Life, and the jinx, goes on

Riding Buddy and I had a nice ride on Friday.  The donkeys were very put out at being left behind.

We took one of my favorite trails that loops up around one side of a ravine and circles around to come back down the other.  The ride out was good, the trail clear, but it got a bit interesting on the way back.  That freaky wind that hit here last week came through that area as well and there were trees down everywhere.  There is one stretch of trail that goes down an old seasonal road and there must have been fifty trees down on it.  It looked like a giant had come along and pushed them over.  

"We want to GO!!!  Downed trees are nothing to us!"

Saturday, we made a very small amount of second cutting.  The first cutting on this field all got made into balage.  All of the hay yields in the area are half of normal because of the harsh winter and this whole thing only amounted to 75 bales.  Rather disappointing.

Especially disappointing as the baler broke half way through, one of the needles broke.  A neighbor was driving the tractor and he seemed to forget that all this equipment is ancient, ahem, vintage.  We had to get the farm down the road to bale the rest of it.

The hard part about making second cutting is that it takes just as much time running equipment around the field for a tiny yield as it does to make first cutting and get 500 bales.  The hay is exceptionally beautiful though and very high quality.  It will go towards feeding the pregnant ewes this winter.  My fatsos won't even get to smell it. 

The 100 free-range meat birds are everywhere.  Even the highly obnoxious pigeons who used to steal all the food are intimidated by the poultry horde and are keeping their distance.

Then there are the little velociraptors.  Some people call them turkeys, but if you've ever seen a group of them run around and chase after people, you'd know that they are velociraptors.  They may sound and look adorable, but don't be fooled:)

The sheep all like to hang out in the barn when it is hot out.  If there aren't too many people around, they all lay down and the crazy chickens roost on top of them.  Baby "X" in the middle ended up being Flora.

Seriously, they're everywhere.  They don't actually leave the barn that much.  It's one of the downsides to raising chicks without a hen to mother them.  They never learn to forage well without a mom to show them how.  In the past, we have put the babies under a broody hen so she will adopt them, but there were no hens brooding when this horde arrived. 

Lamby Loo has nearly outgrown the lap.  He's been raised on cow's milk, which is supposedly not great for lambs, but they grow like crazy on this milk.  The bottle babies here always stay with the flock, but get bottle-fed - they have always done extremely well that way.  He is bigger than his siblings now.

Everywhere.

The rototillers hard at work.  These pigs are crazy.  They go flying round their yard, 90 miles an hour, chasing each other.  Whenever a car goes by on the driveway, they come zooming from wherever they are, huffing and barking, trying to chase the car.  They go up and down that ramp like they are trying to launch themselves into orbit.  They really want to prove that pigs can fly.

If you go in there with them, they rush over and chew on your legs.  Fortunately, they have not acquired a taste for poultry yet.  We have had trouble a couple of times in the past with pigs killing and eating chickens.  They just wander up to a foolish hen, like the one in the background, and gobble her up.  It is hard to keep them apart without confining one or the other.  Hopefully, these two will stick to chasing cars and rocket launching.

Time to head out after a hard day's napping.