week 35: single farm mom
this week on the little dream farm
Happy to report that Chris arrived home safely late Friday night after a week-long trip to London and Dublin with some high school friends.
He had a really great time, he said he got a nice break from work and from farm chores, and of course, everyone here on the farm was happy to have Dada back in our midst!
I got the sweetest, most kind message earlier this week on Instagram. I’ll share with you the first part of it. It said, “How amazing it must feel to be so secure and independent even with a partner but with the partner away to be able to take care of an entire farm and the animals that live on it.”
This was the day after Chris left and it made my day and gave me a, Yeah, that IS pretty amazing attitude that carried me through this last week, which I really appreciated!
So, I thought I’d share with you the goings on during a week of single farm mom-ing it here on the LDF!
Before we get into today’s Farm Note…some of my very favorite skincare products are on mega sale this Labor Day weekend—perfect time to treat yourself!
My go-to daytime & evening moisturizer for the last several years
My go-to cleanser—this is the perfect balance for every skin type
Every few weeks I like to do this charcoal face mask to purify pores
And now onto the Farm Note…
Update on the War on the Rats
Thankfully my research paid off and I was able to eliminate 56 juvenile and adult rats in the span of four days last week. I haven’t needed to set snap traps the last three nights because the two before that I didn’t catch anything and I haven’t seen or heard one rat during the day. We’ve been keeping out the baking soda and corn muffin mixture and that’s been doing its job, too.
I think we’re far past the worst of it and now it’ll just be ongoing maintenance heading into the colder months when we really need to be on the lookout. If you missed it, last week we shared in detail about this rat saga which you can check out here: week 34 farm note: war on the rats.
The Girlies have names!
For a while there we had so many hens it was getting hard to tell everyone apart, and then we started losing so many of them we just stopped bothering to name them. But! I spent a ton of time with our seven ladies this week since we’ve been feeding them several times a day outside of the coop (in order to keep food out of the coop while we get rid of the rats) I felt like it was high time we named this current crew, so Chris and I knocked that out together on Saturday.
We got these little colored bands for their legs so we could mark one of them if a hen happened to get sick or we wanted to keep an eye on a particular hen. For now, we just added a band to each hen until we get a handle on identifying them. People always ask how we can tell them apart, and generally you can decipher who is who by looking at their feather patterns. We’ll use these little cheats in the interim while we get down their new names!
The list below is the hen’s name, a nickname or shortened name if she has one, the color of her band, and what leg it’s on:
Rosie (Red) - Left
Calliope (Callie) (Red) - Right
Florence (Flo) (Green) - Left
Pippa (Pip) (Green) - Right
Maggie (Yellow) - Left
Belle (Yellow) - Right
Birdie (Purple) - Left
So there we have it! Our little gang of seven newly-named Girlies!
Daily Chores & Rhythm
We split up the chores when Chris is home but here’s what each day looked like for me during the week this last week—the stuff that got done every day:
0300-0330: Wake up and enjoy the quiet morning and the sunrise with coffee!
0600: Feed the Furmers, scoop litter boxes
0615: Let the Girlies out, feed them, give them water
0630: Give the donkeys morning hay, scoop their poop
0700: Walk outside (soaking this up as much as I can right now before it gets cold!)
0830: Log on to work for the day
1100: Feed the hens, let the donkeys out into their pasture to graze
1600: Feed the Furmers, scoop litter boxes
1615: Bring the donkeys in for night hay, refresh their water bucket, scoop poop
1700: Feed the Girlies
1730: Log off of work for the day
1810: Tuck the Girlies in for the night
2000-2030: Off to bed!
Everything Else
Thankfully I had a low-key work week while Chris was away, but I had a list of stuff I wanted to get done since we’re somehow already starting to wind things down outside for the growing season. Here’s what that list looked like:
Gardens - I started breaking down a lot of our fruit and veggie garden. In another Farm Note I’ll share the successes and failures of this growing season (because there were lots of both!) but for right now I was wanting to pull up the trellising we installed for cucumbers, edamame, peas, and green beans, and also pull out all the melon vines—this year we grew watermelon, cantaloupe, and honeydew melons.
Dahlia Patch - I shared lots of photos and video of the Dahlia Patch this week since it’s starting to really take off with bursts of color! This week I was in there weeding, string trimming around all the rows and the perimeter fencing, mowing, and using the blower to clean everything up. The patch looks incredible and in just a few weeks it should be in peak bloom—I’ve got a bunch of really good lessons learned that I’ll take with me into next year’s dahlia growing and I’ll save all that for a future Farm Note as well!
Lawn - This was a crazy year for mowing and since we got our zero-turn mower at the end of the 2022 season I’ve managed to put 58 hours on that machine. The lawn required mowing almost every 5th or 6th day this entire summer season, so I was out there this week knocking that out an hour at a time when I could find pockets of time to get it done. Of the 58 acres we own, we keep about 5-6 acres as lawn that we actively mow, manage, and maintain.
Structure Upkeep - I did a lot of weeding and clearing around the Lower Barn (chicken coop), the Mini Coop (that little shed-like structure next to the Lower Barn), the Big Barn, and the house this week. While I’m motivated to rid our farm of rats, it was a necessary task to ensure we clear as much brush or growth away from all the walls around all our structures—this is something we’ll actively manage more closely going forward.
Fall Clean Out - Last year during our holiday break between Christmas and the New Year, I spent a bunch of time cleaning out the house and organizing all our closets and drawers and storage. This year I decided to get it done now as we’re winding things down for the season so that when the very last dahlia box is put into storage for the winter and the last load of spent plants is dumped, that we can just go into complete relax mode with nothing on our agenda. So this week I spent some time cleaning out closets and organizing the laundry room and cleaning out drawers—that always feels so good to have everything refreshed and so tidy!
Odds and Ends - Do you ever just have a list of lots of little stuff you know you need to do that just keeps adding up? Hopefully I’m not the only one! This week I got after that list and checked off so many silly little errands and tasks that were needing to get done that are finally now complete! Gosh, that feels so good!
That message I got on IG meant a lot because back when we were newer to the farm it really did feel like a whole lot to handle when one of us was away for any period of time and the other person was home with all the farm duties.
Now, though, we have such a solid routine we’ve built—a rhythm, a steady drum beat that we move to each day, and I find that frees up head space to be able to take on all the other stuff I was able to knock out this week, like the stuff you read above and also cooking nourishing meals, taking extra long showers, watching a show or two on Netflix, and getting some really good sleep.
I’m so glad Chris had such a wonderful time with his friends in Europe—he needed that! I’m also so glad the critter crew and I all had such a lovely, productive, wonderful week here on the Farm!
Have a lovely Labor Day weekend, friend, and please do us a favor and make sure you include something for yourself this holiday weekend that you most need!
Sarah,
Love to hear about all of your organizing! Keeps me motivated. I would love to hear more about what household products you have moved to for a greener home and if any of the Subscription sites are worthwhile. I started to look at that this summer but there are so many uptions its gets confusing!
Thanks for all you do for the animals and for Us!
Eileen