We Bought a Farm: Hardest Farm Day This Year

This is where our day began. It began at 7:30am trying to move our egg-mobile to a new location on the farm. 

It went badly.

Our turn radius wasn't wide enough and we got stuck and quite honestly, could have seen our egg-mobile go head first into the pond. We switched from a 4-wheeler to a truck and it went somewhat better but still was way more challenging than it should have been.

After about an hour, we finally got the mobile to where it was supposed to go, but at the moment we parked it, the back door popped open and all the chickens went spilling out of it.

This is a major problem.

Chickens aren't that bright. If you move their house to a new location that is too far from where they were, the chickens will try to go back to where their house used to be. In this case, that was about a quarter mile away.

What we normally do to combat this is put a fence up around the egg-mobile for a few days until they "hone" back in on where they have moved to.

But we didn't have time to put up the net. The door popped open. They went stumbling this way and that way.

That's 130 chickens flying to bushes and corners of the ponds and in the back of blackberry bushes (THORNS!) to hide.

I had long talks with them throughout the rest of the day.

Hey chickens! Your house is over here. It's a nice house. We cleaned it all out. You'll be safe from coyotes in this egg-mobile. Hey chickens. We really don't want to hurt you. We are your friends. You've known us from years. Just let us lead you back to the egg-mobile. It's a great place.

(They didn't listen.)

So the kids and I (and JB and Jacob and Jake and Ann at times) spent hours catching chickens. 

Literally ... hours.

The boys and Abigail were ROCK STARS. 

Hannah had very brief glimpses of rock star status mixed with lots of crying and getting frustrated when her brothers yelled at her for letting a chicken run through her legs.

I didn't have my pedometer on. I wish I would have. I can only estimate that I would have broken 20,000 steps today.

I am like a puddle of exhaustion right now. So, so tired. 

John's Achilles heel of farming is animals not going where they are supposed to. We have a joke where he says: "I'm sorry for what I said while we were moving the ____." Today that animal was the chicken. 

Give JB and Emergency Room full of sick patients over runaway chickens any day.

I'm off to the shower,