Hermit on the Homestead

It's been a while since we moved the not-so-baby chickens to the coop inside their own cage to protect them from the older chickens. We thought everything was going well. Until Aji went out to check on the chickens and a very large blow snake was wrapped around the biggest baby chicken and constricting it. Aji was quite startled by this since she had reached her hand inside the box. She ran back to the house and yelled that there was a snake in the chicken coop. Ganesh killed the snake, but it was too late to save the chicken, it was dead. Once again, we just never thought a snake would get in the chicken coop and kill a chicken much too large for the snake to eat. It was so pointless...pointless killing. We are so angry that the snake had to do that to our little chicken, but at least we got a tiny bit of justice. If we had just checked the chickens a little earlier, we probably would have saved it. Will any of these chickens survive to adulthood? A sad feeling lingered the rest o

I found a helpful document put out by Idaho State University about "Halter Training and Gentling Calves" that felt really illuminating to me, because for once, YouTube failed me and when you search for training calves you get workout videos. Thanks, but no thanks. According to the gentling calves, the first step is to attach the lead hope to the halter and let the calve drag it around for a few days. This teaches them that the rope is strong enough to stop them if they step on it. We accidentally did this correctly, we did let them drag around their halters for a few days.  The next step is to tie the lead ropes to a post and let them stand there while you pet and brush them daily. Over time they will learn that you don't want to hurt them. Occasionally pull the lead rope to see if they fallow your tug, this will give you insight as to when they are ready to start walking around on the rope. A this point they should let you touch them pretty easily with out avoiding it. T

A few weeks ago we were invited to tour our neighbor's homestead and see the baby animals. They were adorable little baby pigs and goats and chickens. They actually make their living from their farm. All four of us went, Winston, Ganesh, me, and Georgie. When we left they were so nice and offered us some home-grown sausage and uncured bacon that they had just put in the freezer from freshly—ahem—slaughtered one week earlier. We tend to be vegan and avoid animal products but, we've never had to the opportunity to taste such fresh and wholesome meat that wasn't treated inhumanly or shot up with drugs or heavily processed, etc. We hung on to it and finally broke it out for fathers day. I realized Bacon is a very appropriate for this day because we brought home the bacon. It was very delicious. I especially enjoyed the sausage because it less resembled an actual cut of meat. I'm weird like that, the less the meat resembles any animal body part the better. We also realized h

Dad finished building transitional home number 3 for the not-so-baby chickens. It's a make-shift cage inside of the chicken coup. I reached inside the box to grab the chickens in order to move them and they run so fast. I had a hard time grabbing them even when they were confined in the box. Finally I grabbed one, they feel weird, like bones wearing fluff. I put them in an empty diaper box and then carried the box to the coup and put them inside the new cage. They immediately started kicking and shaping the hay into a little nest. It was kind of cute. Meanwhile, I had to fix the screen on our sliding door in our bedroom, it had an enormous hole ripped into it, and we just happened to have some leftovers of a roll of screen material, so I got on it. First you take out the gasket and throw away the old screen. While I was doing this I broke the gasket, so I had the main piece and another piece about a foot long. I figured it didn't matter I'll just use the pieces. It was extr

Chickens are a serious pain in the butt. I neglected to mention that one of the jobs involved in raising the chickens is to wipe their butts. They get something called Pasty Butt and they die if you don’t wipe their butt. You must do this until they get adult feathers which is at about 5 weeks old. Just sayin’. They constantly kick hay into their water and it gets stinky, they eat a lot and need to be fed all the time. It’s just no fun. Meanwhile, the bigger the baby chickens get, the more interested our dog Cheezit gets. Which is not a good thing. One night we heard all kinds of commotion at about 1:30 in the morning. We were shocked to see Chicken Number 2 running around the hallway, with Chicken Number 1 and 3 huddled in fear in the box. What in tarnation is going on here?! Shreds of cardboard were everywhere, hay and mess everywhere. Cheezit had destroyed their brooder box and the chickens were so scared. We had to jury-rig something to plug the enormous hole in the box and throw t

June 5, 2022 I don’t know why I’m such a wimp. They are just baby yaks after all, not even a year old. They are so fuzzy and adorable, I really want to hug them, and I totally would, just ask Ganesh. But they are pretty big, and they have horns, and they are surprisingly fast and agile. When something is big and scary, you don’t want them to be also fast and agile—this is a very disconcerting combination. Their backs are about at my belly button height. When something is big and scary, you want it to be slow like a sloth, or a tortoise, so you know you can easily evade it if necessary. If you touch them funny or even get too close, Dusty swings her horned head at me. I was so confident until the day I had the light brush with the horn. But why can’t I just toughen-up-soldier and do it anyway?   And we’ve really come a long way. Dusty doesn’t bluff me…too much, Rocky is just getting more and more friendly. When I reach through the coral, I can scratch him and pet him. Rocky loves these

The garage has a very high ceiling, so for the first time we think we could make good use of one of those shelf things you can store stuff near the ceiling. We ordered it and were very excited to install it. Ganesh unpacked the boxes and I was watching the baby so I couldn't help him. Two hours later he came in the house and said, "I give up, I can't find the studs." I found that hard to believe...what do you mean you can't find the studs? We have a stud finder after all. I went in there and spent 2 hours and came up with the same conclusion. So my dad and I tried and 8 hours later we still couldn't figure out a place to put the wrack.  (How many college degrees does it take to install a ceiling wrack?...sounds like the beginning to some joke.) We could not get our stud finder to get a reliable reading, I guess because the sheetrock was so thick or something, it seems to work well inside the house for hanging pictures.  We considered returning it...but it'

April 29, 2022 After nearly a decade of loving yaks from afar, they are on their way, closer and closer every minute. They will be delivered and step off their trailer onto their new forever-home. I was working on grading and then Ganesh came out of the office and said, “Your yaks are here.” I looked out the window and sure enough the pickup truck with a horse trailer attached was stopped at the front gate. I looked at my phone and I was getting a call from Ruth, the lady that works at the Smiling Buddha Yaks. Yaks arrive! Dusty and Rocky The trailer with their wonderful logo on the side pulled up the long driveway. It was so exciting. My baby yakies on that trailer! I waved my arm for her to drive the truck around the back of the house. I opened the fence, and she drove up to the coral that we built. She opened their door and they didn’t come out right away, they were nervous, which is to be expected. I feel a little sad for them, they are separated from all their buddies, their paren

The previous owners left two hens here, and we watched in the chicken coup for a few weeks and no eggs happened. Aji said that if you feed them they will lay more eggs which makes sense so we started giving them our table scraps of rice and the throw-away parts of the veggies from the chopping and all that and, what do you know, they started laying eggs. We thought it would be a waste to just throw the eggs away, and when I read about the huge difference in nutritional value that farm fresh eggs provide over commercial eggs, I thought, hey, a few eggs might be a nice treat. But we all started enjoying it so much that the eggs from just two chickens started to feel a little insufficient. And eggs at the store have more than doubled in price so that's not worth it.  So we thought, what if we get more chickens? So easy, right? I was headed to the ranch store to getting some tools and buckets, and Ganesh told me to buy two chicks if I happened to see them. Sure enough the ranch store h

March 3, 2022 The impossible dream has always been for me to have yaks. Most people only google-know what a yak even looks like, let alone seeing one in real life. It’s a whole other level to actually own them. I always thought of it as an impossibility since we lived at sea level elevation and yaks need at least 3,000 ft elevation, prefer the high desert and really don’t care much for hot weather. I opined—I will never live in a place that is right for yaks. Oh well, in the spirit world I can have yaks. I did have a dream though that I was walking a yak on a leader rope and I lead it into the house and it was so big it barely fit through the door. Little did I know I would indeed move to a high desert, perfect climate for yaks, and have enough land for them and everything. Even when we moved here, I thought someday we might have yaks, but with a twist of fate we found out that our house is registered to the greenbelt. What is the greenbelt, you ask? We asked that too, it means if you

The first month we were here was incredibly treacherous. The moving company refused to deliver our furniture, so we were all sleeping on the floor, with just a little bit of our clothes in bags, we had some of Winston’s toys in order to entertain him. It was dreadfully uncomfortable. Note to all others reading this: Never do business with Nationwide Moving, or Cobra Van Lines—they are shysters—I'm not convinced that they aren't running some outright illegal trafficking/smuggling or some other nefarious activity. I just don't believe that any company can be *that* bad genuinely and innocently, they know what they are doing. And if that wasn't bad enough, keep "sleeping on the floor and having no furniture" in mind while you continue reading. We had to manage a constant revolving door of contractors who were redoing the flooring, carpet, and painting. Nine days later after arriving, we were confronted with a major systemic backup of the sewer system. The toilet

The first night we are here, I had a dream. A group of men walked into the room where I am sleeping (and it really was the right room). They walked up to the foot of the air mattress, and I sat up. “Hello, I’m elder Robbins.” said one of the men, “There’s something you have to know about living in this place.” then he turned to the others who were holding three pitchers of liquid and a blue glass. They poured the liquid in seemingly deliberate and specific amounts, like a recipe, of a foggy liquid (lemonade?), a dark brown liquid (tea?), and a white liquid (milk?), until the glass was full. They handed me the glass and it was so smooth and slippery that I nearly dropped it. It slipped through my fingers and I had to support it with both hands. The glass settled and I felt like I had a steady, but light grip on it. I looked to the right, where Ganesh was sleeping, expecting to be like, “do you see this?!” but I just saw the blankets, I pulled them back to make sure and he wasn’t there.

December 3, 2021 We departed our suburban stucco track home for the last time. I’ve lived in the city and suburbs my whole life. Surprising for a hermit, isn’t it? Most people have a vast network of friends and family, but I only had a few in each category, so there weren’t a lot of ties holding us there, I suppose that made the separation easier. Ganesh and I often casually joked that we should move. Ganesh wanted a “homestead in Alaska” and I joked that he would live there by himself if he did that. But as time went on, we were increasingly tired of the stress of the city, the constant traffic, having to watch Winston at the park every second, feeling like you are going to get mugged at any moment, have to watch your back while you load your kid into the carseat. It just isn’t healthy to always be on guard like that. The palpable attitude of people sauntering across the street as you wait for them to cross. The snappy rudeness of the clerks and employees everywhere. People getting sh