Farm Diaries: Volume 1

So my dear husband, aka The Farmer, was gone for 6 days. I think he feels like thats an exaggeration, but I do not. He left Sunday at 4:00 PM and got home Saturday at 2:00am. I call that 6 days. It is at least 6 nights- right?? Any way, that is totally beside the point. If you know me (surely someone reading this doesn’t), you know that I am NOT a farm girl. I am not even a country girl, yet I find myself here, on the farm, in the country. I don’t do dirty, stinky, hot, cold, bugs, critters, and so on. I don’t like it. I love sitting on the porch swing when it is 75 degrees with a light breeze- that is about as outdoorsy as I get! With all of that said, you can imagine leaving me with a FARM for 6 DAYS is probably not ideal. Luckily our almost 12 year old is a much better suited care taker then I am. When the farmer left, we had 18 chickens, 3 goats (two of which are pregnant), 1 cow, 3 pigs (one of which is pregnant), 6 piglets, a rabbit, a dog and a cat. (for all you real farmers, I know this isn’t much, but it is a lot to me!)

Day 1 goes off without a hitch. All animals are cared for and accounted for.

Day 2. I wake up to have coffee before everyone else. I watch out the window to see two of our 3 goats. I keep watching waiting for Mabel to come by. She doesnt. I know right then, there are baby goats. This gets me all sorts of excited! I don’t love yucky farm stuff but I LOVE babies of any kind. I run to wake up the farmer boy to tell him. He goes out and comes back in to tell me the news. There were triplets…. were….. 2 of them didn’t make it. I rush outside to see if we can save the babies but it is too late. We are all sad but love on the one baby that is left and we are all thankful she is ok. Fast forward a little while….. I don’t really know what to do with the babies who didn’t make it. We go out to see about everything and I see our dog…. EATING the babies. I start crying and screaming. I have my farmer boy keep the dog away from the babies. I run inside and grab gloves and bags. My sweet boy offers to do it all (thank goodness) so he scoops them up and takes them off for me.

Day 3. Momma goat still hasn’t passed all her after birth so I text a farm friend (because again, I am clueless and have NO idea what I am doing). He informs me I need to catch her and pull it out. Do what??? I will spare you all the things I text to my husband and skip to him sending a friend over to help this clueless farmers wife. We manage to eventually catch the goat. I say we, but I didn’t do much, other then run around…. a little. The goat is now all better!

Day 4. Time to feed the pigs and farmer boy is gone way too long. I knew something was probably up. I yell (it is a long way down there) He informs me that she had the babies all I hear is “there are only 5 left” So I know that some have died. I throw on some different shoes and run down there. Did I mention that she was in her furrowing pin but decided to break out the day before?? Well she did! So now she is just in the middle of the field. When I get there it is bad. 16 babies were born. 7 died at birth, 4 died shortly after birth, and now there are 5. I had never seen anything like this and I had no idea what to do. I call our farmer friend (again) who has been raising pigs for years. He informs me we have to get her back into the furrowing pin and that he is on his way. Shortly after hanging up the momma rolls over on a baby. I start crying and yelling and pushing her (she weighs like 400 pounds) and eventually we got the piglet out. But the poor thing wasn’t moving much at all and I had a feeling it was going to die. Fast forward and our friend saved the day! He was kind enough to clean up the mess AND get her in the pin. I don’t know what I would have done without him coming by to help or without our little farm boy! Later that day the crushed piggy died which broke my heart again.

Joel finally comes home and Saturday night after the kids are sleeping we are sitting on the couch and I hear what sounds like baby goats. I look at him and say “I am pretty sure Lucy had her babies!” We grab a flash light and sure enough, she did! We worked to make sure everything was ok and babies and momma were nice and warm. I was so thankful that he was home for this birth!

I am sad I didn’t start blogging all our farm mishaps before now….. Because they always seem very comical after the fact!  I have realized talking to other people who have farms that everything we deal with is normal, but non farm folks seem to find lots of humor and disbelief in it all!  I am sure there will be more to come!