Lyric Farm

05/03/2023

This is what being a sanctuary is all about. ❤️

05/03/2023

Some fun on a snowy day on the farm with LF volunteers Blake and Kiley! ❄️☃️🐮 (Captions under each picture.)

We still have some volunteer openings throughout the week. If you’re interested, please email us at [email protected].

07/02/2023

MY LITTLE FARM ❤
“Farm work doesn’t make you stronger. It doesn’t make you anything. It reveals you.
There’s gym strong and then there’s farm strong. They’re mutually exclusive. The toughest women you’ll ever meet spend their days on a farm.
There are more uses for twine than you can possibly imagine. You can tie up a hole in a slow feeder, fashion a tail strap for a horse’s blanket, mend a broken fence and use it as a belt.
“Well that certainly didn’t go as planned,” is one thing you’ll say quite a bit.
Control is a mere illusion. The thought that you have any, at any given time, is utterly false.
Sometimes sleep is a luxury. So are lunch and dinner. And brushing your hair.
If you’ve never felt your obliques contract, then you’ve never tried stopping an overly full wheelbarrow of horse manure from tipping over sideways. Trust me, you’ll find muscles that you never knew existed on the human skeleton to prevent this from happening.
When one of the animals is ill, you’ll go to heroic lengths to minimize their discomfort.
Their needs come first. In summer heat and coldest winter days. Clean water, clean bed, and plenty of feed. Before you have your first meal, they all eat.
When you lose one of them, even though you know that day is inevitable, you still feel sadness, angst and emotional pain from the top of your head to the tips of your toes. And it’s a heaviness that lingers even though you must regroup and press on.
You’ll cry a lot. But you’ll never live more fully. You’ll remain present no matter what because you must. There is no other option.
You’ll ask for so many miracles and hold out hope until the very last.
You will, at least once, face-plant in the manure pile. You’ll find yourself saying things like, “we have maybe twenty minutes of daylight left to git ‘er done” whilst gazing up at a nonspecific place in the sky.
You’ll become weirdly obsessive about the weather.
You’ll go out in public wearing filthy clothes and smelling of dirt, sweat and p**p. People will look at you sideways and krinkle their noses but you won’t care.
Your entire day can derail within ten seconds of the rising sun.
You can wash your coveralls. They won’t look any cleaner, but they will smell much nicer.
Farm work is difficult in its simplicity.
You’ll always notice just how beautiful sunrises and sunsets really are.
Should you ever have the opportunity to work on a farm, take the chance! You will never do anything more satisfying in your entire life.”

17/01/2023

UPDATE: Thank you to all of you who have contacted me regarding volunteering or employment! The number of responses has been a thrill to see! That being said, it’s taking me a little bit of time to process all your inquiries. Please do not interpret the delay in my response to be disinterest! Thank you!

BARN HELP WANTED - Uxbridge, MA

Do you love animals? Do you like to be outdoors in all kinds of weather? Are you looking for functional, gym-free activity that will increase your strength and endurance?

We need you! We are a small farm animal rescue with an immediate opening for help with feeding our residents and some minor cleaning on Sat, Sun, Mon, & Tue afternoons. Daily chores take about 2-1/2 to 3 hrs—possibly less, once training is complete and depending on the day. (Additional tasks or projects available on a weekly basis, not included in the daily time calculation.)

Qualifications:
• Comfortable with all kinds of animals, including dogs
• Ability to follow directions
• Attention to detail (a must for everyone’s health and safety)
• Ability to lift and carry 50-lb bags of feed or full buckets of water (although we can talk about this one)
• Ability to work independently after training is complete
• Have transportation
• Are reliable and will show up
• At least 12 years old
• Can bend low and/or kneel
• Doesn’t mind getting dirty

Will consider applicants who can only do one or some of the above days, teams of two if friends want to work together, and a “special projects only” helper.

If this sounds like a good fit for you and/or someone you know, for more information please contact me through a PM.

Volunteers are also welcomed and encouraged to apply!

07/09/2021

FOUND ON THE FARM
Friends!
Maggie and Scarlett are friends and neighbors to the farm and each other who come to visit the farm. They’ve recently become enamored with the chickens and duck, and spend time cuddling with them. They also help collect the eggs, and feed the chickens and other animals. Then they go home with fresh eggs!

Would you like to make friends with a chicken? Or perhaps another farm animal? Are you interested in feeding them? Or perhaps you just want eggs! We always need volunteers, so if you have an hour (or more) a week to spare and you’d like to help out, just shoot us a message.

Check out our other FOUND ON THE FARM posts to see what other fun things we find on the farm!

07/09/2021

FOUND ON THE FARM: Fungi!!
I have been fascinated to find so many different types of fungi around the farm—a fabulous variety. It’s been quite wet at times this year—we’ve had TWO tropical storms roll through in rapid succession this summer—and we have some wetlands on the property, but the shade patterns of the trees make a difference in the areas that are not considered wetlands, which is where all of these different types of fungi have been found. Admittedly, a couple of them were found in the manure pit, so were not a surprise, but many of them were found in places I was not expecting.

As much as I’d like to tell you about each one, I do not actually know anything about them, other than being able to identify them as fungi. If you are in the know, please share your knowledge with us by leaving a comment beneath the photo(s) you know about!

03/09/2021

FOUND ON THE FARM
Pumpkins! Well, technically only two small pumpkins (so far, only one of which is pictured), and numerous blossoms which will hopefully become pumpkins (or squash, or gourds).

Last fall, we benefited from some of the leftover pumpkins from our friends at George Hill Orchards, and a few locals who donated their porch pumpkins at the end of the season. The animals like to eat them, and we like to let them. 😋 In fact, our local field mouse contingency enjoyed them immensely, as well, and left a bit of a mess for us to clean up. The scraps ended up in our compost pile/manure pit. I truly did not believe any of the seeds had survived the mice over the winter (a situation with which I was okay since the mice seemed to prefer the pumpkins to my stored critter feed), so I was quite delighted when I discovered all these vigorous volunteer pumpkin plants! (In gardening, a “volunteer” plant is one that grows on its own without being planted by deliberate action by the gardener/farmer.)

One of the dreams I’ve had for our new property is to grow stuff—flowers, fruits, vegetables, herbs, you name it. Unfortunately, the time to actually cultivate any type of garden or beds has eluded us so far. When I first discovered a couple itty bitty plants, I didn’t realize how large and beautiful they would become, or how numerous they actually were. Some were incognito, and did not reveal their presence until they were rather large. They are now huge ranging plants with ginormous leaves on long, thick vines, populated with multiple brilliantly-colored and bold-sized blossoms.

And I am, well, delighted still! I enjoy observing them and noting their changes on an almost daily basis, and find it so exciting to see the plants flourishing, even though I’ve done nothing to make or help that happen. What a wonderful gift from God! It is like He is encouraging me by giving me a head start on my dream. And it’s a nice reminder that He can bring life and beauty from what most others see as garbage, refuse, or something to be discarded—even our own lives. What a wonderful lesson!

Stay tuned for more updates on the pumpkins as they continue to grow and mature as the season progresses! By the way, we were given several different varieties of pumpkins, gourds, and the occasional squash—and several of those (at least) were hybrids—so I have absolutely no idea exactly what type of fruits God is growing for us. We’ll just have to wait and see what wonderful surprises He has in store!

Please check the other posts on our page for more FOUND ON THE FARM snippets of farm life.

02/09/2021

FOUND ON THE FARM
A Toad Named Wanda: I discovered Wanda in the water closet in the barn a couple weeks ago while extending the hose to water the critters. She was just chillin there, doing her toad thing, maybe resting up a bit before going in search of her dinner. Apparently I disturbed her enough that she decided to hustle her rotund toad self under the upside down milk crate that functions as a holder for the bucket that catches the drips from the hose reel.

I didn’t see her again—although I kept an eye out for her in vain for several subsequent days before I figured she’s gone in search of other accommodations—until today, when (not surprisingly) I was doing the same thing as I was the first time I spied her. This time she was well-camouflaged in the front corner near the door, rather than the back of the closet, and, had I not had my hat light on, I might have missed her entirely. This time she decided I wasn’t as big a threat to her toadness or peace as I was the first time, for she stayed statue still while I worked, and was still there when I finished my tasks, even obliging me when I requested to take her photograph.

Wanda the Water Closet Toad is a Fowler’s Toad as best I can tell. (She wasn’t inclined to answer any of my questions when I asked. I took her silence as tacit permission to capture her likeness.) The females are larger than the males; do not reach breeding age until 2 years old; like sandy areas; and eat bugs and other invertebrates. Their lifespan is about 5 years.

Check out our other FOUND ON THE FARM posts for more interesting snippets of farm life!

01/09/2021

31/08/2021

FOUND ON THE FARM
The Mollies: Hope and Glory, our pony mules, observe me from the doorway of their stall as I enter their paddock, hoping it’s dinnertime! (A female mule is often called a “molly.”)

31/08/2021

Found on the Farm: Our LGDs Red, Liberty, Pippin, and Temperance all say hello when I enter the barn!