The Deed is Done - Part Two

The roast chicken was WONDERFUL!! I thought I might not be in the right frame of mind to eat chicken for a while but I was and it was so good. It did not bother me one bit to know that just 48 hours before, that chicken had been prancing around in my pasture. I knew his purpose from the beginning and, oh, what a gift he provided for me. I think overall it was a win/win situation. I picture him in chicken heaven right now eating all he wants and with no concern of getting too fat for his little legs.

Let me pick up where I left off yesterday.

Station Seven -

Bagging and Refrigeration. After the chickens were rinsed (did I mention all of the rinsing that went on in each of the other stages? Well, a LOT of rinsing was going on. We run a clean operation.) and drained of excess water, two people handled the bagging. Since these chickens were so big, it took one person to hold the bag and the other to slide the bird in. The bags were twist tied then immediately put either into a cooler of ice or on a rack in the refrigerator. Even though our chickens were thoroughly cooled at the time of bagging, we still wanted to make sure they had adequate circulation all around them as they remained cold for the next 24 hours.

That was it. All of the official stations.

Next step for the birds was to be held in ice or in refrigeration for a full 24 hours before putting them in the freezer. If you don't wait, then the birds may be tough and we certainly didn't want tough birds after all of that work. Freezer space was at a premium around here but between Kristin taking some home to her freezer and alot of freezer management going on, we were able to secure a frozen home for all 69 birds.

23 of these birds are Hadley's and he decided to turn his into a community service project. He has a keen interest in business and investing, so he decided to donate all of his profits to a microfinance lending organization called Kiva Microfunds. You can find our more about Kiva at www.kiva.org. He has not sent out his letter yet, but I think he will find homes for his frozen friends fairly easily because we have a great group of friends that have followed our Chicken Project adventure and they have been enthusiastically supportive throughout the whole thing. It was a good experience for him to experience firsthand the hard work that many of these very small third world business owners go through when they are borrowing what seem like very small amounts of money to start a business - like raising chickens, for example.

I mentioned that it had rained about midday during our chicken processing. Wow, it poured! We haven't had any rain in about 2 months and we have cracks in the ground 2 inches wide. So we desperately needed the rain. I am learning that farmers who need rain do NOT complain at its timing when the sky finally does open up and let it flow. I was in that camp this weekend. Though we got over 3 1/2 inches the day of processing, I was elated to see it rain. Since we had a great group of people that were helping us process, they didn't complain either. It is truly amazing what a difference in attitude can make in a less than optimal situation.

I need to run now. We are leaving tomorrow for a while. Kent's parents are celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary with a Carribean cruise for the whole family. We will be gone a week. Quite a change from feeding chickens and moving chicken tractors.

The Chicken Project is officially over, but I'll continue to blog. We've had exciting news this past week that promises to be the topic of my next series - The Cattle Project. Stay tuned.

Until then, eat clean, be kind, and happiness will come on its own.

Mary Ann

The Deed is Done - Part One

Where to start?

It has been a frenzy of activity around here for several days. On Thursday night, I felt a mixture of Christmas Day anticipation and the dread one feels the day before a major surgery. Pit in stomach, lump in throat, sadness, gratitude, excitement.

We had set aside both Friday and Saturday to process the chickens. Kent's parents came down from Oklahoma and Kent's sister Kristin and her three sons Jared, Joel and Jesse along with their lovely friend Marcia bravely and kindly offered to help. We rented a Featherman plucker to speed the job along. It took 2 hours to find the farm of the gentleman we were renting the plucker from. He lives about 15 minutes away. Farm roads don't always make sense, especially when you cross county lines. That is another story that we won't go into.

The plan was to start processing by 7:00 am on Friday so we would have a few hours of cooler weather before the sun started beating down. While we didn't exactly start at 7:00, we weren't terribly far off from that. Okay, maybe it was an hour later. It takes a while to set things up and while I thought we'd have most everything set up the night before, that 2 hour trek to find Mr. Featherman put a kink in my plans. Even though we started later, we were fortunate because it was overcast most of the day. Except when the sky opened up and dumped buckets of rain on us. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

We all had stations, more or less, but we had a fluidity of work that allowed us to move from place to place as someone needed more help or perhaps a break from a messy job.

Station One -

The first task was to get the chickens from the chicken tractor out in the field to the "kill site" (which was the side of our tractor barn). Two or three of the boys would take the chicken brooder cage (aka rabbit cage) to one of the chicken tractors and load it it up with a half dozen chickens. That lasted about two trips. Then they decided it was easier just to load two or three chickens in deep buckets and transport them to the chicken brooder cage which became the holding area. We had taken food out of the tractors the night before so the chicken's craws wouldn't be full of food when we processed them. We did end up giving the chickens in the larger tractor some food that morning, though, assuming we would not get to them all. We were wrong.

Station Two -

The Messy Area. This was my least favorite spot. I didn't visit it often. This was where the chickens experienced the "one bad day" that my friend Ruddy talked about. We had borrowed metal killing cones to use and had also bought two traffic cones to cut down for the same purpose. These killing cones are nailed to a board or a tree (in our case, a long freestanding board on the back side of the tractor barn), the chicken is turned upside down (which calms him), his head is pulled through the opening, and a quick diagonal slash is made on the side of his throat. Sounds very nice and efficient. Except for one thing. Our chickens were too big. They didn't fit in the cones. No way were they going in those cones. After one bird experienced an unhappy moment or two and flapped himself out of the cone, we went to plan B. Good thing we watch "Poultry Processing with Russ" on YouTube so we had a plan B. Hadley ran back to the garage and got some nylon roping and they made 4 slip knots and attached those to the board. We ditched the killing cones. It went surprisingly well, and the designated chicken processor simply turned the bird upside down, slipped the chicken's feet into the knot, and made the cut, swiftly and without fanfare. We had a bucket filled with wood chips under each killing station to catch the blood while the chickens hung and "bled out." I know it sounds gross, but this is so much more humane that what happens in commercial, confinement chicken operations. Trust me.

Station Three -

Scalder/Dunker. The chicken has to be dipped in hot water to help release the feathers before it goes to the plucking station. We set up two propane tanks with 20 gallon pots of water on the stands. Once the chicken was completely bled out, we simply took him by the feet and dunked him into the hot water several times (probably not quite a minute) to loosen the feathers. We found after trial and error (and some torn chicken skins) that 150 degrees was the optimal temperature to dunk them in. You can test its readiness for the plucker by pulling at the feathers around the leg. If they come off easily, the bird is ready for the next station.

Station Four-

Feather plucking. We used a Featherman Plucker machine. It looks a bit like the tub of a washing machine with rubber fingers all on the inside of it. First, we took the bird to the plucker and laying it across the edge, cut off the head and then cut off the feet at the joints. We discarded the head but I saved the chicken feet. I know, I know, everyone gave me a hard time about my chicken feet, but I understand they make outstanding broth because they are so gelatinous and full of flavor. So that's another project to come. I froze them and will make the broth and can it later. You may think I'm crazy but I think my grandmother would be quite pleased with me if she were still alive =) You can the girl out of Arkansas, but you can't take Arkansas out of the girl.

Once you've prepped the bird, you place them one or two at a time into the plucker, flip the switch and the drum rotates and the rubber fingers amazingly begin to pluck. It has a switch to turn water on too so that the feathers drain on down through the tub and out an opening in the side. It is one nifty piece of equipment. It saved us hours and hours of work. I loved this thing.

Station Five -

Evisceration. This part of the processing reminded me of the game of Operation we had growing up. Wow. What an anatomy lesson that was! I never did get very good at it. Kristin and Marcia get the prize for stamina and perseverance in the gutting department. Jared was amazing too and could eviscerate faster than anyone. I think if Petroleum Engineering ends up boring him, he could easily get a job as an eviscerater with Tysons, ha. Gutting chickens require patience and really, just a lot of practice. You don't want to cut into the craw (which I did) because that is where any food is stored. And you definitely don't want to cut into the intestine. I think the reason for that is probably self-explanatory. Luckily we had careful cutters and our chickens fared well in this phase of the processing. We had a bit of trouble with a few chickens that were overscalded when the temperature in the scalder had reached 200 degrees. The skin had gotten too hot and the Featherman plucker ripped it off. Not a lot the evisceraters could do about that. So we have some "partially skinned" chickens. That's okay. We learned a lot from our mistakes this time.

Station Six -

Cooling. Kent's mom took this job and did a great job. We dubbed her "Quality Control." It's important that the chickens are cooled down quickly. First she put them in a tub of iced, salted water briefly to help draw out any possible remaining blood that might still be on the chicken. Next, she moved the bird to a tub of very icey water where it remained for about an hour. We wanted to cool them down thoroughly before bagging and icing them down.

We went through a ton of ice. Okay, not a ton, but I believe the final count was over 450 lbs of ice. With 69 chickens to process, we obviously didn't have adequate refrigerator space for them all so we begged and borrowed several heavy duty ice chests. When the chickens were finished in their ice water station, we checked for any stray pin feathers (quality control was strict about this but I'm sure some got away from us), cut the necks off (in the beginning, we at the evisceration table didn't think of cutting off the necks), and bagged them in heavy duty poultry bags. Except these handy dandy, heavy duty, "made for poultry processing" bags were not as handy dandy as I had thought they would be. Many of them leaked at the seams. Great. But we didn't find that out until some leaked all over my refrigerator. Another rant that I won't go into. We ended up double bagging many of them. I wrote a polite letter to the poultry place I ordered them from and requested a refund. We'll see what response I get.

We packed these bagged chickens in ice in the ice chests. We had emptied out the refrigerator in the garage (a requirement for rural living) and were able to get about 15 in there. What we hadn't anticipated was the size of these guys. We planned for 3-5 lb. birds and ended up with 5-7 lb. birds. I guess they were happy so they ate a lot.

I am pulling my first roasted chicken out the oven now, so I will get back to finish this post a bit later. I roasted it in a dutch oven in a 250 degree oven for about an hour and 45 min,. finishing up with the lid off at 450 to brown the top. We'll see how it tastes...

Raindrops on...fruit trees?

Harrison will die to know that I'm admitting this, but my random songs have given way to making up my own little ditties.

One morning last week, I was walking up the drive to open the gate when the song from Sound of Music, My Favorite Things, blew into my mind. I started singing, but as I started singing, I thought I actually felt a raindrop. Could it be? I was ecstatic! We need rain so badly. Huge cracks zigzag across the fields, some of them almost 2 inches wide. I was coming upon the peaches I had planted when the song naturally came to my lips...

"Raindrops on fruit trees and feathers on chickens..."

Pleased with myself, I continued,

"Cast iron skillets, a good read of Dickens...

I was on a roll now.

"Cows that are grazing on pastures out back.

No virus worries on my brand new Mac."

Okay, that wasn't exactly farm-related, but I have been so pleased with my new computer and so elated that I have not been having to share it with two teenage boys. It is off limits.

I searched for a refrain as I opened the gate and started up the road with Sadie to the GMO corn fields just past our pastures. It's a special treat for her when we actually get off our property and go for a longer promenade.

"When the chick dies, when the bee flies

Right into my face... "

This has happened on more than one occasion. I don't especially like bees but I can appreciate them. I'm learning to like them since Kent has started his own hives...

The last line came easily, though I admit it is a bit hokey...

"I simply remember I'm in paradise,

I'm out of the old rat race!!!"

I made the mistake of committing the song to memory and sharing it with the boys at breakfast. They were not amused. Kent was more forgiving when I sang it to him. That's one of the many things I like about him.

Several days later, I was in the garden, humming my song but feeling quite unsatisfied with the fact that I only had one verse. I needed another one before I sang the refrain about the chick dying and the bee flying. I was watering the potatoes (still working on that irrigation system) and I started to sing softly to myself (Hadley was nearby)...

"Potatoes are growing, the green beans are showing,

Corn is all planted in rows slightly slanted.

Tomatoes are bearing their first signs of fruit,

Fig cuttings planted beginning to root."

There! That was it. All I needed to complete my song. I could now happily go on to the refrain.

"When the chick dies, when the bee flies,

right into my face.

I simply remember I'm in paradise.

I'm out of the old, rat race!!!"

Honestly, I like Houston. I really do. I like the people and I like that I can get in my car and be walking into Target in less than 5 minutes. But I love the farm. I love looking out of any window and seeing cows instead of concrete. I love seeing the stars (I saw a shooting star last night! How wonderful was that?), I love having things to do outside every day, even when the weather is not the greatest. I love my huge clothesline that is protected by the upper porch ceiling so I can hang out clothes in most kinds of weather. I love the cardinals and the blue birds and, yes, I even love the two swallows that have persisted in making a nest over my front door (despite the rubber snake stapled to the wall) and who, along with their 4 little babies, have made a horrible mess on my porch floor.

It is a busy life here. I imagine people who know me have a vision of me lying on the hammock or sipping lemonade on the front porch for long stretches of time. I have done that, but it has been a special treat. I need to do more of it. Mostly I am working. I still have laundry to do and meals to cook, bathrooms to clean and homeschooling to oversee. But I also have fire ants to eradicate, irrigation to wrestle with, new trees to water, pastures to mow, gardens to weed (and to continue planting), chickens to move, water and feed, and low tree limbs to lop off. And more. Much more.

So, it's not that it's an easy life as much as it is a simple life. It is straight forward. I don't get in the car everyday and spend hours driving here and there. In the past 9 weeks, I've had to fill up my gas tank twice and that was because I had to take Harrison to Houston for an emergency trip to the orthodontist. I filled up 1/2 a tank going in to Houston and another half a tank coming back. So, one tank of gas in 9 weeks.

I'm not looking at the farm, or this chicken project, through rose colored glasses. It has been hard. I've been up at all hours of the night hunting coyotes or turning on a space heater on for baby chicks. I've worked on irrigation until my whole body hurt, I've gone to bed every single night covered to one degree or another with chigger bites or fire ant bites. I haven't been itch free in the past 6 weeks. But it has been with extreme gratefulness that I've taken the bad with the good, the hard with the easy, and the harsh realities of nature with its intrinsic beauty and never ceasing miracles.

I feel a bit like the woman that my aunt told me about when she was in line at the airport, waiting to board a plane for Hawaii. The woman in line ahead of her turned around and breathlessly asked (in a decidedly Southern drawl) "Where are YOU going?" To which my aunt smilingly replied, "Hawaii."

"So am I!" she shouted. "Pinch me, I'm going to Hawaii!!"

"Pinch me!" I want to shout. "I'm at the farm."

Day 51 - Texas heat and fat chickens

The chickens are getting huge. Lovely fat chickens. At least most of them. There are a few smaller birds but overall they are living up to the promise of the Cornish Cross. Fat with plenty of breast meat.

Every morning I walk up the long dirt drive to unlock the gate with Sadie (and sometimes William) at my heels. I pass by the chicken tractors and take a quick peek to see if they still have food. Usually they don't so I backtrack, fill the feeders partway and promise them I'll be back after breakfast and after the dew dries to move them to fresh grass and replenish their feeders. I'm such a sap, I know, because every morning I greet them with "good morning sweet babies!" and I always leave them with "I love you babies." I do this all, of course, knowing that the day is soon approaching that I will be faced with turning my loves into dinner. And yet that's one of the things I love about them. I love that I can give them a good life, that I can take care of them and that, in turn, they will take care of me. I confess that knowing their lifespan is quite time limited anyway absolves some of my guilt as I endeavor to give them a great life while they're here knowing that won't be for much longer anymore.

It has been so uncomfortably hot this past week (it registered 94 degrees in the shade on my upper porch) and that gentleman's warning to Kent about the Salatin style chicken tractors cooking his chickens in the summer became a reality for us on Wed. It was oppressively hot and I had propped open the corner of the tractor to encourage air flow, but apparently I didn't prop it enough. When I went out for what was probably my 4th check of the day, I found one big chicken that looked curiously lifeless. Well, bingo, he was. I was so disappointed. My first instinct was "poor bird!" but that was quickly followed with the realization that I just lost one of my largest chickens. A flickering of the possibility of using him to practice my processing skills flitted out of the realm of possibility as quickly as it flitted in. He was a bit stiff. No, I couldn't go there. I thanked him for his time of service and Hadley took him to the back pasture and offered him to the buzzards. The life cycle continues in its own odd and seemingly harsh way.

Yesterday we propped up the two corners of the tractor that are covered in sheet metal. We have been laying large pieces of cardboard, saved from "put it together yourself" IKEA furniture, on top of the sheet metal part of the roof too, in hopes of deflecting some of the heat. This morning we threw all caution to the wind and put a huge prop in the corner. Those chickens went wild! It was a sort of holiday for them and within a few minutes they went from cranky, lazy chickens to boisterous, exuberant ones. Freedom! About half of them made a break for it and waddled out from underneath the tractor. They scattered about the pasture but curiously they never wandered off more than a few yards. After a bit, they seemed to tire of their freedom and most of them made their way back into the tractor. A half a dozen others are still lounging about - half in and half out - of one side of the tractor. We reasoned that since they're too fat to fly that they aren't going anywhere. The tractor is in full sight so I can monitor what they're doing from where I'm sitting in the front room of the house. We will assume, then, they are giving us their parole and trust they won't go trotting over to the next farm.

In the meantime, we are already planning modifications for the next chicken tractor. That must mean we think we're going to do this again sometime. While I don't know that I'd want to raise chickens for a living (Hadley made it quite clear that he will do whatever he needs to do to assure that he will NOT be raising chickens for a living), I do rejoice in the idea that I might one day be raising my own meat on a more regular basis. Oh happy day!

Coyote Central

For a while it felt like Coyote Central around here. Right before we put the chickens on pasture we could hear the coyotes every single night, multiple times a night, howling and heckling and daring us to put our chickens outside at night. They seemed to be sitting right outside my window and all I could think about were my poor, defenseless chickens sitting like bait in their chicken tractors.

My father-in-law came to the rescue with a .22 rifle. He came from Oklahoma for a visit and brought his father's rifle and gave it to Hadley to reckon with the coyotes with. One problem solved. Sort of.

We still couldn't SEE anything. You don't want to shoot in the dark without being very clear what you're shooting at so I ordered a heavy duty 1 million candle power rechargeable light from Amazon. The first night we had the chickens outside was nerve wracking. The coyotes were carrying on and we had the gun but the spotlight hadn't arrived yet. Hadley slept on the sofa and Sadie was barking what seemed like every hour. My light was still a day away so, the next morning I drove into town (25 min. away so I rarely drive into town) and 5 hours later (it always takes longer than you plan...) I came home with a 3 million candlepower rechargeable spotlight, among other things. We were elated. The first couple of nights were exciting. The coyotes would bark and howl in the middle of the night, I'd fly out of bed, Hadley would grab the gun and we'd go outside, I being the designated light holder and Hadley the coyote hunter.

Nothing.

This went on for several nights until, finally, the howling died off. We didn't hear coyotes for days and I foolishly assumed that they went on to bigger and better poultry operations far, far away. I was wrong. They came back. The only problem now was that the weather was warmer, our windows were open, and when Sadie started barking, the coyotes stopped howling. Can we say that Hadley was not pleased with Sadie? I thought it was the ideal set up. Coyotes howl, dog barks, coyotes leave, everyone goes back to bed and no one has to throw on boots and go traipsing through the pitch black night in knee high rubber boots and a nightgown. Hadley, however, was by this time bent on "getting a coyote". I pointed out that the whole goal was to prevent the coyotes from getting the chickens but that didn't go over well with Hadley. This had gotten personal. He wanted a coyote.

Well fortunately for the chickens and the coyotes, the coyotes have continued to howl but have kept their distance. Unfortunately for Hadley, he has not "gotten" a coyote. He is outside now as I type, obsessively stalking the coyotes, probably staking out a spot on the other side of the dried up pond. I imagine he'll be back in within the half hour. That's okay. It's good for a boy to sit outside in the dark waiting for a coyote to make his day. It's an adventure with a good measure of hope mixed in.

We all need that now and then, don't you think?

The Gift of a Letter

Ever since the boys and I have been here, Kent has written us letters. Real live, stamped, addressed, hold-in-your-hand letters. I've come to look forward to walking Sadie up to the gate at night and taking that extra jaunt down the road to the mailbox to see if there's a letter. Usually there is.

I didn't expect any letters this week. Kent has been at a Windsor chair making class all week at Homestead Heritage (near Waco) and he is busy from morning to sometimes way after dinner with his chair project. It's a neat class. They basically start with a log and, using only hand tools, he should have a Windsor chair by the end of the week. It's a Monday to Saturday class and they are going fast to complete their chairs in the 6 days.

Kent is a sweet, thoughtful kind of man. Still, I was surprised to go to the mailbox on Tuesday and find a letter waiting for us. Even better, he has been sending us news clippings this week from the papers he reads at breakfast. He sent clippings to Harrison about the volcano in Iceland. He sent clippings to Hadley about a music group he likes. Today we got two letters at once. In one was a clipping about a medieval castle that is being built in my birth state of Arkansas (one of only 2 in the world) and another about a sailing ship, the Plastiki, (think Kon Tiki) built from recycled plastic.

I love this man.

Letters are a gift. Yes, email is good and phone calls are great and we still do all of that. But I can't SAVE a phone call, and emails...well, think about it. Emails are a convenience but they are still emails. Letters are personal. They are handwritten. And even when they aren't, they are still signed with a pen and an embellishment of endearment.

It makes me think. How many letters have I written this year? More importantly, it makes me ponder...how many letters might I write in the coming months? Who might I gift with this simple pleasure of a letter? And it makes me grateful for a man who knows the pleasures that the gift of a letter can bring.

Chickens on the Lamb

It was hot today. Really hot. The chickens were roasting in the tractors so we propped up the corners on two ends to let the air circulate. In a few hours we went to check on them and several had their heads poking out of the bottom, gasping for breath. A little while later we checked and several chickens were sitting outside the tractor. Wow! How did they do that? By evening time we had a good dozen chickens hanging outside the tractor, scratching in the fresh grass and grateful for the extra water that Hadley had set out for them outside the tractor. I went out to water my garden beds (no, the irrigation is still not in) and one little guy followed me. Every time I walked him back over to his tractor, he followed me back to my watering. I finally had to pick him up and carry him back. He got the message. He didn't follow me again.

When dinner time came, the ones on the outside kept wistfully eyeing the ones inside the tractor who were happily eating from the feeders. I was able to get about half of them back in, but little did I know that a fresh batch was sneaking out the propped open end as fast as I put their brothers in through the top on the other side. I finally decided they could wait and I went in and finished fixing dinner. We didn't put the rest of them back safely in their home until after 8:00. Once the sun starting going down, they were no longer panting and were obviously happy to be hanging out. What a sweet picture they made -chickens sitting by the tractors, chickens venturing out a few feet from the tractor, one chicken playing King of the Mountain on the compost pile. Sadie did great with them too. I call her "Chicken Dog". She is so good with them. She keeps good boundaries and just sits and watches them. She doesn't bother them and they don't bother her. Of course, she has a selfish motive. She loves to be by the tractors because she has a penchant for chicken poop. Gross, I know. Still, I'd rather her eat that than the chickens.

A Sad Blessing

Miss Chicken died this afternoon. I went out to check on her about 4:45, as Hadley readied the gun to help her out of her suffering. Luckily, that wasn't necessary. She was a real fighter. I'm going to miss that chicken.

Singing on the farm

Though I am loathe to sing in public, I belt it out at the farm. I seem to have different songs that come to the surface, depending on the activity at hand. Early on, I found myself singing different songs as I fed the chicks and added more clean bedding to their brooders. Nothing was ever premeditated - whatever song popped out of my mouth was the song of the day. Literally. Do you know how hard it is to get a song out of your mind when you are consciously trying to rid yourself of it?

The chicks seemed to really like Dan Folgelberg and Seals and Crofts (I am showing my age, aren't I?) So for several days I would walk into the workroom to do my morning chores and the words to the song would slip out of my mouth before I knew what I was doing. "Longer than there've been fishes in the ocean, higher than any bird ever flew..." They especially seemed to like that one until I ran it into the ground. Then one morning, out of the blue, came Seals and Crofts' Summer Breeze. "Summer breeze, makes me feel fine....something on the jasmine in my mind..." I never could remember the words to that song. So it was always..."something on the jasmine in my mind." Something what??

Okay, I cheated. I finally looked it up. You already knew this but now I know. It's "blowing through the jasmine in my mind." What is jasmine doing in my mind?

Probably my all-time, number one, "run it into the ground" favorite is the mower song. I cannot seem to get through a mowing session without the old stand by, Green Acres.

"Green acres is the place to be, farm living is the life for me.

Land spreading out so far and wide, keep Manhattan just give me that countryside."

Then I forget a little so I hum under my breath until the beat allows me to blurt out:

"da, da, da, da, da - fresh air!

da, da, da, da, da - Times Square!

You are my wife! Good-bye city life!

Green acres, we are here!!!"

This, of course, is followed by about 30 repetitions of the same said song until I finally start inserting my own words for another 15 repetitions or so. Finally I either finish mowing and the completion of my task miraculously marks the ending of my singing, or I start consciously thinking of other things to think about or sing about.

How crazy is all of this? It's a wonderful crazy. It's a puttering kind of non-serious, "let your hair down" crazy that I love. It's a silly childish kind of crazy that is completely allowed on 30 acres with no one around to tell you what a bad singer you are or how crazy you are being (except your kids, of course, but they don't count. Your family always knows how goofy you can be; that's one of the joys of close relationships. You are a goober and they love you anyway.)

Even when I try, I can't NOT sing. I love mowing and moving chickens and singing dumb songs all the while. Life here, though not perfect, is pure joy. What's not to sing about?

Day 36 - Day 36?!!

Wow, can it really be day 36? That means these chickens are definitely no longer chicks. They are 37 days old and growing big and fat. Each morning I go out to walk Sadie up the road to unlock the gate (not that I expect anyone to come through it really) and I go back down the road towards the house and check the chickens. They are usually a bit low on food so I fill up one of their food troughs (we have two in each chicken tractor), I check the water, then go in for breakfast and wait for the dew to dry. We don't tend to move them until about 9:30. By then the grass is dry and we can move them to a new green spot. It takes both boys and me to move the larger tractor - gosh is it heavy! Kent put removal wooden wheels on and that helps unless we are having to move it sideways and not forward or back.

Once they're on fresh grass, the chickens go wild. I would too. If you could see the mess they make of the spot they've been in for the last 24 hours, you'd want to move too. That mess they've made is such a great thing though! They are part of the soil restoration plan for the pastures. Of course it will be wonderful when we have a few head of cattle to precede the chickens and then follow the chickens with sheep, but those animals will have to wait their turn. All in due time.

I have a wonderful photo of a white, plump chicken but my new computer and I are not seeing eye to eye. So I promise I will post it later, as soon as I get this glitch figured out. In the meantime, just imagine a fat, happy chicken peering through the wire of the chicken tractor.

Sick chicken update:

I am beginning to wonder if my chicken with the bum legs is the one I sat the waterer on a few weeks back. I suppose it's possible. None of the other chickens have suffered from this malady. That poor chick is still alive, but not filling out like the others and is still confined to the hospital pen. I have finally concluded that she (yes, I've determined she is a she) is having a really tough go of things and that the only humane thing to do is to let her go. Only problem is that I can't do it. Hadley has graciously offered to take care of that for me since Kent won't be here to do that for a couple of more days. I think I'll accept his offer.

Chicken Tractors

We moved the chicks on pasture on Saturday so they've been in their new homes for 5 full days now. The photos show the two types of chicken tractors we built. The top left one is a "Salatin style" tractor named after Joel Salatin of Polyface farms. It is sturdy and solid (and heavy). It is harder to move than the second type and we've since learned that chickens in Texas don't do well in these type of tractors in the heat of the summer. Apparently, the tractors are so well insulated that the chickens cook. That's not good.

The second type of tractor is one that Hadley designed. Since he is raising 24 chickens himself (we're sharing the mortality), he decided to house his in a separate pen. His tractor is lightweight, easy to move and after adding the tarp it provides some protection from the wind. We can get some pretty strong winds out here so we are still waiting to see how it fares when the big winds hit. He stakes them down with soil filled plastic bags.

We had one more unexplainable death last Tuesday and right now I have one chicken in the hospital. That guy (or is it a girl?) has been there since Saturday. He barely moves. I gave him beef liver (for vitamin B-12) on Sunday after self-diagnosing Mareck's disease. The chicken's feet have curled up and he sits on his haunches, almost completely immobile. On the 3rd day I really thought he was not going to make it and I did more research and gave him the homeopathic remedy Causticum 30C in his water. Yesterday he seemed to rally, though he didn't eat much. I said a prayer for the little guy last night - you know, "take him if he's going to suffer or make him stronger." I fully expected a dead chicken this morning and, wouldn't you know, he is now quite alert and eating and drinking more but still can't move.

I was thinking about this whole death thing today when I was (what else?) mowing. It seems ironic, I guess, that I would go to these pains to save this chicken, knowing that I am going to slaughter him in another month. Keeping him as a pet isn't an option even if I wanted to because he is a Cornish Cross. These are fast growing chickens that will not live long after that 8 week period because they are bred to grow so fast that they will die sooner than later if they aren't "processed." Cornish Cross are the industry standard and yet one that many pasture based chicken farms still use because of their nice breast size. It's a catch-22. People expect plump, full-breasted chickens and yet to get that, genetics are compromised and the chickens are not as sturdy and resilient. My chicken's leg paralysis is actually very common in factory raised chickens. It is not unusual for the bulk of the chickens in factory farms to not even be able to move at all because they are too heavy to carry themselves. Pasturing Cornish Cross's helps to mitigate that problem but these birds are still genetically prone to leg weakness.

So, while I will be happy to enjoy a plump chicken when I cook it, I have decided to try a different breed next time. I am looking into different heritage breeds or the "newer" hybrid Ranger Chickens.

Even if this was a breed of chicken that could live longer, I would still be planning to slaughter him. Growing your own food forces you to be very honest about the way you eat. I eat meat so it is not fair for me to pretend when I buy a neatly wrapped or flash frozen chicken from the store that those chickens didn't die. I know the living conditions of my chickens and I know the living conditions of factory raised chickens. I'll take my "happy to be on pasture" chickens any day. As my friend Ruddy said, "they have a great life and then they have one bad day."

Day 19 Bed Wetting

My chicks have reverted from teenage to toddler.

The problem? Wet beds.

In all fairness, the problem lies not with the chicks but with the waterers. I cannot for the life of me figure out why gallons of water keep leaking all over the floor of the brooder. I've had many theories and once I think I've figured it out for sure, then another avenue of leaking presents itself. It's crazy making to feel like you've done everything right: clean the waterers thoroughly, fill them up so they are nice and heavy and will have less of a tendency to tip over, position them just in the right place so the chickens are less prone to bump into them when they're acting out - and yet you go out to a steamy bed of wet bedding. Gee. It's the perfect metaphor for how I feel about life sometimes. You do everything right, try to "be good," stay organized, be prepared and not get in the way of others and "bam!" bad things still happen. That, I guess, is when you keep going anyway. It's a faith thing for sure. And in my case, a growing love of rural living. I love the process, the idea that I will one day be eating what I've taken so many pains to raise. The whole notion of a start to finish food supply pulls me in. I told Kent the other day that when I saw tiny peaches on the peach trees, I was almost surprised. I always seem to be taken aback when something actually works... So why bother? It's the hope and the dreams that something wonderful will come from a tiny spark of an idea. It's like going to a fabric store and coming home with a whole bag of fabric. That fabric might sit on the shelf from here to eternity, but a big part of that process is sometimes just the idea that, yes, you CAN imagine something going from nothing to something.The whole idea that I might possibly be able to grow more vegetables than my city tomatoes, basil and lettuce...that I could actually start with a baby chick and later prepare Chicken Parmesan with my own chickens...wow! Willa Cather expressed this kind of contentment perfectly in "O Pioneers!" when she wrote: "A pioneer should have imagination, should be able to enjoy the idea of things more than the things themselves."

So, last Friday Harrison and I spent a good couple of hours pulling out most of the bedding and replacing it with dry leaves and more wood shavings. It was a big job. I won't go into the exasperating detail, just trust me. It was a process.

Just when I thought I had it figured out, I took one last look at my little feathered friends last night around 11 pm and - you guessed it - one gallon waterer was completely empty. Wet bedding. Tired farmer. Throw in a lost cat for good measure. An hour later, I was lying in bed, praying for no leaking, praying that the coyotes wouldn't find one big, black cat too tasty and I finally fell asleep. This morning I woke up to good news. William the cat was at the back door and the waterers had apparently not leaked. I said a prayer of thanks and did the only prudent thing I could think of. I removed one of the waterers and decided to just stick with one.

No use tempting fate.

Day 15 - Wildflowers and Laying Hens

The wildflowers are beginning to pop up along the roadside and oh, what beautiful scenery for my walk up to the gate each morning with Sadie. William, our cat usually joins us in the evening, but this morning he followed us as well. It's a funny thing to go for a walk with your dog and a fat, black cat tagging along.

The chicks are growing. Long white feathers are replacing the fuzzy yellow fur. It's starting to get hot in the workroom in the daytime so the heatlamps are off and the garage doors are raised ever so slightly to let some fresh air in. I have to keep the cats in the house when I do this and it's a real pain for now, but when the chickens are safely in their chicken tractors on the pasture, they'll have a "real" top and not two old window screens as their ceiling. For now, though, I don't trust William one bit with that flimsy top to their brooder cage.

Today is April Fool's Day and I played a very mean trick on Kent. He knows I have been wanting laying hens so I could have fresh eggs. So I emailed him and told him that the feed store had received baby chicks and ducks and turkeys and rabbits this morning and that I went ahead and paid for 25 laying chicks and would plan to pick them up on Saturday after I came home and cobbled together a hen house in the old tractor barn. Of course this makes no sense since I don't have a way to take care of them once I'm back in Houston and I don't know the first thing about raising laying hens but that sweet man backed me up 100%. His email back said something like "Hey, that's great honey. You know we tend to analyze things too much. Go for it!" I just love this guy. How did I get so lucky??

Day 14 - Teenage chickens

Well I was admonished by Harrison that I was too erratic in my blog writing. "It's like a journal. You're suppose to write in it everyday" he urged, rolling his eyes in not a little disgust.
As I see it, there are two problems with that. One is that I am quite sure that my life with chickens really isn't THAT interesting to anyone but me. Second is that I let the technological side of things slow me down. So, those two disclaimers made, I will write often, not worrying if I'm boring anyone and I will dispense with the notion that I have to include a photo every single time I post. I believe I can always edit my post so it may be that I simply add a photo when I can psyche myself up to deal with that.

Today's topic : Teenage chickens

I knew that my sweet little chicks had crossed the line this morning when I went in to feed them and found they had eaten almost everything in their feeders. They are pigs now. Starving, maniacal pigs. When I bent down to pick up feeder number one, I had to practically dig it out of the bedding. It was buried in a sea of wood chips. Yes, they are little pigs. Messy little pig chicks that have a total disregard for keeping their brooder in any order at all. They poop in the feeders, in the water, and one poor guy who had obviously been in the wrong place at the wrong time had poop on his wing. The straw that broke the mama's back was that when I lovingly laid down the bountiful feeder buffet and one chicken with an attitude went for my arm instead of the feeder. Bad chick. Bad, bad chick. He had to go to the end of the line...

I have to confess to a bit of chick mother guilt. It's only fair that I own up. Last night when I was giving the little fellas some new water, I apparently sat one of the gallon waterers right smack down on a chick and I didn't even realize it. I kept hearing this incessant "peep, peep, peep" and for the life of me I couldn't figure out where the sound was coming from. That's a downfall of imperfect hearing. A few minutes later Harrison came in and immediately said "The water, the water! You sat the water on a chick!" Yep. Guilty. I picked it up and that poor little guy came running out. I don't know how I didn't kill him. I guess the wood chip bedding was soft enough to give a little. I don't know if we're out of the woods on him or not though. Today I thought I saw a chick that was walking too close to the ground. Ooh. I hate it when I do dumb mothering stuff.

Day 10 - Moving Day

Moving Day Friday -

Yesterday was a big day for the chicks. They moved into new quarters! They still fit fine in the two converted rabbit cages they were living in, but because they were drinking and eating so much more we decided to go ahead and move them to a larger brooder. We needed to bring out the big guns and put the super duper gallon waterers in place and it was a bit crowded in the smaller brooders. So we took the two existing brooders and connected them with plywood, creating an extended "yard" for them to move about more freely in.


This is what it looked like on one end before we removed the cardboard blocking the entry way.
We then removed the middle wire grid, set out two feeders and two gallon waterers in the middle yard, and let the chickens loose. As you can see from the first picture, they were a bit hesitant to venture out, but once they did they each discovered that there were 36 more birds coming out of another cage on the opposite end. No one seemed to like that too much at first and there was a macho display of chest bumping and pecking. After a while, though, they settled down and got down to the business of eating, drinking and going to the bathroom.

The only one who isn't happy with the new arrangement is Sadie. She had enjoyed going in with me to feed them but now with the wooden sides up , she can't see in to the cages and it is driving her crazy. It was a tough day. Here she is, falling asleep in front of one of the cages while we were in the midst of renovation. It gets fairly warm in the brooder area ...

Weather Matters

It is 11 am and Hadley has been outside digging like crazy, trying to beat the rain. He has the thankless (but financially profitable - for him) task of double digging my garden beds so I can get my spring garden planted. If it does rain then he will be out of digging work for the next couple of days because it will be too wet to move the soil.

I am praying for rain so I don't have to drag a zillion hoses out to the garden to water the potatoes I planted a couple of days ago. Our irrigation system is still in the "work in progress" stage, so rain would save me a lot of time and would be better for the garden too. On the other hand, rain will prevent me from working on my garden pathways or planting my figs or weeding the blackberry beds. It's always a catch-22. Luckily, the farm life always provides plenty of tasks that need to be done, inside and out, so I am finding that I'm never at a loss for figuring out what to do. Never.

It's funny how tuned in I am to the weather when I am at the farm. Yesterday I mowed like a mad woman, just in anticipation of the rain. We have a small pasture near the pond that has grown out of control. It is mostly weeds now, since it is where the soil from the pond excavation was dumped and then leveled out. I was bent on mowing it because the coyotes have been hiding in the tall weeds at night, howling and calling out to my little chicks each evening around 11 pm. The chickens will be in a chicken tractor when they are put on pasture, but those coyotes won't let that stop them. I thought if I could clean up their cover, then maybe they'd move on. It's wishful thinking, I know, but mowing is always my therapeutic answer to any problem at the farm. When the grass is high, I mow. When it's about to rain, I mow. When I need time alone, I mow.

So I get it now. Weather matters. It affects all of us, for sure, but for farmers it is the barometer of what tasks lies ahead each day. It determines if you lug hoses or turn on your irrigation system. It grows grass which feeds animals. It grows crops and fruit trees. It fill cisterns. It creates mud. It creates more laundry. It pushes you to the workshop to sharpen tools or to the garage to attempt to finally get things in order. Rain gets the housecleaning done, the planting rotations planned and emails checked.

Yes, weather definitely matters. Out here, I am learning to be grateful for all of it.

The chicken project - Day 4

Well I let three days slip by without writing. I can only blame it on being up with babies all night.

Okay, well not all night. I set my alarm each night between 3:00 and 4:00 to check on the chicks. Kent came in on Friday night and he did night duty on early Saturday morning. We shared the duty Sunday morning.

I am sad to report that we have had 3 chick casualties but all seems to have settled down now and we are at a happy nursery count of 72. I can't account for the deaths so I will simply chalk it up to the "weak chicks" explanation given to me by all of the literature I poured over when I couldn't figure out what I'd done wrong.

We have labeled, rightly or not, one brooder cage Type A and the other Type B. The first night I went to check on them, the chicks in the Type B cage were, for the most part, sleeping sweetly except for a chick here and there that was pecking at the feeder or drinking at the water station. The Type A cage was a different matter. Except for a few sleepy chicks here and there, the rest of the brood was alive and partying. Running here and there, tripping over sleeping bodies, gorging on food...the contrast between the two brooders was remarkable! While I make no endorsement of the party lifestyle, I must confess that the three deaths came not from party central, but from the Type B brood. Ah! I am happy to report that by today the personality of the two cages seems to have evened out and they each pretty much mirror the other. Unfortunately, as with people, labels can stick. So until they are mixed up when they are put out on pasture in the chicken tractors in another 2 1/2 weeks, I'm afraid the labels will likely stay put.

The rain yesterday brought colder temperatures but between the heat lamps and the space heater that Kent set up in the workroom, the chicks seem to be staying comfortable. We finally got to graduate from adding a layer of paper towels down on the floor 2 - 3 times a day to cover the vast amounts of poop that these chicks excrete to simply scattering a thin layer of wood shavings down. It is decidedly easier to sprinkle wood shavings than it is to coax lively chicks out of the way to spread out a paper towel. The paper towels provided stability for the chicks' legs and prevented them from eating wood shavings prematurely, before their bodies could handle an occasional shaving mixed in their feed.

The highlight of my weekend was NOT the chicks, however. The highlight was Kent being with us. He brought "provisions" of fruit and (store bought) frozen chicken breasts along with two dozen gorgeous red roses.

Right now, I love chicken farming.

The Chicken Project - Day 1

I am so elated. Thrilled beyond measure.

My babies arrived this morning. 75 chirping, hungry, sweet little balls of fluff.

I got a call at 7:11 from Karen at the post office. I was still in bed, asleep, after having spent a very quiet night at the farm all by myself. The boys were gone, Kent was gone, and it was just the cat, the dog and the rabbit for company. It's hard to go to bed when there is no noise you are wanting to retreat from.

The minute I hung up, I flew out of bed, got dressed and went downstairs to make a pot of tea, feed the animals and check on my brooder. All was going well until I realized that one of my brand new heat lamps wasn't working. I called Kent and left a message, called my friend to let her know that I was coming to pick up Hadley and Harrison, and made a quick breakfast. I threw dry cereal and bananas in a bag for the boys, grabbed my broken heat lamp, and tossed everything in the car.

By 9:15, I had driven to Fayetteville to pick up the boys, stopped at Lindemann's to get a new heat lamp bulb, and set off for the New Ulm post office.

When we walked into this tiny post office we immediately heard a cacophony of chirping. Karen the postmistress brought out a very small box, maybe 24" X 18". That was it. One very small box packed full of tiny sweet babies. Um, I mean chickens. Meat chickens. The kind you eat.

These chickens are shipped the day they are born so my chicks were, at most, 24 hours old.

We got them home, set up the new warmer lights, filled the water and feeders and took the chicks out of the box one by one, first dipping their beaks in water to let them know it was there. They immediately started drinking and eating and moving about. Like children, each one of these chicks was different. One with very large legs, some quiet, some vocal, some shy, others quite assertive.

I am sticking with my vow. I am not naming a one of them. Not one.