Fourteen days ago, on July 16th we began construction of our new chicken grow-out pen using a framing kit we bought online at EZ Frame Structures.  First, anyone with critical thinking skills should be skeptical of products with 'EASY' in the name... and downright dismissive of products which abbreviate it to 'EZ'.  It was not easy (or EZ) at all.  But more on that later.

Right now I would like to revel in the fact that we are finally done!  Or.. done enough.  There are a few details we still have to work out... But.. done enough to move the monster chicks out of the brooder and into their new and spacious outdoor enclosure.

This project took more time and more materials than most of those we have taken on in the past, but there were a couple of factors which made this so.  First, the memory of losing goslings in a less fortified grow-out pen was fresh on our minds.  We were wanting this pen to be solid, heavy, and safe.  Also, we are moving past the stage of homesteading where we are content throwing up temporary structures that are heavy on utility but light on aesthetics.  It has taken years to figure out what we need as well as what we want.  It's an ongoing learning process.. and it's very hands on.  No matter how many pins I saved on Pinterest - they never really helped us figure out what would work for us.  

Earlier this week Dave put in a full day's work in Tulsa and then came home to get the roof put on the coop side of the grow-out pen.  Then there were two after-work trips to buy materials.  And Yvonne and I (with the assistance of Emily who continuously provides us with water so that we will not die of dehydration) have gotten a lot done today.

We are hopeful that we can have this thing chicken-ready by the end of the weekend.  And just in time - my brooder chicks are out of head-room. 

I guess it seems a little weird for me to say that, writing for our farm blog that is hosted on our farm website while quite literally being on our farm.  I expect much of this blog post to be just as confusing as I am also writing from a place in my head that does not always make the most sense.  But that is exactly why I feel compelled to write about this today -- I am hoping for some sanity-saving clarity.

When we pulled up stakes and moved, I had one very clear idea in my head:  we had to move out of the suburbs and live on the land.  There were no real specifics there in the plan.  We had been doing what we could where we were for several year: learning how to can our own food, figuring out the ends and outs of composting, raising rabbits, growing fruits and vegetables in our flower gardens.  At the time we were striving to learn valuable skills and become a little more self-sufficient so that in the event of a major catastrophe (such as the one we had already lived through), we would stand a better chance at survival.

That's what we had been doing before the sudden decision to move.  It is not that that mindset was not at all involved in making the move, it just is that it was not the primary reason at the time.  Instead, my determination was based on a growing sense that my children (as they also grew) were not living life fully.  I wanted them to see meadows and play in streams, learn bird songs, and experience nature as an everyday reality rather than an occasional trip to the park.

As a homeschool mother, I was primary educator and curriculum advisor.  And I had come to the realization that something very important was missing from the curriculum: real life.

I mean real life as opposed to the inherent artificiality of our modern lives.  I mean sunrises and sunsets rather than incandescent or halogen bulbs.  I mean taking the rocky path through the underbrush rather than staying on the sidewalk. I mean where things get dirty and stay dirty and a little rust adds charm.  I mean the entire cycle of life from birth to death - played out day after day before our eyes without filters or apologies.  Where respect for nature would come naturally - while at the same time stripping away any desire to worship it as some mysterious god.  This often-idolized false god that they could learn to see for what it really is - only a fellow creature, but one worthy of our care and attention because there is an order to things... (an order which, out here, we have to learn to live with each and every day as our ancestors had done) and, ultimately, that there is a True God who made it that way.

Being human, I often lose sight of the goal.  Especially after two years of Dave having to live away from us for his job while we simply worked to hold things together, I lost direction.  If we were totally self-sufficient by now, Dave would not have to work away from home.  Nevermind that that sort of self-sufficiency was never our goal... we had only wanted to learn and pass on skills that would make us less dependent on modern technology in the event that we did not have access to it at some point.  We were not going off-grid.  If you could make some real money at this, this will never happen again.  Nevermind that we never intended to make money at this.  Making it into a business enterprise would put our entire endeavor in danger of becoming artificial.  If you could just increase production and advertise you could make a good profit.  Nevermind that increased production would mean throwing out all of our kinder, gentler methods of raising animals.  Nevermind that increased production would displace me from my full time job as mother and teacher.  Direction lost.

We are in the middle of an extreme heat wave that started early in the week.  Every day for the last seven days has given us temperatures in excess of 95F degrees.  The meteorologists tell us that the heat index has been hovering between 105 and 110F each day.  It feels a lot hotter.

It isn't like the heatwave took us by surprise, so we all voted last night to wake up early this morning and get as much done as possible on the grow-out pen before it got too hot.  I had realized earlier in the week during solo attempts at putting this thing together that every step of the process - excluding pre-cutting lumber - requires at least four hands (ideally six or so) and we only have so many chances for all of us to work together.  Despite our early start, it was really hot.  My phone camera had overheated by 8:30 am so the pictures from the day are not the best.  Apologies both to you and to my camera.

Because it is just how we roll, we were sure from the start to make the entire project more challenging by assembling the frame on un-level rocky ground.  Actually, I'm just kidding.  It isn't how we roll.  We would much prefer to forego a challenge or two every now and then.  However, all of our ground is un-level and rocky.  We could, I concede, go through the time, expense, and trouble of laying a level concrete pad every time we build something.  But... nah...  

Homesteading is not our sole occupation.  Dave still commutes to work in Tulsa every day and works long hours at his job.  I still have homeschooling to oversee and house-keeping duties in addition to all of the day-to-day farm-related chores.  There is dinner to cook sometimes because we cannot live off of sandwiches and coffee.  Although we have tried.  It doesn't work.  Being barely alive does not provide the energy needed to actually function in our lives.  ​All of that is to say that time is always at a premium.

So when it comes to the more involved projects around the farm - such as building things - we are constantly looking for ways to save that precious time.  Our last effort involves the purchase of a chicken coop kit from a place called EZ Frame Structures online.  (I am not going to provide a link here.  At least not at this point - as we have not gotten very far using their product and a link would be something of an endorsement.)  I will say that ordering anything from them at all seemed like a huge risk at the time as the internet was flooded with terrible reviews regarding shipping - from extremely slow shipping with no contact from the seller to people claiming to never having received their kit... I failed to find a single decent review.  That's normally more than enough to put me off from ordering from a company, but I really, really, really​ wanted this to work.  Thankfully, we had no problem with shipping.  Yes, it was slower than a lot of shipped items these days - but the seller provided tracking numbers and updates along the way and I have no complaints.  About that.

I am working on putting together a chicken coop kit today (there will be blog posts to come on that topic) to serve as a new and inevitably great grow-out pen for our young chickens, but it's too hot to stay out there the whole time uninterrupted.  I decided that while I am here in the air conditioning with a laptop in front of me, this would be a good time to introduce our readers to our donkey, Fatima.

I have mentioned it before - maybe here on the blog - but I always wanted a donkey. I have no idea why.  I had absolutely no experience with donkeys.  I am not even sure that I had ever even seen one in person before the day we brought our first donkey home.  The only childhood donkey memory I have is that there was a book called "Donkey Donkey' among those in my book collection.  I believe it had belonged to my sisters before me, as it was missing pages and had scribble marks.  I don't recall ever having read it as, even as a child, I was a bit of a stickler and the missing pages rendered the book unappealing.  I remember the cover pretty well though.  So maybe that was all it took to leave me with a lifelong desire to own a donkey?  Are we humans really so simple?  

Once in Oklahoma permanently, we immediately began our search for a donkey.  We scoured Craigslist daily and I even checked newspaper classifieds.   At that point, we had no idea how to find what we were looking for.  It isn't like you can head on down to the donkey department in Target or order one on Amazon.  We slowly learned about small animal swaps and auctions and began attending the ones we discovered just to get a feel for the area and how things worked.   Of course, there are not any donkeys at small animal swaps, but there are people.  Dave managed to get a number from a nice stranger at a swap for a man in Inola who sold mini-donkeys... and we were finally off.

It was October, 2015 when we finally made the trip to Inola to meet some donkeys.  We were led to a pasture around the back of the house that seemed to be full - at least to my memory - of little donkeys in an assortment of colors.   They all pushed in close and crowded around us, sniffing our pockets and our hands looking for a treat or a pat.  All of them except one, that is.  There was a young spotted donkey, smaller than the rest, who spent her time maneuvering around the edge of the pasture in such a way as to always be at least 300 feet from us and the rest of the donkeys.

I had already told Dave on the drive home that he could pick our donkey for us.  And so I knew​ what was going to happen.  Scratching a fluffy, friendly baby donkey under the chin, Dave signaled with his other hand toward the wild donkey and said:  "I want that one."  The nice man with the donkeys took care to inform both of us that the little spotted donkey had not been handled at all and would take some time to tame down.  This seemed only to encourage Dave.  And so it began.

Last month I had written about the predator attack on a temporary pen where we were housing goslings overnight in much grim detail.  I am relieved to report that we have had no predator losses since and have started sleeping a little easier at night again.

There was one gosling who had survived that terrible night while sustaining some gruesome injuries.  In my emotional state at the time, I could not bring myself to put him down despite the fact that I was sure he could not make it.  

I was apparently wrong all around.

The kids affectionately dubbed the little thing Nick Fury - for reasons which should  be obvious to Marvel fans.  

It turns out that Nick Fury is actually a girl goose, but we are keeping the name anyway. Yes, I have considered fabricating a goose-sized eye patch for the sake of dramatic effect.  

All of her other injuries have completely healed and she gets around fine although she has to rely on her hearing when her little flock is off to her right.  As for the flock, they have never so much as looked at her funny this whole time.  She's the same gosling they have known since hatch day.

So.. it looks like someday we will be saying:  And that's how we came to have a one-eyed goose.  Here's hoping to happy adventures for Miss Nick Fury.

When we acquired our first substantial number of goslings we did what most people do these days:  We went to the internet and searched for basic care information.  Most of what we found assured us that geese and other waterfowl have higher protein feed requirements than chickens and it was suggested that we feed either a game bird feed or a feed specially formulated for waterfowl.  Easy enough.  We knew that we would be free-ranging our adult flock on grass someday, but our young birds would need supplemental feed until they were grown.  There were plenty of formulated feeds in the feed store with pictures of geese and ducks on the package.

What we did not find during that initial search was information on Angel Wing Syndrome - and so, as with most things out here, we had to learn the hard way.

Then you obviously have never followed us when we are working on one of our projects before.  Just so you know what to expect from now on, I shall provide a sort of flowchart of steps that we go through whenever we are working on anything.

We have laid tile before so we were pretty confident going into this last weekend.  We were both slow to realize that something was wrong, however.  I guess both of us were thinking that it had been a while and we were rusty at the mechanics of mortar and tile.  I admit that I complained a lot more than Dave.  Mostly I wanted to know why the pre-mixed mortar we were using had the consistency of hot toothpaste.  I was not polite about it at all.  It was sticky, messy, and impossible to spread with the  trowel.  It was on my shoes and in my hair...  It made me cranky. But we used it anyway.  A whole bucket of it... and then a little more.

It is the strangest thing to me that all winter long I see reminders on the news and social media to shelter your pets and other animals from the cold - yet when summer comes there is basically silence.   Personally, I find it a lot easier to warm up than cool down... And my experience has taught me that a lot of my fur-covered or feathery companions have much the same problem.

Aside from breaking up ice in stock tanks and hauling around buckets when our hoses are frozen, winter is fairly easy around here.  I am probably only able to type that out at the moment because it happens to be July, but I am going to go with it.  Check back with me in December and see if I have changed my mind.  We have never lost an animal to cold weather.  As long as they have shelters with some deep (and actively composting) bedding, full bellies,  and a few companions to snuggle with - they do just fine.  I have heard otherwise.  So much so that I was pretty shocked as a novice chicken owner to find my first Buff Orpington hens dust-bathing in the snow  for the first time on a particularly frigid January morning.

It should not have been so surprising, I suppose, as Buff Orpingtons are a cold-hardy breed.  Which is great!  In winter.  Summer, however, poses quite a few challenges for our extra fluffy and often broody hens.  

I haven't had a moment to breathe, let alone blog, for the last couple of weeks.  Still, the thought of empty blog space sitting out here on the internet haunts me and I feel compelled to sit and write something just to make the tiny bell inside my mind stop ringing for a while.

This is our fifth year here at LeChat Noir Farm in Salina, but we have never gotten around to most of the home improvement projects that were needed when we first moved in.  We focused our energy on building a barn (and an apartment for our older boys) when we first arrived.  Then we turned our attention to fences and shelters - as we were starting out with exactly zero and though we wanted to free-range the animals .. our neighbors probably would not have appreciated that much free-ranging going on.  

Just as we reached the point of having enough in order to fix things that needed to be fixed in our own living space, Dave was laid off from his job in Tulsa.  He moved away for work temporarily while looking for a new job close to home.  Temporarily turned out to be two years.  Which, I suppose in the grand scheme of things, is actually temporary - but hardly feels so to a mere mortal such as myself.  Needless to say, everything was put on hold for those two years while the kids and I worked to just maintain the place mostly on our own.  Improvement ​ was out of the question.

As anyone who maintains a small farm knows, you cannot always keep animals ​just because they are cute.  They need to serve some practical function as well.   What can a flock of geese do for you?

There is a blog post or a YouTube video floating around out there somewhere that suggests keeping a single goose with your chicken flock to protect them from predators.  I have never personally encountered the original source of this information, but I have read enough blogs and such to have encountered the reference repeatedly.  A lot of our customers also come out to our place looking for a 'guardian goose' for their flock.  They tell me that they read that they could raise a single gosling with their chickens and it will bond with the chickens and fight to defend them as part of its own flock.

I really hate to burst bubbles here, but it simply is not true.  I will give the benefit of the doubt and say that individual animals have their quirks - and it is possible that someone somewhere ended up with a goose that seemed to do exactly what they are advertising.  However, such a goose is an exception and, if he does indeed exist out there, he is in imminent danger.

In our experience, a single goose will not actually bond with chickens (or guineas or turkeys and so on) no matter how young the goose is when you bring him home.  It is within the realm of possibility, though I am purely speculating here, that if a gosling were actually hatched by a chicken he would imprint on the chicken and, therefore, appear to have bonded with the other chickens.  However, imprinting happens a lot earlier than a couple days later when you bring a gosling home from someone else's farm.  Bonding is something else entirely.  A goose bond is very strong and it is not handed out all willy-nilly to any other creature just because it happens to have wings.  A goose will bond with another goose if another goose is available, but a lonely gander's second choice is... you. (Because if that gosling had been incubated and hatched by humans, chances are high that he imprinted​ on a human.) Sure, you may be able to isolate a goose to the point of him following your chickens around in desperation for company, but he is not going to stick his neck out (pun intended) to defend those chickens.  Any such behavior is self-defense and nothing more.

And this is where the real problem comes in:  A single goose cannot defend itself against a determined predator.  A flock of geese work together to defend their territory - circling, honking, hissing, and snapping like a multi-headed monster.  To the unwary predator, that is exactly what the flock is.  It is no longer a scattering of meal-sized birds, but a single, immense, obnoxious, and potentially painful creature that is just not worth the trouble for a snack.  If you are following me here, you can clearly see how one goose and a flock of chickens cannot produce the same effect.

Would you believe there is an update to the peacock story already?

After posting A TALE OF TWO PEACOCKS this morning, I went to the barn to collect some food for the guineas and.. I heard chirping. 

If you have only found us through our website and this blog, then you may not be aware that we have a pair of Indian Blue peafowl.  They are not listed under 'Critters' on our page.  They do not even get an honorable mention.  There is a very good reason for that.  You see, when we were putting our website together, we were not completely sure that we even had peafowl.  There's a story here....

​On the feeding of donkeys... and other creatures.

I am just going to jump right in and say it:  We people tend to feed our animals too much.  Maybe it is an American thing.  I have no experience anywhere else.  But it is a thing.  That is not to say that I do not know people who follow their veterinarian's advice to the letter and measure out their dog's food with great care.  The fact that I know anything at all about the details of how and when acquaintances feed their pets -- because they went out of their way to explain it to me as if it were a matter of importance -- tells me that this is something that is hard for them.  Not hard for them to do, but hard for them to wrap their mind around. 

I was the same once upon a time.  I would read the suggested feeding amounts and schedules on the back of the dog food bag and scoff:  "What? My dog eats a lot more than that!"  Not that he should have, just that he did.  As if that makes sense at all.

Of course, my own eating habits were much the same.  I am pretty sure from the barrage of news headlines about Americans and obesity that I was not exceptional.

Then I moved to Oklahoma and bought a donkey.  I recognize that the things that motivate me to self-improvement are often a little unusual.  But caring for a donkey changed a lot about how I viewed diet and health.

It does not matter how long we have been doing this, or how many times things go horribly wrong and we get through it.  When we lose any animals, the heartbreak is the same.  It means we are human​, I tell the kids, We know by the pain we feel that we have lost none of our humanity along the way.  And none of that reassurance in our humanity dulls the ache -- or quells the fear.

When I tell people that we inevitably lose some poultry each year to predators, I do not often see any surprise register on their faces.  Honestly, I think I might be able to hear them thinking: "Sure. That's what happens when you insist on free-ranging your animals, you ding-bat."  Sometimes my confession is followed up by their testimony (which confirms that my mind-reading skills are on target), "We will be keeping ours in a safe coop and run.  So, no worries."

No worries.  If only.

While it is true that we have a chicken missing periodically - the likely victim of a hungry hawk or a late morning fox on the prowl for a snack - most of our losses have not actually had anything to do with free-ranging.  Nothing compares to the losses we have sustained inside safe enclosures.  And I mean nothing compares - by any measure and not just quantity.  The chicken who comes up missing at the mid-morning roll call does not compare to the discovery of an entire grow-out flock helplessly torn to bits.  Waking up the morning after your safe enclosure was no longer safe is a punch in the gut.

Our sudden and somewhat impulsive move to Oklahoma in December of 2013 was tumultuous and it took several months to even begin to be in a position to start acquiring poultry and livestock.  Having said that, I realize that we were not entirely ready then and had we been more reasonable people we would have given ourselves a year or more to get settled in before throwing live animals into the mix.  But with experience comes such wisdom - and we lacked both.

We also lacked patience.  We had gone through a lot to get here and time was passing.  Back then, we still worked on suburban time -- expecting things to happen in hours and days rather than months and even years like it does out here.

I had done my research.  Long before the move I had poured over every goat book I could get my hands on.  I spent hours watching YouTube videos and reading the best and worst blogs that offered goat advice and information.  I had decided that we wanted to raise Kinder goats.  They were a newly recognized breed - a hybrid of a Pygmy and Nubian - which promised to offer all the good things you get from a meat goat and a milk goat in a moderately-sized package.  There was also the advantage of these goats being a fairly rare breed which would mean that we would be forced to take our time finding exactly the right goats at exactly the right time.

Or at least until May of 2014 - which was probably not exactly the right time.  There happened to be a Craigslist ad for registered Kinder goats for sale within driving distance of us.   What are the chances?  It was like destiny.  We made arrangements with the seller and rented a horse trailer to go pick up our goats of destiny.

At this point, even in retrospect, I cannot say with certainty that we had done anything regrettable regarding the purchase of our first livestock animals.  We had: 1) Done our research,  2) Decided on a breed which would be well-suited to our needs and resources, 3) Committed to that breed, and 4) Decided to buy registered stock from a registered breeder.   

In the past when I have shared pictures of birds still inside our brooder boxes, I have gotten comments asking how I keep the brooder so clean.  The short answer is:  hard work and determination.  However, there are a few things that make that hard work more effective in the long run which I will be sharing here today.  Read on to learn more about the cleaning method that has made all the difference for us.

I am almost too tired to write this, but as I sit here watching more clouds roll in for the afternoon I feel the need for some catharsis.  You may have heard about the extreme weather that has been pummeling the plains states for the last few weeks.  Well, that's us.

One of the many tornadoes that touched down a couple of weeks ago even happened to touch down at our place - but, thankfully, it lacked motivation and only destroyed a lot of our trees and fences.  Still, that and the ongoing tornado warnings and sirens and flash floods and closed roads and rising bodies of water and loss of life is more than enough to remind us that post-traumatic stress disorder is a real and lingering thing.

It occurred to me for the first time this morning that all of this record-breaking severe weather might very well have been the catalyst for starting a new blog.  Subconsciously, of course - as these things go.  But surely after days of watching the radar screen and listening to damage reports made something go click in my head.  

Regardless, it is not entirely the stress of dodging weather disaster every day that has exhausted me.  It never is.  What wears me down are the daily things.  Usually they are little unforeseen difficulties that pile up until they become overwhelming. 

Our grass is dying from excess water and our soil is leached.  Extra food is needed for all of the animals, but keeping it from going moldy and growing toxins is a constant concern.  Disease is more likely to spread in this kind of weather.  Parasites proliferate.  Small injuries become bigger ones as infection is harder to keep at bay, and nearly impossible to treat properly in muddy conditions.  

Here we are on the third blog post and I already have to say it: Okay. New Plan.

And it is all because we don't fence our animals.

The disadvantage of letting donkeys, goats, pigs, chickens, geese, or some combination of those and others wander around our entire property most of the time rather than confining them to tidy paddocks or grazing areas, is that it makes it pretty difficult to start young trees or grow a garden.  Sure, they have over 14 acres of untouched woodland to explore and munch on, but the little apple tree that Dave just planted just plain tastes better. 

We figured all of that out rather quickly and made sure to wrap the bases of young trees with netting to prevent bark-stripping - and fence the youngest saplings entirely to preserve them.  It is extra work and it is a bit unsightly, but we would rather do all of that than not give the critters the most room to roam with us every day.

We also installed a chain link fence around our house so that we could plant flowers and vegetable gardens that would not be turned into dust baths - and to keep the sidewalks free of poo.  That has worked out pretty well for us over the last few years.  We keep goslings and chicks grazing within the chainlink of our front yard when they are growing out, but send them outside once they are tall enough to reach the raised gardens.

Sending them out was a precautionary measure that I was sure we would never need as the geese have never shown any interest in our flowers or vegetable plants - preferring the bermuda grass and chickweed out in the open areas.   

​I used the word 'never' far too many times in that sentence above.  I should know better.  And I'm sure you have already guessed that the next thing I am going to say is:  Until now.

I have always been fascinated by the study of animal behavior.  As a matter of fact, behavioral science was my minor in college for a time.  (Until I could not manage to pass organic chemistry.  Three times.  Consider that a closed door.)  When I spend my days (and sometimes nights) here surrounded by and observing animals of all kinds - I am in my happy place.

I love animals.  I am an animal lover.  However, I have noticed that I am not an animal lover in quite the same was as a lot of my animal-loving peers.  You see, I love animals best when they are being animals.

I am not, in fact, a robot.  I do enjoy cuddly moments of human interaction with creatures.  It's just that I especially love to be near animals when they are doing what  is most natural for them.   That may sound sort of crunchy and far-out groovy, but really it is practical.   Animals behave better when they are behaving naturally. The clincher is figuring out what is natural for them -- and what is not.

Put down that Little Debbie snack cake and read that again: We often choose what is not good for us.  You could blame it entirely on free will - a rather important thing that other animals lack as they depend on instinct alone.  But you would be missing a key to the puzzle.  In addition to free will, we humans also have instincts.  Reaching for that Twinkie may be more instinctual than you think.

But wait! Twinkies are not natural!  How could I have an instinctual drive to eat Twinkies?   Why do chickens eat styrofoam when there is a bowl of fresh, organic, non-GMO chicken feed right there?  Why does your goat stand out in the cold rain next to his shelter all day?  

There is a long and complicated answer to this question that is far too meaty for a mere blog post.  However, it essentially comes down to one thing:  Stress.

On August 29, 2005, we changed.  A similar observation has often been made by those who have experienced some singularly dramatic event.  For instance, they may write:  "On May 1, 2014, our lives changed forever."  Though I can sympathize with such an observation, I have a slightly different experience.  We changed in a fundamental way on that fateful day, but it took quite some time and a lot of concerted effort for our circumstances -- our lives -- to change.  

On August 28th, you would have found us to be a pretty normal suburban family -- discounting the ritual of weekend preparation during hurricane season on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.   My husband went to work in town every morning.  I kept the lawn mowed in our postage-stamp sized yard.  Our school-aged children attended the local private school.  I handled the grocery shopping.  We took our dogs to the groomer.  We attended church on Sundays and helped out with local fundraisers and events.  We drove children to soccer practice and music lessons.  We ate a lot of junk food.  We were entertained by the television.  We managed to pay the bills and keep the house in good repair, but nothing more.