I promise, I won't always be about the chicken thing, but here's an interesting thing I've learned.
If you have read Isaiah at all, and/or the Book of Mormon, it is almost impossible not to look at a mother hen and wonder what the Lord meant when He said He would gather us as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings.
She literally puts them under her wings. I mean, I picked her up to count the chicks and make sure none were missing (one ran off and actually spent a whole night outside the coop alone because I didn't check under her the night before). And--there were only two chicks under her, yet the hen's body was peeping. No chicks falling out--the other two were all tucked up inside there.
Mama hen fluffs herself out huge in order to cover them and protect them--she guides with clucking and wings and, at the slightest danger (which means me), she rustles them back to safety, which often means under herself.
Such a nurturing image--a very engaged, concerned parent protecting the child both physically and with constant direction and teaching. God is quite a poet.
A few years ago, if you'd have told me that feeding, housing, murdering and cooking chickens would be a daily part of my life in the near future, I'm not sure I would have dared to try chickens in the first place. But here I am, my first day of FREEDOM (say it Braveheart-style) after quitting the corporate grind (no offense, work pals), spending the majority of the day moving chickens, building a third mobile coop so they can till the garden for me, and trying to solve egg-eater mysteries.
Consider the phrase, "I had egg on my face." I never really had a context for that one--I knew it meant that you were caught red-handed, guilty, or embarrassed. This is just one of the phrases that hearkens back to when chickens were part of everyone's daily life. A chicken with egg on the face is an egg-eater--it's a capital offense because they generally can't be broken of it. I caught a hen eating an egg and put her in jail but she has laid eggs without eating them every day since, so just today I realize someone else could have broken the egg and she was just eating it--what any chicken would do. So I put two eggs in the nest of my main flock and I'll be darned if I didn't go back and find ONE. And no one else laid today either, or they were all gobbled up.
I suspect this rather aggressive one that looks like a very fat hawk. She is super heavy and meaty, so I won't feel too bad if I'm wrong. Go, carnivores!
Anyway, I need to figure that out soon.
In other chicken news, the eight hens that remain from the accidental clutch that hatched in my shed last fall are finally all caught after being practically wild all winter. I was going to sell these girls and then keep my old flock, but they actually are laying so much better than the others that I'm reconsidering. The first three years of a hen's life are her best laying years (once she starts laying at around 20 weeks), but they can live for 15. Most make it into the stockpot well before that.
I'm just trying to get in the groove of how to rotate my flocks, since chickens don't like strangers, so you need to separate flocks. That's why I have so many coops--the old hens in the big box with the rooster (our food security animal), the accidental wild hens now in a chicken tractor in the garden, the hens on probation in my "jail" tractor (I can't tell if they are not laying or eating eggs but haven't yet condemned them to death. The big main coop has mama hen and her four chicks (see pictures below). She only hatched four because I hadn't read enough about how to manage a broody hen (below) and this was my first time (and hers), so I can't feel too bad. Lastly, my sweet four little Americaunas just got their new tractor built today. I do nothing but feed them and take care of them but they completely freak out anytime I'm nearby, not sure what that's about.
So my plan is to put mama hen and her four chicks in the new tractor with the store-bought chicks (now about 35 days old), with a wire partition down the middle. My hope is she'll get used to them and want to mother them when she sees how pathetic and unlearned they are after living in a box in a dark shed their whole lives. After a little while I'll take out the partition and hope no one dies and then I have eight chicks with a mama to be my main layers for next year. I've read that mamas will adopt chicks (or kill them, depending on the mood) and am holding out hope, even though she's a first-year mama. I've let her go out a bit with her new babies and show them how to dig for bugs--I could watch it all day.
She really does talk to them. She was growling at me and threatening me one day (as mother hens are supposed to do) until I put down the feed, then she switched to hen chatter and all the chicks obediently came out and did as they were told with the feed. It was remarkable. Wish I spoke Hen.
It is gorgeous outside and I could spend every day, all day, out there, but to be honest, I did a really half-baked job of resigning from Access, so I have piles of projects to finish before I can really pull back.
Last but not least, in my effort to take my life back, I'm going to start writing publicly more and moving some of my stuff to this blog so I have one record, including some of the old Mamamelodrama stuff, so forgive me if the post volume starts getting a little excessive. I've been advised to have all my writing in one place, so that's what I'm doing. If you'd like to have me take you off so you can switch to RSS or just come visit when you want, just let me know.
I promise, I won't always blather on about chickens. But if you do like learning about random chicken-related things, you should check out the "chickens" tag in the sidebar cloud, or read what I've learned about eggs. Fascinating stuff. I can't imagine life without them anymore.
White turkeys are the ones generally sold commercially. I meant to take a picture of both the bronze and whites before, but I just have a white before and a bronze after.
And After II (yes, we cook our turkey's upside down, it's part of a very elaborate turkey roasting ritual my husband carries out):
Our white hens that we got last year still lay wonderfully--one big fat white egg a day usually. But, I'm down to 6 now. I had them loose for much of the summer and I guess I lost two to predators.
Cute lucy on the tree ladder.
Lucy and Noah in the back yard.
Mother hen (used to be the rooster I called "sissy chicken") and her 12 chicks out learning how to forage. She is pretty fierce if you get too close, as you can kind of see in this picture. She's a great mother, and she does gather them under her wings, just like the scriptures say God will do for us. I need to take more pictures of the trees here--it is so gorgeous. Yesterday we got the sod cutter rented again and took out more grass for next year's garden. It seems counterintuitive to follow up my miserable neglected failure of this year with expanded ambitions for next year, but we feel we should try again. The first year was very fulfilling, and we did get some good out of this year's but I was learning how to juggle the work/family/health/garden issues.
Talk about fall, we picked tons of apples yesterday from the neglected tree way back on the property (you have to commando crawl under a fence to get over there, then pass the buckets back over when done). Some of them were so perfect and huge. If we found a wormy one, we threw it to our neighbor's (very grateful) sheep. I have applesauce canning on the agenda this week.
Yesterday I also inventoried my food storage, and I'm not so bad as I thought. We are fervently working on that now. I'll go on record that I think the constant media talk of signs of recovery is just that--talk--and I personally think we haven't yet seen the worst of it. I realize only 20% of economists agree with me on that, though.
I heard a comment in general conference that perfectly summed up what I've been feeling as I've been reading about both the economy and studying the scriptures much more than I have before (funny how well they go together!)
It was D. Todd Christofferson who said, "We cannot presume that the future will resemble the past—that things and patterns we have relied upon economically, politically, socially will remain as they have been."
I think there is a lot of false security thrown about in the name of what has always happened, but real security is in obedience to and trust in God and trying to live by the Spirit.
Yesterday, with the help of Paw-in-law and David's brother Danny and his wife Jessica and a wonderful chicken plucker loaned by a sweet chicken farmer in Sandy, we harvested 21 fryers/roasters, all weighing in at about 5-7 pounds dressed weight (after cleaning). It started out rather poorly, with a lot of "is this worth it?" thoughts.
David was being too careful IMO about the killing part and I kept reiterating how the lady I got the plucker from just took a large serrated bread knife and had them upside down (by rope, we used a killing cone made from a bucket), and sawed 1-2-3, plop, head in the trash can catcher, and it was over. I actually did the second one myself to illustrate this point, (it took four saws, I found my place, held the head down firmly, then shut my eyes for the 1-2-3---4).
I was amazed at the difference in myself since last year. City slicker has definitely been countrified. Remember I was weepy and couldn't eat meat after that first round? The second round a while back I was just ok, but this time I didn't have one tender feeling about it. I felt grateful, and today's dinner (shown above) for me had a stronger sense of thanksgiving and recognizing the reality of the bounty we enjoy (plus it was super yummy), but I didn't feel much sentimental about it--after all, I've been complicit in chicken death my whole life, and at least I know these chickens were well taken care of.
About by chicken 9 I finally figured out the plucker really did work amazingly and required very little after plucking if the operator (me) actually used it right, so after that I was fast. Dave bled out and beheaded, popped them in a holding pot, I scalded them (15 seconds just under boiling water) and pulled out large wing and tail feathers, then went to the plucker which is just a wheel covered in rubbery "fingers" spinning to the left out of a grate. I finally figured out to hold the bird so the rubber things went against the grain--feet on the right, and rotated the bird top to bottom, left to right, under wings and between legs, and all of a sudden it looked like a lovely roaster from the store--except with big yellow feet and a too-long, gory looking neck. I cut off the feet with chicken scissors and tossed it into the icewater in the cooler. By the end, this whole process was well under 5 minutes.
Meanwhile, Dennis was running errands to get more coolers, get more ice, get bags, etc. and Danny and Jess where making sure my water stayed hot enough--makes a HUGE difference in how well you pluck (and too long in the hot water makes the skin come off with the feathers--in the end I had to skin 2).
Last year I wanted to spare my kids the trauma and make sure I had them far away for this, but not so much this year. Ben and Sophie knew what was going on and chose to stay inside, Ben ate his chicken tonight just fine, Sophie hasn't feeling well for a few days and didn't eat much of anything. Noah was outside some, and not visibly traumatized, but not really happy about it, seemed puzzled and trying to figure it all out. He wouldn't eat it today, but in general he doesn't eat much meat, so it's hard to know. Lucy was outside the most and it was all we could do to keep her from the feather/blood hazmat area.
At one point when Noah first got out he came over to me while I was working a chicken over on the plucker, and said, "Mom, are you making lunch?"
Lucy came over and saw the first chicken alone in the cooler water and said, "Mom, is the chicken taking a bath?" "Yes, Lucy." I said. She said, "Is the chicken hurt in the bath?" To which I replied, "Not anymore." David called over from his killing station, "The hurting happens over here."
I feel like my dead pioneer ancestors are not so much derisively laughing at me this time as I'm sure they were the last time I was all weepy and traumatized over killing chickens while being perfectly willing to munch down the supermarket/Del Taco version. I didn't think I would come to this point, but I can perfectly see myself going out back on Saturday and wringing a neck for Sunday dinner.
Once we were all done, the cleaning was a pain. Danny did 5 or 6, which I was impressed by. Although I had done it before, I had forgotten some, and I was at 15 or more minutes a bird at first, but I worked myself down to 5-7 (still terribly slow). Today I found one I'd forgotten in the cooler and was done super fast. The trick is to carefully cut around the top and bottom ends in a way where you don't nick any of the guts, but you are able to put your hand in there like you're stuffing the bird and pull out everything inside at once, then you need to scrape out the lungs and kidneys, which are stuck to the back ribs, with your fingernails. My fingers were sore today, which made piano in primary a little tricky.
I'm just saying, like Victor Frankl says in "Man's Search for Meaning" where he writes about his life in Auschvitz, people can adapt to anything. We really have no idea what we're capable of, and the things we say we could "never" do today we may find one day we don't give a second thought.
Dinner tonight was yummy, the best part was the strawberries Ma-in-law dipped in sour cream and brown sugar. Holy cow, life is good.
Speaking of life is good, our bunnies now live under the rabbit cages in the shed rather than in them, because I wanted them to be out and more free, and they seem to leave peacably with the chickens. I let them all out in the day to run about and then they all go back in at night on their own and I shut the door. I looked in the backyard today and saw Lucy swinging on the tree swing with a couple bouncing bunnies in the grass around her and a chick or two pecking about, and it was the most idyllic scene. We've been so blessed here.
I tried to let the turkeys have some freedom today, as their pen opens up to the back pasture our neighbors use to graze their sheep (but is owned by our landlord). I came back to put them back in and the sheep had gone in there, eaten all their feed and upset their water. So I guess freedom won't be in the cards for them. Oh well, more tender meat, I guess. I'll try to get pictures up shortly.
Sorry if this was too gruesome for you, this is pretty much my journal, after all, so feel free to skip whatever.
I'm biking to work tomorrow, 15 miles, so I need to get to bed. Wish me luck.
Thanks for all y'alls sweet comments--I miss everybody lots.
Downstairs bathroom converted to greenhouse (and turkey nursery)
Sorry, sideways. I replaced the normal vanity bulbs with alternating white and yellow CFLs. Plants love florescent light and CO2, (just the opposite of humans).
This is thanksgiving in it's early form. Four turkey poults (poults=turkey chicks). Two bronze and two whites, here four days old. These are commercial breed broad-breasted, so they can't reproduce due to the awkward physical size they will eventually have. Also, they can have leg problems if allowed to live too long--they've been selected for meat. Next year I am going to get the old fashioned kind that are a little less busty but can reproduce.
The poults look a little like the chicks, but they have more prominent wings, longer necks and a little knobby on their forehead/beak area. They are less flighty and skittish than the chicks and let me hold and pet them. The are very wobbly and awkward when they walk as opposed to the chicks, and tend to just walk right over each other rather than walking around. They are cute and very, very stupid. They are also very fragile, so it's recommended you get 1/2 as much more to double the poults as the number of turkeys you want to end up with because they die easily. Mine are very pampered, so I'm hoping for better odds.
white poult
bronze poult
They are friendly, but love to nip at my fingernails and wedding ring. They'll eat out of my hand.
Here are the layer chicks, 3.5 weeks old, 14 different breeds. Five of the tan ones are buff orpington cockerels (roosters under a year). When I make a weird noise or do something strange like hold a camera at them they all freeze and stare at me out of one eye like this. Notice "skinny-head," as the kids call her, in the back center, with the 'Nilla Ice crew cut.
The lovely hen in the middle is the one we call "red," for obvious reasons. She's beautiful. The Buff behind her I believe must be a cockerel, from the long legs and larger size. The water bottle on top of the waterer is to keep them from roosting up there and pooping in their water, because they are that way.
Another photo of the, "What the "%&*@" is food-lady pointing at us?" freeze-and-stare pose.
I keep the greenhouse/turkey nursery/bathroom locked and let myself in with a hairpin because I'm the only one in the house that can figure that out. This is spike, our gorgeous boy-kitty, saying, "Please, please let me in here just for a minute. I just want to look at the turkeys, that's all."
Girl-cat Bella smiles for the camera. She doesn't even bother trying to get in to the chick or poult rooms anymore. You're asking if my house stinks, aren't you? No, not really. Not any more than the barf fest we had over Easter weekend and the daily diapers. And as any good book will tell you, proper litter management means little to no smell.
Because there is no way I could properly manage all the litter these gargatuan 3.5 week old fryers are putting out these days, I had to move them outside, even though it is a little early. David built an 8x8 pen. At this age, they need about 1 sq ft of space each, moving up to 3 (min) -5 (cushy) sq feet each as they grow (on soapbox: commercial chicken batteries give them a space smaller than a piece of paper--six hens in a file-drawer sized cage--they can't even sit down most of the time. This creates disease and pecking, so they often have to debeak. It is not uncommon for one of the six chickens to be dead and trampled long before anyone gets to it. They live that way for two years. off soapbox). I have 21 fryers now, as some died, which chicks sometimes do. So 64 square feet gives them a very comfortable 3 feet each. They will need a heat lamp until they are harvested at 8-12 weeks. Chickens eat grass, and having chickens on grass reduces feed costs.
The Easter bunnies came to our house this year! Here are our four bunnies. The white ones are Goosey (named on behalf of Lucy, aka, the Goose) and Susan (named by Sophie). The black one was named by Noah: Blacky Taffy. The grey stripped one you can't see on the right is Ben's, Hoppity. These are all New Zealands which are a good pet or meat breed, the white ones are a good fur breed also. Theoretically we have one white buck (Goosey) but in all honesty it is too early to tell. If we do, it is possible that 150 rabbits a year can come from just these four innocent little things. A rabbit ovulates upon intercourse, the latter causes the former. They can start to reproduce at 8 weeks, have around 8 per litter, and can start over 8 weeks later (and so can their babies).
They can eat pellets, which are expensive, but are very happy on 70% alfalfa and 30% mixed grain, which is way cheaper. We got a starter bag of pellets and (my first!) bale of alfalfa hay. Alfalfa is a legume, which means the hay is high in protein for them (also Alfalfa feeds nitrogen to the soil and is a good crop to rotate before or after you plant your garden).
These guys are in cages, but we give them outside play time (when it isn't raining) and will build them an A-frame outside hutch for the summer so they can eat grass and save us even more on feed. These cages are old and free, given back from a family in the ward, whom my cousin lent them to a while back. This is in our shed/mini barn.
I can't show off my cute hair because it has been rainy and this picture was taken after doing chores in the rain--I had to clip my new bangs back because water turns them back into a fro--all the straightening-iron magic is gone. But here are me (tired, as you can see from the circles, and cold, as you can see from the red nose) and Goosey.
Will we eat the rabbits? We won't eat these, our breeders, which is why we can name them. We'll raise a few and try it and see how it goes. They are higher in protein and almost fat free in comparison to any other meat, and many say they are very good. Is it okay to eat cute things? Well, I think my chickens are very cute, and cows are just beautiful, with those big brown cow-eyes. This whole experience has definitely led me to be more mindful of the meat I eat, and we eat less. Rabbits are great food storage, as they convert feed to meat more efficiently than any other animal and breed fast and easily. Plus, I'd rather eat a cute rabbit that I gave a happy life than a miserable and factory-farmed chicken that is 10% fecal soup (sorry, off the soapbox really now). We can always keep the buck separate from the does to slow things down. And we can put the extras on ksl.com or craigslist and get rid of them.
We now have about 66 animals. I'm finding I really, really take a lot of joy from these animals, in a very satisfying way, not just like with pets, but another way I can't verbalize very well. I appreciate them and love them, and it doesn't wig me out that they are food animals, because I know that I really have a lot more gratitude and respect for food animals than I ever have.
So, our Easter was fun, with new animals and a big egg hunt in the yard with lots of our friends, including the Hunters from Pasadena, whom we miss terribly. It was so great to see you guys.
Work is fine, life is fine. I'm trying to walk that fine balance between striving hard and praying hard for the things we need but being accepting, thankful and satisfied with what we have. There are issues, some big, that aren't really blog fodder, but overall, we are very blessed.
I have to go because I promised Sophie we could watch "her video." Yet again. Ever since she saw Emilie Simon on my blog (my hair picture) she has been obsessed with this video. It is actually very cool and visually interesting. Don't wig out that it shows her back for a second at the beginning--it represents the beginning of spring, but it doesn't get all nudie. Watch--it's a fun song.
This past year has taught me a lot about eggs. First of all, I've learned that you don't need a farm to have hens and fresh eggs. Even if I live in a tiny place, I'm going have hens. I'm not really even a bird person, but I'm becoming a hen person.
My 10 hens are now about a year old, which means they are no longer "pullets," and they lay about 6-12 eggs a day. Hens in their good laying years (some say age 1-2, others say their prime up to 3, although many can lay into their teens) can lay 280-300+ a year (half a dozen a week, usually one every day or so). When all my new layers are producing, we'll be getting 12 dozen a week in season (which is spring: summer heat lowers production and winter lack of daylight and cold lowers production). Enough for the extended family to get all the eggs they need.
I was reading in the Salatin book about how he sells his eggs to chefs by showing them how different his eggs are than factory-farmed eggs. The chefs get really excited and always switch, even though they cost more than bulk factory eggs. He shows them how you can put the egg in a bowl and pick up the egg yolk and the white tries to come with it. The yolks do not break easily and are easy to separate. If you break his egg into almost-boiling water it will poach all together and be easily taken out with a slotted spoon at once instead of falling into many pieces. The eggs sits up high in the pan (see my breakfast, above).
They are also higher in protein, with higher vitamin/mineral content (seen in the bright orange yolk) and you can taste the difference--they are very rich. They make way better cakes and pastries. Salatin has made a killing in the chef market in his area of VA.
So this week when making my breakfast I tried the same tests on my eggs and was really excited to see the same results. Salatin pasture-raises his eggs, which means they are on a large pen that is moved over fresh (chemical-free) grass on a daily basis, but they are still safe from predators (racoons, opossums, eagles/hawks, rats) and kept out of nasty things they shouldn't eat. We do a combination of free range and coop time, but David just finished the moveable pasturing box so we can start with Salatin's method and keep them on grass all the time. It really saves on feed costs.
Even if a person doesn't have room to move the chickens around, they can save $ on feed by giving them all the table scraps, dry bread and (non-sprayed) grass clippings. All chickens need feed in addition, and you can use scratch grains or layer feed from the store. We use a combination. They need 3-5 sq feet of space per hen, so you can have 3 hens in a 3x4 big dog house, and maybe a little fenced yard of the same size they can go into (covered with chicken wire to keep them safe). It can be just 2 feet high.
Free-range or pastured chicken eggs are NOT vegetarian eggs. Chickens on their God-given diet will eat grass, weeds, weed seeds and LOTS of worms and bugs. They will happily eat most kitchen scraps, including meat, although at our house we don't feed them chicken, because that's just weird. They love milk, and families with a goat/sheep/cow often feed extra milk to the chickens. Also if your milk goes bad they will gobble sour milk up. If they acquire a taste for raw eggs they will start breaking their eggs to eat them, so we never feed them raw eggs, although theoretically you can feed them cooked eggs and it is all unrelated in their (tiny) minds. If you're grossed out by eating eggs made by chickens that eat bugs (at first I was a little weirded by that) just learn a little about what concentration-camp raised commercial factories feed their chickens and you will start craving bug-fed chicken eggs.
Raising chicks takes about 30 minutes a day. At 4 weeks it takes about 15 minutes a day. A regular laying flock of juveniles or adults takes about 7-10 minutes a day. All these minutes are fun, even in snow, at least for me. Once a year you clean the coop, and that takes a few hours. They don't stink unless they are not managed well, in fact it doesn't even smell much inside our coop itself. We use a deep litter system where you just keep adding carbon matter (dried leaves, wood shavings, dried grass clippings, etc.) and stirring up the litter every week or so. It slowly works up until it is 18 inches or more of litter in winter, which helps keep them warm. The droppings compost with the litter, so in spring, you open up the coop, compost everything (if needed, sometimes it comes out fully composted) and put it on the garden. Having animals makes organic gardening so much more affordable.
The kids love going out to get the eggs every day, and are learning responsibility by feeding and watering them. The result is more nutritious, more humane, more connected to the land, so not super stinky to the neighbors like factory farms, family friendly, environmentally friendly, chemical free and very, very local. Even in towns with strict animal codes a few hens can be kept as pets, and yes, hens lay eggs even without roosters just like we ovulate even if there are no men around. Keeping hens to have your own eggs seems like a big deal, but I have been surprised by how NOT a big deal it is. It is way easier than having a dog, and about the same as having a cat if you have a box to scoop.
I'm not trying to preach or guilt people for buying factory eggs. I'm going to have to buy some for Easter because I don't want to waste my good eggs on boiling and don't yet have enough hens to spare eggs. Although mechanistic, industrial egg production is horrific and even more so the more you learn about it, it is hard to pull away from it. But I'm trying to get there and move into clean, humane food that focuses on stewardship.
What I am saying is, get a hen or two if you can. It is so great in so many ways, not the least of which is breakfast.
So I was doing a little better and starting to get up and around, just tired. I was taking massive doses of Vitamin C because they said it would speed healing, and that appears to be true, the incision opening has been healing from the inside out nicely. So when I started feeling flu-like symptoms on Thursday I thought there is no way I could be getting sick with all this Vit. C. But it just got worse, with headaches and backaches and then whole body aches and chills and sweats and then this lump on my stomach above the incision started growing quickly and by last night was big and hard and red and hot to the touch. So apparently I had an infection and had to go back to the hospital. My mom is a chemist/microbiologist at Lakeview Hospital here in Bountiful and she was concerned because infections, especially around your guts (vs. a hand or leg, etc.) can spread very quickly and get scary, so she made me go to the ER. I'm glad I did, because they told me it was a good thing I came in. I had to get some crazy nuclear-bomb style IV antibiotics and they had to cut me open a little bit (1/2" cut, 3" deep) to let whatever was in there drain out. They filled it with packing and now I have yet a new hole in my body that needs to close up before I can return to normal ife. Gross, I know. My mom took me home to her house at 2 a.m. after we left the hospital so I could have some undisturbed sleep (something that doesn't exist at my house), and I slept until 11 when David finished teaching Sunday School and came and got me. We've made arrangements to have everyone shuffled around for the next couple of days, because before all this happened David had committed to go to WA state for a quick business trip, so he left this afternoon and is returning Monday night. He feels guilty, but we couldn't have anticipated this.
Anyway, I am assuming this eventually will end and I'll feel/be better, but until then, it's back a few steps.
I did order chicks (they come in two weeks) and got all my seeds in the mail. David tilled the gardens Friday and my mom planted peas yesterday (my mom is so great.) The neighbors who moved in just behind us are going to work with us on our animals and garden, which is a huge help since I can't do anything but place orders with people right now. A sad thing, because we got all commercial chickens last year (these new ones are heritage breeds) I'm having problems with my fryers that I didn't kill. I kept 4 fryer hens alive to see if they'd lay, and although they eat too much, they lay gorgeous, huge brown eggs. Well, I'd neglected to think about how fryers are bred to be killed before 12 weeks. Like the huge-breasted thanksgiving turkeys, who literally can't stand up if they are allowed to live after a certain time and are completely unable to mate and be bred naturally--these commercial meat animals can't live healthy past a young age because of our greedy selection of unhealthy animal strains for maximum meat. So our tremendously fat, waddling fryers are getting red, raw stomachs from their dragging on the ground. I knew it wasn't cost-effective to keep them, but loved how funny they look when they run and the gorgeous brown eggs, but now it just seems mean--they aren't designed to live this long (they are 10-11 mos old). A healthy, normal chicken breed can live 12-15 years. although generally laying hen flocks are replenished each year with new chicks and older hens are taken out of commission after their prime laying years (age 3-4). Anyway, that's just sad. So, David's going to have to take them out next week with the help of neighbor Dan, who, although we are novices ourselves, wants to work along side us to learn what we've been doing.
All that farmy stuff cheers me up, as I am generally anti-social, depressed and under-estrogened these days, the first two probably being due to the last one.
Anyway, consider yourself updated. Back to bed for me.
Well, it was really only six roosters. It appears that 3 of my 10 layers are probably roosters, so I kept all 4 female fryers alive. It was much easier this time around. David took an idea from a guy at my work and we still used the "killing cone" but we used large pruning shears first, which broke the neck and got them dead fast and then finished off with a knife. I tried to pluck one, which looks nice in the end, but took so long I said bag it and had David skin the rest. It was a better division of labor, he said, for him to kill and skin and for me to gut. It took way longer than a respectable person should take, but since he put them on ice after skinning, I had to gut cold chickens, which was SO much better psychologically than warm ones.
I eat less meat all around now since that first chicken murder, but suffice it to say that I'm fine with killing and cleaning chickens now (and probably most animals of similar size), which is a skill that may come in handy sometime, who knows.
Mom helped pick lots of garden stuff and I have 10 pounds of cherry tomatoes because I didn't plan well.
For dinner Saturday, we had a chowder with corn (neighbors who apparently didn't see my corn field), potatoes and onions (my garden) and brocolli (Costco) with zucchini banana bread (my garden and a facist banana republic governing oppressed workers with the Chiquita militia, respectively). We were proud of our #7 produce count for one meal.
The doctor told my on Friday I will probably need a hysterectomy this year. Any wise advice on that is welcome.
Michele asked what race I was preparing for--the answer is a sprint triathlon (or, the sissy triathlon). I already do almost the equivalent over three days but I'm moving toward doing them all on one day in less than 90 minutes.
Swim: 750 m(0.5 mi) (I currently can do 900 in 30 minutes)
Bike: 20 km(12.4 mi) (I am not quite there yet because my lunch hour is too short and I am too slow and stationary bikes are dumb, and I need to get me a real bike)
Run: 5 km (3.2 mi) (I'm slow because I can't run yet and have to walk, but I can do it in 50 minutes).
It's good times. I want to be able to do this in one day, even if it just on my own, before I have to go get cut open.
So the funny choir story. When David was on a mission I dated a very nice guy for 9 months named Brett. He was very complimentary and, let's just say it, fawning, and even though if the record was read back it would be clear I told him repeatedly that I really felt I needed to be with David, my actions spoke otherwise because of my own selfish need to have a nice guy fawn on me. Plus, he really was a good friend and I liked him. Just not in the irrational, apparently eternal infatuation-style way I liked/like my totally grumpy and un-fawning David.
So, this went on until the Wednesday before the Saturday David got home, when I was visiting him in Provo and just woke up and said, "Crap, I gotta go."
I drove away, never spoke to him again, was married two months later, I heard gruesome reports on the results of my horrible handling of the situation, and learned in 2000 that he had never married.
So, the funny story--you saw it coming--yup, he's in my choir. I'll see him every week now--and he's a baritone and I'm a SII, so we literally face each other the whole time in the U-shaped room.
The good news: he did finally get married three years ago. He has a 22 YO stepson and no children.
I saw him and after an initial, "Oh crap!" I just went up on the break and said, "Hey, we gonna talk and be friends or would you rather not?" He stared at me in confusion then horror (have I changed that much? He didn't recognize me!), then he quickly covered with friendliness. We parted, then I realized he was absent the next 20 minutes of practice. Then, in an attempt to get it all laid out then and not drag things on, I asked him to talk with me a few minutes after practice to make sure it would all be cool with our weekly seeing each other and whatnot. He was nice and chatty and offered me a nice platonic yet snug hug, which was strangely familiar despite the years. Fifteen years is enough for him to get over me being a total self-absorbed @$#* and completely messing with his head and life, right? I know a good week is enough to get over me, but to get over the leavings of my evilness?
Arg.
Life is stranger than fiction.
David says I can still go to choir, he just doesn't want to ever meet this person.
Well, back to a crazy busy week. Manic ambition is a slave driver.
We had to harvest a chicken yesterday because she (a fryer) broke her leg. It was generally uneventful, unpleasant but not traumatic, and not that messy, really.
Well, it sure set me to thinking.
There may be some of you who think I've taken on all this farminess due to an overly idyllic view of farm life, because the old ways were harder and dirtier they must be better. While hard and dirty does have it's benefits to keep us working and humble (and healthier), I didn't go into this thinking it would be fun and games. I wanted to see if I could do it, especially when it came to animals.
I've been carrying around this notion that if I can easily eat animals every day as long as they are neatly refined down to a perfect fillet of protien and wrapped like candy, that I am not being honest with myself. Forget everyone else, for me, I just wanted to look it in the eye and face it and say, "I'm going to eat you." And, if I couldn't, then I think I need to seriously consider eating it, even when someone else does the dirty work.
Take fish. I can catch a fish with a hook in it's face, pull it out of the water, hit it on the head with a pair of pliers, slit it's belly with a knife, scrape out it's guts, fry it in a pan, and eat it up right there--no problem. I feel perfectly at peace with my fish eating. Whatever my line in the sand is between people, pets and food, fish are squarely on the tasty side of it.
So now I understand first hand what it's like to kill a chicken, I know what it is I'm doing when I order an enchilada or a chicken caesar. But it's likely the chicken in those entrees didn't have a carefree life in the backyard up until the last second. They were in a body-sized cage and/or debeaked, living in chicken hell right up until they were sent to chicken heaven.
Now, chickens are dumb. I've been caring for my chickens for almost three months now, and I will give you that. But they are dumb in a sympathic way for me. And dumb doesn't mean you deserve mistreatment. If you are a living thing created by God, some respect is due.
But, in some ways, they are not dumb. For instance, I sometimes come out later than I should to shut the door, and the ubiquitous escaped hen or two is asleep outside the fence. The main rooster is not inside asleep with the others, he's outside in the fenced yard as close as he can get to her, waiting for her to come in so they can go to sleep.
Or, say I pick up a chicken to inspect it. All the other chickens freeze and stare at me, "What's she going to do?" You may think they're worried for their personal safety in the moment. No. They're watching and observing with whatever cataloguing ability those tiny little brains can offer.
Yesterday I went in to get the injured fryer, they all freeze. I take her out of the hen house and around the yard. They all come out then freeze in place, staring at me. I walk away several yards and look back. All staring at me. The crazy telepathic thought comes into my head, "Where's she going with Betty?" Even worse, maybe they have millenia of genetic memory going on in there and they're thinking, "Oh-oh, Betty's got a broken foot, she's dinner tonight."
And here's an interesting observation. Up until yesterday afternoon, they had gotten relatively comfortable with my presence, sometimes escaped hens even letting me pick them up and put them back. Not today. They scattered in a snap when I came in this morning to get as far away as possible. They're not 100% dumb, just 95%.
Yes, and who cares? So chickens have little chicken feelings. It is our God-given right to eat them. Man has been given "dominion" over the animals, who are to be enjoyed "with prudence and thanksgiving," albeit "sparingly." "It is pleasing" to the Lord that they should "not be eaten" but only used "in time of winter or famine," or to "save your lives." (Let me just sloppily paraphrase four books of scripture on the topic.) Animals are ours to do with what we will, but it pleases God when we won't take a life that we don't need to.
The chicken did not die as fast as we'd hoped. Our knife was not as sharp as we thought. Although it felt like an eternity, it was really only a few extra moments. I held the chicken's feet with her head down in the cone and could tell when she was cut, when she was not yet dead after being cut, and when she was dead. I could feel the difference in her muscles between the tension of pain and the nervous dead twitching that would propel the running around headless should we have chosen that method.
I instinctively went to not watch when David made the cut, but I reminded myself that this was the point of the experiment. "If I can't do this, if I can't take it, I don't eat chicken." I won't be the person who can do as I wish as long as I am not faced with the reality of it. I don't want to be a person who will happily wear my $5 Wall-mart t-shirt simply because I don't have to look in the face the starving 7-year-old who sewed it for me.
I had to watch, and realize what a sissy my ancestors would think I am.
I'm not about to go running around judging people on this, because our very way of living in our time and place has wide ramifications and negative impacts on incalculable people past, present and future, and it is frankly an impossible, crazy-making downer to live that way, and immensely hypocritical to look outside oneself on that. But just for me, I needed to know, I want to live consciously as best I can without being incapacitated and alienating everyone I know. If I find out that how I live is at another's expense, I don't want to hide from that.
Now, let's be practical here. That chicken was hurt and in pain and it wouldn't serve anyone to let it sit there. What, would I take it to the vet? Seriously! David and I both agreed that it was good that we had the one to do by itself before "harvest day," so we'd know what to expect and what we want to do differently. The chicken had to go down.
This time, I just skinned it and gutted it, rather than the scalding and the plucking and the singeing, so it was faster. Still, as flint-faced as I went into the thing, I found myself rushing to get the chicken into a familiar state--headless, footless, featherless, hollow and ready to roast--then it wouldn't be the chicken I carried out of the henhouse, it would be just like the pre-wrapped protien products at the store. Then I would feel better.
Then I went to the store later and saw the meat section, but in my head were visions of whole flocks and herds living mostly horrific lives, not enjoying the full amount of their creation, but masses being bred inhumanely to feed insatiable gluttony and waste. I realized then that I may be in for some changes.
The experiment is still inconclusive, but definitely is productive, regardless of the ambiguity. The fact is, at this point, it seems wasteful that I must kill something else to feed myself when I live in a time of plenty with so many other healthy options. And now at least I know I would not be able to stomach harvesting a mammal, even though I read all the chapters on it in my Country Living book and tried to mentally go through it to see if I could deal. That answers that question right there--no.
If it takes denial to do it--if I have to hide myself from the truth of it to make it comfortable to me, then, well--I shouldn't be doing it, right?
This Saturday we will go from 21 chickens to 11 chickens in The Great Chicken Massacre of 2008, so today I get to order more chickens from McMurray Hatchery so we will have more layers in the hen house in the winter. (There needs to be a lot so they can warm up together in the coop). So today I ordered a rainbow of new layers to spice up our current all-white hen menagerie:
(below "st run" means "straight run," which means just whatever comes out, non-sexed, usually half/half")
Top Left (and first chick on left, below) New Hampshire Reds - 5 st run
Middle Left - Buff Orpingtons (lots of thick feathers for winter!) 2 female, 5 st run
Bottom Left and middle chick: Black Minorca 2 female
Top Right: Buff Minorca 2 female
Middle Right: Barred Rocks 9 st run
Buff Orpingtons are good mothers, which means I won't have to buy or tend chicks anymore, unless I want a different variety. Many modern hens won't set. They'll lay eggs and wander off. In a commercial environment, setting tendencies are a bad thing--you don't want the hen to be upset when you take her eggs. You can sneak other, non-setting hens' eggs under a setting hen no problem, and she'll mother and raise the chicks as her own. Her chicks will make even better mothers than she was, because they are a generation raised by a mother, not just in a hatchery (or by me). Of course, the boys in the straight runs will be fryed up, except for whichever one I decide will be our rooster. I'm hoping to have a buff orpington rooster also, but I may change my mind.
So, I recently had cause to review my blog thoroughly (as aforementioned amusing security breaches gave me pause ---"What HAVE I been writing in my blog??") And I learned that I've been saying for months, "Soon the coop will be done." Well, guess what? The chickens moved in to their coop last week! It still needs the roofing material put on, but it will do for now.
BEFORE:
AFTER: YAY DAVID!
Fancy doors on outside to get eggs! Nesting boxes inside!
The fryers are too fat to get up on the perches. Look how fat they are!! They are ready for the freezer. They've had a good, chicken life, unlike the chickens we've had in our freezer up until now. Sure, I have to see them die, but I know where my food is coming from, and I know it has been treated well.
Poor Roxy the dog can sit and see the chickens in their run all day. She's drooling.
Our pullets should start laying in September. Our next batch won't start laying until Christmas, and that is only if we keep a light on out there on a timer to keep the sun "coming up" at 5 every morning as the days shorten.
Four generations! That lady with hardly any wrinkles in the middle? Yep, she's 88. Let me tell you about granny's skin care regimen--sheesh! I can't, it's a state secret anyway.
I look like my dad in this picture, which is very, very disturbing to me, but everyone else looked cute, so I'm swallowing my pride and putting it in.
The chickens are getting so big! Here's Lucy at sunset, following me around while I took some pics of the fatties. All the chickens are the same age, and some of the fryers are girls, so it is not a gender thing here, all about breeding. Fryer's on the left, laying hen on the right (and bottom). Although you can see the bright red comb on top of the fryer, so it is a boy. The girl fryers' combs are pale and smaller, and there are none that I've seen yet on on the layers.So here's the West garden all going green! And Lucy. The hose and my bag of compost make it unkempt, but hey, we're working here. Far left row from front to back, two acorn squash plants and four varieties of potato, beets in back. Middle row front to back: chard, carrots, onions, peas, tomatoes. Right row is all squash and beans with corn in the back.
This is my tallest corn. I just weeded it three days ago, and you can see it is already being overrun, so I'll be on that tomorrow. It's the Sabbath after all.
Here are the tomatoes on the West garden side, they are all of a sudden growing fast, they must like this warm weather we've finally been getting this week. Saturday was so productive, the coop is almost done, everything was weeded, I thinned the corn (but cheated and took all the extra plants out and replanted them somewhere else). There was organic pesticide sprayed on all the fruit trees, grapes and berries. I still need to thin the fruit on the fruit trees. I am stressing over my compost and going to get some professional advice on that at the garden center this week.
I had a 3.5 hour job interview on Friday for a full time job in marketing for a company in SLC. The position has been open for four months, and I sent them a resume on Monday, they called Tuesday, we did a phone interview Wednesday, I put my portfolio on the web for them Thursday, and then I did the crazy interview (one room, two interviewers, two breaks, three water bottles), and they said when they are ready to make an offer they start reference checks.
Well, they are having me schedule the reference checks for Monday and Tuesday.
It was so weird rehashing my whole life with them. It will also be weird talking to my old Sprint boss--immesshed, educational, intense and all-encompasing are the words that come to mind of my time being what he called his "work wife." A very different time, and that corporate life is such a very different world. But, it was one I was strangely happy and relaxed in on Friday.
David is getting a bit more work from the company he's been with for three years. Last month we thought they'd dried up completely, but now it looks like it will keep us going a big longer. We are still actively looking hard for a regular position for him also. Between the two of us, we will be able to execute a 7-year plan to put our lives back in a good place. I have talked to my Bishop and other trusted counselors and feel very relieved about this plan. I know that being here in Utah will make things easier for the kids.
Plus, this wonderful woman I was working with when I was deciding on doing a day care, she lives three houses down and runs the sweetest little 8-child, all-girl day care complete with French and ballet. I told her I likely need to be on her very long waiting list, and she said she will have an opening in late August and I'm officially on the top of the waiting list as far as she's concerned. That is a huge relief for my concerns about Lucy.
Well, it looks like after all the many, many doors we've pushed on and keep pushing on, one is opening. It is not the door I thought would be the right one for us, or that I thought I wanted to be the right one, but I can see that right now, it is a miracle that it seems to be a very timely solution for us.
Anyway, I'll let you know. Maybe my references will let the cat out of the bag about me and there won't be an offer after all.
But if so, then I'll be a working full time farmer with four kids. That will make for a lot of interesting blogging which I will never have time to do. However, I really like the company and know I'd be good at the job. Plus, paychecks are nice.
PS--if you click on the link about my dad above, you'll learn that he was in fact one of the inventors of the PC. Cool huh? But he's dead now. And he was nuts.
Please order a free seed catalog from rareseeds.com--wow! If this doesn't get you excited about growing a little food next year, nothing will, and it's not too early to start planning. You can buy a $4 packet of seeds, find a 5' sq patch of ground, and grow yourself your own 85-150lb watermelon! Or you can just have a fabulous container garden. It is just a fun, relaxing read, I'm already excited about next year, and learning about all sorts of things I can plant in fall!
I had a sick chicken last night and was sure she was going to die. She was totally lethargic, limp when I picked her up (they usually fuss something fierce) and rather compliant when I fed her water, milk and a bit of colloidal silver (seriously, get some of this for your emergency kit for water-purification and antibiotic purposes). She slept in a box in my bathroom and this morning was perky, mad when I tried to pick her up, and happy to be put back out with her other friends. She actually ran directly up to one of the roosters, and they nuzzled--weird, huh? Aw, chickens and their little feelings.
I read this interesting article today about a brain scientist who suffered a stroke and lived to tell about it. There is an 18-minute video of her presenting on her experience I found very fascinating. For a minute toward the end I thought it was getting a little froofy for my taste, but then I realized it wasn't really, and I should cut her some slack for being so, well, right-brained about it all. We live in a very left-brained world. I recommend you take a look.
I had some theological wonderings about the experience and wished I had the focus and time to write her a letter and talk about the idea of the doctrine of the restored gospel--that spiritual mastery over the physical self (and not just extinguishing or denying the physical self) is the most powerful form of existence. Rather than discounting the value of the left-brain, we can make that amazing analytical function serve the the creative, unifying focus of the right brain. So, I don't necessarily agree wholeheartedly with her conclusions, but found the whole discussion highly engaging.
And yes, I can very much see how silencing the left-brain "chatter" would bring nirvana. I find my brain-chatter highly annoying and counter productive.
Well, I've been in the dirt a lot. My blisters pop and reblister.
I learned the difference between a weed and a tiny potato plant coming up--the hard way of course. There are minute tops of chard and carrots peeking out. I'm hand-shoveling about 1500 sq. feet of new garden in the pasture, because the tractor guy is too busy and I need to break up the sod before we can till (and I have many tall tomato seedlings ready to go in now). I have three weeks before all the planting needs to be done, and I'm on a tight schedule to get soil shoveled, tilled, raked and ammended and seeds/plants planted.
I think I have the wrong ratios in my compost tumbler, so I'm adding more dirt and grass (plenty getting shoveled up in the pasture!) It is theoretically supposed to be done, but really it is just icky. I also found out the grass a friend lent me that I put in there had been chemically treated. Yuck. That could affect the bacteria doing their composting work. I may just start over. Mom gave me the give of 5 big bags of compost, so that is a comfort.
Chickens are so fun! At night I just go into the yard and clap my hands while yelling--"Go to bed! Go to bed!" and they all run in the shed. They have been getting out and going all over the yard--every hour or two we have had to go put them back in. This is due in part to our temporary (shoddy) fencing in the transition space, which I finally fixed up yesterday. But still, chickens everywhere.
Then I realized in the past three days the little ones had learned to "fly" over the fence (the littler the chicken, the higher they can fly--a word used loosely for a chicken). So, Sophie said she saw it this morning and I quit cursing my poor fence mending and went in there with a pair of kitchen shears and cut off half the wing feathers on the right side of every hen (just as the books said to--doesn't hurt, just like clipping your nails--see pictures), and I'll be darned if I didn't have 100% reduction in loose birds today. Everyone happy and confined. Control is such a great thing (although in general, a sense of control over one's life is such a delusion).
The chickens are also getting super fat, fast, especially the fryers--we've only had them a week and it is very noticable. We had lots of rain and everything's green and pretty. We had a fun Memorial day with the Mocks, the Mosses, and maw/paw-in-law over for a BBQ.
I keep committing to updating daily, even if it is short. But I also commit to restarting the diet each morning. They are going equally well. I'm not good at keeping commitments to myself.
I began touting the virtues of Animal Vegetable Miracle over on Mamamelodrama some time ago, but I want to push it one more time. This book really had a huge impact on my life, the choices I make, and attitudes toward family rearing and family feeding. It also leaves the reader with a great deal of how-to information, even though you thought you were just reading an interesting narrative. I took prodigious notes and am still referring to them. Make it your next read for sure!
Here is a rather generous excerpt I'd like to encourage you to read on Mother Earth News. I also highly recommend subscribing to the Mother Earth updates--they do such a great job on the healthy, family-focused, self-sufficiency thing, and do better than me on the "That's not food" front, too.
Go to the library or Amazon and get it for yourself. I did the library thing and I'm really wishing I had my own copy to refer to, though. You can read the reviews here:
The first thing you are supposed to do before you start to garden a space (unless you're planting in dirt you bought) is to have your soil tested. Soil testing kits can be bought at garden centers. In my typical rush-rush attitude, I blew this off--I didn't have time, I was going to compost and mulch and green-manure, and real-manure anyway, so why?
But I kept reading about how every time you harvest vegetables from a soil, you are also harvesting much of the soil's vitamins, and with the short-sighted chemical fertilizer method that doesn't leave any slow-releasing organic matter in the soil, it just slowly gets worse and worse. In the west garden, that was their primary garden spot for the residents here for years, and although there was a good leaf mulch and some grass tilled in to some of it, the far end just seemed a little dead.
Lots of earthworms mean healthy soil, and there are a lot less worms in that half of the garden. So I tested over there with a $5 kit (it was $12 for a set of 5, should have done that). My soil is very alkaline and okay on potassium and phosphorus but LOW on the big, important nitrogen.
It's hard to act on this when the plants are already in, but I'm going to take measures tomorrow, first to get iron sulfate to bring the Ph lower, then some organic fertilizer, since my compost isn't done yet (although I started a new pen bin this week in addition to the tumbler David built).
If you don't compost, you should! Even if you just a have a little container garden--and if you don't, you should! There are some areas of Canada where 90% of the residents compost. It makes for wonderful gardens and keeps valuable nutrients out of the landfill:
Another thing I've learned is that any kind of bean--bush, pole, green, kidney, pinto, whatever--actually gives back more to the soil than it takes, and it gives A LOT of nitrogen. So, I interplanted LOTS of fast-growing green beans today between slow-growing squash hills and one bean plant replaced a dead tomato in the middle of the tomato plants.
The soil in the pasture, which I may or may not have tilled tomorrow, is really good, virgin soil, black with lots of worms, and has had horses pastured there for many years prior, so that's just fertilizing at it's best.
Chicken question time:
Yes, it's going fine, they don't stress me out, but my kids' handling them does.
No, the coop isn't done yet, it's been raining. They live in the shed and come out into the yard by the shed during the day. I got home after dark from the temple last night and David didn't get my message about putting them back in the shed. They weren't eaten by racoons or a skunk, but they'd all put themselves to bed back in the shed in a big, warm pile of chicken on the floor.
Wintering chickens: Chickens keep themselves warm by huddling together, and the coop should be not too big so the heat they give off (a surprising amount, they all feel fevered) can be held in a small space--you need 3-5 sq. ft per chicken in the house (and 18" of perch space per bird). But, in areas with cold winters (read: not LA, but here), we'll need to insulate the coop before first frost with styrofoam or commercial insulation covered in a plywood inside.
Right now the design just has the studs with plywood over the outside, so the insulation will go between the studs with plywood inside. So Jen, yes, in NH, you need to insulate :) In winter, they won't be having yard time (unless there is an unusually warm day and there's no snow on the ground), so they eat inside and just are all "cooped up" in there for 3-4 months. If you put a light on a timer to turn on early, the hens will keep laying strong (laying is governed by day length), otherwise, in the winter they lay a lot less.
A hen has to be 20 weeks old to lay, so we're only at week 6. The roasters, I think I've mentioned, shouldn't live a day over 12 weeks. A good laying hen will lay 230-260 eggs a year in her first season (pullet season doesn't count as the first). But that number goes down quite a bit each year after that, so that's why you keep adding pullets each year and culling the poor layers for stew (apparently you have to stew chickens that weren't killed young because they are tough).
So, there's some homesteading talk for the day. Have a good Memorial Day weekend!
I decided to quit holding out garden box space for subsequent plantings because I'm going to dig some new beds in the other garden with or without the tractor. So this morning I filled it up with winter squash, including pumpkins and acorns, and summer squash, including little round zucchinis and yellow squash, crook and straight neck.
With intensive gardening you can interplant long-maturing plants like squash (one gourd I planted today is 140 days) with quick-growing things, like beans, which are especially good because they add nitrogen to the soil. So I put in furrows inbetween the wide spaces you need for squash hills to put beans which will come out well before the squash takes over the space.
Ben did a test day at Capital Hill Academy downtown today and it went well, we are going to do a two-week test in the fall to see how it goes, but it looks good. Sophie will go there after she does 1st grade in grandma's class at Orchard Elementary. It is a non-profit school that was started by a teacher who taught at Challenger and still teaches Latin at Rowland Hall (swank SLC private schools). She also homeschooled her own children.
It began as her helping out some families who had kids either in public school and not doing well or the parents we're happy, or homeschooling with the same problem, and she just sat down with them and did the hard-core basics with a classical bent (e.g., after phonics, grade school kids start Latin). Its K-8. It's grown to three classrooms (K, 1-3, 4-8), and the director teaches the older kids.
It is small, and serves a very clear niche, but my cousin, who sends her three youngest daughters there (recovering homeschooler) is thrilled with the results, because basically it is set up just like we all intended to homeschool in the first place. It only goes from 8-12, there is no wind-up or wind-down for the day or for the school year. It is intense math, intense reading/phonics/spelling and writing. They do cover science, history and geography but the intent is that the parent will do read-aloud in the afternoon on these subjects as well. There is prayer and the pledge--no messing around, old school. They train the kids treat each other very well, which is very big for me.
I know not to get to excited about anything, but it looks like exactly what I was hoping for, and I have my cousin's testimonial, and we have much in common when it comes to strong educational opinions.
So, yes, the chickens came today. We're still working on the coop ("we" of course is David), so for a week or two they are behind the shed during the day, and in the shed during the night. I'll leave off talking and show you some of the pictures I've been promising, in a very random order.
Here are chickens behind a makeshift chicken wire fence--lilac tree in the background, Ben's chicken toy he built today on the left.
My sweet mom came over tonight, brought dinner, bathed kids, cleaned my kitchen and bathroom, then mopped the floor. It felt so good to be mothered! Love you, mom!
Here are some tomato plants my Aunt brought me and I had to get them in the ground before they withered. They look pathetic, and I hope this becomes a "before" picture. The strange wet marks are from a soaker hose system I'm trying out with stuff I've found around the property.
Chickens! The big ones are fryers, the little ones are layers. They are about 5 weeks old. Fryers are harvested between 8-12 weeks. Layers lay best in their first 3 years, and new pullets (<1yr> hens) should be added in each year and non-producing hens culled.
These birds have been living mainly in a garage for their whole lives, and never have been out of their little kiddie pool. They were in heaven, eating bugs, bugs, bugs as fast as they could get them down (with some greens, too, they eat greens!) They ignored the feed grain I gave them for quite some time to scratch in the dirt and peck at the tasty, gooey bugs.
Blurry closeup of little layers, fat fryer on right.
Better closeup, fat fryer below.
Ben's chicken play toy. Boys sure love some spare time with a hammer, nails and spare wood.
This is why we decided we'd rebuild the coop from scratch. When we took it down to the corner frame, it blew over. Sophie there also.
The dog we share with our neighbors so I can justify not getting one. Roxy. She will live right next to the hens, and will probably be sad (or get lucky and grab one).
Our new neighbors behind the hen house. Our landlords own this landlocked property, and our neighbors pasture the sheep there to keep the thistles down.
Cute Sophie and Lucy on the corral fence.
Loving life on the farm! I have SUCH a farmer tan.
(below "st run" means "straight run," which means just whatever comes out, non-sexed, usually half/half")
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So here's the West garden all going green! And Lucy. The hose and my bag of compost make it unkempt, but hey, we're working here. Far left row from front to back, two acorn squash plants and four varieties of potato, beets in back. Middle row front to back: chard, carrots, onions, peas, tomatoes. Right row is all squash and beans with corn in the back.
Here are the tomatoes on the West garden side, they are all of a sudden growing fast, they must like this warm weather we've finally been getting this week.
West garden is done!!
