All chickened out

Day two of roaster chickens is over.  I took the second group of birds to the butcher yesterday.  John had a day of work, but he helped me get them crated so I didn’t have to kill myself before I even got out of the driveway!  It was a much more easy-going day than our [...]

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Soaping up!

I seem to be falling off the blog wagon this past week or two.  It’s been a very busy time.  Butcher dates, and all sorts of farm things like moving sheep fencing in 98% humidity… not my favorite thing to do on a fairly steep hill!  But it got done.  The really exciting thing that [...]

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She’s back!

Rhubarb the goat, that is.  She had gone to live on a friend’s farm in Jefferson, a few towns over, early in the spring before she freshened.  She had two beautiful kids. one a buck and the other a doe.  Our friends have a young family and really enjoyed having her, but made the decision [...]

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More summer fun

This has been the weekend for self-immolation, I think.  On the eve of the anniversary of my mother’s death 7 years ago, we find ourselves once again working on clearing out the remnants of her house in town, in preparation for a friend to move in.  We had another friend of the family renting the [...]

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Traveling ewes

I wish we could *really* drive our ewe flock down the road the half mile to the pasture we use at a neighbor’s place, but I think it might be a little too crazy for me to deal with!  The few cars that use our road as a cut-through frequently get going quite fast, so [...]

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Coopworth ewes assert their independence, film at 11!

Another crazy 24 hours here at the Ruit Farm.  Yeesh!  It hasn’t stopped since 3 a.m.  Yesterday I separated the last buckling from his mother, so when I went to bed at 10:30, there was some calling and baabaa-ing and maa-maaing, but I ignored and went to sleep.  Around 2:30 a.m. I began to come [...]

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Chicken hut, 101

Roaster chickens are on the schedule to be moved down to the pasture any moment now :*)  The only thing that had put a kink in the works up until now was that we didn’t have a portable shelter put together for them yet.  Life being what it is, we had some of the materials, [...]

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