Friday Farm Blog – Aug. 7, 2015

By Daisy Luther

Sometimes I miss blogging just to write about everyday life, so, inspired by The Buzz written by my friend Gaye at Backdoor Survival, I thought I’d dedicate Friday mornings to telling you guys about our adventures at the new farm that we’ve leased.

It’s amazing how quickly you become an animal hoarder when you have the space for them. We’ve been here just over a month now, and when we moved, we had two house cats and a dog.  There were a couple of horses here already (not ours but we get to hang out with them) and it just accelerated from there.

First, after an incident with a stray neighborhood dog terrorizing the horses (and me) we got a livestock guardian dog. His name is Thor, and he’s over 150 pounds.  He’s a big teddy bear if you belong here, but woe betide anyone or anything that shouldn’t be here.  Look at that beautiful face.

Then came the chickens. I started out with 8 baby chicks and sadly, lost 3. The remaining 5 are thriving and have just come out of the brooder into the larger part of the coop.  You can’t see their faces in this, because…spinach.

The next addition was a temporary fixture, who stayed here briefly while awaiting pick up from a wildlife rescue. This little fawn was found abandoned (the neighbors said it had been there for more than 24 hours) when we heard a ruckus. The poor little thing had been cornered by some neighboring dogs. We chased off the dogs and brought it home, where she was bottle fed goat’s milk until she was picked up to be  rehabilitated and released.

Of course, the presence of a baby in need of goat’s milk necessitated goats, so our friend “loaned” us three. One baby to put in the stall with the fawn…

…and two mamas to feed everyone. (The other one is camera shy and I can never get a photo of anything but the back of her head.) By the way, I learned to milk a goat last week.

We have quite a few rodents in the barn, which aren’t among the official count of animals here. We adopted two cats to help us out with this. They’re brothers.  One of them, Slash, has been in hiding for the past two days, watching us from under an old nesting box on the wall until he decides we aren’t going to cook and eat him. We can see his glowing green eyes under there. Kinda creepy. This one is Axl. He’s as friendly as can be. Since they look alike, I figured this photo would suffice for both of them.

And we can’t forget the peacock that roams the property. He’s been here for a few years and apparently his mate vanished, probably eaten by something. He roams around with a flock of wild turkeys, no kidding, who seem to have accepted him as a very flamboyant turkey. His name is Freddie Mercury.  He’s rather elusive, but I caught him visiting the horses when I was driving some feed to the back of the barn. I got a photo from inside my Jeep.

This week, my lovely daughter returned from visiting her grandparents in Canada, so we mostly hung out with our animals and didn’t do a whole lot of stuff to prep. We have found our little version of paradise. 🙂

So how was your week?  What did you guys do to prep?