I’ve been thinking, a little bit, about how fast everything can change and disappear- not in a bad way, necessarily, but in the way where the small memories that you have fade out pretty quickly. It’s nice to have documentation of that, whether it be by pictures or words.
So, here goes that.
As some of you (many of you who actually still check for updates? probably) may know, I’ve been spending my summer living on a small farm, doing work in (mostly) the morning, and spending the afternoon doing mostly whatever. I was here for a while by myself, and recently my boyfriend came to stay- he is doing remote lab programming work in the afternoons (and just Wednesday I also started an online summer class in the afternoons as well). But I am learning a lot, and having a great time- also getting some outside time/Vitamin D, which is good.
Yesterday morning’s task was to clean out the barn- a task which I had actually been looking forward to for a while. What had happened was that the chickens had, shall we say, flew the coop, and decided that a more fitting spot for them was the barn/loft in the barn. Now, I’m not sure exactly when they made this decision, but it was long enough ago that months (?) of caked up chicken poop was on both the coop and barn. So I was up there in the loft clearing that out and fixing the gaping hole in the floor of the loft. Which was kind of not the pleasantest thing I could think of but very satisfying- especially when we built a wire wall to keep the chickens out once and for all.
Then since the chickens did not know that the coop was their new home, we had to round them up and bring them there- as it turns out, chickens’ brains shut off in the nighttime when they fall asleep, so we were able to pick up big fluffballs of sleeping/almost sleeping chicken and carry them over to the clean (and powerwashed! We used a powerwasher) coop. Which was actually a boatload of fun and consisted of much chasing and flapping of chicken wings.
It also should be noted that they were taking the fact that they couldn’t get into their previous loft home to mean that they created a pile of chickens right next to the wire wall we built. Some of the chickens were choosing to roost on the back of the donkey, which she did not appreciate.
And speaking of chickens, some newborn chicks were hatched the other day! There are 6 of them, and they are incredibly small- they’re also now living inside of the house in a box on the sunroom, because we risk losing them to a coyote/stray donkey hoof more if they’re outside than inside. The mother chicken was sad, but apparently her memory is pretty short- in less than a week, they will be forgotten and unrecognized as her children when they return. Which is also kind of sad. Here are some pictures of the chicks (this (and most other photos in this post) are in a slideshow, so wait for the pictures to load!)
There are of course other benefits of chickens- like, of course, them following you around because they think you have food.
One of the roosters in the flock (a flock of chickens? Unsure, that sounds like it has to be looked up by someone at some time that is not right now) was getting agressive and fighting with the other chickens in the flock, so it was decided that it was time for him to be dinner- which we also learned how to do. We got to see how to pluck/gut a chicken, and I also got this PHENOMENAL picture of my boyfriend looking slightly disgusted which I like to title “Behold a Man” after the famous Plato and Diogenes story that is as follows: “According to Diogenes Laërtius, when Plato gave the tongue-in-cheek definition of man as “featherless bipeds,” Diogenes plucked a chicken and brought it into Plato’s Academy, saying, “Behold! I’ve brought you a man,” and so the Academy added “with broad flat nails” to the definition.”
Unfortunately nobody I’ve talked to thinks that title is as funny as I do (either when referring to this picture or the almost-plucked chickens that are ALIVE), but nevertheless I laugh at it without fail, because I am my own best audience.
We also learned how to do the same thing with a turkey- although cleaning it, instead of gutting it, and so I got this picture of wild turkey meat.
This can be contrasted with the live turkey that was sitting on the tractor (which I then learned to drive, sort of! Only the backhoe part, but that’s the most important part anyway, in my opinion) a la “Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!”
And then of course- of COURSE- we have the goats, who are the primary focus of interest for anyone who visits the farm (i.e. me, my boyfriend, and the neighbor children) because they are cuddly, bottle fed, and babies. We got them my first week here, when they were 1 week and 5 weeks old, respectively, and now they are…. 4 and 8 weeks old? I’ve heard that goats are just like dogs but with more energy, and these ones, when I managed to socialize them by chasing them around and feeding them milk, are very cuddly and playful. We bottle feed them goat’s milk 3 times a day. They are supposed to be weaned between 5-8 weeks, but both of them are well on their way. It should be noted that the last 3 photos in the following slideshow consist of the goat’s journey into the wheelbarrow, on top of it, and after knocking it over. These pictures were taken yesterday- the goats have gotten so much bigger even in the few weeks I have been here.
And then there are all sorts of other projects we are working on- creating a stone patio for a soon-to-be farm stand and learning stone masonry, picking violets for violet jelly (that never got made because the donkey decided the violets would be better served as a nice afternoon snack), building a gate in the barn, learning to drive a backhoe, taking the donkey for walks, building a path and a fence, stacking firewood, finding weird-looking bugs, and lots and lots of cooking. I am enjoying myself quite a lot and getting more confident in my ability to do stuff with minimal instruction. Also using power tools. So yay for that.
American in Moldova 