As I look out the window at the end of my kitchen this chilly February in 2016, I see a lovely solid black Thai rooster disappear into our Horse Barn that is currently full of a friend’s rabbits. We are happily caring for them while they deal with a medical crisis in their family. I listen to Finn, our overgrown, woolly dog barking at the small flock of guineas as they cluck their way across the entrance of the Horse Barn. I hear their loud, two-syllable screech as they tell each other which way to go and what amazing object they’ve just discovered either in the sky or on the ground. Some people don’t like the sound of the guineas, but I absolutely love their occasional loud outbursts that can be signaling anything from, “Look out! It’s a hawk that might want to eat us!” to “Oh no, one of us is on the wrong side of the fence and isn’t smart enough to remember that he can fly over it or just simply duck under it to join us! Let’s yell until he figures it out!” to “Look at this amazing snake! Let’s catch him and see what he tastes like!”
Just outside the horse barn I see a cage full of Ivy’s rabbits housed in a ground cage next door to the outside sunning pen for our American Guinea Hogs. About half of our hogs are enjoying the intermittent sun while the other half are lounging in deep bedding hay inside the Horse Barn. About half of the ground in Horse Pasture is bare, and the other half is covered in pasture grasses such as Bermuda and rye. We are slowly planting some of our pastures with native grasses and good grazing grasses, but have left this one much to its own and it shows as the horses’ hooves have worn away much of the grass during the flooding season.
Captain and Lucy, our mixed breed lab “puppies”, are barking at the 8 young heifers that are strolling from the pasture and occasionally stopping to rub on a tree or nibble some bright green rye grass. They are making their way slowly to their hay bale near the Horse Barn where they spend several hours each day. I wish that I could say that these cows were ours, but we are leasing 15 acres to an elder from our church to run his cattle while we save our pennies to hopefully buy our own heifers someday soon.
One of our cats, Commander, a very friendly white male cat with a few large orange spots, meanders across the field heading from the Horse Barn to the Tractor Barn. Our four cats are doing an excellent job on rodent patrol, but we are hoping for kittens sometime in the near future so that they can have help with the mouse and rat buffet.
Far in the distance, I can see our two horses, Misty and Reba, with their heads buried in the grass grazing in a back field near a patch of woods that they’ve done a lovely job clearing out of underbrush and making some lovely walking paths for us.
Catching my attention just off of the back deck is a ground cage full of little Thai chicks and their Mother Hen, enjoying their small patch of new grass that changes daily as we move the pen across our yard. Much of the grass in the back yard is dormant, but there is still a plentiful amount of green grasses, despite the fact that this is February. The raggedy-looking, half-feathered chicks are fun to watch as they learn to hop onto perches and to jump down and scratch the ground for food. The uneaten seeds that the chicks leave in a trail behind their moveable ground cage is in various stages of sprouting, leaving the promise of quite a few sunflower seeds and clover grasses growing this spring and summer unless we decide to mow them down. They never leave any of the earthworms or mealworms behind, happily and loudly chirping as they gobble the daily buffet of worms up within minutes. These chicks will soon be added to our small flock of free range Thai game birds. We gather some of their eggs to eat, but very willingly let them hatch a clutch when they’d like. Raising them mostly for meat and for their ability to forage well and evade predators, once they are fully feathered we let them free range until butchering time, keeping the hens so that we can build their flock.
Behind our garage and just out of my sight, I know that our 22 laying hens and 6 roosters are happily searching for grasses and bugs in their electric fence that we just moved to a new patch of ground out in one of the large pastures.
There is a lot of activity going on at our farm and I am so happy with the fact that our freezer is full of chicken and pork that we raised on our farm and that we have a nice stack of full cartons of eggs from our hens. I am so thankful to God that our little farm is starting to grow and produce and that our efforts are being multiplied. Lord willing, we will continue to grow this next year and the view out my kitchen window will be even busier next winter.
- Trisha
Just outside the horse barn I see a cage full of Ivy’s rabbits housed in a ground cage next door to the outside sunning pen for our American Guinea Hogs. About half of our hogs are enjoying the intermittent sun while the other half are lounging in deep bedding hay inside the Horse Barn. About half of the ground in Horse Pasture is bare, and the other half is covered in pasture grasses such as Bermuda and rye. We are slowly planting some of our pastures with native grasses and good grazing grasses, but have left this one much to its own and it shows as the horses’ hooves have worn away much of the grass during the flooding season.
Captain and Lucy, our mixed breed lab “puppies”, are barking at the 8 young heifers that are strolling from the pasture and occasionally stopping to rub on a tree or nibble some bright green rye grass. They are making their way slowly to their hay bale near the Horse Barn where they spend several hours each day. I wish that I could say that these cows were ours, but we are leasing 15 acres to an elder from our church to run his cattle while we save our pennies to hopefully buy our own heifers someday soon.
One of our cats, Commander, a very friendly white male cat with a few large orange spots, meanders across the field heading from the Horse Barn to the Tractor Barn. Our four cats are doing an excellent job on rodent patrol, but we are hoping for kittens sometime in the near future so that they can have help with the mouse and rat buffet.
Far in the distance, I can see our two horses, Misty and Reba, with their heads buried in the grass grazing in a back field near a patch of woods that they’ve done a lovely job clearing out of underbrush and making some lovely walking paths for us.
Catching my attention just off of the back deck is a ground cage full of little Thai chicks and their Mother Hen, enjoying their small patch of new grass that changes daily as we move the pen across our yard. Much of the grass in the back yard is dormant, but there is still a plentiful amount of green grasses, despite the fact that this is February. The raggedy-looking, half-feathered chicks are fun to watch as they learn to hop onto perches and to jump down and scratch the ground for food. The uneaten seeds that the chicks leave in a trail behind their moveable ground cage is in various stages of sprouting, leaving the promise of quite a few sunflower seeds and clover grasses growing this spring and summer unless we decide to mow them down. They never leave any of the earthworms or mealworms behind, happily and loudly chirping as they gobble the daily buffet of worms up within minutes. These chicks will soon be added to our small flock of free range Thai game birds. We gather some of their eggs to eat, but very willingly let them hatch a clutch when they’d like. Raising them mostly for meat and for their ability to forage well and evade predators, once they are fully feathered we let them free range until butchering time, keeping the hens so that we can build their flock.
Behind our garage and just out of my sight, I know that our 22 laying hens and 6 roosters are happily searching for grasses and bugs in their electric fence that we just moved to a new patch of ground out in one of the large pastures.
There is a lot of activity going on at our farm and I am so happy with the fact that our freezer is full of chicken and pork that we raised on our farm and that we have a nice stack of full cartons of eggs from our hens. I am so thankful to God that our little farm is starting to grow and produce and that our efforts are being multiplied. Lord willing, we will continue to grow this next year and the view out my kitchen window will be even busier next winter.
- Trisha
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