Annette,
So on the eve of your generous party, I find myself reflective (and wishing I could attend tomorrow). I have just arrived back in our house from the barn night check. I left Rita (our youngest Flanagan) wrapped in a blanket and snuggled next to the stall rail where Tabitha will spend her first night alone.
I have so much I want to share in regard to adopting rescued farm dwellers and our trek after discovering Happy Trails…
First, just to explain, I wouldn’t be weaning sweet Tabitha right now if Mama Fleury was holding her weight. But with research and good advice and direction from our vet., I have had to agree this would be in the best interest of “Her Fleuriness” and would also feed positively into Tabitha’s ground training. And as it has continually happened, the best scenario has occurred! Fleury is staying at our neighbor’s barn tonight with two goats and another PBP – which means she will hear the same commotion and have similar barn mates and she has a huge pasture all to herself!! What a great help to this transition. Tabitha has my daughter Rita – the two have become, well, one. And now they are sleeping together….
If anyone would have told me a year ago any of this would be happening I would have told them OFF!
If only I could convince anyone that anything is possible with wayward wonderful animals and turn them ON!
How long is it now? A good few years ago, our son Patrick, asked for a pig! A pig. Crazy. We had pygmy goats that his older brothers had cared for after we accepted them from a “hardship case”. We had chickens that a local school system had hatched as science experiment. And we had Amish bunnies that Patrick and his sister Hannah had bought from a little lad alongside a scenic Ohio off road. PIG? No way.
Patrick continued to ask. Finally, I told him that if he could and would plant and grow enough corn feed for a pig, then he indeed, would get a pig.
Patrick hand dug a garden patch about 50’ by 100’ and grew corn.
I went online to find a pig.
In the process, somehow, I stumbled across Happy Trails. Made the call. Collected our first “pig” actually “pigs” and we have never looked back!
4 pigs, 1 goat, 2 roosters, 6 hens, 1 guinea, 1 pony, and a pregnant welsh mare later…I feel compelled to persuade others to more than consider… to listen and realize that every one of us average people can do a little more. Small amendments to our days can and do add up to large adjustments toward a more positive bigger picture.
In a million years I would never have thought I would be checking on my daughter sleeping in my barn with a 5 month old foal! Never. But when one is willing – willing to open their eyes a little bit wider – let their heart feel a little bit deeper – allow their minds to skip across the immediate balks & blocks and stretch into important (somewhat sightless) callings & carings … well, amazing things happen and a whole new history for a family just might begin!
FarmFlanagan is a true testament that anyone AND EVERYONE should at least consider adopting/supporting the creatures of this earth. We have a limited budget that we work from. We rely on the knowledge shared from those that know — no formal or previous training. We are consistently blessed beyond words and entertained beyond our imaginations. And all the stories that come to us with the beloved creatures that arrive here, their experience and energy, are intricately intertwined into who we all are here … and amazingly enough, that then goes out again back into the world we go into…daily…in one wonderful way or another.
Call me crazy – but I swear to you, it’s true!
Hope you have a great time enjoying each other’s company and that purposeful passion shared….
Will miss being a part of it tomorrow, but I must somehow make a hair-do happen for this gal who will have slept the night prior to her first big high school dance in a barn!
cheers!
terri
