Horsefeathers

Well, today was farmers market day. No, I am not yet a farmer at the farmers market, I just shop there. And since I somehow ended up a rather useless member of the board, I managed to have a few farmer friends and acquaintances. When one is undertaking farm living for the first time, having some peeps who are further down that road is quite helpful. And, perhaps, terrifying.

For example, a recent posting from one of my farmer folks went something like this: "Holy 100 foot whirling sewage water flinging crap driller! I got it done. Yes you can flush, yes you can take a shower, but if you put in that much toilet paper again I will KILL you." Wow, THAT'S reassuring, and CERTAINLY calculated to make one look forward to living on a septic system!!

But today the subject was chicken houses. I am chomping at the bit to build a chicken house and get started on the keeping of domestic fowl. I likes me some fresh eggs in the mornin', and besides I just like the whole idea of chickens. I thought, seriously how complicated can that be? You buy chickens, you put them in a chicken coop, and you get fresh eggs every morning. Like everything to do with a farm, it is a little more complicated than that. There is, for example, the whole debate about free range chickens. Do you keep them in a little house, do you keep them in a little yard attached to the house, or do you let them out to play all day and trust that their reportedly strong roosting instinct will send them packing back into their little house every night? Inquiring minds want to know, and I have no answer yet.

I mean, I like the idea of letting them run about like chickens with their...well, you know, but what about predators? Like my dog? Or cougars? Or lions, tigers, and bears oh my? Isn't there some basis in reality for that old thing about foxes and henhouses? Do we have foxes? Our high school team is named the foxes - was that a desire for our players to be clever and crafty or because we have foxes hereabouts? I DO NOT KNOW THESE THINGS!

You know, when we were first married my husband said the definition of eternity was two people and a five pound canned ham. More recently, my definition was an 8x10 office and five years worth of 6 separate professional journals, few of which were getting read fast enough to keep up with the piles. Now, journals have been replaced with homesteading handbooks and books on how to raise farm animals. How much time do I have to read all this stuff??? How do people know all this stuff? I will tell you. There are two ways and only two ways people know about farm stuff. Way One: they are fifth generation farm stock, everyone they know is a farmer, and they came out of the womb knowing about irrigation pipe and crop rotation and chickens. Way Two: they have earnest desire and have screwed up a lot.

Clearly, I am following the second path. So I have my reading material set out for me, on "Chicken Tractors" and deer fencing and why goats can eat sheep food but goat food will kill a sheep. (Memo to those of you who care, the easy way around that is "All Stock Feed") And maybe in a couple weeks I can actually get my hammer and nails and forage in the supply of wood in the barn and build my chicken house. I am just goofy enough that I will probably be moved to tears by collecting my first eggs from my very own chicken roost on my very own farm. At least they don't have names, so I can eat them.

So tomorrow's task is moving the horses. To introduce you to that particular cast of characters, we have three horses here in Oregon and one in Louisiana. I am NOT moving the one in Louisiana tomorrow. I have kept my three here in a friend's pasture and will move them to the farm tomorrow. We have Barney, a quarter horse gelding about 23 years old. Barney is the polar opposite of an alpha male, like an omega male or something. He will assume the position of low man on whatever totem pole he is assigned to, the one horse in the pasture that gets pushed around by everyone. Then there is Mac, a thoroughbred gelding who used to race, and through a track injury involving a stone and his right eye is partially blind. This does not stop him finding and consuming not only his food but everyone else's too. He is a nice guy, but a 1500 pound brown pig. Lastly, there is Mercedes, our mare. I swore I would never have a mare, because they are, well, mare-ish. I spend my days in an estrogen-rich environment and had no aspirations to extend that to my barn. But, she was available, and my daughter needed a horse for 4H, and she rode Mercedes, and called to tell me she LOOOOOVVVVED her, and I am a sap. So now I have a mare. And she acts - like a mare. She is either bitching out both boys in the pasture or trying to get a little action. They are both geldings, so that is a generally fruitless endeavor.

Tomorrow, I get what I have wanted my entire life - to own horses, and to have them in my own pasture where I can look out my window and see them grazing, and can just walk out and feed them without having to drive somewhere. I am counting on this proximity exponentially increasing the probability I will actually get to ride them. The hurdle between now and then is moving them. I am perfectly comfortable pulling a horse trailer, and I have Bubba. Bubba is my big blue truck, a real beast, and capable of pulling about anything. The problem is that I have a sort of funny little driveway. It is about a half mile long, full of potholes, narrowly bounded by trees, and then when you get to the house there is a smallish turnaround. None of this is calculated to make maneuvering a trailer easy. There IS a side driveway just before the house which goes steeply up to the pasture, and a meadow with PROBABLY enough room to turn around, if you can avoid the apple trees. So, yeah, it's gonna be a tiny bit challenging.

This is the next step, though, towards my little dream farm, so I am going for it. If tomorrow's blog starts out with a long wail or lots of cursing, you will know I broke something, got something stuck, or took out an apple tree.

Stay tuned.

The Chronicles of Harry

JULY 5. 

Why oh why do I have a llama? I will tell you why I have a llama. Because I am pathologically incapable of saying no to an animal, for one thing. Also, he sort of came with the goats. And the goats came with the farm. Since they were there first, I didn't think it quite sporting to boot them off. When I told people I was inheriting a llama, to a man they asked "Llamas. Don't they spit?" While I can, to be fair, admit this llama has never spit at me, he has displayed some other less than savory character flaws. He is socially challenged. He has a decidely unkempt appearance, which cannot be changed until I can figure out how to lay hold of him. But today, the rat bastard llama escaped from captivity and was found nonchalantly EATING MY FLOWERS. This is a cardinal sin. 

It took 4 of us to herd him back into a pasture and close the gate. Feeling entirely too self-satisfied, I considered that the end of the matter. Folly. Serious folly. Not 2 hours later, he was out again. Too many pastures, too many gates. By then there were only two of us there, and He Who Shall Hereafter Be Called Harry (because he is. hairy. and because of Houdini) laughed at us for trying to herd him. There may have been spitting involved, but I think it was laughter.

JULY 7. 

Ooooo-kaaaay, then, so here is what I learned today: 

(1)When you have livestock it is very important that every single person knows to shut every single gate.

(2)Three million acres of cabbage plants with seed stalks as high as my shoulder is NOT FUN TO RUN THROUGH.

(3)A llama running full bore straight at you is an impressive thing.

(4)Apparently me running full bore at a llama is also an impressive thing.

(5)Llamas are stooooopid.

(6)Emergency personnel are quite amused when you call them to ask for help catching your runaway llama.

So here is the story. For those of you who have seen my posts of late, you know of Harry, the black hairy r-b (I called him a rat bastard, I do apologize, and there will be no further profanity. Or not too much.) llama of my recent acquisition, who escaped not once but twice, and has remained at large. At very large, I might add. So today the lovely woman from whom I acquired the llama called me. The neighbors called her. A large black llama roaming your fields is not a treat, apparently. So at least I knew in which direction he had been spotted.

So Kate and I (with appropriate footwear this time) trekked from our property to the next and around this humongous field of cabbagey things, past a collection of beehives (not my favorite part), following the fire lane. And voila, there is Harry, just laying down in the firelane clear on the opposite side of said three million acres of cabbage. We had gone armed with a hefty sheaf of yummy looking grasses. Harry was not impressed. He stood and looked ready to make off again upland, but alas, there was a deer in his path so he paused. Based on exactly what inspiration I have no idea, we started making noises like goats. Actually they sounded more like sheep, but close enough. This confused Harry to the point of immobility. We slowly advanced. I was also armed with a lead rope. Just when it looked like victory was possible, he turned and ambled off down another firelane into yet another neighbor's fields, this of wheat or oats or something. We followed him, and finally just got fed up with attempts to tempt or cajole him.

"Kate", I said, "How fast can you run?"

Perhaps you can see the direction this is all headed at this point. Downhill. And rapidly. But Kate took off gamely after the llama, and was actually gaining on him, when he turned and ran right past her. As I only had a flimsy lead rope not a throwing rope, I leaped at him as he passed and got a grip on a hunk of fur (he is VERY hairy) but couldn't hold it. SO he took off back the direction we had come. In general, this was a good development because that meant he might just go home. Instead, he headed into a grove of trees smack in the middle of all that damnable cabbage. We trudged to the trees, and split up going around the edge. I heard him in the middle of the dense growth. Suddenly Kate hollered that he had come out her side and was headed for me.

"Mom", she says. "Run right at him!"

Yeeeaaaahhhh, RIGHT. See lesson learned number 3 above. I had already observed this at close range on the edge of the oat field. But figuring if I at least made a show of authority he might stand still, I gamely ran right at him. (Don't fear, readers, I did not run at him very far, I am not suicidal today) Whereupon he turned and ran the only direction open to him - away from the trees, between me and Kate, and into all that CABBAGE. Can I just say that I HATE CABBAGE? We tried to follow him, but see lesson number 2. Not happening. By the time we both emerged from the edge of the field, Harry was again at large. We trudged for home.

Fast forward. Back again at the house, I called my go-to-guy country friend Bill. To see if he owns a tranquilizer gun. He does not. Sigh. So, on his suggestion of calling the sheriff's department, I dialed 911. I am in a pasture, I do not have a phone book, so DO NOT FUSS AT ME. The 911 operator was very nice. I immediately made it known that the "nature of my emergency" was just that I would like to be connected to animal control for Marion County. She asked me why. I (unfortunately) told her. Thankfully these people did NOT ask my name. She thereupon connected me to another very nice gentleman who was a dispatcher for this part of Marion County. Of course, the call immediately dropped. So I called 911 back. With the benefit of experience from my prior call, I just asked to be connected to the dispatcher for Silverton area calls. She then says "Is this about the llama?" Oh God.

So she then suggests I call a vet, and gives me the after hours number for one. I call, leave a message, and some time later he calls back. He was even more amused than the 911 operator, and suggested perhaps tranquilizer was not the sort of gun I was looking for. He also advised me not to chase the llama. Nice time to tell me that. He also advised me this was going to be very expensive. He had to hang up to take another emergency call, so I was spared further discussion at that moment.

By this time my husband has arrived on the scene. He takes off while I am walking every foot of our fenceline making sure there are not any modes of egress of which I am unaware. He calls me (ah, cell phones) to tell me he has spotted Harry. I start walking so that we can end up with the llama between us. This works nicely. BUt by this time it is nearly dark, and the llama is black, and I don't know if I am as hard to see as he is but I don't want to find out the hard way by getting little cloven hoofprints all over my body. So (thank you very much App Store) I turn on my STROBE LIGHT on my iPhone. Harry is very intrigued by this. Then I tell him firmly to GO HOME. He takes off down the edge of the cababge fields like he actually is going to do just that.

I have left the gate wide open in a lovely pasture. But, see lesson number 5. Harry passes all that lovely grass up, and keeps going to who knows where. It is now full on dark and I am past caring. Tomorrow is another day. I am looking online for sources of tranquilizer guns.

Stay tuned.

JULY 10

Alrighty, so here is what I learned yesterday but was too tired to post last night. (Oh - and Harry is still on the loose. Called SIX vet practices, 3 didn't answer phone, 2 referred me to one that didn't answer phone, and the other wanted like $400. Need more people, then we can herd him.) SO - what I learned:

I am a terrible farmer. IF being a farmer requires one to be emotionally detached from their animals and then kill them, I suck at it. Well, I suck at select portions of it - I could kill chickens all day long, and once they are adults it is difficult for me to bond much with a steer, they're just too bloody big and potentially violent. But, alas, not true for sheep.

For the second year, my daughter showed sheep for 4H. For the second year, she did market lambs. The point of this, as may be obvious, is that they (or at least one) go to market at the end. The Dreaded Auction.

Of course, they have names (last year Bonnie and Clyde, this year Johnny and June though Johnny didn't make weight), and that makes it tougher. It is hard to kill something with a name. And sheep are crafty. Stupid but crafty. They are so skittish you can't catch them yet alone handle them until just about fair time, then at fair they are your new best friend, eat from your hand, and LOOK AT YOU. With their EYES.

So last night was auction. June knew something was up, and it was difficult to see her all skittish again in her little pen, like a prisoner all alone in the last hour before the chair or chamber. I was sympathetic but not worried for her personally because she is a she. Last year we had ewe lambs too, and the understanding was that girls get bred boys get eaten (not such a bad system!). Well, this year June was bought by Kate's best friend's parents. TO EAT. Kate tells me this and I fall apart. NOT JUNIE!!!

What followed involved tears, an exasperated though amused husband, and a daughter with phenomenal problem-solving skills. The result was the buyer pays what he expected but gets 25# more meat, because he is getting a fellow 4H-er's other lamb (can only market one) who is a neutered male, I pay that 4H-er's mom what she wanted for the lamb, which is about $100 less than the buyer is paying Kate, who pays me back when she gets her money. So Buyer gets meat, friend gets $ and unloads sheep, Kate gets $100 profit and gets to keep her lamb. Which we plan to breed. Whew.

OBVIOUSLY we cannot go through this process every time so I simply cannot raise animals for eating that I can get attached to. Which makes me a ridiculous excuse for a farmer.

TOO BAD. C'mon home to the farm, June-bug.

JULY 11

MWAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!!

Victory is MINE!

After spending the entire day painting, breaking only to run to the fairgrounds for the last time, our friends pulled up with June (the lamb saved from being dinner) in their trailer. We got her situated in the pasture, introduced to the three goats (not fans) and watched as it turned out her best friend was Chevy! We expected Chevy to herd the lamb, but she didn't have to - wherever she went June trotted along behind her. It was hysterical.

Finally, with dusk coming, it was time. To try. Again. SIGH. I knew he was out there, my crafty opponent, just waiting, laughing in his little llama way.

We had a plan, though, and one more person. So we set out around the infamous cabbage patch- Kate went uphill with the bucket of feed, John and I went downhill with two long ropes between us. The plan was to hopefully find Harry, and come at him from both directions, appease him with some grain, then string the ropes between us and try to herd him.

He was exactly where he was the last time (soooo predictable). He got up and headed into the cabbage (SOOOOO predictable), but when Kate rattled the grain he was at least tempted. So we set the bucket down and backed off for a minute, while he snacked. But as soon as we approached again off he went. So we split up again. I headed for home, with the plan being to wait in the firelane of the cabbage patch just past the turnoff to our pasture, so that when he came along trying to get away from Kate and John I could head him in.

I waited. And I waited. And when it was so dark I could no longer see my feet, I decided I couldn't see an approaching black llama either. My spiffy strobe App iPhone plan was a no go since I had left it in the kitchen. So I went to the house and texted John to make sure all was well, and to let them know I was at the house.

My phone starts quacking (yes, John's ring tone is a duck) and John says they are passing the bees (remember the bees? Well I'm glad I hadn't just waited there in the dark because that was THE WRONG DIRECTION. They had gone all the way around the huge damn cabbage patch instead of down the hill the way I went. I would have had a big black llama approaching me FROM BEHIND. Seriously!!!

Anyway, I took my cell phone and hoofed it back up the hill to the cabbage and stood in the firelane above the turnout to home. I turned on my iPhone and waited. Here came the black menace, and John is calling out to me "Don't startle him!" Ummmm, we won't talk about who is capable of startling whom between a woman in a white T-shirt with a brightly glowing cell phone and a black llama - in the dark. I couldn't have cared less about startling him! So I waved my cell phone and luck was with us. Luck and the moon - it was dark in the cabbage patch, but the moon was shining on our pasture. Like a beacon lighting the way home. YES!! Harry turned into our property.

But recall I said he was a crafty opponent. No sooner had he turned into our property than he took off up a narrow path along the pasture fence that headed back to the cabbage firelane, instead of heading through the meadow to the open pasture gate. Kate had arrived on scene, so we called out to John to run fast up the firelane and head him off. This actually worked, and we got him back into our meadow. Kate had a rope and I had my glowing phone, and between us we presented sufficient incentive that he finally turned and ran into the pasture.

FINALLY!!!!!

So, I wrote a poem in his honor. This is not fine literature, don't be disappointed.

I met a llama on the path

He made me want to kick hith ath.

I met a llama in the lane

He filled my head with gnawing pain.

I met a llama in the garden

Eating flowers, asked no pardon.

I took all I could of this brand of fun

Then searched in vain for a tranquilizer gun.

But in the end it paid to wait

The monster finally went through the gate.

So now the farm is quiet and merry.

POX VOBISCUM Dirty Harry.

(For the Latin challenged among my readership, which I certainly hope for your sakes is most of you, "Pax vobiscum" means Peace Be With You. Noooo, I did not misspell PAX. It is a CURSE.)

Ahhh. I think I may spit at him.

Welcome to the Funny Farm

Hello all, and welcome to my blog.

So here's the story - I am an otherwise sane and rational woman of a certain age with a decent job who really ought to know better. But this particular insanity goes back a long ways. When I was about seven, we had just bought a new 1960 ranch house in a subdivision, with no grass and no flowers. We (my parents, brother and I) spent an uncomfortably long time picking up rocks in the dirt that was the backyard so my dad could plant grass. When it finally looked like a yard, my dad had the fence built. Ah, the fence. While all our neighbors who had fences had chosen the standard chain link of the day, my dad ordered - split rails. I have never really been given an explanation for this choice, but to me the reason was clear. I was finally getting a horse.

See, all the pictures I had seen in my romantic horse-crazy girlhood showed horses with their heads hanging artfully over a split-rail fence. I had been begging for a horse since I could say the word. Knowing my dad's reluctance to break my heart, I knew the day had come. That fence was a thinly coded message - the horse was finally to be mine. Soooooo wrong. Sigh. I never really got over that.

I finally got a horse when I was 43. He was an Arab with an asthmatic condition, so the price was right. But that was the best horse I have ever had - willing, fast enough, devoted to my kids, and smart. Smart enough to run away from me in the pasture, his one bad habit. But it was a serious love relationship from the start. A month or so into my horse-owning experience, I called my husband from the barn where I boarded him (the horse, not my husband - that must be something like a dangling participle or some other cardinal sin of grammar). Anyway, I said "You know how sometimes you dream of something for soooo long and when you finally get it there is no way the reality can live up to your expectations?" I could hear the panic in my husband's silence. But then I said "This is NOT one of those things! This is even better than I could have ever imagined!" I think he knew even then the die was cast.

When we were first married, we moved to a 17 acre farm. Nothing was actually farmed on it, the owners lived in town with dreams of moving out there once their kids were out of school. One couple rented the house, and we rented a garage apartment. The rest of the place was just fields of weeds. I asked if I could have a garden, and the landlord was so delighted to have a kindred spirit he came out and plowed up a garden for me - about 2 acres worth. My husband was amused and alarmed in equal measures - amused at watching my trying to figure out what to do with all those rows of dirt, and alarmed that this might be a pattern which could repeat. He grew up sort of in the country, I was a city kid who always wanted to live in the country. He knew considerably  more than I did about all of this, and I was in over my head. Needless to say, that garden was a bust. But I did learn that I breathe easier when surrounded by land, rather than houses ten feet apart. I learned what it meant to disk something up, and that a bush-hog was a mower on steroids. It was a beginning.

It was also a long time ago. Other than that brief interlude on the 17 acres, and my boarded horses, we lived a city life, in a succession of cities, pursuing work and education. But over time, my husband learned something too. Never ever underestimate the determination of his wife to achieve her dreams, no matter how ill considered.

Fast forward to the last few years. I have spent the last umpteen years in education and training in order to pursue one of those possibly ill-considered dreams, in this case being a physician. I was 46 years old with five children when I started medical school. I am here to tell you it has to be easier at 25 than at 46. One of my coping mechanisms to get through a decidedly unpleasant residency training experience was to promise myself - and my youngest daughter - that when it was all over we would live in the country and she could have whatever animals she wanted. Besides the usual (horses) she particularly wanted a llama. She had no valid explanation for why she wanted a llama, but want it she did. And I said Of Course, Sure, Whatever You Want.

When I finally finished residency I planned to return to my native Baton Rouge, Louisiana to practice. In the course of residency, however, there was this little thing called Hurricane Katrina which effectively changed the landscape of medical practices across south Louisiana such that there were no jobs. My best friend lived in Oregon, my husband always wanted to live there, so there you go. I ended up in the Willamette Valley of Oregon, in my opinion the most stunningly gorgeous farmland on the planet.

After almost three years in a rental house - a very nice one, in a very nice subdivision that I felt ungrateful for wanting to leave - an opportunity presented itself. A friend and fellow physician planned to move his family back across the country and needed to sell his farm. EVERYONE knew I wanted to move to acreage, and at least five different people kept asking me if I had looked at this place, so finally I did. I tromped over all 40 or 50 acres of it, climbed to the top of the upper pasture where you can look west and see the Coast Range and look east and see the Cascades, and decided there was no way I could ever manage to get this place. Or that my husband would hate it. Or that he would remember that awful first garden and think I was getting in seriously over my head. Or that he would be right.

So finally, I screwed up my courage and suggested he go look at it. The Gods of Farm Fools were smiling on me that day, because the weather was gorgeous - in, like, April. In Oregon. I think when my husband saw that it was possible to see Mt. Hood from the top of the upper fields he was down with the plan. My friends made it impossibly possible.

So that is how we have come to be the incipient occupants of a farm in the Pacific Northwest. We don't even have a stick of furniture moved into the place yet, and we already feel at home there. We have spent the last 2 weeks painting (Farmhouse. 4 children. BIG dog. Definitely painting.) My husband was given a crash course in tractor and mower operation by our friend before their departure back East, and has been out there mowing daily. Along the way, over the course of the last couple weeks, I have come to realize that we are going to screw up A LOT. And it is going to be a bit amusing. Perhaps not to us immediately, but to a lot of other people almost certainly. I have also learned that if you can keep your sense of humor, you can even cope with a runaway llama. Oh yes, there is a llama involved. Long after my daughter stopped wanting one, she got one anyway. Talk about ill-considered dreams! Stay tuned.