What A Busy April

It is too true.  While many people are talking about the slower pace of life during this time of quarantine, I am busier than I’ve ever been.

I stepped up my game in the garden and pushed the limits of my budget for food forest trees, shrubs, and plants.  My supply of seeds was eaten by rodents, so I needed to replenish (my own fault), and fortunately I got my seeds and plants ordered in the nick of time before things got too difficult.

One day after my seed order was filled, the company I ordered from was slammed with orders and was asking people to be patient while they tried to keep their employees safe during operations.  Another company I had an order with, stopped taking orders just days after I got my order in, so they could catch up.  I watched anxiously while their stock dwindled hoping my order would be filled (they’ve got the best yellow crookneck seeds).  And the nursery I ordered trees and bushes from were unable to fill all of my order.

Everyone was scrambling and I felt lucky to have ridden the crest of the wave.  I’ve got all my seeds, and have been planting for two months.  In fact, we started eating from the garden just a couple of days ago.

But it’s Spring and my laying flock has really stepped up production.  I’m getting between 2 and 3 dozen eggs per day.  That’s a bit of a challenge because I only have one egg customer.  Meanwhile, I’ve set up an outdoor, self service egg selling station so people can help themselves and leave their money in a coffee can bank.  But no takers.  Even with eggs so hard to find, people walk past my sign and look and then keep walking.

Fortunately for me I was able to get eggs to several family members who were missing them at the supermarket.  I unloaded 33 dozen - two weeks worth of eggs.  It’s a relief that they won’t be going to waste.  And the thing I’m finding out is that people are no longer taking things like eggs for granted anymore.

I remember a friend of mine saying that people wanted to trade eggs for massage.  As a licensed massage therapist and energy worker, she was talking about how eggs weren’t valuable enough to trade for massage, and I realized how things have changed so much in our world.  There was a time when the local midwife or herbalist or healer/doctor would take payment in food.  Food was prized and valued, because people had common knowledge about what went into the growing of food, the raising of food, the time it took and the labor involved.  Now people buy cheap food at a corporate supermarket and they are so far removed from that process that they have no real appreciation for real food.  They have no experience with what it really takes to produce food.

Anyway, my flock’s eggs were truly appreciated when they made the rounds among my family members.  My mom told me she felt rich!  And talked about all the things she would do with eggs.  Just last week she was hoarding the few eggs she had left, trying to make them last.

Another thing the layers are producing right now are chicks.  I’ve had four hens go broody this Spring.  I’m glad they are going in a cycle and not all at once.  It started with one, then a week later, another one, then a week after her, another one, and so on.  I have one mama with her chicks in the yard, and another one in her house hatching out chicks these last few days, and another one due to start hatching out in less than a week.  I’m running out of places to put everyone.  Tomorrow I will be building another brooder and putting up fencing for this next batch due.  It’s tonnes of work and while not all at once, it’s coming pretty steadily in waves.

Meanwhile I’ve been raising meat birds too.  So I was able to get my family set up with birds in their freezers for the next few weeks.  Meanwhile the next batch of chicks arrived by mail last week.  They will grow up and feed my family just when they’re needed.  It’s intense though.  The harvesting must be done daily within a two to three week period when they are at a certain age and weight.  Since it’s just me, I’ve about reached the limit of what I can provide.  I’ve committed to providing birds for four families, which includes us.  But it is worth it to me.  I’m driven to do this.  It’s the most impactful way I can connect with my family during this time of quarantine.  It makes me feel less isolated, to make sure that as long as I am producing good quality food, I can share it with them.

It’s a bit like a family cooperative.  In that they pay for the grain “their birds” eat and for the cost of each chick, and I take care of the birds, raise them, harvest them, and process them.

As for my immediate family right here, I dream of producing the majority of our food on this land.  And this time of quarantine is really putting that dream to the test.  I’m finding it difficult to get certain processed things, like flour and baking soda.  It makes me want to be more creative about how I make bread.  Without flour, I have to find new ways to make bread from materials that I can grow on my place.  Like grinding corn to make tortillas, or using potatoes, or legumes, or starchy vegetables to create a kind of bread.  Maybe not a sandwich loaf, maybe not traditional pasta, maybe not wheat cakes, but something bread like that comes from my garden.

So living in this way, fills up a lot of each day.  And meanwhile, I’m still binding books by hand for our family owned business, Pegana Press.

Spring Chick Update

On Sunday I moved 35 Cornish Cross chicks outdoors.  I had to do some repair work on their little house, because the nesting box portion of their house in falling apart.  I got the house on Amazon, one of the last purchases I ever made from them.  I had a gift card that more than half covered this house, but it’s the true definition of flimsy.  Never the less, it does the job, as long as I stay on top of repairs.  And it’s perfect for this batch while they’re still small and getting used to being outside.  They will soon outgrow it.  And as I’ve learned through experience, chickens get attached to their homes and don’t like to be moved.  But for now this will do quite nicely.

The 15 Buff Orpington chicks and 1 (smaller than the rest) Cornish X were moved into the newly vacated brooder and are happy with their new space, it being double what they were in.  The single Cornish X is starting to grow at last and getting feathers and will soon join the rest outside.  The young Buff Orpington chicks will continue in the brooder for another two to four weeks depending on how fast they grow and weather conditions.  Then they’ll go outside too, in the Birch Grove Cottage I built for the October Buff Orpington chicks, which are now 5 months old and are in the process of being integrated into the existing layer flock (Buff Orpington chicks from last June).

Everything cycles.

Spring Chick Progress Report

At three weeks this is the difference between a Cornish Cross chick and a Buff Orpington chick.  The Cornish X are bred for fast growth.  They are a broad breasted meat bird.  The Buff Orpington are heritage birds.  They are good egg layers, good moms (they go broody), and are not bad meat birds, (though I have no personal experience with a Buff Orpington on my table).

I took this photo to illustrate the difference in size since both these birds are three weeks old.

Which is why I had to separate them 10 days after their arrival.

54 chicks started out in this 100 gallon stock tank.

 















I lost 4 of them over the first three days, which left 50 birds.  Or so I thought.  (It turns out when I went to separate them out, that I had an extra bird-hooray!)

By the time they were 2 weeks old, the Cornish X were so much bigger than the Buff Orpington chicks that they seemed packed in like sardines

I had just been waiting until they feathered out a bit to move the Cornish X out to the lean-to on the south side of my house where I keep the brooders.  And after two weeks their wings had feathered out enough for me to feel comfortable about moving them out of the house.

That left a lot more space in the tank for the remaining 15 Buff Orpington chicks plus one unidentified bird (it looks like a Cornish X, but is small like the Buff Orps.  And since they hadn’t feathered out much at all, they are still indoors.

And here they are now at three weeks old.

The red heat lamps make it hard to see them in photographs, but you can see they have a lot more room to move about.

And this is the Cornish X in their brooder at two weeks old.

And here they are a three weeks old for comparison.

You can really see the growth in just one week, the box looks much fuller than in the first photo.  And since there are 35 birds in this 4’ x 4’ brooder, I imagine that they will be ready to move again in a week.

In good weather, the ideal scenario would be to move them outside at 4 weeks, but during this time of the year, with the colder temps, that will depend on them getting more fully feathered out.  They are nearly there, so I may get them outside in a week.

At 5 weeks, I expect to be able to move the Buff Orpington chicks into the brooder, but again-that depends on how far along their feathers are.  Still, I do have three heat lamps and it stays quite toasty in the brooder when I use all three.

After 5 weeks, I will be more than ready to have my dining room back.  Those little guys generate so much dust.  But I must admit, they also generate pure joy in the house.

Momentary Magic: Spring Chicks

Spring chicks just arrived this morning in the mail.  I have them under a red bulb heat lamp.

There was a time when my flock self multiplied.  Chicks were hatched on this place naturally and grew up being cared for by a mother hen.

Then one day nature in the form of coyote stole in and changed all that in one sad summer afternoon. The saddest part of all?  Coyote wasn’t even hungry.

What a waste.  All those lifeless bodies.  All the joy drained out of the hen yard.

Now the joy has returned in the form of Spring Chicks.

They don’t have mothers to raise them or to keep them warm or to teach them how to scratch the soil.  Even so, they figure it out.

It is miraculous that 54 tiny chicks can be packed carefully into a cardboard box, and shipped across the country.  The miracle is seeing the soft look on the faces around me when I pick them up at the post office.  The woman at the counter handing them over with blessings and well wishes.  The people in line murmuring that it was worth the wait just to see a box of chicks arrive in tact, their robust chirping filling the post office lobby.  A sign they are healthy and alive.

I drive them home with the heater cranked up into the 80s in my car, and I coo reassuring words to them all the way.  And when I unpack them-another miracle.  They are warm as toast.  The box is warm.  Tucked under their little straw mat, there are two heating packs, still warm after 40 hours of travel.

I find myself warming with gratitude.  It has not always gone this well.  The last batch of chicks arrived chilled through.  I lost about 17% of those chicks.  It took them a long time to even begin to thrive after being so compromised.

But these chicks stayed warm.  They not only survived, but they are vigorous.  Eating and drinking right away.  They haven’t passed out on their little faces with their little wings spread out, like I have seen others do in the past as they try to recover from the stress of being shipped in the mail.

The loud complaining peeping from being packed together in a box for a day and a half, has been replaced with the soft conversational chirps as they chat among themselves.

Right now I can hold 3 in the palm of my hand and all 54 chicks fit comfortably in their 100 gallon stock tank.  They will soon outgrow it, but for now it is the coziest place in the house.  Just the right size for newly hatched chicks.

Welcome home, dear ones.

Thank you for being a part of my life, and allowing me to be a part of yours.

Thank you for the miraculous joy you bring with you.