We are blessed to have both sets of grandparents living nearby, and everyone helps out in one way or another. Here are some updates from our Spring preparations.
(I usually fail at getting a lot of photos because I am busy getting the work done along with everyone else. But I was able to snap a few!)
We had been saving for, and finally took delivery of our 3rd "egg mobile" built by Murray at Murray's Hen Hoops - we are so grateful for his skill and talent! And glad to meet his friends who drove it down for us from 3 hours north. They were a delight to fellowship with.
Now that we are on a farm, we see that the weather forecast makes many decisions for us, and teaches us flexibility.
Our new plan was to move one of the egg mobiles into the greenhouse pasture area so our newer chickens could get used to the idea of their next home. All but 45 of our chickens have lived out on the pastures using the egg mobiles as their sleeping place, snack bar, egg laying place and shelter from extreme weather. However, our newer Black Sexlink chickens have only lived in the greenhouse and surrounding area.
I wondered if the chickens had good memories, and it seems they do! The older hens who have lived in pasture before, ran right over to the egg mobile, hopped in, and looked around their familiar place.
While the younger hens (the black hens above) stayed their distance away.
A side-note about avoiding pandemonium:
We are hoping that by getting the newer chickens to spend some time with the egg mobiles before moving to the larger pastures will ease the transition to the field. Typically the first night out on a far away pasture is difficult. All the chickens start looking over at the greenhouse and getting nervous about the darkness falling. They panic, some fly over the electric fencing... they feel desperate to get back over to the greenhouse for sleep and protection.
This means that our whole family misses dinner in order to head out and chase and capture frightened chickens and stuff them into the egg mobile for the night. This can take hours depending on how nervous the chickens become (they don't like the dark, and can easily panic). We get to repeat this fun madness about 2-5 nights before they all get the idea that this is their new shelter and the greenhouse is only for winter months. (There are usually 1-2 outliers who, even after a week of "training" just refuse to get inside before the automatic door closes!)
Why does this take hours? You'd think placing 45-50 "untrained" fowl into an egg mobile should logically take 45-50 trips. But our past experience has shown us this is not the case.
The reality of their innate fear of dark means that they possess a flight instinct that is not overcome by gratitude for our tender loving care for the previous several months. In fact, last year, all of our 60 leghorns were skilled escape artists who would come out of the egg mobile as fast as we put them in, vastly increasing the amount of trips we made from the field to the door of their new home.
Depending on the amount that escaped, this ritual has taken us anywhere from 45 minutes to 2.5 hours per night—night meaning in the dark with flapping and clucking with feathers flying through the air. That was bad enough, but some of them even bit us during transportation.
You would think these birds would have so much gratitude for our caring for their safety. On the contrary, we had nights where it seemed that they would rather be caught by lurking predators than by their compassionate owners who were just trying to save their lives.
We would return to the house in muddy, muck-filled boots and clothes, so much so that most items needed to be left outside before we all came in to get a shower.
If you think that farm life’s routine might be boring, come visit us for an evening or two. These nightly episodes made for very interesting nights. Our city friends say that they live in the city for the excitement it affords them. Take it from a past city dweller: if you want real excitement in your life, move to a farm!
During these times, if we had possessed any other disposition than one of great thankfulness for the farm and our new-feathered friends, each of us would have screamed, stomped the ground and espoused a few choice expletives before shooting the silly things. But as God would have it, we laughed at the irony of the situation (well, afterwards anyway). Who knew that we would be rounding up fowl each night instead of enjoying a leisurely evening eating dinner, talking, and playing games? Yes, we still do these things—occasionally—when we aren’t too tired from ending our day.
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| Kailyn sitting with the older hens in their egg mobile - the hens checking out their new digs. Perhaps they are looking very forward to getting out on fresh pasture. We hope! |
The 5 month old chickens are not too excited about the new home. But hopefully by next week they will be ready to move with the others, thus avoiding the aforementioned "pandemonium!"
A portion of the greenhouse is sectioned off for our early crop. Spinach, lettuce and broccoli are all growing.
We also have starter plants both for the greenhouse and for the local Farmer's Market. We hope to have plenty to share with others at the first day of Farmington's Farmer's Market (weather permitting) on April 2nd.
Our egg production has been steady all through the winter. We should have enough to supply both our Farmington and St. Louis customers throughout spring and summer, Lord willing!
And now for the most difficult job of the year - moving tons of mulch from the greenhouse, bucket by bucket, over to the compost pile for a season or two. We probably put on average, 10 buckets of mulch into the greenhouse everyday throughout the winter. To reverse 3-4 months of this work, you can do the math and see that this is a BIG job which takes many weekends of labor. But it will make a wonderful compost for our gardens and it provided a clean, warm place for the chickens all winter.
Now, if we could only find a small front-loader which could get through the greenhouse doors and do the hard work for us!
Laughing, learning, having fun, working hard... farm living is the life for me.
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