Feeling Corny

Several of our chickens have discovered our corn. Lucky chickens. Not only do they get to freely wander in the rain and sunshine, they can gorge themselves on things they like -- for a while. Their counterparts in CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations), the homes of most of the animals Americans eat, exist on the floor of a warehouse filled with up to 40,000 other chickens. They might finally get to see daylight on their final day, when being trucked to the slaughterhouse, but then who needs a range to tour if you can't walk because you've been bred for your breasts, not your legs? Those breasts put the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue to shame. In 1920, it took the birds 16 weeks to reach 2.2 pounds. Now, they can reach 5 pounds after only 7 weeks.

Any egg eaters thinking about congratulating themselves for not eating meat might want to reconsider. Egg-laying chickens find their homes in 12" by 18" battery cages, which they share with up to 5 other layers, stacked in a large house that may hold more than 80,000 birds. What a delight!

No windows? Well, there might be windows on the neighbors' houses, but they stay closed most of the time. All those chickens stink.

Chickens are enough for today, except did you know that in 2002, two Iowa counties had more than 800,000 pigs? In February 2012, the governor of Montana was trying to entice Chinese investors to open a pig plant in Shelby that would house over 800,000 hogs. A feeding operation with 800,000 pigs would generate over 1.6 million TONS of waste per year? That's 1 1/2 times the annual sanitary waste of the City of Philadelphia. Now that's a factory, not a farm.

How do we feed the world without doing things this way? Joel Salatin tells how, in his fascinating book, The Sheer Ecstacy of Being a Lunatic Farmer. 

"Isn't he the guy who says true American heroes don't go overseas to empire or nation build; they stay home, farm, and fuss with government workers who enforce regulations inspired and lobbied by the military-industrial complex?" says Virginia.

Maybe so.

Animals in Trouble

He's pretty hard to see in this picture, but the Imposter, our number two rooster, is sitting in this tree. Double-click on it and look for dark feathers right in the middle.

"Now why is he up there?" says Virginia.

Because he's a smart rooster.  Of the 9 that arrived a month or two ago after a friend called to ask if we wanted some roosters, he's the one that slipped away before meeting his fate in the killing cone.  And now, he knows that to escape the weasel or whatever it is that killed 4 hens a few nights ago, the higher the better.

Okay, here's a better picture, but you needed to see the whole tree first.

Now that we're down to 3 hens, while we wait for our 13 month-old chicks to grow up, Lex and Rosie (our Boxers) are missing their daily egg treat.  Karen would hand each of them an egg, which they would crack open, lick from the shell, then for a snack dessert, eat the shell.  Come and admire their coats, will you?

To brag a little on our trained hens, they lay their eggs here.

See the hinge at the bottom of the photo?  The door you can't see, down below in the picture, is only open when we retrieve the eggs (or take pictures).  Karen cut these doors inside the barn, so we can reach into a coop she built outside on the front of the barn. 

Yesterday, Karen asked me to take some pictures of Darla, just in case, I think.

That is, just in case Darla failed to survive surgery this morning.  Her vet removed an abscess and lymph node nestled between her carotid artery and jugular vein.  She seems a bit tired, but gobbled down a bottle of milk in no time.

Imposter

A month ago, a friend asked if we could use some roosters, less than a year old.  Sure, we said, contemplating the usual destination of roosters.  When they arrived, nine of them, Karen wasn't feeling up to par, so we sentenced them to the garden shed, formerly a chicken coop.  After a few days, with no change in disposition, Karen advertised them on Craigslist.

The response was quick and enthusiastic.  Several asked if we would prepare the roosters for pick-up.  Right, we'll go to that trouble and post on Craigslist because we enjoy doing the deed for the fun of it.  Then Karen found a taker.  On his way, he informed her that he lived in a small apartment.  Could he kill them on our property?  Good grief.  I was in town at the time.  When I returned home, the man was holding a dead rooster. Karen, knife in hand, was waiting for the next to expire.  So why did we advertise on Craigslist?

Off in the distance, a rooster ran.  "He escaped," Karen said.  Lucky guy.  After the bloodletting, he gradually wandered back to our brood and food.

For most of the day, he treads carefully along the periphery of our flock.  Rooster number one keeps a sharp lookout.  The Imposter has become the only named chicken on our farm, except for Soossey, the Sussex.  He looks something like rooster number one, but he's smaller, he has a double comb, and he's a serf.  Or is he something else?  Check out his shadow in the photo.  Maybe he's a cat in disguise.  He nibbles after the others are satisfied.

At dusk, squawking to himself like me in the garden, he sets off across the lawn to a white pine tree, pecking all the way.  At the tree, he circles, catches a little more dessert, then flies to the lowest branch.  Fiddle, faddle, he jumps up a limb, another, and another.  The branch wobbles as in a stiff breeze and lets loose a final cock-a-doodle-doo.  A few more cackles and he settles down for the night.

"He's waiting," says Virginia, "like Prince Charles and his sons."

Maybe.

Crow and Crew

Illness has reminded me to slow down and pick the broccoli, spinach and asparagus, and to head to the greenhouse for rainforest temperatures and humidity.  Finding me there in long sleeves, Karen nodded, "yes, you must still have the fever." 

I spent the afternoon with Wendell Berry after finishing one of my least favorite chores of the year, income taxes.  Thank you, Liz, for Jayber Crow, and the salty drops sliding down my cheek on the final page.  Only two, mind you, "I'm a man, after all," which reminds me of the recent silliness about pink toenails on the 5-year-old boy in a J. Crew's ad.  I think "talking heads" is a misnomer; "talking pie-holes" would be more accurate, mouths moving without any clear connection to their brains.

"We have a black one," says Karen from the basement, "that makes ten chicks so far."  This incubator batch is proving much more successful than the first one.  I've become so accustomed to hearing chirping from the basement that yesterday when the first one popped out of its shell -- and I mean "popped," no dawdling, that one -- I kept working on our taxes without mentioning it.  I'd forgotten she'd moved the other batch outdoors to what used to be our duck house.

"You guys are quite the farmers," says Virginia.

Hardly.  To call us farmers is inconsiderate and demeaning to real farmers, who are truly Renaissance people. I balk at buying a tractor for two reasons: (1) I don't need one; and (2) I wouldn't know how to repair it, unlike a real farmer.