Wild Predators

"All animals like chicken."

A lot can happen in one week. Let me start with the good news, we have Little Bill on the scene, in his own huge space, happily munching on grass and being his normal majestic self. We all rode together to get him in my Dodge Grand Caravan, (it’s a mini-van). He loves his new place and even seems nicer than I remember him. He is very gentle with Iona’s hands as she pets him and he licks her hands or eats pellet treats from her tiny fingers. I noticed the woman who has been taking care of him was very confident when she was handling him, petting his sides, ribs, neck and ears. She also has a little blonde 3 year old girl who he has been around on the farm so it’s almost like he has had obedience training over the last couple years while he has been with her. He is very respectable and well-mannered.

That is as far as I can stretch the good news about Little Bill so, for the bad news….we are down to 5 chicks. Four “golden girls” and a little rooster. We brought them to the city to keep them safe. Let me be honest, I knew there was a snake living next to the coop, I chose to ignore the facts and proceed without enough caution. My husband has been mowing and cleaning up the new 1 acre lot above our barnyard and told me he saw a snake, and decided not to cut down all of the brush in one spot, for his own safety.

We had 10 chicks, 3 were missing after 2 nights away, so I replaced them last Wednesday with 3 brand new chicks, and moved them from the coop to a safer place, I thought, a rabbit cage near the coop. The next morning one was missing, so I thought maybe the door could be more secure, no problem, I fixed that. The next day we were down to 5, two of which have missing toes. Bruce is apparently a mathematician because he let me know we have lost 8 chicks total. 😒 I took all of the chicks back to the Yome with us and they are happily growing in our portable rabbit cage. We brought them with us on the 3 hour trip north this week, they are on the back porch now. I jumped the gun, ok

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There are so many potential predators for chickens, everyone really does like chicken. Opossums, skunks, snakes, raccoons and humans are just a few of the animals who like to eat chicken. By replacing the chicks and keeping the cage full, I was successfully keeping the chicken case full for whoever the the hungry predator or predators were. Little Bill being there on the other side of the coop will help, but we need to have livestock guard dogs in the barnyard as well as at least one following my blondes around as they explore our little slice of “the nature state.”

I think the temporary solution until we rebuild our ecosystem around the farm is to have my sweet husband build a chicken tractor that I can keep near us, as we transition from the yome to the camper and eventually get the coop safe again. A chicken tractor is like a small portable coop on wheels. You move it around so the chickens have fresh ground to eat bugs and fertilize, and they can even lay eggs in a nesting box on one end of the tractor. This is an example from google, however my husband’s version will be much cooler, possibly reusing a soccer goal as a light weight frame for our chicken tractor.

We have started the first few lessons of our nature study and the kids really like it. It is perfect for summer because it only takes about an hour in the mornings while we are at the farm, and the big kids can add to their notebooks in the afternoon if they want to dive deeper into an illustration or an explanation of an idea they have learned.

I think having a little homeschooling practice is also very good for little Iona so she can learn to step off center stage for a moment while we focus on something besides her. She has been getting better at circling things with her dry erase markers, understanding she can’t touch the big kids work, and sharing tools like scissors. I think these little lessons will pay off, (I am hoping) as we start our homeschooling next August, with little Delaney on board. We discovered that our new state bird is the Northern Mockingbird, and we had a mother creating a nest right in our rolled up window shutter of the yome. We investigated it, found out Josie was right, that it was indeed a Northern mockingbird nest, with 4 hatchlings inside. We relocated it to the tree behind our home and the mother was not detoured by our scent. She took care of them and they lived.

Besides the goats, baby chicks, and toddlers, I have had time to take a look around my back yard to add to my foraged herbs.

I have echinacea, chamomile, mullein, black-eyed Susan, of course dandelion and Josie keeps finding more herbs in our book. All of which have great anti-inflammatory, immune boosting qualities, perfect for my tea cup. We are making a “coffee table book” about all of the plants around us on the farm. We have tons of juniper berries, elderberries, blackberries, muscadine wild grapes, and many to still discover. We had a very nice rain one evening that washed away all of the grass pollen that was irritating my sinuses, and my cough is almost completely gone.

Everything was great at my doctors appointment yesterday. I told Bill that now that I am 33 weeks they have increased the frequency of my appointments (every 2 weeks) with the doctor, and it feels like the tempo is increasing, like a crescendo is coming. He said, “your instincts and intuition are right, you are going to have a baby soon Donna.” I don’t know why, but that made me laugh so much, I am even smiling as I type this.

We were able to try a new restaurant in Marshall, Britt’s Bake Shop and Café, and it was delicious. With the cost of food these days, restaurants are suddenly the same price as purchasing food and preparing it yourself, her prices seemed reasonable, especially after seeing the portions. I split a big breakfast plate with Iona, complete with 3 eggs, hashbrowns, bacon, sausage, biscuit and pancakes for $12.00! Bruce had Churro pancakes ($5), and Josie couldn’t resist a double order of biscuits with chocolate gravy ($7-it’s a local favorite recipe.) The service was very sweet and friendly, the kids are hoping it can be our new favorite place. It is nice to see the young lady who owns it was right there, making sure everything was operating as she would like it to.

While we are away this week, our neighbor, Mr. Kite, is doing some awesome work on our property, getting things ready with a driveway for the camper, bush-hogging (a.k.a. mowing rough fields with a tractor), and removing some fence posts for us. Our shed for our “wash house” will arrive next Thursday. We have water turned on and will be able to have water, “on-demand” soon.

I am so grateful we took this leap of faith.

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