The critter that rules the roost

Welcome to the farm, Little Critter!  Born Monday morning and has turned the farm upside down!

days melt all together

Always, this time of year, combined with the big, commercialized holidays, I always get kind of melancholy and reflect on things that have happened to me so far this year. It's hard not having a net connection out here. Paying for a wifi hotspot by the gig is just too expensive. Not enough paycheck for it.

So, what's been happening to the little self sustained farm this year? I've been stuck in a rut of perpetual catch 22. The farm isn't making enough to pay the taxes and the monthly bills so I work off farm more which reduces the amount of time I can work to improve the farm which in turn, slows progress on it down. I am grateful for the pitiful paycheck, it is keeping the bills paid. Just doesn't give me enough to make the improvements I need to make in a timely fashion. Took me all summer to scrounge up enough to get 6 pieces of treated 2x10 along with 18 pieces of treated 2x6, 4 rolls of cage wire for the base of the chicken coop. 19 weeks to save up $218. There's chickens in it now but it's not finished and winter is coming fast here. My big stumbler is that darn truckers tarp I need for the shelter side. That bugger is over $100. I need 4 more sticks of lumber, 3 more sheets of plywood to finish the shelter side. Meanwhile, I've got a plastic tarp zip tied and pinned to the base, covering the whole thing to keep the weather off the 45 days old chicks I hatched in the house to fill it. Oh, ha, I don't have a door for it yet, I keep them inside with an old quilt hung over the hole and an old, rotten table top! Yep, use what ya got, even if it's crazy and kind of retarded looking.

Garden was a wash this year. Barely made enough out of it in between the head high weeds to feed me up to Christmas time. Totally my fault for relying on an old fart who was full of crap and good stories of all the stuff he could do for me to help. Too bad it was all bullshit. So glad I wasted 5 years feeding 2 worthless nags for him while he was away. Eh, I did get a square baler out of it. Which, I need to buy a tarp for that and get it moved into one of the side stalls on the old barn. I've been procrastinating moving it because that old barn needs some work and I'm worried it's gonna fall down this winter. The main section of that old barn is full of square bales of hay. Too bad it's not MY hay. Another catch 22 thing. Work too much to cut and bale the hay so I had to reach out for help which in turn, I need to give help in return.

I'm disappointed with the rabbits this year. I've old had 3 batches of kits all summer, sold 18 to Rural King, lost 4 in the yard and ended up with 2 young does and another 2 bucks. Since I lost one good breeding doe this summer, the 2 young ones are needed to replace her. They haven't produced yet. The 2 bucks need to be in the freezer and will be pretty quick. No sense in feeding them for nothing.

Another year has gone by without me adding quail to the farm. The run is something else I need to save for. Right now, it's behind a new pair of glasses. I only have one pair, prescription, and they're expensive to replace. The ones I am currently wearing are so scratched up, they give me headaches. Tried to polish them since no vision place around here would do it for me. They claim you can't polish the transitions lenses. Wow, what a big mistake choosing those were! Pain in the ass, they take forever to dark up then take forever to undarken and the coating is flaking which is what's causing the distortion. I tried some stuff around the shop and made a slight improvement, it did peel some off but they're a little cloudy now. Don;'t have a fine enough grit to actually polish them. So, new pair has to be purchased. Need $300 for that, have $43 dollars saved up for them so far. LOL, it's gonna be a while still. There's no earning potential from a new pair of glasses. Personal comfort and decent vision but no farm income. Hard to make that kind of decision but it's base survival here and it's do what ya gotta do and get on with it as usual. So, it goes on the list with socks, underwear and a new pair of boots that don't have duct tape on them holding them together! Yep, I'm going into winter with 1 pair of sneakers that are pretty much worn out and a pair of work boots that are split down the side. Oh well, just part of life.

Oh! A good thing, it was kind of a surprise! Delta, my Kinder goat nanny, just gave me a new kid to play with! A single this time, a little nanny goat. Tri-colored. Never had kids in November before. Had to be one of the January billys I hauled to the auction in September. She would have bred back in May, during the monsoon rains we had this spring. So, there's a new baby bouncing around in the barn.

Oh, ha, a friend bought me an adult coloring book. Complex, geometric patterns. Kind of cool. Supposed to be good stress relief. Too bad I've only got 4 colored pencils! I colored 2 pages so far but the lack of color option has me a bit miffed. Stress relief, yah, okay. hahahaha Maybe in a couple of weeks, I'll splurge on a new set of pencils and get to coloring.

Eh, the 2 stupid dogs are pestering the life out of me this morning! You're late Mom, you're supposed to be outside feeding so we can run all over the place, chase the loose rabbits and act stupid! Hurry up Mom! Get some socks so we can lick your face and bother you while you're trying not to kill your back putting socks on! Come on Mom! Why are you ignoring us whining and barking? You don't need that cup of coffee! Mom! Quit ignoring us! Eh, okay, time to go out and feed..........

May Crazy days

May 12-27th

So, here it is, half way thru May and what's going on around the farm? Time doesn't mean much around here since it's all so scheduled and in high demand. There's not much left over for deviation from the set routine. Out of bed every day, same time no matter how tired you are. Feed and milk, tend to small things that need done then head out to the off farm job. Rinse, repeat.

Critters are doing fair to middling, garden is coming along, no thanks to my old, good friend Ronnie, who spends more time sitting on a bucket than anything else. Even tried to get my son to turn some garden over for money to make it look like he did something. So much for all his big promises and such, all lip service and bullshit. Not really surprising since I seem to be constantly surrounded by people who think they want to be just like me but lack the stamina to keep up. Which, is just a polite way to say they're full of crap and too lazy to follow up. And, a no show today as well.

So, spring farm checklist- chicken coop-nope. Run the front fencing-nope. Build the new lean-to for the rabbits-nope. Turn the garden-nope. Well, kind of, that last one isn't a total no check mark, I did arrange for the corn patch to be tilled which it is. 3 days of rain in a row while I was working kept me from getting that patch planted. Rain on my first day off in 2 weeks put a damper on farm stuff but I still managed to hoe the tomato rows in the drizzle and weed both the strawberries and the asparagus. My great farm hand Ronnie doesn't seem to understand the importance of doing those things so I did it in the rain yesterday. I'll be planting corn today by myself.

I've got 15 chicks in the brooder grow tank, they're 3 weeks old. 2 batches of meat rabbit kits, not sure how many are there tho. Just haven't messed with them yet. The calf is growing like crazy. Meatball, the boer goat orphan, is growing well. He's gotten over losing his only friend now. Hard hit for both of us. I sold a young billy to someone local and while delivering it, the herd went looking for the lost goat kid and Baby goats kid apparently got hit on the side road. They've never been out there before but the urge to find the missing kid must have been very strong. So, that was kind of a blow to the farm, sell one and lose one, cutting the sale price for the one in half.

The work schedule really has me run down. No time to make cheese and I'm dumping almost all the milk I get from Goober cow. I'm at the point now of where I feel like I should just go ahead and sell her to someone who will use the milk. Before, the cost of the feed to keep her in good flesh while milking was worth it because of the cheese, cheese making classes, butter, yogurt, etc. Now, with my work schedule consuming all my time, all that milk is being dumped but the feed is still getting to the cow. Tough choice to make since Goober is such a big part of this little farm. With Lucky and Sis gone, there isn't much keeping me in the farming mood anymore.

Ah, I've left the most messed up art of my time away from the blog out! Roger George! Roger is a 50 something yr old man who lives local, works on the barges and likes to build old cars. Been hanging around for about a year, talking cars and such. Nice fellow, so I thought. Turns out, he and his wife split and he needed a room to rent for a few days. I made it clear there is just one rule on my farm, NO DRINKING. He obviously missed that and proceeded to get drunk and follow me around crying about how scared he was of being alone. Nope, this isn't going to work out. Out he went. Yup, end of that, right? Not hardly. It's been 3 months and he's got his friends all convinced there's some great romance going on between us, he's been rerouting his mail to my farm and telling his work he lives here on the farm. Never even a hug between us, no friendly peck on the cheek, nothing! He is so very not my type to start out with, quite round and bald. Nothing wrong with either, just not what interests me in a man. Apparently, in some peoples minds, not a chance in hell means someone loves you. 3 weeks ago, he got off the boat then he waited for me to go to work, broke in to my home and stole all my farm records, the journals, all of the printed blog. He said he thought he could hold it for ransom to work out a deal with me to stay here. Oh Yah, that worked out real well for him. I got my stuff back and he got a black eye. The guy is batshit nuts and borderline stalker material. I'm currently working on restraining orders. He's been on the boat for the past 3 weeks, we'll see what happens when he gets off it this time. He had better stay clear of me and the farm, I'm getting good at delivering black eyes to idiots.

So today has been a working day off. I've been working on finishing up the front garden, turning everything that's left because Ronnie simply can't do it and I can't wait that long. Turning a 2' by 3' section in a 5 hour day, sitting on a bucket and smoking just doesn't cut it. Times a wasting. I've already found close to a pack worth of cigarette butts out in the garden. Guess Ronnies idea of gardening is very different than mine is. I'm leaning toward working it out so he isn't out here anymore. Just don't have the time to deal with the bullshit. I'm getting another one of our mutual friends to come pick up and board Rons horse. He's used it as an excuse to keep coming out here but since he got out on January, he's not touched that horse. All the promises were dead air and I'll be damned if I'm gonna give him an escape or another excuse to sit around and do nothing.

Yep! Worked it out! Ronnie is gone. No more excuses. No more bullshit.

Now my thorn in the side is my disrespectful 21 yr old son. The things he's done to me this past year are amazing. The way he talks to me, wow. If I would ever has talked to my own parents that way, I'd still be in the hospital! Worse than that, he steals from me. Big blow up this past week, rudeness, disrespect and I've had enough. Yep, that's done. The man child will be taking care of himself from now on, the freeloading is over. Time to grow up and take responsibility for your own choices and your own stupid mistakes.

Now for some fun stuff! 3 orphan boer goats now live here. Bottles twice a day because the young lady who originally took them then sold them back to the herd master, pretty much didn't have a clue and they're pretty well starved. She just dumped them back out in the pasture. Of course, the herd rejected them. They've been here a few days and the belly bloat is about half gone. Kids aren't weaned at 8 weeks and, as they grow, if they aren't eating feed, they're most certainly not candidates for weaning. Nannys here don't kick their kids off a teat until at least 14 weeks around here. These 3 orphans looked like road kill possums when they arrived here. Like the good shepard I am, I will do all I can for them.

2 litters of meat rabbit kits were born last week. Also, 34 chicks hatched. 15 in the first batch, 19 3 days ago. Still no chicken house built! I may try to get to it this coming week. I need to pay the first installment of taxes so if there's anything left of the paycheck, I'll do what I can to get it going. Need it quick tho. Chicks are growing and if I just put them out in the barn, I'll be feeding the local wildlife. As it turns out, I was too late to feed the house wildlife. Zone flew out and the kittens played with it. It's now stuck in the heating vent. I am currently working on baiting it out.

A minor slip this weekend, the newborn kid went missing. Saw the baby Saturday morning before I went to work. Sunday, no kid. Monday, no kid. I walked all over the crp looking for where that first time Momma might have left her kid at. Couldn't find it. Tuesday morning and no kid. I resigned myself to accepting it has been eaten by the coyotes. So, I set myself to task on mowing around the barns and cleaning up more of the sons messes. Some friends stopped by for a visit and lookie there, the newborn kid is back! Bopping around the barnlot like it was never gone. Makes me happy and mad, all at once. I'm thrilled the kid is back and obviously okay but mad I couldn't find it. Oh well, whats done is done.

Now, it's pouring rain. So much for more clean up and mowing before work. I didn't get around to building the fence for the corn and melon patch. Need that done asap too. Not going to get built in the pouring rain tho. “Sigh” the last 3 weeks it's rained on my days off. Part of it I guess. I'm going to have to lose some sleep during the work week if I want to get it done any time soon.........

Warm Weather

It's pretty decent outside.  It's been much warmer, a ton of rain, a little flooding and everything is a muddy mess.  I finally got some seed started.  Just a dozen cherry tomatoes.  The big toms will get started tomorrow while I'm off work.  I'll probably make 3 or 4 batches of soap with all the goats milk I have in the fridge.

Baby goat is currently working on gifting me with a kid and Goober cow is still in her holding pattern.  Got a call last night while I was at work, Daisy cow had her calf.  I sold her a couple weeks ago to pay the past due on the LP bill.  I just owed way too much money and it's been hanging over me for more than a year.  I was never going to get it paid off with $30 a paycheck.  The late fee was more than that!  So, I did what I had to do and sold one of my herd.  Actually, sold 3 of my herd!  Daisy, her unborn calf and the bull.  Yep, I owed the LP company that much money!  Anyway, Daisy had a heifer calf.  No problems, both Momma and the calf are good last time I heard.  Hope to see some pictures soon.

I've finished 5 throw blankets so far this year, all 3x5 (mostly 40x65) and I've got a few bird houses in the works.  Extra things to offer on the market table along with the soap and the fruits and veges.  I also got a promotion at work and a small raise. 

On the downside- my new farm tenant is turning out to be a fruit loop.  Lots of big promises, no follow thru.  Story of my life tho, I always seem to find the winners.

Eh, time to head for the off farm job!