The learning curve doesn’t stop at the gardens, but also includes critters.
We already had Claudia, our mixed breed rescue puppy of 9 years, and searched for and waited for Frazier, our Maine Coon kitty. He was a rescue from Pennsylvania. The rescue was VERY thorough! Many months, two applications, and two visits!
We then went to a farm in Virginia to pick up a lamb and baby goat! Both still needed bottles, so that was a true adventure!
So where do you keep two new babies? In the kitchen of course!
Meet Snuggles the lamb and Gracie the goat, as they get acquainted with Claudia our pup and Frazier our kitty! Our new additions spent the first three nights in our kitchen till they got better acclimated. They are like having bottle fed babies, as they need to be fed just as frequent!
See them now!
From here, all sorts of critters began joining our family. We took on some Michigan Silkies, adopted a bunny from the county fair, two more sheep and several more birds, to include an amazing goose named Lola. Mason, the sheep in the middle above and his sister Doret on the right with Snuggles on the left. Gracie checking out her new house.
Nissi is a pure breed blue heeler and full of it! He challenges us to our wits end and back! Wow! But what a loving dog! He does love his people!
Lola is a better property guard than any other critter we have on the farm! Though she is no where near as aggressive as her Canadian cousins.
I take animal ownership very seriously. If it’s possible, almost too seriously, but to the animals benefit. Our poor Gracie had a rough start. She had worms really bad as a little one. I believe we came pretty close to losing her, but we kept at it. This was a massively stressful event in my life! From learning to give shots, trips to the vet, forcing fluids down her throat and constant watching!
Everyone else has been pretty healthy. We did have one chicken with a prolapsed vent, which after one week of care our lil feathered friend was good as new. I am now a self proclaimed chicken proctologist. If you really want to know more just ask, but the vet wanted 800 dollars to fix her!
Much to my bride’s dismay I even try to rescue other critters.
A black snake from my aunts shed, and one from ours where it got tangled in netting. What’s a farm without blacksnakes?
Then there’s this lil critter. It survived two shovelings of compost and a trip in the bed of a pick up truck, so I felt it was fate to try and keep it alive. Unfortunately I wasn’t successful, but…
There have been fox and groundhogs that have threatened parts of the farm and protective action that has had to be taken. Not part of the life of a farmer I like, but a necessary part, nonetheless, as we learn to take care of that which God has given us.
The reality of Shiloh’s Farm I have found is this. It is a place to learn and to grow, not just in learning how to best use the resources of the farm, but to learn and grow in my understanding of God and how farm life relates to Scripture.
The lessons continue to be far and wide and I indeed have much growing to do.
Jim Shiloh 