Misfitmorgan's Journal - That Summer Dust

misfitmorgan

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Hi All,
We live in Northern Michigan....which is just easier then saying the north eastern side of the lower peninsula of michigan which is more accurate lol Basically hold up the mitt portion of michigan and we are on the pointer finger area. The climate here is crazy esp this spring we had more snow in april then we had all year combined. A week and a half ago it was in the 70-80s and all this past week and next two weeks is low 40s and mid 50s. Crazy weather really, the lakes have a lot to do with it so they say.
A little complicated but the "we" portion is me and my Hubby who isnt actually my hubby...because we are both still going thru our divorces but other then the miner legal side of things we live, act, and portray ourselves as husband and wife because as soon as the paperwork is done we will be...if we lived in a common law marriage state and weren't married to other people we would be common law already lmao. See complicated.
We have a lovely 20 acre farm we got a little less then a year ago now. Ok well we think it is lovely and are gloriously in love with our Big Black Barn...but...always a but. The Owners(we lease atm) were pretty bad hoarders of everything really, on top of that they were very lazy people. So as you may imagine all the buildings were filled to the ceiling with basically junk. None of the buildings have had any upkeep in the last 12yrs and if something hit the ground that is where it stayed. We have been cleaning the property since about May last year when we were given the ok to start picking things up. It took from May until July to clean up enough to move the livestock to the barn and from July until September before we could move in. So that gives you an idea.
The goal/dream is be full-time farming but we are not at all there yet. We both got inspired to really love and want to farm from our grandparents. Mine owned a 180acre diary cow farm that had been in the family for over 125yrs...which my Uncle made some bad choices and we lost the homestead parcel and all the land except 40acres of woods my dad bought so he could keep his hunting camp there. The new owners tore down all the barns, sheds, grainery, and equipment sheds except a newer pole building and about 1/4 of the original wood barn. The first time i say it after the new owners took over it was heart breaking. Imagine some place you spent uncountable hours as a child and young adult, someplace you loved more then anything and someone tore it all down. I was fine with someone else owning it though sad but i thought i could still go look at it atleast...no they took that too. Hubby's Grandparents owned a 120acre farm in Iowa, his father inherited the farm when grandpa wanted to retire and drank away all but 20acres of it in roughly 15yrs. So basically we both grew up with farmers in the family and hoped to become farmers ourself but ended up having to start from scratch...so we ended up on the 20acre farm we have now.
So thats basically it for now.
 
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misfitmorgan

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So last Saturday Lucy had kids. Boy/girl twins...yay! Then Monday we found her snuggled with her kids and unfortunately she snuggled the boy between herself and the wall. He did not make it. Here is a picture of her and her doe kid the day they were born though, the doe was born first.
20160422_194148.jpg

She always has babies with bands. Lucy is a mini La Mancha.

Then Sunday morning we let Alice out of the birthing stall because she had not had babies and was in there for over a week. We thought she would like to visit the herd and maybe get some sunshine and outside time. Instead she did this at about 5pm.
20160423_170642.jpg

Who needs a clean dry stall...brat. Alice is a ND and had twins does!

One of our farm goals was to have rainbow eggs...so you open that farm dozen and it's goregous. After a year this is what we have.
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Thats cement residue stuck in the bucket btw lol and 2 duck eggs in the upper left corner. I really like the egg colors we have esp the blues. Recently one of the young hens started laying a gorgeous dark green egg too.
 

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One can generally tell a duck egg when present... they are generally covered with mud! Nice rainbow you have there. You'll need to ge a couple of turkeys and some quail to vary it up a bit more :thumbsup Grats on the two ND doelings and so sorry about the loss of the buckling. Some moms are just not too observant...
 

misfitmorgan

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One can generally tell a duck egg when present... they are generally covered with mud! Nice rainbow you have there. You'll need to ge a couple of turkeys and some quail to vary it up a bit more :thumbsup Grats on the two ND doelings and so sorry about the loss of the buckling. Some moms are just not too observant...

Thank you!! We do have quail actually just all their eggs are in the incubator atm. Been trying to get Turkey's but we dont want commercial ones and its hard to find heritage locally. We tried hatching some from shipped egg last year, it was a flop out of 55 eggs in three shipments we got nodda. Hoping to go to the swap in May and find some poults and adult even.

That doe in particular doesnt seem overly bright but is usually a good mom. Thank you the does are very cute. If seem the small breed we dont actually want to keep kids from always have girls and the large breds we want to hold kids back from have bucks :barnie
 

Starlight4Leah

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I used to live in Michigan up until about a year and a half ago. We moved during December and January, with our horses, dogs, and cats. Sadly we had to leave behind our goats, chickens, ducks, turkeys, Texas Long Horn heifer, and my mothers horse as well as mine. Boy was it hard to leave them all, but they went to good homes, our goats went together, and the does became mommies. :) our heifer also went with the goats. Texas is great, we finally have a nice house, and are where we want to be. We are currently leasing to own our house/farm. Our house is nice, we even got a guest room/pool house, inground pool, and we have around 7 barns for our livestock. Boy do those barns need cleaning out though. We have the same problem with you, the people are hoarders, we have only been able to get one barn half way cleared out for our animals, the cattle barn needs a new roof put on, and weeds pulled (it also has an attached shed/milking room.), our goat and pig barn is piled full of junk. Like I said their hoarders, it is full of boxes from church stuff, it has tires in it, hoses, you name it. The main barn that we got cleared out is full of carpet, flower petals, wood, taxidermy wood, PVC pipe, etc. Don't even get me started on the tack room though, that is a mess. The bad part is that they still treat it like a junk yard, everytime they have junk to throw out they bring it over here and dump it. :he We only have until December though until the house is in our name! Until then, we will continue to clean, and just go with the flow. :)
 

misfitmorgan

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I used to live in Michigan up until about a year and a half ago. We moved during December and January, with our horses, dogs, and cats. Sadly we had to leave behind our goats, chickens, ducks, turkeys, Texas Long Horn heifer, and my mothers horse as well as mine. Boy was it hard to leave them all, but they went to good homes, our goats went together, and the does became mommies. :) our heifer also went with the goats. Texas is great, we finally have a nice house, and are where we want to be. We are currently leasing to own our house/farm. Our house is nice, we even got a guest room/pool house, inground pool, and we have around 7 barns for our livestock. Boy do those barns need cleaning out though. We have the same problem with you, the people are hoarders, we have only been able to get one barn half way cleared out for our animals, the cattle barn needs a new roof put on, and weeds pulled (it also has an attached shed/milking room.), our goat and pig barn is piled full of junk. Like I said their hoarders, it is full of boxes from church stuff, it has tires in it, hoses, you name it. The main barn that we got cleared out is full of carpet, flower petals, wood, taxidermy wood, PVC pipe, etc. Don't even get me started on the tack room though, that is a mess. The bad part is that they still treat it like a junk yard, everytime they have junk to throw out they bring it over here and dump it. :he We only have until December though until the house is in our name! Until then, we will continue to clean, and just go with the flow. :)
Ours do the same thing but on a smaller scale..they make a mess when they are trying to "clean" stuff up. It grates on our nerves. They also won't let us throw anything away...for example. There is one corner of the front of the garage that had a piece of tin come off....several years ago....and under that hole in the roof they had a giant box and in/on/around that giant box were books. So now there is a giant pile of rotted books and when the dumpster was there we asked if they wanted us to toss them in and the wife says "No we have to go thru and see which ones we want to keep" you have no idea how hard it was to keep my jaw from hitting the floor and not look at her like a complete nut job. They are nice people they clearly just have a problem. So far 4 10yr dumpsters were filled and left and 4 full size pickup truck loads full and we have had three huge bonfires...the disappearing kinda fires. Still it looks like poop and there is stuff everywhere. The barn alone had not been cleaned for at least the last 2yrs they have animals in it. They were actually banned from owning animals on their property because of the mistreatment thru neglect. We had to bring in a mini skid steer to clear out the center area where it would fit...the rest was all done by hand. Ever try to hand clean manure/old hay/bedding that was walked on for years and is 2ft thick...it took forever. As i said they seem decent just have some issues and dont really know much about livestock...they dove head first into cows as their first livestock and had a lot of losses. They started with 57 baby calves and by the time they were a year old they had roughly a dozen left.

Anyhow...we are working hard on cleaning it up but we cant do any major repairs until we are in a contract to buy. So for now we just hand dig drainage ditches from the barn and work around what we have too.
 

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I really feel for you folks... That has to be a helluva lot of work! :ep:th :hide I'm sorry, even for a "good deal" I don't think I could rent to own/buy a place owned by a hoarder... I've watched the show enough... I admit I'm not the cleanest person in the world, and I do have some "clutter" laying around (like a pile of mail I go through maybe once a month, that sorta thing), but I'm a huge fan of trash it! I've actually considered the fact that when I'm gone, there won't be a lot of "personal" stuff for them to inherit... I just can't see the point in hanging on to stuff. :idunno
 

Starlight4Leah

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Ours do the same thing but on a smaller scale..they make a mess when they are trying to "clean" stuff up. It grates on our nerves. They also won't let us throw anything away...for example. There is one corner of the front of the garage that had a piece of tin come off....several years ago....and under that hole in the roof they had a giant box and in/on/around that giant box were books. So now there is a giant pile of rotted books and when the dumpster was there we asked if they wanted us to toss them in and the wife says "No we have to go thru and see which ones we want to keep" you have no idea how hard it was to keep my jaw from hitting the floor and not look at her like a complete nut job. They are nice people they clearly just have a problem. So far 4 10yr dumpsters were filled and left and 4 full size pickup truck loads full and we have had three huge bonfires...the disappearing kinda fires. Still it looks like poop and there is stuff everywhere. The barn alone had not been cleaned for at least the last 2yrs they have animals in it. They were actually banned from owning animals on their property because of the mistreatment thru neglect. We had to bring in a mini skid steer to clear out the center area where it would fit...the rest was all done by hand. Ever try to hand clean manure/old hay/bedding that was walked on for years and is 2ft thick...it took forever. As i said they seem decent just have some issues and dont really know much about livestock...they dove head first into cows as their first livestock and had a lot of losses. They started with 57 baby calves and by the time they were a year old they had roughly a dozen left.

Anyhow...we are working hard on cleaning it up but we cant do any major repairs until we are in a contract to buy. So for now we just hand dig drainage ditches from the barn and work around what we have too.
I totally understand you. The homeowners now are nice and all, but they were/are definitely hoarders. They do have a granddaughter that is a complete brat and acts like she owns the place though . We actually told them how we have ATV's and they said that was fine and we could ride them, then one day w wouldn't go babysit their granddaughter at the movies ( they claimed we were going to hang out) and since then they will not allow us to ride our atvs now, even though we had been riding them since we moved in . There are some goods and bads about Leasing a house, but we just keep reminding ourselves that it will soon be ours and they won't be able to step foot on our property. My parents actually got into it with them, because there were two men that had trespassed onto our property (our horses and goats were put into danger) to pick up a trailer. We had no idea it was there, and when we walked out they were trying to hook up to our livestock trailer. I am 16(female) and my sister is 13. We walked out and halter end our horses and simply asked if it was their trailer because we had one stolen from us. This 6ft+ marine man had stepped up face to face to me swearing at me, threatening me, threatening to have me thrown in jail for walking out there while they were there, and a whole bunch of crap. I was so scared, amd angry because he was threatening me on my property saying I disrespected them (mind you he had been smoking and throwing his cigarettes in the grass were our animals graze, and just barely missed hitting my horse with his truck). My family and I were so angry, because the way the pasture is et up, there is a second drive and gate and if that gate gets left open, they WILL be out, so we get really nervous with everyone driving in whenever they want, so we are still learning to watch and just let it slide.
 
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