Farm living, pigs and chickens

Mama and I were talking last night as we were waiting to leave for church and she remarked that she was not anxious to go back to the Jennie house because of the work that will be required to clean it up and get thing arranged. It made me realize that, for her, this is a vacation; not so much for me. In our present financial condition, it may be the best vacation I can give her. Besides, her little brood of chickens is here now and she is still worrying over them and those fears are getting more intense as the nights cool down. It is a wonder that chickens ever survived without her.


Grandma made potato soup last night out of only two potatoes and after all of us ate there was still enough for me to take for lunch as well as feed lunch to Grandma and Grandpa tomorrow. That’s how big these potatoes are. The peels are going to start a compost pile so nothing will go to waste. Mama is really getting into this farm living.

The other day Grandma uncovered a very nice steamer trunk among the piles of waste in the little farm house. It is well worth keeping. I wish the heirs had left the antique sewing machine for us but they took it just before closing. We were planning on making it into a table for the entry to our home. We saw one retrofitted with a mesquite wood top and it was beautiful. The trunk that was found will become the base for a living room table. We just happen to have a large glass tabletop that would do nicely for the project.

There has been very little else that has been salvageable out of the four or five dumpster loads we have taken out of the house – mostly Grandma. Grandpa has reused a lot of tin and lumber salvaged from the garage we tore down to repair and re-service several little buildings on the farm. We now have a tool shed/garage, two chicken houses, two loafing sheds, a calf lot complete with loafing shed and the start of a pig lot. We also stripped the tin off of the large steel frame that will become our main shop for the farm.

As we talked about buying a couple chicken feeders Grandpa remembered seeing some in a pile of scrap along one fence line. So we walked down to find it and sure enough there were two metal troughs that would work very nicely for the feeders we wanted; at least that is what Grandpa and I thought. Mama was not happy about putting feed for her chickens in scrap feeders, but I think she will get over it.

When I said she is really getting into this farm life, that mostly had to do with planting a garden and trees and raising animals. I was not referring to Grandpa’s and my practice of reusing well used items we can make do with until they can be replaced with nicer looking items. Salvaging boards from the garage to be reused on the buildings and salvaging scrap metal pieces to serve as feeders is not in her vision of farm life.

She comes by it honestly though. We visited a pig farmer to look at his purebred Hamps and Durocks. It turned out that his wife also raises chickens and sells fresh eggs for $1.50 per dozen. Mama and I bought two dozen, more to support them than any other reason. Grandma will not eat the eggs because there were so many flies in the pig barn which was on the other side of the farm. Go figure. We will probably end up buying two of his hogs, but I am sure that on our farm there will be far fewer flies.

The people at church got a huge kick out of us transporting thirty one chickens from Amarillo to Bowie in the back of our minivan. I am not sure how they pictured it in their minds, but it would be interesting to find out. Mama only added to the humor when she explained that the longest stop we made in the five hour trip was to feed the chickens because they were being too loud for her to nap. They were hungry and wanted us to know it.

I drove home with all the windows open yesterday to let the stray feathers blow out of the car. I’m still not sure I got them all.