Barnyard Politics

I've read a lot of farming books, but some things just aren't covered. I've yet to see a chapter on barnyard politics, so everything I've learned there has been through my own trial and error (heavy on the latter).

First of all, there's a pecking order, both for each type of animal as well as the individuals of each type. Our order is as follows:

1. Bruce (draft horse)
2. Doc (draft horse)
3. Josie (dairy cow)
4. Buttercup (dairy cow)
5. Thunder (the ram who thinks he's at #3)
6. #57 (ewe)
7. #56 (ewe)

First, let's start with the horses. Bruce is fat. There are a number of reasons for this: He came to us that way. I mistakenly thought that eliminating grain from his diet would cure the problem, but a summer on pasture has disproven that theory. He should be getting worked more, but such is the life of a weekend farmer's horse. Now that he's eating hay for the winter, I have a little more control over his diet, but not as much as I'd like. As the boss horse, he makes sure that he always gets his fair share of the hay, and he gets to define "fair".

My new theory is that if I feed the horses hay at two separate locations, Bruce will only be able to defend one at a time, giving Doc his fair share (as defined by me). It seems to be working, but Bruce is still fat. I did see a liposuction machine for sale on Craigslist last week -- only $1800...

It's important that the animals are fed in accordance with their pecking order, or trouble ensues. If I feed the cows before the horses, the horses nibble our barn as if it's a big gingerbread house. I doubt the barn tastes very good; it's really just the horses' form of blackmail. The chewing doesn't stop until the hay comes out.

When we first bought the sheep, Thunder was still quite young, and couldn't reach into the hay feeder I had built for the cows. He quickly learned to jump up into the feeder for easier access. He's now full grown, but still jumps up into the hay feeder to eat.

One evening I made the mistake of putting hay in the cow's outside feeder before stocking the milking station. It was dark outside, so I couldn't see very clearly. Josie had returned outside, and I chased after her to get her back into the barn. She was using her nose to shovel a bale out of the feeder and on to the ground. I didn't put a second bale in the feeder though. It took me a couple seconds to realize that it wasn't actually a bale she was working on. It was Thunder, now pinned against the slats. He didn't move at all or make a peep. I wasn't sure if he was in shock, or dead, or was still trying to hold his ground. Or maybe he couldn't feel a 900lb cow through his wool cocoon.

Now Josie gets her hay at the milking station immediately after the horses are fed, but before I open the door for the cows or put any hay outside. But all is not well in the barn.

In the interest of producing higher quality milk, reducing e-coli, and improving our cow's health, I've eliminated grain as a regular part of the cow's diet. She was just fine with that, and made the transition much better than I'd anticipated. In the absence of grain, however, she demands gourmet hay. It has to be better than pasture in the summer, and it has to be better than her "regular" hay in the winter, or she won't come in.

The loose hay we put up last summer was her favorite, so that's what I used until it ran out a week ago. Knowing that there would be hell to pay if I didn't have anything to keep her at her trough, we went to the hay auction and bought 50 bales of the softest, greenest hay I've ever seen, which at $8/bale had better satisfy Josie's picky palate.

The first night I served this to her, she sniffed it, reached deep into the trough, and shoveled it out onto the ground. I put it back in, and she shoved it back out again. Hmmmm....

She's since decided that the new hay is alright, but has developed an annoying habit. Legume hay has leaves, some of which typically shatter in the baler and spill out as the bale is opened up. That's the tastiest part of the hay.

Josie likes to fluff the hay up a bit so that the leaves fall out. Then she tosses it all out of the feeder and licks up the leaf bits that remain. When the leaf bits are all gone, she starts craning her neck to reach the hay she just threw out, dancing in her stanchion and giving me fits as I try to milk while protecting the bucket from her dancing hooves.

So now I've added yet another item to the endless list of farm tasks. Build a new Josie-proof feeder that will keep her from tossing out her hay. I'll get to it one of these days, probably after I'm freshly inspired to build it when she puts her hoof in the bucket.

Below is some footage of an intelligence test we recently administered to Henry and Bilbo, cleverly disguised as a game of keep-away.

The William Arbuckle company of Toledo, Ohio makes some fine stuff! Our "Tiffin" corn sheller is probably over 110 years old, and still works wonderfully. Their corn shellers are such a pleasure to use that 5 year olds who typically prefer to lounge around in their underwear will jump at the chance to operate one.

Armed with a bushel of field corn from our garden and my experimental plot, we set to work, and now have a couple gallons of shelled corn to make our own cheese puffs with.

One evening I decided to bring the camera down to the barn with me for milking time, where I snapped this photo of warm fall sunlight streaming in through the windows.

It's a very pleasant place to be, with the cows munching their hay to the sound of milk streaming into the pail. There's the occasional protest from one of the barncats being molested by Bilbo in the corner. I can hear the horses chewing on the barn, hoping they'll annoy me enough that I toss them some hay to make it stop.

Since I've taken that photo, things have changed. It's much colder now, and not quite as pleasant.

Michigan has four very distinct seasons, and winter just arrived this week. I like them all, but some a little more than others. Winter has a sort of austere beauty around here. The leaves are gone from the trees, and I can suddenly see through the woods that seemed so dense until now. The wind makes a whistling noise once the leaves are off. It reminds me of the wind in the sailboat rigging when we lived aboard our boat in Bellingham. It's often snowing, but so far it's been just a few scattered flakes, each a perfect star. They don't accumulate, but seem to disappear as they hit the ground.

Rachel did a fine job of announcing winter's arrival, saying "It's 22 degrees, and I'm going outside to use the outhouse!" I wonder if she'll make the same announcement when the temps go below zero again.

The barnyard, despite a load of wood chips, had grown very muddy over the last few weeks, especially after being churned up while I extended our water line to the horses' paddock. It's not a problem anymore though, as the mud has all frozen. It's nice that the wheels on our poo-cart no longer sink into the mud, but they don't roll over this frozen stuff too well either.

Our barn seems to produce its own barn-cats through spontaneous generation, as evidenced by the appearance of "Coon" the kitten late this summer. She's a true barn-cat, as I rarely see her outside the barn at all. She survives on a diet of second-hand chipmunks left by Meowie and Burrito, along with some milk donated by Josie.

A trip to the vet this week revealed that she's got pneumonia, so she gets to play house-cat for a week while she's on antibiotics. She now lives underneath the woodstove.

While bow-season didn't produce anything for me this year, firearm season went pretty well. The bucks, as I'd anticipated, grew careless. I had a 40 yard shot at a 6 point buck who was busy making a scrape. He ran away as the smoke cleared, just as healthy as ever. I guess there was a little too much brush between us.

Later in the evening of opening day, I spotted a nice buck running along one of the trails I've cleared with the tractor. This time the shot went where it was supposed to, and he was down within 50 yards.

Our local library hosted an astronomer a few weeks ago, and Henry was quite excited to go out and sleep under the stars after seeing his presentation. We loaded up the backpack with sleeping bags and found a nice cowpie-free spot out in the middle of the pasture.

Henry saw his first shooting star, and I was amazed by how many airplanes there are flying over our house at any given moment. We lasted until 1:00am, when Henry announced that he couldn't sleep any more, at which point he ran for the house and spooked the horses who thundered around the barnyard and terrified him.

There's an old play-house in our woods which I had promised to bring up to the house for Henry. I was going to do it with the tractor last summer, but never got around to it.

This year I finally had the time to bring it back, but was able to load it on to our stone-boat and drag it back with the horses. It's not in the best of shape, but should last at least until Henry loses interest in it. Inside is a "witch's kettle" made from the top of an old cream separator.

I managed to find an old Oliver 99 walking plow at the auction in Topeka, which is perfect for the smaller space of our garden. We harnessed up the horses and went to work. I worked the lines while Rachel steered the plow. The plowing went very well once I stopped staring at the plow and paid attention to where the horses were going.

Multi-purpose Outhouse

We had some wonderful fall color this year, with the house surrounded by the yellow glow of the big sugar maples that surround us. Then over the course of about 3 days, everything came down in a leafy blizzard and left the yard a few inches deep in leaves. The chickens are beside themselves with all the new scratching opportunities, and now spend hours kicking leaves around.

The outhouse, though not yet fully complete, is now operational. It's all sheeted, and two of the three windows are installed, but it still needs siding. Although it still gets some use, the sawdust toilet in the house isn't a whole lot of fun to empty, so we avoid it as much as possible.

The popularity of this new building is actually much greater than I'd anticipated. One of our new hens has decided that she likes laying her eggs in there (the door, which went on last weekend, doesn't yet have a latch to keep her out). Our barn cats quickly discovered that it's an excellent pick-up spot, great for mooching attention from the human-folk who are briefly immobilized there throughout the day.

I met some of our neighbors for the first time last week, a couple who seem very nice. About 15 minutes after letting the dogs out for a potty break, I received a phone call from them. They live through the woods and across the state highway down a long driveway. Bilbo likes to roam, apparently. We initially thought that Memphis would help show Bilbo where the "home turf" was, but he's been doing his best to corrupt her instead, as she follows him around on his wild explorations.

So, last weekend, we bought an "invisible fence", which is a shock collar triggered by a signal wire you run around the perimeter of your yard. Bilbo made a few forays across the wire with a special spring in his step, but has since decided that staying in the yard is just fine.

I finally decided to open up our new pasture for the animals, even though the back end doesn't have a fence around it. I put up a polywire temporary-fence, which seems to be working alright so far.

Josie's production went up a little once she was back on pasture, and I like not having to shovel manure in the barnyard and haul hay around. This will give us a couple weeks of reprieve until everyone has to start eating hay again. If last year is any indication, we'll probably have some snow here then anyway.

My hunting endeavors haven't gone all that well this year. I saw lots of deer in the first couple weeks of the season, but no bucks that were close enough. I finally resolved to take a doe to get the freezer filled. I took one long shot that I missed, and haven't had an opportunity to take one since. I think they all know it's deer season now, and have become completely nocturnal. In a week or two the rut will start, and then the bucks will start to get careless, or so I hope.

Our horses have some chronic thrush (that's a bacterial infection on their hooves). It's not a big deal, but I need to clean them out and apply medicine daily. At first, Bruce would visibly transfer all of his weight to the foot I was trying to lift, but has since mellowed out and usually cooperates now. Doc would play "ring around the mulberry bush" with me when it was his turn. Now it usually takes a bit of sweet-talking before he'll grudgingly allow me to mess with his feet. Today he kicked loose and stomped on my foot. That felt *wonderful*. Last week the cows banged the metal roof on their hay feeder and spooked the horses while I was cleaning Doc's hoof. I thought I was about to be dismembered, but only got knocked over.


The turkeys are all happily nested in our freezer now, so we won't be running any more turkey-drives back from Stan's house. They were regularly visiting Stan and his wife, apparently feeling quite comfortable among their roving herd of guinea hens, geese, chickens, and peacocks while partaking of the abundant feed. One of the hens learned to tap on their back door looking for handouts. Although we initially planned to do our own butchering, the Amish farm where we've been buying chicken offered to butcher them for $5 apiece, which seemed like a good price. We've eaten one so far, and it was very good. Meat tastes better when images of the butchering process aren't lodged in your memory.

We've been watching the Star Wars series over the last few days, which Henry absolutely loves. Every stick has become a light saber. This evening while I was bottling our milk, he presented me with a light-saber performance outside the kitchen window. It's strange for me to think that I first went to see the new Star Wars movie with my own father when I was exactly his age.

Sci-Fi has always been about reading current trends and extrapolating them to the next step; a way for us to explore and contemplate what may be just around the corner. Back when I was 5, the wonders of space exploration were still very much on people's minds -- and Star Wars extrapolated that trend to a possible future of space-based civilization.

It's clear to me that our future can never be in space, which makes these movies feel quaint to me now. Humans are a product of our own planet, and as such are inseparable from it. The mix of bacteria which make our digestion (and thus our life) possible, is probably found only on this planet. We've developed immunity to untold numbers of pathogens, the mix of which is almost certainly unique to earth. The amount of gravity our skeletons are adapted to, the composition and pressure of the atmosphere we can breathe, and the temperatures we can tolerate are all unique to this planet. We -- and the planet we live on are as unique as a snowflake. Even if we could find and easily travel to other planets which are similar to our own, we could never expect to survive there.

As we've recently entered the era of increasing energy scarcity, the ability to build or fuel spacecraft looks like it will also be in terminal decline. But to me, it seems as if it was a silly dream to begin with. I think that our future -- if we manage to preserve it -- probably looks a lot more like our past.

Winding down

Summer is drawing to a definite close now. Today our weather reminded me of Bellingham (our old town in Washington), about 45 degrees, rainy and windy for much of the day. Our pasture isn't growing a whole lot at these temperatures, and I should probably be putting the animals on hay soon.

When Buttercup the cow returned from her summer vacation of hanging out with some fine young bulls, she and Josie became the best of friends. And then one morning, they *really* became the best of friends, engaging in highly visible displays of passion right next to the road for all the passers by to see.

Having by then spent a few hundred dollars breeding Buttercup (both with multiple AI's and the bull visit), and with Josie being bred before we purchased her, I was a little disappointed. With Buttercup's track record, I was starting to think that she might have to make a permanent visit to Hamburgerland.

I called the AI lady, but she wasn't able to make it out until early the next day. That's a little late, but I figured it wasn't going to hurt anything but my wallet (and hey, who cares about that?). Nearly 5 weeks have passed since, and I haven't noticed any more signs of heat in either cow, so I've got my fingers crossed. If all goes well, we'll have two calves here in about 8 months.

While my mom was out for a visit, we had to hook up the horses for a ride around the farm on the forecart, but first I wanted to pull a white oak out of the woods for a new post in the barn, to be used in rebuilding the horse stall that Doc destroyed by pushing against it with his BIG butt.

I made a point of doing everything on this post the hard way -- no power tools, no chainsaw... everything done by hand or horse. I felled it with an axe, pulled it out of the woods with the horses, cut it to length with an old crosscut saw, and squared it with a broad axe. I'm proud of what I did, but it really made me appreciate that I don't have to do it that way all the time.

Yesterday we harvested our first honey, from our single hive which sits out near the garden. The hive has two "supers", which are the boxes that contain "extra" honey -- above and beyond what the bees will need to get them through the winter. That's the honey we get to keep.

Step one is to get the supers off of the hive, and the bees off of the frames. They get kind of angry when you pull their hive apart, but I let them have it with my smoker. The smoke makes them think that a forest fire is about to consume their hive, so they eat a bunch of honey and calm down. Or something like that. I forget what the bee book said exactly. One of the problems with running a farm is that I no longer have the time to read up on how I *should* be doing things.

Once I had the two supers removed, I set up my new honey extractor outside near the garage, thinking that a messy task like this might not be suitable for the kitchen. It took me about 10 seconds of running the honey extractor before an angry swarm of bees showed up (they can smell honey) and scared me back inside.

With Rachel and Henry's help, the honey frames were all eventually cleaned out -- netting us about 5 gallons of honey and a couple pounds of wax. At $30/gallon, this is probably one of our more profitable operations, so long as I don't factor in costs for the hive, extractor, bee suit, and my time (and mental anguish).



While it's not exactly complete yet, we are making progress on the composting outhouse. It's all framed, the roof is on, and a little bit of sheeting has gone up thus far. If a tornado comes through, we're all going to the basement of the outhouse, as it's probably the best built structure on our property.

It's bow hunting season again. I haven't quite lived up to last year's experience (when I shot a nice buck in the first hour) but I have been seeing deer. Just this evening after dinner I was out for about 20 minutes, sneaking up to a bunch of does in our alfalfa field -- but no bucks. I've seen a couple bucks, but always just out of range (because they saw me first). Our neighbor Stan says he's seen some very nice bucks at the back of our field lately, so there's something to look forward to if they stick around.

Our turkeys are nearing the end of their brief lifespan, destined to become thanksgiving dinner, turkey sandwiches, and the like. For now, they're both entertaining and annoying. They love to strut around the yard when we're around, with all the toms puffed up and fanned out, dragging their wings along the ground. One disappeared, so we're down to nine now. Not sure if she ended up in someone else's freezer, or perhaps a coyote's stomach. Or, perhaps she left to join her wild brethren, as their territories have started to overlap as our turkeys wander increasingly further from the barnyard.

One day after giving the horses a good workout, Rachel decided that I should try riding one of them. I picked Bruce, because he seems a little more relaxed than Doc. Note the bike helmet I'm wearing -- a sign of supreme confidence in my fine steed (I would've also worn body armor if I had any). Despite my misgivings, Bruce performed well, and responded just as well to me working the lines as he would if I were walking behind him as usual. He's awfully big though; riding him feels about as secure as sitting on top of a tanker truck. I thanked him for not throwing me off and squishing me.

Rachel has been digging a mysterious hole in our basement, which she says is for "storing cabbages". If I disappear anytime soon, I would suggest that you look for me there. I think the forced use of a sawdust toilet (and upcoming outhouse) may be wearing on her.

A crappy weekend

Crap has been a subject of much focus lately, this weekend in particular. But a crappy day does not a bad day make (at least not necessarily).

A little while back, an unsuspecting bathroom-goer made a grim discovery. A mysterious someone had plugged the toilet yet again. Rachel rushed in to assist, plunger at the ready, yelling "Clear!" before attempting to restore circulation to the afflicted fixture. Pushing the plunger down produced a nice little geyser from outside the toilet, which hadn't happened before. Hmmmm...

I loosened the bolts to lift the toilet and discovered that they really didn't need to be loosened, because three of the four were completely rusted through. There was no wax sealing ring to replace, but rather a home-made rubber washer and globs of sealant. The pipe underneath was crumbling away - I think it had an asbestos flange. So it wasn't going to be a simple wax-ring replacement, but rather a plumbing repair as well. I don't really like toilets (except at certain times) anyway. They use electricity (via the pump in our well) which puts them on my black list.

So instead of sinking a little money into a simple repair/replacement project, I decided it was high time to sink more time and money into a much bigger project. It's time to build the outhouse!

This isn't just any outhouse, but a *composting* outhouse. That's the plan anyway, as the outhouse doesn't fully exist yet. A fancy-schmancy double-seater affair to allow complete composting of the "product" before removal is required. It would be almost as romantic as those dual-showerhead showers in fancy houses, except you're only supposed to use one side at a time, until the chamber beneath fills up.

Our neighbor Stan volunteered to teach me to lay cinder block this weekend, which is about 3/4 complete now. Next weekend should finish the foundation, and after that it's on to the rest of outhouse. I'm making it up as I go -- hopefully the inevitable design flaws won't be too daunting.

Some of you will be visiting us soon, and are probably wondering if the outhouse will be finished by then. Perhaps you're wondering if you'll have to stumble outside in the dark of night, searching in vain for the correct outbuilding. Maybe you'll get lost and end up as Buttercup's next love toy, discovered face down in the barnyard the next morning. Worry not! You won't be relegated to the bushes when nature calls, as we do have an interim solution.

We also have a "sawdust" toilet in the bathroom for the time being. It's a fancy frame and toilet seat that fits over a 5-gallon bucket, which uses sawdust to accomodate your offerings. Don't remind me that sawdust *also* requires energy to produce (perhaps using more energy than the toilet it replaces). I can't be burdened with petty details.

Our neighbors accross the street keep horses, and like most horse owners have an abundance of horse crap. Being as I am the proud new owner of an ancient manure spreader, I offered to relieve them of this awful burden, which they were happy to unload today.

When Bruce mentioned that he would be cleaning out their horse barn, my first thought was to hook the spreader up to the tractor. But that would involve 1) pumping up the leaky tire, 2) detaching the brush-hog, 3) fueling up, and 4) setting up the tow-bar before I could hook up the spreader. After a few minutes of deep thought, I realized that this would take just as much time as harnessing the horses, which made it an easy decision.

Bruce and Doc seem to know what's coming, and didn't want to turn into Bruce and Kelly's driveway at first (yes, our neighbor has the misfortune of living next to a horse with whom he shares a name), but eventually they relented and resigned themselves to their crappy fate. A strong magnetic force seemed to pull them back towards our barn each time we passed, but they managed to resist it with my assistance on the lines.

The spreader worked beautifully, spewing a fountain of poo in graceful arcs accross the pasture. The weeds which overpowered my grass seed have never had it so good!

Rachel has been dutifully harvesting the bounty of our garden. We'll have enough potatoes to feed half of Ireland this winter. She's also made kim-chee, sauerkraut, relish, and too many types of pickled items for me to remember. We also canned tomatoes for the first time -- one batch of tomato sauce, and another of ketchup. Several hours of prep, cleaning, and cooking down a four-gallon pot of tomatoes rewarded us with 6 and 1/2 pints of ketchup. Like most food items we produce, it's really best not to compare our time and energy spent with the alternative of just buying it at the store. I think the lowest wage in Bangladesh would compare favorably with our wage if we figured out what we "earned".

With Ron's help (that's my father-in-law), the woodshed I started nearly a year ago is now standing. It was immediately recommissioned as an equipment shed, however, so our firewood is still living under leaky tarps. We put it together using timber-frame construction, which is both a lot of fun and much more work than conventional construction. At least all of the beams were free. The turkeys like it quite a bit. One of them flew up to inspect my work while I was putting the last few sheets of roofing on.

One evening after dinner, Henry decided that it was high time for a salamander hunt in our basement. This is one of the fringe benefits of living in an ancient house of questionable structural integrity. The basement didn't disappoint, and boy did we eat well the next day!

Buttercup has a new companion now, Josie the cow. Josie is a 3/4 Jersey 1/4 Holstein cross from a nearby dairy. She's very friendly, and had no transition problems moving to the farm. She's been producing over 5 gallons a day ever since she arrived at the end of July. Twice a day, after I release her from the milking stanchion, she uses my butt as a scratching post.

As Josie arrived a month ago, Buttercup was just leaving in the same trailer, off to her vacation at Camp Studly Bull. Buttercup just returned from her vacation, and seemed happy to have a new companion. They're inseperable, and both come into the barn for milking time, although Buttercup won't be milked for another 9.5 months.

With Josie's arrival, we've started up our cow-share operation,and are officially open for business. We even have a customer already. Drinking 5 gallons of milk a day was getting really tiresome, so I'm happy to be able to share it now.

We're still cutting firewood for this coming winter -- 5 cords cut and stacked now, with another 1.5 cords to go. I wish this was all done last spring, but... we've been kind of busy. At least we're ahead of where we were at this time last year. I've been hauling whole logs out of the woods with the horses, rather than cutting them up in place. That takes the truck out of the loop and reduces fuel use. In the interest of eliminating fossil fuel use, I should be getting rid of the chainsaw too, of course. Maybe next year. Yeah, next year.

Trial and Error

When you buy a tractor, chances are that you can put some gasoline in it, turn the key, and start working without too much trouble. Mowing with horses, however, is different. For one, each owner may use a slightly different set of voice commands. The previous owners would whistle to get the horses to move quickly. I can't whistle loudly to save my life. Usually they'll respond well to a "Step Up" command, but sometimes they seem to forget.

My first attempt was to mow a very thick stand of white clover and grass that I'd planted as pasture. We don't have enough animals on the pasture yet, so I thought I'd section it off and maybe get some bonus hay. While I did manage to mow a few hundred yards, the sickle bar kept plugging up and locking the wheels (which are what drive the mower blade). At the time I was sure my problem was due to a lack of fine tuning on the mower, but I later learned that white clover is the bane of all mowers because it grows so thickly. The tractor mower actually did worse, and even my neighbor's haybine had trouble with it.

But before I learned that the clover might be my problem, I started rebuilding the mower bar. Here was a good chance to use the expensive parts left over from an aborted attempt to fix up an old Ford mower (which I earlier purchased for use with the tractor). After a day of frustration, I thought I'd got things together well enough to use. However, after a few seconds behind the horses, the friction on the blade was too much and broke the wooden pittman stick, which is the strange sound that starts partway into this video.

So I couldn't use the Ford mower parts on my International horse drawn mower, even though they were nearly identical. There's a lesson learned for a few hundred bucks. On the bright side though, I've discovered that the Amish stock new parts for the horse drawn mowers. And best of all, their prices are a small fraction of what I paid for the Ford parts at the dealership.

Finding the Amish farm supply store was a dream come true. At previous times in my life I sought out climbing shops, then marine stores during my sailing phase, and now it's horse drawn equipment stores. Shipshewana Farm Supply is my new favorite store. Not only do they stock a multitude of horse drawn implements and supplies, but they're cheap!

With my new parts from the Amish farm store, I set to work last weekend and managed to successfully rebuild the mower bar. I also put a new tongue on a forecart I found on Craigslist (that's what Henry is sitting on here) This evening after work, I harnessed up the team and mowed about an acre. Steering the horses isn't quite as precise as steering the tractor, but we did all right. They kept improving as did I.

My revelation for the evening: It's really hard to steer when your view is constantly blocked by two humongous horse fannies.

We've got a new cow in the works, a Jersey from a local dairy farm that's selling off a few cows. We're waiting for results on a Johnes test before we take delivery of her, which will probably be in a week or two. She's got bigger teets than Buttercup, so I'm interested to see how much easier she will be to milk.

Speaking of Buttercup, I think we're going to have to try something different. She's now been visited by the AI lady three times to no avail. Next try will be to have the vet artificially get her to cycle before being inseminated so that we're sure our timing is right. If that doesn't work, we've gotta find a bull for her to go and visit. Maybe she's just holding out for the third option.

Last week's weather finally stayed in our favor, and we managed to get our hayfield's second cutting in the barn without a hitch, with our neighbors Stan and Sharon helping out with a haybine and baler. We managed to get about 8,000lbs of hay from 2.5 acres, which isn't bad. Our old barn isn't the sturdiest of structures, and putting in the new hay did make me a little nervous. The night we put it up, I had dreams about our barn tipping over and caving in from all the new weight.

Our turkeys are now about the size of small chickens. Their new home is in the basement of the barn, where they roost in the evenings. For about the last 5 days, we've been letting them roam the yard, but they seem to have trouble finding their way back into the correct door of the barn. I've had to herd them back in each evening, with today being the first day they found the way themselves. They don't strike me as the brightest minds of the avian world.

We've been contemplating a doggie successor for Memphis, but hadn't quite decided on a breed. Pheasant hunting in Michigan isn't quite what I'd hoped for, so I'm a little less interested in a hunting dog than I once was. We thought about a Great Pyrenees "livestock guardian dog" for a while. Getting the sheep made me think that we might want a border collie, but Rachel wasn't so sure about a hyper breed like that.

At the Amish harness shop (one of several nearby) a week ago, we stopped in for some horse collar pads and a minor repair. They happened to have a "puppies for sale" sign out front, with a momma chocolate lab and her one male pup roaming around the yard. Henry was beside himself playing with the pup while we waited for the repair, and after sleeping on the idea, we returned to bring him home.

"Bilbo" is quite energetic - and became even more so once we got rid of his tapeworms and fleas. At first it seemed as if he were already house-trained, but he's since decided that going in the house is a-okay just so long as nobody sees you in the act. Rachel just discovered a nice little Bilbo nugget on the tile by our woodstove, which has my name on it when I'm done updating the blog. He likes shoes, straw hats, earphones, Henry's stuffed animals, and "Chipmummy" the mumified chipmunk which the cats left for him. He was even nice enough to leave that last item inside one of my shoes yesterday.

Henry thinks it's fun when Bilbo tries to "make puppies" with him, which he encourages by crawling around on the carpet with his fanny in the air. I tried to explain why that's not a good idea, but there seems to be a bit of a comprehension gap. I remember having a similar discussion with my own father about a puppy I had when I was young. I didn't really understand what all the fuss was about either.

The garden is going well this year. It's big, and the weeds were starting to win there for a while, but seem to have abated now. With our many rows of potatoes, I wasn't so sure I could keep up the squishing remedy I used for the potato beetles last year. So I relented and tried out an organically approved pesticide called Spinosad. It's made from a soil fungus if I remember correctly, and it worked wonderfully. It supposedly excites the bug's nervous system to the point that they go into seizures and die. I'm not convinced that a chemical capable of that is good no matter how it's made, but this one does appear to be benign. The label had almost no cautions whatsoever. Just like DDT when it was first introduced.

Our tallest corn is now over 8'. Sugar snap peas are all done, and we have small watermelons and cantaloupe on the way. We've been eating carrots, beans, summer squash, lettuce, etc. Rachel has also been doing some pickling. I think our first corn is only a couple weeks away now. But I can rest assured that the local racoon population knows that as well. Maybe Henry needs another 'coonskin cap?

One day while using the brush-hog along the road in front of our house, I noticed an odd shape in the middle of the road a few hundred yards away. I stopped and stared for a bit, and realized that it was moving, albeit very slowly. I ran over to investigate, and discovered this attractive creature, who was a little less than enthusiastic to meet me.

Horses and Turkeys and Sheep -- OH MY!

On a fateful morning last week, I set out to retrieve Buttercup from the pasture for the morning milking. As I passed by her new $150 mineral feeder with the swiveling rain guard, something looked askew. The entire feeder (which she's never actually used like she's supposed to) was flattened. Hoping that it was still usable, I did my best to bend it back into shape and continued on to go find our cow.

Buttercup was clearly hot and bothered, and expressed a strong interest in meeting me up close and personal, like the cow in this video. I made sure not to let her fall behind me, but as we passed the mineral feeder, she broke away. She then proceeded to show me how she had flattened it before. Apparently the curved rain guard looks like the back of another (very sexy) cow.

Later that day the AI lady paid Buttercup another visit. So, hopefully, in 9 1/2 months, she'll have a calf. If the mineral feeder is flattened again in 22 days, that means we need to bring the AI lady out again.

In addition to our cow excitement, we've cut our first hay. The weather is always a nemesis when you have hay out drying in the field, so I decided to hop to it and get the hay cut when the forecast showed 7 days of no rain.



After a few days of drying, it was time to rake the hay into windrows. Despite the forecast, some rain started to sprinkle halfway through this job, but it didn't amount to much. Not enough to damage the hay anyway. A day after that, we had a mystery rain storm come to attack us at 1:30am. I checked the forecast while it was pouring rain outside, and there was zero mention of rain. A check of the radar showed a single storm forming out on lake Michigan, and heading straight towards us like a missle, and dissipating shortly thereafter. This rain was enough to damage the hay, but not too bad.

Rain was finally in the forecast for the evening of Memorial day, but the hay wasn't 100% dry yet. If we baled it, it would become moldy and useless. If we left it in the field, the additional rain would make it worthless. That left us with one option not normally considered by sane people, which was to put it up loose, as was done before the invention of balers. Loose hay, so long as it's not stacked too high, can still dry out without molding. We didn't have enough room in the barn to put it all in without stacking, but we did get a few pickup loads put away, and it's now dry and looking good.

I thought that forking all of the hay by hand would be a terrible chore, but I actually enjoyed it quite a bit. At least it was fun until about the 6th truck load. Tossing 5lbs of hay on the end of your pitchfork is much more pleasant than hefting 50lb bales around anyway.

In order to get as much hay as possible in each truckload, we had to squish it down. Our certified professional hay squisher was invaluable for this.



We soon ran out of space to spread the hay out in the barn, so decided that it might be a good time to learn how to make a haystack. It might get moldy, but at least it wouldn't burn our barn down if it started to heat up. At best, it might allow us to keep more of the hay from this cutting.

Although the hay did heat up a little, it hasn't molded yet, and may very well survive as good hay. In the good old days, such stacks were just left outside with no tarp; the hay on top acted as a thatched roof while the hay inside remained dry. The stack did shrink quite a bit though -- it's now about half of the height shown in the photo.

Our new horses seem to like the haystack, which is in their paddock. I hadn't really planned on getting a draft team this early, but was keeping my eyes open to make sure I had an idea of prices and availability so I could jump when a good opportunity arose.

As it turns out, that opportunity came up, so we've made the largest single addition (by weight) to the farm's animals. Doc and Bruce are a team of 8 year old Belgian geldings.

They spent their first hour galloping around the barnyard and exploring their new farm. Doc soon discovered that the many small trees in the barnyard make great scratching sticks for those intimate spots if you back over them and rock back and forth.

But wait, that's not all...

The weekend before we got Doc and Bruce, we made another addition of pasture-eating livestock.

Being financial wizards, we've decided to enter the highly lucrative wool business (shearing typically costs more than wool can be sold for). We've picked up three Romney sheep, a breed known for high quality wool. By next year at this time, we'll all be wearing our home-made wool underwear.

I would post a photo of the sheep, but they're not the most photogenic, as they're typically running away from us. We'll get one... eventually.

Finally, we now have 11 week-old Narranganset turkey chicks from a woman who hatches them in Kalamazoo. They'll be around until Thanksgiving when Rachel has volunteered to gut and pluck each one of them all by herself.