The Skinny on the Guineas

Glenn and I moved the guinea fowl over to their new roost several weeks ago. We let the guineas get used to their new home, then decided it was time to let them see the world. Teaching the guineas how to leave the roost and fly back in the evening has been a patience-testing experiment.

First, we had to get the guineas to leave the roost. Glenn opened the doors and expected them to take flight right away. The first day, only two guineas ventured outside to the perch, then quickly retreated. Oliver decided to give them a lesson about the joy of flying. The guineas were not impressed and stayed inside.



On day two, all of the guineas finally decided to go outside and check out the view. We waited quietly under a tree until finally, all at once, they took to flight. I was happy I had the camera ready to capture their first moments in the air.



Once the guineas were out, the next big challenge was figuring out how to get them back into the roost. Glenn and Oliver spent many hours trying to find the easiest way to get the guineas back inside. In the picture below, Glenn and Oliver have herded the guineas under the roost and are contemplating their next move. The local wild turkeys stopped by to watch the action.

Glenn thought trapping them with a bird net and putting them back one by one would be a good idea. Oliver and Glenn expertly herded the birds into the net. Oliver's bird herding skills are truly remarkable (if only school tested him on THAT ability rather than his ability to pick out the letter "P").



Glenn decided herding the guineas into nets was too stressful for the birds, so he has tried many other methods over the past three weeks. On various evenings you could find Glenn and Grammy up in the hills with headlamps, Glenn and Oliver patiently sitting under the roost, or me and Pearl, covered in baby poop, yelling at the guineas to just fly inside already! One day we even had Glenn, Grammy, Pop and three boys in capes all trying to help the guineas get back to the roost.


The guinea fowl might be time consuming, but they are definitely intriguing creatures. Once they learn how to roost on their own, I'm sure we will feel better about all the hours we have spent outside with them. Pearl found them so interesting she had to pop her head out of the Moby to watch as I took pictures. Lotta also finds them fascinating. We won't tell her how delicious we heard they are.

Guineas, Melons and Alpaca Corralling

I have learned a valuable lesson. I will never again talk about erections on my blog. Using the word "erection" in a post title alerted the people at Viagra to the fact that I am now running a pornography site. So, if you see random advertisements from Viagra in my comment section, please disregard. Here are a few recent farm updates.

The Guinea Fowl Roost

Glenn is loving my maternity leave. He has all day to work on the many projects he has going around the farm. Yesterday Glenn finished the construction of the guinea hen roost and decided to paint it red (like we are planning to paint the barn). We will be moving the guinea fowl into their new home this Saturday.




Big Melons!

We ordered seeds for this large "Bidwell Casaba Melon" from the seed saver catalogue last year. Glenn picked this variety because it was developed in Chico, CA and he thought it would have a good chance in our climate. They are turning out to be huge and so tasty. We will be planting this variety again next year for sure!

Alpaca Grooming

A couple of weekends ago we decided the alpacas were looking a bit unkempt so we gathered them up for a morning of grooming. Alpacas are decently easy to corral. They can be captured with only an (extremely frightening) rope. I watched as Grammy and Glenn roped in the alpacas and began to wonder why we even built a fence for them. It seems like we could have saved some money and made a large enclosure out of ropes. You can see Leche and Serio (the goats) laughing at the alpacas in the photo below.

Grammy haltered all of the alpacas and then I began to work out Remy's knots.


We "let" Glenn brush Pablo because he is a bit more wild than the other two. It was fun to watch them dance.

Finally, all the boys were clean and I was able to snap one quick picture before they rolled in dirt.

Our audience: Oliver and my two cute nephews, Reid and Owen.

Our Romantic Anniversary: A Vigorous Erection and Hours of Pickling

Yesterday Glenn and I celebrated six happy years of marriage. To honor the occasion, we spent the day getting "farm chores" done, then had an excellent evening together getting foot massages and having dinner out on the town.

Glenn's big project this weekend was erecting his guinea fowl roost. We wanted the guineas to be close to the garden and the front pasture to keep bugs and snakes away from the places where we spend most of our time.

Oliver and Glenn spent a long time thinking about how to most easily get the roost up without getting hurt. Glenn decided Oliver and I were pretty worthless, so he asked Grammy and Pop to come over to help.


Glenn put on the final touches on the roost and I decided to check out the guinea fowl view. Not bad.

Finally, after two hours, Glenn was fully erect and boy was he proud!

Here is a picture of one of the guinea hens. She is at the awkward teenager stage, but you can see how pretty her coloring will be.

We wanted to hang out and admire his erection all day, but we knew we had a big pile of cucumbers waiting for us inside. Our excellent neighbors donated all of these cucumbers to us in exchange for some pickles. After our jam experiment we were ready to take on more canning.

Glenn filled the jars with fresh dill and other spices. He really had to study the directions as making pickles is slightly more difficult than making jam.

My job was to cram the cucumbers tightly into the jars. The sad thing about this picture is that this is my attempt at making a "sexy" face. It is a wonder how I ever got pregnant.


The final product: eight jars of pickles! We will have to wait two to three weeks to try them. Pickle photograph by Glenn.

Naked Goat Wrestling + Breastfeeding Squirrels + Poultry = A Wonderful Wednesday

Oliver had another wild, naked morning in the pasture today. I think he would be happy if we just left him out there to live with the goats. At times he certainly acts more like a goat than a human. Patches and Oliver love to knock heads together while Leche always tries to get a piece of the action.

Oliver finally put on some clothes and he strapped on his squirrel to head to town for my doctor's appointment. At the young age of four, Oliver is already quite the staunch lactivist. He is not ashamed to nurse his squirrel named "Pearl" on demand in public. If his baby needs a nurse, then damn it, she is getting one. As you can tell, she is one satisfied squirrel.

After measuring my belly and listening to the baby, Oliver and I headed to the post office. We opened the door and could hear loud chirping sounds. Our chicks and keets (baby guinea fowl) had arrived! We ordered our birds this time from Sandhill Preservation because we like that they are a no-kill chick facility.

Oli really enjoyed being able to hold one chick and one keet.


The babies are all settled in for the night. I'm looking forward to see what guinea fowl personalities are like. The keets are the smaller brown or lavender babies in the photo below.

As an added bonus to an already spectacular day, our resident wild turkey "Gerdie" decided to hang out with us all day. She has two poults and does an excellent job of keeping them from being eaten by a fox. I'm happy she has chosen our property as her home! I think it's a pretty nice place to raise children.