evening chores

As a follow up to my post on morning chores, I figured I'd talk about the opposite end of the day. There are also late-afternoon chores, which the kids and I (mostly I) take care of that involve more of the cleaning aspect of farm life (manure management is my life!), but I figured I should first give The Map Man equal billing for his chore time, and the evening chores are his thing.

The first photo depicts pretty much how things look when I come in after teaching lessons -- pretty much the way I left things when I finished with afternoon chores, only darker.

The first thing The Map Man does is feed the sheep their daily grain. We feed a home-mixed blend of steamed oats, steamed barley, and flaked corn (less percentage of corn this time of year, a bit more during the winter). They also get unlimited hay and access to whatever pasture happens to need mowing. And they have a loose mineral supplement available to them. They've been going through quite a bit of mineral this past year, as the hay last year was really lousy due to poor growing and cutting conditions (which is why we ultimately stopped feeding it to the ponies). After dumping the grain in the trough and counting to make sure they're all in, he locks them in the barn for the night. This management system has worked really well for us -- in the 10 years we've been raising sheep, we've never lost one to a coyote, even though we regularly hear them howling as close as our pasture gate.

Next he locks the chickens in their coop. They return to the coop to roost for the night on their own when it starts to get dark, so all he has to do is shut the doors and close the windows and they're safe for the night. He also counts them to make sure they're all there, which is very easy to do as they are all lined up on the roost. Foxes, Fishers, and Owls are the biggest problems for the poultry, and occassionally, if we return home too late and don't get them locked in right at sunset, we'll find one missing.

Next task is to round up the ducks (that little white speck back in the pasture behind the duck house is a duck) and lock them in their house. The same animals that bother the chickens will bother the ducks, although given the choice, the predators seem to prefer the chickens.



Finally, The Map Man fills all the water buckets and leaves the ponies with access to their run-in stall in the barn and the dry-lot paddock for the night.

While The Map Man's out doing his chores, I'm getting the kids settled in for the night (he goes out to do his part after Family Story Time, which occurs at the kids' bedtime). When he comes back in from doing chores, the kids are off in dreamland, and most nights we're able to spend a couple of hours together. That's something that we didn't make time for previously, but has become an important part of our day since we became involved with the Enki Education materials, which convinced us as to how important it is for parents to recconnect at the end of each day. I think it's made a big difference for our family, so it's time we try to protect.