Happenings on the Ranch

I have long maintained that living and working on a farm teaches great lessons to children.  The value of hard work, how to care for something other than yourself, and to understand that an animal relies solely on you for its health and well-being are all lessons that will carry them through to adulthood.  There are also the lessons about where our food truly comes from.  The eggs come from the chickens, not the case at the back of the grocery store.  No matter how attached you are to a particular food, if it was meant for butcher, it goes to the butcher.  You know the name of the pork chop you’re eating.  You also know where it came from, how it was raised and how it was treated during it’s lifetime.  You learn how to grow a tomato from seed to fruit, along with every other vegetable imaginable.  And, as a result, you learn to appreciate your food – good food.

I didn’t learn to cook as I was growing up.  In fact, my brother and I weren’t allowed in the kitchen unless it was our turn to do the dishes.  Meals were placed on the table at the exact same time every day and snacks were very planned.  The unfortunate part of this is that my mother has never been an exceptional cook.  She never learned what seasoning was (and, to this day, removes the salt from any recipe she makes).  She also turned into the Microwave Queen in the early 80′s and never looked back.  My first husband’s family was mortified when I was at their house at age 15 and made scrambled eggs in the microwave.  I’ve never lived that down.

It wasn’t until well after I was married that I began to experiment with cooking.  Many, many of those dishes were absolute disasters.  Like my mother, I didn’t know how to spice food.  I had grown up on bland food and overcooked meat, so getting past that took a very … long … time.  But once I started to experiment and truly let myself go in the kitchen, I found that I had a knack for creating dishes.  This came in very handy while I was a single mom raising three kids on military pay.  Whatever happened to be in the cupboard turned into that night’s dinner.  Occasionally a fellow Marine from the barracks would come for a good home cooked meal and I was always rewarded with high praise.  Which only made me want to cook more.  Now, I enjoy cooking and baking and continue to experiment and tweak recipes to this day.

Which is why I’ve always had my kids in the kitchen.  I thought it would be a good idea to get them off to a good start by teaching them the basics early on.  They’ve alway enjoyed it and our 14-yr-old son especially took to baking … and all kinds of weird experimental concoctions have come out of it.  (Alien green cake, anyone?)

Tonight, Tess (11) and Megan (13) pooled their efforts and created a fabulous fruit salad.  Watermelon, cantaloupe, peaches and apples, tossed with walnuts and seasoned with fresh mint leaves; it was just the perfect cool meal on a hot summer night. 

The finished product was delicious.  The girls took the rinds from the melons and used them as bowls for serving.  Pretty creative for a quick meal.  Well, with all the goofing around it actually took them over an hour to get it done, but it was worth the wait.

1. The thermometer in the greenhouse reads “The devil called; he wants his furnace back.”
2. Just looking out the window at what needs to be harvested makes you sweat.
3. 15 minutes outside requires 25 minutes inside and 2 liters of water.
4. You hallucinate that each vegetable you pull off the plants is yelling, “Pick me! Pick me!”
5. The day’s weather page in the Old Farmer’s Almanac says, “Don’t even ask.”
6. Both you and your chickens are walking around with your wings up trying to stay cool.
7. When your spouse compliments you on your “healthy glow” they’re referring to your sunburn.
8. Instead of going out the open door, the dogs just stand with their legs crossed.
9. Your hay fork gets stuck in the bale because it melted.
10. The calendar says July.

No, they’re not poltergeist.  But they are like something out of a scary movie.  They’re both fascinating and terrifying at the same time from our perspective.  It’s survival of the fittest. Who’s quicker, us or them?  They have stealth on their side but we have a rifle.  They invade quietly, one on the attack while the other waits in the tree line.

They’re coyotes.

They’re beautiful animals, they really are.  But the first three years we raised poultry they wrecked havoc on our flocks.  Since the chickens ranged across the back three acres of the property these predators figured out they could get a quick, easy meal without much effort.  Just run through the tree line and grab a grazing chicken and keep on running.

This year we moved all the flocks to the front of the property so we could keep an eye on them and the dogs could be around to ward off predators.  Not just the coyotes, but foxes, opposums and raccoons, too.  It had worked really well thus far.  Last year we had lost around 65 chickens by this time.  Crazy, right?  This year we hadn’t lost any.  Until now.

They’re back.  They’re feeding hungry babies and have gotten desperate enough to come to the front of the property.  They creep slowly up to a cluster of trees and just wait for the chickens or turkeys to wander close enough to the fence line.  Then, boom.  Like a shot out of a cannon one darts out, grabs the unsuspecting bird in it’s jaws without slowing down.  The pace picks up as she runs full speed toward the back of the property.  Her mate waits in the shadows as she joins him and they head off to feed the babies.  Four days in a row now we’ve lost one or two birds per day.

It would be more if my mother-in-law wasn’t so vigilant.  She keeps an eye from her bedrooom window which faces toward their hunting grounds.  If the birds wander too far, she blows her whistle to get their attention and bring them back.  If she sees a coyote, she blows the whistle even louder.  That’s our cue to grab the rifle and head out the door.  I’m a true animal lover and I’d hate to have to shoot one because they’re just trying to feed their family; but so am I.  Survival of the fittest.

If this keeps up we may need to fence in a large area for the chickens and another for the turkeys.  We’ve already started on an area for the younger birds, but it may need to be expanded just to protect our flock.  If they’ve got no food, maybe the coyotes will go somewhere else to eat.