Dawn Felagund (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dawn_felagund) wrote2019-08-10 09:10 am
dawn_felagund) wrote2019-08-10 09:10 am
Life Update 2: Our Farm Family Is Complete (or Showing My Ass)
The other major thing that happened toward the end of the school year/beginning of summer break is that we welcomed our miniature donkey, Luna, into our farm family. This means that our farm family is complete. No more animals! (Well, except for the constant rotation of various poultry, but that doesn't count.)
A miniature donkey has been on my wish list for a while, just because. Ostensibly, Luna is a companion for the goats. In reality, she is a pet.
Omg I freaking love her.
We weren't supposed to end up with Luna. Bobby put in a deposit on a miniature donkey foal this spring, and we were supposed to pick her up in August. Midway through June, the owner contacted us: Their young daughter was attached to the foal and they had decided, as a result, not to sell her. They were apologetic and even offered us money in excess of the return of our deposit. (To which we said no; we are not the types of people to get pissy because a kid becomes attached to an animal. I was happy to let her go to a loving home. I hope they are lifelong friends.) But this did leave us without our hoped-for mini donkey. Bobby went back to Craig's List, and lo and behold, Luna had just been posted. She came from a miniature horse farm where they were downsizing by rehoming their donkeys. (They'd hoped to breed them, but their jack wasn't interested.)
This meant that we ended up with Luna more than a month before we'd planned. I posted to Twitter at the time, so I'm going to let that thread speak for itself.
It was a unique experience, driving a cargo van with a miniature donkey in it. Lots more Luna pictures are below the jump, if you're interested.
She is a very chill, low-key animal. She basically does three things: She eats, she sleeps (including taking afternoon naps, which is super cute), and she stands. She is now pastured with the goats; she's very sociable and was visibly lonely when she was by herself, even though the goats push her boundaries from time to time and she has to snap at them. (That's goats for you.)
We did have one exciting incident when we'd had Luna about two weeks. We were often grazing her in the backyard because the electric fencing wasn't set up yet, and Bobby was leading her from the barn to the yard when my young neighbor and her friend happened by on bikes. They were very excited to see Luna--and Luna was very terrified of the bikes! She broke free of Bobby and galloped full-send down the road to the cornfield at the end of the road. (I-91 is past the cornfield, so this was pretty scary for us too!) She galloped up and down the corn for a few minutes before slowing, stopping, and letting me approach, but the poor love was terrified when I led her back. It took her several days to settle down after that.
She's very affectionate, though a little shy. Bobby calls her spookyhorse because she is easily frightened of things. She likes to be approached on her terms, not ours. Bobby and I will sit in her paddock, and within a minute, she is pushed up right next to us with her head over our shoulder for scratches. She loves "donkey hugs" when I drape my arm around her neck and stand leaning on her.
She can be loud and lets us know when we are not meeting her expectations. One of her biggest expectations concerns what we have termed "scarytime." Scarytime is when the sun descends behind the trees. Now Luna has access to her stall at all times, so she could put herself in at scarytime, but the scary things that come with scarytime are only fully banished if Bobby or I walk with her into the barn.
(Actually, she gets oats at that time, and I think the oats more so than Bobby and me dispel scarytime.)
So if scarytime happens, and we don't come down, she brays to let us know, "Hey! It's fucking scary down here!" She's going to be in for a rude awakening come winter when scarytime happens at 4 o'clock and neither of us are generally even home yet!
The rest of the homestead is doing pretty well. The goats are almost full-grown; we'll know soon if they'll reach breeding weight and if we'll have kids next year. We have entirely too much poultry right now (and ducks still on the way, jeezum ...). I don't even know how many chickens we have. Twenty-two chicks, I think, still under a heat lamp in the shed, plus about eight layers and the two roosters, and four turkeys, out in the coop. But 'tis the season. This is our meat for next year. We are still eating last year's poultry, and this year we are raising more chickens (but growing the turkeys smaller because 45lb/20kg per bird was too much last year).
We had a groundhog family move in destroy a good bit of our garden. Mama had moved out, leaving the two younglings behind. Bobby trapped and relocated one, but after researching more and learning that one has to practically drive across the state to keep them from coming back, when he caught the second one ... well, let's just say that one is nibbling lettuces in God's garden now.
The bees are doing great, but we won't get honey this year.
But the moral of this story is that Luna is awesome and, even if the least productive, the best addition to our farm family ever.
A miniature donkey has been on my wish list for a while, just because. Ostensibly, Luna is a companion for the goats. In reality, she is a pet.
Omg I freaking love her.
We weren't supposed to end up with Luna. Bobby put in a deposit on a miniature donkey foal this spring, and we were supposed to pick her up in August. Midway through June, the owner contacted us: Their young daughter was attached to the foal and they had decided, as a result, not to sell her. They were apologetic and even offered us money in excess of the return of our deposit. (To which we said no; we are not the types of people to get pissy because a kid becomes attached to an animal. I was happy to let her go to a loving home. I hope they are lifelong friends.) But this did leave us without our hoped-for mini donkey. Bobby went back to Craig's List, and lo and behold, Luna had just been posted. She came from a miniature horse farm where they were downsizing by rehoming their donkeys. (They'd hoped to breed them, but their jack wasn't interested.)
This meant that we ended up with Luna more than a month before we'd planned. I posted to Twitter at the time, so I'm going to let that thread speak for itself.
It was a unique experience, driving a cargo van with a miniature donkey in it. Lots more Luna pictures are below the jump, if you're interested.
She is a very chill, low-key animal. She basically does three things: She eats, she sleeps (including taking afternoon naps, which is super cute), and she stands. She is now pastured with the goats; she's very sociable and was visibly lonely when she was by herself, even though the goats push her boundaries from time to time and she has to snap at them. (That's goats for you.)
We did have one exciting incident when we'd had Luna about two weeks. We were often grazing her in the backyard because the electric fencing wasn't set up yet, and Bobby was leading her from the barn to the yard when my young neighbor and her friend happened by on bikes. They were very excited to see Luna--and Luna was very terrified of the bikes! She broke free of Bobby and galloped full-send down the road to the cornfield at the end of the road. (I-91 is past the cornfield, so this was pretty scary for us too!) She galloped up and down the corn for a few minutes before slowing, stopping, and letting me approach, but the poor love was terrified when I led her back. It took her several days to settle down after that.
She's very affectionate, though a little shy. Bobby calls her spookyhorse because she is easily frightened of things. She likes to be approached on her terms, not ours. Bobby and I will sit in her paddock, and within a minute, she is pushed up right next to us with her head over our shoulder for scratches. She loves "donkey hugs" when I drape my arm around her neck and stand leaning on her.
She can be loud and lets us know when we are not meeting her expectations. One of her biggest expectations concerns what we have termed "scarytime." Scarytime is when the sun descends behind the trees. Now Luna has access to her stall at all times, so she could put herself in at scarytime, but the scary things that come with scarytime are only fully banished if Bobby or I walk with her into the barn.
(Actually, she gets oats at that time, and I think the oats more so than Bobby and me dispel scarytime.)
So if scarytime happens, and we don't come down, she brays to let us know, "Hey! It's fucking scary down here!" She's going to be in for a rude awakening come winter when scarytime happens at 4 o'clock and neither of us are generally even home yet!
The rest of the homestead is doing pretty well. The goats are almost full-grown; we'll know soon if they'll reach breeding weight and if we'll have kids next year. We have entirely too much poultry right now (and ducks still on the way, jeezum ...). I don't even know how many chickens we have. Twenty-two chicks, I think, still under a heat lamp in the shed, plus about eight layers and the two roosters, and four turkeys, out in the coop. But 'tis the season. This is our meat for next year. We are still eating last year's poultry, and this year we are raising more chickens (but growing the turkeys smaller because 45lb/20kg per bird was too much last year).
We had a groundhog family move in destroy a good bit of our garden. Mama had moved out, leaving the two younglings behind. Bobby trapped and relocated one, but after researching more and learning that one has to practically drive across the state to keep them from coming back, when he caught the second one ... well, let's just say that one is nibbling lettuces in God's garden now.
The bees are doing great, but we won't get honey this year.
But the moral of this story is that Luna is awesome and, even if the least productive, the best addition to our farm family ever.
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That answered my question! Best reason for having her! She'd probably like me. Easily spooked animals and chidren always taking a liking to me, for reasons I have never understood. I'm really not that nice. I've wondered if that is the reason? Lower expectations on my part is less pressure for them.
One more donkey story and then I will leave you alone. I took a bus to a person's house on the outskirts of Mexico City once. It was beginning to get dark and I was worried I'd missed the stop. I was explaining to my friend when I finally arrivwed that I was terrfied I'd be lost in the middle of nowhere in the dark (this was before everyone had cell phones). She asked what made me think I'd gone too far. I told her when I stopped seeing any cars on the road and only kids and donkeys! Or kids on donkeys. Small of them were small. But I don't know if they were minature (probably not) or just young. The kids riding them were tiny/young!
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Luna always has to shy away from me when I first come in. Just in case I forget the correct order of things and feel I'm owed her affection. :D
Luna joins the Goldens as an animal without a point beyond bringing us joy. Which is point enough!
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So true!
She'll probably warm up over time--or maybe she is an introvert--gasp! Actually, that never stopped you from being warm.
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I just love everything about her, can you tell!
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I have only just this moment realized of course that what he truly wants, being addicted to puns, is an excuse to talk about his ass all the time. Thanks for the heads-up, I'll be better-prepared to appreciate it when it does happen.
We had a part-time worker on the farm last year or the year before who also worked on a big vegetable farm and the owner of that farm hated guns, and yet had to dispose of groundhogs, and she explained to us that she was often the one in charge of dealing with them. It involved a hav-a-hart trap and the creek, and we were all traumatized, and she was like listen, you think you're traumatized...
We're lucky on the farm that mostly we can get by with a judicious combination of the dog occasionally murdering groundhogs, and just not planting anything sensitive near the area where they like to have burrows. They got every single artichoke this year, though. Grr.
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is an excuse to talk about his ass all the time.
THAT'S ONE OF THE BEST PARTS.
It involved a hav-a-hart trap and the creek
D^: Ours also begins with a hav-a-hart and what Bobby calls his "irresistible mix," but it ends at the business end of a .22.
I get not liking guns (who wouldn't right now?? okay, well, a lot of people but ...) but drowning an animal? Jeezum! I'd bring it home and shoot it here first.
(Worse was, when we moved in, we found a hav-a-hart out in the woods with a dead skunk inside it. I assume whomever caught it didn't know how to transport a skunk and so just let it dehydrate to death in that trap. Ugh.)
Our groundhogs got all of our greens (including a kale plant that overwintered in our brutally endless Vermont winter, which felt really unfair), peas, beans, celery, cucumbers, and had decimated our summer squash plants before we finally got it. The squash, celery, and beans have thankfully come back.
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Sorry about the groundhogs...we have them this year too, although they seem a bit disappointed there's not much of a garden for them to nibble from.
Why no honey this year? (I know nothing about the mysteries of beekeeping.)
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And goats and bees and chickens and turkeys and pending ducks!? You are livin' the Vermont country dream. :^)
On the groundhog...Certainly, I am a major proponent of gun control and have been for many, many years, but there's a reason farmers often have a 0.22 on hand, i.e., for vermin that are eating your sustenance.
Speaking of Vermonty things, I attended a conference on ALS last month in Dover, which was an intense few days, very very sciency, learned a lot. I did contemplate a turn north after the conference was over :^), but predicted that I would be too wiped out to drive to the NEK. I was right. I collapsed when I got back to Boston. At any rate, on the way home, I picked up the following at Grafton Village Cheese in Brattleboro:
Also my Senator Bernie Sanders action figure stands alongside my Senator Elizabeth Warren action figure on my coffee table. Thuringwethil II and I call the pair the "Guardians of the Galaxy." :^D
One more Vermonty thing! I was pleased to find that my local liquor store carries both Barr Hill gin (made from raw honey) and their Tom Cat gin. Favorite current cocktail: "The Lobotany" which is 2 oz Barr Hill gin muddled with fresh basil leaves, 1 ounce Cocchi Americano, and 1 ounce fresh lime or lemon juice. Decorate with a sprig of basil.
I do intend to haul my Boston butt up that way and inflict myself on you guys again!
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And Luna got her introduction to us that she deserves (delayed by that other incident, blah).
She's quite the personality huh? :D How does she like the walks, does she also get spooked easily during those?