Sunday, May 31, 2015

Baby chicks

"Grandpa, when you hold a baby chick, you let it sit on one hand and then you put your other hand in front of it so it can't jump off," Jasper told his Grandpa Dave. "And you don't hold it too tight."
                                           photo by Dave Ellison

Dave and I have been talking about buying baby chicks  again for the last few years. We like having chickens running around the barn yard, but we don't like losing them to racoons, weasels, skunks and our very own dog. This spring we've had our grandson Jasper here for five days and our grandsons Kieran and Simon will be up next week for seven. It seems the perfect time to get baby chicks. The boys will learn about baby chicks and Dave and I will have to critter proof the chicken coop so the boys can  experience the chickens.

Jasper and I emptied the coop of everything we'd stored there in place of chickens. Then we forked out the old bedding. Jasper learned how to use a pitch fork and I learned how to avoid the tines on Jasper's fork. Next we rebedded the coop with fresh straw. After nap time, we drove to Detroit Lakes. The chicks were stored in three foot long stock tanks with heat lights hanging overhead. Jasper and I picked out five yellow ones, five brown ones, five speckled one and five black ones. They peeped loudly in a box on the back seat next to Jasper on the way home. Then we took them out to the barn and one by one let them loose under the big metal umbrella shaped brooder. We turned on the heat lamp, filled a waterer, and then  filled a feed trough with chick starter. The chicks immediately began exploring. They dipped their beaks into the water and then tipped their heads back. A little drop of water glistened on the tip of each beak as they swallowed.

One at a time Jasper and I picked up each chick, held it carefully in our hands and felt their fuzzy heads with our cheeks. We looked at their eyes and their beaks. Jasper kissed each one on the top of the head. We all bonded.

When our friends Budd, Kate and Marguerite came to see the lambs today, Marguerite followed Jasper into the barn to see the chicks. As I set a little yellow baby onto her hands, she smiled, and her fingers curled instinctively around the little puff of life just as mine did when I first picked a chick up and as Jasper has learned to do. Marguerite remembered the chicks they had as a child and the chick in her hand brought her joy.

By the time Jasper returns to the farm in a month or so, the chicks will be unrecognizable - almost full grown chickens, but he'll have the memory in his hands and his mind and on his lips of baby chicks and that memory will be with him forever, bringing him joy.


Saturday, May 2, 2015

A real shepherd

                                                                          photo by Kate Andrews

Kate is a friend of ours. When she moved back to Pelican Rapids to help care for her elderly parents, she offered to farm sit for us, caring for the dog, cats and sheep. She has become quite a good shepherd.

Kate feeds hay and corn to the sheep and checks the animals daily when we are gone. A year ago, while we were in Missouri,  our rams got into the ewes' pasture a month early. Kate led the rams back to their own pasture and then repaired the fence. Last fall she taught dyeing at our fiber day. This winter she helped with shearing. This spring she  recorded  while Dave and I inoculated lambs. In the last month, Kate has brought Budd,  her father, to visit the lambs nearly every day. He's 94 years old and is slowing down, forgetting things, perfectly happy to drowse on the sofa for much of the day. But Kate shepherds him off the sofa, out of the house and into the car for a trip to the farm. Then she and her dad sit in the sun and love the bottle lambs. The lambs nuzzle their hands, chew on their shoe laces, and rub their heads against Budd's knees. While they sit and watch, some of the lambs' energy rubs off on Budd. He returns home full of joy about the experience and memories of the sheep he had when he was a child.

Kate spends the time at the farm beside her father observing the sheep. "Number 3 blue is limping,"
she told us when we returned home from playing with our grandchildren. "Number 31 is breathing real fast," she said on the phone last night, "Even when he's lying down. I watched him for half an hour."

Dave and I would eventually see the limp and the rapid breathing, but not as fast as Kate has. We don't take the time to sit and watch our sheep at this time of the year. We're too busy with other things. Even though she hasn't birthed a lamb in the middle of the night or baled hay or cut off a tail, Kate is a real shepherd. She carefully watches over the animals, the true definition of shepherd.