Our 4th of July week was so full that I felt like it deserved it’s own post! We had so much fun (and a little bit a drama), and we also learned a lot!
This summer we have been picking up some odd jobs “farm sitting” for other people while they go out of town. The hardest part about having livestock/animals is finding someone to care for them while gone. This week we had our biggest job yet with over 30 goats, 2 pigs, a couple dozen chickens, 15 or so rabbits and a dog. I was so nervous about taking care of all these animals, but we did it!
Monday morning we also went to the library, where we discovered that we had a flat tire! Thankfully, I have three sons who know how to pump up the tire and we were good to go! On Monday evening, my cousin and his family stopped by on their drive home from vacation. They stayed for dinner and spent the night, helped us do farm chores in the morning and then hung
Tuesday was a beautiful day and I went back to school for my first teacher-related meeting! I know that we have the summer “off”, but it’s so nice to be able to use the lighter schedule to do some hardcore planning and prepping. Once the school year starts its so hard to get ahead. In the evening, we did go out raspberry picking in our back field and it was such a beautiful evening!!! This is our third summer living here and I still can’t get over how stunning it is.
Wednesday morning, I woke up and went for a long run – 10 miles. It was AWFUL. I wanted to stop by mile 2, which does not bode well for covering a lot of miles. It was really humid, but when it all comes down to it, this was 100% a mental battle that I lost- physically I could do, but my mental motivation gave up on me :(. After my run, I headed into school for another meeting and then quickly raced home from the meeting to collect the family and head to our little local small town parade. It started spitting rain during the parade, so we headed home for dinner and to cool off while it literally downpoured and thunderstormed outside!
Once the weather cleared up, we headed back out to catch the fireworks. We arrived at the park sometime around 8pm and were there until 10:30/11:00.
One thing of note: when we arrived for fireworks, we happened to park next to a car with two men sitting inside it. Without going into great detail, there were several huge red flags to both Theo and I about their behavior and attitude. We both felt really uncomfortable (worried about a shooting, tbh) and almost left. Instead Theo said something to the officers who were working, and for various reasons the men were searched and asked to leave the premises. I know that it may seem like we were harsh and judgmental, but honestly, guys…if you see something, say something.
I woke up early on the 4th and went for a 4 mile run with some friends! When I got home we headed straight out to another parade. The kids took about 100 homemade mulberry lemonade popsicles to try to sell. They walked around before the parade and completely sold out in 15 minutes flat- and made almost $50! We enjoyed the parade- which was almost two hours long and then walked back to the van just as it started pouring rain! We got home, got some lunch and then all crashed for naps since we had been up so late the night before. Theo took all the kids to the store and while they were gone, the neighbors dogs got into our yard and attacked our chickens. It was a massacre. They would pick up a chicken, shake the life out of it, drop it and then go after another one. We had three dead ones and three more that we can’t find (we assume they were injured and hid somewhere and died), and two who are seriously wounded. The most infuriating part is that the neighbors never apologized, offered compensation, or even mentioned it. They also didn’t even try to chase/catch the dogs- so I spent 10 full minutes chasing these dogs around our property with my dead chickens hanging out of their mouths. I can think of maybe 3 times I’ve ever been so mad in my life. The loss of 6-8 laying hens is hundreds of dollars in eggs. Not to mention that the dog got our favorite hen, who is like a pet to us. I just truly don’t understand how they aren’t apologizing or attempting to make amends.
(side note: I was extremely close to calling the police and I did document EVERYTHING. But Theo is a police officer and he says that calling the police for something like this is akin to small children “telling on each other”. It never really solves the situation and can just make it much, much worse. There could be retaliation and it could escalate, etc. The best way to solve this problem is for us to go over and try to talk to them ourselves. But I’m not quite there yet.)
These are the PG pictures, I’ll spare you the terrible ones.
The last thing we did this week is put some tentative sunflower photo plans down on our calendar! I am SO excited for these babies to bloom! A friend/co-worker is going to take sunflower minis in the field and give us a cut of the profits for “renting” the land/field. I am so excited about this! The day we took these pictures was overcast and SO muggy, you can just see the humidity in the pictures! I’m sure that the photographer’s photos will be stunning, though!
And that is a wrap on the 4th of July week! It was a great week overall, with the exception of the dog fiasco. Pray for me that I deal with this well and that we can have a conversation with the neighbors that doesn’t lead to any type of escalation. And that our poor Sapphire will survive her wounds.
Hope you are having a great week!
Weirdly my sister had that same problem this week– their neighbors 2 dogs came into their backyard and killed/injured many of their chickens. My sister did end up calling animal control only because they had had other problems with these same 2 dogs (and they have a camera in their backyard). Animal control did pick up the 2 dogs but I have no idea what they have or will do with them.
Other than that it does sound like you had a really nice week. Most of our long weekend was such a washout with lots of rain and storms but thankfully they held off for our family’s party on the 6th.