Growing our own meat seemed like such a good idea at the time. I love lamb dearly, so I started with that, despite most of my livestock-raising experience being in beef cattle or pigs. Lambs are small enough to do well in the smallish pen out back and I had a connection who supplied some local 4-Hers with show lambs to raise. Since they moved the fair up a month this year, he had some small lambs that just wouldn’t have made the weight cut by fair time, so he gave me a good price for them.

I crammed them both into the dog crate when they were weaned, and brought them home. They were born sometime in January, and I got them in March. I didn’t tame them down, thinking that if they even looked a little bit like pets, it would be hard to kill them at slaughter time. I was lucky and got the only black one my friend had – that’s not such a hot color in the show world, but it sure would look nice draped across my couch.

For a while, they were fine. The dogs were interested at first but then left them alone. I started letting them out into the dogs’ side of the yard to take care of the weeds there, and they did fine. Sure, we’d have odd moments like the time the ewe lamb somehow locked herself into the kennel, and going out to take out the trash and coming face-to-face with an alarmed sheep.

But they started demanding their breakfast earlier and earlier, along with the dawn. And on the weekends, man, did that get annoying. There was no such thing as sleeping in, even though they had plenty of hay to munch on. I’d have to find some clothes, cram my feet into my porch shoes, and stomp outside to feed those goddamn sheep. It was mostly the ewe too, not the wether, so I promised her that she’d be the first to go.

When they got big enough, life kept getting in the way. I’d initially thought that we’d have our friend the mobile slaughter-man come around and do them, but it was fair time and he was really busy. Besides, he laughed at us when we asked him. He said, “You’re hunters; there isn’t anything about this that you can’t do.”

So we made a project of it. Since the cruise was cancelled, I had room to take a day off of work, which I did last Friday. We borrowed a hand-cranked hoist from Junior’s dad that fits into the hitch receiver of the truck, since my back is still too torn up to work on the ground. I’d been feeding them near the dog kennel for a few days, thinking that on the morning of the deed, I could just feed them in there to make it easy to catch them.

But that ewe lamb was a wily beast, and she wasn’t having any of that kennel nonsense, even though she routinely went in there just to scope things out on her own. So we had ourselves a bit of a rodeo trying to catch these creatures so we could kill them, and that sure was a lesson learned. Next time, I’ll halter break whatever it is I’m raising to make it easier on all of us at killing time.

But once they were caught and I’d killed them, things went pretty smoothly. They turned out to be a little harder to skin than deer are, so it took us a little longer than we’d anticipated. By the time we got the second one bagged and ready to go, I was a little worried about the first one getting too warm. It was 105 that day, although not quite that hot yet. But we took them up to the meat locker and they were fine. I wanted the locker to cut and wrap them even though Junior and his dad do it all the time with deer because I like to have lamb bone-in and we don’t have a meat saw. Venison is just fine boned out, but little is as fine as a nice crispy bit of marrow on a lamb chop. It was well worth saving my back too, as the whole thing set me back at least a week of healing time.

When we got home, I still had the hides to deal with. I fleshed them out back with the pressure washer, which was nice to keep the heat down if nothing else. Salting them was a bit of an adventure, as deer hides don’t hold anywhere near the amount of water that wool does. I flipped them and they got dried out OK.

So when the locker called yesterday, I was thrilled. The tannery isn’t too far from them, so Seamus and I brushed the excess salt off the hides and took them in. Then we went over to the locker to pick up the meat, and I was glad I brought the big cooler. The carcasses had weighed 76 and 78 pounds, and I think I got most of that back. One of the lambs is for my mom, in trade for a painting she’s done that I fell in love with. It will probably take me more than a year to eat the other one, since I’m the only one who loves it so, but each time I do, I’ll remember them. We raised them respectfully and to be tasty, and I have no doubt that they will be.

But if we do a steer, I’m having someone come in to kill it. I am simply not capable of getting that much weight into the truck!

I got to get up close and personal with a young Grey Fox today.

A fire crew was clearing weeds near one of our vacant buildings, and they looked in a window and saw this guy. Foxes in this building aren’t that unusual, but the door to his room was shut. He must have fallen in from the ceiling. Grey Fox are excellent climbers, and they sometimes use trees to get all the way to the roof of this three-story building. One of the roof access doors in broken, so they get inside and roam around.

When I got there with the snare, I slipped into the room. He hadn’t been trapped for too long, as his eyes were bright and shiny, but long enough to eat the buddy who’d been in there with him. Who knows what that one died of – the fall maybe? It hadn’t been long enough for the dead one to smell too bad either, so the live one wasn’t totally suffering.

He was curled up in a ball watching me with his beady little eyes, trying his best to appear invisible in a completely empty room with no hiding places. He looked young to me, with slight big paws. I know there’s often a litter near this building, and I suspect both foxes were this year’s spawn.

I moved slowly and slipped the noose of the snare over his head. Like a flash, he was through it. I almost caught him by the hips but I wasn’t fast enough to tighten it. He sped around the room a few times, climbing sheer walls at least as high as my head trying to get away from me.

In only a couple of minutes though, he’d settled back down in his corner. He’d been in there long enough to be a little short of energy. I moved ever so slowly and got the noose near him. He bit at it and growled, and yipped a little, but another try got it over his head.

As soon as I tightened it, he went limp. I think he was probably young enough to remember momma carrying him by the scruff, and he didn’t fight at all once I had a hold of him. I slid him out the door and out the back door of the building, which was right there. He held still while I fiddled with the faulty release spring on the snare, but once I had it loose, he was off like a shot.

A little disoriented, the last time I saw him he was headed right back to the corner of the building. I sure hope there’s a run there and he wasn’t just going back up to the roof.

I picked up what was left of the dead one and took it out of the building so it didn’t stink up the place too bad. I hid it in a hot, sunshiny area hoping that I can come back in a few months and pick up a relatively clean skull, which seemed to be intact. But if the local scavengers get it before I do, so be it. I did my part for the live one at least.

Poor Ringo was bounced around a lot in his life. My friend Big Jeff bought him when he was already grown. He had papers (which don’t mean much to Border Collie people) and Jeff was hoping to breed him to his female dog. She never took, but Ringo was his buddy for a few years.

When Jeff went to Iraq, I dogsat for him for almost a year. Angus and I both got pretty attached to Ringo, and when Jeff came home and picked him up, there was a dog-shaped hole in our lives. Jeff must have felt sorry for me, because he brought him back to be my dog.

Angus and Ringo became a fixture in my truck; I used to bring them both to work with me and take them for a run almost every day. Ringo was an odd dog, terrified of cameras and guns. He was very friendly but didn’t have an ounce of ball drive in him, unusual for a Border Collie. He was great with the kids and left the livestock alone.

But I’d been seeing a red spot on his eye. It would come and go, and I thought he was scratching it on something. Last week both eyes were so red that he was blind. He was feeling around for obstacles with his front feet and moving like he was sore. I took him in today, telling myself that if it was just a weird thing, he could live out his blind life at the house that he knows. But I wasn’t willing to put him through too much pain.

The vet’s initial thought was that it was a poisoning. He was bleeding into his eyes and his gums were white. He was acting like he had internal pain too. An early catch of poisoning is curable, but this has been going on for a while. Treating this would be expensive and iffy, and I just don’t have the money right now to throw at something that may or may not work. I’ve lost a dog to poisoning before, when I should have let him go sooner, and it’s not a pleasant death.

So I said goodbye at the vet’s office and let Ringo go for the last time. Angus will miss him and so will I. I had him for three and a half years. He was a good dog that had too hard of a life.

The last time I had a goat, it was at my house in town. He was a fun pet, but not really appropriate for town. The landlady would not have approved of a house-goat, although Elvis thought otherwise. After finding him in the living room for the third time, I finally cobbled together a fix to keep him from eating the sliding door screen. But then when I had to put down his doggie buddy, he got obnoxious. He hollered all day and bothered the neighbors, although how they could hear him over the yapping shit of a dog behind us, I’ll never know.

So I sent him off to live at a dairy with some other Pygmies. He was happy and I was happy.

Enter an acre and some other livestock. Now, I intend to eat this livestock; they are not pets. OK, maybe some of the chickens sort of are, but definitely not the sheep.

And we were offered a bummer goat from a dairyman my mother-in-law knows. I could see where this was going. I did not want to bottle feed another baby. I did not want to have my garden destroyed when a goat broke into it. I did not want to hear goaty shrieking when I slaughtered the sheep. Goats might be fun, but they’re also rather naughty. And it’s one more thing to have to feed when we’re gone.

So we waffled for a while. Junior wanted a goat “for the kids.” Sure, the kids who are collectively here half the time? Guess who would have to take care of the goat? Then the in-laws were going to take it. Fine by me, really. But then I got talked into it, and last weekend we went to pick up the (fortunately weaned) baby goat.

His name is Calvin, so I guess we’re not going to eat him. He looooves me. Clung to me as much as a little monkey of a goat can cling when we picked him up, but then, he’d just been castrated and didn’t feel so hot, and I probably most resemble the woman who was feeding him. Now he follows me around the yard and hollers if I get out of sight, but he settles down when I’ve been gone a little. He’s only broken into the garden once, and the kids caught that pretty quickly.

So I guess I like the little bugger.

We’ve got what’s essentially another animal pen in the far back, besides the garden and the two we’re using. It’s open to the concrete behind the shop and is more a utility area than anything else. The garbage cans are back there, and the dogs, and there’s a weedlot growing too.

So I’ve been letting the sheep out there to take care of the weeds. I can stop worrying about the collies harassing the sheep. The stupid collie is scared of them and hides in his dog house all day. The smart one is now their friend. He’s not much good for herding from the back, but they’ll follow him anywhere. It is a little alarming to go put the trash cans away and have not two faces run to greet you, but four. The woolly ones are always surprised that I’m a person and run away again, but then, they’re much dumber than even a stupid Border Collie.

So it was getting to be dusk tonight; time to round up the critters. I went out to feed them to bribe them back into their own pen, but they didn’t come. I could see them, so I didn’t know what was up with that. Until I looked a little closer: either they themselves or Angus had herded the both of them into the dog kennel on the concrete and, get this, then managed to shut the door. They didn’t get it latched of course; not even the smartest collie has thumbs. But there the two raving morons were, having pulled every last bit of straw out of the kennel’s dog house, standing there looking at me like, “What?”

So I let them out and they raced on over to where dinner was, only to be bamboozled by a cat. The housecat had got into their pen and was keeping them from the gate. Not very bright on anyone’s part there. Finally I got the gate shut behind them and all animals into the correct spots. The sheep, instead of eating, went for a sproing-fest, springing around their pens like really heavy deer, apparently for the sheer joy of it.

This aggravated the chickens in the next pen. Most of them sensibly ran for the coop when faced with two hundred pounds of sproinging idiocy, but not my main rooster. Not only did I finally figure out who’s crowing (the dominant one, as I’d suspected,) but I got to watch a rooster face down the enemy. Several times. While all the other chickens were in a flapping panic, the Lakenvelder was rushing the fence, puffing himself up and chasing the sheep. Who ran away. Each time.

I was laughing so hard at all of this that I was crying. Sheep a-bouncing, roosters charging, a horrified cat and a very smug collie makes for one entertaining evening.

This poultry endeavor just keeps chugging along. I get so much fun from these silly birds that they’d be worth the effort even if we weren’t planning on edible byproducts.

We moved the first batch out to the coop and left them locked in for at least a month. Finally, we finished putting up the fence dividing their pen from the sheep pen. I still had to chicken-proof the back fence to keep them from getting onto the highway. I had to dig a trench, lay chicken wire in it, staple that to the wooden fence, and then bury the end. It won’t keep a determined raccoon from getting in, but those are prone to go over the fence anyway. I just didn’t want to make it easy for my birds to become pancakes.

So last week we opened their door and let them out. They were dubious for the first few days, but by now they’re jumping out as soon as it’s open, and spreading all over their yard having a good old time picking at bugs and grass. I’ll probably lose a couple to hawks but this is just too big of a yard to put a roof on.

The next batch of birds was going to come from the incubator. Only two of the twelve were developing, so the day they were due to hatch, I bought two more pullets, Barred Rocks this time, to keep them company. And Junior saw the turkeys at the feed store and decreed that we should try a couple of those too, so there they are. They endearing in their idiocy. Of the two chicks that hatched, Easter Eggers, one got pretty sick at around a week old, so I had to put it down. I think the remaining month-old hatchling is a cockerel. I may keep him. They’re about ready to join the bigger chickens in the coop, but I’ll have to put up a cage so they can get acquainted without too much fighting.

I thought I’d try one more time with the incubator, so as soon as these were out, I put 16 more fertile eggs in, half Silver-Laced Wyandottes possibly crossed with Blue-Laced Red Wyandottes, and half Mottled Houdans. My fertility on this batch was really good, and fourteen made it to lockdown. Of that, half hatched, which is a decent percentage for shipped eggs. Two are the Houdans, which have a feathered topknot like the Polish Crested chickens I had as a kid. All of those seem to be doing well in the baby brooder at a week old.

I got fed up with fiddling with my cheap incubator, so I ordered a homemade job over the internet. That may have been a mistake; the construction quality certainly isn’t anywhere near what Junior would make. I’ve been instructed to leave wooden things to him for now. We can’t tell if it works until we get the fan fixed and some more eggs to incubate. Frankly, I’m a little sick of babysitting temperatures and humidity, so I may just leave that until next year. 30 chickens is a fine number for now, even if half are roosters. We’ll keep some of those and eat the rest, as the other part of the project. They’ve been an interesting diversion.

I’m clearly sick.

I’m getting feverish in the most odd situations.

I’ve developed a horrible cough…. hackcoughI’lltaketwohack….

I tend to lose perspective when in the presence of the chick bins at the feed store.

I seem to have the chicken flu.

The twelve original birds, ten pullets and two cockerels, were joined the next day by six more roosters. I needed to have enough to eat, after all.

The little trough I was using as a brooder was getting cramped. It didn’t have a top, and at less than a week old, some of the birds were already trying to stretch their wings.

I looked around for something bigger. A large trough would have been just the ticket, but it would have been an expensive ticket. We thought about dividing up the coop since we don’t have birds in it yet, but I’d have to run a couple of extension cords out for their heat lamp. So I set Junior to the problem, and bought some hardware cloth to cover whatever he came up with.

What he came up with was sort of genius. The old residents here had a peach bin that I think they’d been storing feed in. I had it tipped on its side to keep the dog food out of the rain. Junior cleaned it up, plugged the holes, brought it into the garage, and made a lid for it.

Now the chickens have room to grow. When they outgrow this, out to the coop they go, even if they still need a light. Besides, I hope to need the brooders again soon, as I have ten more eggs coming in the mail, and six after that.

But with all of this space, sending me to the Tractor Supply for epoxy was a bad idea. They only like to sell chicks in sixes, but if you ask nicely and tell them you have eighteen more, they might let you buy only two. So I came home with epoxy and two more interesting-looking chicks. I have no idea what kind they are.

Twenty is a much nicer number than eighteen, don’t you think? And I think I’ll get better any year now. Is there a vaccine for the bird flu? Keep it far away from me, please!

It seems to be a rule in life (or mine anyway) that one doesn’t buy a cat. No, one runs across cats, one is selected by a cat, or one inherits a cat with a farm. I’ve never had to go looking for one. When there is a cat-shaped opening, one will appear.

My first cat as a child was a kitten from my aunt’s barn cat. My sister and I were absolutely floored that our parents let us bring it home. She was always a hair wild and standoffish, but we loved her. Since then, every cat I’ve interacted with on a regular basis was a cat of destiny. There was the cancer-riddled tortoiseshell who lived at the vet’s office I worked at. Her owners had abandoned her and I couldn’t bring her home. The vet was kind enough to let her live her life out there, nominally my cat.

My next cat, the first one that was truly mine, also came from that vet. She was rescued as a tiny kitten full of worms from a local fire. Her eyes weren’t quite open yet. I took her home and bottle fed her (and try explaining that one to your High School English teacher who was so very kind and let me keep her in her classroom to feed during the day) and raised her to be mine. That was the movingest cat I’ve ever had; she went to college with me and several towns after that. She predated and succeeded my first marriage.

There were cats in between. A couple of tuxedos at the animal shelter I worked at, both named Mouse to keep some sense of plausible deniability from the boss.  A big black kitten that showed up at the house, and who I had to leave when I got a divorce. Sorry Elmo. A neighborhood cat in the next house who decided that she would be mine for about six months, until her actual people caught her and locked her back in their crack den.

And Booger, King of all my cats. He was a barely-weaned feral kitten who had the good sense to turn up just outside my office window. He hollered for a couple of days while I slowly baited him with lunches and cat food. Finally, I went after work and lured him into my reach with kibble. Driving home in shorts with a pissed-off feral kitten wasn’t my brightest plan – I’d forgotten a box, but he warmed up to us after hiding behind the toilet for a day or two.

Since Junior doesn’t particularly care for cats, I didn’t plan to welcome any more. But the gophers are driving him nuts, and he surprised me by suggesting that an outside cat or two wouldn’t be amiss around here. So the universe should have sent me a cat, and I thought it did. I’m a big fan of the orange cats, although I’ve never had one, and there was a nice young orange tom hanging around work. He’s not completely feral, as he talks to me as I walk by instead of running away. He lives a few buildings down from us, and they’ve been feeding him and his siblings. So I thought I’d bribe him in and take him to get neutered.

But Seamus and I took a tour of the Animal Control’s new facility last week with the 4-H group, and it came to me that I could pick up a cat there for less than the price of having one vaccinated and neutered on my own. Junior didn’t particularly care if he helped pick it out or not, so the girls and I went, just to look.

It seems there’s no such thing as “just looking” at cats. We found a lively orange and white older kitten with beautiful dark orange eyes that we wanted to look at. I wasn’t aiming for a female cat, and long hair could be a detriment around here with the foxtails. And then down the hall, there was a nice-looking older short-haired buff male tabby. We asked to see them both, and the shelter people were happy to show them to us. I was waffling about which one to pick (which is why we didn’t ask to see fifteen) when the light bulb went on. Junior had said one or two cats, so technically I had an in. The universe agreed with me, as it turned out that cats are almost a two-for-one deal. The second cat is only $15, all neutered and everything.

So here we are, with two more cats. I misheard something one of the girls said about the female cat. I thought she said Cheddar when she was talking about a cat named Shadow (she mumbles) and decided that would be an excellent name for the cat with the cheddary eyes.

The male cat’s name is coming slowly to me. Colby would be the logical choice, but it doesn’t seem to fit him. I like people names for animals, and this dignified gentleman needs a nice mature name. I was considering Chuck and Hank, but I think he’s more of a Pete. Like the cat in The Door Into Summer, he’s slightly obsessed with doors. I have a feeling that he was an inside cat, as he certainly wants to be one now, but Booger won’t be having that. So Mr. Pete is being very good and tolerant of flighty Cheddar, and I hope between the two of them, we can have a good mouser.

This is the first time in my life that I’ve ever paid for cats, but I think I’m OK with it. Taking the both of them home was definitely the universe’s trick on me. You know, it was only a week ago that we only had three animals here. Now we’ve got 25. It’s been a busy week.

So it seems that I screwed up with the eggs in the incubator. I candled them a couple of days ago, at about two weeks of development, and the only ones that showed any shadows at all looked more like one-week eggs. So I did some research, which I totally should have done first. It seems that if you leave the ones that don’t develop, or those that start and then die (quitters) in the incubator, they can start to rot and off-gas. Which kills the rest of them. I should have taken out the two that broke, but they were stuck so firmly to the turner that I was worried that I’d explode them and have to deal with rotten eggs in the house.

So I threw out that batch. I still have another 16 ordered on eBay, so I’ll give it another shot, and probably more during the summer too.

In the meanwhile, the last time I was at the feed store – the good local one, not the Tractor Supply – they had Silver-Laced Wyandotte chicks available. I had Golden-Laced Wyandottes in the incubator, so I thought some of those chicks would go well with my whole slightly exotic dual-purpose chicken flock I was planning to build.

They get chicks in on Thursdays, so at lunchtime, I stopped on the way home. Of course, no Wyandottes. But they did have Ameraucana pullets, which are the ones that lay the colored eggs, and Buff Orpingtons, which are nice and big brown egg layers. I got five of each of those. I also picked up a couple of Rhode Island Red roosters, but I think I’ll go get some more tomorrow. I predict that I’m going to have too much fun with the laying flock to want to kill too many of them, so I’d better have some extra boys around for the soup pots.

I had set up the brooder on Wednesday night. I had most of the stuff from that misguided duck egg project, but I got a better heat lamp. Once I had all of the things in the trough that I use, I decided that it looked a little crowded, so I picked up a smaller feeder and waterer when I bought the chicks. They seem perfectly content in their temporary home, and I plan to finish my part of their big coop this weekend. We’ve got a few weeks before they’re big enough to go out there anyway.

With all of this space out back, keeping the weeds down was a real hassle. Junior’s worked hard on getting the soil leveled so it would be easier to run the mower over but it’s still a big chunk. So while we were putting up fences for the chicken yard, we figured we’d put up one more fence for a little livestock.

Sheep are my meat animals of choice right now. I thought they’d be easier to start with than a steer, as the pen’s not all that big. They’re better about grazing grass than a goat, who’ll go for your landscaping if you give it half a chance. And lamb is my very favorite meat.

Growing our own meat (the lambs and the chickens too) goes along well with the big garden. I’ve always wanted to grow more of my own food. If I had a bigger place I’d get even more ambitious, but this is a good start. I like knowing what goes into what goes into me, and I like giving the kids an education in where their food comes from. With all the hunting we do, these kids aren’t under the misconception that meat comes in a plastic package from the grocery store, but this will be even more personal. This is meat that we directly had a hand in growing. We’re taking full responsibility that in order to feed us, we’ll have to kill things. We’ll do it cleanly and with respect, but these are by no means pets, and I’ll be reminding the kids of that every chance I get. They do not get names.

So once we decided to try this, I started asking around for lambs to buy. One lamb would be miserable and lonely, but two are fine. I would have liked three, but two is what I found. I’m not ready to mix lambs from different flocks yet; I want to keep my diseases under control here. I haven’t touched sheep for twenty years, since college, but I still remember some things.

The producer I found was recommended by a local friend. I knew him too, but I didn’t know he had sheep. He’s a rancher and farmer and happens to have a few ewes that he’s accumulated over the years. Only two lambs weren’t spoken for, and he gave me a really good price on them, and lots of good advice. We went and picked them up with the dog crate on Monday, and if I’d waited even another week, I’d have had to take two trips. They’re much bigger than they’d been the week before when I scoped them out.

I was worried that the dogs would run these things to death through the fence. They’re Border Collies, after all. Chasing sheep is what they’re bred to do, and Ringo is a known livestock worrier, which is part of the reason that I have him. Since my training collar was dead and only had one receiver unit anyway, I took the opportunity to buy a pro trainer model, with two collars. I got the set just in time and reminded the dogs what that collar means. They know; they behave perfectly well with the collars on.

Still, I was a little leery when I turned the lambs out in their pen. Ringo was nowhere to be seen; he sulks when the collar’s on even if he hasn’t felt it in days. Angus was intrigued though, paying close attention right at the gate but not getting excited or trying to chase. We stood out there and watched the lambs explore their new surroundings for a while and I was very surprised to see them march right up to the gate. They sniffed noses with Angus and then walked away; all was well. He remains interested and likes to lay near their fence but I haven’t caught him trying to chase one time. Good dog.

So they’ll be an interesting project. There will be challenges along the way, no doubt, but I think it’ll be rewarding. Certainly the end result will be, which we should reach around the end of June. Tasty, tasty lamb in my freezer, mmm!