yesterday, i realized we haven’t updated our farm journal in over a month. wow. the busy, it ate me.
it’s not the farm that’s so busy, though. it’s everything else. the garden is taking a break for the winter, thank goodness. Nothing to do out there right now but spread manure and compost, some of which is already done.
Tonight, i’m meeting up with someone from the local animal shelter, who specializes in re-homing feral cats. We are adopting three such cats, who will live in the barn and eat mice. Two are arriving tonight, and the third will come as soon as another such cat enters the shelter system. They have been neutered and have their shots, and have at least a few days worth of exposure to humans at close range in nonthreatening situations (one has been in the shelter for over two weeks), but they are not house cats. And wow do we have a food source for these guys. More mice than you can shake a stick at in that barn these days. I’m really glad we invested in plastic feed bins last year, because the feed bins are genuinely mouse-proof. But we buy feed in larger quantities than the bins can hold, and the bags are mere paper, highly vulnerable to mice. Mice are living in them in obscene numbers now. I think I counted eight while i was out doing evening chores the other day. Not okay. And our pampered housecats are not going to move into the cold barn for a week, no sir. So, we are adopting a long-term solution: the barn’s own cats. And we’re participating in getting cats out of shelters where they risk euthanesia (and illness from poor cross-contamination prevention measures).
so, Rev made the barn doors square (they were sturdy but very not-square, before), and made it so only one of the doors has to be open for chores, instead of both, and made the lock easy to deal with, and now that the barn will contain a cat, we are going to home some cats in it, tonight. In the dead of night, because that’s how the schedule works–we should be home with the cats by 7pm, but you know, it’s pitch black out by then now. i’m pretty ready for December to be over and the Sun coming back, already.
I expect Thistle will be fascinated, and Tatters a bit put out when he realizes there are cats in the barn. but it’s not like he hangs out in there enough to eat the mice. And they won’t be on his recliner, or contesting my pillow with him, so it should work out with minimum scrapping, I hope.
more tomorrow. barn cat photos when i can capture some pics–no guarantees on the timing!