Animal Chores

This weekend I handed the animal chore torch over lw6ESmic'웽d}m8pZ¥ to write about the animal rotation tasks, and you can decide which tasks I probably won't miss.
The animal rotation lasts for three weeks. So every Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday, I was up  at 8, bucket in hand and sometimes with boots on my feet (gasp!).

First off you give the goats and sheep half a bale of hay, divided accordingly into the three feeders. Lots of 'MAAAAAAA'ing ensues. Make sure they have water.
Next: Give the chickens food in their feeder and give them water because chances are they are usually out of it. Sometimes throw food in corner for younger chickens because they get the short end of the stick when it comes to food time. The older chickens can be vicious!
Then give some food and water to the ducks and hang around to watch how cute they are when they drink water (once they get over how scary it is to see the same person they see five times a day come into their cage again).
Then carry a bucket of water down to the potato field to deal with the meat chickens. First I have to move the chicken tractor so they can have a new patch of grass to demolish and poop on. The thoughts that go through my head during this time:
"I hate you. I hate you I hate you so much"
"Move! You are so stupid! You need to not get stuck under the pole!"
"Oh my god. You are so disgusting. You pooped in the water dispenser."
But. I do really appreciate them for providing some of the tastiest chicken I have ever had. For special occasions we eat last year's meat chickens. The farm crew next year will eat the chickens from this year.

Here are the meat(head) chickens. 

~9 am: Milking! Modock is our one milking goat, and she is very patient. This is good because milking is a very quick learning curve. The first time milking takes FOREVER and the milk comes out in little spurts, but after that it just gets easier and easier. Now we're getting about two quarts every morning from her, which is a lot less than we got at the beginning of the season, but still enough to keep us having fresh goat milk most every day.

More 'MAAAAAAAAA'ing happens.

Throughout the day the chores involves getting enough greens for the animals. This could be anything from fireweed to dandelions to cauliflower leaves. The best is cauliflower and cabbage leaves because they are huge and take very little time to gather, so seeing huge buckets of harvested cauliflower was very exciting these past few weeks. Seeing huge buckets of cauliflower leaves produces MUCHO 'MAAAAAAAAA'ing.

Here they are eating cabbage leaves. The goats on the right usually end up pushing everyone else outta the way.

Some days the animals go out to pasture. This is a win-win situation, because you don't have to get buckets of greens for them, and they get to frolic in some grassy area and eat all of the things. Sometime I can get them to come in by whistling, but usually I have to go around the back of them and walk them up. Once a couple start running up towards the pen, the rest will follow. This applies to when they go to area they shouldn't be in also. Like when they got into the seed field by ripping through the heavy metal gate during a field trip. They ate some turnips, which to be fair needed thinning anyways.

Around 4 pm I check the hen house and pick out all the eggs. Usually we get between 12-15 per day.

Last stop of the day is the meat chickens again. Water and food and annoyance at their poop.

Animal chores! The end.

The Apprentice Life

We've spent the past three months living in extremely close quarters with 6 other people. It's a struggle at times (mostly just to keep the kitchen clean), but we magically all get along... better than you would expect from a random group of twenty-somethings who wanted to work and learn on a farm in Alaska for the summer!

To describe certain feelings and experiences, we've come up with a few expressions that we use multiple times a day.
The first one: Hangry. Hungry + Angry
Sometimes we'll get grumpy and snappy and in a funk, and then we realize that it is really just our hanger speaking. Usually shows around 11 am or 5 pm. It can get bad. Luckily there are now rows of juicy sugar snap peas to apPEAse us when hanger strikes.

Then my favorite: MLIF. My Life Is Farm
We throw this word out probably too much now, but it's so perfect.
The farm kids are playing with legos mixed with dry moose poop. MLIF.
My hat fell down the outhouse... MLIF!
Can't make it to the kitchen without stopping to eat peas for five minutes... MLIF
Boot zippers are stuck because there is poop jammed in them. MLIF!
Eat as many peas as possible during the week so that we don't have to harvest as many on harvest days... MLIF.

Throwing poop at your friends and coworkers is the norm (compost heap making!), shoes only happen when the cracks in your feet get too bad, dinner can be found 20 steps from the kitchen, there are always shavings from wood carving on the floor, second lunch happens most days, and hot chocolate is the hottest commodity.
It's hard to believe that we only have 7 weeks left here... time flies! But at least there's more thyme in the garden!