Final items, chick concerns, teaching tomorrow

Mama and Victoria are in the final hours of their visit with the girls. It is always a challenge to leave when a visit is over and still ensure, even in leaving, that the memories created outweigh the sadness of the departure. It has been a wonderful visit with Zoe, Sophia, Audrey - and Brittany. Now, in the final hours Mama and Victoria are trying to decide how to say goodbye to the girls. They will be heading to the airport in Columbus, Ohio tomorrow after the girls have been dropped off at school and daycare respectively. When everyone gets home from their day, Mama and Victoria will be back at the farm. I am sure they will figure it all out, but the sudden, somewhat unpleasant change back to normal will sit poorly with everyone for a bit. Such is as it must be as we all go back to our routine lives.

In their final hours of appointments in the Ripley area, Mama, the girls and Victoria will be dropping off the stray pup that has attached itself to Brittany and the girls. At least that was the last I heard of the matter.  I am pleased that the rehoming will happen in West Virginia versus the pup ending up with us on the farm. Both Victoria and Mama have been telling me how wonderful the pup is; how smart, how gentle, how quickly it could be trained, etc. As accurate as that may be, we do not need another dog at the farm. Mama and Victoria agree in principle with my assessment, but they will still be talking about the pup for some time to come.

From Mama’s perspective, this has been a great time with Audrey. In the past visits, Mama has not had as much uninterrupted time with Audrey but with Brittany traveling to help a friend – the reason for Mama’s timing for this visit – there have been several days when Mama/Grammy was the principal authority is Audrey’s world. It took a couple days but Mama, being Mama, won the child over fully and they have become fast friends. Their relationship changed in those hours together and now Audrey responds to Grammy the way Zoe and Sophia do.  Mama’s impact will be felt, and I hope, appreciated for a long time to come.

Here on the farm, I have been wrestling with chick concerns. Tuesday morning, I got up at 5 am to tend to the chickens and the baby goats before I left to teach an all-day class. I wanted to make sure the ducks and chickens had been let out to their water containers early to save Grandpa some steps and to not rush him into the day's activities. In letting the chickens out of the little coop, I did not have the time I normally take to let out the adult chickens with the rooster while retaining the hens and their five chicks inside the coop. I had to leave the door open to all who would exit the building that day.

When I got home, all the baby chicks were out scratching in the leaves outside the little coop yard being watched over by their mother hens. The real issue was getting the chicks back into the coop overnight. I did not know last night as I was closing the coop door for the night if the little ones made in into the building or not, but I could not see them below the access door. This morning, as I opened everyone up, I found that three of the chicks had spent the night outside the coop. Only two had made it up the ramp into the building last night. At least they made it through the night hiding them under the coop.

The chicks and ducklings in the garage need to be moved but that will not happen until Mama gets home tomorrow. I am not sure where to put them, but we need to get them out of the garage. The horde of flies they are drawing find their way into the house every time we open the door to the garage and Grandma, Grandpa and I are about done with the intrusion. Anyway, we will find somewhere to put the growing chickens while the ducklings will be placed in the grow out pen for a few weeks. But even that will not fully empty the garage because we are on the verge of hatching out some quail eggs. I have thirty-eight in an incubator. I took out the egg turner this morning with the expectation that the hatchlings will introduce themselves to us through the weekend.  

I have no idea how many of the eggs will hatch but my intention is to raise the hatchlings solely to process the birds for eating. If this works, we will try again with the quail, but this is our first concerted attempt to hatch any out. I will have Mama call one of her contacts and see if she knows anyone who would like some hatchling quail right now, but barring that, we will have some of them for dinner in a few weeks.

I will be up again very early tomorrow to repeat the process I followed Tuesday morning. Grandpa can probably handle to chore, but I never know if he will be feeling up to the challenge when the next morning arrives, so I try to take on the larger portion on the task to ensure that the birds at least get to water before I get home. It would all probably work out without me doing the work so early in the morning, but I don’t want to be wondering all day as I teach a class.

Tomorrow, I will not get home until after I pick up Mama and Victoria at the airport. My class is only a four-hour class, so the timing works out to meet Mama a couple hours after the class has concluded. A busy, fun day, especially since I get Mama back.