Howdy y'all! Welcome, and I'm glad you stopped by. BirdHaven Ranch is a unique place here in Rhode Island where we bring animals and compassion and caring and love together into one smooshed together jumble of arms, legs, hooves, feet, tongues and lots of sloppy, wet, nuzzly kisses. I guarantee, sure as a a hot kettle whistles, our horses just love to nuzzle you, and even more if you happen to have a treat or two hidden in a pocket. The goats love to nuzzle you too, but they'd prefer you have a weed or two in your back pocket, just sayin'!
But where'd we come from? We've been here in Rhode Island for nigh on 8 years now, and countin'. And man, it's been great. Great neighbors, great community, great towns, great people... I could go on. It's been an interesting experience adapting to Rhode Island, accepting and adopting the cultural differences which are so different from New Mexico. But more on that in a moment.
I began working with horses in the mid 1990s in Albuquerque, New Mexico. At that time I began taking riding lessons from the world renowned Liz Sanchez, famous in the horse world for showmanship and training, claiming several world champions as her clients. It was in New Mexico where I fell in love with my first horse, a 13-year-old Morgan named Sparky. I also participated with Challenge New Mexico, a therapeutic riding organization located in Santa Fe. I spent several years there in the early 2000s, and afterwards helped and supported several youth rodeo events in the farming communities south of Albuquerque.
Gail and Joe are my children, and I love them dearly! They're growing up on the farm, and enjoying every minute of it. It takes a lot of dedication and effort, but I truly love home-schooling them, teaching them math and language and history and all that good stuff, and then bringing them along with me as we go and graze the goats, or take care of the animals. It is such a blessing to be able to raise them in the responsibilities of a farm, for I think it imparts so many deeply learned values and traits; values and traits which will help them more than I can imagine as they grow up.
We eventually pulled up stakes, packed our bags, loaded the horses into a trailer, topped off the gas tanks, and headed east. Unlike the country song where were flipped a coin to see if we'd head to North Carolina or California, we already knew where we were headed: to beautiful Aquidneck Island, Rhode Island.
I love to admit it's been fun acclimating to Rhode Island culture, and especially the cuisine. You see, in New Mexico we have a lot of Mexican and Spanish foods. Heck, I grew up on the question: "Red or Green?" No, this is not a Christmas based question. The people are asking if you prefer red chili or green chili. Although if you can't make up your mind, you can always respond with the answer: "Christmas" and a server will bring you a selection of both red and green!
Here, we've fallen in love with what I'll call the surf foods - you know, like 'surf and turf'. In New Mexico, which for those unacquainted with the Land of Enchantment, is one of the driest states in the Union, we have a lot of beef. Beef! It's what's for dinner! Because... well, we grow a lot of it. Shrimp? Well, not so much. Or cod. Or halibut. Or lobster. Or... well any seafood really. Sure we could get it shipped in, on ice, packed and frozen. I have to say there's something truly amazing about fresh caught seafood!
There's another reason we love it here: it's a heck of lot easier to raise critters of all types on the rich, green grass of Rhode Island than it is on the wind-blown sands of New Mexico. And, with all the weeds and plants growing wild and abundantly here, we have more feed than we know what to do with. We brought two horses with us, Lady and Bullet (we sold all the other livestock we had in New Mexico, it was just too difficult to move all our animals across the country!). Of course not everything was rainbows and lolly-pops, especially when you're a horse used to the rich alfalfa New Mexico fields can grow. But after getting used to Rhode Island grass hay, our two horses are living happily and healthily now, and we can't complain.
And if truth be told, they're probably living happier and healthier than they would have in New Mexico, even if they give you their big, sad eyes and try to convince you otherwise. You see, we use the term 'hot' to describe alfalfa heat, it's hot meaning it has lots of protein (too much), lots of calcium (too much), and lots of other nutrients (too much). It's also sweet--at least to a horse, or a cow, or a goat or a sheep--it's like candy to them. And as too much candy to us causes us all sorts of digestive and eventually health issues, too much alfalfa for horses and livestock can also cause serious intestinal and health problems. And last but certainly not least, it's just plumb near impossible to grow alfalfa in Rhode Island. The salt air seems to make the plant grow too well, get too green, and when they cut it, it turns black! Yuck! Most of our alfalfa here in Rhode Island is shipped in as cubes or pellets from western states or Canada.
Our livestock animals were created by God to be able to graze for nearly 18 hours a day. Modern livestock practices have shifted eating patterns closer to what humans find comfortable: a morning meal, a mid-day meal and an afternoon or evening meal. Yet horses and goats, and other livestock, would rather have constant access to feed. This way they can eat a little, sleep a little, eat a little, sleep a little and so on. Sounds pretty nice, right? Hahaha, well they get to do their hard work when they have to carry us around, or pull a wagon, or pull a plow. They are livestock and beasts of burden, so they get to help mankind by carrying things!!
Giving them free-range access is also beneficial health wise, not least of which is an improved dental health. Overall it's such a blessing to be able to keep our animals in a more natural state, it gives them plenty of exercise (and the goats even more as they go around eating people's weeds)! And it gives them a joy in being, which helps us push on through each day!
And pushing through each day can get to be a challenge. We have quite a few 'to-do' things for our pastures. We'd love to get more permanent fencing installed, and it would be wonderful to be able to get the bottom third of our property under control. Right now it's not fenced and little overgrown (well, okay if you twist my arms, it's a lot overgrown!).
A little known fact: goats are escape artists! They make Steve McQueen's, James Garner's and James Coburn's efforts at a Great Escape from the Germans look like child's play! Because they tend to be so nimble and skilled at finding holes in fences, we've had to keep them in our closer pastures. Now, this is a boon when we take them out to weed someone's property (i.e. when we take them to go mow...err eat their weeds), yet it's not optimal when we have to put the lawn mowers away... ahh, I mean when we put the goats away.
Most of what feeds this wanderlust in the goats is their curiosity, and their desire for new weeds or new plants to eat. They love variety in their diets: a leaf of this here, a stem of that there, one here, two there, a bit and a mouthful of these flowers and then skittering over and a good chewing on of these saplings. Strong fences are the best counter to this inbuilt curiosity. Strong fences and full bellies.
As mentioned above, I'd love to get the back parts of our property under management against. But like everyone else's land, ours is overgrown! Ha! We need to goat mow our own land. Yet we can't get our goats in there until we get better fencing, which takes time and money--but mostly time. We have most of the supplies and materials we need for the fence, we just don't have the hands. It would be wonderful to get some volunteers who could give us a hand, then we could get the fences up and expand our land, expand our goat herd - which is going to happen soon anyway -we have a buck (a male goat) with all the does (female goats). For those of you who know anything about the birds and bees, the end result of this situation is fairly obvious.
You know, as I think about this fencing, it strikes me how amazing God truly is! A friend of mine was getting rid of some chainlink a while back. Well, rather than throw it in the ocean or fill up the local landfill, he gave it to me. Now--well back then, I thought what in the world am I going to do with this?!? I mean I needed rolls of chain link fencing like I needed a hole in my head. Well (que sound of video tape fast-forwarding), now we have a pasture. Without a fence. And we have fencing. Which isn't around a pasture. Hmm... what's wrong with this picture? If... well... hmmm... let me think... lol. I got it! (Editorial note: God has to deal with me like this quite a bit, but He's so loving and grace-filled all the time. He amazes me in so many different ways!)
And now you can see my dilemma: fencing, pasture. Put it together and what do you get? More space for the goats, horses and other critters! We just need some helping hands to get this done! I'm hoping we can find those helping hands sometime soon, because, as I said, we're just about to see our goat population... explode! Hahaha!
We have other dreams as well. One thing you do when working on a farm: dream. One of those dreams, and I'll talk on this more later, is a barn. I'd love to have a bigger barn, where we could house all our critters. Right now it's a touch small. I'd love to see it built as a two-story building also. And guess what I'd put on the top floor? Ha! Gotcha! I bet you were gonna say hay (the hay, and tack and feed and all that stuff is on the first floor anyway!). Nope.
You see I have special plans for the second floor of my dream barn. With BirdHaven Ranch becoming a center for our veterans and our special needs and specially gifted neighbors, I hope to make this the center of our activities. I'd love to make an activities room here, where we can set up to do all sorts of farm-related and craft-related tasks and activities. This would be especially nice on the colder days. I'd love to move my weaving looms here to this second floor as well. Just imagine the joy on the face of a child as they learn to weave, as they run the yarn back and forth, making a rug or a piece of fabric. And just imagine as they take it home and they show their parents. "Look at what I made! Look at how pretty it is!" Man, wouldn't that be refrigerator art? You'd be the envy of all your neighbors!
Thanks for listening -- well reading. Running a farm is amazingly rewarding and wonderful. It's a blessed life. I love it. And my kids do too! We call this our home, and we so very much want to stay here, amongst all of you, our neighbors (and now, you our neighbors on the internet too!). I hope everyone has a blessed morning/day/evening/night, and again, thanks for listening. If you want to help, or donate, please contact myself, Megan, or head back to the website and fill out a donation form. We truly love and appreciate all our neighbors, both physical and digital!
Comments