Happenings on the Farm
There are a lot of different things that happen on the farm, such as having to bale hay and straw, harvest crops, feeding livestock, hauling rock, repairing barns and gates and the birthing of new babies. This year started out glorious with my goats giving me several beautiful kids. A couple of months ago I have lost two of my first time young mothers and their babies during birth and I lost a little newborn boy a few days later. The mama was so lost and just cried for the longest time. She is a my special pet and I feel so bad for her. We had coccidia and I treated the whole herd so we aren’t having that problem, it was that the babies were too large for the mamas, they were bred too young and their frames were too small, and the little boy was turned upside down and his head was backwards and we could not get it to turn after trying for such a long time. It was a very san time for me. My animals are my life and when I lose one, it is like I am losing one of my children. Even though we are expected to know that these things can happen and will at one point or another, we are never really prepared for the loss. It is like anything else, no matter how much we prepare, we are never ready to accept the reality of the situation.
There is nothing like watching the birth of a new little one and watch it take it’s first breath and first step. I feel lucky to be able to watch and see these special events occur and privileged that I can live this life on the farm that I love. This year we have added several dozen new calves, new chicks, new ducks, several sets of twins and two sets of triplet kids, goats, and my first miniature horse. This year we are also experiencing a drought and as we begin to end the month of July, we are now facing a shortage of water here on our farm and the surrounding farms. The ponds are slowly depleting and our yards are just as brown as a brown paper bag. Our gardens are not producing and our hens are laying less eggs than normal. I hate walking outside and seeing all the plants, flowers and vegetables that I worked so hard to plant earlier just burn up and nothing to show for it. I should not fuss because there are many others in the same boat and the farmers with their crops in the field with nothing to harvest is a sad situation. If we learn nothing else, a daily dose of prayer does a body good.
Many things happen on the farm, some we witness and others we don’t as the actions of the predators that watch our livestock and sometimes get lucky and snatch a chicken, duck or cat. We often hear the coyotes howl on all four sides of the farm and wonder if we’ll lose anything this night. Maybe it could be the cougar that wanders the farmlands and has been seen close by every now and then or the smaller critters such as the skunk and coon, and some of them are not too small. The coon around here can carry off a 5 gallon bucket of cat food like it is nothing; they even get the lids open. Pretty smart for a country animal. So as you see, several things happen on and around the farm. What a life!