Animal Farm

This is Phinneas, or Furrbut. I can't really tell them apart unless I try to pick them up. Furrbutt loves to be picked up, Phinneas not so much. They are out "barn" cats and pretty good mousers. They get the occasional bird and young rabbit and even butterfly too.

Remeber those chicken tractor's from last week? Well this is what it looks like to be living in them. these chickens are called meat kings. All they do is eat, drink and grow. And make a huge mess. We have to move this housing unit every 2 days.

These are the turkeys. much like the meat kings but even dumber and not as tough. 

Les boys. that our rooster in the foreground and our ram behind him. They are pretty good guys but don't turn you back on Caesar, the ram, he can get playful.

This the a shot of some of the ewes and lambs on the pasture. I'd like to get them more tame but most of the time they are just causing trouble.

This is the chicken yard with just a single egg layer willing to face the camera. Chickens are funny animals.

New Beginning

I have arrived at my new home in New Brunswick and the getting tired and dirty has begun. This is the house:

Charming isn't it :) Someday maybe I'll show you inside. After we get a couch and TV so we look a bit more normal. For now I'll do a little photo tour outside.

Beatrice has come with us:

And she has a sister, for now at least, Betsy:

We have a multipurpose outbuilding made of a Shipping container, or Sea can as they are called locally, with some rooms added on one side:

A garden struggling in through a cold wet spring and the ravages of crows:

I seem to have brought hot Ontario weather with me this week and a scarecrow is on the to do list so hopefully it'll get a bit more green in coming weeks. And to finish off a different kind of tractor:

Chicken tractors! These mobile housing units were ingeniously built by my big bro currently AKA Big Muddy. Thanks Bro! They are providing shelters for our new laying hens and some meat king pullets. 

Next time we'll go out back and take a closer look at all of the animals.

P.S.: Thanks to ECJ for the generous donation of the machine of photos that captured these images. 

Real

So I got kind of busy there for a while what with the move and all but that battle with materialism is for another post. Today I want to talk about yesterday. Yesterday I went to the Tweed property and took down the temporary garage that has been shielding Beatrice from the elements the past couple of years and was generously donated by friends. I packed it up so Beatrice can take it to New Brunswick in her bucket and in New Brunswick it can once again be her shield.

It was a sad drive leaving the property. This time it really felt final, I have no more excuses to return. But the finality is not the source of my sadness. Over the past couple of years I had done some work on the property, not much but what I could without having deeded ownership and yesterday I could really see that the process of all my efforts coming undone are underway. The property is not posted for sale and the forces of nature are reclaiming their dominion. In the grand scheme of things I know that is not so bad - the world can use all the natural habitat it can get. But right now my sheds are still standing, the cleared areas are still mostly grass and the bunkie is beautiful. The grass is full of baby bushes and trees and the rain cover has blown off the first shed. Without maintenance it will not survive the winter.

It made me even more sympathetic to the people we purchased our New Brunswick farm from. Many people might think they were crazy for wanting to sell it to people who would continue to hobby farm the property rather than take more money from the clear cutters who wanted the wood. I saw their point from the start but after yesterday I think I really understand both their sadness in selling it and their relief that it was bought by people like us. My sense of stewardship of the land has increased.

I can only imagine the sadness of old farmers watching their children sell off generations of toil and care and love to the "developers". Or worse yet - having to do so themselves.