Udder End Farm

There is a large pink pig living in my favorite kidding pen, which happens to be in my front yard (You might be a redneck if…). She took up residence there back in mid-March, when she was a small pink pig, with the assurance that she would only be there temporarily. County Fair has come and gone, as has Miss Piggy’s former roommate, but Miss Piggy herself is showing no sign of vacating my favorite kidding pen any time soon. Miss Piggy’s avowed Champion reminded me the other day, when I felt the need to protest her continuing residency, the kidding pen itself was only meant to be a temporary measure when it was erected 9 years ago. Mr. Champion feels no responsibility to remove his pig, based on the fact that for 9 years my goats have utilized space that he would have chosen to grow rosebushes.

I like rosebushes. As soon as my new barn gets built, I will be happy (maybe) to turn over said favorite kidding pen to rosebushes. For the moment, however, my new barn is a large pile of lumber and tin stacked neatly in the center of my riding arena. Kidding will begin around here the middle of September, so I have temporarily divided my second favorite kidding pen into two smaller pens and purchased another calf hutch. I find calf hutches to be a wonderful temporary substitute for goat housing. A good quality calf hutches has a half life of approximately 20 years. This is very good, as hunting season begins September 1st, and runs until about January 1st, and I have a very strong feeling that the erection of my new barn is temporarily on hold.

I feel the need to explain why my favorite kidding pen was my favorite. It’s only 16 feet from the back door and requires only one extension cord to reach it. Extension cords are a temporary, yet vital, supply of electricity for all of the light bulbs and tank heaters around here. I have dozens-possibly hundreds- of extension cords snaking across my yard to all parts of my goat ranch. The extension cord to the chicken house is a quarter of a mile long. Once upon a time the chicken house had a real electrical circuit going to it, but it was disinterred by a wandering backhoe. If you step in a puddle at my house you are likely to be rendered temporarily incapacitated before the breaker trips. Believe it or not, I employed a licensed electrician to install a substantial, permanent breaker box just to handle my collection of extension cords.

Anyway, while I was dividing up the second kidding pen I took the liberty of charging a couple dozen of those handy galvanized horse panels (they make the best temporary fencing) to Mr. Champion’s account at the lumberyard (call it loan, honey, just until I sell the wethers). I’ve been using them to slap together a few more pens in the vicinity of the cow shed. The cow is temporarily living with the horses, because I’m using her shed to shelter a group of young does which I really do plan on selling soon, after they’ve kidded, and weaned the kids, and have been bred back. I just want to make sure they turn out nice before I sell them.

I needed to fence those does out of that one corner where we made the compost heap- the one we didn’t get a round to loading out two years ago. I’m really glad we left that mountain of manure there because it was a nice snug place to mulch the three apple trees we meant to plant, but couldn’t decide just where to plant them (two years ago); but I can’t plant them right now because all three are just loaded with apples. If I got the holes for the trees dug this week I could plant them next month, after I pick the apples, which I fully intend on turning into pie filling, as soon as I get back from State Fair. But I actually won’t have time to dig three holes for the apple trees this year because I need to dig twenty holes to plant the barn before the ground freezes, whether or not the barn gets built in the next twelve months, or twenty four months or…

I just want to qualify that we are not building the barn in the center of the riding arena. It would be a fabulous place to build a barn, but I spent an awful lot of years training my horses up the road in the Woolgrowers corrals (which is way too far to lug my jumps back and forth, let me tell you), and now that I finally have a nice place to ride I would’ve liked to have kept it. I’m sure we’ll get the barn built in it’s proper spot (wherever that is), someday. I’m sure it’ll go up quickly, once I get those post holes dug. My horse doesn’t mind traveling up to the sheep corrals again. He enjoys the extra stretch, as it’s gotten kind of crowded in his corral since the cow has been bunking there. I couldn’t turn him out in the field this summer; the original horse pasture inadvertently ended up being sown in alfalfa, so at this time it’s a hayfield. We put off buying a new baler this year, which was good because now the hay field is first class goat pasture, but the sage hills we intended for goat pasture will make acceptable horse pasture when I get them properly fenced. So the horses are temporarily imprisoned in the front yard- but not with the pig.

I guess at this point I could turn the horses out in the hayfield. I sprung a big leak in my main irrigation line two weeks ago and haven’t been able to water. The ground over the leak finally dried up enough so I could excavate it last week, but now I’m waiting for parts to rebuild it. Yes, I did use J.B. Weld (I really love J.B. Weld! We own quite a bit of stock in the company, as well as the Duct Tape company and the Baling Wire company), but this time around the split in the fitting was too big to hold. Anyway, the goats have eaten the field down and it’s probably dry enough for horses. No, I can’t put the horses out there because the sickle bar mower is still sitting down there in the middle of the field where we finished with it last year. I don’t seem to worry about the goats decapitating themselves but I will make book on it with those stupid horses. I can’t move the sickle bar until I pick up the two rows of handline that are still sitting there between the gate and the mower. I intended to pick them up when I finally got my new wheel line up and running, and in fact, my new wheel line is up and running, except that now my water is not running to it- anyway I never picked up the handline because it conveniently waters the little grass paddock where I am temporarily storing my bucks. I’m keeping the bucks there until they eat the grass down and it really is safe to turn the horses loose on it, because Rosie’s pony is incredibly fat and prone to founder. I still want to leave the handline in, because I’m thinking I’ll actually get my water line repaired and then I can water my field until the end of October and not have to feed a lot of goats before then.

Speaking of feeding goats- I’m aware that at any moment someone is going to call me and tell they are on their way over with 25 tons of hay. This is a bummer because I still haven’t gotten my stackyard cleaned up from last year. One reason I haven’t done this is because my stackyard, as it has been emptied, has been converted into a series of temporary pens to contain breeding bucks and their attendant ladies. Come to think of it, that stackyard was only supposed to be a temporary arrangement because the truck that came last year couldn’t get to my permanent stackyard, which is now also temporarily housing the children’s show wethers (please remind me to pick up another calf hutch when I’m in town). I suppose I can put my hay over in the riding arena next to the new barn, but it’s going to require a bunch of those pretty green corral panels (not the galvanized ones- the expensive ones) to keep the local critters out. I hate to put anything else on my arena, but it’s just temporary.

The last time I ate Chinese my fortune cookie contained this little piece of advice: “Temporary measures will always evolve into permanent solutions.” I really hope they do, but in the mean time, I’m still waiting.