Since the day we arrived at Lovell’s Orchard, it’s been nonstop peach picking, peach canning, store tending, and farmers markets, and that’s been a lot of hard work. But when it comes to farm life, there are many other hardships that rear their ugly heads at the worst times. The number of animals here, unfortunately, has been steadily dropping. To start, three of the original five kittens have gone missing, (one day they were all here, and over the course of only a few weeks, more just kept going missing) and now there are only two left. One of the four Geese have disappeared without a trace as well. Daniel and I both feel like the red foxes we have been seeing on our trips home from town are the culprits to blame.
Before we arrived, The Lovell’s had purchased this mesh like electric fence to keep predators away from their livestock, but since they started using it, a billy goat, a sheep, and a baby pig have all somehow managed to get themselves entangled in it overnight and have all died before we could hear their cries come morning. Needless to say, they no longer use the fence anymore. But there is a price to pay when you let your animals roam free on your property. The three remaining goats that now run free were curious and hungry last Sunday morning, and wanted the food in the rabbit cage containing the baby bunnies. So they flipped the cage over and broke it open, (while Luke, Rosi, and the kids were all away at church, and Daniel and I were away helping the Brevard’s bottle wine) causing momma bunny and two baby bunnies to escape. It’s been a week now, but even with all our combined efforts, we cant seem to catch momma bunny, and immediately after the cage was flipped, the two baby bunnies that escaped were both killed by the farm cats. Everyone was very broken up about it the day it happened, and it still weighs on mine and Daniels heart.
The worst story that we feel the need to share, concerns the baby ducks that were born a couple weeks ago. When they first hatched, there were fifteen ducklings. By day 2 or 3, we counted only fourteen. A couple days later, only thirteen. By the time there numbers had dropped to about ten or eleven, Luke thought maybe something was killing the ducklings, so he made the decision to put the Momma duck, and all the remaining ducks into the chicken tractor (a small metal 10x10 mobile enclosure that sits on the ground). Well, they did fine in it the first day, but when I went to check on them the next day, to my shock and horror, their were three dead ducklings laying in it. They had food, and plenty of water, and there was no possible way an animal could have gotten to them to kill them. I just don’t know why they were dying. Two days ago, Daniel checked on them, and found two more dead, leaving only five still living. And as if we didn’t all see this coming, Rosi and I went out to check on the last five yesterday while Daniel was out in the orchard picking peaches, four were laying in the grass dead, and the last one was barely hanging on to life. Rosi and I immediately rushed it into the house, and tried nursing it back to health. Holding its little beak up to some crumbled bread soaked in milk just waiting for it to try and eat something, anything. After an hour or so of trying to resuscitate this baby duck, Rosi had to leave and take the kids somewhere more positive. (And I understood this) But after she left, I made it my mission to bring this duckling back to life. I sat at the table with it for another two hours talking to her, comforting her, and trying my hardest to get her to eat or drink something. But she just stood there, lifeless. The damage, from what I can only assume was the extremely high summer heat we’ve been having, had already done it’s work, and after about another hour or so, the last remaining duckling died…
I guess in the rush of the harvest, it’s easy to give all your attention to the task at hand and put everything else of a lower priority on the back burner. By doing this, you keep the store shelves fully stocked with peaches and customers happy, in exchange for the goats eating the decorative plants outside the store, loose ducks and geese excreting all over the porch, and 500 pound pigs breaking down sections of fencing to take a swim in the pond…
Though this is all frustrating, we’ve been trying not to let it get us down. Everything that’s happened so far has just been another lesson Daniel and I have to learn before we can properly own a farm of our own one day. We only pray it doesn’t keep happening to the remaining animals. We don’t know how much more of this we can take.
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