Most mornings I’ve got Nathan to help me with a portion of the homestead chores but harvest season is upon us so he’s been off working occasional early mornings and even right through the weekends around Tanglefoot Ranch. This means I’ll fly solo for the chores here on the homestead.
Here is a glimpse of what flying solo for our early morning chores looks like:
The alarm sounds for me at 6am. I’ve got to feed Miss Everly and oversee her dressing and getting off to school. Grayson wakes shortly after I rouse Everly at 6:20am.
Everly had a rough day at school with a friend the day before so we special have plans for Everly to write the friend a feelings note this morning. Everly eats, dresses, works on her note and we head out the door by 7:15am to wait for the school bus.
While we wait, we release the chickens from their locked up chicken coop, visit with the chicks a bit, swing on the tree swing and then the bus rolls up and she climbs aboard.
Once Everly is on the bus, Grayson helps me to feed the adult chickens, 15 of them. Then I set him of the deck to watch the chickens eat while I head over to the turkey tractor to feed them. This job requires two hands and lot of bending over.
I also have to release Snowball, Everly’s cattle dog puppy, from her kennel and put her on her tether, also not a good job with a baby in your arms. Snowball likes to try to eat the poultry or chase & jump on the kids and we don’t even know what she’d try doing to the goats… She’s still got lots of obedience training to master and she’s still very young, so she’s not free to roam the homestead just yet-Her drama is a post for another day ;P
Once I get snowball on her tether and manage to get out of her “tether tangling range”-(cause she will wrap your legs in the tether and hurt you very badly), then I can move on to my next task.
Next I take chick feed out to the baby chicks in their enclosure. They are eager to eat, super cute little fluff balls, 19 of them, that currently swarm my feet when I climb in their enclosure with food, see how they swarm Grayson? While I’m looking down at them and taking care to NOT step on one I ram my eyebrow on a pointy tree branch. It drew blood and bruised. Perfect.
The goat enclosure is near the baby chicks so I head on down to say good morning to them and bring Poptart up to the garage for her morning milking. Poptart always tries to eat the chicken food so I’ve got to lead her directly to the milking stand without becoming distracted along the way.
It’s close to 7:35 am now, Grayson is still sitting, watching chickens eat. After the chickens eat they take turns queuing up to lay eggs in the garage. You see they made this little nest underneath a chair with some lose/ discarded hay near the goat’s hay stacks. They refuse every nesting box we make for them. We just let them continue using their makeshift nest because their permanent coop/ nesting boxes aren’t finished yet. Plus it is sure convenient to collect eggs without having to go beyond the garage.
I begin milking Poptart while the egg laying procession continues. Once milking is complete and I’ve ushered Poptart out of the garage and off the deck it’s close to 8 am. Grayson is now leaking through his cloth diaper and wants to nurse and go back to bed. Adalyn is still asleep. Once I get Grayson dry, fed and sleeping I might have some quiet time with my coffee before Adalyn wakes and I’ve got to feed and occupy her.
All I’ve got left to do morning chore wise is to water and move the turkeys, clean and refill goat waterers, fill hay feeders and release Clay, our goat buck, from his pen so he can free range for the day. Oh and I better collect all the laid eggs so our other dog, Dixie doesn’t come in and eat them.
What does your morning routine look like?
