First Week at the Farm: SKUNK!

Howdy friends and family. Well, we moved last Tuesday (what day is today??) and the adventure began. I picked up a big Ryder truck and loaded up my stuff. Lisa and her mighty funny friend Sean helped me load and then we drove to Lisa's to grab her big items. I won't spend much time talking about "killer" --the California King mattress of Lisa's that we tacoed in an attempt to get it out of the apartment, on the truck and then reverse it at the farm. Sean couldn't stay to help us unload so we did that part ourselves. By 4pm we were giddy and about falling down. We had a couple close calls unloading the mattress and the iron fireplace, and the only casualty was a toad that got flattened when we dropped the mattress.

Wednesday I had the farm closing and then had to go to work. Lisa had the day off and when I got home on Wednesday night she had totally set up the living room and it was beautiful. She's got a great eye and by combining her furniture and mine, she had set up a lovely room. She also set up my bed so I'd have a place to sleep so night 1 was upstairs, in the air conditioned room with both dogs, Lisa on her air mattress.

We woke up all giddy and ran around outside with the dogs and must of said 500 times "it's beautiful!!" And it is. This is the prettiest farm in the whole world, and I'm not kidding. La Bella Vita is absolutely stunning.

The rest of the week was entertaining as we were discovering even more cool stuff about the farm. On Saturday I took Lisa's truck back to Hoboken to pick up some things. Brian helped me load (thanks brother!) along with my neighbor Cheri. I went back on Sunday for another load and I'm still not done! I wish I'd of had time for a rummage sale.

By thursday we were feeling a little more at home and started exploring the farm more. Lisa discovered a climbing wall and basketball hoop in the upstairs of the barn! Lisa's parents came on Sunday from St. Louis to check out the new place. They got the treat of a lifetime when they pulled in the driveway and saw Lisa trying to get Gabby to let go of a skunk. We'd seen the skunk earlier that morning and I was thinking it'd go off and hide and if it did, it didn't hide very well.

I was in Madison at the time, getting more stuff from the house when I got that phone call. "We have a crisis" I think was the line Lisa used. I was on the way home and got there in time to see Gabby getting soaped to the gills. Lisa used her very finest herbal Aveda on Gabs so she didn't smell too bad! She had a feint odor of skunk, but we are very lucky that the skunk was not fully grown so it probably only had half skunk power.

The other uber cool thing is Lisa's chickens are laying eggs! Someone gave Lisa a book on chickens so I've been reading that and we've been discovering how to care for them. Lisa keeps checking for eggs and sometimes when she walks in the chicken is in the next box, looking out. In Lisa's words it's like walking in on someone in the bathroom. She walked in on Dumpling trying to lay an egg and said "oops, I'll come back later!" And sure enough, Dumpling laid an egg.

Speaking of the chickens, Pot Pie is the noisiest one. She likes to say hi really loud and if Gracie runs at them she protests the loudest. Marsala and Cacciatore are kind of quiet. We're trying to figure out which chicken is laying which eggs. According to the book you can tell this by the color of the chicken's ear--it matches the egg. I haven't been able to see which chicken has spots on its ear but I'm guessing it's Pot Pie.

So Lisa cooked up a scramble with the eggs on Sunday--and it was delish!

And we don't have internet...so can'[t upload any photos. We're ordering up satellite internet so look for photos soon!

Stay tuned for th next installment of Life on the Farm: Decorating with Fly Strips.