New Farm

We have moved to a different farm. It's not far from our original hosts here on Big Island but it has a slightly different climate since it's further up the mountain. While we learned a lot at the first farm and enjoyed our time there, we wanted to broaden our knowledge and experience base. We're not going to be here forever, so we're want to make the most of our time here. Our focus at the first farm was maintaining coffee and tropical fruit trees. Now we will be working at two different sites, a “homestead,” (7 acres) primarily devoted to tending animals and a secondary site (11 acres) still under development, which we will help establish as an agricultural site.

While we've been to the second site, we haven't started working there yet. We have, however, begun learning our regular routine on the homestead, which is orientated around the daily needs of the ducks, chickens, rabbits, goats, and sheep living on the farm.

Our routine breaks down into a three part working day:

MORNING
Feed and water the chickens and ducks. There about about 50 chickens, some for laying, some for meat. The chickens raised for meat, male and female alike, range in a pen while the laying hens range in tractors similar to the ones on the previous farm, though these don't have wheels. There are about 20 ducks that go wherever they want, and their wont is to follow us (i.e. the food bucket) around. After the chickens and ducks are tended, we head over to another section of the farm that is home to goats, sheep, rabbits and fledgling chicks.

It's illegal to keep rabbits on the ground in HI (look what happened in Australia), so the 10 or so bunnies here are kept in elevated pens. The rabbits are raised not for their delicious meat or soft fur, but for the nutrient-rich droppings they produce, which are very easy to collect as it falls through the grated floor of the pens. Near the rabbits are 4 pens of meat chickens too small to be included in the ranging pen. These are not the cute, fuzzy “baby” chicks you may remember from your 4th grade science class: they are aggressive, dirty, biting and shitting machines. They're fast, too: everyone here calls them the velociraptors, and they can bite and shit on the hands that feed them with surprising rapidity. Their beaks and claws are sharp and we look forward to the day when they are large enough to join their brethren (henthren?) in the ranging pen.

After we care for the rabbits and chicks, we move onto the most challenging part of the animal routine, caring for the goats and sheep. There are about 20 goats and half a dozen sheep ranging in separate pens. Both animals produce milk but are also utilized for their natural groundskeeping abilities. Sheep graze (heads-down) on grass while goats “browse” (heads-up) the non-native trees selected for removal. Both the goats and sheep are fed hay pellets with mineral supplements and are given fresh water. Feeding them can be challenging, as they all charge you once they see your food bucket, but the milking routine has an even steeper learning curve. Only 3 goats and 2 sheep are currently producing milk; the rotation in the herds helps to keep them healthy. (We'll hash out the exciting milking details in a future post.)

AFTERNOON
After a lunch break, we do an afternoon project, the work of which depends on what needs done. As we are still getting used to the homestead done anything major yet, but we hope to have some interesting work soon.

EVENING
We do another round of evening chores to care for the animals. The routine is almost identical to the morning work, with minor variation. We collect chicken eggs and rabbits are fed fresh greens, rather than pellets. Right now, we are only milking sheep in the evening, but this is due to a farm decision about production and animal training, not any major difference between the species.

It sounds like more work than it actually is. With the help of our onsite hosts we can get the morning and evening routines done in about an hour and a half each. The real work to come will be in the daily projects that will fill up the middle of the day. We'll post about those as soon as they're under way.