Dart Creek Farm

I’m just posting a short entry to keep the blog going as it has been quite some time since I’ve written anything. So much has been going on at the old homestead. Chickens, Turkeys, Eggs, Barn, Family, Surgery…I will write about all of it soon!

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by Michael Lobby

Much has happened since our last post.

Summer, sadly, came to an end, although the Fall is so beautiful here. Dylan turned the big 9 years old. He started the 3rd grade at a new school. Kaitie is growing up so fast. She started the 6th grade a  new school also…one school for the whole 6th grade class…a much easier transition for the very awkward time that starts at age 11.

As always a lot of work was done on the farm with building and repairing fences, expanding the arena, managing a very large amount of horse manure, taking care of chickens and horses and dogs, getting ready for the coming cold and rain and snow of Winter. We have established a master drawing of our proposed garden and done some major planning for raising pastured poultry this coming Spring/Summer. I built a Whizbang chicken plucker that will pluck a couple or three broilers in 15 to 20 seconds flat.

December brought us record snowfall and the inevitable frozen driveway, power outages, frozen pipes, snowed in chickens and horses and Lobby’s. The month also brought us  a hasty, yet wonderful surprise just in time for all the bad weather - our first foster child. It was a whirlwind experience that we had not been planning on until the Spring. We went from one day in the normal hectic and crazy life of the Lobby’s to having to care for a 6 month old little boy who was in need of a safe house and a family with a lot of love to give. He came to the right place and has settled in quite nicely. So nicely that I was able to go outside and spend a substantial amount of time working in the barn.

Which brings me to the thing that inspired me to blog again. The pure bliss of getting down to the so basic task of working with ones hands. I had forgotten about one of the great things about living where we do…the opportunity to escape from all the stress and worry and over-stimulation of life in the city and a job and the economy and all that goes along with them.

I, with my son at my side, was banging a hammer, sweating, prying lumber, pulling nails, cleaning water buckets, bringing horses in, burning scrap lumber, all to get ready to build another stall and start on the tack and feed room inside the barn. I was hot and tired and sore, limping… and happy. Very happy. And even happier when we went into the house to find my beautiful wife and daughter putting the finishing touches on a wonderful feast of fresh sushi. Oh how I love the farm life…

I also met with my doctor the other day to discuss the future of my left foot. As some of you may know I have, for a very long time now, had a somewhat love/hate relationship with that foot. The love ’cause I need it to walk and get to all the places I need to go. The hate ’cause of all the years of pain and swelling and surgeries and doctor visits and all it’s affect on my work and family life. So, a major decision has been made and sometime in the coming months I will be inviting many of you to a going away party. I’m having a major surgery that I am confident will help propel me forward into my 4th decade and make it the best one of all. We will celebrate the end of one life and the beginning of and better life (I hadn’t really thought it could get much better before this decision).

So much to do before I’m off my feet for awhile. Finish the stalls and tack room in the barn, convert the outside stalls to a brooder for the day old chicks, clean and organize the shop and move all the horse stuff/tack/feed into the new tack room, finish Kaitie’s room remodel, and get a good start on the garden. Reality dictates that all of these things won’t get done before surgery, but I am going to work as hard as I can to get as much of it done as I can. One of the great things about getting all these projects done is that, as hard as the work is, I am simply in my heaven while I’m doing them. Oh how I love the farm life…

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by Michael Lobby

Well, it’s almost the end of July and I can’t believe the Summer is going by so fast. We had quite a busy week, lots of horsey stuff. The barn was full of activity with lessons, hoof trimming, hay bucking, egg hunting, and a nice visit from my uncle and cousins from Eugene. Repairs were made to the chicken coop in addition to a new shade area so all the hens could take their dirt baths out of the hot sun. We obviously have to make more repairs as the smaller hens can be found wandering around the yard outside the coop. And an enlightening discovery (or just a realization) about a certain “hen.” I had been trying to convince Kim that her beloved Babs was not the unique and beautiful hen she was hoping for, but a quite lovely and colorful boy chicken. I knew this by the not-so-henlike behavior of jumping on the others and going for a ride. Kim was in denial (I think the kids were too) about her being a, yes I’m gonna say it, Rooster. The final giveaway was the loud cockadoodledoo out of his beak after having his way with one of the girls. Oh well, he’s still Babs, only now will probably be on his way to a barbeque nearby.

Kim and the kids (mostly Kim) cleaned up the barn and rearranged the feed room into one stall and the tack room into another temporarily until I can get the official tack room finished. It needed to be done as we have new sets of saddles and bridles and, yeah, that stuff for the new boarders. I was able to empty another stall of hay and get another 50 bales up into the loft. That was after I discovered I started the stack too far from one end and wouldn’t be able to fit all the hay up there. So I spent half a day restacking 110 bales before I added the next 50 to make sure there would be room for all of it. Whew! Great workout. Let’s see, that was probably a week ago. Still have 160 bales up. My workout plan has, so far, fallen flat. But, thanks to Kelli I found and old a hay elevator that I’m going to try and pick up this week. We’ll see…

I added another cross fence to divide the lower pasture and make room for Velvet, the new mare that will be staying with us. The initial visit between the mares didn’t go so well. Pretty much as soon as I tied the last wire and turned on the fence charger, one of them, I think it was Molly, kicked through and ripped down the fence. Grrrrrr…hours of work demolished and a few seconds. I went and got Kim to help me get the big mares moved before they did the same to the next fence. When Kim went in the pasture (wearing shorts), sure enough, the same thing happened again - one of the mares kicked through the fence. The wire got caught up in one of their legs and as they ran pulling the wire, it cut right across the back of Kim’s legs at the knee. Ouch! It looked like she had been whipped and then burned. She was ‘hurtin for a few days. Poor Kimmy. But we learned our lesson…shorts + fence wire + horses = pain. So, I spent the rest of the day rewiring the fence and getting the mares situated in the pastures to the sides of the geldings. Sometimes girls just can’t get along.

Kim had taken our cousins and the kids to Sauvie Island to pick berries. She came home with a few flats that we canned. It wasn’t a whole lot compared to the super-canning-homesteader Kelli Wright, but it’s giving us some practice and help planning for next year. We have made a master plan of our future garden that we hope to start on at Summer’s end. Right now we’re just waiting for the blackberries to ripen so we can pick and then get rid of the overgrown buggers. Oh so much to do…and loving every minute of it.

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