With St. Francis in the Fields

Rejoicing in the beauty of the world

Yesterday afternoon Fr. John Williams, aka Rebekah's dad, came out to the Ranch for our annual Blessing of the Animals.

People were pretty tired from haying in the morning, but a good contingent trooped off in seach of those creatures great and small for whom Down Home Ranch is also home.  Given the current abundance of said creatures, Fr. John suggested that we select a few "stations" from which to bless, since tracking each one of them down was not practical, and in some cases unwise (such as Peggy Sue, the Longhorn, who holds some sort of bovine grudge against me).

And so we set out from the Pavilion towards  the Village, where Missy, Barny, Abi, and Lady all reside.

Barny gets a blessing

Missy the yellow Labrador is off in Texarkana with Anita, mistress of Martha House, so we went on to our first stop at Barnabas House, where little Barny lives.  He was excited to see us, and happy enough to be blessed, but what he really wanted was to go for a walk, so I suggested we put him on a leash and bring him along.

"Maybe not a good idea," said Michael, who is one of Barny's four owners, and proprieter of a huge aquarium housing a multitude of fish.  I quickly deferred to his opinion.

Michael's new fish tank

After that we headed to Teresa House, home of Abi and Lady.  Abi is enthralled with attention from anyone but a veterinarian, so she was delighted to sit in Fr. John's lap and receive her blessing.  Lady watched amiably from a distance.

Next stop was "the new" Joseph House, which Sterling, John, Kyle, and Travis are hoping to move into sometime in the next few months.  Fr. John asked each person to name the home in the Village where they lived or would live, and asked God's blessing on our homes. 

I was touched to see Kelly reach out to put her hand on Joseph House as it received its blessing. 

From there it was to the top of the haying field, the highest point on the Ranch.

Fr. John explained that St. Francis was considered strange by his contemporaries, because he so loved creation that he would stand in a field and dance, holding up his arms and spinning around.  He urged us all never to worry about what other people say about us, but like St. Francis, to rejoice in the beauty of the world.

From the hill, the horses, donkeys, cows, foxes, fish, turtles, armadillos, skunks, racoons, wild pigs and all other creatures on the Ranch received their blessing. 

Natalie moves manure from the barn to the compost pile

"And bless all the horse poop, too," Kyle said earnestly, which elicited a few disapproving murmurs, but I knew Kyle was remembering what we'd told him about how the horse manure he collects and takes to the compost piles enriches and gives back to the earth.

Later on in the afternoon Jerry popped into my office and said, "I've got to run to Bloomer's and pick up some winter veggie packets.  Be back in an hour."

As I left my office, I saw him digging in the garden and went over to investigate.  He'd bought brussels sprounts and broccoli, pansies and peas and was planting them in the beds.  Our adolescent rooster was practicing crowing (pretty funny at this stage) and the evening sun slanted across the newly mown hay field.

In that moment, I knew exactly what St. Francis had been getting at.

Of the Making of Hay

Community gathering in the hay crop



Last week the hay crew came and cut our hay. 

We were glad because we'd been trying to get it cut for weeks, but we're such small potatoes nobody is really enthusiastic about bringing out all that big equipment to work on our measly 20 acres.

But fortune smiled, the weather stayed dry, the temperature dropped, the hay got cut and windrowed, and there it was: 470 beautiful square bales sitting in the pasture ready to be loaded onto the trailers and taken into the hay barns.



Andrew exults in the beautiful morning air



This morning  I saw Keith grab a stray bale lying in the road.  He tossed it through the air into the bed of the pickup as easily as I would a bed pillow. 

"Wow!" I marveled, and mentioned it to Annette, who said with a wry smile, "Let's see how far he's tossing them at lunchtime."



Our terrific crew

 There was no dew this morning, so we got an early start.  Natalie, Crystal, Alaina, and Rebekah volunteered to help, as did Sterling, Travis, Andrew, Alan, Michael, and Kyle. 

The usual staff suspects showed up: Brian, Mr. Pat, Charles, Keith,  Jerry, Mr. Lobo, and Phil.

The truck and trailer started rolling, and our troops got underway with a whoop and a holler.  Brian stacked the bales as they were thrown onto the trailer.  Energy was high.  Some of the Ranchers worked in pairs to move the 50-pound bales but others managed on their own.

Natalie & Crystal load a bale

The whooping and hollering quickly ebbed away, as oxygen was required for other purposes.  The workers settled into a rhythm.  Soon it was time to move to the hay barn to off-load the bales and stack them in the barn.

Loading the trailer with 50-lb. bales

By this time the novelty was wearing thin.  It was harder moving the bales into the barn and everyone was beginning to tire.

At one point Travis said, "I don't think I want to be a cowboy anymore."

Then it was back to the fields, and so it went throughout the morning.

I couldn't believe how hard our guys and gals worked, with no complaints or slacking.  They are proud that our horses and cows now have a winter's worth of food put away, and they helped make it happen.

And Travis decided he does still want to be a cowboy after all.

Charles & Keith take a well-deserved rest

New Life at the Ranch!

New life at the Ranch!

Oh boy my mother hen complex came in handy today!

Got the call about 11:00 that our chicks had arrived at the Elgin post office and they were--ahem--ready to have them picked up.

I snagged Matt out of Ranch Camp with Denise's blessing.  Matt's our main Chicken Wrangler and has helped engineer this segment of Operation Independence.

Right now our little friends have a lot of growing to do, but we look forward to the day they will provide major assistance with grasshopper control and give us yummy eggs each morning.

Two of them have names.  Their names are Clara and Ray, because Heidi Clara and Gary Ray Holliday, parents of Rancher Christopher, bid on and won naming rights to the Founding Flock hen and rooster.  We don't, of course, yet know which ones are Clara and Ray, but they're in there.

Proud of our brood!

I have frittered away a good part of the day hanging out with the wee ones.  We have 40 chicks, several each of nine different breeds.  They are so incredibly dear and small and busy, runnning from wall to wall inside the Chicken Hilton. 

They're about two days old, and I don't think they'd eaten until they arrived, but the moment we let them out of the box a gigantic grasshopper leaped through the wire and they were after him immediately.  I guess they got him eventually because when I came back to check on them later there was no sign of the grasshopper.

Casey & Matt check the chicks

Already when I come into the enclosure and call "chick chickee chick chick"  they come running.  When I sit down on the pine bedding they gather around me.  They'll go exploring busily around and then just stop, wobble this way and that for a few seconds and then plop down and close their eyes.  This was a little alarming at first but then I realized they're just taking a quick nap.

When the Ranchers got off work at 3:00 they started coming by to see the new additions.  Alaina said she wanted to name all the boys Tim and all the girls Faith, which was fine I told her except for Clara and Ray.
Tomorrow the Garden Team will begin caring for them.

As you may can tell, I'm nuts about chickens and for me this is a very happy day.  Stay tuned to watch our flock grow and thrive!