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Twice a day, every day of the year (365 days)
without fail, Bruce and I do “chores”. The following is what we would typically do each time
we do chores. Bruce does the feeding and I do the watering. Sometimes I think I should do the feeding
because I think that the feed pails weigh less than the water pails. But anyway, Bruce will gather up about
4 five-gallon pails and fill them with feed. Some will have ear corn and a little soy-bean meal in them
and the others will have a mixture of ground corn, minerals and soy-bean meal. He then will take these
pails, two at a time and stop at each feed station, scattered around the farm yard and up into the north field and put feed
out for the animals – i.e. chickens, ducks, turkeys, and pigs. At the end of August, for example,
we have 10 different feed areas for the poultry and 6 different areas for the pigs. I follow him around,
carrying two half-full 5-gallon pails of water at a time and fill the various dishes and waterers for each of those 16 areas.
My problem is that I can only carry half-full buckets and so it takes a lot of trips back to the well to re-fill them
and then go back out to dump that water in the dishes and waterers. I figure that I walk about three miles
each day just doing chores. Bruce also has to make sure that the Randall Lineback cattle have some hay
as they don’t do well on just a diet of fresh grass – they get the runny poopies unless they have some dry grass
to eat. I also have to fill two different stock tanks for the steers and heifers and the Randalls, but
that I can do with the aid of a hose attached to a well pump. I just have to stand around and make sure
that it doesn’t run over. Just about the time that I get to that point, Bruce is refilling his buckets
to take some feed down to the buffalo farm to take care of the two pigs and the many more chickens that we have down there.
He also takes care of watering them and checking to make sure that the buffalo are ok and that the electric fence is
working ok. Also, twice a day, we milk our beefalo cow. I bring the stainless steel milk pail
and a small bucket with wash water and a clean rag down to the barn and once Bruce coaxes our cow into the head-gate in the
barn, I sit up by her head to talk to her and keep her calm by giving her a few ears of corn. Bruce cleans
her udder and then milks her. I then take the milk up to the house, pour it through a clean filter into
a chilled gallon jug and then put it in the refrigerator to chill. Then I have to clean up the pails and
the wash cloth. In addition to doing all of the above every day, every couple of days, we move each of the portable
chicken/duck/turkey pens around. These are huts where the poultry spend their nights. They
have doors on them and each night they go into their huts and we have to go to each pen and close and lock the doors so that
no predators can get in. Each morning, we go around and open up each hut so that the poultry can free-range
around the farm and eat grass, bugs, and their feed. We move the pens every few days because the poultry tend to do most of
their pooping at night – or at least that’s what it looks like. So by moving the pen, we move
them to a new grassy area that is clean, until they poop it up again, and then we move it again. It is
a great way to fertilize large sections of the farm. By the end of the year, when most of the butcher chickens/turkeys/ducks
are gone, we have literally fertilized a couple of acres of land, and no shoveling required. When the summer months produce the worst of the
heat and humidity, our chores also include a noontime watering of the animals and Bruce usually helps me with that one.
That takes about an hour. Quite often, we also hose down and make mud holes for the pigs to wallow
in and cool off in. So on an easy day, Bruce and I spend a total of about 5 hours a day doing
chores – 2.5 in the morning and 2.5 in the afternoon or 1.25 each in the morning and 1.25 each in the afternoon.
Other days, we can spend as much as 2 to 2.5 hours each in the morning and 2 hours each in the afternoon.
It’s like working a split shift. Go to work, come home, go back to work again.
Or in our case, do feeding and watering, work on other things, go back to feeding and watering again and don’t
forget to lock them all up for the night when it gets dark.
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