BRAYS OF OUR LIVES

Yesterday, FarmWife spent an hour moving fences, tidying up, raking hay, scrubbing troughs, rearranging buckets, and so forth. At the end of it, she had an entirely new system: Arrietty on one side of the fence, in what shall henceforth be known as "Fatland," and Missy and me on the other, in what shall henceforth be known as "Foodville." Missy, who has been having trouble keeping her appetite up, is now living on my side of the fence in a 4 foot slice of shed, separated by a creep-bar. She and I will both have access to delectable orchard grass hay and the back pasture, along with spring's impending grass. Arrietty, meanwhile, is on a new diet of 1) air, 2) water, 3) salt, and 4) itty bitty portions of dry brown hay delivered three times a day in a slow-feed haynet. This business of Arrietty getting fatter and fatter was not sustainable, FarmWife explained, especially as her hoof growth has increased dramatically as of late. "It's a potentially life-...

To all who expressed concern over the state of FarmWife's face, she's much better, thank you. A nice tip from our friends at Simple Relief has helped her start healing the cuts inside her mouth and her front teeth are already nice and firm! Crisis averted. Tomorrow, Arrietty and I start bunking separately. She's moving into the goat stall, the goat is moving into mine, and FarmWife is building a creep of some sort so that Missy can continue to live the life of repose to which she has grown accustomed. There's just no other solution to the fat mule/thin mule problem. FB

I'm afraid FarmWife and I butted heads yesterday—not in the sense that we disagreed, but in the sense that we bonked painfully into one another (more painfully for her, I'm afraid). It was as the result of me spooking, but I bear no blame: the night before, I had been witness to a massacre in the chicken coop (two more chickens and both of our dear ducks are dead, beheaded—and my barn is splattered with blood like a scene from a horror movie. It was awful. No wonder my nerves are a bit shot. FarmWife thinks the predator is a zombie weasel, since it slips through small cracks and only eats brains.) As far as the head bonk goes, FarmWife came out of the situation with a bloody nose, a cut lip, and a loose tooth, which is slightly funny if you look at it from the perspective of someone having a bad run of dental luck: next Wednesday, Clover goes in for oral surgery (an infected slab fracture of the 4th molar), and my own dental exam has been postponed because of the cost. FarmWi...

FarmWife's daughter treated her to a professional hoof trim today—that is, FarmWife presented her own work-worn fingers to a manicurist at yonder shopping mall and watched him work his magic. The poor chap probably didn't know what hit him. FarmWife's fingers had never been pampered much, you see, so he wrestled with myriad hangnails, battered unkempt cuticles into submission, and finally coated the whole thing in a layer of clear shellac (FarmWife drawing the line at colored polish). Daughter, in the next chair over, got black polish on her own hoofies. This, she explained later, was so that she might match the dog. We recently celebrated Toenail Day here at Bent Barrow Farm, upon which occasion we all submit to FarmWife's ministrations to our own hooves and claws. The rabbits get cradled like footballs and have their toenails chopped with a guillotine-style cutter, the goat sits in FarmWife's lap and presents her funny feet one at a time, and Arrietty and I stan...

Money troubles? Phllllbttttt!  Dear Friends, Thank you for all your many expressions of concern as to my well being. I'm currently feeling pretty good, staying pretty active, and appearing in stable condition (no more water out of the nose, so perhaps that was a fluke!). I'm eating like a prince—Equine Senior, timothy pellets, oats, and free choice orchard grass hay—and no longer losing weight. My next vet visit will involve bloodwork, a dental exam, and a fecal egg count. FarmWife is working on getting Missy over to my side of the fence and Arrietty over to the other, now that I am in the "hard keeper" camp. Arrietty is much too ponyish for a diet like mine! Sadly, my next vet visit has been postponed because of an even more pressing development—Clover, my shiny little weasel dog, has a broken molar! It is split down the middle, right up into her gum, and smells like rotten fish. She must have a great deal of pain, and so FarmWife made the terrible choice to ...

I don't know that such a long lapse in blogging is excusable, but for what it's worth I've been caught up in something which should soon bear fruit. When it does, I'll have a lot more to say. Before dawn today, our chickens were visited by a marauder (what sort, we know not). It killed one, leaving it headless and disemboweled, and injured the leg of another. We lost a chicken outside, in daylight, last week. A month before that, we lost our best duck without a single feather of evidence left behind. Today's attack was different. It took place in the safety of a closed and latched coop. There were no obvious areas of entry for the predator, which made me wonder if it was something skinny—perhaps a fisher, like the ones in yonder marsh. It left me feeling broken-hearted for our chickens, who must have been startled awake by the attack. What a terrible thing, to be accosted on your roost! Otherwise, the animals are well. Fenway's unexplained weight loss has me a b...

A mule surveying his realm Spring has been thinking of coming early here in the Pacific Northwest, and we are ready for it. My teeth (which may or may not be defective—I am seeing an equine dentist at my soonest possible opportunity) are ready to nibble the tender shoots of its delectable grasses. My mini-me, Arrietty, is ready to gambol squeefully upon its cushions of flowers. My goat, Missy, is ready to totter about under its azure skies. My FarmWife, Marnie, is ready to bask in the long evening hours of its lengthening days. This has been quite a year at Bent Barrow Farm. We saw our youngest human off on the school bus for the very first time, welcomed Miss Arrietty G. Teaspoon (our heart and soul), and moved into my double-sized, much-improved little barn (Christmas Present 2011). We lost B.G., one of the World's Best Goats, to irreversible orthopedic disease. We lost Pickle, one of the World's Best Ducks, to a hungry raptor. We gained Kevin, the cockatiel, wh...