A Little Who’s Who on the Homestead

Welcome back to the farm.

Now that you know who we are and what we are about, I thought it was time for a proper introduction to the big players on the homestead, the animals. I mentioned some of our fury and feathered friends in my first post, but I thought a proper introduction with visual aids was in order. This is by no means a comprehensive list, rather some of our more entertaining and favorite friends.

First up is the original trouble maker, Red. She is one of our original first eight chicks we started our flock with. This means she is knocking on three and a half years old. She is an Issa Brown hen that lays some amazingly huge dark brown eggs for one of our smallest framed birds! And she is every bit the trouble maker too.
It all started on their first time spending the night outside in a makeshift pen I had set up in the back yard. Something attacked the pen and when we got home she was no where to be found. We assumed the worst and mourned her loss.
The next morning I went out to warm Delisa’s car up and clear the very light frost from her windshield while she showered before work. You can probably guess what was hiding in the bushes next to the car, little ole red. She had survived a cold night alone after escaping whatever attempted to eat her with not a mark on her. I scooped her up and brought her inside and surprised Delisa with her while she was still in the shower. We were both very excited she made through. Since then, she has been a favorite and always brave and into something. If we leave the back door open to let fresh air in she invites herself in and wanders the house looking to see what we are up to.

The longest standing member of our animal family is Delisa’s horse Peewee. As I am not an equine master by any stretch, I am unsure of his lineage (I will get Delisa to do a write up on him one day for you all). Some things I believe I have heard her say about him is that he is half gaited (?) and half quarter horse(?). All I know for sure is he has more personality and sass than any one horse should have a right to.
He loves to challenge me on walks to be lead horse and nudge me playfully from behind when I am not walking fast enough. He has a low talking he does when we come out to feed that sounds like an old tractor trying to crank. He is a lot of fun most days but some days he can be a butt.
Peewee is in his late teens and has COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) and we have to watch him closely in the heat of summer. He sometimes requires shots daily as well as antihistamine powder to make it through particularly dusty and hot parts of the year. With that considered, he is still a great trail riding horse and is a great mount that will protect and serve Delisa well when she rides.

Our sweet Daisy girl has been one of the most unexpected joys we have found on our farm. She is a rescue pup from a shelter that my wife saw something special in when no one else seemed to. Delisa works indirectly with shelters in helping get their animals spayed and neutered and this is where Daisy came into our lives.
She was a very timid and shy girl who wanted desperately to please someone but had no idea how. When she came home to use she would do nothing by hide in the kitchen. Delisa had to hand feed her scrambled eggs so she would eat something. We were wondering if she would ever be a normal pup, despite the warning from the shelter that she would never be a couch dog.
After two weeks of allowing her to get used to her new home and us, we began bringing her dog bed out from the kitchen nook where she hid and putting it on the floor next to the couch. The first night she stayed put, but the next night she joined us in the living room while we watched YouTube before bed. Not two or three days later we received a great shock when Daisy finally felt comfortable enough to join us on the couch and climb up to snuggle in my arm pit under my arm.
In the intervening years, Daisy has blossomed (pun intended) into a fun and intergenic pup that loves to chase a ball and swim. The only thing she loves more than those is snuggling on the couch with her humans. She despises thunder storms, gun shots, and car rides though. We are trying to work on these to build confidence and help her through it but it is a long process as is any rehabilitation.

The cats of our homestead are a study in opposites. Jezebel and Frankie are our feline adoptees. Jezebel adopted us more then we her. She was actually a neighbors cat and they had lost interest and sequestered her to a life outside by the time we came along. She would come visit us for love and the food Delisa would leave her on our porch. Delisa being allergic to cats meant she offered food and I offered the love. Well one day the neighbors moved away and there was jezebel still visiting us. We contacted them and they said we could keep her since she seemed to stay at our house more than theirs. So we gladly obliged.
Frankie, on the other hand was a feral hitchhiker that followed us home so to speak. We would, on occasions help a friend with his horses across town when he was gone on a trip. He has what was best described as an infestation of feral cats on his farm. Not a mouse to be found though! Frankie was one of those cats and caught a ride in the suspension of Delisa’s car one evening all the way across town to our house. She did not like us but didn’t mind the food we would put out for her so she stayed. I was able to catch her one day early on and miss diagnosed her gender as a boy and that is how she got the name Frankie (good thing its gender neutral).
We found otherwise when she got fat and disappeared for a few weeks. When she reemerged she was quite slim and there was a kitten that had followed her out from under the porch. Over the next few weeks, as the kittens got more mobile we were able to catch them and Frankie and confine them to the trusty playpen we had raised our chicks in and allow them to grow to the proper age to adopt out. We had Frankie fixed as well as her babies before they were all adopted out (my mom has one of her babies at their farm). Frankie remains standoffish at best and tolerates a few pets when food is involved only. She may be anti social but she is one of the best mouse hunters we have seen in a while.

These aren’t all our animals but they are some of our most favorite and ones with the best stories, because who doesn’t like a good story. I am sure in time we will introduce you to all of our animals and any others we happen to bring into the fold on Sunflower Farms. I will leave you with our current iteration of our coop and the pond and a shot of some of the variety of eggs we get each day. Enjoy and hope to see y’all back on the homestead soon. Don’t forget to have a Sunflowery day!