A weekend on the farm

Isn’t Friday the end of the work week, time to kick back and spend the weekend doing something fun? Actually, if you live on a farm, the weekend is the bulk of your work week, catching up on some of those things you didn’t get to do while you were at your real job. When you add the summer heat and the Daylight Savings Time hours, it makes for some long days. Here’s an account of the fun we got to have this weekend.

On Saturday, it was time to organize and move the sheep according to size and sex. The ewe lambs finally got weaned from their mothers. The rams were moved into their flocks. Basically, the Border Collies had a very long day of practice. We had already spent the week bush hogging fields and preparing for the big moves. A hot summer with sporadic rain always calls for management of different areas of the field so the grass isn’t overgrazed or allowed to get too long.This is the sort of real work that we train our dogs to do, when more is at stake than winning a prize.

On Sunday, it was time to process the ducks we’ve been telling you about. Having processed a single duck several weeks ago, we had already decided we will not repeat raising ducks for meat, so we didn’t invest further funds in the wax and extra equipment that would make removing the down feathers easier. Instead, we spent hours hand plucking the 10 ducks we processed that were already sold. It was hot, tedious work that confirmed we are getting out of ducks, except for eggs.

Like every day of every week, Saturday and Sunday started and ended with animal chores. On Sunday, we also had to process 18 pounds of tomatoes fresh from the vines, along with other gardening maintenance. As usual, work continued until the sun went down. Dinner was served at 11. When we fell into bed at midnight, we were exhausted! Sometimes going back to your real job is a real relief on Monday morning.