Farm Critters...

Friday night:
Home from work in the Cities—kids home from school. Sitting on the porch with a Doppelbock, binoculars, and the Guide to the Birds of North America. The Red Wing Blackbirds descended on our farm like a noisy black cloud. Ducks are entering the mix of migrating waterfowl. Kids and dog romping in the sun.

Saturday morning:
Send the kids out to play. Jens comes in sobbing that Happy is hurt. Sure ‘nuf. Sometime over the night Happy had an encounter with a wild animal and got her face slashed open. I’ve been suspecting that we have a Big Cat (like a cougar) around here—but Happy probably wouldn’t have lived through that encounter. Maybe a badger or something. She looks awful—her poor snout like sliced meat. We doctor her and love her up—she’s not racing around like her usual self.

Then the kids and I head down to play with our chickens. I’m so pleased to see a whole row of chickens sitting in their nesting box to lay eggs—better than finding the eggs on the coup floor. I’m feeding them some organic flax when Alma screams “Banana is dead! Sure ‘nuf. There’s Banana crumpled up on the edge of the coup. We suspect murder. Now since we have 38 (now 37) “mixed heavies we can tell them apart- brown, red, black, black/white, white chickens- most with names. I gather all the kids and run back to the house. Jens and Alma fighting over who gets to break the news to Dad about poor Banana.

Mike deadpans,
“Whadya do with it?
“Do with it? I gathered our children and raced to the house.
Mike stares at me, “you left a dead chicken?
I wasn’t going to pick it up. I didn’t have gloves and, frankly, NO—I’m not handling the dead livestock.

Mike uses some old fashioned word like “I’m incensed you didn’t take care of the dead chicken. [NOTE: the kids and I refer to her as Banana and to Mike it’s “that dead chicken" By his way of thinking, I should be behaving as the farmer I hope to claim to be.

But by my calculations, as long as a woman has a living, functioning husband he can:

1) Sharpen all the kitchen knives- always
2) Handle all dead livestock

Back to my porch—this time a cup of coffee and the Co-op newsletter. They boys magically learned to peddle over the winter. They’re racing down the dirt/gravel driveway on their tricycles to low point between garage and ‘machine shed’ where they get mired in the mud. Alma red faced from racing up and down our ½ mile driveway. “Time me! She’s at 6 minutes per round trip. My poor hurt dog stretched out beside me—tail wagging, smelling like a skunk. We had a baby skunk on the porch—cute little thing I hear. Happy “scared it off- now she and parts of our house smell of skunk.

Point is… this is a wild place. A farm in nature. There aren’t many of these around. But right here on the southern edge of Malta township we have very few people (we’re the only ones in a four square mile area) and a fair amount of prairie pothole habitat. We have lots of deer, pheasants, mice, skunks, rabbits, possum (don’t get me started on the possum—ecological refugees invading other critters habitat niche), coyotes, waterfowl, a big cat (I suspect). Life, death, disfigurement. It’s all here—all in one day’s livin’.