farm missives

Vigilante Farm, that leading Bethel producer of, among other things, emu fat, is pleased to announce that Buckley finally got lucky.

Huh, what?

Until this morning, what I had for rabbits were three virgin does and one virgin buck. Talk about the blind leading the blind. For several weeks, every doe I put into Buckley’s cage kept her tail planted firmly on the deck. Buckley seemed to be doing the right thing - directing his attention to the proper end of the doe, for instance - but no dice. I even checked to be sure that he wasn’t standing on her tail, of which mistake Bucko was occasionally guilty. To be sure, Buckley always got right down to business, with nuzzling, massaging and love bites - rabbit foreplay - always as an afterthought, but that was always Bucko’s way, too.

Hell, until this morning the only action happening on this farm was in the farmhouse. My chickens are all hens, my waterfowl consist of two drakes and a gander, the goats are both gals, and the emus are either too young or too disinterested. But this morning the third doe I put in Buckley’s cage raised her tail long enough for him to signal his triumph by falling onto his side. This evening I arranged a second encounter with her, as called for by the book, but she wasn’t buying it. She even tried humping him, which was my first experience of that. We’ll see how it goes.

Remember last summer when, due to inattention on my part, a doe gave birth in a cage without a nesting box? And the only two kittens that escaped being eaten by their mother (hey, it’s a rough world out there) did so by somehow squeezing through the front door, falling onto the plywood shit funnel and from there into the shit bucket? Where I found them, hairless and blind, damp and dirty? Both of them turned out to be girls, so I kept them. The first one to put out for Buckley earned the name Lisbeth, and the other I call Salander. Tough broads, these two.

We won’t be limited to 25 farm animals for long. I’ve got 24 emu eggs incubating, and when they’re done I’ll incubate some midget white turkey eggs.  In early May I’ll take delivery of 26 chicks (two Rhode Island Reds, two Golden Laced Wyandottes, two black Australorps and twenty broilers), six broad breasted white turkey poults and one Tamworth piglet. The midget whites will be for breeding, and the big white turkeys will be eaten this year. And we’ll see how many rabbits I can get out of three does.

A few years back there was an elaborate blind taste test performed on eight different heritage turkey breeds and a standard broad breasted white turkey. The midget white won, the Bourbon Red came in second, and the standard turkey came in a distant last. Hence my interest in the midget white turkey.

The Tamworth pig is a rare breed these days. It is both fatter and tastier than the usual run of pigs, and it excels at foraging. Like last year’s pig, Forreste, it will live in the woods, sleep in a cave and forage for much of its food. If I like it, I may buy a breeder grade Tamworth gilt next year. I wouldn’t keep a boar; why feed two adult pigs year ’round when you only need to feed one? I can make do with artificial insemination, which I’ve lately been studying. Hey, you can find just about anything on YouTube.

Scott

Vigilante Farm, that leading Bethel producer of emus and rabbits, is pleased to announce that the winter crew of animals has been selected. Those 25 critters that still remain, those that have “made the cut,” will be kept through the winter - nine chickens, two ducks, a goose, seven emus, four rabbits and two goats. Plus a few thousand bees. During the summer there were as many as 100 chickens and 60 rabbits, almost all of which have since graduated to various freezers.

I am out of the turkey business until spring. Only breeding turkeys or pet turkeys are ever kept through the winter; mine had gotten too old to breed and I’ve got enough pets, so one afternoon I sent all six to meet their maker. Now, as I may have related before, a suddenly headless bird moves its wings and legs rapidly, and a thirty pound turkey does this with much more authority than does an eight pound chicken. I butcher each bird before slaughtering the next, so it took a while to do in all six.

The largest bird, a tom, was next to last and what with me being tired and him being strong (though headless), he pulled his legs out of my hands and landed pretty much on the spot where some weeks before I had shot the pig. I had just enough time to think how ironic it would be if this turkey rolled down the same bank that the pig had, but not enough time to grab him before he did exactly that. Down the bank he went, winding up right where the pig had. I had to grab this tree and that to get down the bank without falling, and had to grab this tree and that with just one hand all the way back up. Next time, I’ll tether the turkey’s legs to a tree before I “energize” the turkey.

I hope to have a breeding pair of emus next mating season (next autumn/winter) when the five youngsters mature, but for now I have one adult female that has yet to succumb to the charms of either adult male, which adds up to at least one surplus emu. It was easy to pick which one, too, because one of the males had worn out his welcome. Big Burp had badly bloodied Grace before I put her in the small pen by herself, and Big Burp had recently threatened me a few times when I was in the large pen.

The first time he threatened me, my spontaneous defense - and perhaps my only defense while empty handed - was to get up in his face and dress him down as would a drill sergeant. Boy, was I ever glad to see this ploy work. From then on I went into the pen only when carrying a shovel with which to keep him out of kicking (and disemboweling) range. This shovel technique works, but I’d rather carry an emu crook so I can fend off a rogue emu with just one hand, leaving the other hand free to do whatever it was that brought me into the emu pen in the first place.

This would be the first animal I’d ever killed that could potentially kill me first - rabbit scratches and turkey bites are annoying but not lethal and I’ve yet to see a pig do worse than nibble on my boot - so I needed a good plan. I had no idea how the other emus might react to my killing one of their number, so I decided first to separate him from those others with a makeshift gate made of scrap emu fencing. Next I would trap both of his feet in a snare, then grab his head with my left hand and pull his neck across a chopping block, and then sever that neck with a machete. Sounds gruesome, yes, but can you think of a more safe and humane way to kill an emu? The literature is strangely devoid of suggestions on this subject.

I had a 7′ long piece of pipe with a flange on one end, so I stuck that flanged end through an eye splice and fed the other end of the rope through the pipe. Not the world’s tightest noose, but an emu’s feet are pretty large. The pipe was too heavy to maneuver with one hand, so I placed it across a notched fulcrum so that I could raise the flanged end by stepping on the other end.

Well, it didn’t work. Oh, I snagged the emu alright, but he didn’t stay snagged. Emus’ feet have three toes, all pointed forward because emus are not designed to roost or perch. All the emu had to do was align all six toes with his two shins and he slipped right out of the noose. Now I was in a pen with an aggravated, frightened, potentially lethal emu. The crowd - yes, I had gathered a crowd - clamored for me to shoot the emu rather than to take any more chances with an ineffective noose, and I had to agree.

A bit later, I entered the pen with my 12 gauge loaded with bird shot. Hitting the body of an emu at close range is about as challenging as hitting sand at a beach, but I wanted to hit the head for a quick, humane kill, and that small head was on the end of a long neck atop some long legs, all of which kept moving a lot. I cannot, by law, aim towards the road, and he was between me and the road about half of the time. Neither did I want to aim anywhere near the other emus, all of which were crowding the other side of the gate, so my friend Chuck dispersed these bystander emus by throwing stones at them. The targeted emu dodged my first shot, but not my second.

If you think a suddenly dead thirty pound turkey kicks up a fuss, consider a suddenly dead 150 pound emu. Even on his side, he managed to kick his way beneath the gate, whereupon the other emus clustered about him. Chuck and I dragged him out, hung him up in front of the goat barn, and dry plucked him. These feathers have since delighted a number of fly tiers and one hair stylist. The next day I skinned and butchered him. I’ve since developed quite a fondness for emu chili.

It was time, I decided, to put the other adult male, Foghorn, into the small pen where the adult female, Grace, had been by herself for the past few months. Perhaps she would finally mate with Foghorn now that her attention was not compromised by the presence of Big Burp. Also, if I delayed separating Foghorn from the youngsters too much longer, I might not be able to distinguish him from them.

I did this and found that while they did not overtly fight, she seemed to ban him from the barn, hence from the food and water. At least, every time I went out there, there she was between him and the food/water. Oh well, let him learn to assert himself, thought I, for if he cannot do that, then how will he ever mate with her?

A couple of days ago, I found myself in the emu barn with some spare time, so I went into that small pen to shoo her away from the food and water so as to let him eat and drink. It took a while, but I did corner her in the far end of the pen while Foghorn was in the barn, perhaps eating and drinking, perhaps not. Let’s see if I can’t calm her down a bit, I thought, and reached out and stroked her back; she didn’t resist.  Let’s see if I can grab her gently by the neck without her struggling, I thought, and did just that. Suddenly, she dropped to the ground in the lying down position. Now, I’d seen plenty of emus lie down, but she had her tail raised way up in the air, which I had never seen before.

Could this be the female mating position? I’d seen Foghorn adopt the male mating position (the sitting position, which is something of a squat) when he was “propositioning” me, as male emus are wont to do during the mating season. However, the Emu Farmer’s Handbook says nothing about female emus ever showing sexual interest in humans. I walked back to the barn, followed by Grace. As I got to the barn, she passed me and assumed the very same position right by the door.

Well, it’s been over twenty years since I’ve attempted to seduce a new woman, but it’s gratifying to see that I’ve still got the moves.

Scott

Vigilante Farm, that leading Bethel producer of porcine transportation sagas, is pleased to announce that this year’s farm-to-butcher trip was the easiest of all.

Every year so far I’ve been hopeful, even volubly so, that I’d found the right technique for getting the pigs into the truck with the minimum stress and strain to me, to my pig partners, and to the pigs. Every year so far, though, I’ve had to call my butcher to say that once again, it had taken longer - sometimes many hours longer - than I’d planned on to get them into the truck. This year my butcher told me to call him once I was en route.

This year’s event was different in several respects. On the plus side, I was dealing with only a single pig. On the minus side, that pig was at large in a half acre or so of forest - hence her name, Forreste. On the different side, I had decided that rather than hustle a live pig into my truck, I would load a dead pig into my car.

One might think that I was just trying to win the contest of wills by removing the will of my opponent, and one can think so if one wants to. I like to think that I was at least as swayed by Kathleen’s opinion that my pigs generally lead a pretty nice life - as domestic pigs’ lives go - but that being loaded forcibly into the truck, then unloaded forcibly from that truck, and spending a night in a strange pen listening to other animals being killed pretty much negates all that nice room to run, all that nice stuff to dig up, all those first rate scraps to eat, and all those hose squirtings on hot days.

The plan this year was to not feed the pig that day until it was Time, then to call it to the side of its wooded pen nearest the driveway, throw down some food, let the pig dig into yet another delicious meal, and then Lights Out. A pleasant life all the way to the end.

I was prepared. I had a sturdy sled into which to load the dead pig, and room in my car for that loaded sled. I had a young friend, Luis, to help me lug the pig, in return for which he would take the head of the pig. I had a rope prepared for dragging the dead pig by its front legs - never by the back legs, for then one is dragging it against the grain of its hair, and it won’t slide well at all - with slip knots already on each end. Well, hangman’s nooses, actually. And I had another long, strong rope, just in case.

Now, most of the pig’s half acre is much lower than the driveway, but there is three or four feet of level ground between the electric fence and the top of a very long, very steep bank. This bank is long enough that a person at the top needs to yell in order to be heard by somebody at the bottom, and steep enough that I need to grab one tree after another to pull myself up it. This pig, however, had astounded many onlookers by charging straight up this bank. Well, after all, a pig is mostly muscle, and that muscle is delicious, which is exactly why we keep pigs.

“Watch this,” I said, holding aloft a grain scoop with the last of this year’s grain. “Hey, pig!” Sure enough, the pig walked slantwise up that bank, right to me. I threw that grain down on the ground (wouldn’t want to shoot a hole in its feeding dish now, would I?), accepted a loaded revolver from Laurence, its owner, and shot the pig point blank in the head. Up until this point, everything had gone exactly to plan.

Well, we’ve all seen people get shot and killed on TV and in movies, right? They fall down and don’t move until somebody moves them. That, I’m afraid, is a dramatic convention, every bit as unreal as a TV cop’s always finding a parking place right where he needs one. Sudden, real death is generally followed by considerable motion on the part of the deceased. Suddenly dead rabbits kick, suddenly dead turkeys flap their wings, and suddenly beheaded chickens famously run around.

So I wasn’t surprised when the pig did a lot of twitching. Nor was I surprised to see that twitching die down, just as it always does with rabbits, etc. But I was surprised when that dead pig, as if to say “Up yours,” gave a mighty final twitch that launched it over the lip of the bank, and rolled all the way to the bottom. Oh, great.

No time to lose - I wanted to get that pig bled out soon. I grabbed that short rope with the two nooses in one hand, and one end of the long rope in the other, and rappeled down the bank, with Luis belaying that long rope around a birch tree. I put a noose on each foreleg, affixed the long rope to the middle of the short one, used that long rope to pull myself back up the bank, went and got my truck, and used it to pull that pig back up the bank. Luis expertly removed the head using only a knife, and we hoisted the pig from a tree for a while. Then we lowered it into the sled and lifted the sled into the car.

Wheels rolling, I called my butcher and told him when to expect me. Laurence and I settled in for a pleasant, scenic ride only to learn that the pig, dead and headless for twenty minutes now, had yet another “Up yours” to express, by taking a posthumous dump in my car.

Scott

Vigilante Farm, that leading Bethel producer of varied avian excreta, is pleased to announce that the head count just doubled.

Yesterday, I introduced to my brooder about 85 day old broiler chicks. They immediately set into motion their Five Step Plan: eat, drink, sleep, shit, grow; eat, drink, sleep, shit, grow; eat, drink. . .  These birds are a contract job, if you will. My friend and neighbor Jay bought these chicks, will buy all their (organic) feed, and will eventually take them away to return in little packages, on ice. I provide the facility and the electricity - which could be an issue with the remnants of Irene coming - and put the feed and water to them. For this I get 25% of the eventual packages. Good deal all around, I’d say.

Emu Graduation Day came and went. I’d read that young emus can be put with the adult emus when they are four months old, and mine were now 4½ months old. There was some trepidation involved, because of the way my two adult males had been staring through the fence at the youngsters for the last couple of months. Were they thinking, “I’d like to rip you limb from limb,” or were they merely checking out the freshman class? “Hey, check out that hottie - next year, she’s mine.” Only one way to find out.

The last time I’d moved these birds, I’d done so one by one, carrying them upside down by their feet. Now they were perhaps four feet tall and weighed perhaps 80 pounds apiece. Grabbing them by their soon-to-be-lethal feet might prove difficult, even foolhardy.

I generally move adult emus - only when necessary, mind you - by steering them from behind, holding onto their vestigial wings, but this technique requires first sneaking up behind each bird, which could take a while. I tried, instead, herding them from one pen to another through two adjacent doors. These doors, when open, pretty much seal off the rest of their hallway.

There are those who say that one cannot herd emus, but I’ve found that you sort of can, though you have to maintain plenty of distance. The first bird made it through OK, but the second one somehow got around one of the doors and found itself trapped in a narrow hallway full of buckets, bags and tools. It promptly panicked and kicked the crap out of everything it could get to. It even managed to turn off the yard hydrant that supplied the emus’ automatic waterers, which I didn’t notice until the birds were clean out of water the next day. I repositioned that door so that when the errant emu calmed down, the only place it could go would be into the pen of my choice and, in time, it did just that.

The remaining three birds were pretty spooked now, so I got a 4′ x 6′ piece of plywood to help with the herding, after taking a few seconds to note that the first two young emus, now together with the older emus, seemed to be getting along fine with them. The plywood made it much tougher, though not impossible, for the birds to get around me, as it almost filled the 7-8′ wide section of the pen through which I was herding them.

I had mixed results with this plywood. It made it easier for me to impose my will on the emus, but it also freaked them out so that they charged the plywood barrier. These birds could almost, but not quite, jump over the plywood. They could almost, but not quite, shove it out of their way, at least not if I braced myself against my side of that plywood shield. I got the third bird into the big pen, and decided that the other two could wait until later in the day.

While there was no intergenerational strife, there was plenty of intragenerational strife. The two adult males spent a lot of time bumping chests together and snapping beaks without connecting, which reminded me of male sophomores trying to impress the new freshman girls. The next day, however, I found Grace, the adult female, huddling in a corner, badly bloodied. She now resides in the small pen, solo, and seems to be recovering.

I’ve been despairing of any turkey reproduction. The toms are ready enough, but I think the hens have become too old to be interested, and it is they that must initiate the act. Then, a couple of weeks ago, I saw hints of turkey sex, so I started saving and incubating turkey eggs. These eggs get laid just about anywhere - on the floor, on a shelf, in the pen, on top of the nesting box, in the tall grass portion of the pasture - but never in the nesting box. Yesterday, though, I saw a couple of turkeys going at it just like old times. Who knows, these eggs might be fertile after all, and I might just get some poults, which should be barely old enough to mate next spring.

I’ve got to start keeping paper records of rabbit mating. What with my incomplete mastery of my new PDA calendar, two of my does reached their probable kindling dates without my having made any preparations for them. I had one nest box available, and gave it to the doe that should have been one day ahead of the other. That “first” doe never gave me any indications of being pregnant; that is, it merely ate the nesting hay I provided, left its belly fur intact and, in fact, never gave birth. The “second” doe wound up kindling without any nest box at all.

I found this out the next morning, when I happened upon her chowing down on two newborns. Two other newborns, hairless and blind as all baby rabbits are, had managed to escape. Somehow, they had gotten out of the cage and onto the upper deck shit funnel, which is the ultimate “slippery slope.” From there they had toppled into the shit bucket, where I found them, still alive. Hosing them down was out of the question, for thermal issues seemed to trump hygienic ones.

I shuffled rabbits rapidly among cages, and put these two unfortunates into a clean nesting box, covering them with pine shavings. I then put their mother, still with blood on her chin, in with them, hoping that the nest box, the shavings, and the squirming beneath the shavings would shock her maternal instincts into beating regularly again.

This was several days ago. These babies are still alive, and starting to grow fur. Nursing happens pretty much at night, so I never see it, but I have to believe it is happening for them. If these two do survive, they will get a shot at being breeding stock. Usually one selects breeding stock based on body shape, but I think that toughness is a trait worth selecting for.

Scott

Vigilante Farms, that leading Bethel producer of rural arcana, is pleased to announce that a great mystery has been solved.

Now, I knew right along that maintaining an electric fence six inches above the forest floor would require some perseverance. All kinds of plants grow in the forest, and they reach six inches in height pretty quickly, so I have to periodically patrol the perimeter and pluck these pushy plants. Still, one hears the sound of the fence arcing across something every now and then, and these arcings need remediation. This generally involves adding additional plastic stand-offs, which hold the fence wire an inch from the tree.

Some trees require more than one stand-off. This is particularly true with larger trees around which the fence wire curves. Between such multiple standoffs, the wire necessarily gets a bit closer to the tree, say, half an inch.

Still, it’s been a mystery to me why a tree that made do with two standoffs with no arcing yesterday, is arcing today. At first, I just added another standoff, turned the fence back on, and tried to forget about it.

Sometimes I noticed a gooey deposit between the wire and the tree, right where the arcing was happening. Was the tree oozing sap? With no visible injury to the tree near by?

Enter Detective DeVore. Kathleen is often the first to notice the fence arcing, and yesterday she noticed it in time to divine the cause of the Mysterious Arc-Producing Goo. Care to guess what it was?

I wonder how many people even know that slugs climb trees. Well, slugs do climb trees, which is why I’ve installed a copper slug barrier - and it seems to be working - to keep slugs from climbing the tree that contains Spencer’s tree house. But if a slug fits itself between the tree and the electric fence wire, it is going to get zorched.

Most animals, when shocked by an electric fence, instinctively jump away from it. Slugs, of course, never jump anywhere. Their instinctive reaction seems to be to bunch up, which only makes the shock problem worse, so they get zorched again, harder. This process apparently repeats itself until the slug decomposes into a small blob of unrecognizable goo, still arcing.

I find it sad that the life of a slug, which never seems to rise above dreariness, should end in such a manner, with its epitaph being a simple “zap…..zap…..zap…..”

Time to replace those 1″ stand-offs with some 3″ stand-offs, to benefit both the slugs and the fence charger. Hope I don’t wind up zorching squirrels.

Vigilante Farm, that leading Bethel producer of agricultural diversity, is pleased to announce that the forest pig project seems to have taken hold.

You may recall that the first introduction of Forreste, the forest pig, to the forest ended in her being carried by me to the original pig pen after she got out. Then ensued some adjustments to the electric fence, mostly by way of making the wire height conform more closely to the irregular ground surface.

The second introduction of Forreste to her forest digs ended pretty much the same as the first, with Forreste seeming not to notice the wire under which she squeezed. The difference, though, noted by me as I again carried her back to the pen, was that Forreste was now a bit heavier.

For those of you who may ever need to retrieve a pig at large in the forest, let me describe the technique I seem to be working out, at which technique I hope to never become any more practiced than I already am. First of all, herding has its limitations; herding will get the pig near the gate, but not (so far) through it. The trick seems to be to tire the pig to the point that it stretches out exhausted and can be grabbed by its hind legs.

Tiring a pig is easier than you might imagine. They seem to be built for short bursts of speed, but not for distance running. One doesn’t even have to do all the tiring of the pig by one’s self, either - dogs and grandchildren are well suited to tiring pigs.

Finally, when carrying the pig back to the pen, don’t carry the entire pig. Let the pig carry some of the weight. I’ve heard the term “wheelbarrowing” used to describe this, but this term only suggests the wrong way to do this. You see, if the pig is oriented like a wheelbarrow, then you’re still carrying about half of its weight; but if the pig is oriented with its spine more nearly vertical, then the pig is carrying most of its weight. Also, when you grab onto either a wheelbarrow or a horizontally oriented pig, you’ve got your thumbs pointed toward the wheelbarrow/pig; but with the pig oriented vertically, you’ve got your thumbs pointed away from the pig, which is the way you’ll have to point them anyway should you have to momentarily carry the entire pig up some stairs or over an obstacle.

Next, I adjusted the fence even more precisely, ran a ground wire under the driveway and buried that ground wire alongside some of the fence. I even soaked the ground near where the pig went under the fence the last time, to make the initial pig/fence encounter more memorable. Finally, I moved the (now even heavier) pig to its cave-like shelter. That was a week ago, and the forest pig has stayed in its prescribed part of the forest ever since. Wouldn’t it be nice if it stayed there for the rest of its life?

Keeping a single pig is not like keeping several pigs. Obviously, I need to carry less food to one pig than to several, but there are other differences. First of all, pigs in a group, when presented with fresh feed, chow down like hungry teenagers just back from a hike. They might reason that if they don’t eat it, some other pig will; and that if they don’t eat it fast, then that other pig will get the lion’s share. A single pig eats much more laconically, much like a cat, for it can afford to.

Furthermore, my earlier observation that a pig never shits where it sleeps seems to apply to multiple pigs but not to single pigs. Perhaps single pigs feel, like some single people do, that their own shit doesn’t stink; whereas multiple pigs, like groups of people, can be counted on to remind each other that shit does indeed stink and that that is why the outhouse is way over there, dammit.

Ah, the things I never thought I’d ever need to know, let alone discuss.

Vigilante Farms, that leading Bethel producer of emu eggs, is pleased to announce that it has embarked on its foraging forest pig experiment.

This experiment is in keeping with my overall plan to invest some up front money and effort in order to make the daily chores easier. A single pig, of course, requires much less food than does a multiplicity of pigs. A pig that lives in an oak and beech forest (well, partly oak and beech) can forage for acorns and beechnuts, plus whatever else pigs find so entrancing underneath the ground. I plan to schlep very little pig grain this year.

In theory, a pig can be contained by a single electric wire located six inches above the ground. The wire must be low enough to the ground that even a small pig, as Forreste currently is, cannot squeeze beneath it without touching it. It must also be high enough that even a large pig, as Forreste is planned to become, cannot walk over it without touching it. In other words, six inches plus or minus not a helluva lot.

The upside of putting an electric fence in the woods is that one can use trees for fence posts. The downside of putting an electric fence in the woods, at least in my woods, is that the ground surface is very irregular, so the wire height has to be “adjusted” between trees. This means digging post holes anyway, and lots of them.

There was a time when Maine was 80% farms and 20% forest, but now those fractions are reversed, which means that 75% of today’s Maine forest land was once farmed. My forest was never farmed, though, as one can determine by its lack of stone fences. Its steepness and its proximity to a large cliff, which limits the sunlight, also render it unsuitable for farming, as does its lying on an esker, which is the rocky, sandy deposit from an ancient sub-glacial river.

Here’s what I’m getting at: if there is a nastier job than digging fence post holes in the woods, through soil consisting of little but rocks and roots, carrying tools and materials up and down steep slopes through the woods, during the overlap between black fly season and mosquito season, I have yet to encounter it.

Finally came the day when

1. the fence was complete and charged by an underground high tension line, and

2. an underground water line finally fed a hog watering nozzle screwed to a “magic tree,” and

3. the pig’s walk-in cave lined with a truck cap was complete, and

4. the pig arrived.

Multiple pigs have always arrived in my truck, but this single piglet fit into a 2′ x 3′ cage in the back of my station wagon, which station wagon already smelled like a barn anyway.

OK, pig, here’s your food, here’s your water, here’s your shelter, hope you learn to respect the electric fence without getting zapped too many times, see you around, I’ve got things to do.

Less than an hour later, we heard Satchel barking somewhere between my house and Kathleen’s garden, nowhere near the pig forest occupied by Forreste the Pig. I sure hoped that Satchel wasn’t barking at Forreste, at least not way over there, but it turned out that he was.

Oh shit, now I’ve got to catch an escaped pig in the woods. I’d rather dig fence post holes in the woods. Maybe, just maybe, if we can keep her calm - and it’s time to put Satchel in the house - maybe we can herd her back to the barnyard and through three gates into the old pig pen. Several times we got that pig almost there, but then she always got around us and started heading back towards Kathleen’s garden, which is the last place we wanted a pig to be.

Reversing the pig’s direction meant circling around the pig. The pig was walking down the driveway, so I had to double time it through the woods to get around the pig without getting too close. Many times I was almost close enough to lunge for the pig, but if I missed, then the pig would probably freak and I’d never catch it.

I didn’t think that I’d have the stamina to wear out a young pig, but lo and behold, the pig, now panting and drooling, finally stretched out on the ground. Probably not going to get a better chance, so go for it. Oh boy, I got it! Oh no, look how far I have to carry this goddam pig!

Earlier that day I’d been doing morning chores, part of which involves scraping rabbit shit along my plywood shit funnel so that it can go plop, plop, plop into the shit bucket. This is a routine job, and I try to think about something else while I do it. As I start this task each morning, the bucket already contains an inch or two of rabbit urine, which has found its way down the funnel and into the bucket without my assistance, plus enough rabbit shit to make the contents of the bucket truly disgusting.

Despite my trance-like state, I noticed what appeared to be a tennis ball floating in the bucket. Hey, there has never been a tennis ball in the rabbit barn, so what else could it be? All the cage doors were latched, so it couldn’t be a baby rabbit, but what could it be? I reached into that bucket - hey, farming isn’t all glamor - and fished out a baby rabbit, alive but just barely so, for who knows how long ago it fell in? Only the top of its head was even a little bit white, and the rest of it was brown and slimy.

I took it outside and hosed it down, but stopped once the hose water got cold. I then patted it down with lots of paper towels. OK, now it’s drier but shivering, time to put it back. There were three litters in the rabbit barn, plus three more outside, and I could tell by its size that it belonged to the litter that had just begun to jump out of the nest box into the cage, so I gave it to its mother. She nosed it a bit, and maybe licked it, but this wasn’t getting that little rabbit very warm, so I put it in the nest box, piled nest box detritus around it, and hoped for the best.

By that afternoon, it was hanging with the other baby rabbits in the nest box, though still identifiably tan. By the next morning, neither Kathleen nor I could determine which of the baby rabbits was the shit bucket rabbit.

How does that old joke go, when you’re in deep shit not everyone who piles shit on you is your enemy? Something like that.

Vigilante Farm, that leading Bethel producer of various birds, is pleased to announce that things are being made simpler.

Of course, many of my summer improvements are aimed at making the daily routine easier to manage. Most of these, like improved gate latches or additional yard hydrants, are beneficial but not especially noteworthy. However, I have just completed one project, and have almost completed another, that do deserve mention.

Project #1: I have tilled, planted and fenced an experimental emu garden. No, I’m not planting emu eggs, but I am planting kale for the emus, right within the large emu pen. For once, a six foot tall fence is aimed at keeping emus out of an area rather than within it, so the fence posts are placed inside the fence.

This is a labor-saving garden in two respects. First of all, it is fertilized with emu flop that needn’t be transported very far at all. Emu flop, because it goes through the bird so quickly, is not “hot” like chicken manure and can thus be used without composting, or so I’m told. We’ll see.

Second of all, I needn’t harvest or process the kale. I need only wait until it is ready, then open the fence to let the emus in. With any luck, they will eat the leaves without pulling the plants up by the roots, in which case I can practice the “cut and come again” technique by simply closing off the fence for a while so the plants can recover.

Project #2: This year’s pig (that’s right, singular, pig) will be a forest pig. With some help from my friend Mark, I have fenced off the better part of an acre of woods with a single wire about 6″ above the ground. Once electrified, this wire should constitute an ample barrier to contain a pig within that area, for the pig can neither climb over it, nor crawl/burrow under it, without getting zorched.

This pig will shelter in an old truck cap. Now, before you say, “How Appalachian is that!” let me point out that this cap is being dug into a hillside so that it will appear to be a cave that happens to be lined with a truck cap. It will be properly drained with perforated pipe and small rocks (all indigenous) and will have pine shavings spread onto its “floor,” so it should be nice and comfy.

This shelter is located just behind Spencer’s tree house, which at first glance might appear to be a cruel joke on Spencer. In fact, it is just the opposite - pigs tend to relieve themselves just as far as they can from where they sleep. They don’t similarly respect the place where they eat, but they do respect the place where they sleep. Also, this new pig pen is pretty much downwind from his tree house.

This area was chosen because it contains many of my oak and beech trees. A single pig ought to be able to forage amply for acorns and beech nuts. The scraps that I bring from the vegetarian restaurant in town can be a substantial part of a single pig’s diet, whereas they constituted only appetizers for four pigs last year. I hope that this means that I am done carrying a ton (yes, a ton - forty bags at fifty pounds apiece) of pig pellets each year.

I have been brooding four goslings, four ducklings and ten chicken chicks for a friend who is away, along with my own six chicken chicks. Until recently, they all coexisted in my brooder with the hardware cloth floor and the various heat lamps. The young geese, however, are enough taller than the rest that now they can, and occasionally do, poop into the communal waterer. Over their protest, I moved them to the floor of the brooder building with their own waterer sitting atop a couple of board scraps (and thus out of reach of the goose’ pooper) and their own heat lamps. Yesterday, anticipating the same problem with the ducklings, I moved those down with the geese. They will be joined by the young chickens soon, when I will need that brooder for even younger chicks now incubating.

If I were inclined toward ceremony, I might regard each of these transitions as a graduation, complete with speeches. Well, I’ll admit to a bit of that sentimentality. As I take each young rabbit from its mother and put it in another cage in which it will live out its days, I generally say, “Congratulations - you’re weaned.”

Vigilante Farm, that leading Bethel producer of, among other things, emu egg shells for artists, is pleased to announce yet more emu doings.

First of all, the six remaining younger emus, now properly referred to as “older chicks,” have graduated to the small emu pen. So far, their domiciles have included, sequentially: the hatcher, the indoor totes, the outdoor brooder, the floor of the brooder barn, one half of the emu barn, and now the small pen.

Consider, if you will, the goats’ perspective on this. Their goat yard has been nibbled away by the construction of facilities for chickens, pigs, guineas, rabbits, turkeys and assorted waterfowl, but they do have the ability to stare at (is “contemplate” too strong a word?) said critters, and to nose many of them through the fence. The baby emus entered this scene en route to the brooder barn via closed totes in order to keep them warm, thus escaping the goats’ notice.

Transferring the young emus from brooder barn to emu barn was done one at a time, up side down, by the legs. They have gotten too large, too strong and too willfully incontinent to carry by cuddling in one’s arms. Kathleen even carried one of these young emus by its legs, which may be hard for some of you to picture. As I carried the first one through the goat yard, struggling and loudly chirping, the goats stood stock still, apparently flabbergasted, as if to say, “Where in the hell did that come from?”

Transferring them later from the emu barn to the small emu pen was as simple as removing the barrier between them, but it was interesting nonetheless. I’d read that young emus need to be separated from older emus, unless the latter have hatched and are brooding the former. At the last moment I decided that a video might be in order, so I whipped out my cell phone and took one. I’ve seen better quality, but here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-cu2dQlezE

Note that Foghorn unhesitatingly left the eggs on which he was setting. He won’t do that for mere people approaching, or even handling, him. Note also that all three adult emus showed serious interest in the youngsters.

A few days after this video was taken, I presented the young emus with a live mouse in a plastic bucket. They showed no interest, perhaps because the bucket was too tall for them. I then took that same mouse, in that same bucket, to the large emu pen (yes, it is the larger of the two pens and it also has the larger emus in it). Grace showed no interest, Foghorn stayed on his eggs, and where the hell was Big Burp? It took a few minutes to find him, but I found him way at the other end of the pen, past the pine trees and past the swampy area, lying down but alert, almost. . .as if. . .he too were setting on eggs.

Only one way to know for sure, and that is to reach beneath him. He seemed pretty twitchy, though, so I probed beneath him gingerly, ready to fling myself upon him to keep him from arising and clawing the crap out of me (which he could, literally, do). Nope, that’s his foot. Nope, that’s his leg. Yep, that’s an egg alright. There might be another, but I’m done probing.

Could this egg possibly be fertile? None of last year’s eggs were, nor those of the year before, so I’ve kept none of Grace’ eggs this year. And I’ve still seen no emus getting it on. But we’ve all heard of women who just couldn’t get pregnant finally adopting a kid and then getting pregnant. Could the presence of these youngsters have triggered something in Grace and/or Big Burp? We just won’t know for another seven weeks or so.

Scott

Vigilante Farm, that leading Bethel producer of emu tales, is amused to note that Foghorn is back at it. No, he’s not gone back to trying to seduce me - he’s been trying to do that all winter - rather, he’s gone back to setting on some of Grace’ eggs. Grace stopped laying eggs where I could find them once she was no longer snowbound in the emu barn, but she evidently didn’t stop laying them where Foghorn could find them.

Remember, these eggs are almost assuredly sterile. Nothing happened when I tried to incubate them last year and the year before, and I still have yet to observe any emu hanky panky. The emu eggs I incubated successfully this year were those that I had bought elsewhere. We’ve eaten most of Grace’ eggs this year; they are a big hit with company.

So, why is Foghorn devoting seven weeks to fasting, comatose behavior? Is he devoted to hopeless causes, in which case I should perhaps change his name to Jude (the patron saint of hopeless causes)? Is he a believer in immaculate conception (which is the only way these eggs could be fertile without the aforementioned hanky panky)? Or is he simply hard wired to behave thus with any eggs that don’t disappear?

I was recently asked why Foghorn should behave so parentally if he never had sex with the mother. I responded that I didn’t believe that animals other than humans understand the connection between the sex act and procreation, that even we humans only made that connection comparatively recently in our history. When you think about it, we humans only know of that connection because we have been so informed by other humans, and even then we don’t always keep that connection fully in mind when it matters.

Kathleen has suggested that I swipe these eggs from Foghorn, to save him the futile effort. But, really, why? It’s not like he’s ignoring his other responsibilities; he has none. What better use of his time does he have? Why should I mess with his mind if I don’t have to?

Yesterday morning was warm and pleasant, with the snow almost entirely gone. I spent some time watching a game of Worm Tag. One chicken had found an earthworm, and the other hens wanted it and were chasing her. Now, a chicken cannot eat and run at the same time. All it can hope to do is run faster than the other chickens until it can afford to drop the worm and peck at it once or twice, but then it has to pick it up and run with it again. Back and forth, round and round the goat yard this game went. The chicken with the worm never did forfeit that worm, but it also never got to eat the worm until I gave the other chickens their daily cracked corn, leaving that one exhausted chicken finally to eat what it had defended for so long.

Day old chicks will do the same thing with an insect. The chick with the insect often loses it to a pursuer, but the successful pursuer now becomes the pursued, and on it goes. The winner to this game is the human observer, for it is amusing to watch chickens of any age play that game.

Turns out I do have a Chantecler rooster after all. Guess he was just lying low while there were other, larger roosters around. The chicken eggs we eat now are probably fertile after all, so I’ll gather some up for incubation.

Speaking of hanky panky - Bucko got lucky again yesterday morning, and he achieved completion in the usual four seconds. Before I could get Erica out of his cage, however, he hopped back on her and achieved completion again, ten seconds after he had just done the very same thing. Boy, was I impressed. Just so you’ll know, a male rabbit signals his climax by falling over on his side, not by lighting a cigarette.