The Worst of Times...

Keeping up a homestead is work, but usually the work is somewhat enjoyable. Believe it or not, cleaning the chicken house isn’t really that bad. Many times there is a hen in a nesting box to keep you company, and the others are in and out to visit and see what your doing. I like to think they are there to thank me for being a good chicken mama, but in reality they are probably saying “oh good, our servant is here and she is doing housekeeping today.” 

Tending to the garden isn’t so bad either when you know you’ll be rewarded with baskets of yummy fresh fruits and veggies!

However, homesteading isn’t all fun and games, sometimes this go wrong. 
Chickens get sick... 
Critters eat your plants before they produce your veggies... 

Six Brussel Sprout plants.
A critter ate one right after we planted them. Its catching up!

Bugs destroy your fruit. 
Chickens destroy you garden.,,

What used to be an onion patch and some cucumbers.
The chickens has other plans.

Critters destroy your chickens... 

I was reminded of that this week.

I went out to gather that mornings eggs, and walked into a murder scene. Feathers everywhere and we lost more than half of our hens. We did what we could to secure the survivors, and threw a game camera out there to see if maybe we could get some footage of the suspect. 

And just as we suspected, we got us a big evil raccoon. We set a live be trap. We caught it. It has been taken care of. 

Rufus is missing most of his tail feathers. The girls are terrified. Some of them won’t sleep in the coop at night. It took us all week to get the last girl to spend the night in the coop! It will take time for them to get back to a new normal. It will take time for us to recoup our flock, but the homestead is resilient. We will get there! 

Rufus is not amused.