week 42: the days are long...

this week on the little dream farm

Chris and I celebrate our birthdays just four days apart, mine on October 16 and Chris on October 20. Here we are, now 36 and 38 years old.

Naturally I’ve been thinking a lot about time this week—how quickly the years pile up…how fast the time goes by. The days are long but the years are short, are words by Gretchen Rubin that come to mind.

We met when we were 24 and 26, both of us hard-charging young Air Force officers who each chose the military service route as a means to pay for college. While we grew up in different parts of the country (me in Pennsylvania and Chris in Florida) and went to different schools (Temple University for me and University of Central Florida for Chris) we both went to school for political science and journalism to pursue a career in communications. The Air Force gave us both an incredible opportunity as Public Affairs Officers and it always amazes me to think we were each pursuing the same path before our paths crossed.

If you’d told either of us back then that in ten years we’d be living on a farm in Upstate New York I’m not sure I could have seen that for us—I wanted such different things out of life back then. Certainly, though, in those plans I’d had for myself back then, they didn’t include something that would turn out to be as wonderful as this farm.

As I scrolled back through some photos this past week to reminisce on what we were doing at this time last year and the one before that and the one before that (when we still lived in Philadelphia), it feels like we’ve packed a whole lot more than just two years of life here on the farm, but boy, has the time been bittersweet. It’s so fun to take a look back at what we were learning or what kinds of challenges we were facing or to see just how far we’ve come in such a short time.

I’ve wanted so badly to figure out what this farm is so that I could make sense of and feel settled in how we’d spend our days here, but as the year has gone on and we’ve explored one avenue after another, I’ve come to the realization, and Chris and I talk about this a lot—that we just don’t really know…yet. If there’s one resounding thing I’ve learned from David this year, it is letting go of forcing what I think something should be and instead opening up to allowing what is…or what is trying to come.

Always, I’m reminded of his words to me to Listen, and allow the answers to come.

I’m a work in progress on that front.

Aside from birthday celebrations, we’re in the midst of our fall checklist, knocking off one little task at a time as the days go on. The biggest project we have coming up in the next few weeks is preparing the peony patch, picking up the peonies from the farm two hours north of us, and then getting them all planted. They’ll go right in a small field in front of our solar panel towards the front of the farm and in the next few days I’ll be mowing down the area, using a push tiller to create the planting beds, and then we’ll get all the holes dug before we go pick up the roots and get them all swiftly planted. I’m really looking forward to this project and can’t wait for the day when we have a patch of peony blooms!

On the top of our list this week was figuring out what the heck is going on with the hens! In addition to Opal (who is back in a cage having some residual issues still) we now have two others in cages in the milk house and so we’re starting to see a trend with impacted crop and sour crop. Both can be caused by a number of things so we’ve been on the lookout for all the signs.

We lost a hen last weekend who came down sick really fast and then died before we could really get a handle on what might have been wrong with her. We think she laid a broken egg a few days prior and developed an infection.

The fenced area where the hens are currently spending their days has needed to be moved, and we likely waited just a few weeks too long to do it. The worn out area and the dead, dried up wet grass is what I think has caused the impaction for several of the hens, which then typically then leads to sour crop.

So, while Chris was away in Oklahoma this weekend visiting a friend and going to a UCF game, I made about a dozen trips back and forth to the milk house in the sopping rain yesterday to try to get the two newest ladies to the chicken hospital ward off on the right foot with treatment.

It’s hard not to get down on yourself when something goes wrong with the animals because so much of it comes down to management practices. In this case, it’s a chicken keeper thing, not a chicken thing. To think, if we’d just moved their fence sooner we likely could have avoided all these issues and the poor hens having to suffer. It’s not helpful to beat ourselves up about it, but it helps if we own our part in it so we can get it resolved before it gets worse.

This week we’ll be free ranging the hens to keep them out of that area altogether and on fresh grass/ground instead.

Unfortunately (and fortunately in a way), we’ve learned so many lessons the hard way on this farm, and this is just another one we’ll not repeat. In the meantime, we think we have a better handle on dealing with crop impaction and sour crop, so hopefully we’ll be able to get all three ladies back to the group and that there are no others. I’ll be heading out this morning to the coop to check on everyone and make sure we have all empty crops and no one else who needs a brief stay in the chicken hospital.

I’d ordered a product on Friday—acidified copper sulfate—that you can use in times of wet, humid weather and dry grasses to prevent your flock from getting impactions and sour crop. It was something I wanted to add to our arsenal so we’d have it on hand in case we need it. It looks like it’ll arrive just in time and that we’ll actually need to use it now—so the rest of the flock will get some preventative help so that we can hopefully stave off any further issues.

Wish us luck as we hopefully right the ship and get everybody feeling better!

Last night, just as I was wrapping up chores and getting ready to head in and grab a shower and wind down for the night, after it rained the entire day and evening before, the sky burst open into a wave of sunshine and a faint but full rainbow formed right over the farm.

I really needed that. And I’m glad I had a front row seat to watch it come, develop into its full form, and then fade away. It was a real beauty and such a gift at the end of a crazy day!

I’ll leave you with a few of those photos and a wish that you enjoy your Sunday and have a wonderful week ahead!!