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.