Category Archives: Farm Stories

Farm Stories, Health and Fitness, Inspiration, Stories

One step forward, three bumps down.

I might have mentioned that since I’m not working lately I have been doing a lot of yardwork. For the last two weeks my biggest focus has been the nightmare of a firepit terrace. See, somebody about 15 or more years ago got a brilliant idea to reuse chunks of broken driveway to make a terrace. It’s a great idea in theory, but the way they did it was awful. There were gaps to swallow chair legs and it was uneven enough to trip over. I’ve put up with it for 8 years and I decided that I was going to tackle it. Pry slabs loose, break them up, shovel out the sod between. It’s not easy work and I’ve been going slow but steady.

The firepit before I started tearing it apart. You can hardly see the concrete for the grass growing between!

A week ago a friend volunteered her husband for a couple of mornings. His work was on pause and he was going stir crazy. We spent one morning prying up the slabs and got farther than I expected. The next day he put treads on my deck stairs. They’d been out of commission for an embarrassing amount of time and we had been using a less than ideal path down to the lawn. But with a couple of hours of work he had the top half put back together. Yay! Now I have easy access to the lawn from upstairs.

The terrace after one week of work. I might not be fast, but I love to see the results of my efforts.

So Tuesday of last week I got as far as setting up a row of blocks to mark the edge of the terrace. I put in probably five hours of hard labor moving heavy things by hand. I took Wednesday easy to make sure I didn’t hurt myself. Thursday morning I got ready to work hard again. I put my boots on by the back door on the deck and went to use my newly useable stairs. The top half was fine. Then I got to the bottom half where there are still the old wood deck boards. Wood stairs that haven’t been used in almost two years… If you’ve ever lived in a damp climate you know exactly where this is going. Wood that sits for any time ends up getting coated with a sludge that isn’t quite moss, mildew, or mud, but is as slick as snot.

I took one step onto the first stair and the next thing I knew my feet weren’t under me. I landed on my tailbone and bumped down a few steps until my heels dug in at the bottom landing. Ow! It didn’t hurt much at first, but my mobility was suddenly severely limited. I could hardly bend over to pick things up from the ground. But I have found that if I don’t keep moving I will freeze up.

I got the hose and a wire brush and scrubbed those steps to within an inch of their life. I managed to mow part of the lawn. Ow! I didn’t want to sit. Reaching for anything that takes me out of center hurt. And every time I hurt it made me laugh. Ibuprofen didn’t help much. An ice pack helped a little. But what did the most was time.

It’s been a week. It hasn’t been a fun week. I’ve been restless and cranky and hardly got anything done. I gave myself a deadline of May 30 to have this terrace cleared and some sort of firepit functional. Lounging around wasn’t getting anything done. I hate feeling like I can’t get things done. It does bad things to my mental health. But yesterday I got moving again.

My boys helped me get the big trailer down into position, then they helped break up more slabs.
I did not think there was this much concrete in that terrace. And there’s more to load.

I got my boys to come out with me. The middle one just needed the incentive of driving my truck to bring the trailer down. I am horrible at backing trailers while he has a natural instinct for it. We got it parked and started throwing chunks on it. Now it’s piled high enough that I’m worried about it being overweight. We might have to throw half of it off before we take it on the road.

I often start projects only to run into the most ridiculous roadblocks. All I know how to do is to keep trying. It often feels like I’m going too slow if not backwards. But when I pause and look around I can see that I’m not doing as bad as it feels. Baby steps might not be fast, but if you take those tiny steps for long enough you might be surprised how far you can get. And don’t hesitate to slow down if the situation calls for it. Allowing yourself to recover means you can do more the next time you push. Just don’t let the momentum completely disappear.

I just have the one pile of chunks left to throw on the trailer. Then I can rake it level. Should be done this evening!
Dogs, Farm Stories, Goats, Poultry, Stories

A tale of ducks and turkeys and goats and a dog.

I have a duck in one tub and a dog in the other. And there’s a story behind it.

It’s not the first time we’ve had a duck in the bathtub.

Last time we bought poultry feed we decided to try a cheaper brand. It saved us almost $20 for a month of feed, but it seems to have caused problems for the ducks. Almost two weeks ago a duck had to be brought in for treatment of a prolapsed vent. She got all bound up and tried to eject her innerds. Professor Google provided answers and she got to have daily Epsom salt baths and Preparation H applied to encourage healing. This morning she got released back to the pen, but another one seems to be starting the same problem. We need two people to catch the duck because they are slippery suckers.

Well, the ducks share a pen with the turkeys. The turkeys don’t like anyone messing with their pen or their ducks. They need to go out on grass anyway so we herded the turkeys out of the pen and down to the pond pasture. The goats were at the gate, but the leaf-rake-of-doom kept them far enough back so we could shove turkeys through one at a time.

Then we noticed that one goat had grown too big for his collar. I don’t know how it came on so quickly, but he looked like he was choking and gasping for air. That needed to be dealt with immediately. But he didn’t want to be caught. The other goats were eager to run in defense of him to keep us away. We had a merry chase around the pond and back and forth across the creek. We were getting nowhere and he just got more stressed.

Here’s a word of advice: don’t bother chasing goats to catch them. It works for poultry, but goats are stubborn and smart. They will always escape if you chase. It’s better to lure them in. A coffee can of COB (AKA goat crack) properly applied will get them to do almost anything you want.

So we had a can of goat crack. We had the rake-of-doom and a long stick and a leash for just in case. We got 4 of 5 goats to come and partake of treats. You can guess which one refused. We got 3 of 5 into the other pasture and closed the gate. So now we have the meekest goat (Ritz) and the distressed goat (Moo). They’re easier to manipulate on their own. I walked over to the roofed dog kennel they use as shelter and drop a pile of crack…COB. Ritzy meanders in, happy to have a chance at treats and Moo follows. I step in and close the door.

We aren’t supposed to use horns to manage goats, but they sure are handy. I caught him. My helper straddled and pinned him. I unhooked the collar… finally! Then we let him eat out of the coffee can so the entire encounter could be associated with treats instead of terror. I might have made a mistake in not working with this goat much. He needs to be better socialized to humans.

Okay, the goat is dealt with, the turkeys are hanging out with them and intimidating them while wrestling each other. Meanwhile the dog has been gleefully running in circles, unable to decide if he’s going to “help” us wrangle goats, chase rabbits, or roll in all the smells he usually doesn’t have access to. Guess what he did.

Back to the duck pen. We got the ducks cornered and pulled out the ailing one. Got back to the house and I started filling the tub with water and Epsom salt. The dog followed me in and boy did he smell foul! The minute that duck was settled in her bath I took the dog to the other bathroom to get him cleaned up.

“But Mom! I thought it smelled so good! Why don’t you like my perfume?”

There is something about manure that is irresistible to dogs. Especially male dogs. Most baths given to dogs in this house happen after they have found their way into a pasture and come back crusted in stink. It’s like a 13 year old boy that believes the Axe commercials. Except we all know that repulses rather than attracts.

I got the dog clean. I even finished off with a dab of the boys Old Spice body wash around his neck. We’ll see how he likes that smell. The duck has gotten her treatment and is in the hospital cage for observation. The bathrooms are clean-ish and the used towels in the washer. Let the day go back to the sleepy rainy Saturday we had intended to have.

Blackberry War, Farm Stories, Goats, Stories

This…this means war!

I know nobody is reading this. It doesn’t matter. Let’s talk blackberries. They are delicious when made into jams, jellies, pies, or any of the many other things that can be done with them, right? But when they get growing on a property they can take it over in just a couple of years. I hear that the south has kudzu and there’s poison ivy back east. There are invasive plants wherever you go. My battle is with invasive blackberries.


Himalayan Blackberries grow especially fast. They shoot up canes bigger around than your thumb and 30 feet long. They build on themselves to create mountains 14 feet tall or more if they have support. They are like a tidal wave washing over the land, starting fresh clusters with roots on the end of canes in the fall. Everyone told me that I should mow and then spray everything with herbicide to knock them down and keep them down. I’m not very fond of that idea. It’s tempting and easy, but I don’t like the dependence on poison. I also don’t have easy access to anything that can mow down mountains, and my good brush trimmer has been down for a couple of years. It broke and a helpful friend took it apart and lost the parts. One of these days the parts will turn up. Until then we get to use other methods.

My favorite tools in the blackberry war are simple hand held pruners, a Fiskars billhook, large pruning shears, a curved pitchfork, goats, and a cattle panel. I started out pretty complicated, but now I keep it simple. T-posts and cattle panels fence off an area that needs to be worked over. Then I go in with a single cattle panel, lean it up against the mound of growth that I want to take down, and climb. I’m not a dainty thing and this is one area where my weight is an asset. I jump and crush and smash the panel to the ground. I trim anything that keeps it from descending. Then the goats swarm. We like the berries, goats think the leaves are candy.

When the blackberries are crushed the goats will strip anything resembling greenery from them. Once that is done the canes dry out pretty fast. Then I can cut them close to the ground and rake them into piles for burning. There is a pile waiting in almost every area that the goats have worked. I could probably also let them just rot into the soil, but burning is more satisfying.

There is now plenty to burn. A year ago I felt like I was fighting a losing battle, but now that I have the hang of it we have cleared nearly to the midsection of the property. The only thing holding me back is goat containment. They have little respect for most fences, and my neighbor’s choices of fence are anything but goat-proof. There will have to be some fencing improvement in the near future.

Hey, look at that. Two posts in two days. It’s easier now that I remember that nobody is going to read this stuff. I have a lot more pictures of the blackberry war on Instagram. I joined that platform to share and follow quilty stuff, but instead I have ended up posting a lot of other stuff, including a takeover of the blackberry war hashtag. Feel free to check it out.

Family, Farm Stories, Stories

Why Caosville?

I love puns. We used to play with words in the most horrible ways when I was a kid. The worst we came up with was “possumbly.”… One day someone said, “Oh, no there’s a dead possum in the road. Do you think maybe he came from the swamp?” I replied, “Possumbly.” Everyone died laughing. Funny thing, though. Nobody seems to appreciate my puns as much now. We lost something growing up.

Anyway, I married into the name Cao. The proper Spanish pronunciation is “cow” but my kids prefer “K.O.” I can’t imagine why… Now if you have a family named Smith you would refer to them as the Smiths. The English convention is to add an ‘s’ to make it a plural. So with Cao we become the Caos. In Spanish that means exactly what it looks like: chaos. It fits. My husband had ADD in the best of ways and our boys continue the tradition. When they were little I kept threatening to rent them out as demolition experts.

Now it isn’t so bad, but life is chaotic. I try to keep a handle on it but things keep slipping through the cracks. The poultry refuses to be contained, the fridge is a constant terrifying science project, and the blackberry vines laugh at the goats, who can’t get out of their pasture, but escape any other enclosure I try to put them in so that they have a chance at consuming the brambles. Before we moved here I knew that I would call this place Caosville because it fit in every way. And I like it that way.

Farm Stories, Food, Poultry, Stories

Sunday at Caosville

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It has been a busy couple of weeks. Finally it is Sunday, my day to just be at home and not running around like a crazy person. Of course, that means it is also the day I do the most work around here. Usually the hardest part of that is rounding up the teens to do their share.

Last Sunday was a gorgeous, sunny day and much was accomplished. The lawn got mowed, then dragged with a blanket harrow to break up the weeds to make room for the seed I had Little Miss throw on the ground. As a reward for all her help she got to drive the mower a bit and then we finished the day by making a coop for her chicks to move into from the brooder box.

This Sunday is gray and rainy and so far I have done almost nothing. We had a road trip to Bend yesterday and the driving and not enough sleep really caught up with me. So today will be focused on indoor stuff. The house needs a good cleaning and I have four boxes of apples that have a grand destiny ahead of them. Applesauce is coming! How better to spend a gray fall day than with a house filled with the scent of apple and cinnamon and a chicken roasting in the oven. Yeah, it’s that kind of day.

Farm Stories, Stories

Welcome to Caosville!

Hello Internet! After ages of telling myself I was going to jump in, here I am. Caosville is a place, a theme and a state of mind. Here we know that whether you are going to make an omlette or hatch a chick that eggshell is going to have to get broken. And that’s okay! My life rarely goes according to plan and I am always having to adjust what I wanted to do to fit what I am able to get done, and that is okay too. It has to be because otherwise, who could stay sane? I could tell you everything there is to know about me and my world in one post, but that would make for a very long and boring read. Instead, why don’t I just introduce things a bit at a time.

Here’s the short version: Bus Driver, Quilter, Mom, Voracious Reader, Farmer, Lover of Delicious Food, some more dedicated than others, and not necessarily in that order. I get stories from every facet of my life and I think it would be fun to share. I hope you enjoy!