This is a busy time of year for anyone tending a farm, whether it’s a hobby farm or something on a much larger scale. There is always work to be done.. watering, weeding, tilling, fence mending, fertilizing…and then of course the harvesting. My morning chores include all the animal tending, mucking, feeding, etc.. then over to the gardens to water.
We currently need rain, but everything is looking full and happy.
Let’s head over to the chicken coop.. currently overcrowded with the new chick population, now incorporated with the old. It’s smart not to overcrowd your coop with too many chickens.. and I kinda fell in love with a few more chicks at the feed store than I had planned on. Then.. ALL of them lived, which doesn’t usually happen… and so, I have a few more than a real chicken knowledgable person would tell you is appropriate for this coop. But.. I do let them free roam during the day, and so that will help the overcrowding. I hope.
As I walk over to the coop, the older girls know I’m about to let them out and they are waiting impatiently for me to get there. If I could give you a sound bite, you would hear them clucking.
Once they are let out of the coop yard, they usually head right over to the side of the house and rummage through my seaside real estate garden for bugs and worms.
The youngsters aren’t old enough yet to free roam, and so they get the coop yard to themselves for a bit, something they like very much, because they are at the bottom of the pecking order right now as they are the new kids on the block.
Can you believe that just a few months ago they were fuzzy little chicks?
This is Bellatrix.. the little brown chick who sat on my son’s shoulder. She is a blue egg laying Auracana (Sp?) … and what an unusual feather color pattern she has!
This is Luna, a comet – very docile and curious hen.
Up at the barn, Coady and Lacey sure wish they had more pasture time, but minis are hard to keep at a healthy body weight… they get fat on little more than air! and have to settle for the hay that is a little less rich than the green pasture grass just on the other side of the fence.
It seems unfair that the big boys get to spend their days coming and going…. and coming and going… and coming and going… from the barn to pasture as they please. The constant in and out is because the flies drive them crazy after just so long and they come running back in for respite every hour or so.
There is a lot of work involved in tending a farm, but it’s a good life and I feel so very blessed to be able to do this -for a living-. For years my days were spent more often than not in an office punching numbers and letters into a computer. One of those offices had no exterior windows. On the really cold or hot days when I’m outside working I remind myself of that windowless office and I thank the powers that be, once again, for letting me live this life with these animals and nature.
For me.. that’s a beautiful thing.