A Year on the Bluff, the Roundabout Way (Part 1)

The author with beloved Concepcion the pig
Farmer Nic (2018)

Before we got to where we are now (owning and managing a small farm on three acres in Loleta in Humboldt County in Northern California), my partner Nic and I rented a house in nearby Eureka. The house sat in the middle of two acres on a busy road connecting Eureka to Arcata, and the driveway was a roundabout so our several housemates and visitors could pull all the way through and around. One of the unique stipulations of our contract was the requirement to have farm animals of some sort to help keep down the pasture. This adorably rural and seemingly mundane rental condition was the fork in the road that eventually led Nic and me to Table Bluff Farm. But before we became who we are now, we started at Roundabout Farm.

Roundabout Farm

Sweet sheep face
Farmer Hannah (2016)

From April 2016 until June 2017, Nic and I accumulated a series of farm animals. It started with two sheep, #61 and #67 (named for the ID tags they had on their ears when Nic picked them up). From our quest to learn whether he had acquired one male and one female (as he had requested) by getting an extra up-close view of the undercarriage of those sheep and finding out we had two females, to the gals befriending a neighbor's horse and escaping with him to another field, to the annoyed neighbors berating us for the sheep pooping on their lawns, to us ultimately renting a U-Haul van and dropping them off at the local USDA-certified meat processing facility, the sheep were a series of learning experiences in themselves. They are stubborn creatures that tested our patience daily while also  entertaining us to no end. Their sporadic baa-ing was the source of many of our chuckles.

The original four ducks.
Farmer Hannah (2016)

Next came ducks. Despite their propensity for projectile defecation, we quickly fell in love with their personalities. One day I came home from work and found Nic unpacking a bunch of Amazon.com shipping boxes from the back of his Pathfinder. Before I could get out "What…" he had opened the first box and four ducks exploded out, quacking and flapping. We had acquired forty more ducks in a day, and with them came our first taste of farming as a business. We filled duck egg contracts with local natural food stores and a restaurant. And the ducks seemed really happy there. They had a natural pond to waddle down to every day where they swam and foraged for bugs. We trained them to be herded and could send them back into their coops whenever we needed to.

Mother Athena and daughter
Aphrodite (front)
Farmer Hannah (2016)

Then came our goats. We started with two Lamancha goats, a mother and her baby, who we named Athena and Aphrodite, respectively. They were great for eating brush and just generally livening up the place. Another goat, a Bohr goat named Momo, joined the crew soon after. Athena taught us that the strength of motherly bonds cannot easily (or ever) be weakened, especially in the animal world. Everywhere Aphrodite went, Athena was sure to follow. Momo is much more relaxed, though she does manage to get herself tangled around anything perpendicular to the ground. But since we've had sheep, goats seem relatively easy. 

Shamu enjoying her daily slops
Farmer Nic (2016)

Soon after the goats, we went down to the Arcata bottoms to pick up a Berkshire pig from two Portuguese farmers. We got her into the dog kennel in the back of my Toyota Matrix and brought her home. We named her Shamu and she quickly became our favorite farm animal. I picked up buckets of fruit and vegetable waste from a local store for her, and she especially loved the watermelons and pumpkins at the bottom of the barrels. Our sushi-chef housemate brought us bags of rice and veggie scraps after his shifts. A local bread store sold us just-expired bread for cheap that we could use to supplement the fruits and veggies Shamu was getting regularly. Soon came along two more pigs, this time Red Wattles, one female we named Cinnabar and one castrated male named Red. When the time came to process Shamu, we hired the local Humboldt Happy Butcher, who was incredibly kind during the whole process. Tears streamed down my face the entire time, for I had come to love our pigs deeply.  What gave me comfort was knowing that we had given her a wholesome life and that our family members would be nourished by her. 

Our original 2 chickens, including
Big White who is still with us today.
Farmer Hannah (2016)

Raising chickens had not been the end goal in our mini-farm lifestyle. We really wanted to focus on ducks. But after being around the three chickens we inadvertently adopted with our original four ducks, we came to like their presence on the farm (as well as the eggs they produced). So when an opportunity arose to adopt a local woman's laying hens, we jumped. Soon we were producing enough eggs to sell at our local natural food stores and to feed our housemates and ourselves. We discovered that not only were chickens more reliable than ducks in terms of laying, but that they were ultimately cheaper to feed and cleaner to raise in general. We decided to up our chicken game and bought some mail-order chicks to raise in the garage under a heat lamp until they were big enough to go outside.  

Our mutual dream to keep nurturing our homestead kept growing until it became a pressing need. Nic and I talked for hours each day—while washing eggs, cooking dinner, feeding the animals, driving to pick up veggie scraps, mucking out the coops—about various aspects of the roadside farm stand we wanted to create. Essentially, we wanted to provide eggs, produce, and flowers for the local community while also creating a way of life for ourselves that we felt drawn to. Since we were renters, however, there was no guarantee that we would be able to stay another month, much less the years it would take to create our vision. With financial backing from my parents, we made an offer to purchase the property. But it was not to be….at least not at Roundabout Farm.

To be continued