Its also been a while since I posted an update. The most notable happening is my little guy, Grayson, crawling! He has been in physical therapy for a while now and hes mastered sitting up, is working on transitions between positions and just yesterday took off crawling! After a couple months of therapy he learned to sit up and to use sign language to communicate. A few weeks ago he saw a chiropractor snd had some major neck work done.

We’ve also had our one year anniversary as farmers. A year of building constructing, crop planting, crop harvesting & crop selling, shrimp growing & harvesting, lambing, calving, butchering, incubating & hatching poultry, fence hanging, gardening, tractor driving, hay cutting & baling, animal feeding & watering, fence repairing, pruning, learning farm veterinarian skills… lots and lots of learning and failing and bring yelled at… but we survived the year, we feel accomplished and we’re still dreaming & planning the future.

Lots of the site’s makeover has to do with our homesteading and how its no longer a hobby, its now an extension of us and we couldn’t be happier about that- even after a day of being covered in livestock feces, sweat, blood and maybe even tears…

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Shortly after we bought the fencing I was pretty adamant about hubby fencing off my garden space. You see, I’ve sold shares for our family’s first ever CSA project this year so it’s pretty important that the goats don’t smush down the chicken wire fencing and eat all the food I’m growing for other families this year.

The problem is I’ve only got my hubby for 1.5 days each week and that time is spent on our family’s farm chores, his daddy duty with the girls and perhaps his own relaxing or hobbies… Time for fence hanging is in short supply and fence hanging isn’t a one person job.

The fence rolls are about 100lbs each, it takes both of us to unroll a section of fence and then it takes us both to get the fence staples nailed in (one person to tension the fence and one to do the hammering)… So, the completion of fence work has taken a backseat but we thought a moveable electric fence might be a nice temporary solution in the meantime. Plus, we would like to set up pasture rotations with the electric fence later down the line.

So one of the 1.5 days free was set aside for electric strand fencing. We started with a single wire at something like 7000 volts then we added a second electrified wire and then a third “dummy wire” that isn’t hot yet but it will be once weeds are trimmed. 

Training animals on an electric strand fence takes tons of conditioning and we are in he throes of it now with the three goats the two goat kids and the two lambs… Plus we’ve added a Great Pyreneese rescue dog, named Winnie, to the mix. 

We’ve been conditioning Winnie to the electric strand fence plus another invisible perimeter fence especially for doggies. The electric strand fence shocked her accidentally the first day and she’s basically respected and avoided it since. Her collar that is connected to the invisible perimeter fencing beeps and then goes on to shock her if she ignores the beep and continues crossing the invisible fence line. The invisible fence runs around our house, yard and the barnyard. The electric strand fence just runs around the barnyard.

This morning I took Winnie off her chain link tie-up for some fence testing. She seemed like she was going to be fine until she ran and then jumped through the electric strand fencing. I don’t think you get a shock if you are jumping through the air! Then she seemed like she was sticking close to the house, inside the invisible fence perimeter. She tried to cross the invisible line, got a shock, cried and came back… Then five minutes later I see her outside the perimeter invisible fence jogging up the road. I call her back and she just looks at me and keeps running- “eff you lady!” is what I imagine she was thinking.

At the exact same time our ornery goat also decides she will go between the electric strand fencing wires. She gets a good shock, cries, kicks and just keeps going till the wire breaks. Her two babies follow her. I take chase after her. We run two laps around the house and she’s sill evading me so I grab one of her babies, show her I’ve got it and then I head back to her fenced enclosure to deposit the baby. Mama always follow her calling baby! Unfortunately baby head butts me with his horns twice in the face while I’m holding him. Ouch!!

Finally I’ve got mama goat and two babies back behind a solid fence and I tell them they get no field grazing time due to bad behavior. Bad goats!

I turn the electric strand fence off so I can repair the broken wire, there are still two goats and two lambs that need to NOT break free. Once the fence is repaired Winnie comes sauntering back all rolled in some animals poop- after we just shampooed her yesterday (did I mention she was skunk sprayed two days ago?!). Then I walk to the mailbox across the street to deposit some outgoing mail and on my way back I see Winnie has returned home with a special treat- a deer leg.

The deer leg doesn’t phase me since I’m dealing with dead stuff almost every-single-day now and I’ve heard of other people’s livestock guardian dogs (like Winnie) doing similar things… it’s just startling the first time a severed deer leg appears in your driveway.

So, that is how my morning is going so far. I think I need more coffee!

The post Electric fencing is a pain in the ASS! appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

You see we were pointed in the direction of a homeless livestock guardian dog. We’ve known we needed one since our beloved family dog lost her life last fall.

Luckily we’ve only had one farm predator issue since losing our farm guard dog, Dixie. You might remember my post about the mink killing my birds just before Easter.

We still have our herding dog that we are trying to train (she might be pregnant!) but we know she’ll never be a dog we can trust with our baby poultry… and she’s not a guard dog.

Anyway, over the weekend we just became more farm legit! We picked up Winnie, a 4 year old Great Pyrenees from a shelter. We knew she could have past life issues that could make her unsuitable for our farm setting but the shelter offered to let us foster her while we test the waters and after four days I’m pretty confident she’s a keeper (so is Adalyn!).

She’s huge but so gentle and submissive. She’s not shown any aggression to any of our family farm residents and she’s been introduced to everyone, cats, ducklings, ruminates, chickens, kids, herding dog, the neighbor’s Great Pyrenees…

Also, we put up an electric fence to attempt containing our barnyard creatures. The grass is always greener on the other side of the road, according to our goats, and we’d really like to avoid having one hit by a car…

Speaking of running over ruminates- I ran over a lamb last week! It was horrible but lucky. Little Sam the lamb was asleep under the back of our Prius Friday afternoon as we piled in the car to get to the girls first softball practice. My rear view mirror and backup camera were clear so I backed up… Heard this knocking sound under the car. Immediately stopped to investigate and found my lamb underneath the center of the car, pinned, bloody nosed and freaking out.

OMG I ran over my lamb!!

I was having a heart attack, the kids in the car were very concerned and needy, the lamb was being squished by the car… but somehow I managed to successfully drive the two front tires up on a couple split logs of wood, to raise the car up enough so that I could free Sam the lamb. Had to pull him out sideways by his fur.

While I freed Sam Everly was tasked with calling her dad home to help out…

“Dad, come home now a lamb has been run over!”

We had to leave for softball right away and someone needed to stay with Sam and assess the damage… Luckily Sam didn’t get run over with the tires of the car, just grated a bit beneath the middle of the car and the gravel drive. He knocked his nose hard in the freak out.

After he was freed he was up and walking fine, bloody nose stopped after applying some pressure and an hour later he was out munching grass with his lamb you girlfriend Holly.

Lambs sleeping under the car is another reason we ran our electric fencing… and I’ll always look under the car before getting in and driving. OMG!

The post Meeting Winnie, running over a lamb and shock fencing… appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

This is probably why farmer Grover gives me an amused grin and remarks “you can’t believe everything you read” when we are discussing farm things. It’s true, I’m an information seeker and I tend to learn best when “in the throes” of something. It’s worked out well for me until recently.

Becoming the caretaker of baby lambs has thrown me right into the abyss of unfamiliar animal husbandry, so I googled and asked people about what could possibly be going on with the youngest lamb we’ve taken on. The verdict was grim… He’s probably septic from an umbilical infection or he’s got a white muscle disease or it’s pneumonia… or he didn’t get “first milk” aka colostrum so he’s destined to die… “oh their will to live is very weak” if they are depressed they just die…
I was seriously considering taking him to a vet to be put down based upon the grim outlook based upon my research. It was a hair pulling two weeks of us bottle feeding him, searching for answers and trying to figure out how I could help him- then it hit me.

I can’t control this.

Nobody likes to lose animals and nobody likes to find out they could have done something more to help after it’s too late… but running in circles grasping at straws isn’t doing anyone any good either. So, I told myself we would just go with our gut, really pay attention to the lamb’s cues and do our best.

For two weeks he was near death, he peed & pooped himself, he wouldn’t stand or walk but he would eat and was perky. I was torn- should he be put down, is he suffering? A knowledgeable friend came by and put me at ease, he wasn’t suffering and beyond help. He was alert and he was mostly normal, maybe lacking in key vitamins. He needed to build leg strength back up, he needed more time and he needed to decide if he had the fight in him or not. Here he was a week ago:

Two days ago I stood him up to have a pee and walked away for a moment and he just shuffled behind me. Weak legged shuffling but progress… and his little tail wag- so sweet!

So what Sam the lamb has reminded me is that control is a maddening illusion. Life and death plays out the way it is meant to regardless of how “in control” we might appear. All we can offer is our best effort, the rest is out of our hands.

The post What Sam the lamb taught me… appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

Since before the holidays we’ve been having some septic issues. The last two days have been filled with basement sewage floods, poop logs in the shower and the guys trying to get a handle on shit hitting the roof. Thankfully shit didn’t actually hit the roof, just the floors and baseboards.

Also, my eggs arrived in the mail. You see, I got an incubator for Christmas and I really wanted to fire it up so I bought some Silkie hatching eggs off eBay. They were at the post office waiting for me today. 

We also determined we had an orphaned lamb. It was born the day before and it’s mama had a stillborn twin in her after she delivered. The dead twin had to be pulled and she wasn’t doing so well. This morning, a day later, she was dead- with little lamb curled up next to her.

We tried getting another mama to take little lamb as her own, you know with an afterbirth perfume but had no luck. So tonight we have a new house guest… Little lamb dropped in for supper. Don’t worry, little lamb is on the menu- for now. She’s just staying for the bottles of milk, the warmth and the companionship.

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