Grace

When we lived in New York, Patrick and I had about 100 laying hens that we raised from day-old chicks. Once they were big enough to leave the brooder, we moved most of them to the farm but kept a handful in a small coop behind our house so we'd have easy access to eggs.

Unfortunately, the neighborhood raccoons suddenly had easy access to chickens. The coop was right outside bedroom in front of a sliding glass door and I would often wake up in the middle of the night to find two huge raccoons trying to get into the coop. We were religious about making sure the hens were safely inside before dark but one evening we got hung up at some weekend event and came home to a chicken massacre.

There were dead chickens all over the place, most of them with just one bite taken out of them. It was awful. After noticing that we were short one body I grabbed a flashlight and found one hen, sitting on the snow, catatonic.

She had been attacked- her head was bleeding- but she was still alive. I brought her into our laundry room and to try and nurse her back to health, but I didn't think their was much hope.

I couldn't have been more wrong. We named her Grace and, before long, she was walking around our kitchen and eating grain out of our hands. She was in the house for months because, if we'd put her back in with the other hens, they probably would have killed her. (It's pretty shocking how vicious chickens can be to one another. Seriously.) But eventually, Grace healed and we took her to farm and, frankly, kind of forgot about her.

Then we moved to Martha's Vineyard and decided that 100 laying hens was about 90 to many. We sold all but a handful. The one's we could catch easily went to new homes and we moved the eight or so that we had left in with the nanny goats a few weeks ago.
So I got a really nice surprise a few last weekend when I was hanging out in the hoop house and Grace walked up to me.



She is easy to identify because the raccoon did some permanent damage to her head. With the exception of the bottle babies, Grace is the only animal I've ever taken care that seemed grateful. Now, whenever I'm in the barn Grace comes over and lets me pet her a bit. The other chickens run away like I'm chasing them with an axe whenever I get anywhere near them.

Although it hadn't occurred to me to make sure Grace didn't get sold with the other hens, I'm awfully glad she's still with us. She is an exceptional hen.

Farm Update 2/19

My friends, what a wonderful and exhausting week it has been here on the farm.

We have had the full range of Vineyard weather on the Island in the past seven or eight days- fleeting snow, torrential down pours, winds so fierce and powerful that the ferries couldn't run, and beautiful blue-sky-days with bone-chilling tempurtures. Today was sunny and warmish, but I don't trust it to last. I am counting the minutes till spring when I don't have to fight the elements and the entire flock is on pasture.

The new kids are absolutely thriving- there is just no other word for it. Little Basil's eye problem has completely cleared up, whether from the antibiotic cream I put in it or not I don't know. He is a tiny little peewee though, so I am leaving him in the kidding pen with his mom a little longer than usual just to be sure he is bonded and strong. He has been eating from his mom without my help since Sunday and he is a very hungry little guy!




I am so happy that we are able to keep the kids in the warmth of the hoop house for awhile after they are born. We are supposed to be moving out of the hoop house at the beginning of March, so I really want the remaining six nannies to have their kids so they can also benefit from the warm surroundings. Andrew Woodruff, the owner of the veggie CSA that is lending us the barn, is a wonderful man, very generous and kind. I know he would probably let us extend our stay a bit, but I really don't want to take advantage of the situation. We would like to be good guest so that we get invited back next year.

Not having a proper farm is wearing on me this week. In New York we were positively spoiled. We had more than 35 acres that we were reclaiming as pasture land, cutting down the trees a few at a time so the flock could strip the leaves off, then cutting them for firewood. It isn't a perfect set-up- the land is adjacent to the Taconic Parkway (a busy highway that connects NYC to the rest of the state)- but it is ours. Being guest on the land of others is hard, because we could be asked to leave at any time and that is always in the back of my mind.

Unfortunately, it is the reality of life on Martha's Vineyard. Real estate prices have sky rocketed here since 2000 when the first house sold for $1 million. I read an ad in the paper last week with the headline "Price Drastically Reduced" that was for a two bedroom mobile home on 1/4 of an acre and was "drastically reduced" to $249,000!

Patrick and I are lucky to own a home here. We bought it as a summer rental before we moved up full-time, and without it we probably wouldn't have taken jobs here. It's on the market now while we look for a place that might someday accommodate a fiber mill and Bed and Breakfast.

The animals at Felix Neck seem to be adapting to their new home. They have already made a dent in the invasive bittersweet and they will be in heaven there when green things start to come out. Last fall, I pointed to a rolling green pasture and told Patrick that, in a few months, that kind of green would seem impossible, and it does.

Our Shearing Day Fiber Festival plans are well under way. The fun will begin on Saturday, April 19th at 10 a.m. I hope you can come because it's really a party thrown in your honor. I am so grateful to all of you and it will be nice to get to thank some of you in person.

I had two Shareholder visitors this weekend and it was so nice to get to show off the flock. Beth was here on Sunday with her beautiful baby Aubrey and they spent an hour oohing and awing over the kids. Beth started a great thread over at the ravelry group about he visit if you want to check it out.

Christine and her husband Brian spent the weekend on the Vineyard and visited both the babies and the rest of the flock on Sunday. Our insane rooster Dan Rather really didn't like Brian much and relentlessly attacked him in the kidding barn. It was terribly embarrassing and a tiny but funny, but only because Brian was such a great sport about it. It did reenforce my decision to do something about that rooster.




Our flock will be expanding by one this weekend when Mark and Melinda bring their sheep Daisy over to Felix Neck to join the others. Daisy is an Icelandic/Navajo Churro cross that Mark rescued from being sent to auction this fall. She is a sweetheart of a sheep and has a nice fleece as well. It will be interesting to see what kind of lambs she and our Cormo lamb Lincoln produce.

Adding one sheep to an existing flock is a tricky thing. The other sheep (not so much the goats) will often bully and butt a new sheep, so I am planning to put Daisy in an adjacent pen for a couple of days with Jack and Roquefort (last year's bottle babies and all around good guy goats) until everyone else gets used to her being around.

We actually already have a Daisy in our flock so the new Daisy will be known as Daisy2 from now on. The original Daisy was one of my original four sheep and, while she doesn't exactly come when you call her, she deserves a little respect. She is a Babydoll Southdown, a sheep not exactly known for their fine wool, but I had no idea what I was doing when I bought four of them. I am looking into having their wool turned into quilting batts, so if there are any quilters among you let me know.

The article in the Vineyard Gazette is definitely bringing visitors to Felix Neck to check out the sheep and goats. In fact, two couple s came by to see them while I was showing Christine and Brian around, but their attention very quickly turned to the dogs. Our dogs are just such amazing creatures. They are beautiful, fun and funny, and absolutely loyal. Cini has more than once protected me from our mean, charging ram, Lincoln.

These two pictures of Cini are my absolute favorites. He is such a gentle giant. In the first pic, Cini is licking Buster's ear. In the second he is checking out the hours-old FDR.




The picture below is one of the nannies who hasn't kidded yet. She has the very best horns I've ever seen (remind you of Marlo Thomas in That Girl?) but she also has a really cool personality. We will be needing a really good name for her.