Spring and the Multiplicity of Chores
May 3rd, 2015 · 2 Comments · Posted in farming
You have to be careful what you wish for on the farm. Deep in the throes of winter, you yearn for warmer days and maybe a little green grass. Of course, that day arrives soon enough, and with it a whole lot of work you didn’t have to do when there was two feet of snow on the ground.
As you can see from the photo above, the first of our Freedom Ranger broiler chicks have moved out of the basement brooder and into the mobile tractors. That means refreshing water and replenishing feed a couple of times a day, as well as moving those heavy cages with the hand dollies. And right behind these birds comes another batch of chicks at the post office. Quick, clean out the brooder, make more bedding. The new chicks need to be checked multiple times each day to make sure they’ve got food to eat and water to drink. An additional 20 layer chicks–they grow so much more slowly–also require care in their basement nest.
After I’ve looked in on the chicks at the crack of dawn I’m walking out to the goat enclosure where we now have two dames each with twins that need their own tending. The kids are still nursing and the moms graze what they can, but I make sure they have extra grain while they’re lactating. As soon as that’s done, I’m off to our two separate flocks of laying hens with a bucket of grain for them. Open the coops, make sure they have plenty of water–check, check.
Things get more complicated with the sheep. We don’t have separate facilities for the moms and their lambs. As best I can, I separate them from the other animals in the paddock and lead them into the adjacent pasture for their own morning dose of grain. Then back to the house to fetch the milk bucket, a wet rag and a bucket of grain for the Jersey cow, Emily.
I lead her into the “milking parlor,” just a pen we built inside the walk-in shelter in the paddock. While Emily has her head in the grain bucket, I give her udder a rub down with the wet rag, dip her two rear teats in an iodine solution, then proceed to milk into the stainless bucket. The streams of milk make such a lovely sound. We’re letting Emily’s calf nurse off the front two quarters. Milking by hand, I get about three quarts from the two in the rear. Of course, milking directly under Emily’s butt entails some risk. To get her to stand still long enough to be milked out, we learned a new trick: We put a couple of fist-sized rocks on the feed bucket. Getting her tongue around the rocks to slurp up the grain keeps her occupied, alright.
My last job before breakfast is leading Emily, her calf, the boy goat, our Nubian goat, and the rest of the sheep (the two rams and the females without lambs) out to pasture. We’re letting them roam a large area of the property unrestricted since the grass isn’t tall enough yet to start rotating behind electric netting the way we do in full season. They seem to find enough to eat during the course of the day. Meanwhile, we move fencing around so that the moms with their lambs have access to the orchard. If we’re lucky, the animals will all follow us back into the paddock at the end of the day so we can milk Emily again and make sure the livestock is secure for the night.
Sound like a full day? Well, there’s still firewood to be stacked, a vegetable garden to build, felled trees to cut, pasture to be mowed and I don’t know what else. Oh, and those chickens all need another round of water and feed before bed, the goats, too. And don’t forget to turn out the lights.
Thanks for taking time out of your crazy busy day to keep us updated. I really look forward to reading your posts so I can live vicariously.
My days are so crazy lately, Cathy, that I had to wake up at 2 in the morning to write this post.