Wed, Apr 16, 2008 · Filed under Animals, Spring, Summer
That was fun! Picked up the CHICKENS, wood shavings, and starter feed mix at the feed store. On this beautiful, sunny day, the airy, skylighted boxes looked like a deluxe place to be for a traveling chicken. Back on the farm, wood shavings were spread and waterers filled, and then the two-week old chicks were let loose. I lifted around 20 out by hand, a start on getting to know the guys. There are 50 in all (though I forgot to do the official count while unpacking), 40 White Rock Cornish X and 10 Frey’s Special Dual Purpose cockerels, all healthy, energetic, pretty much same-sized and apparently happy, running around like maniacs, jamming themselves into intense corner huddles, and PECKING AWAY at the feed and everything else in sight…
Yes, right from the airhole view, they’re definitely entertainment! I could watch ‘em for hours (and, sorta, did…could’ve been tilling…). Chickens… » The chickens unpacked...
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Sat, Sep 29, 2007 · Filed under Autumn, Market & Stand
Early Saturday from May through October, just before 7 a.m., I’m heading down the road with Bob, making the quick 12 mile (19 km) hop to the farmers’ market in the center of town. Up at 5:30 after only three or four hours sleep, I’m generally a little groggy, and the drive is a pleasantly dreamy trip through peaceful farm country. Once in a while, though, a sharper awareness breaks through. We pass a farm that’d been turned into a seniors retirement home as a way to survive. We travel through a rapidly increasing number of adjoining farms, thousands of acres of them, bought out in the last couple of years by the Mennonite community—the continued farming is great, the seemingly monolithic takeover somewhat unsettling because it’s to me an unknown. The last farm on the way in to town is owned by the municipality and waiting for demolition. You can see the silos and buildings outlined in the fog ahead, right beside the lights of the new, low profile, high tech superprison that’s probably a bigger full-time employer and overall economic force than all of the farms on the drive put together. In the wrong frame of mind, I can really feel the decline-of-farming statistics I read about, and everything seems totally out of balance and more than a little surreal… Luckily, the farmers’ market is always fun!
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