Winter

early evening light

sunlight dapples a sweet smile

little girl in white

GOATS!

The goats arrived. They are about 10 weeks old. They are cute. Their ears are green in the video because they just had their ID tattoos done in their ears...it will fade. They were anxious the first day, but are already adjusting very well and feeling mighty exploratory.

In other news, the fox visited again. It tried to score a hen about 20 feet from me, as I was sitting in a car in the driveway. Chuck was actually inside the coop at the time, hammering. The whole place went into an uproar, and the fox escaped empty-mouthed. The hen is fine...Chuck found her hiding on the front steps of the farmhouse. The rooster is missing some feathers, but is also hopefully fine (we are not sure what happened- it was just out of view). We do not like this fox, and consider this latest attempt entirely too bold. But our statistics are definitely improving.

We went to a bluegrass pickin' party today...Winter loves music and had a grand old time.

Also, I gave the bees a jar of sugar water feed and they stung the @*&$ out of me.

Happy Mother's Day

A new mother's first mother's day...a bouquet of flowers, a stack of pancakes on an elegant tray in bed, and a clean house she need not life a finger for...or, alternatively, a new rooster, a giant box of bees, and gardening dirt on every surface. Winter and I know how to do it right!

Chuck is away on business for a couple of days, so Winter and I are holding the fort. We gardened yesterday in our raised beds and at the community garden, with the help of some friends. Winter loves digging her hands in dirt. Loves it.

Then we went to pick up a box of bees that had arrived from Connecticut earlier in the day. A package of bees weighs about three pounds and contains about 10,000 bees. Yes, 10,000. Since the weather was turning bad, we put the package in the basement, where I sprayed them with delicious sugar syrup and they buzzed in irritated thanks.

The next day we went to pick up Manny. Manny needed a new home because he was sharing a coop with another (giant) rooster and only eight ladies, which is about the minimum for one rooster. There was a little tension, and quite a few missing feathers, but the family that owned Manny really wanted him to have a new home instead of being soup. He is about 18 months old. We are not sure what breed he is, but I am trying to find out. He is a very handsome rooster, and hens are all atwitter (not that it takes much to set hens atwitter). He settled in pretty much immediately.

In the afternoon, our neighbor came over to help me install the bee package into the hive. This involves setting up the hive, opening the bee package, removing the Queen and her attendants in their cage and placing them in the hive, and then placing the rest of the bees in the hive. Note that "placing" bees sounds much calmer than it actually is. There is lots of spraying, shaking, thumping, and dumping. When our neighbor arrived, she asked her if I was nervous. I said yes, a little, and she said "good. you should be."

I suited up and placed the bees as best I could. They seemed to be finding their way when I checked in on them later this evening, and were guzzling their bee feed, which is 1:1 sugar water. The most disturbing part is that when you are suited up in a bee suit, bees directly outside the face veil are so close that your vision kind of records them as maybe actually being inside the veil. Some deep breaths and carefully controlled thoughts help with that.

The Queen's exit to the hive from her cage is blocked with a marshmallow- by the time it is eaten through, her scent has mingled with the hive and they accept her as their queen rather than an enemy bee. That only takes one marshmallow, so next Winter and I made rice krispy treats.

All in all, a pretty good mother's day. Happy mother's day to all the mothers we know!

King Farm in Spring

Today, at least for the morning, was one of the most beautiful days I have ever seen. Video doesn't remotely capture it*, but I tried anyway...and this is proof for the skeptics who think it is always cold and snowing up here. At the end of the day, we had a tremendous thunderstorm, so dense I could barely see the driveway from the windows of the house. But oh, what a glorious morning.

*I was taking a tired Winter on a stroll for a nap, and she was crying throughout the video. I dubbed in birdsong, and the end result is entirely realistic and far more pleasant to listen to.

Places to Go, Things to Do

Normally, I shower and get dressed and ready in our bathroom with Winter happily playing on the bathmat with her assortment of toys, or, even better to her...my toiletry bag and all its mysterious treasures inside. I peek at her every few minutes and talk to her, and it is easy and cozy. Today, instead of sitting and playing and singing to herself, she looked up at me, then scooted over to the bathroom door, opened it, and headed down the hall.

I think our hands just got a lot fuller.

RIP, Brave Rooster

With great sadness, I must report the death of Rooster. He came to the farm as part of our anti-fox measures, and he did his job. Roosters were put on earth to do two things (aside from scratching for feed)- make more chickens, and protect the hens. He protected every single one of his ladies, with the ultimate sacrifice. The very same fox, the original culprit, came back while we were out on a walk...as we came up the driveway, Chuck saw a flash of red. We knew right away that it was probably too late for someone. As Jezebel and Chuck raced after the fox, I took Winter inside to her crib and started the search. Last time, when the fox got five hens in about 45 minutes, there were puffs of feathers everywhere, strewn across the yard and some of the fields. This time, I only saw one drift of feathers, fluttering in the evening breeze. It was Rooster. The fox had dropped him as it ran. I will spare you the details, but I waited with him as he breathed his last, then managed to stroke his beautiful feathers for the first and last time. I am deeply sad that he was with us for a short time only, as he was a really wonderful rooster. He died the death of a hero...if he were human, his story would have been a blockbuster Mel Gibson movie, complete with slow motion montage and adagio in the background. But he was just one chicken, on one small farm, on one beautiful spring evening.

Every single chicken keeper who keeps chickens in an agricultural setting (instead of factory farming) has a fox story. Or, usually several stories. Along with dog, hawk, and coyote stories. The predators are doing what is in their nature, and chickens are pretty easy prey. You can't really blame them. But when your chickens get hit, you don't exactly feel warm and fuzzy, or terribly forgiving. We had already made quite a few changes, but fox truly are masters of cunning, and exploit every weakness, no matter how small. We will redouble our efforts, pay Jezebel in rawhide bones for her diligence up at the coop(she also performed well, coming within a few bounds of the fox), and learn to work as hard as we can to balance the cycle of life and death towards life. Rooster helped us make one more step in that direction.

The Birds and the Bees

In response to a recent fox hit, we got a new rooster. He arrived early one morning, popped out of his carrier blinking, and proceeded to introduce himself to the ladies. So far, he is a really stellar rooster- very handsome, very alert and watchful, not at all aggressive to us or other humans, and he has run off both Jezebel and the cats from his flock. We even enjoy his crow quite a bit...it makes the place seem very...farm-ey. The hens knew it the second he showed up, and proceeded to gossip all about it to each other, and still have plenty to say. It was clearly the biggest chicken happening of recent note (fox excluded). They steal treats right from his beak, and managed to pluck a few of his neck feathers- now we really know what henpecked means- but he is boss.

I am currently scrambling to get a hive in place, because someone found a package of bees for me. I thought I had missed the window for this year (bees are in high demand, and you have to order them very early) but I lucked out. A neighbor is passing on an old hive to me, and being kind enough to show me the ropes. To my surprise, bees may be the most complicated animal we have yet, insofar as learning to manage them well.

Winter and I visited the goats a couple of weekends ago, and they are doing well. Chuck, and our friends Heather, and Mike, have done an excellent job getting things ready, and the goats will be coming home to quite a nice facility. They have a house all their own, a nice secure barn, some fun ramps, and an outdoor enclosure with some sweet wooden fencing. The goats are cute as ever. The one pictured is Orion.

Winter has finally perfected her crawl. Or scoot. Or whatever it is. We have wood or tile flooring all throughout the house, no carpet. I think the floor is uncomfortable on her knees, so she has developed her own little crabby crawl, which gets her where she needs to go without having to use her knees. She is getting pretty efficient at it (more than it seems in the video below- she gets camera shy) , and is enjoying reaching and demolishing cabinets, magazine racks, kitty tails, and anything else that strikes her fancy.

Hello!

Our family's website update is...delayed. When we got our new computer, in the process of cleaning the old one to donate, we deleted this little, innocent looking program file. That file, unfortunately, was the key to our whole, entire website. So we will have to build the site all over again, from scratch. Do you know how much not fun that will be? It will get done, but the weather is nice, the birds are chirping, the farm and our jobs are frantically busy...so it may be a while. In the meantime, I will use this blog for a few updates.