After dirtying up my nice clean and sanitized incubator, only 2 of the rescued eggs hatched out. Which was only worth the hassle of having to clean it all over again because they were both pearl grays. Also, because I didn’t have to do it. Middle was willing to carry off all the rotten eggs, scrub off egg shells and hatching goo, and bleach out the ‘bator in return for 15 minutes on the computer. He used that time to play several rounds of Angry Birds. Which is kind of ironic, don’t you think?

It’s hard to say when things started going wrong. I guess it all began when I found that one guinea had flown out of the garden and it appeared to be a female. Leaving me with what looked like two males and one female combing the bean plants for bugs. Or rather, one female combing the bean plants in between the two males as they tried to kill each other. As it happened, a free ranging guinea was hit by a car a few days later and I found her lying in the driveway with a broken leg. Aha! She was a perfect candidate to go in the garden. Another female and a guinea with not much means of escape. So I had 4 guineas in the garden again and the gender issue a bit more evened out. Until she died.

Guineas don’t do spring break. They don’t need a road trip and a beach to wreak havoc when the temperatures start to rise. They can create chaos just fine at home, thank you. And they do.

The milk fridge is full. And the girls keep right on givin’. Which is because, unlike a lot of farms, we have some goats who kid in the spring and some that kid in the fall. So we have sweet, fresh milk even through the dark winter months when a lot of herds are dried off. We can make cheese. We can make ice cream. We can make several batches of horrible, foul tasting yogurt and still keep experimenting with it. But even if I don’t know the secret to making good yogurt, I do know the secrets for keeping goats in sweet, delicious milk.

Everyone wants to see cute cuddly chicks and cute fluffy ducklings and cute playful goat kids. But the animals on my farm don’t do cute. They laugh at cute. They spit in cute’s eye. They eat cute for breakfast. They meet cute in the corral at high noon and say “Go ahead, cute. Make my day.”

I know it’s not a big deal to most farmers. With their hundreds of acres and farm machinery worth thousands of dollars. But around here we work our 4 acres by hand. And we buy our hay in the squares bales that fit in the back of the Suburban. Or on a big load, in the back of the Ford S-10. I know, I know, Diary of a Wimpy Farmer.

I love the fence.

I hate the fence.

The fence allows the goats to wander around, pooping outside of the barn where I don’t have to clean up. The fence leads the pony and the sheep to the pond to graze so I don’t have to mow the grass on the tractor-tipping slope of the dam. The fence lets the chickens rush through its squares to safety, leaving violent offenders of the leash law barking and foaming at the mouth on the other side.

But the fence is so needy.