Grab ya some afternoon wine, It's story time!
Where was I... Ah yes, the hot mess.
For starters, we signed the contract thinking there were going to be 16 chickens, 2 pigs, NO abandoned DOGS, and NO piled-up JUNK growing under every inch of grass that was left.
But of course, there is always a little setback when it comes to John and I.
Why we have such bad luck, I'm not really sure.
Maybe it's God's funny way of paying us back for all the terrible things we both did as teenagers.
Most likely, he is constantly trying to teach us patience.
John and I have as much patience as a little child standing in line for an Ice cream Truck.
The Abandoned Dog
The minute we pulled up and I heard that rat-looking thing yappin', I literally started screaming.
"No! Not another dog! Get rid of him right now John Grotte! Go take him out back and get rid of him!"
I knew my husband was not going to get rid of him that easily, so I begged him to shoot it.
(I'm glad my husband doesn't always listen to me, because, in the moment of impulse, I was 99.9 % serious.)
If he actually would have done what I asked, I would have felt terrible for weeks...
((...Kinda how I feel at this exact moment for butchering that "Fat a$$ pig!"))
Well of course our children fell in love with the dog. And John "felt too bad" to get rid of him by that point.
(I think he just was blaming the kids for falling in love with him also.)
John named this Chihuahua "Chicco Go-bye-bye."
For months this dog did NOT "Go-bye-bye", so my Daddy named him "Chicco go-nowhere."
One of my best friends ended up taking "Chicco" about 6 months later in an impulse decision on both of our parts. Her husband was not too happy when she came home with another dog!
Grace told my friend to "Take him because his BREAF STANKS! STANKY, STANKY BREAF!"
If I'm being honest, we miss that little Stanky-Breath-Yappin' Chihuahua.
Yes, including me.
Our family has come to realize how great of a "Ranch Manager" that lil' dog was since we are constantly runnin' to chase the cows down by ourselves.
Feral a$$ Chickens
John spent every night our first month outside the house Chasin' down those feral a$$ chickens with a fishin' net to train them to sleep in the coop.
They insisted on roosting in the beautiful Magnolia trees as high as they could, in front of our house.
Bird droppins' all over the outdoor furniture!
Night after night, around the clock it sounded like a chicken was being murdered when he would climb on top of his truck, ladder, or both to the highest limb to snatch them out.
Our neighbors must have thought we were very hungry.
Some would sneak into John's Junkin' shed, and the moment anyone opened the door, there was a chicken flyin' at your face squawking and pecking.
That's probably why we came to the house with only 12 chickens and not 16, as promised.
I would imagine they were great homegrown dinners for the coyotes and bobcats roaming around.
I spent my days cleaning that God-Awful coop left at the property and giving myself anxiety about all the bugs that could possibly jump from poultry to human.
Googling obviously did not help, because then I found way more out about pigs than I was prepared for.
Bathing them in essential oils and D-Earth, I was determined for those things to become domesticated. Calendula and pumpkin, a great natural de-wormer. FYI.
When I would hear an egg call, Grace would try to bait them into the coop with kitchen scraps so they could lay in proper crates and not throughout the entire inch of our 16-acre woods.
It was an Easter Egg hunt for the kids and I every day.
Let me tell you, by the time Easter came around, my kids were not that excited about hunting down eggs!
A couple of them disappeared the first few weeks, I guess they didn't want to live the domesticated life with rules and everything.
(I don't blame them.) American Freedom.
2 or so were chased down by our Pitbull for an afternoon snack.
It took some hard-working weekends to build their chicken mansion.
They must like it; they behave pretty well now... besides a few.
It must be the mirrors and decor they have in there.
"Boujee chicken life ain't that bad."
((Is what I imagine them thinking.))
Homebred chickens in training!
I love reading your blogs.