Seven? Seven? Baby Bunnies

It was an accident, I swear. We thought Peter was a boy, we thought they were all boys... were we wrong!

We found the litter under the rabbit hutch inside barn. We thought it was just one baby bunny, but when we moved the cage and started to round them up we found two and then two more and then two more. Seven. What kind of a rabbit has seven babies???

The babies are all different shades of brown with one brindle and one black. They are little and delightful and how will we keep them alive? There are so many predators in the barn and bringing them in the house with the dogs is not an option.

For two weeks we lock them in the hutch, but it's too small for so many bunnies and on May 19th we move them to live with their uncle Softy in the doll house. I fear that Softy may hurt the babies, because that's what adult males tend to do, but Softy's previous injuries make him more docile and he tolerates, even seeming to enjoy the babies. Phew...

I shore up all the cracks and holes and try to make sure the bunnies are safe. Should I lock them in the doll house over night when predators are hunting? Should I let them hide under the doll house? Should I let them decide? Having to work nights makes the decision easier.

I can't wait to go home and see how they bunnies are doing??

The bunnies found their own safe haven living under the doll house. They dart all over the small pen clearly delighted with the new outdoor smells and the freedom to run and jump and play. Softy has become a jungle gym of sorts, but they move so fast I'm not sure he knows how many there are in total.

I tried to loan the babies out to the local grade schools, but they no longer allow small animals in the class due to allergies. I remember growing up with tons of class pets. Guinea pigs, rabbits, snakes, gerbels etc... I can't image a classroom so sterile they won't allow the class pet or a peanut butter sandwich.

I bet they don't have metal monkey bars anymore either.

The bunnies are growing up fairly wild and loving it! I'm going to separate them into groups based on gender and all the boys will live together and all the girls will live together. I have a few more months to enjoy the little pile of soft fuzzy babies until they reach maturity.

We've named them after Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, but I don't think we got all the names rights.

Grumpy, Doc, Happy, Sleepy, Hoppy, Drunky and Dopey.... How far off are we anyway?

Blast Rock & The Waterfall

One of the bonuses of having a farm plated truck is being allowed in the local quarry to pick up rock, stone and gravel at discounted prices. Brent and I hook up the beat up dump trailer, different than the really nice dump trailer, and head the two kilometres east to the quarry to look at some blast rock.

Blast rock is called landscaping rock at the Garden Centre and sells for big money, but at the quarry it's exactly what it sounds like - the rock that falls into a pile with the first blast off the rock face. It's also called armor rock and slag. The pieces vary in size from one person to the size of a honda. The quarry encourgages you to bring your own heavy equipment to load your truck, but we need to take a quick look first.

After a frustrating talk with the lady that mans the gate we finally make our way back to the rock face and we are delightedly see piles and piles of large misshapened blast rock. I glance around looking for snakes (the lady warned me) as Brent backs the trailer to a large pile. We don our mandatory hard hats, steel toed boots, safety vests and gloves and start to load.

The first few rocks are loaded in a fit of instant gratification as we envision our projects coming to life. We can finish the garden wall with this rock, place these around the pump house and build a waterfall with these enchanting beauties that have captured sparkling of minerals. After fifteen minutes of loading we aren't talking anymore.

The sweat rolls off our faces as we heave rock after rock into the trailer and it feels like each one gets heavier and heavier. I can hear Brent breathing hard as he lifts a two man rock by himself and I find him attractive in his work boots, sweating and brandishing a boyish smile.

I stop and try to catch my breath as I try to place a large rock into the dump trailer without falling over. "think we have enough for now?" I try and break Brent's rhythm before he falls.

We stop and discuss how many rocks and for which projects we'll use these rocks and before long we're losing time. Deciding to work smart rather than hard we chose to stop loading and plan on bringing the backhoe down next week to load.

Back up to the front and onto the scale. We've hand bombed two and half ton of rock and as the exhilateration starts to wain I begin to feel like I've just loaded two and a half ton of rock. Who needs to go to the gym when you live on a farm?

Back at the farm we still need to remove about thirty patio stones to make room for the new patio and somehow they seem to weight signifigantly more than they did when we put them down last fall. Can patio stones retain water? My arms feels like noodles and my legs scream with each patio stone I dead lift.

I'm loading them into the loader part of my little diesel case tractor and relocating them to their new home beside the pond. We'll get to that another day.

We're still excited to build the patio, but realize we need to put down road grade as a foundation before we lay our rocks. It's getting too late and the rocks are getting too heavy.

We really want to put some rocks down somewhere and feel satisfied, but our sore muscles and bruised fingers barely let us place a few rocks around the pump house.

Tomorrow we'll build a waterfall.

The next day: I barely manage to climb out of bed with a burning in my arms and legs that begs for time in a hot tub, but we're on a mission.

We back the trailer to the waterfall area and start sorting the rocks trying to put the biggest ones on the bottom.

It is during the survey that we realize how wet the area we've chosen is as we instantly obtain soakers. Already covered in mud and water we start to unload. They're heavy and sharp and sudden I find these rocks annoying. Who do these rocks think they are anyway? Why are they so heavy? What the heck did they eat? I hate to admit it, but these rocks are really kicking our asses.

Brent has an amazing enthusiam for every project and he brings this energy to the waterfall. He's excited and it shows. I'm sore and cranky, but it's easy to get caught up in his eagerness. Our waterfall is lovely. It's all natural with the water pouring out the top and making a happy tinkling noise at the bottom.

I've got a large bruise under my right thumbnail and a scrape up my arm that may need a few stitches, but it is all about blood sweat and tears. The satisfaction we feel looking at the waterfall we build out of blast rock warms my muscles and suddenly, without pain medication, I feel good.

Brent and I hold hands looking at our waterfall from all sides like excited children. Isn't it great? Doesn't it look lovely? We pat ourselves on the back before darting inside to get ready. Brent's late again, but I understand his need to stop and smell the waterfall.

He takes one last look and says "don't you think it should be taller with more rocks at he base?" I think I may want to kill him.

Farm Animal Mob Mentality

On average it costs roughly fifteen dollars a month to feed my farm animals and it's considerably cheaper to feed goats and pigs than to feed my dogs.

Today I picked up a large bag of hog chow and a large bag of rabbit pellets. Now that I have ten rabbits to feed! When I say large it's usually about forty kilograms. When I unload the bags into the feed room the crowd gets restless.

They start grunting and baying and snorting eventually leading to a cresendo of squealing, squelching and screaming. They start physically pushing each other which excites Willow into a frenzy, jumping on Charlotte, and then running around like a mad crazy goat.

After I'd organized the feed into the plastic bins and put the garbage away the mob was reaching the point of insanity. Going in to calm them down with a flake of hay is a great idea, except I was wearing a favorite pair of red flip flops. I've had these shoes forever and consider them "work sandals", so I'm not worried if they get muddy. In fact I was watching the dogs watch the bunnies and I stepped into a mud hole so deep I lost my shoe today and had to go fishing for in elbow deep in straight up thick, gooey mud. I could barely rinse the clay off the shoe.

I snag a flake of hay as I walk by an open bale and confidently push open the gate to the clucking of a chicken, the screaming of the pigs and the mad dash running of the goats.

Charlotte runs into Nugget who tries to get out of the way and smashes into Willow. Uninjured the chicken heads for high ground. Ginger roughly noses Charlotte in the flank who grunts in response. They are in hot pursuit as I walk quickly and throw the flake of hay. Only Willow is briefly distracted by the hay and the rest want some grain.

I am standing in a field, wearing flip flops staring into the eyes of a mob wondering how I'll get back to the safety of the barn with my toes intact. I take a step sideways, but they're on top of me as soon as I move. Charlotte's hoof comes down on my right foot and Willow plants her feet in my gut. I start to fall backwards and swear the chicken is right behind me to make me fall competely to the ground.

I give Charlotte a shove off my foot and lean away from Willow's dangerous feet. Dashing around a frenzied chicken I make it back into the safety of the barn. I've lost my shoe for the second time that day, but consider it a loss I'm willing to take.

I grab a container full of pellets and throw it over the fence to calm the mob, because I'm not going back in there right now. I must remember to grab my shoe in the morning.

The Paint Sprayer Plots Murder

After cleaning out the back garage with a pressure washer it was finally time to paint. My dad had picked up two used industrial paint sprayers at an auction really cheap and we'd planned to use one to paint the interior of the back garage.

The sprayers had to be cleaned as they'd been put away dirty. Brent spent several evenings soaking the sprayers and the hoses to try and convince the debris to find a new home. I was working one night and got a call from a frustrated man stating the paint sprayer was trying to kill him. Controlling my giggling I managed to ask what happened and why an inanimate object would seek his death?

Like all good stories it starts with the use of a large commercial compressor. Brent was using the compressor to blow the left over paint through seventy feet of high pressure hose. A chunk of dried paint lodged itself inside the hose refusing to budge while the back pressure of air started to build. Brent turned off the compressor, but how to release the pressure? I'm grateful he specifically told me he did not peer down the end of the hose to "look for" the debris, but he did decide to put the end of the hose into a bucket of dirty water instead.

While getting up to move the debris came lose and flew out of the end of the hose, bounced off the wall and struck Brent in the side of the head. The back pressure of air blew into the water covering Brent liberally with a layer of filthy, sandy wetness.

Cold, dirty, wet and headachy Brent limped, as all injured people do, into the house and promptly called me to tell me the tale of how the paint sprayer tried to kill him. Brent was not laughing.

A few days later Brent has recovered and is working on the paint sprayer that plotted his death when the whole thing stops working. I could tell he wanted to kick the sprayer, but how can you kick a machine while it's down? Brent got even by feeding the sprayer unfiltered old paint that was so thick and dirty it clogged the sprayer and gun forcing us to lose another painting day to hunt down a new filter for the gun.

Where did we get this old paint you ask? We gathered. We went to family and friends and gathered all the old paint. We then took the old paint home and spend an entire afternoon sitting on the driveway opening gallon after gallon of paint. We mixed mostly white and some blue together and came up with twelve gallons of industrial gray. Rather than filter the paint through a pair of old pantyhose Brent just started spraying.

It was a lovely colour and it should have only taken a few hours to paint the entire building, but it was starting to take several days because: the paint gun got jammed, so we got a new filter for the sprayer; then we lost the tip to the spray gun; then we needed a new gun filter. We finally got it all set up then the sudden death of the paint sprayer ruined the day (I guess Brent got even with that sprayer); then it started to rain.

We moved on to the back up paint sprayer with glee in our hearts, but now were were out of paint. The best and cheapest place to buy paint is Ollie's in Western New York. A quick trip over the border to buy fifteen gallons worth of Sand Castle Beige, a new filter and tip for the gun and some milk put us in good spirits.

We returned from our adventure and set up the second sprayer. Armed with fresh paint and new filter the system worked like a charm. It took only a few hours to paint the entire room, except Brent kept taking breaks because of the fumes. I painted half of the ceiling and managed to get a large amount of paint all over myself, but did it with delight.

The room looks clean and huge and ready for our big party. The back garage is going to be the central support building for the entire shindig and we're finally starting to feel ready.

Our endless to do list includes: painting the newly  moved outbuilding, creating a seven hundred square foot flagstone patio, building a waterfall and re-siding the pig building, and then we'll be ready to party.

With feeling that only can be gained by sniffing paint fumes we gather more ideas about building out houses and gardens.

I Shaved a Gizmo

I groom my own dogs. I like to think it's because grooming is a bonding method and this way I don't have to send them to strangers and risk ill treatment. It started as a solution to a financial problem. A groomer charges forty-five dollars to groom a shih tzu. I have three that need grooming every six weeks, at least.

I purchased a ridiculously expensive pair of clippers and watched a bunch of youtube videos and started clipping. The first time I trimmed Taz's eyes I had the shakes. I bought blunt tipped scissor for safety, but they were never sharp enough.

It took time and practice before I became proficient at clipping the dogs. I usually clip the dogs about every two weeks depending on the weather. If it's warm they get buzzed sooner in the spring. Tonight Gizmo got his "big" hair cut. I took it all. The only thing he has left is a tail. The rest of the hair is gone. See ya bye.

Gizmo is not happy about this and has been sulking for three days. He'll eat, go out and then back to bed with looks of disgust aimed my way. Taz is thrilled to have her spa day over and she dances and runs around like crazy with her new style. Poco is more dignified and sits statue-like for several hours so as not to muss it up, but Gizmo is completely put out.

I find Gizmo with his thick, luxurious, copious amounts of hair the easiest to clip. It doesn't seem to matter how I clip him, he looks amazing. If I leave his tail and ears or clip them down to nothing he always manages to look adorable. It's easiest to just clip, wash and dry.

If you want to leave a bit and use a guard to clip then the dogs need to be brushed, washed and then combed before you can clip. You can not run clippers with a guard through a mat because the guard acts like a comb and everything gets caught, it pulls and hurts.

I can manage to shave Taz and still have her looking cute, but she's always too cold. She's a tiny little thing with no body fat to keep her warm, so I'm always struggling to keep her shih poo hair with a slight curl brushed to prevent mats. I find it easier to clip legs, face, belly and bum short and leave the back long. It feels like I'm cheating, but we're all happy with this make-shift puppy clip.

Poco is an entirely different story. Years of neglect and abuse have damaged even the fine hair he manages to grow. The hair is sparse even after a year of healthy food and clean living. Poco gets incredibly cold if I leave less than an inch of hair and he looks sickly. His skin is the blotchy shih tzu pink and black and looks blanched against his white, white hair. When he first came to live on the farm he had no hair on his hind end and only mats everywhere else and it took him six months to grow anything.

I use delicate caution when I clip Poco and let him grow really long and then go at it for a few days. Poco doesn't handle stress well, so I usually brush for a day and then give him a break, then a bath, then brush and then another break. Finally we get to the clipping part.

Poco stands like a statue while he gets clipped. You can hear a low warning growl when you get to the back end, but it's more fear than aggression. The infection in his bum was ugly and took weeks to clear. He rarely actually bites anymore, but the warning snarl is enough to slow down and give a few cuddles to help him relax.

It's taken a week, but everyone is groomed. It took a day for Taz to try and dig under the bunny pen and get filthy dirty. Poco rolled in something that was either dead or pooped out and stunk, so bath number two. Gizmo is still in bed and at least clean.

Brent was amazed at how much doggie laundry had piled up over the past ten days. He offered to bath Poco after a bad rolling "incident" and I said yes please! Brent plopped Poco in the sink and said "what do I do now?" I picked up the soapless shampoo and read the directions: wet, lather, rinse and repeat.

Good rule to live by: wet, lather, rinse and repeat.

ABC's of Moving a Building

We're working on cleaning up for our party in June and we're trying to multi-task to find solutions and fix existing problems. My dad has helped us hook up the water well, so we can use that water to feed the farm animals. We need to build something to cover the well and pump.

We discuss how to build a wishing well, but we have a small building in the pond area that we've wanted to move anyway. Hmmm.... can we move the building? Well, why not?

Sometimes an idea sounds better on paper than it actually is in real life. Brent and I discuss this idea at length and finally decided to "take a look" at the building and see if it's moveable.

We're excited when we realize the sil plates aren't attached to the concrete foundation. We get the back hoe started, pull out a section of fence and grab some tow rope to move a building. Why not?

Some people landscape using wheelbarrows and some people use backhoes. We're backhoe people.

We try and slide eight foot pieces of one by hard wood boards under two of the corners, but they keep slipping. We managed to get one corner of the small building into the bucket of backhoe and try over and over and over again to slide the hard wood boards underneath. Finally, we decide to try and lift it with a strap wrapped around the middle part of the building and attached back to the bucket of the backhoe.

I suggest x-bracing the building or at least putting hardwood on the bottom to give the building support, but Brent shakes his head and says "Let's give it a try." He wanders over to start the backhoe and I holster my hammer and drill. I have a feeling of doom, but want to remain positive, so I give Brent the thumbs up and a big smile.

The first movement causes the building to groan in protest and lean heavily to the right. I wave frantically at Brent and he stops any forward progress and he gets out to assess the damage.

"I think if we pick it up, it's going to fall apart" I say.

"Naw, I think we can drag it from here, but let's put the board back under the right side" Brent answers.

We leverage and lift and manage to get the board under the right corner with the rest of the board sitting on the ground. He lifts the bucket and starts going backwards dragging the building along the ground. The grass is screaming and dying as I watch with a camera from the sidelines.

He pulls backwards and the building get stuck on a large cinder block that has been living inside for the past two decades. I try to pull the block out, but I worry that if I move that block the whole building will fall. I express this to Brent and he yells "pull it!" I pull it and the building drops about half a foot to the ground, but stays together.

It's time for a beer, some thought and more pictures. We manage to leverage the two hardwood boards back under the building knowing they will probably fall out. We re-wrap the tow strap around the building and lift it again.

Brent manages to move the building about fifteen feet backwards before disaster strikes. We lose the right board, but the building is balanced on the loader, so it doesn't fall. The catastrophe occurs when I try to remove the left board, so Brent can lift and drive forward. It falls. With a crash and Brent's wonderful reflexes, one side hits the ground and he lowers the bucket at the same time. The building hits the ground and miraculously stays together!

Time for another beer and some more thought. What if we get the hardwood back under the building and strap that to the front of the backhoe? Seems like a good idea. Wait. I need more pictures.

About four hours have past since we've started this project and we're still only fifteen feet from where the building has lived on it's own concrete foundation for the past twenty years.

So, the building with boards underneath are now triple strapped to the bucket of the backhoe, with fingers crossed and camera at the ready we move. Again. Brent slowly lifts the bucket and I can feel my heart pound as the entire building is lifted off the ground!

I give Brent the big thumbs up and he slow, very slowly drives forward. After several attempts we finally agree on the exact location and lower the building over the pump and well.

We spend another two hours trying to put bricks and a silplate under the building, before we finally give in and reinforce the lower walls with hardwood.

"Hey." Brent says "we should have done that before we moved the building." I think I could shoot him right at the moment, but I sigh, take a sip of my cold beer and laugh.

My dad shows up the next day and laughs at our new building. "Well", he says, "call me when you're ready to straighten it out and I'll give you hand. You should have x-braced that building before you moved it."

How to Clean up Raccoon Poop

I think the title says it all.

My boyfriend and I are planning on getting married this fall and we had this great idea to throw a party at the farm this June. We decide to use the barn and back garage as the main location for the party. It's a great space, but is in dire need of being cleaned.

The back garage has been ignored for about ten years and a family of raccoons had taken up residence in the barn, but they had access to the back garage via a hole in the wall. The raccoons had spent many wonderful days hanging out on the upper level shelves and falling through the pink styrofoam insulation that was nailed to the ceiling.

The space is very large and will fit a big truck in one bay and a full size tractor in the other if it wasn't filled with twenty years worth of hoarding. There's pounds of nuts and bolts, both new and rusted. Automotive parts, gas line, brake line and an engine lift. We found plumbing parts and door parts, bits of pipe and hundreds of dollars of scrap steel.

Many of the treasures were rusted and stuck to make shift tables. The floor, what we can see of it, is covered with bits of pink styrofoam insulation, grease, dirt, raccoon poop and dried mud. The place is a mess, but with concentrated effort we clean.

We start with sorting. Using old glassware, tupperware and tins I start to sort nuts, bolts, nails and screws by use. Wood screws, self-tapping metal screws, roofing nails, drywall screws, three inch wood screws. I find huge bolts and nuts and I categorize them based on size, shape, rustiness and if it will fit in a tractor. My drawer filled with miscellaneous parts continues to grow with bits of metal and plastic, there lies the usefulness in mystery.

I have drawers of small electrical, plumbing and hinges. Shelving full of plumbing and car parts - for cars we don't own. I wish to throw some out, but that's simply forbidden at the farm. My dad and boyfriend gang up on me when I suggest discarding a broken pipe threader. I'm afraid.

After three days of sorting I think I've found all the treasures and my sorting room is getting full. The back garage is nearly empty, except for the upper shelves and a few items in the corner. The large propane heater was ripped out with the help of my little case front end loader and discarded - a small victory for me! The ancient compressor has been relocated, but still saved because it might be worth something to somebody someday. I'm not sure that it runs.

About half of the pink styrofoam insulation from the ceiling is has been broken and destroyed by raccoons. We debate about pulling the rest of it out and the decision is made to rip it out after we investigate the upper shelves.

I am the first to "take a look" at the top shelf and I am shocked. There must be at least a foot of raccoon poop layering the plywood. I am frightened. The wood was once wet and has dried lines of urine that must have pooled on the floor. The odor is horrific and I've smelled missing dead people in the heat of July.

How was I going to clean this up?

I turn to Brent who is working on repairing the garage doors and ask for his help and opinion. He climbs up on the ladder and declares: "this a job for the tractor".

I gratefully rush out into the fresh air and fire up my little case front end loader eternally grateful I saved up the money and spent more on my tractor than on my car two years ago. I carefully position myself under the shelf as Brent slides the plywood off the two by six trying to balance it onto the bucket of the tractor.

As he pulls the shelf away from the wall I can see and hear the poop hit the floor twelve feet below. Brent looks sorry, but there's nothing we can do. He's poised on my front end loader, twelve feet in the air balancing an eight foot piece of plywood thickly layered with poop. How can I consider my life boring?

Brent manages to get the poop board onto the front of the loader and I start to lower it down. If you know anything about tractors the bucket starts to slope downward as your lower the arms, so I stop and put it into reverse and carefully make my way out the nine foot opening of the garage door.

Brent climbs off the front of the tractor and I slowly extricate the poop board outside and towards the burn pile. I am nearly choked by the smell. Brent is coughing violently and I think he might have vomited in his mouth, just a little bit.

I successfully release my load into a more appropriate location and head back for round two. There are three upper shelves and we manage to get them removed from the back garage with little damage and droppings of droppings.

The scent and visual has helped us make our decision. The pink styrofoam insulation ceiling must come down. You haven't lived until you've pulled an eight foot long piece of styrofoam down on yourself when it's covered in feces and urine. Your skin crawls and you cough in disgust.

Half way through I ask Brent if this is one of the worst jobs he's ever done and he tells me it's in his top worst five. What does this guy do when I'm not around? Worst he said was cleaning pigeon poop out of barn. Odd to think that pigeon poop is worse than raccoon and when did my life become all about poop?

It takes several hours to get all the insulation down and we stink. Horrible smells and itches cover our skin and I can't wait for a shower. We're covered in a layer of filth the likes I've never encountered and I'm grateful that we'll only ever have to do that once - I hope. I have a strange rash on my arms with abrasions all over my limbs that sting in the shower.

Standing in the empty back garage it suddenly feels bigger. With the breeze going through it doesn't smell that bad either... perhaps there is some hope here after all.

Day two and we've fixed the garage doors and have started pressure washing the entire space. This is also a top five worse job ever.

We're hoping to paint by Monday.