farm missives

Vigilante Farms, that leading Bethel supplier of someday, maybe, emus is pleased to announce that yes sir, we grow some tough rabbits around here.

Kathleen and I were driving home one night and had to slow down to avoid a rabbit crossing the road, about a mile away from home. This rabbit was doing the suicide dance much like a squirrel - “No, I think I’ll get run over by those wheels, no, let’s try for these wheels” - when I yelled, “Hey, that’s one of my rabbits!”

Sure enough, it was white with gray ears and nose, which is how all of my crosses between my Californian buck and my New Zealand White does turn out. It was certainly neither a cottontail rabbit nor a snowshoe hare, which is what we have in Maine. I checked my rabbit cages when we got home, and everybody was right where they were supposed to be. Then Kathleen reminded me of the three young escapees last summer.

Three rabbits, yet to be weaned, had squeezed through a hole in the cage (since repaired), fallen to the ground and sneaked out through a hole beneath the rabbit barn’s sill (since filled in) to freedom. I didn’t even look for them at the time, figuring that they probably had already been nailed by a hawk or something.

Now, it appears that at least one of them has survived most of a Maine winter. Well, this winter, that isn’t saying much, as all of the snow storms lately have gone well south of us. But for this rabbit to have survived in the wild at all is remarkable. That rabbit was born in a cage, as were all of its ancestors for who knows how may dozens of generations. Where did it get its survival skills?

More questions: Could there be a breeding pair surviving in the wilds of East Bethel? Might we find feral gray and white rabbits some day helping themselves to Kathleen’s garden?

Paulette went off her feed a few days ago. This, you may recall, is what led to Roscoe’s demise. I now know enough to act quickly when I see this, so I called my farm vet. He told me to give her a 4 ml intramuscular shot of B-vitamin complex and to cram some peppermint, spearmint and yogurt into her. Getting yogurt into a goat can be tricky, though; it never worked very well with Roscoe.

What I did, to the subsequent approval of my vet, is this: I made a cup of peppermint and spearmint tea using ground leaves and a tea ball, diluted that tea with cold water to about body temperature, added several tablespoons of plain yogurt, and used a whisk to get it all into solution (or at least, a suspension). Cooling the tea was intended to keep the yogurt from curdling and the bacteria within it from croaking. This mixture, it turns out, can be administered easily with a turkey baster, and Paulette didn’t seem to mind it much. Paulette ate a bit that night, and once I repeated the treatment in the morning, she resumed eating her grain and her hay with the dedication of a normal goat.

A friend of mine recently got a dozen chickens, and I helped her build a chicken coop out of stuff she had lying around. A couple of days later, four coyotes ripped the chicken wire right off the wooden post and got all but one chicken. She hung in there and got more chickens, sheltering them behind plywood and an electric fence instead of chicken wire.

Her second batch of chickens is still with her, but one day she informed me that she had three extra roosters which were fighting, and could I please take them? I said that I would, reminding her of the protocol regarding gift roosters - that one mustn’t ever ask what became of them.

I showed up with a traveling cage, and proceeded to grab each bird that she identified as a rooster. Yes, I could tell they were roosters, but far better to let her make the call. I realized too late that I should have exercised some bedside manner. The right thing to do would have been to pick up each rooster, cuddle it in my arms and whisper sweet nothings in its ear as I escorted it to its nice, clean, comfortable cage, in which it would ride to my happy farm to live out its days. Instead, I grabbed each rooster by the legs and carried it in my customary fashion, hanging upside down, to the cage, into which I released it, still upside down.

Most birds deployed thusly quit flapping after a few seconds, but these didn’t really get a chance to quit flapping because I didn’t have to carry them very far. All the hens got upset at my treatment of the roosters, as did my friend. In a lame effort to relax her, I told her that she was definitely doing the right thing in getting rid of excess roosters. Fighting with each other wasn’t the real problem, I explained. The real problem came when they reached sexual maturity, for then they would make the hens’ lives miserable. One rooster for a dozen hens is about right, I told her, but four roosters for nine hens is way too many roosters.

I could tell by her face that this wasn’t registering with her. “Put it this way,” I said, “Having four roosters instead of one is like being married to four guys at the same time, each of whom expects full privileges.” That registered, alright.

Vigilante Farms, that leading Bethel producer of agricultural drama, is pleased to announce that Paulette is no longer a solo goat. Last night I acquired, and installed with Paulette, one Maggie the goat.

Maggie is a five year old Nubian doe, one year older than Paulette. She has the same floppy ears, and could easily share the vocal, even nutty, characteristics of that breed. While Paulette has never been bred, thus never kidded nor given milk, Maggie has done all this more than once. Through happenstance, Maggie was not bred this year, but she could be again.

Roscoe was known for going nose to nose with people, in an affectionate way; all part of his charm. Maggie has the reputation of actually kissing people, which could make future farm tours even more interesting.

These two goats have yet to get a good look at each other, because the power was out when we got back; it just now came back on, hence the hour of this message. This didn’t stop the new roommates from engaging in more than casual head butting, which I had been warned to expect, as they sought to resolve issues of territoriality and dominance. We humans do the same, of course, though we butt heads only in the metaphorical sense. On a cold night like this one, we humans will often still find a way to snuggle up together, and these two gals may well have done this by now.

Last night was the first time I had traveled with an adult goat in the car, and I would have no qualms with doing it again. Maggie rode in the way back of my Subaru wagon, standing with her head over the back seat the entire time, commenting gently.

I am proud to claim, and Kathleen is embarrassed to acknowledge, that I

• discovered and announced Roscoe’s demise,

• accomplished his removal and interment,

• mucked out the goat barn, and

• acquired and installed and announced Roscoe’s replacement;

all without once doffing my union suit. This bespeaks more the hectic nature of the last couple of days more than it does any permanent deterioration of my personal hygiene. Now that the goat barn is again at full strength, though, and now that the power is back on, I plan to treat myself to a hot shower.

Scott

Vigilante Farm, that leading Bethel producer of agricultural mayhem, regrets to announce the passing of Roscoe the goat. He and Paulette were the original livestock on this farm, unless you count the bees, but none of those original bees survive today.

I’ve regarded both my goats and my ducks as pets; every other critter provides food, one way or another. Maybe if I had a dozen goats, I could regard them as a commodity, as I do, for example, my rabbits. But I don’t, and I won’t, so I can’t.

The best guess is that he died of goat polio. Not the poliomyelitis that humans get, but polioencephalomalacia, which attacks the nervous system and interferes with the operation of the rumen. A goat can get this from eating moldy bread, and if he did, then it is my fault for allowing him to get anywhere near the chickens’ snack food. Each of us has his list of things he’ll never do again, and mine is probably larger than most.

Roscoe had his legion of devoted fans, some of whom can’t remember Paulette’s name, but Paulette is my concern at the moment. Goats are herd animals, and they are known to fare badly, even wither away, as sole survivors. I know of a perfectly acceptable five year old Nubian doe that has been bred in the past but happens to be dry this year, which I could pick up tomorrow. Or maybe this is the right time to acquire a llama which, as a fellow ruminant, should constitute a suitable companion; after all, goats are used as companion animals for single horses. I’ll sleep on it.

Two rabbits are pregnant, and Grace the emu has laid four eggs so far. Pretty soon I expect Old Bill the turkey to start servicing his five hens. VF will bounce back.

Scott

Vigilante Farms, that leading Bethel producer of rural whimsy, is pleased to announce that the cycle begins once again.

Just after 4:00 this evening, Grace presented me with her first egg of this season, her 31st overall. 548 grams. I grabbed it while it was still warm, so it is a candidate for incubation. I think I’ll put these eggs into the incubator in batches of eight, which is about how they do it in the wild. It could be tricky to house several batches of chicks differing in age by a month or two, but that is a problem I’d love to have.

Who knows if this year’s emu eggs will be fertile? All these emus are a year older now and, unlike last year, are definitely old enough. Grace is sequestered with Foghorn this year instead of with Big Burp, but I’ve yet to witness any emu nooky, ever. The only obvious pass I’ve seen either male emu make was made by Foghorn, and that pass was directed at me.

Bucko doesn’t know it yet, but he’s getting lucky tomorrow, New Year’s Day. Probably with Claudette, my #1 doe. You use your #1 starter on Opening Day, right? We’ll see if these electric nest heaters can work their magic in the depths of February. Remember, rabbits are born hairless and stay that way for their first week or so. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?

The chickens have pretty much stopped laying. Not unusual for this time of year. At least, they have stopped laying eggs where I can find them. One by one, they seem to be trying to move into the goat barn. The goats are, of course, thrilled.

I still have yet to see any duck enter any building, despite cold, snow or wind. There is nothing but their pride keeping them from going into the chicken coop, the goat barn, or the dog house. Twice a day I have to knock the ice out of the pigs’ rubber dish so that I can give the ducks water in which to swim, and they generally do just that.

The old guinea barn is now empty, having most recently housed broilers and then turkeys. I hope to use it to grow out rabbits, then brood emus, then brood turkeys before I once again grow out organic broilers in it.

Lo, the Vigilante Farmer hath said unto the animals, “Go forth, be fruitful and multiply, so that I can eat your multiplicands.”

Vigilante Farms, that leading Bethel producer of rural nonsense, is embarrassed to note that the Vigilante Farmer’s first attempt to learn what it was like to spend the night snuggled up to goats ended in defeat.

Christmas Eve or Christmas Night? Which would be the more significant night from an Away in the Manger perspective? That consideration was slighted in favor of convenience, for I had to be someplace else early on Christmas Day, so the attempt was made on Christmas Night, which was last night.

I got back home at 9:00 pm, and 9:30 found me entering the goat barn. Warmly dressed was I, and carrying an old sleeping bag and an expendable pillow. I expected to find the goats nestled together in their stall. But - there were no goats in the goat barn! And the sliding door to the barnyard was snugly closed! I opened it and the goats rushed into the goat barn, cold, hungry and complaining. Who knows how much of Christmas Day thy had been locked out of their barn?

Now, I’ve had these same two goats for almost four years, living in this very same goat barn with that very same sliding door, and though they have occasionally played with that door, never before have they managed to close themselves out of their barn. Also, never before in those four years had I ever intended to spend the night with them. I call this a big, hairy, unfortunate coincidence.

Here’s the problem: while goats can mop up their grain ration in a minute or two, they can take a couple of hours or more to finish eating their hay, especially when they haven’t eaten all day. Until last night, I couldn’t have told you how long it took them to eat hay, because I never devoted that much time to watching them do it. Here’s the rub: as long as they are actively eating, they are standing; and as long as they are standing, I’m not bunking down in their stall. I’ve had my foot stepped on by a goat a few times, and I have no wish to have the rest of me trampled by a 200+ pound goat.

Well, they had to lie down eventually, right? Maybe I could out wait them. So, I started puttering around in the goat barn, hanging up tools that had never before been hung up, identifying stuff in bags stashed here and there, spreading hay over goat berries in their stall, stuff like that. I even decided that the two chickens that had been locked into that same goat barn all day might be hungry; they happily ate goat grain out of my palm and drank goat water out of a coffee cup.

OK, now that the chickens were sated and the barn was as neat and tidy as it had ever been, there was nothing to do except watch the goats eat their hay. This can be a peaceful activity, one to which I often devote a minute or two doing during the day, but how long, really, can you watch a goat eat hay? Hours? Another question: once they finished with the hay, how long would it take them to lie down? I had no idea, never having been there when they laid down for the night. And would they ever lie down while I was watching them? And how cold might I be by the time they did, if they ever did?

I set 11:00 pm as the time at which I would give up. Watch the clock, watch the goats; watch the goats, watch the clock. At 11:00 the goats were still munching away, no hurry, and it appeared that a 12:00 deadline would be no different, so I put my sleeping bag and pillow back in my car and drove home to find three dogs asleep on my side of the bed.

Never before did that look quite so perfect.

Vigilante Farms, that leading Bethel producer of rabbits and grass-fed organic chickens, is pleased to announce that it is almost down to “winter population.” Through the winter, you only want to keep those critters that are necessary for breeding, for egg production or for amusement.

Amusement - that means the goats and the ducks. Some day I think I’ll spend a night with the goats in their little barn, just to see how effectively they keep each other (and me) warm by snuggling, and to see how effectively the bottom layer of their bedding is composting. Gotta pick my night, though - too cold and even the goats will be chilly, let alone me; too warm, and the stinky stuff on the barn floor gets to stinking again.

I’ve yet to see these ducks get under cover. Maybe they do this when I’m not around, but whenever I see them, they are standing in the lee of the chicken house, right near the new-this-year insulated yard hydrant. I have a four foot piece of garden hose connected to this, no longer than that because it must drain after each use lest it freeze. Consequently, the vessel that I fill with water for the ducks’ twice daily ablutions is near by. Water that gets spilled or emptied from these vessels tends to form puddles that freeze quickly.

Yesterday I found one of my pet Indian Runner ducks frozen to the ground in one of those puddles. His feet were free to move, but his chest feathers were stuck in the ice. I could have yanked him free, but he would have lost feathers. Instead, I aimed that short garden hose, with its 40°F or so water, at the ground right in front of him. In about ten seconds he was walking freely, with all his feathers, to rejoin his buddies. This morning, though there had been a puddle last night, there were no ducks frozen to the ground. Maybe they learned something?

I’m done with slaughtering rabbits until spring, and those eventual rabbits have yet to exist even as a dirty thought in Bucko’s mind. He’ll resume his paternal duties on January 1, but he’s been celibate for almost three months now, just so I wouldn’t have to maintain the outdoor cages or slaughter the residents of those cages during the winter. Outdoors, Maine winter, and bare handed don’t go well together.

I was a little concerned about doing this even in mid-December, so I picked a relatively warm day, 20°F with no wind. Turns out that my hands never got cold until clean up time, because a rabbit undergoing processing stays warm at least until you’ve started on the next one. Also, no bugs. Not too bad, overall.

OK, we’ve all left our gloves behind and had to deal with cold hands. Here are three more tips for warming your cold hands:

1. Say you’re out in the barn - just put your hand underneath a setting hen. The underside of a hen can keep eggs at incubating temperature, about 100°F, for weeks. Some hens are more tolerant of this ploy than others, and you may need to use one hand to restrain the hen while warming your other hand underneath her.

2. Say you’ve just come into the house and are being greeted by a dog - you can warm both hands at once by cramming them into the dog’s armpits. This sounds disgusting, but remember that dogs don’t sweat, so their armpits are no smellier than the top of their head, and you pet that part of the dog without hesitation.

3. Say you’re riding a motorcycle, and you’re starting to worry that you won’t be able to work the clutch or the front brake with your frozen hands - just grab your crotch. Conservation of energy being what it is, you’ll cool down your crotch as you warm your hand, but you don’t need a warm crotch to ride a motorcycle.

You heard it here first.

Scott

Vigilante Farms, that leading Bethel producer of agricultural arcana, is pleased to announce the resolution of the culvert conundrum. Even with the removal of those three rabbit hides, water flow through that culvert was still pretty limited. I evidently needed to remove a blockage that was nowhere near either end of the culvert.

As we all know, there are specially equipped trucks that will come to your house and chew up whatever it is that is plugging your drain pipe, or your culvert, or whatever. I cannot imagine the operator of such a device getting back into his truck less that $200 richer, though, so there had to be a way to clear the culvert by myself.

You Texans and Californians may not be familiar with roof rakes. These are devices that we in snow country use to pull chunks of snow off a roof while standing on the ground. As you might imagine, these roof rakes have long, tubular handles which, to facilitate storage, consist of several five foot segments. I bolted a wooden dowel to one end of my roof rake handle and screwed a hook to the other end of that dowel, with the intention of snagging whatever might be in the middle of my culvert and dragging it out of there.

Didn’t work. I was able to determine, however, that the blockages was about 20′ from the upstream end and 10′ from the downstream end of the culvert. Though I tried, I couldn’t even bash the blockage through the culvert, in part because there appeared to be a bend in the culvert at that point.

Well, let’s try a little hydraulic action. I screwed an old fashioned metal nozzle onto a garden hose, turned the water on full, and slid that hose into the culvert until the nozzle hit the blockage, whereupon the hose reminded me of the folly of trying to push on a rope.

OK, let’s try a stiffer “hose.” I joined three 10′ sections of 1/2″ CPVC tubing with garden hose adapters at either end, and screwed on that metal nozzle again. The action was stiffer, yes, but the forward motion was still arrested by that bend in the culvert, or the blockage, or both.

Maybe I needed to finesse my way around the bend. I glued a 45 degree elbow between the end of the CPVC tubing and the nozzle. Again I shoved this into and out of the blockage, until I noticed that little water was flowing. Sure enough, the back and forth motion on the angled nozzle had succeeded in shutting it off.

OK, let’s remove the twistable part of the nozzle, so that it can’t possibly shut itself off. This left me with four small jets normal to the axis of the nozzle. Who knows, that might be more effective than a single straight ahead jet.

No, it wasn’t. Running out of things to try here. Let’s try this same technique from the downstream end of the culvert.

On my very first try from the downstream end, my bent “nozzle” made it through the obstruction, past the bend, and all the way out the other (upstream) end! Now I attached a metal hook to the CPVC tubing with a pair of hose clamps and pulled the entire assembly back through the culvert. As the hook came back around the bend, it met with some resistance (as I had hoped), then overcame it (as also I had hoped). In another few seconds, we’d finally see what manner of critter had been lodged in the bend.

That hook emerged from the downstream end clutching nothing more than a bunch of leaves. Over and over I tried this, each time coming out with fewer and fewer leaves.

No beaver, no weasel, no fox, no Loch Ness Monster, just leaves, now mostly gone. Is this culvert now ready to face winter? It’ll have to do.

Vigilante Farm, that leading Bethel producer of, well, rabbits, is not especially pleased to announce that there’s one helluva mystery going on here.

It rained quite a bit last night, creating a small pond (well, a large puddle) on one side of my driveway. For countless eons, water used to flow across what is now a raised driveway. This is why I put a culvert underneath it, way back when, so that the water might flow after all. That culvert would now seem to be plugged.

OK, so where are the ends of this culvert, anyway? Somewhere under all those fallen leaves, and those rocks, and a mess of silt, that’s where. And, on the upstream end, under at least a foot of water.

The downstream end was much the easier end to find, for it had little silt and almost no water. All I had to do was move a few rocks, and there it was. “Maybe both ends are plugged,” said Kathleen, “and maybe you ought to see what you can drag out of the downstream end, since you’re looking right at it.”

Not that long ago, the Vigilante Farmer would have tried to explain why the downstream ends of culverts don’t get plugged, because nothing ever tries to flow into the downstream end of a culvert. Today’s Vigilante Farmer, however, is all about minimizing effort, and explaining this fact to her satisfaction would be harder than simply sticking my arm into the damned culvert. So into the culvert went my arm.

About six inches in, my hand found something soft, and I pulled it out. “Yuck, what is that?” I asked, answering myself a couple of seconds later with, “That’s a rabbit pelt!” Back into the culvert went my arm, and out it came with another rabbit pelt. And back again for a third rabbit pelt, after which there appeared to be no more.

Now some water was flowing out of the culvert, but not a lot, which meant that the upstream end was still mostly plugged. Maybe by tomorrow morning the pond level will be down far enough that I can find the upstream end and make that culvert drain water once again.

But now we’ve got a new problem, or at least a new mystery - how in the hell did three rabbit pelts find their way to just inside the downstream end of my culvert?

I can tell you how the rabbit pelts parted company with the rabbits - I did it. Removing the hide is an essential part of processing the rabbit, and I’ve processed a lot more than three rabbits. I give some of these hides away to a local camp so that kids can learn how to tan them, but most of them I just compost. I don’t compost them in a locked vault or anything; I just put them into a bin made of wooden pallets and cover them with leaves, or old compost or, most often, rabbit shit.

I can see how some small critter, something like a weasel, could crawl between the slats of my compost bin and dig up a rabbit hide or three, and I can see how such a critter could drag them 100 yards or so and stuff them into my culvert, but I can’t see why. Does a rabbit pelt have enough food value to justify the inconvenience of digging through shit to get to it? Or was this critter smart enough to figure that stuffing rabbit pelts into a periodically soggy culvert would transform it into a permanently dry nest?

Theorize away, dear reader, and don’t keep your theories to yourself.

Scott

Vigilante Farms, that leading Bethel producer of organic, grass-fed chickens regrets to announce that this year’s pigs will soon be leaving us; and just as they were getting really good at demolishing Trash Hill, too. Trash Hill is what I call the mound of dirt and rocks under which is buried - and not buried all that well, either - car parts, building debris, scraps of fencing, broken glass and much, much more.

Pigs are natural diggers. My 15 pigs so far have already unearthed tons and tons of rocks which I have removed and put to good use. They eat some of what they dig up: roots, grubs, worms and even truffles if we had those in Maine. I’ve read that their major source of iron is the dirt itself.

Can one get pigs to dig in a particular place, though? Earlier this summer I tried the old trick of poking a hole in the ground with my pry bar and pouring cracked corn into that hole. This didn’t work all that well, as the pigs just ate the stuff that missed going into the hole and filled up the hole with dirt.

All summer, though, they’ve climbed up and down that hill to eat the vegetation growing on it. That climbing has dislodged lots of rocks, and every couple of days I’ve taken away a few buckets of those rocks.

A few days ago Eddie provided me with a bucket of acorns and suggested that I climb to the top of Trash Hill and dump them there. Sure enough, the pigs climbed right up the hill once more to gobble those acorns, for acorns are right at the top of any pig’s list of favorite goodies.

Today I noticed that the pigs were still up there going after those acorns that they had stepped on, and thereby buried, on that first day. “These pigs will be gone soon,” I thought, “and here they are at the peak of their powers. Let’s see if I can’t direct their remaining efforts to better effect.”

The more they walked around near the top of the hill, the more they dislodged rocks. I found that if I removed the rocks as quickly as they unearthed them, the pigs had nothing but sandy dirt to stand on, so they sent that sand down the slope, exposing yet more rocks. I also found that I could focus their efforts to a given area with precision by sprinkling cracked corn on just that part of the surface. Chickens can take cracked corn off the ground without disturbing the ground, but pigs cannot. Again I quickly removed the rocks and again the pigs couldn’t help but dislodge still more.

Now, let’s recognize that if one wishes to remove rocks as fast as pigs can unearth them, one has to get pretty close to those pigs. However, a pig that is actively digging and eating is a pig that doesn’t mind my reaching over it, or under it, to get at a rock which, until a few seconds ago, was buried. There are hazards, though. You can wind up with a pig grunting and snorting right in your face; you also have to avoid grabbing the occasional brown, squishy rock.

But for these minor hazards, working with pigs can be pretty enjoyable. The pig is doing exactly what it wants to be doing, so it is both busy and content. I can think of people with whom I’ve dug holes, who either spent the whole time bitching about something or other, or listening to talk radio, or both.

One of the many ways in which pigs are different from dogs - a dog that is peeing or pooping generally devotes its entire attention to that task, but a pig can pee and poop without the front end of the pig being even remotely distracted from whatever it was doing before nature called on its rear end.

What with my removing the rocks quickly and my sprinkling cracked corn here and there, the pigs were actually making some headway with Trash Hill. Then came the moment when they really started digging. Whereas before they might have had just their snouts buried in the dirt, now they had their entire heads submerged. Now they weren’t merely unearthing rocks; rather, they were launching rocks into the air from below the ground. What was all this about, I wondered?

I can only theorize that they had finally reached the depths to which my pry bar had penetrated a couple of months ago, the depths at which that cracked corn had lain undisturbed for all of that time. That cracked corn was probably fermented by now, which could account for the fervor with which they attacked it.

That was yesterday. Today I dug some more with the same three pigs, but the magic just wasn’t there. Ah, we’ll always have yesterday.

Scott

Vigilante Farm, that leading Bethel producer of, as of now, grass-fed organic chickens is pleased to announce that it was not caught flatfooted by the first snowfall of the year.  To be sure, it wasn’t much of a snowfall, the sort that sticks to leaves but not to pavement, but it does serve as a reminder that one needs to locate and put under cover anything that is lying on the ground and might be needed before spring.

I’ve just about finished with my digging for this year, which cannot be done easily once the ground freezes.  With some help, I’ve buried another power line and another deep water line through the goat yard; buried cable in conduit from my utility pole to my house; and dug up, insulated and re-buried two water lines that froze last winter.  With my truck and some digging, prying and sawing, I’ve removed about forty stumps from my newly widened barn road and from my newly expanded pig pen.

Why did I widen the barn road, the Texans and Californians among you might ask?  Well, a snowplow can only form a berm alongside a road that is a bit higher than the plow itself.  After that, one can either make the berm wider - and the road narrower -  or shove the snow straight ahead until one can no longer do this.  Thus it happened last year that I found myself with a massive snowbank at the end of the barn road, blocking the emu barn.  To get to the emus, I had to either clamber over this snowbank, often in the dark, or shovel a pathway that was thirty feet long and as much as six feet high.  With the widened road, I’ll be able to put more snow onto the side berms before having to build a snowbank at the end.

But it gets better than that.  I’ve widened the road to the point where the eastern edge abuts a steep embankment.  With any luck, I should be able to shove most of the snow right off that bank.

Some things are winding down.  For example, there will be no more mating of rabbits until New Year, so that I will not have to process rabbits during the winter.  Yes, I could do this barehanded job in the winter, and would do so on a sufficiently large bet, but I’d just as soon not; I’ve got better things to do in the winter.

Last Saturday, the last of the 60 or so organic broilers went to meet their maker.  These were part of an interesting offer by my friend Jay, who is also one of my pig partners.  He wanted to eat some organic chickens without having to house or care for them himself, so he bought and delivered to me 60 day-old chicks, two bags of organic chick starter mash and seven bags of organic broiler crumbles.  When the time came, he transported the broilers to and from the poultry abattoir.  I provided the heated facility, recently vacated under extreme duress by my guineas.  Twice a day, I gave them food and water, and sprinkled pine shavings over their soiled litter.  For this, I got one quarter of the processed broilers and several bushels of highly compostable, mixed manure and shavings.  A good deal all around.

Will I ever understand emus?  So far, I don’t even understand the three emus I’ve had for two and a half years: Foghorn (m), Big Burp (m) and Grace (f).  I can’t even always tell which is which.  Big Burp is the only one that still has his ID band attached, but Foghorn and Grace look enough alike that I need to hear them sound off in order to distinguish them; males and females have very different sounds.  If they keep quiet, as they have largely done lately, I’m stuck.

With all three in the large pen, one of them (Foghorn?) was getting picked on by the others, so I put him in the small pen by himself.  Oops, it seems I may have put Grace in there by mistake, so a few days later I put Big Burp in the small pen as well, figuring that they were last year’s mating pair and could well be this year’s mating pair.  Oops again, now I positively identified Grace as being the one by herself in the large pen, with both guys in the small pen.

Time to switch Foghorn with Grace, while leaving Big Burp where he was in the small pen, but how?  I can’t just leave the doors to both pens open to the hallway, find the bird I want to move, grab its wings and escort it to where I want it to be, for nothing keeps either of the other two birds from switching pens while I do this.  I had to wait until either Foghorn or Grace was alone near its door, prop open both doors, and escort the bird from this pen to that one.

After a few days, aha!  There was Foghorn, right by the door to the small pen, and nobody else around.  Open, open, move, close, close - nothing to it.  Boy, am I slick.  Now to wait for a similar opportunity with Grace, who is now in the large pen with just Foghorn, from whom she is indistinguishable if both remain silent.

This morning, as it snowed, I found that one of the two indistinguishable emus was bleeding from its right wing!  What’s going on here?  Are they fighting?  Do I really want to get involved if they are?  Yes, I suppose I do.

I entered the large pen and they both walked away.  I got between them so that if Grace made her distinctive noise, I would be able to tell if that noise was coming from this bird or that.  After a while, I was able to conclude definitely that the bleeding bird was Grace, my only female emu, she of the 30 eggs last year.  Not good.  Must find, or must make, an opportunity to move her into the small pen with Big Burp.  At least I can identify her now - she’s the one that’s bleeding.

Grace has recently discovered her appetite after slimming down all summer, so I hoped she would go for the food I just put into the empty feeder.  Sure enough, she did.  I opened both doors and got behind her, intending to grab both wings and steer her into the small pen to be with Big Burp, her former mate.

But wait!  I can’t grab her by her bleeding right wing, now, can I, so I grabbed her left wing and her neck and used my thighs to push her forward.  Once she got to the first doorway, though, either she had better ideas about where to go, or she misread my intentions, for she squatted down into “the position” right in front of me.

Good thing nobody showed up about then, because what could I say?  “Oh, hi, Officer.  No, no, really, it only looks like I’m molesting an upset, injured female emu.  I’m completely innocent.  Just ask her.  Please put that gun away.”

I nudged her with my foot, and soon there she was, in the small pen with her old buddy, Big Burp.  See, he’s coming up to welcome her.  And now they’re cavorting about the small pen.  Maybe I’ll get to witness a courtship display.  Oh, no!  He’s chasing her, and she’s trying to get away!

Around and around the perimeter of the teardrop-shaped pen they went.  Every time she got into the narrow part leading to the doorway, where I stood behind the open door, she reversed course by turning and leaping simultaneously, talons flying.  If she was lucky, she got behind him and got a head start while he turned around.  If not, either she bashed her head against the doorway to the barn (which is 6′2″ off the ground) or she bashed her side against the other fence.  Either way, she kept going, and so did he.

I had to get Big Burp out of there, so that Grace could recover in the small pen by herself for a month or so, but I wasn’t going to get between two actively fighting emus.  Grace was now bleeding from both wings, I think from getting them snagged on the fence when she bashed into it.  Big Burp was now bleeding from the neck, where he must have caught one of her flying talons.  Big Burp slipped and fell a few times, always on the same slick muddy spot at the other end of the pen from me, but every time he picked himself up and again gave chase.

I don’t remember how long it took for them to settle down, for things were exciting enough to distort my sense of time.  Maybe ten minutes?  Finally, here came Big Burp toward the door, by himself.  I snuck around behind him and escorted him through both doors, I don’t remember just how, but my sense is that I wasn’t taking “no” for an answer.

Then, off to deal with the other critters.  Morning chores are never the same one day to the next, but they are seldom this different.

Scott