My Life is a Country Song Right Now

Chloe

I hate that one of my first official blog posts here is a whiny one.  However, the topic is just life on the farm, so we might as well start here.

I got a cow that's gone dry

and a hen that won't lay.

A big stack a bills that gets bigger each day.

The county's gonna haul my belongings away,

'cuz I'm busted.

(Charley Pride) 

Fortunately, since we don't believe in wracking up debt, the last half of the refrain isn't true for us, but I couldn't help humming that tune as I was trying to wring out every last drop of Chloe's milk the other night to meet my milk orders.

We hadn't planned to breed Chloe until August, but the bull had other plans and went over one fence and under another to meet my aged bovine beauty.  The result: an impending March calf...and reduced milk supply.

Since our new garden plots aren't entirely fenced in yet, our chickens aren't allowed to free range right now.  More than half of them are in a mobile chicken tractor, so they're still getting fresh grass, but they'd much rather be out and about free ranging.  The result: reduced egg production, and even the eating of some eggs out of boredom.

My country song, though, would need some extra lines - about raccoon-led chicken massacres and foolish meat birds that died of heatstroke a few feet from their water source.

This, my friends, is life on a farm.  You've been warned!