Brian Boucheron Stuff and Also Things

Rainy Days

I seem to keep getting yelled at for my blog inaction. I guess my five readers are desperate for farm-based updates. This past weekend was a rainy and semi-lazy one. It actually started on Thursday with a rainy and cold day, which kept us inside for most everything but the chores. It felt like a weird day of waiting to work but not doing anything, and I got a little screwed up. It really wasn’t a day off in my brain, but I tried to make that mental transition, knowing that we’d have to make up time on Saturday or Sunday.

Friday was equally cold and rainy. We had a mob of children come visit the farm, which was… entertaining. I took some photos and then ran and hid in the barn. They appeared to enjoy seeing all of the animals and petting lambs and whatnot. If I recall my field-trip days though, they were probably just happy to be outside, roughhousing and doing nothing constructive.

Saturday and Sunday continued the trend of cold and rain. We moved animals on Sunday, just so we could say we got some durn work done for once. Oh, and also because the oxen kept getting out of their fence, due to the fact that they had eaten up all their pasture, and oh look, there’s green grass right over there!

Oh! So that’s a good story, I suppose. One of the goats was due to kid on Friday. So after the kids (human) all left and Derek and Maribeth left the farm to go do something, I go outside to check on the goat and make sure there’s no signs of labor yet. But there was a rather prominent sign, that being a baby goat on the ground, covered in goo. Yikes! So I ran inside to tell Adam (the other intern) and we went out and started pretending to know what we were doing. Meanwhile Gregory from up the hill pulls into the driveway, honking and carrying on. This is when we were notified that the oxen were out and heading towards the garden. (!)

So somehow it was decided that Adam would take care of the midwifery and I would go pretend to be a teamster and get the oxen back where they belong. I ran and got their leads and lickin’ stick and set off hoping for the best. I guess it’d be a better story if there was any difficulty, but it was really absurdly easy. I’m not sure if they’re like dogs, in that you have to sound dominant or wrassle them and win before they listen to you… but once I got their leads on (which is really the hardest part, but a bowl of grain helps keep them from running away) they seemed to accept fate and do as they were told. Luckily, I had just worked out a mnemonic to remember the commands… gee, haw, hip, woah are the basics. Gee means go right, and I remember that because it sounds like “get” in the redneck accent used to yell at Rachel’s dogs, and since you lead from the left it works out, spatially speaking. Haw is for going left, and it reminds me of southpaw, so that’s pretty easy. Hip is the opposite of woah, and if you don’t know woah then you’ve never had your mom pour milk for you.

Also, I found a Guinea egg over the weekend. Guinea Fowl are terrible poultry-like-objects that I’ve probably complained about before. They make lots of noise and seem even dumber than chickens. They hang out in the yak pen alot, and indeed that is where I found the farm’s first Guinea Fowl egg. It’s a bit squatter and smaller than your normal chicken egg, with a rougher shell. I failed to photograph it whilst frying, but it had a larger yolk than one would expect, with very little white. The yolk was very orange, almost reddish inside, no doubt from all the god-knows-what they’re eating out on the farm every day.

It tasted like any ol’ egg. I found two more yesterday, and ate those too.

Beat

It’s nine o’clock on a Sunday night, and I’m already considering going to bed. This is sad not only because it’s so early, but also because I did relatively little today. Morning and evening chores, and that’s about it. I suppose I also rode my bike into town for the first time, but that’s not work really.

It was, sadly enough, a challenge though. Two and a half miles to Ashfield proper, quite a bit of that is hill, and I am definitely out of shape. I’m thinking it will become a good Sunday routine: write letters all morning, ride to town and mail them, pick up some beer, eat a slice of pizza, zip down the other side of the hill at dangerous speeds. By the end of the summer perhaps I’ll be used to living in an area with actual elevation changes!

Speaking of out of shape… last week we put the boys to work for the first time this spring. By “we” I mean “Derek”, because there’s no way I’ll be driving the team anytime soon, if ever. They were especially spunky this first time out, and there was lots of yelling and wrassling and I almost had to make a call to see if my car insurance covers oxen damage. Luckily they stopped inches short of my bumper, but you quickly realize that if they don’t want to do something, such as stop or go or turn or not gore you, there’s really not much you can do about it. But they eventually got down to it and dragged an old tractor tire around, filled with rocks. They got tired pretty quick, but they’ll be whipped into shape soon enough.

We also walked the yaks last week. That was quite the hoot. It’s almost a good thing they’re so skittish and want to run away from you, because I wouldn’t want them running at me. Walking the yaks is much like walking a dog, only bigger and with horns. Once you manage to grab one in its pen, you just clip on a leash and hold on tight. They were pretty spunky too, as it was also their first time out after the long winter. After a little while they settled down and would walk by your side and heel pretty well without pulling at the leash. I wish I had photos of that, but alas, I don’t have a personal photographer around to take flattering pictures of me in my new habitat.

Stimulating Activities

I have been reprimanded for not posting enough, and for not taking enough pictures of baby animals. One of those “problems” is easy to remedy. As you may be noticing, this post is awash in photographs of cute baby sheep and goats and even a bad puppy. Enjoy!

As far as writing more, I suppose I’ll have to just write about the minute doings of my current life. I guess maybe that’s interesting. Today, I drove a tractor. A tractor with a bucket thingy and separate pedals for forward and reverse, and separate left and right brakes. It seems like a really good idea to me, to have four pedals available for maximizing your messing up potential.

I used the tractor to do two things: After we mucked out all the stalls this morning, I had to scrape the bedding away from the barn and scoop it into the big steamy pile of cow goo. I feel like the bucket control lever could have a much more intuitive interface (perhaps a scroll wheel or a trackpad?) but I managed to get the hang of it just fine. In the afternoon I had to take water up to the oxen, who are out on pasture finally (they were very happy to be out of the barn, and I wish I had shot video of the terrifying sight of a 1600 pound oxen jumping and bucking with glee whilst stumbling down the hillside towards the tiny yet apparently effective portable electric fencing). This involves filling a basin and toting it up the hill in the tractor’s bucket, whilst not spilling too much. I got it all the way up the hill, and dropped it as I was setting it down inside the fence. Round two was more successful, with the boys receiving not only fifteen gallons of water, but also their surprisingly heavy mineral block for licking upon.

It only took two days for me to get zapped by the aforementioned fencing. It felt similar to when I plugged in my Lite-Brite incorrectly (read: while squeezing the prongs together to fit it in the outlet), only this time no thoughts of turning into a robot crossed my mind, and I find that terribly disappointing.