Home On the Range

Throwback Thursday brings some nostalgia for these guys. Back in the day, we had buffalo (American Bison). No for real! Buffy and Wilma were the names we gave them. Wilma was the dominant and always stayed at a slight distance, watching, but Buffy was social. Many an afternoon was spent having my hand “exfoliated” by her tongue.

They came to us from a farm that trained barrel racing horses. When they were young calves they would be perfect for training the horses to herd in the tight circles that sport calls for without traumatizing them. Young cattle are too easily spooked and buffalo calves are just a little mellower and seem to just “know” the commands without being trained. Of course as they grow, they become too big to fit the criteria for training so they would be sold off.  

During this time we had a brief foray into breeding beefalo. The meat is excellent in that the protein content is higher and the fat content is lower. These two young girls were brought into the fold with the intent to breed them to a quality bull for beefalo calves. They grew from young calves to awkward young heifers and eventually into almost full size bison. This is where we ran into the problem. This picture is from when they were about a year old. By the time they were two they had some height and the bull had a problem. Logistically speaking it was difficult to make the necessary deliveries to produce beefalo babies.

They were both gentle, and I knew to give them appropriate distance and respect, but as they grew we knew that they were becoming potentially dangerous. They never did, but they literally could have walked through a barbed wire fence unharmed. They were so strong and their coat was so thick that it would not have fazed them at all if they had. Out of the concern for our neighbors who might not think it is so neat to have a buffalo wandering around in their yard, we made the decision for them to go to a conservatory for buffalo.

The lady that came to pick them up was amazing. I missed this part because I was at the paying job but my husband shared the story with me. They had been moved to a corral to make it easier to move them to a trailer. Because of all the people around, they were spooked and agitated. This lady asks if they have names, which my husband tells her, and climbs the corral fence and into the open area with them and using simple hand signals and voice commands got them calmly loaded onto the trailer. It makes me happy knowing that they are on that conservatory and possibly still using those same names I called them by all those afternoons. Maybe one day, with better fencing, buffalo can roam here again. 

What’s up with that name???

The Oily Hive… What??  No I do not raise bees nor do I have an overabundance of oil creating a skin condition. So I guess I should explain the origin of the name of the blog.

For those who follow my husband, The Village Medicine Man, know he refers to me as the Gorgeous Lady B. Now I am not a boastful person so I don’t think referring to myself that way would be appropriate. But, Lady Bee evolved from that and created a character that I have identified with at this stage of my life. Looking forward to the next stage of grandchildren in the next few years, I want to create a culture of family, tradition and connection to the land to share with them as they grow.

So where did Oily come from? Well, I do a lot of at home beauty treatments and remedies. A lot of those include various oils. I am also very interested in essential oils and will be expanding that knowledge base soon. In continuing that culture I wish to share with my family and friends the things I have learned through the years and along the way.

Much like a bee hive, the blog can create a centralized place for information and products for healthy living. So thus the Hive portion was created. I can see our home as a hive of activity that is filled with passed down knowledge and traditions, such and animal care, homemade remedies and care for the land and garden. In that vein the goal for this site is to eventually add, in addition to blog content, inspirational things and documentation of things around the homestead, an outlet for people to find resources for quality essential oils and other natural products.

Now that the strange name has an origin story, I would like to encourage you to continue to follow me on this journey. I have no map, things may change and I am not sure where it will lead but I am excited and glad to have you join me.

                                                                       

Copping out

It has been a crazy busy couple of weeks. As if the holidays don't make it hectic enough,we helped my son and daughter in law move. Plus I am trying to give myself a new routine since everything I do with the animals has to be done in the morning before I leave for work. It's dark when I get home now, even if I am out the door at 5 sharp.

So now that I have made sufficient excuses I thought I would share some photos of what's going on around here. Enjoy!

We have baby guinea fowl! 

They are so cute and so much cleaner than chicks! I love how they stay all huddled together. We have them in a brooder box indoors but when they hear the grown guinea call an alarm they all run to that side of the box in a huddle. It is so amazing to see how they just know when to follow that call.

This is Blackjack, the Ameracuna rooster. He is gorgeous!

This is the one who taught the chickens how to pose for the camera. Ugh! 

We enjoyed a nice walk through the pasture last weekend. I LOVE this time of year! The leaves are beautiful and the land is preparing itself for rest to come back even more colorful in the spring. 

I finally got around to cutting up that pumpkin to distribute. They all loved it! At least it was large enough they couldn't grab it and run away with it like everything else I put in there for them,

Roulette and his little hen.

I also got the poultry netting to put over the fenced in free range area today so they don't have to be fully supervised. Got to let them enjoy that grass before it is all gone. Getting set up now for staged fodder to feed them in the months they won't have grass. Also, Roulette and his hen moved into some new quarters. It is a small mobile coop that can be relocated as necessary and the fence around it also is mobile. At least right now they have plenty of grass!

Well that's all for now! I will be getting back to the written posts soon. Just trying to catch my breath for a bit. Enjoy the pics!

Maybe We Should Have Gone With Pat

I became a chicken lady this year. We have had chickens for several years but they were not MY chickens. My daughter had some and we enjoyed the eggs and my father in law had some that my daughter’s chickens shared a pen with. Early this year one of the two areas our primary egg chickens were in was decimated by a mysterious predator that took out almost all of the population. When the time came to order to chicks to try to replenish the weakened flock my husband asked if I would like to get some of my own. Of course who would want plain brown or white eggs when you could have blue ones?! So my request was for Ameracuna chicks and the order was placed. A few weeks later a chirping box arrived with lots of little fluff balls in it and I was officially converted to a crazy chicken lady!

I don’t remember what the original count was but I had 8 or 9 Ameracunas and there were about 25 Rhode Island and New Hampshire reds. The breeder also sends one “mystery” chick with the order. This is where Roulette comes in.

Named for a roulette wheel because we just didn’t know exactly what we would be getting, male or female, as well as breed. (Looking back now at all the ambiguity with Roulette, I can’t help but be reminded of the old Saturday Night Live skit about Pat.)  As the chicks grew and developed, the mystery one became more and more evident. Once my 6 surviving Ameracunas were big enough, we moved them and Roulette to the Manor my husband had so kindly had constructed for me while they were in the grow-out pen.

Roulette is the bossy one on top of the water container. 

Little Roulette was still a mystery, not just in breed but also in gender. Developing a commanding demeanor and a “fluffy butt”; bossy like a cockrel but filling out like a pullet, it was even more challenging. Finally we decided we would have to wait for a crow or an egg to make the call.

Ultimately, the decision was made to relocate Roulette to another pen when it and the Ameracuna cockrel became more and more aggressive to each other. I still was not convinced of the gender. After a couple of days in the temporary enclosure with another pullet chick, Roulette seemed to be adjusting well.

As I was leaving for work one morning, I stopped to check in and was saluted with a strangled but definite crow. I guess we have a cockrel. Now that he has been separated for a little over a week he is already filling out to be a huge and gorgeous rooster. I still have no definite determination on breed although Wyandotte seems most likely, or some mixture.

I wonder when the next order for chicks are going in. He will need some pullets and hens to protect now. I think I need to look over that catalog. Should I get some Buff Orphingtons or some Copper Marans? Oh decisions, decisions! Nah, I’ll just get both. 

Happiness is...

Growing up I had a Snoopy book that had a mustard yellow cover and was full of things to be happy about. Now I can’t tell you the first one except a simple line like the one above with an open ending. As a child I didn’t glean much from that, but now as an adult I see the brilliance of these three dots.

We are given a multitude of things to find happiness in every day, from the moment we glare at the clock and mumble under our breath about leaving the comfort of our warm bed to the frustration of unfinished work at the end of a long day, opportunities for happiness can appear in every aspect of our life. You can be happy in the moment of enjoying that warm bed and the opportunities this new day brings. A feeling of accomplishment in what has been done can give us happiness.

We have lots of opportunities to find happiness in our simple everyday activities. It is our choice to be happy in those moments and embrace them. For me happiness is often things in their simplest state, the most elemental things in life. It is not about money, position, things. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness didn’t have anything to do with the car you drive or the label on your clothes. What do your three dots contain?

Sometimes happiness is a warm blanket or a wet nose attached to a wagging tail. Maybe it is the joy of having friends you can trust… Even when they move that football. Use that open ending to find all those things we take for granted in our daily lives and find the happiness in them.  It’s a great day to be happy Charlie Brown! 

I Don’t Need a Dog

This is Ragnar, our furbaby (although my family thinks I focus a little more on the baby than the fur.) 

We didn’t set out to get a dog. Given the area we live in, a dog might not be the best addition to the livestock.  The chickens might not survive some breeds (previous experience) and smaller dogs might not survive the pasture. (At the time we had a donkey as well and he DID NOT like anything with four legs that was not him.) I had a conversation with a customer at work who was trying to rehome a cute little poodle. She really was cute but I’m not a poodle kind of girl. When I explained our circumstances she fully agreed that this was not the dog for us but we should still have one. Of course I reassured her that a dog of any kind was not in our future, just because... 

Literally, the next morning, I hear a sound like someone loudly “hooting” in our yard. We live very close to an industrial building with people and trucks coming in at 5 or 6 in the morning so this isn’t to be unexpected… Other than the proximity to our yard.   Now at this point of the morning, I am trying to get some sleep… and this “hooting” has woken me up. I’m not an angry person when I am woken up (but my husband tells a story of me slapping him when he once tried to wake me. Personally I don’t believe it but…) Anyway, I calmly walk to the door and open it prepared to inform whomever has deemed it necessary to make such a ruckus at that hour that they need to go home and rethink their life. Well, there was no one there, in fact the industrial yard was still dark, but sitting on the top step at our front door was a shivering, wet puppy making the most awful, pitiful sound. I ran and got an old towel and scooped him up, carried him to where my husband was getting ready to go to work and said something to the effect of “You are not going to believe what I found on the front step.”

The rest is history. Spoiled by me or not, for the record, I am not the one who fed him a hamburger for lunch that first day. Just saying…

But that hamburger patty smells so good.

God sends us what we need when we need it if we know how to see it. This little dog has fit so perfectly into our family and tendencies that we jokingly say he was created just for us. The last couple of years have been tough but dogs offer us comfort, support and unconditional love in response to somehow knowing when we hurt, when we are sick, when things are stressed, sometimes before we even see it ourselves. So yes, I may have thought we didn’t need a dog but I think someone else thought otherwise.

I wonder if he has had his treat yet tonight…

What Have I Gotten Myself Into?

Today is November 1^st and according to the rest of my writing family (my daughter specifically) it is the first day of Nano Rhymo (or at least that is what I think she calls it). This apparently has something to do with challenging yourself to having a set number of words to write in a book each day with the goal of being finished with it at the end of the month and ready for editing… That doesn’t sound like a lot of fun to me. I’m not really a writer. (Wait! I have a blog! Does that mean I am a writer???) I guess that’s where the practicing comes in.

My life has been a series of attempts to be more involved, more organized, more focused, more anything really… As a form of a mid-life crisis I have realized that no real growth can happen without a certain amount of risk. I am an ISFJ. I don’t know if any of you are familiar with Meyers-Briggs but that makes me a homebody. Really, I am happiest in my safe little bubble not letting most people know what my truest inner thoughts are. This is WAY outside my safe little bubble! I might express a true opinion that might offend someone… A huge part of my thought process is to measure my opinions against others so I don’t offend anyone… In other words I don’t share controversial opinions.

There is a phrase about everyone’s possession of opinions and I think it is a pretty accurate assessment in some cases. So I won’t be sharing anything controversial here. Just awesome adventures with the family, cool things that happen on the farm, other credited ideas I think are neat, possibly some home made products in the future, but for now… Just me finding a way to step out into my own personal twilight zone.

Hey K! Does just over 300 words for today get me started?