Some days in farming you are on the top of the mountain. Everything seems to be going right. The chores go easily, the gates all close, the fences don’t have holes, all of the water troughs are full. Some days the sun is shining, the birds are chirping, the views are amazing and everything seems perfect… And some days it storms.
I had one of those perfect days the other day when I wrote the traditional family post. Not everything was going right, but everything felt perfect. Then, yesterday happened. We had a huge thunderstorm go through, with winds out of a different direction than the normal prevailing direction. That blew rain in to our rabbit cages that are closed on 3 sides and have always worked to protect our rabbits. The adult rabbits were fine, but we lost an entire little of babies that got drenched, along with two babies from another litter. This not only hurts our farmer hearts, but it also knocks out a whole litter of profit a few months from now.
After that discovery I saw one of our female Muscovy’s who had been doing great with her one duckling, walking around our yard alone. She seemed so lost, and yet again, we lost both another member of our farm family, and a potential source of profit down the line. I also noticed that one of the hens that I wrote about the other day was missing. This is one of the two hens that are co-raising their clutch of babies. The other hen seems to be doing well with the entire group of babies, but it isn’t nearly as fun as watching the two hens ushering the clutch of babies around the farm together.
On my way around the farm feeding our various critters, I discovered areas where one of our local foxes (or more than one of our local foxes) had eaten, not one, not two, but three of the roosters that we have been planning to sell at an upcoming auction. We free range our birds, and have been working to reduce the number of predators, but we still suffer losses from time to time. It is tough and frustrating to lose so many of our sale birds so close together.
The final blow was walking out front and seeing that the nest that was being shared by the turkey and the duck had been ransacked and both birds are missing. That was probably also the work of one of our local foxes, but who knows. Raccoons and coyotes also frequent our farm, so it could have been any of them. Either way, the nest is wrecked, the eggs are gone, and both birds are missing. We are all disappointed because we were looking forward to seeing what actually hatched and which mom took responsibility for which babies. It could have been a lot of fun.
Sometimes that is just how it goes in farming. Many people have this idealistic view where it is easy, fun and the money just flows in. Day to day, however, this just isn’t the reality. Things don’t always go as planned, and as grandma always said, you can’t count your chickens (or ducks/turkeys/guinea hens) before they are hatched. Despite the hard times, we absolutely love what we are doing, and we wouldn’t change it for anything.