Donkeys, Rock Chucks, and Other Saturday Plans

​For the past year, I have successfully posted one blog a week, every Wednesday. So it feels a little strange to be posting on a Saturday. However, after the day I’ve experienced, I had to share it because this one is absolutely going down in the record books.
My morning started off pretty standard. I came downstairs, had my morning caffeine, and we talked through the plan of attack for the day. We had my sister, her husband, my niece, her husband, and their twins here to help us with some much-needed tasks around the homestead.
And the first thing on the docket was a bittersweet one. A family came to pick up our calf, T-Bone. Earlier this year, our Dexter cow calved, but her baby was stillborn. Worried about her milk supply, we bought an Angus-Hereford calf for her to nurse.
Unfortunately, in true livestock fashion, she took one look at him and decided that was not happening.
So T-Bone became a bottle baby.
Most of that work fell to my dad. He handled the feedings, the checking, and the day-to-day care, which meant T-Bone followed him around constantly like a very large, very hungry puppy with hooves. Watching him leave was hard, especially for my dad.
It did help that once T-Bone got settled into his new, much larger field, the family sent us pictures and videos of him exploring his new home. Their kids also seemed genuinely excited to have him, which made it easier. Still, it started the day on a strange note. That odd homestead mix of knowing something is good and right, while still feeling the ache of letting it go.
Then the rest of the day’s work was waiting for us.
Deciding it was better to divide and conquer, my sister, brother-in-law, and I headed to the barnyard to move chickens into different pens. We had four roosters that needed to be caught and put in a holding pen temporarily, thirty to forty meat chickens that needed to be moved from the barn to a pen, and our white American Bresse hens that needed to be moved into a second pen. All the while, those four roosters still needed to be separated and put into their respective breed’s pen.
It was like musical chairs, but with chickens. Musical chickens, if you will.
While we were doing that, my parents, my niece, and her husband went to the garden and started laying landscape fabric, with the twins hanging out in a playpen in the orchard.
Thankfully, musical chickens went fairly quickly, and we had all the birds in their new pens within an hour or two. My sister and brother-in-law loaded up our trailer with garbage, mostly feed bags and boxes, that needed to be taken to the dump while I started mucking out the stall we had removed the meat chickens from. Their timing was perfect. They finished loading the trailer just as I got a wheelbarrow full of bedding ready to go to the compost pile.
So my sister, my dad, the twins, and I set off for the dump.
The twins were fussy at first, but eventually started to doze off. We were almost halfway there when, all of a sudden, a fairly large cardboard box flew out of the trailer. Of course, we stopped. My sister ran back to grab the box while my dad adjusted the straps on the trailer. Once everything was secured again, we were off.
Less than a mile down the road, a donkey came trotting toward us.
Straight down the road.
Next to a freeway.
One thing about my sister is that she knows EVERYBODY. So, naturally, she knew who the donkey belonged to and called them. While we waited, she walked along with the donkey to help keep it out of the road, while we drove behind her. This was made extra exciting by the random jackwagon who flew past her while she was literally standing in the road with a startled donkey.
Fifteen minutes later, there was still no donkey owner, and we were starting to struggle to keep the donkey off the road. It kept running ahead of my sister and wandering onto the relatively quiet highway. I pulled the truck up beside the donkey and stayed next to it until I finally saw a truck with a horse trailer coming up behind us.
They touched base with my sister, who was walking behind us at this point, then headed off the donkey, who finally realized it had an entirely unfenced field beside it that it could wander into. So, naturally, it found some dirt and decided this was a perfect time for a dirt bath.
As I waited patiently for my sister to get back in the truck, she informed me that the people with the horse trailer were NOT the owners of the donkey. They were just some good Samaritans who had been driving on the freeway, saw us struggling with this ridiculous donkey, got off at the next exit, and came back to help us.
Because apparently there are still wonderful people in the world.
Between these incredibly kind strangers and a surprisingly polite donkey, we had it loaded up in about five or ten minutes. Then we turned around and headed toward the owner’s farm.
We were off again when, all of a sudden, a four-wheeler started coming our way. An older gentleman was on the quad with a rope, so I asked if he had lost a donkey.
It was, in fact, the donkey owner.
We told him we were headed to his farm, and he said he’d follow us. So we were off again.
Then a dog came running down the road toward us, and I told my sister we were NOT stopping for another animal.
Turns out, the dog was following the donkey owner, who also happened to be its owner.
Finally, the donkey made its way back home, and we led the good Samaritans back to the freeway where we waved them off on the remainder of their journey.
After at least an hour from when we first started our trip, we finally made it to the dump. Another hour later, we finally made it home.
For a brief and foolish moment, it felt like the afternoon was getting back on track.
We got one final landscape tarp laid down while hamburgers grilled on the BBQ. As we were wrapping up lunch and preparing to send everyone home with lots of thanks and gratitude, our neighbor called to inform us that an offending rock chuck, which had been going under vehicles this week, had run across the street and climbed up under my dad’s vehicle.
Because… why not?
We then spent the next hour and a half using rods, air hoses, water hoses, and finally arrows to get this stupid rock chuck out of my dad’s engine before it caused damage. It was such a ridiculous endeavor, with this rodent continually outsmarting and outmaneuvering us, that we almost posted on the town Facebook page that people should bring popcorn and come on down if they wanted some mid-Saturday entertainment.
By the end of it all, we were tired, dirty, sore, and more than ready to sit down and kick up our feet.
Days like this remind me that life is rarely tidy, predictable, or convenient. Sometimes you set out to move chickens, haul garbage, and lay landscape fabric, and instead you end up rescuing rogue donkeys and waging war against menacing rock chucks.
But they also remind me that there is a strange kind of blessing tucked inside the chaos. There are people who show up. There are family members willing to help. There are strangers who pull off the freeway for a donkey that isn’t theirs. There is laughter in the middle of exhaustion, and there are stories that can only come from days that absolutely refuse to go according to plan.
And honestly, those are usually the ones worth writing down.