Podcast Episode 15 - Big News on the Farm!

Hey folks!  Sorry it has been so long since we have shared a podcast episode with you all!  A LOT has been happening with Fiberton Acres.  We thought what better way to let you know what is happening than to tell you in a new podcast episode!

The spoiler...we are moving!  To learn all the details, click here to listen on Soundcloud or listen on your podcast play of choice!

A few of the other things we reference in this week's podcast:

Fiberton Acres and New Products

Our Instagram (to see Ric dancing while tilling)

Our Patreon Page! (To get exclusives on our travels and more!)

Our Email List!

All the Apparatus, our intro and outro music!

Settling into our new place in OR before we leave for WV

Once set up at our new spot in Eugene, we headed to the farm store to get supplies to make our temporary space feel more like home for our 3 months of Oregon living.

We discovered the poly-wire electric fence, a small white polyester cording with metal strands running through it. We were able to run the fence using 4 T-posts and about 10 plastic fence line holders (only $2.99 each).

Little Pauly nursing.  No wonder she is growing so quick!
(Portable electric fencing in background.)

We let the sheep out in to their new pasture and watched them go crazy eating all the new grass. (Which here in Eugene there is no lack of grass and other greens to eat for the sheep.) However, they began escaping almost immediately, and Rocky was the first walking around the yard.

“Rocky! Go home.” We yelled at him (he’s not a good listener) as we walked toward him he ran back under a high spot in the fence. So we turned off the fence, lowered the high spot, turned the fence back on, and went back inside to keep setting the place up.

Good job herding Rocky back, JB. 

“BBllllaaaaaattttt.” we heard from outside and we saw Pauly walking around outside the fence and eating weeds right outside the door. We walked toward Pauly and she snuck under a different spot in the fence. This would go on the rest of the day as the sheep pointed out all the weak spots in the fence for us.

Look at that cute lil face!

After a nice day of running fence and setting up rabbit hutches, we packed it in at around 8PM and slept for about 13 hours.

The next couple of months would prove to be a similar experience to our first day. Days seem to consist of at least one animal escaping (cats bolting out of the RV, dog figuring out how to escape his first lead setup, Pauly in the driveway yelling at 4am, etc.) To be fair, the rabbits did not escape once.

However, during our first month, we experienced our first loss of an adult animal. One of the younger rabbits, little Edward, fell ill with mucoid enteritis. It is a tough disease for rabbits to recover from, and the antibiotics that you give can often be as tough on the body as the disease. After trying what we could, we decided it was time to try the antibiotics. We knew that they can wreak havoc on the intestinal system, so we gave her yogurt and enzymes to try and offset the antibiotics. Unfortunately, either the antibiotics or the illness got the better of her, and we had to say goodbye.

Edward and I in the Cali sun before the move. 

It is crazy to think that we have already spent almost 4 months here in Eugene.  We have been working, taking care of our crazy critters, and preparing for the big move in the beginning of August to our new home on the border of Ohio and WV!

More on that move soon...

-Ric and Ash

Final day on the road to Oregon

We rolled into Weed, CA around 8:00 at night and proceeded to Friendly RV Park for the night.

A man met us out front and explained that they only take cash or check. We, being good 21st century folks, had neither. I had to drive the Kia over to the Pilot gas station hit up the ATM for $30 (that the ATM charged $2 and my bank charged another $3). We paid the guy and prepared for the night. The heater in the RV kicks out a lot of heat but is also roughly as loud as a small jet aircraft at takeoff so we couldn’t use it, luckily we had about 1 million blankets to keep us warm.

In the morning, as we were doing the feedings, the couple from the camper next to us came over to say hello. They were an older couple and had both grown up on farms up in Canada. After talking to them for a while we found out he fought in WWII for the Canadian Army and was 88 years old! They like to drive all over and they visit family on their trips. We decided we want to be just like them when we’re 88.

Silly Rocky was not super thrilled to be in the small space.  

Adrian and little baby Pauly seemed just fine in their stall.

After saying our goodbyes to them we hit the road again. This time the RV was squeaking quite loudly for a few minutes causing Ashley a little bit of a panic. “Is it going to explode?” she asked over the walkie talkies we had in each car. “Maybe… but I bet not. It is cold so it should stop once it warms up.” I tried to reassure her. After about 10 minutes of RV squeaking, cats meowing, and Ashley panicking the noise quieted down as the RV motor warmed up.  

After a few uneventful hours on the road we entered into Oregon and then all the way up to Eugene! We exited the highway and navigated some back roads to avoid city driving, and made it to our new place well before nightfall (easily an hour before hehe).  It’s a nice little place with plenty of room for the animals to stretch their legs finally, including our 4 day old lamb, who had spent the majority of her little life in the back of a trailer.

The family enjoying some luscious Oregon grass and stretching their legs! 

Overall, the travel went pretty well for how quickly we had to hit the road and go.  It was a great way for us to do a trial run for the big move to WV later this summer!

-Ric

The first couple days on the road...

Hitting the road on day one involved making the journey all the way to Casa De Fruta… about 100 miles north. I admit it wasn’t a far away goal but it was a way to get some road behind us. I called them to ask if they had a spot open for the night, that was pull through, and that could accommodate a horse trailer with 3 sheep in it… also could we camp there with 3 sheep?

The girl on the phone had to go ask her manager but returned to say it was fine.

Casa De Fruta started as a roadside fruit stand but has become a roadside attraction with an RV park, a model train you can ride on, a restaurant, a carousel, a truck stop, 32 peacocks, and a candy shoppe.

At a previous visit to Casa de Fruta. Just hanging with peacocks.

We arrived after dark and got set up for the evening, clearing off the bed we were using for storage so we had a place to sleep and basically shoveling a path through the RV;  just doing the bare minimum to sleep.

When we awoke we were itching to get on the road again… right after coffee and breakfast. I drove the car down to the coffee shop and get some coffees and pastries, and candy, because why not? We gulped our coffees and downed our pastries (I would be more specific but I honestly don’t remember what they were) and started the RV back up. 

The extremely loud squeaking noise coming from the engine compartment lasted until we exited the park before it began to subside. “What the hell was that noise?” came Ashley’s voice over the Walkie Talkie.

“A loud squeaking noise,” was my super helpful response. 

“Is it broken?” she asked.

“No, just a squeaking belt.” I said, hoping I wasn’t lying. As soon as I said it her voice come over again: “The windshield wipers just came on and won’t turn off!” She was yelling into the headset at this point. “Pull over and I’ll look,” I said.

Once we pulled over I looked under the dash to discover that I didn’t know anything about what under a dash is supposed to look like… I found the wires connecting the windshield wipers via a Google search and disconnected them. “Avoid driving through any rain,” I said, “And you’ll be fine.”

The only excitement for the rest of day two was the constantly escaping cats. Thankfully, Ashley had them in the RV with her so I didn’t have to deal with it. Obi (my cat) was the ringleader of the prison breaks. If I remember correctly they escaped 12 times that day. We eventually moved the cats into one of the hard carriers to better contain them.

Mom...we are literally dying.  I promise.  Let us out.

We made it pretty far that day, deciding to stop just before we got to Oregon in a little town called Weed, CA. We found this little RV park that once again welcomed our little menagerie, and welcomed a nice restful night.

Day 3 soon...

- Ric

Part two of Big BIG changes for Fiberton...

A baby lamb is a tiny bundle of cute that is constantly trying to escape or run around like a crazy person leaping off everything in sight as well as trying to climb on Adrian, our ewe.

Pauly was born on Easter some time late at night. We didn't notice until around noon on Monday. We saw a fluffball running around the field when we were coming home from buying moving supplies.

Little Pauly, our Easter baby

“Uuum, what is that?” Asked Ashley. “Is that a baby?”

“No, not everything is a baby.” I said snarkily, mostly because this was the 5th “Is that a baby?” in the past 3 months.

“Then why is it running around?” she continued.

“Balls! That’s a baby!” I exclaimed while jumping out of the slowly moving car.

Normally a successful baby lamb would be just another day on the ranch, but being that we were embarking on a three-day move up to Oregon the next day, it was causing a little stress (understatement).

“Should we call Christy?” Ashley asked, only slightly panicked. Before I could even say “Yes,” she was already on the phone. Christy and Mike were there within an hour, with oats, vitamins, and inoculations in hand.

After they gave us the ok to move her we went back to packing, we were leaving in less than 24 hours after all.

So little and cute! 

Our Friendlord came over to help us finish cleaning and packing for the move so it would look good when she came over to inspect it later (she’s cool like that.)

Pulling out of that driveway was hard, not only because we had a horse trailer being pulled by 26 foot Winnebago, but because we were already missing all the amazing people that we knew there.

JB loaded in the car watching Ash in the Winnebago in front of us

Leaving the driveway of our awesome little farm in San Miguel.
We were super lucky to have such a great place, with such wonderful Friendlords and
friends in the area.  Thank you all for everything!  

Part three with the road trip will come along soon....

Big BIG changes for Fiberton...Part 1

“Well, I guess we’re moving to West Virginia,” I said to Ashley after receiving the news, “I got accepted to Wheeling Jesuit University’s Respiratory Therapy Program!”

I should introduce myself, I’m Ric! Ashley has probably mentioned me before, but now she’s working like crazy (I’ll explain on what later) so I’m picking up the slack with my superior talents :-)

I am the hubby that Ashley keeps talking about. (On the right.)

As I mentioned above, I got accepted to Uni halfway across the country in a place I’d never heard of, let alone been to. I needed a change of career, or a career at all really. I have asthma and have been in hospitals quite often my entire life (I find them comforting… I know, weird, right?) and I have always wanted to be in a medical field, but didn’t want to be a doctor or a nurse. I honestly had forgotten that respiratory therapists existed until I had a bad day at work and was looking for something better to do with my work life.

I decided to get the full BA degree, so I looked at schools that offered it, there were about 48. And the top five were Ivy League and/or prohibitively expensive. But WJU looked right up my alley, so I applied. Not only did they accept me, but they gave me scholarships!

After we had decided to move there at the end of summer one of Ashley’s old friends called from Oregon and offered her a job on a campaign, it was a city council race that was highly contested and the candidate needed the best campaign manager that Eugene has ever known (I’m tooting her horn for her) and they asked her to come back to the Eug for “One more race.”

“.......... Should we?” Ashley asked me.

“Why the hell not? I love adventure, and excitement.” (That’s why I’d be a bad Jedi.)

After about two days of me convincing her that we could pack up 6 rabbits, 2 sheep, 2 cats, and an incredibly old black lab into Oliver (the cool name we’ve given to our 1986 Winnebago) she caved.

Oliver, our trusty Winnebago

It was official, we had less than a month to pack up and get to Oregon. We discussed it with Ashley’s parents and after they helped us decide it wasn’t a ridiculous idea, we began telling people with “The Friendlords” (our friends who also happened to be our landlords) and then Mike, Christy, and their friendtern (their intern who also happened to be their friend) Tiffany, and lastly our jobs. We began frantically packing and doing dump runs in between our last shifts at work. 

We pulled Oliver around near the house and bought a 2-horse trailer made sometime in the ‘60’s to haul the sheep (Ashley’s dad Dean drove her, like, 4 hours north just to pick it up because it was SUPER CUTE and also half the price of any other ones we saw online). We started overhauling Oliver and converting the pullout bed into a full time bed and putting in the new entertainment center and bookshelf that I had built. (I just learned how to build stuff recently, so I’m bragging.) Once I had hooked up my Playstation, NES, Atari, Genesis, Super Nintendo, Wii, and my computer I was ready to go. (Unfortunately, we still had a whole house to move out of, hehe.)

The adventure will continue...