When farm animals escape

August 29, 2009

Since moving to the country I’ve learned that sometimes smart cattle and sheep perform the farm equivalent of a prison break – with one key difference. Instead of breaking out, they break in.

After work one evening last week, I was on my way to the chook house to collect the day’s eggs when I came across two cows in the backyard. They were just beyond the laundry line, clearly on the wrong side of the fence.

Of course I did what any level-headed city boy would do upon coming face to face with two large, beastly escaped convict cows by the laundry line. I turned around and ran the other way.

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Your chicken killers are here

August 22, 2009

Rick and I were both wearing clothes we wouldn’t mind getting blood on as we drove up Aussie Bronwyn’s driveway in our little city boy Nissan Pulsar.

Axe - photo by milan6

Axe - photo by milan6

When Aussie Bronwyn came to the door – the High Priestess of Chicken Wisdom herself – Rick called out ‘Your loyal chicken killers are here!” My stomach turned.

Was I really going to do this?

At a dinner party a few months before, Rick had said to Aussie Bronwyn, “If you ever need help killing chickens, let me know.”

In some circles this might be considered an odd thing to say at a dinner party. Not here.

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Giant beings in the bottom paddock

August 15, 2009

In our first few months here, the grass in our paddocks grew longer and longer, and then it quickly turned brown. I had no idea those paddocks would soon transform.

Cut hay

Cut hay

We’d been told that untended paddocks were a fire hazard in the driest days of summer, but we didn’t know what to do about our long, dry grass. We had no tractor to cut it and no animals to graze it.

Then our neighbour Duane called.

“Would you like to sell your standing hay?” he asked.

I didn’t really know what that meant.

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Noah’s olives go in the jars

August 8, 2009
Pickled olives

The finished product

Ever since I’d read that pickling food can create botulism, I’d been a little nervous. Yet there I was, ready to put our olives into jars.

This is the part where it can all go horribly wrong. One false move and you’ve created the Olives of Death.

I stood at the island in the center of the kitchen. It was a bright Saturday morning, and the light was streaming in the French doors that open out to the deck and the olive grove beyond. Above me the peaked wooden ceiling spread its wings.

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