Our 'peaceful' evenings....

Ahhh... evening finally. My friend Eliza wrote me an email the other day and said how peaceful and quiet my evenings must be with all the barnyard safely tucked in for the night.

HA!

What a laugh! I tell her that she has an idealized version of my life on the farm.

Here is what its really like:

About 4:30pm, when there is about an hour of daylight left, the turkeys decide they need somewhere to roost for the night. So the young, trouble making jakes (young males) get up on the deck, then up on the roof of the house. This sends the housecats into a frenzy. So we have to spray them with the garden hose to get them (the turkeys not the cats!) to come down. The dogs help us round them up and drive them into their night coop in the Turkey House.

The geese scream like mad hatters when corraled into their night coop. This, sets the guinea hens off. They sound like howler monkeys shrieking.

There is the muddy chase to round up all the young hens and get them into their night coops in the hen house.

Don't forget the much-hated-pigs. Its a slip-n-slide thru the mud to get them fed.

My husband and I, exhausted from building the Duck Garage all day, huddle together as the sun goes down behind the trees and make sure we have everyone bedded and fed. Ducks? Geese? Turkeys? Baby turkeys? Ducklings? Chickens? Goats? Pigs? All set and in we go.

Fast forward 3:00am.

My eyes fly open, "Honey! Honey! We forgot Runner!!"

I grab my sweats and glasses and head outside in the moonlight. The dog at my side we run to Runner. She is our last turkey momma to set a nest - a very late season nest. Of course she made her nest is the most inconvient place, again. We built a shelter around her - well, lets call a spade a spade. We built Fort Knox around her. In fact, we don't even have a door - we just screw boards over the opening each night. Except this night.

Fearing she's been attacked and killed by raccoons I peer in gingerly, hoping not to find the headless turkey momma....She looks up at me! She's fine! Whew!

The dog sniffs around until I can get the boards screwed back in place.

Finally, I get back into the warm bed. And here comes the kittens. One after the other they come walking across the bed and tickle my nose with their whiskers wondering what I've been doing. I hear the dogs start pawing around. A kitten stampede flies over the bed. Why did I even bother to go back to sleep?

The sun rises about 6:45am and we get up and do it all over again. My first stop? To un-screw the boards and let the sun shine in on Runner.