Spring passed in a frenzy of soccer, soccer, soccer mixed with testing, projects, and papers. Chaos. I feel like I use that word to describe my life far too often but sadly, it is accurate.
The chaos has kept me from putting in the kind of veggie garden I usually like to keep. But our decision to downsize last year has been appreciated by all of us. I can’t imagine trying to take care of chickens and pigs and goats and gardens. It simply wouldn’t have happened. To top it off, my daughter Hannah tore her ACL during one of her last games :(. Surgery is scheduled for July 2nd.
The garden did finally make its way into the ground, squeezed into bits and pieces of time as I found it. Maybe the seeds have felt my lack of commitment and taken it personally. I have NEVER had so much trouble with germination in my life. THREE plantings, my friends. THREE. Cucumbers, beans, lettuce, squash, pumpkins. Things I’ve grown for years that for some reason simply will not emerge from my dirt this year. In one final desperate attempt to gain something for all of my hard work, I did something I never ever do and dumped Miracle-Gro on it. We’ll see if anything miraculous happens.
I feel like we have been playing catch-up after our summer away last year. Taking a summer off of your property is a big deal. Projects pile up at an overwhelming rate and I feel like there is no end in sight.
My first project after the garden was to tear down an old fence. I had abandoned this old/garden chicken spot after last season. It was a bit sad bc we put several years of labor into building the soil. It has been used off and on for a little bit of everything. But 10 years have taken its toll on the fence and it wasn't keeping anything out or anything in. Last summer our poor chickens were slaughtered one by one by racoons. The summer before that deer ate every green thing to the ground, even tomatoes and peppers! And anytime I had put pups in it fora time they ould miraculously appear at the front door. Lately it has been overtaken by weeds the size of my arm and over my head that produce a vicious and spiky burr. They drape themselves over the fence and entangle everything. It was a mess and it had to go.
I never would have believed there could be so much rusty old wire hiding in the weeds. Apparently our answer to escaping chickens was simply to add more fencing. Roll after roll came out of the weeds and dirt. Chicken wire by the piles. It was almost impressive just how much we had managed to lose in that small space over the years. My boys had to use the extra pull of the 4 wheeler to get the last few feet out from under the pile of rocks and dirt that eroded over the top of it. After a solid week fo working on the porject, covered in poison ivy and rusty fence scratches, we finally got it all out.
Somehow I managed to sell of some of the fencing and the rest went to metal recycling so not a total loss financially for the many dollars wirth of fencing. I felt satisfied by a job well done. I think my boys were just annoyed we didn't put up the fence properly the first time around (we have since installed fencing the correct way and it should hopefully be less of a pain to deal with in years to come.). A wonderful neighbor tilled in the monster weeds with his tractor and the goats have been merrily munching on the rest. Not sure what else will happen with it in the future but at least I don’t have to worry about losing my youngest child in the jungle that was there before!
In the midst of our outdoor projects and the never ending indoor projects (installing flooring this week! Yay! Been waiting almost 10 years for new floors. I'm excited to cover old asbestos and have a cleanable surface :) ) we FINALLY got our oldest, Abbey, into the tiny home we put on the property back in September. Just in time for her 19th birthday. We ran into way more glitches than we expected to but she is IN! There are a few more finising touches left but she is IN.
Lucy isn’t the only dog in our life these days. Almost a year ago we brought home Rosie from another farm before we left for Alaska for the summer. You can read about her story here. The hope was that she would bond with our goats and become a guardian dog within our permanent fenced area. The idea sort of worked. Her presence kept anything threatening away from goats for the summer but once we got home it was clear she wasn’t happy with them. And she was always trying to get out. We went to great lengths to keep her in and we were successful for a while but sometime this February escaped.
Now there has been something obviously very wrong with Rosie since day one. She has been terrified of us. And if she got off leash or out of the fence she would run off and it would take major efforts to corner her and literally carry her back since she refuses to walk on a leash (and if you’ve ever hauled an 80 pound Bernese basically playing dead down a mountainside well… you might have some idea of the difficulties we have faced to keep this dog alive). Despite our efforts to win her trust, she won’t come anywhere near us. I knew the young family I got her from was also having trouble with her (although I didn’t realize how bad until we saw it firsthand), and I have tried to track down the breeder with no success. But it is obvious to us that she has suffered some abuse or neglect from someone very early on in life. It is extremely sad.
When she escaped the fencing I thought for sure we'd never see her again . She had slipped her collar and even once I cornered her in our barn she still managed to barrel out when we tried to feed her. It’s not easy to tackle an 80 pound dog. So we just waited to see what would happen and what happened really surprised us. She stuck around. And not only that, she seems to like us. But is also terrified of us. What she reminds me of is a wild animal that has nowhere to go and no longer has the instincts to live in the wild but recognizes the hand that feeds her. She sticks around for the daily bowl of food and stays close to us with some kind of inner desire to be part of a pack. She also has this strange fettish for human clothing. She hasn't destroyed toys or anything else left around but if my kids leave their shoes to jump on the trampoline, she eats them. If I leave my work gloves and walk a mere 10 feet away, she will sneak up behind me and eat them. I have lost SO many gloves this summer!! Pants, socks, shirts. If it smells liks a person she will eat it and poo it out the next day.
She sleeps at the door every night and every morning jumps, wags her tail and yelps at the door as if asking to come in. But if we go within three feet of the glass, she scurries away. If I go outside she stays a safe 10 feet away and will bark at me if I try to interact. If I am not looking at her she will follow within an arm's length behind me no matter where I am. But if I face her or reach out to pet her, she jumps away like I’m about to smack her. No matter where I am on the property she is within 20 feet of me at all times, watching. She’ll lay off at some distance and follow when I relocate. At this point, months later, I can get her to slink carefully up to me and snatch a piece of meat from my hands. But if I try to touch her, forget it, she's gone. It’s a weird relationship. I’m not sure it will ever be any different and it makes me sad for her. She is healthy, seems happy, but she obviously wants to be a part of our “pack” but can’t decide how to. There is no way for me to care for her as I can’t get anywhere near her for more than a split second. If anyone has ever had any dealings with rehabilitating an abused dog, I would love to hear from you. The rescues and shelters here would not take her so she is not going anywhere!
Now, Lucy is not a two dog kind of dog. She is visibly annoyed by Rosie's constant presence. If Rosie is waiting outside one door, Lucy deliberately walks to the other door. It's quite obvious she views her indoor priviledges as a symbol of her status on the farm. Lucy is still the queen. You can almost see her lift her snobby nose in the air when she walks past Rosie. It's comical.
Despite Lucy's lack of charity toward Rosie the Rescue dog, we stll love her to pieces and we have been ramping up our breeding program a bit. We had some health testing done for Lucy and ran an Embark on her to check her genetics and COI (coefficient of inbreeding). These are good things to know going forward as we try to find her new mates. We want to make sure the genetics line up safely and we keep the percentage of inbreeding down to ensure the healthiest dogs possible. Right now we are eyeing dogs in West Virginia, Kentucky, and Michigan as possible studs for this fall. They all have something great going for them! And not only are they handsome tri-colors from my favorite Silver Dollar line, their personalities sound very similar to our sweet and wonderful Hamish from our past litters. We’ll keep you posted!
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