Our son enrolled in school as a freshman and quickly made many friends. All the kids were very friendly... it's a small school and town and everyone knows everyone. He seemed pretty content and didn't appear to miss the big city.
We had a temporary place to live, our son was in school, we had goats, now we needed chickens and a garden. We purchased 6 Araucana chicks from a local feed store. I had been told not to get too fond of these chicks, ha! They looked like Easter chicks and I was reminded of my childhood at Easter time. They were my Golden Girls. It was love at first sight. They followed me every where. I was their mama. They were free roaming chickens and would produce the best nutritious eggs. And they did just that after about five months. The problem with free roaming chickens though is that they lay their eggs wherever they decide to. At first they were laying in the coop but then our daily egg take started diminishing. It took me about an hour combing through the barberry, cactus and cedar to find her hiding place, actually I followed her. There was a nest of 24 of the most beautiful eggs, pink and green because that's the color of eggs that Aracauna chickens lay. Unknown to city people, eggs don't need to be refrigerated and they don't go bad quickly and there won't be a baby chicken in the egg unless it has been fertilized. It takes a rooster to fertilize an egg and we had no rooster. The way to tell if an egg is fresh is put it into a cup of cold water. Fresh eggs will sink to the bottom, older eggs will float and should not be eaten. I learned all this from my ever knowledgeable laptop. As dumb as we were when we moved out here we never would have survived without the information contained within our laptop! Praise be to technology! I felt really bad stealing her eggs. I guess she got tired of me stealing them each day and decided she was going to stop me. She did for a while and I know she was feeling very smug about it until I was on to her secret! She was what you call a broody hen...and a damned good one. Never had another like her since.
The first little garden.
This is a picture of an unripe pumpkin. Most city people have never seen a green pumpkin. Pumpkins are orange, right? I planted pumpkins in my little garden from the seed of a pumpkin we had purchased and eaten. I forgot that I planted them. One started growing and for the life of me I couldn't figure out what it was. At first I thought it was a cucumber and then as it grew I thought it was some type of melon but I had never seen a melon with ridges like that. When it got as big as it is in the picture I posted the picture on the internet to all my friends. Surely someone would know what it was. No one could identify this gourd. So, me thinking it was some type of watermelon picked it from the vine and cut it. Immediately I knew it was a pumpkin that had not ripened yet and I cannot tell you how stupid I felt. City folks again!
We started a little spot in front of the cabin for a garden, a very little spot. This little garden produced more veggies than the huge garden we would create later. We had yellow neck squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, tomatillos, onions, peppers, orkra, lettuce and melons. Maybe I should take a hint from that little garden and go for a smaller one next year. We were living the life. Of course we had to fence it in to keep the goats out of it, even though Billy was constantly challenging the fence and sometimes successful. Whatever made me think I wanted a billy goat? I guess I was remembering when I was a little girl my aunt had goats. Actually she was the mother of the cousin I got my goats from. When I was little I loved playing chase with those goats. We had to run for our lives to keep from being head butted by them. Nothing had changed, I was still running from goats. Sometimes I could be heard screaming for my son to come help me because I had Billy by the horns trying to keep him from butting me and knocking me to the ground.
It was getting time to tell that goat "adios". He was truly the alpha male around here. They were beginning to take over our new house as it was under construction. Goats don't care where they drop their contents, they do it all day any where. They are eating, pooping machines. As luck would have it the fellow who was painting the inside of the house was raising goats. I had my fill of Billy. I no longer wanted to raise goats of any kind. Billy had been trying to become a father for quite some time and Nanny would not cooperate. She was very fickle and had been avoiding his advances on a regular basis. He was always trying to mount her and she would run screaming for help. He would get that amorous look on his face and jump on her. She would take off like a frightened virgin and hide in the dog kennel. I talked the painter into taking him home with a promise he would not eat Billy. I convinced him that his herd would proliferate rapidly with the help of Billy. He piled that goat into his van with all his workers and took him home. Ah, safe at last....said I and Nanny!
Billy was very amorous!
Nanny was lonely, can you believe it? Now she was more of a pet than ever. If we took walks, Nanny followed. It was me, the dogs and Nanny. A couple of fellows driving through the ranch one day stopped and said, "That's the first time I've ever seen a woman walking her dogs and goat." I told him to hang around, he hadn't seen anything yet! One morning I left to take my son to school and didn't close the cabin door tightly. My husband was in the shower and he could here a lot of banging going on in the kitchen. He couldn't figure out how I got back so quickly. Upon investigation he found Nanny rummaging through the cabinets. It was now time for Nanny to go to her husband in another village! When the painter returned his herd was increased by one more!
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