tomorrow for sure).

Back to building the pig pen and slogging through the mud trying to make headway before the rain comes again.

Then I hear some duck and turkey noises that do not sound right on the other side of the barn. I drop everything and run over to see what is going on.
My tom turkey, Tanner, has one of the ducks pinned to the ground and you guessed it - he is having his way with her. So, I break up the "love-fest" and put the turkeys in their cage. Now the pig and the turkeys are secured.

The pig pen building resumes - until the bottom falls out of the sky and I am drenched to the bone.

Hubby and I drop everything we are doing and run into the house, because it is also thundering and lightening. I decide I am done for the day as it is almost dinner time. I am caked in mud from the days work, so I decide to shower before I make dinner. Trying to unwind and enjoy the few minutes of solitude, my hubby knocks on the bathroom door and says, "Sorry to bother you, but someone left the pasture gate open and well, all the animals are in the front yard. I need your help."

Fudge-cakes!

I still have soap on me and shampoo in my hair. I hurry to rinse off, get clothes on and run out to the yard. My young male bull, Mocha, who I am trying to wean from his mother, Angus Girl, is latched on to her teat. Damn it! Start the weaning clock over again for the third frigging time!

My hair is still wet from my earlier attempt at a shower, while I run to break up the "milk drinking marathon" between Mocha and his mom and my hubby tries to get the calves in the barn to keep them out of the way of us moving the older cows to the back pasture. Then it pours down rain again as I am getting all of the animals back in their correct pastures. Finally after a few attempts, all the animals are where they are supposed to be.

By this time, it is way past dinner time and I am entirely too hungry to even think about cooking. So, cheese and crackers becomes the meal for the evening.

Oh, and I had a beer to go with the cheese and crackers ...

How was your day?

Flashback Friday - The Chickens and the Eggs

 

On a cold spring morning in March of 2011, the day old baby chicks my husband and I purchased from a hatchery in the Midwest (Murray McMurray Hatchery) arrived at our local post office.

My husband received a phone call bright and early in the morning from an annoyed postmaster that there were some very noisy chicks that needed to be picked up as soon as possible.  Over the phone, my husband  could hear the peeps in the background and decided to drop everything to rush to get our very first batch of Cochin bantam chicks. 

I had to drive into a satellite office for work that day, so I missed the grand entrance of these powder puffs of  sweet peeping joy.  When I arrived home that day, the jacuzzi tub in the downstairs guest bathroom was fully transformed into a baby chick nursery.

This began the adventure of raising twenty-eight chicks that were less than two days old.

I was so excited to see the chicks and spent most of the evening on that first night sitting on the bathroom floor watching them learn to eat and drink.  They were adorable and I felt like a proud mother hen as I watched them doze off to sleep under the heat lamp.  They were perfect in my eyes and so cute, I just knew they would be a great addition to our lives.

I awoke from that first night as a surrogate mommy at the ungodly hour of two in the morning when the cacophony of peeping baby chicks bled through the walls to the upstairs master bedroom.  Just like human babies, these little guys did not sleep through the night. When one started peeping, the remainder joined in.  There would be no uninterrupted sleep for many nights to come.

As the chicks grew older, we moved them from the tub to the screen enclosure of the back patio.  It was like a huge aviary for them and they had a great time playing in the security of a closed in play-pen.

When they were a couple of months old, we moved them to a ten by ten fenced dog pen with a cover.  They were placed right next to the screened in patio for easy monitoring.  After a few months when the chicken coop was completed, the now adolescent chicks were moved into their permanent home.

The move was not without casualties.  Just prior to moving them to their permanent abode, a hawk swooped down upon one that had escaped the from the dog pen.  The hawk had his first taste of baby chick and after that would try to get into the cage every chance he could.

During the next few weeks, three chicks were lost to the hawk and the count remaining stayed at twenty-five through their first year of life.

Within three to four months, the first egg was laid by one of the hens, it was about the size of a golf ball.  I was ecstatic about the prospects of having fresh from the farm eggs for breakfast.  But, it took several  more weeks for the other hens to start laying so having their eggs for breakfast had to wait.

Once I had the first bite of my hand-raised, free-range, organic eggs, I was in heaven.  The eggs were hands-down the very best I had ever tasted.  Soon there was an over abundance of eggs and family and friends were the welcome recipients of the excess.

To this day we have anywhere from fifteen to thirty hens to keep us in fresh eggs.  I have to admit, each time I eat a store bought egg, I can really taste the difference in flavor and texture between home-grown and commercial eggs.

Farm Girl Freak's Dark Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Ingredients:

1 cup butter (2 sticks)
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 Giant size Hershey Dark Chocolate Bar chopped into chunks


Directions:

1. In a large mixing bowl beat the butter with an electric mixer on medium to high speed for 30 seconds.
2. Add brown sugar, granulated sugar, salt and baking soda. Beat mixture until combined.
3. Add in the eggs and vanilla, beat until well blended.
4. Beat in half of the flour, then stir in remaining flour.
5. Stir in chocolate pieces.
6. Drop dough by rounded teaspoons on an un-greased cookie sheet.
7. Bake in a 350 degree oven 9 to 11 minutes or until edges are lightly browned.
8. Transfer cookies to a wire rack or wax paper and let cool.
9. Makes about 48 cookies.

Fan Appreciation Give-a-way

I have been so overwhelmed with the support from everyone that I would like to give back to you all with a chance for ONE lucky person to win:

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To Enter:

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Good Luck to everyone and thanks again for supporting I.T. Geek to Farm Girl Freak.




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Mocha is Such a Weaner!

Never a dull moment on the farm. Every day there is something that needs to be done with the animals.

I "thought" Angus Girl was dried up and no longer lactating. I mean it has been over two weeks since I separated her from her son, Mocha. So, I let her back in with everyone and wouldn't you know ...

This is what happened:

Dang it!

Now, Mocha is in the front pasture and Angus Girl is in the back with the other girl cows.

Starting the weaning process all over again.

The past two nights have been constant mooing from both Mocha and his mom. And of course, the other cows join in the serenade, which leads to no sleep for me. I am going to use earplugs so I can sleep through the night tonight (seriously, I am).

Was it Something I Said?

If you have been following the Farm Girl Freak's time-line on Facebook, you know that I am trying to get Angus Girl fully dried up (from lactation) before I let her back in with the herd and with her son, Mocha.

The past couple of days, she has been pretty upset with me and the hubs for not allowing her to go into the back pasture.  She knows which gates lead to the back ten acres and she checks them multiple times a day to see if we "accidentally" left them open.

I video-taped her yesterday morning when she tried to access one of the back gates.  My hubby walked over to her and said, "Hi Sweetheart."

What happened when he put his hand out to greet her was pretty funny.

I just have to caption the video clip with, "Was it Something I Said?"