Casey O’Neill is a farmer and owner of Happy Day Farms in Laytonville, Calif. The opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect the views of The Mendocino Voice. If you’d like to write your own column for The Mendocino Voice, send your idea to info@mendovoice.com.
Ted had her piglets late Thursday night. Her sister Bill went to feed the families, but Ted got pregnant so we kept her and she has been eating well on apple drops, acorns and alfalfa pellets pre-soaked for better digestion. I checked on her just after seven in the evening and it was clear she had gone into labor in her nest of straw. I offered her apples and she ignored them, which made it obvious that she was underway because never have I seen a pig turn down food.
I went home to bed but Amber is more cautious than me, so she got up just before midnight and headed up to the ranch to check on Ted’s progress. Nine piglets, one came out wrong and didn’t make it, and one had gotten lost and hadn’t made it to the teat yet. Amber got everyone dry and drinking milk, scooped up the placenta and the piglet that didn’t make it, and then came home to get cleaned up and back to bed. I received the report with drowsy happiness; piglets make everyone happy.
I sit drinking coffee and writing in the early morning darkness after checking dry sheds and feeding the puppy, cats and rabbits. Soon I’ll make breakfast and then head to the ranch for morning chores in the dawn light. I’m excited to see the new piglets, curious about what colors they will be. Amber told me, but I was too sleepy and can’t remember. New life on the ranch is always fun, whether it be bunnies, lambs or piglets. Everyone loves the cuteness of baby critters.
Animal husbandry is not easy, and there are often times when I find myself questioning my choices. We boarded a neighbor’s horse for a couple of days because he had escaped and made his way down to our neck of the woods. At dinnertime I got a call from my brother telling me that the new horse had gotten tangled in the electric fencing separating the pigs and sheep from the horses, and that everyone was loose and chaos ensuing. With great resignation, I put my boots back on and headed for the ranch.
We got everyone corralled quickly, but I couldn’t get the fence charger to operate well. In retrospect, I think it had to do with the soil being too dry for the ground rod to work well, especially because it was shorter than a normal ground. I was tired, frustrated and questioning my decisions in raising and keeping livestock.
It’s always the same process of deduction. I think, “Maybe I don’t want to raise animals anymore,” and then I work backwards from “Well, do I want to buy meat? Do I want to lose my participation in the lives of the animals our families will eat, to know how they lived, what they ate?” The answer always ends up being that I want to be part of this journey, no matter how difficult it is at times.
All in all, it was a good lesson in electric fencing and chargers, even though I’ve had to learn the same lesson multiple times over the years. It’s funny how even though we’ve gotten a good amount of rain this fall, the low humidity and long summer have parched the ground enough that the moisture we’ve gotten hasn’t totally relieved the dry conditions. Also a lesson that some of the equipment I have is frayed, aging and should be retrofitted or replaced.
It’s an odd feeling to come to a point in my journey as a farmer and rancher in which I’ve had tools and equipment long enough for them to wear out. We’ve been doing the work of full-time husbandry of land and livestock for almost fifteen years after decades of homesteading before that. I look back on the trials and tribulations, the triumphs, the many steps that brought me to this point.
I’m reveling in the ways that the farm has become more abundant: the consistency of animal production, the constancy of seeds becoming young plants that grow and then transform into harvests, the continued growth of comfrey and bunchgrasses that occupy the margins and provide biomass while sequestering carbon. Care and effort over time yields results, and though there are mistakes and setbacks, I come to see the increased fecundity of the land we shepherd, and it brings me great joy.
We’ve been harvesting cannabis in the bottom garden at brother Lito’s, and we’ve had to literally wade through the comfrey hugel beds that separate the lower terraces. The resounding “cronch” of the leaves and the massive wall of green biomass makes me as happy as the herb we’re bringing in. I have big plans for comfrey mulch and for digging more comfrey root to use along with the wasted cannabis stalks to make more hugel beds for next year. Abundance that comes from the sun, the magical alchemy of life on the farm. As always, much love and great success to you on your journey!
Casey O’Neill owns and runs HappyDay Farms, a small vegetable and cannabis farm north of Laytonville. He is a long time cannabis policy advocate, and was born and raised in the Bell Springs area. The preceding has been an editorial column. The Mendocino Voice has not necessarily fact-checked or copyedited this work, and it should be interpreted as the words of the author, not necessarily reflecting the opinions of The Mendocino Voice.
What a creepy article, from killing pets to naming pets opposite sex names, what kind of weirdo funny farm is Casey running? Good grief, bunch of freaks, smoking too much of what they are growing. Autism.