It's always something...Martyn fails again at making a money tree

There is never not a need financially for non profits. We always keep a teeny nest egg, but it is important to constantly raise money in a non profit. I have had Martyn trying to propagate a money tree for years, but he has had no luck. And we wonder if a money tree might lead to many non positive things...like Paco buying too many cookies or poetry books [I guess one can never have enough of either].

So the push in the coming couple of months is tor add to our nest egg to cover the annual costs coming up:

• Hay...oh, hay. Last year we did $3,000 worth which got us through a very long winter. I am aiming for that this year, to be safe.
• Next week's vet call will be about $500 to cover annual shots/checks for equines and to castrate/disbud little Ollie
• Who is little Ollie?! I will introduce him next.
• Next week is also a small event for Opie, Pino and Birdie, called Opie Day. We have invited some elders from he Greens elder residences to meet us at Inn Along the Way, so they can sit in the old barn and the animals can run and romp. We do not charge for these elder visits, and don't plan to. We do not take a salary or get reimbursed for travel or time.
• In the fall, we do annual rabies shots for ALL animals, this has to be done by a vet. Rabies is a real concern in Maine and after talking to the state vet on arrival, we felt it best to vaccinate everyone, even the pigs.

So please donate if you can. Any amount is helpful.

Old cat ballet

The sun comes in the elder cat suite in a vibrant way. They have panoramic views of The Wood. They all love to gather, and sun.

There is something so beautiful about the way a cat can sit, and sit, and sit, and then make a slight adjustment to his stance and it creates another beautiful pose, or gesture of emotion, like ballet.

{If you like our Elder Cat Suite, please consider a donation or visit the Apifera Farm Wish List too. Thank you}.

Last chance!

I'll be selecting -this weekend-two people who will get a free piece of art out of the Little Tulip book, as long as they have pre-ordered by tomorrow. The book is currently in production and slated to be ready for shipment in late July.

Visit pre-order site now >

Earnest the pig photobombs dinner

Every night when hay is served, Marcella lies down in it, with the goats gathered around her. Last night, they were photobombed by Earnest.

Opie's blind chicken-the pig names her Henneth but Opie calls her Pickles

A post shared by Katherine Dunn / Apifera Farm (@katherinedunnapiferafarm) on Apr 24, 2018 at 2:25pm PDT

Our latest Apiferian is a one eyed blind chicken. Opie immediately seemed to understand the chicken was unique. When she first arrived, I kept her in a bunny hutch on the floor of the barn where Opie, and his other pet chicken, and some Buffs, could get to know said blind chicken. Now Opie is feeling pretty full of himself these days, with Spring air, and the fact that he now seems to have not one, but two pet chickens. He made it clear in this video not to bother his new blind chicken!

He had not even named the first pet chicken, one of the four Buff Orpingtons who I took out of the flock to be away from Father, the Barred Rock rooster who is very rough on the girls. The Buffs don't tolerate him, but this poor hen would cower for hours in a corner, so I took her out. Then the other Buffs began separating out from the Barred Rock girls. The Buffs were here first and were grown when the Barred rock hens arrived as chicks. So be it, the Buffs now live with Opie, Sir Tripod and Else in the front barn, and the Barred Rocks live with Father in the other side of the barn. You gotta go with the flow.

So when my friend asked if I might be able to take her one eyed blind chicken, how could I say 'no'. Blind, one eyed? It's right up the Apifera alley. I had met the chicken formally at my friends home, where she was working hard to get the chicken back in good enough health to return to the flock. We don't know what happened, but she thinks a predator, perhaps a hawk, freaked out the flock and this hen damaged her eye. Whatever happened, she was in my friend's care in her studio for weeks, so she was really personable and used to being handled since her eye was being cleaned daily. But her land is different than ours, and she feared the hen was a sitting...er, duck...to prey, and I suspect she was right.

When I first took her out of the crate on arrival, I thought,

This chicken is not long for this world.

But as you know well, I am often wrong.

I knew she had been in a cage for many weeks, so it was clear she was a bit wobbly. Her beak was long, as were her toes. But she just seemed off. She would lay down and tuck her head down. I know that could have been a defense too, but she was thin and you know once a chicken, in my experience, and I am not a chicken guru, but once a chicken gets really sick it seems to take a lot of them. Her 'good' eye was also goopy, and her wounded eye was like a Marty Feldman eye and really weird looking. After about for days of cleaning it, I noticed a piece of straw stuck there in the ooze, pulled it out, and magic, the eye just exploded with liquid. Sorry for the graphics, but not only did the chicken seemed relieved, so was I. Now that eye is sort of there, but dark. She is definitely blind, as she runs into any objects that are new. but she knows her area now.

In fact she was laying an egg every now and then-a beautiful brown one. I put her in her bunny hut at night but each morning she comes out and free ranges. She knows my voice and comes to me, and I still hold her and clean her eyes. I love that I can do this. I have missed personable chickens, which I had many of out West. For some reasons, my hens here have been less personable. But the Buffs, free from Father, are warming up.

Well, it was time to name that chicken.

"Pickles," said Opie.

"One Blind Mouse," yelled out Wilbur the Acrobatic Goat.

"I've been called her Henneth," said Earnest the pig, as he napped.

Well, the pig is often right, so her name is Henneth. But Opie still calls her Pickles. It is after all, his chicken.

Opie and Henneth, er, Pickles

On arrival, I put a harness on her, thinking the hens might peck her eye

Old else, with Henneth

Her right eye now deflated

My waistline has a plan of its own but I can help an old goat

A post shared by Katherine Dunn / Apifera Farm (@katherinedunnapiferafarm) on May 8, 2018 at 9:33am PDT

I have tried and finally succeeded in getting a quick video of old Else coming out of the barn in the morning. The elder, crippled goat has seemed to come to life after winter -–who of us hasn't?–and I get such a good feeling when I see how content she looks coming out to go to the orchard pasture where she, Opie and Sir Tripod Goat spend much of the summer.

Else's front leg is getting more and more bent. She reminds me a bit of Stevie, our beloved very crippled goat we had out West, in the way she moves that front leg. She arrived really thin but has put on weight by feeding her twice a day away from other animals, with minerals. For her age and breed though, she's doing okay.

When I come upon her as I did later this morning after chores, sunning, it just gives me great inner peace. I can't save the world from destructive powers out of my control, I can't win every argument with the angry masses online [and I don't try], I guess I'll never have a book deal and my waistline has a plan of its own, but I can work in inside the fences of Apifera that protect us all from The Noisy But Necessary Road to Everywhere [aka Maine Route 32], trying to make an old goat comfortable, giving her a feeling of safety and permanence. Each day and night her routine is, well, routine. I have always understood the importance to animals, and us humans too, of an understood routine. Sure you go out of the routine sometimes, but a daily knowledge of what is going to happen, and not happen, brings calm to the animal and barnyard. That knowledge has worked well for me all these years. It also means when something goes wrong, the entire barnyard knows.

If you like the work we are doing hoping old/special needs animals, please consider a donation to our non profit. Thank you!

Stanley leaves, Stanley returns

Last week I noticed that Stanley J. Catfish was not at morning feedings which is the norm. Since they came, the two cats have been a bonded unit, where one is, the other follows.

But I didn't think too much about it, and went on with my feedings. Still, it was not right. After all the ferels and barn cats we had taken on out West, I knew they often disappear, sometimes for many days, a few weeks even, and return unscathed. And sometimes they don't return.

I just knew it was odd that the two were a unit, unlike the cats out west, who were part of a huge clan and separate barns, so they had more interdependence from each other.

I waited a few days, and lost hope, and posted about it on Instagram. I think it was two days later, and there he was at breakfast. I was so happy to see him. He must have thought I was nuts because I sang to him, discussed his where abouts, gave him a lecture [oh yea, cat lectures really work, right?] and sat with him too, looking to see if there were any wounds on him.

The night of his return, he was extra hungry at dinner I thought, and I sat with him while he ate, pushing the bowl with my finger, and then touching his head. I'm trying to tender them both up in time for autumn rabies shots-it would make it much easier for everyone including them.

This morning at feedings, after being back one day, he was not there.

So Stanley J. Catfish must have a double life, a really good reason not to be around for a free and easy meal of stinky cat food, which he devours when he is present. I wondered if he might be onto a female somewhere, since he was only neutered about three months ago and it supposedly takes about 6 months for their wanderlust hormones to dissipate after neutering. Or maybe he is just napping, maybe he is ill and wants to be alone...maybe he has a pickup out in The Wood and he drives away to a cabin once a week. He might even have a passport.

Such is the mystery of the barn cat.

I was thinking though how quickly I had lost my hope when he left. I have been through this so many times, but instead of taking the 'think positive' route, I just accepted pretty quickly an eagle or fox got him, thinking he wasn't that worldly as other ferels I've known. I wondered if I'm losing my touch, my innate gut feeling-something we all have for sure-but I practice at listening to my intuition, and I wondered if I wasn't listening, or what had made me so doubtful this time.

I don't know. Maybe it's that death is everywhere there is life, and sometimes, especially on a small farm, it is best to acknowledge, and move on or one can go crazy worrying, wondering, imagining what happened. Was it a quick kill, was he stuck somewhere, had he been hit...on and on.

I'm not sure what the lesson is in what I just wrote. But I do know, as always,

Nature knows more than I do.

So does the darn cat.