Spring on the Farm: Sweet and Smelly

Usually the farm is pretty benign with chores, but sometimes it gets quite lively. The last two weeks of April before it finally warmed up, my husband decided we (meaning me) needed to learn to make maple syrup. I ordered three spiels (the tap that goes into the tree) and three collection bags and hangers. I got a turkey cooker and new buckets and every insulated cooler on the farm (clean of course) to hold the sap until time to cook. We didn't get a ton of sap before the season ended, but it took me three days to cook it down. The nights were freezing still so I could just turn off the cooker and start back bright and early after cow chores were done. The days were warm enough that I got to wear a tee shirt and shorts so I took the opportunity to get some sun and read a book while I waited, and waited, and waited, adding more sap as it cooked down. I must have done something wrong. The syrup came out great, but I don't think it should take three days to get 3 ½ quarts of syrup; should it? Next year we're planning on more and starting earlier, so if anyone knows how to have it not take so long, I'd appreciate the tips.

We went from those glorious eighty degree days to nine inches of snow on May second. I couldn't believe it. (They had more than I did further north!) The next day it melted into a muddy mess- again.

We waded through the mud and re-set fence posts so we could rebuild the fence around a small pen we used for small calves to learn what a fence was for. If they get out of that, there's always the bigger pen to catch them. I had used the pen for long-horn sheep for about a year and a half, so it was divided up to wean the babies from the ewes and keep the rams from breeding the young ewes. They ended up more like pets (although in my case, most animals do), but they were not big on the profit margin, so they had to go. When we put up new the fence, we took down the wooden panels that divided the fence and I pulled up posts. I had a roll of woven wire also, and I rolled it back up and deposited it in the small building we had built for a sheep shelter. We had put it on skids so it could be moved if need be and my husband hooked the chain to the tractor and tried to pull it out of the pen so it could be used for hens instead. It wouldn't budge. There was a lot of mud and wet hay from the sheep piled around it, so he turned the tractor around and gave it a lift with the hay spear and then dropped it back down so he could turn around and try to drag it again.

Now at this point, experience should have warned me there was a reason our yellow Labrador was going crazy around the bottom of the building, but I just told her to move out of the way. Big mistake! When my husband gave that thing a yank and it started moving and within two feet I saw the error of not locking the dog in the house. Pew! She has a thing about skunks- I don't know why. She attacks and shakes them as if they were stuffed toys. Of course she ends up getting sprayed. I yelled for my husband to run but he didn't understand what I said and looked at me to see what I wanted. I just motioned for him to go as I covered my nose and ran like heck. He turned the other way and saw what was happening and floored that accelerator. I'm not sure the building was actually on the ground at that point, as it was sort of floating over the ground. He went back in the pen to try to get that silly dog to drop the skunk. She did. I ran to get my de-skunking supplies to wash the dog. (That always ends up my job for some reason.) When I came out the house the skunk was waddling across the pasture. I asked how my husband got it to go away. "I threw rocks at it," was the reply. "What is wrong with you!" was mine. 

I washed that dog four times and there wasn't much in the way of results. I had to lock her in the barn (poor cows) as there was no way she was coming in the house. The first night, she did okay, but the second night she got out in spite of having the door blocked by a heavy object. I put her back and locked her in the feed room, and she got out again. I finally figured out she was getting into the gutter where it runs underneath the wall between the main part of the barn and the blocked off part where the feed is stored and the barn cleaner chain goes to a pump-out pit. She somehow scrunched her 85-pound body into that tiny gutter and under the wall- twice. I left her out at that point and of course she barked all night wanting inside. I got the smell down to a dull roar and let her in, but I bathed her every day (twice) with whatever I could find to get the smell off. I could not figure out why it wasn't letting up, and in fact, was getting worse.

                                         Chaos the Trouble Maker!

In the mean time, we finally got those calves out of the barn, which in itself was a rodeo. They had been out of necessity locked in the barn since late July of last year and now they didn't want to go. We got really beat up out the deal, as there were thirty of them, and then they broke down the panel gate and opened the sliding door and helped themselves back in the barn the next morning. We had to wrangle them out all over again, but we reinforced the panel to keep them in the pen. There's nothing like a herd of cows getting out to show you the weakness in your system.

I cleaned out the former sheep shed and deposited the litter around our fruit trees which are on one side of the machine shed. That dog kept digging at the wall and running around in her usual crazy way. I yelled for her to knock it off since she hadn't bothered to run the wild rabbits off all winter that had taken up residence there. They hopped right up the stairs to the house and she would just walk past and keep going, so I didn't know why she was so interested in them now. Anybody see a warning sign yet? I had fed the cows a couple of bales of hay, getting one off the floor of the shed where they were stored and parked the tractor back in there by the hay. After getting the shed cleaned out I went to get the tractor to pull the shed into place for hens I was getting the next day. I climbed on-board and was about to turn the key when I saw something under an old unused cabinet that was right about where the dog had been digging from the other side. I muttered something unladylike, and yelled to keep her out of the shed and then started that tractor and hauled it as fast as I could out of the shed making sure those beady black eyes stayed under the cabinet. The dog was watched closely as we finished the job at hand. That critter wasn't coming out for a while. I got the shed put into place and pounded posts in to tie that roll of wire I had put in the shed earlier. Wouldn't you know, I hit the last post so hard, I knocked the end right out of the pounder. It must have been cracked from years of use because I didn't think I was that strong, but I was nervous about that skunk in the machine shed. Obviously, I chose to park the tractor outside. 

After the pen was finished, my husband took off with the dog to the house and I went to back the vehicles out of the shed (didn't want Stinker Bell smelling them all up.) We noticed the dog smelled a little worse; couldn't figure out why. And then, I took a different path to the house than they did. After some more unladylike language, I went and told the dog she was in big trouble. My husband asked why. There were three baby skunks, dead, or nearly dead, on the path and that was why she smelled so bad. She had dug them out from the wall side of the shed and had been playing with them. I had to go finish them off with a shovel to the head and then put them in the burn barrel to keep her from getting them again. We had just discussed that if the skunk had babies under that cabinet, she probably wasn't going to go until she was ready to move them. Well, I guess Chaos took care of that little problem. (Isn't that an appropriate name for the dog?)

Skunk Spray Remover
1 qt Peroxide
1/4 cup baking soda
2 tsp. dish washing soap (I use Dawn)

Pour baking soda and soap into a bucket. Add peroxide. This will foam! Immediately coat the dog over affected area,( if you can figure out where that is) while it's still foaming. Leave on the dog until the foam stops. Then wash the dog thoroughly. This may have to be repeated.