4 - 15 - 12: Farm Tour and Montana Day Trip

Today, we went on the official farm tour, led by Mimi and Rob, with help from Emily, Devin, and Kiora. We began in the hay barn, which was built in the 1940s. The hay is stored on the upper level in the manger, and the barn has two wings, so each side of the barn has several openings in the wall for dropping hay. One of the walls drops directly to a trough below for feeding the cows and another wall drops to the ground, where the hay is loaded onto a tractor and taken to a field on the other side of the farm, where the mother cows and their newborn calves currently reside. Indeed, three calves were born either late last night or early this morning, and were dried off and with their mothers this morning once we had woken up! There are three calves left to be born, and I am really excited to see a cow being born, so hopefully I will get the chance to do so.

After the hay barn visit, we saw the chicken coop, which is a converted mobile home where the layers (chickens who lay eggs) live. We also saw the mobile coops which will be used for the broilers (chickens who get eaten) when they arrive in early May. We learned that the mobile coops work like this: the chickens live in a wood and wire enclosure with an open bottom, which gets put on grass and moved every day, so the chickens have fresh grass and bugs every day. So the chickens are kind of like clucking lawnmowers with feelings. We next visited the mother pigs Sandra, Stripey, Esmerelda, Lucy Armadillo, and one other mama pig, and their piglets. The pigs were highly alert when we entered the barn, and we were promptly educated on pig history and proper pig-handling procedure. Pigs are very smart and quick, and so I learned that it is important to always be aware of where a pig is, especially because they can swivel with incredible speed. Also, pigs have hook snouts, which are perfect for nosing nosy piglets away when they get unruly. Here's a cool thing I learned today: mother pigs have a certain number of teats, and when their piglets are born, within the first week or two, each piglet chooses their own particular teat to suckle on, and the rest of the teats dry up.

Next, we visited papa pig, Jacquey, named after Jacques Cousteau, who enjoys getting scratched behind the ears, and the mother cows and their calves. It was a magnificent farm tour, and we learned oodles about the geography of northern Idaho. Prehistory lesson! Apparently, back during the last Ice Age, the valley Bonners Ferry is in had a waning glacier, and so the valley used to be several hundred feet under water. This is one of the reasons the soil in northern Idaho is so good for farming. After the farm tour, my mom and I drove to Montana to see Kootenai Falls. We saw the Falls, which are amazing rock formations across which cascade millions of gallons of water daily. We also went across the Swinging Bridge, which was precisely like the bridge to the dragon's lair in Shrek, except without the dragon, princess, moat of magma, or volcano. And, on the drive back to the farm, we saw four wild turkeys!