A Cat and Mouse Game

What is a farm without cats to catch  mice?

Once we stared raising animals, which meant storing grain,  I quickly changed my perception of the  little creatures. I no longer cringed at the thought of our cats hunting them down and slaughtering them. 

Mice eat grain.

Mice make nests and shred grain bags.

Mice droppings are messy, their urine stinks and no self-respecting farm animal will eat contaminated grain

Almost daily, a couple of field mice would fall into the grain bins. Michael would scoop them up in a pail, call the cats, the dump the bucket. This was the highlight of the day for our cats; there is nothing they enjoy more than having their prey handed to them so they can play with their dinner.

Often the cats left gruesome mice offerings in thanksgiving right on our doorstep, eliciting screams from our little girls.

Michael, my husband is a dog sort of man but there was one tom cat we owned who was a real man’s cat.  That old barn cat followed Michael around the barnyard and in and out of the barns almost like a faithful dog.

“Where was our dog”, you ask?

Oh, he was sleeping on the porch with one eye open watching this interloper in action.

Mickey, the tom cat, often perched on the top of a fence post while Michael fed the calf, horse and pigs. One day the curious calf stuck out his thick, rough tongue and licked Mickey so throughly that  the cat was lifted right up into the air, standing up on his back legs. Then Mickey calmly shook off excess saliva and sat back down,  balancing on the narrow post.

My husband’s admiration for the tough old tom cat increased ten fold; he proudly relates this story as an example of a real, man’s sort of cat who was the opposite of the pampered house cats that our little girls lavished affection on.

Horses and Bicycles

Have you ever tried to catch an animal that does not want to be caught?

If you raise animals, they always manage to escape by breaking through fences or because someone leaves a gate unlatched. When any animal escapes it must be caught. Imagine the chaos as cars slam on their brakes to avoid a 2,000lb steer, neighbouring cattle scatter as an upset, fugitive pig surges through their placid herd, a pregnant highly prized mare due to deliver, is hounded into a frenzy as our stallion threatens to break through into her enclosure. The possible comic- tragic scenarios are a countless. Picture kids running around in circles in knee-deep snow with a grain pail following a cavorting calf in the middle of a huge windswept field or a dozen squawking chickens flapping their wings, darting every which way deeking and dodging squealing kids However the hardest animal to capture is a horse because they are swift, smart and strong, emphasis on all three adjectives.

Chad was an older, pure bred, Arabian stallion that we bought as a safe horse for our kids to learn to ride. I admit, he was the perfect, docile pet horse. He would stand absolutely motionless as a toddler scrambled under his belly, a preteen braided his tail, a five-year old fed him a carrot and two kids sat on his bare back. Chad was unflappable. Anthony could even stand upright on him bareback. Yet this mild-mannered animal had a dual personality disorder. Once he escaped his personality flipped. Chad galloped like a highly prized , temperamental race horse. One little slip up and Chad would dodge ropes, people, cars and gallop full-out, head arched proudly tail poised and his main and tail streaming behind him. He was picture perfect, looking decades younger. Once transformed he was almost impossible to reign in.

One particular time was absolutely ridiculous. Chad galloped across the road to a neighbouring field surrounded by tall firs and ran in joyful abandonment. As we desperately tried to head our stallion off, he tossed his head, laughing at our pitiful attempts to capture him. Sometimes raised Chad stood on his hind legs, pivoted, changing directions in an instant. I sent three of the kids back home for their bicycles, thinking to match his speed, what a farce that was; dog barking, kids running and calling, mum shouting out strategies of attack, bicycles, swinging grain bucket all swirling around in maddening circles of confusion. Although trees screened our circus from the road, we managed to snag the attention of a young horse trainer.. He issued quick directions to all the kids and cornered our stallion then leaped out of his pick-up to lasso our equine fugitive.

The Joy Of Gardening With Little People…And A Goat

It is cold outside,-21C with more snow on the way but this story on gardening was due for Catholic Attachment Parenting Corner and I NEEDED to post a feel good gardening story!

Ah, Spring time. For me springtime means gardening, gardening with little people.

The joy of gardening with children can be experienced in pots on a balcony, in a garden the size of a sandbox, in a community patch in the inner city or in a country garden. Often farmers will rent space to city dwellers to garden. No matter how large or small, children will be just as delighted with the joy of raising their own food and tasting delicious fresh vegetables. Gardening is pretty basic. Stick the seed in the dirt, keep the seed moist till it is rooted ,regularly water the growing plant in the sunshine, weed it and sit back to watch nature take over.

Daisy our Goat helps weed

Since we have lived for 34 years in the country, our vegetable rows  were 75 feet long. The sheer volume of produce we grew was our insurance that the raccoons, groundhogs, rabbits, deer, mice and bears would not eat it all. We also grew enough vegetables to barter with neighbouring farmers, sold some on the road side or simply gave our surplus to our generous family and friends.

 The garden was always the children’s domain as well as mine because I wanted them in the garden, connecting with the earth.Although our gardens were lush and colourful, they were hardly gorgeous show pieces. The toughest  perennial flowers were the only ones that survived at our house, ones that could withstand being yanked, stood on and sat on.I am an avid gardener but as I had more and more children, I soon realized that if I wanted the kids to enjoy gardening, I had to relax and let the kids help without stealing all their joy away by controlling every little step of the process. That meant crooked rows, unevenly spaced plants, seeds that were planted too deep or too shallow.Children love to dig in the warm earth, especially toddlers who will dig holes everywhere with a small plastic shovel. One year the dog even joined in, shoving us aside with his front digging wildly and dirt spraying everywhere he actually did save us work.Sometimes Daisy, our goat, was allowed to help weed, much to her delight.

When children take part in planting seeds, watering growing plants and picking fruit and vegetables, they became attuned to the rhythms of nature. They will marvel at the power packed in a tiny seed because after planting one bean seed, they soon ate handfuls of green beans  they picked themselves. Let your kids pick and eat beans, snow peas, raspberries, strawberries and carrots straight from the garden as snacks. Actually eating what you have grown is fun. Now, after a lifetime of eating garden ripe tomatoes, corn picked as the water in a pot comes to a boil and huge plates of fresh green beans with butter and salt and pepper, store-bought garden produce tastes bland to our university kids when they live in dorms.

Let your kids make games out of their jobs, stage competitions when they pick potato bugs, let them have water play after they help water the garden and help make rhubarb jam or freeze strawberries, currants and raspberries. Gardening won’t just be a hobby; it can be a large part of their childhood.

For example, I usually recruited the older children to pull vegetables for dinner every afternoon.

Of course the toddlers and preschoolers always jumped at the opportunity to tag along. It was an adventure to walk through our jungle of a vegetable garden because a tiny person could lose themselves among the tall plants and weeds . This transformed the daily ritual of picking vegetables into an exciting adventure.

One particular day, rain had poured down for days, soaking our heavy clay soil; when everyone trooped out into the garden wearing rain or barn boots , they were soon coated with sticky clumps of clay. As one of my boys struggled to pull out a huge carrot, his boots sank so deeply into the mud that he couldn’t lift his feet.

Everyone began giggling as Matthew struggled to extricate his younger brother. David was finally set free but left a boot behind.

Of course, as he stood on one foot, attempting to free his boot, he fell, landing in the mud. Matt was laughing too hard to help again.

Of course, the next rescuer slipped and landed on their bottom with their feet straight out and their bodies coated in sticky clumps of clay.

It doesn’t take much imagination to figure out what happened next. The result was a bunch of laughing kids, covered from head to toe with mud.

They startled me when they came to the door and even I had to laugh while I shook my head and tried to figure out what to do with all of them. Since it was hot enough, we started the clean-up outside. I peeled off ruined outer clothing, washed feet and legs in a buckets of warm water and then the older kids ran inside, one by one, to shower and  I carried a toddler and two pre-schoolers into the tub to bathe. It took three tubs of bubbly, warm water to cut through all that clay.

I laughed yes but I did add,

” Remember, only one mud bath per year!”

It actually  become a yearly tradition.

Barnyard Cliche's

Clichés become clichés for a reason. Tell us about the last time a bird in the hand was worth two in the bush for you.

Anyone who raises birds, especially chickens can answer this question quite easily. The quick comeback would be

"The last time this cliché was True? Why today and everyday I have anything to do with those dim-witted but strangely adorable hens."

Every spring, once the weather was warm enough and the chicks lost their down and all their feathers had come in, we were forced to literally pick up every single little chicken and throw them out the small door into their fenced in run. As soon as they were off the slanted plank walkway, they tried to scramble back in. Since we raise free range chickens it was of paramount importance that they spend their days outside. In fact after about ten minutes we could not convince them to go back into the large chicken coop because they relished the weeds, bugs and scratching the dirt for tiny seeds and grain which we scattered around everyday.

Now this Operation DDDD Chicken Day had to be planned and manned by at least 6 kids plus myself. It took a few years to perfect our plan of attack on the cowering mass of chicken chickens. Nothing is more frustrating than catching a bird, while trying to herd out a couple more, only to loose all three. You must understand that we are talking about 175 meat birds, bred to eat voraciously . Our final method involved at least one or two children outside, preventing a mass retreat back into the chicken coop and also prevent clustering around the door. Basically it was a crowd control issue.

Inside four kids shoof and stretched out hug sheets of plastic to herd the birds in the direction of the hatch and I grabbed them one by one and pushed or threw them out the door. You cannot possibly imagine how many Ducked, Deeked, Dodged and Dived out of our hands. In frustration we often would try to grab two birds but trust me folks,

a bird in the hand was worth two in the bush

Weaving the Threads: Barn Cats?

Daily Prompt: Weaving the Threads

Draft a post with three parts, each unrelated to the other, but create a common thread between them by including the same item — an object, a symbol, a place — in each part.

Our House Lyrics

by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. From My Girl 2

Our house is a very, very fine house
With two cats in the yard
Life used to be so hard
Now everything is easy
‘Cause of you
And our la,la,la, la,la, la, la, la, la, la, la…..

Our huge, rambling farm-house needed updated and the list of its quirks would fill an entire post. The worst thing was that the house pump was in the barn and above ground which meant it tended to freeze about 4 months of the year when it could drop to  -30 C at night. Despite all the inconveniences, we all loved that house for 18 years because it was full of kids, pets, plants and plastered with kids artwork. I use to sing this song to the kids and they agreed with me, “our house is a very, very fine house” especially because we had cats. The best part was when one of the mother cats was pregnant. Everyone fell in love with the kittens and they were the main focus of everyone’s attention for almost two months. The atmosphere in the house was simply delightful.

Strays were often dropped off at the end of our lane and some flea bags had to find shelter in our barn; I just couldn’t bring them in with babies crawling on the floor. One particular tom cat, Amos, was an old curmudgeon, with old battle scars and a bad temper. Finally my husband had enough of this bully and he took him for a LONG car ride. Three days later, I opened the door and  there sat Amos glaring at me. Michael came charging to the door in utter disbelief. I couldn’t stop laughing and all that day the kids and I sang a Fred Penner song,

The Cat Came Back

Old Mister Johnson had troubles of his own
He had a yellow cat which wouldn’t leave its home;
He tried and he tried to give the cat away,
He gave it to a man goin’ far, far away.

But the cat came back the very next day,
The cat came back, we thought he was a goner
But the cat came back; it just couldn’t stay away.
Away, away, yea, yea, yea

What is a farm without cats to catch  mice? Once we stared raising animals, which meant storing grain,  I quickly changed my perception of the cute, little creatures. Mice eat grain. Mice make nest and shred grain bags. Mice droppings are messy, their urine stinks and no self-respecting farm animal will eat contaminated grain .  Almost daily, a couple of field mice would fall into the grain bins. Michael would scoop them up in a pail, call the cats, the dump the bucket. This was the highlight of the day for our cats; there is nothing they enjoy more that playing with their prey. Often the cats left gruesome mice offerings in thanksgiving right on our doorstep, eliciting screams from the little girls.

A friend gave us a huge, white rabbit but she would leave tiny balls of poop on the floor. Unfortunately, baby Daniel crawled faster than I could sweep, so we moved the rabbit to the barn. A week later, when I moved a couch, I was shocked to find two baby bunnies under it. We all panicked, and started running   to find the mother. In the midst of all the turmoil our mother cat who had only one kitten in an upstairs closet, calmly walked over, lay down and let the rabbits nurse! EXCEPT SHE SEEMS TO QUESTION HER DECISION IN THIS PHOTO.

CATS, you have to love those regal, bossy creature

A Photo Post: Discovering Joy on a Farm with Nine Kids

The Steer’s Pincushion Nose

Cows look dumb and lumber slowly but believe it or not, they are extremely curious. One day as a child, my sister,cousin and I sat on the edge of a stream to eat a picnic, realizing to late that a herd of cattle surrounded us on three sides to get a closer look at us. My heart was pounding as we gathered up our lunch, huddled closely together and facing the cattle, slowly edged away. I swear those steers followed us every step of the way, never taking their eyes off us. It was an eerie experience, the stuff of nightmares.

The old saying “curiosity killed the cat, should really say ” curiosity killed the cow”. Cows, calves and steers must be extremely bored because they generally investigate any foreign object or creature which finds itself in their domain. Unfortunately cattle explore small creatures by nudging them with their noses. This is a stupid habit when investigating a porcupine.

After encountering a porcupine, our poor calf couldn’t eat because he had thirty of forty long, barbed quills embedded in his nose. A dog can be held down, but a 1,000 lb. calf is not as easy to restrain. We tried, ropes and all our kids to hem him in but it was completely ineffective. Finally my husband opened one gate and pinned the calf in by swinging the gate back against the fence. Several kids pushed against the gate , two others pulled on ropes near his head and Michael attempted to pull out the quills. It was an exercise in futility as the calf was still able to toss and shake his head in pain. The only thing that brought him relief was when we pushed his nose into the huge tank of cold water in the corral.

Finally we admitted defeat and called the local large animal vet. Of course she tranquilized him, froze his nose and pulled the quills out effortlessly, though kids still pushed all their weight against the restraining gate and pulled on ropes while Michael held him in a head lock. Luckily the vet was so amused by our kids theatrics and comments that she gave us a discount.

Challenging Cosmopolitan Taste Buds

Backwoods cuisine  served with comic results.

My husband and a  rather eccentric  friend had driven up to the Quebec side, in the Canadian Shield, to fish in one of the thousands of lakes which surround us. Driving home in the twilight they inadvertently drove over a porcupine. Now Michael and his friend  P.J. had lived in the wilderness for a few months after university, surviving on fish, an old turtle, rice and coffee. Never one to waste good organic meat, P.J. immediately yelled,

” Mike, pull over. Porcupine is good eating.”

This was the opportunity of a lifetime. Porcupines are protected because they are easy to kill if a man is lost in the woods, simply bop him on the nose and this waddling lazy animal provides a delicious, tender meal.The two survivalists decided to nail this road kill to a tree so they could skin and gut  him without injury. They arrived home chuckling over their good fortune, still debating the best way to cook the tender meat.  Finally, they decided to stuff the meat with a bread, onion, garlic and herbs and wrap it in bacon.

Suddenly a wicked idea popped into my head,

” John is coming over for dinner tomorrow. He is so conservative but loves to act artistic and sophisticated. What if I served roasted porcupine?”

P.J. burst out laughing,

” And don’t say a thing until he has eaten at least half of his meal. I would love to see the look on his face!”

The following evening John arrived  wearing a tweed jacket with his  shirt collar and cuffs  pulled up over it, a scarf casually draped around his neck and a jaunty beret. Michael and I secretly smiled at each other as he raved over the delicious meal. Smiling mischievously I casually remarked,

“John, did you know that you are actually eating porcupine?”

He froze, fork held in mid-air with a brief look of horror on his face,

“Mel, you are joking, right?”

“Not at all”, I replied, “Since you are so very cosmopolitan, I just knew you would enjoy something exotic.”

John smiled weakly, nodded and then slowly lowered his fork. He did not eat another bite of his meat.

Pigs, Pigs, Those intelligent Pigs

Pigs seem to be popular these days, especially teacup pigs who are worth up to $2,500.00 each. However, our family loves real farm hogs because they are friendly, smart and crafty.

 

For twenty years we have raised meat birds, laying hens, four pigs , a calf and loved an old Arabian and a beautiful warm blooded show horse for years. Our family treasures hilariously memories of our animals but some of the most amusing and heartwarming stories are about our pigs.

When the local hog farmer drove over to deliver our four little piglets in the spring, he stayed for almost an hour enjoying their introduction to free range living. In fact, most of the family stood around their pasture, watching and laughing. The piglets literally leaped and twisted in the air in utter bliss as they emerge from the truck. Like most modern farmers, our neighbourhood supplier had an efficient, clean setup. This means that his hogs never breathed fresh air, saw the sun or touched  dirt or vegetation. As soon as the piglets settled down, they dove into the tall weeds, making pathways, connecting  little round flattened areas so they could sunbath, rest under a tree, make their way to the food, their mud bath and the low wooden shed with straw bedding. Our pigs were very clean and they loved to be sprayed with water from a hose; it helped sunburns as did a thick coating of mud. I don't know who had more fun-the kids holding the hose or the pigs.

Our lane is very long

Pigs are very intelligent. One cold fall day, Michael slowly coaxed four HUGE pigs in from the pasture. Rather than turn into the dark, strange barn, they rushed past my stunned husband and ran down our long lane. Instead of tearing down the lane after 200 lb. hogs,  Michael simply stayed put and yelled,
"Hey boys, come on back."
The pigs stopped in their tracks, turned around and  came running  straight home. Michael grabbed four apples, tossed them into the barn and his pets trotted right in.  Obviously pigs are trained with food.

 Pigs are not simply intelligent, they are down right crafty. One especially cold fall, we decided to bring our old laying hens (who we kept feeding, even though they were on pensions), into the same barn as the pigs. The

Brilliant. This pig turned his back on his prey.

pigs helped to keep this particular barn warm. The dim witted birds kept flying over the  six foot partition to hover near the warmer hogs. Our crafty omnivores actually turned their backs on their prey and pretended to ignore them. It was incredible watching  these pigs lure the unsuspecting birds into their trap.Everyday the skittish hens edged closer and closer to their new warm friends. The sly predators waited until one chicken left the flock and then they slowly backed their dinner into a corner. When the hen was encircled, the pigs turned in unison and pounced. It wasn't long before all 15 tough old birds disappeared.  I do mean disappeared because pigs eat everything. Imagine a pig chewing on a sinewy chicken leg with the chicken feet sticking out the side of his mouth! Pigs are pigs.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         Everyone Remember the admonition, "Quit Eating like a Pig"? It takes on new meaning when you actually watch these creatures devour massive quantities of food. I t is a jaw dropping experience watching pigs dive into their food up to their eye balls. They relish feed soaked in jam soaked feed and day old stone ground, wholewheat bread. During our first year raising pigs our manure soaked garden grew giant vegetables and monster weeds. We fed the pigs a ton of broccoli, swiss chard, wheelbarrows of  freshly pulled weeds, 6 ft. corn stalks, corn cobs, damaged tomatoes, kitchen scrapes, baskets of bruised wild apples, pumpkins.....The neighbours still rave about the delicious ham with only a quarter inch of fat on it!

Although we treat our pigs like pets, we don't feel bad about eating them because they live happy free lives at our farm. I call our pork, chicken and beef  happy meat. I must admit though, there was one poignant moment, though, when three-year old Katie stared at the meat on her fork and asked,
"Is this Josie?"

pigs are very clean

I was standing behind her about to help someone else cut their meat and I waved my hands frantically and mouthed,
"Nooo!"
All the kids lied obediently and said  in unison,
"No, Katie, that's just a pork chop."
Katie smiled and started eating.