We were decapitated chickens for the first few days on the new farm. We had one hundred and eleventy things to do with just enough energy to do approximately zero of them. First things first, though, we had to get the critters off the trailers.
We started with the horses. I could wax poetic about how they’re beautiful souls who are our closest friends, so we needed to provide them with the best as quickly as possible, but in reality, a vet making a farm call for an emergency horse visit is a lot more expensive than the “Quick! Find the gambrel; we gotta save the meat!” reaction if a pig went down. So Will dug his weed whacker out and started clearing a path while I followed along behind him and drove t-posts into the ground.
Since I used posts we had pulled only a few days before, most of them still had their insulators. It was quick work to walk around and double check the fittings and replace the handful that were getting too worn. Then we walked around the fence-line again to string the polywire—a thin, synthetic rope with metal wire woven through to it hold an electric charge. Of course, it was only then that we realized we hadn’t found the gate handles. I’m not going to tell you how long we looked for them; suffice to say that we eventually decided that running to the farm store to buy new ones was a better use of our time.
Time for a side note! In Virginia, running to the store was an hour trip. We can now make it to anywhere in town in and back in less than 15 minutes. It’s fantastic.
To the Farm Store!
Right, so off we went to Gebo’s, the local farm supply store. I was worried we were going to stick out like a sore thumb—at this point, I hadn’t washed my hair in living memory—but there was no need for that concern. It’s a rural farm store. Our dirty clothes and tired faces fit right in. The employees didn’t recognize us, so they came to introduce themselves and welcome us to the town, and the only other customer in the store was one of the local ranchers who was covered in blood up to his elbows. He hadn’t seen a full nights’ sleep since 1982 and was only there to get a bag of calf milk replacer. I’ll give you three guesses for what he was doing all morning, and the first two don’t count. (Both the cow and her calf made it.)
We found a couple of gate handles, successfully ignored the temptation of buying chicks, and went on our way.
Again, Again!
Once home, we put the horses in their new digs and basically repeated the process for the pig fence. Sank a grounding rod into the dirt, got the fence charger out, mounted it to a post, plugged it into the generator…and nothing happened. No light, no click, no zap. Crap. Troubleshoot troubleshoot troubleshoot. Nope, nothing. Something must have happened in the move. Back to Gebo’s we go! “Welcome back, new neighbors! Everything ok?” Yep, just need to replace a fence charger. Do you carry solar powered?
Ok, got the new fence charger set up and went to connect it…oh hang on, babe. The instructions say it needs 3 full days of sunlight before it can be hooked to the fence. Dirty words were said. Many of them. In multiple languages. As I walked past the original charger to go to Gebo’s for the 3rd time that day, I heard the tell-tale click of power. Will checked the wire with a fence tester and sure enough, the “broken” charger was working perfectly. It was odd, but Mama always told me not to look a gift horse in the mouth.
I backed the pig trailer to the fence line, Will opened the gate, and 2,000 lbs of grumpy Berkshire poured out. Kneesa, our oldest sow, took one look at the dusty, flat grassland visible for miles in every direction and promptly tried to climb back onto the trailer.
“At least once more, Miss Swan.”
For the move, we had secured their water barrel in the front of the trailer so they could have access. We had no issues with it the whole time we drove, but apparently the fifth night was just one too many, because they had ripped the nipple out. Well. We made that third trip anyway.
“It’s Crysta and Will, right? What else can we help you find?” To their credit, no one snickered when we asked for a pig nipple. As a joke, I said, “See y’all tomorrow!” as we were leaving.
Reader, apparently I can predict the future. We went to Gebo’s at least once every day for the first 5 days. Except Sunday. They’re closed on Sunday.
Once the pigs were set up, we moved on to the poultry. Frankly, they’re easy to deal with. We just moved the pig trailer—which is actually a slant load horse trailer that we were now using as a chicken coop, so enjoy that confusion—to an empty patch of grass and stepped in a poultry net all the way around it. The birds were in dog crates at the front of the stock trailer—which is what we moved the horses in—so we just unloaded them straight into their new pen. No, poultry net does not keep in birds that can fly, but it does keep out predators, so we still use it.
On Friday, we got Buck enrolled in school. We also got our library cards and introduced ourselves to the postmaster. My mom and bonus dad’s anniversary dinner was held that night at a place in Lubbock with an arcade, so the kids got to enjoy the evening with their cousins.
Then it was the weekend and time to start the house build. Grammy, my mom, and Grandbob, her husband, came out and our little property exploded into activity. Grammy took Buck in the tractor and taught him to drive it. Grandbob started raising the pad for the house. And Will and I tried to look useful.
The next several days really blurred together. I know we went to the library another time, and we stopped in here and there to take care of some administrative things. We checked out the local businesses and introduced ourselves around town. Buck started school, and I started moving our stuff into the trailer. That’s what I’m calling it anyway. It was more like I just brought things in and made a complete mess then spent the next day attempting to clean up the mess. Repeatedly.
There was quite a learning curve to living in the trailer, too, but I’ll save all that for a different post.
The next thing we knew, it was the weekend again, and Grandbob brought Will a skidsteer with a shredder attachment. The kids and I spent the day at Grammy’s house doing laundry. No, I spent the day at Grammy’s doing laundry. The kids spent the day at Grammy’s doing exactly what kids at their grandmother’s house usually do: get into everything, eat all the sugar in the house, and play until they fall into a coma. Grandbob dug our top pond with a backhoe and used the dirt to raise the house pad another several inches while Will zoomed around mowing down as much of the soon-to-be-tumbleweeds as he could.
Sunday brought more of the same, except Grammy and I traded off in the tractor dragging a disc harrow over the freshly mowed dead grass in an attempt to chop it up. We were only somewhat successful. This land has been untouched for over a decade, and the “native grass” that was planted grows in clumps like pampas grass.
Thus concludes the second half of moving week and the first real week on the new property. I’m pretty sure the adventure has only just begun.
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