Country Living Challenges: Keeping Chickens (Alive)

Posted on May 29, 2014 by Keely

Our beautiful and obnoxious rooster, Cappy, woke us this morning with his raspy sunrise song. On a typical morning, there’d have been nothing unusual about this, but we were surprised to hear his voice. When we went outside, there he was, drenched with rain and looking irate on the front steps.

Usually, roosters don’t hang out on the front steps.

It all started on Saturday. Last week, we lost several of our hennies. Evert day or two, one or more would go missing. On Saturday night, I didn’t check the birds, but at about midnight I heard clucking and squawking outside my bedroom window. I charged around the house like a lunatic in a state of undress, searching for a flashlight. I couldn’t find one, so I ran outside and switched on the truck’s headlights. Nothing. I ran back in and found the flashlight, put on some more clothes and went out to stalk the night predators. I treed a raccoon on power pole in the yard, but couldn’t find a chicken. After looking, I went to the coop and counted. Everyone was home except Cappy. I figured he was lost.

I didn’t see a trace of Cappy in the morning which I didn’t find strange. Usually, when a chicken goes missing, it’s just gone without a trace except maybe for a few feathers strewn around the site of the kill. I went on with my life and started checking on the birds before bed, finding Windsor in a tree, Sunday night, and lifting her out to stick her in the henhouse where she belongs. It wasn’t until Monday that I saw Cappy again, scratching in the chicken yard like he’d never been gone. It was like seeing a ghost. Sean and I had to lift him and WIndsor out of the trees that night.

Tuesday, we came home a little after dark to find Windsor’s feathers all over the chicken yard, one of the babies torn to bits in the henhouse, and Cappy missing. Sean grabbed the .22 and managed a shot at the raccoon that was still gnawing on Windsor at the back of the chicken yard. He missed the shot and the chicken-thief got away. It’s devastating each time we lose a bird. We try to take care of them, but there’s not much we can do when a coon has learned to go into the henhouse in daylight. Later that night, after we cleaned up the mess and went to bed, we heard clucking and squawking out the window, a repeat of Saturday. We ran out and found a bedraggled looking Cappy, tailfeatherless, sitting on the ground by the back door. We tucked him in and went back to bed.

He was gone last night when we get home, and every day we assume he’s not coming back, but so far he’s proven resilient. He looks ridiculous, strutting around and naked in patches where critters have been at him, and this morning he was soaked to the skin to boot. I wanted to laugh: “The emperor has no clothes!”

Cappy may not be pretty, but he’s tough, which I guess is what counts if you’re a country chicken.

We’re on the lookout for new hens. It’s down to Cappy, Freckles, and the two remaining chicks, who I believe are boys. Remember when we were getting a half-dozen eggs a day? Those days are long gone, no thanks to Chunky and Co.

kind of a sonnet to a pig

Posted on May 1, 2014 by Keely

Hey, this What Would Jeeves Do stuff really works! My kids were killin’ it today. Here’s what I did:

I rearranged seating so that my kids are now in groups of three instead of five. This cut down enormously on unwanted chatter.
I gave a really fun bellringer: I drew a piecewise graph with axes distance and time and the title “Sally’s Adventure” and directed the students to write the story of the graph (including speeds) within the three minutes after the bell. My favorite had Sally running from the Mafia. My second favorite had her walking her pet fish to the lake.
I explained my expectations for them clearly and told them what they could expect from me.
I skipped the whole-class lesson and worked with each group of three as they needed me. Their retention was waaay up, and so was my energy. I think I spent 8.5 hours at a sprint today, less the forty-five minutes of C-time. We’ll chalk the energy up to endorphins. My 3rd period commented on it, saying they’re going to see to it that the 9th graders act right from now on, since I’m so much nicer when they’ve been good.
I had another mathematically literate adult in the classroom! Our math consultant is hanging with me one day a week now because Algebra is the only tested subject left. YESSSS!
I came up with a badass new way of teaching the logic version of finding slope between two points.This is just a modified slope-formula, but I think it really brings home the meaning of slope and the thinking behind the formula. Instead of relying on identifying x one and x two, my kids are thinking about the change in the x coordinate from one point to the other. Sean was extremely unimpressed by my innovation, but it has allowed me to bypass big sources of confusion in my class, which is critical right now.

Freckles’ family is doing well. They’re all snuggling in a nest-box at night. The babies have no problem getting up to it, which I assume means they’re flying significant distances already. I love this zero-maintenance chicken-motherhood business. No stinky brooder to clean out, just little cuties to love on.

Here’s my Pinkie sonnet from yesterday:

a chill cracked the air
and a gunpowder smell
that caught in my hair
as the massive beast fell
no silence, no still
for the great fallen hog
just the knife and the kill
and the gathering fog
in the trust in the eyes
never trembles or shakes
as the animal dies
and the heart in me breaks
though the blood’s on my hands and not on my breast
my compassion is stuck like a blade in my chest

Farming and teaching both use and abuse my compassion. I wonder whether compassion eventually runs dry or is strengthened by strain. I’m sure it withers if it is never exercised.

Hitch

Posted on April 21, 2014 by Keely

Hitch up yer dungarees! This weekend kicked some derriere and I’ve got some thoughts I’ve been thinking on and I’m ready to spill because I think I done thunk ’em out fully.

1) Hitchin’ up the team:

Meet Jesse and Chelsea. They’re living and working on Jesse’s family’s farm in Ohio.

We played board games and had real conversations and amazing food all weekend. Every time we end a visit with them, I’m left with a hole in my heart as the car rolls down the gravel road. We always talk about ways to bring our lives closer together, and someday we will. These folks are our family.

The farm just acquired two gorgeous Haflinger draft ponies, Molly and Polly, at an auction last weekend. They’re a trained team, and are to be used, among other things, for logging and to haul wagons and farm implements. It felt so good to smell like horse again. Jesse and Chelsea taught us the basics and let us each try driving the team. The girls know their stuff and they’re eager to work. They’re really magnificent, purposeful, powerful animals. My superior position felt fragile: It was a privilege to direct their strength, but I never felt like I had any ability to command them without their consent.

We were lucky enough to be present on the farm for Open Farm Day. I hung out with Molly and Polly and got them ready for the driving demonstration, but not before checking out the chinampa and the hugelkultur. I helped Chelsea put up signs, which meant I got something of a grand tour.

It's a living fence! You can see the willows starting to leaf out. It'll provide fencing for livestock, withies for basketry, food for critters, and wildlife habitat.

It’s a living fence! You can see the willows starting to leaf out. It’ll provide fencing for livestock, withes for basketry, food for critters, and wildlife habitat.

They raise a lot of sheep, and they’re ridiculously cute when they’re small.

This eggmobile is moved from place to place to give the chickens fresh grass. As it moves, it leaves a well-fertilized swath in its wake. There are also chicken tractors for the broilers, which are moved on the daily to keep the meat birds delicious.

In addition to all the cool stuff mentioned above, the farm practices management intensive grazing with their sheep and cows, presents farm-to-table dinners, and is hosting a permaculture course. I’m selling them short by trying to list it all. They rock.

Jesse told me a great story about a hawk that used to prey on the chickens that would graze in the pasture. When they started grazing the pigs and chickens together, the hawk killed a chicken, only to have his dinner stolen by the pigs! The hawk spent the rest of the summer sitting mournfully on his perch, gazing down at the fearless fowl below, knowing they were unattainable thanks to the pigs.

The kind of farming that our friends practice is something that I aspire to emulate in every aspect of my life. They solve problems creatively and seek to build streamlined, efficient systems that are sustainable and productive. The farm is beautiful and it does important work. It allows the people who live and work there and the patrons who support the business to live ethically. It educates people about the significance of food in the economy and the environment.

On Saturday night, we had a picnic dinner and a fire in a hilltop pasture. The view was stunning, the food delicious, and the conversation candid. We are all at this amazing point in our lives where we have these enormous choices to make, and the imminent decisions can either be crushing in their significance or can make you feel free.

2) Gettin’ hitched:

A ton of our friends are getting engaged these days. Sean and I have been together for almost six years, we are the dream team, and we choose each other every day, gladly. Marriage seems like an obvious choice for us, but we’re not getting married, at least not for a while. There is no compelling reason for us to get married: We don’t believe that our lifestyle is sinful (apparently some people do?!), and, though we want to have kids someday, we don’t think marriage necessarily has to come first. There is, however, something that compels us to not get married: we can’t buy into an institution that excludes people that we love. Love and partnership aren’t limited to one man and one woman, and marriage shouldn’t be either. Until it’s an option for all of our friends, in any state, we refuse to take advantage of our privilege. For Sean and Keely, the personal is pretty much always political. That said, I’m super stoked for some beautiful weddings.

3) Bonus

highlights from my conversation about the farm photos with C:

Ms O: “they have a wire bottom on their chicken house, which is on wheels, so the chicken poop falls on the ground and fertilizes the grass, and they move it so they can fertilize all over the place”
C: “That’s awesome!”
(this is markedly more enthusiasm than I expected)

C: “Are those solar panels? Way cool.”

C: “when they were logging my woods, the tractors ripped that place up. Probably, if you were doing it with horses, you’d do way less damage. That’s what my grandpa did. He had mules and stuff when he first got here. That seems like a pretty good way of doing things.”

Hard Work

Posted on April 16, 2014 by Keely

On Saturday, Sean and I got up and started working at 8 am. We didn’t quit until 4, unless you count a break for lunch and to entertain some guests. We cleaned out the chicken house (think Augean stables) and set up the little chicken family in their new digs.

This wire cage is partitioned, so the chicks can move freely between the halves but the big chickens can't. The idea was that Freckles could come and go through the open top, but the chicks would have half the cage to themselves so that they could be safe from the big birds. Unfortunately, Freckles shoved her big chicken self through the tiny doorway, so now it's just kind of a tiny cage for the silly bird.

This wire cage is partitioned, so the chicks can move freely between the halves (chick food and water go in the covered half) but the big chickens can’t. The idea was that Freckles could come and go through the open top, but the chicks would have half the cage to themselves so that they could be safe from the big birds. Unfortunately, Freckles shoved her big chicken self through the tiny doorway, so now it’s just kind of a tiny cage for the silly bird.

We built trellises for the peas, started planting a flowers and forage project in the chicken yard, tilled and weedwhacked around the upper garden, washed, dried and folded two loads of laundry, and planted salad. We’re just sitting here now, trying to study up what we can do now to show the world that we ain’t afraid of hard work.

Sean made a pork sirloin roast for lunch. It’s from the pig’s lower back, just above the hams.

I don’t know how that man does it, but I will never let him go. With the pork we had our first garden salad of the year and some sweet potato fries with sriracha mayo. We ate on the porch, enjoying the breeze and the quiet, drinking in cool water and the pleasant, quiet shade.

check out the cool garden to-do board Sean hung for us!

Days like Saturday, I wouldn’t trade this for anything. Sweat was beading on the sunscreen behind my ears and the plane just above the unscratchable spot on my back was sunburning anyway. I’d been working since I woke up and could have worked until I dropped and not finished everything, but I was splitting my dimples all day.

We left home around four to head to the Juke Joint festival in Clarksdale, Mississippi. I loved it last year and I loved it this year. There aren’t a lot of events that celebrate Delta culture and heritage, so Juke Joint is special. The way Clarksdale lights up one night out of the year reminds me of the Magic Toy Shop pop up book I had when I was a kid. There’s a lot more beer, crawfish and guitar at Juke Joint, but the mood is the same. ‘Nuff said.

In a total change of scenery, on Sunday, we went to the Orpheum to see Ballet Memphis’ Peter Pan. The Orpheum is a beautiful old theater in Memphis; it’s all chandeliers and gold and silver paint. The show was magical. The ballet and the flying were seamless, and the fantastical, dreamlike mood of ballet suited the story perfectly. I’m still working on understanding the language of dance; a dance party will go on for a while and I’ll lose the plot, fail to understand what the dancers are saying with their movements. I’ll get there, or maybe I won’t, but I’m trying.

On the way home, there was an emergency weather alert on the radio. It’s that tordado-ey time of year again. Sean asked “do you think they make these announcements crackly and use that creepy automatic voice to give these announcements a scary, doomsday kind of quality?” I’ve never heard them that way at all. I grew up thinking that the robot voice was a guy named Noah. When I hear weather radio, I just assume I’m on a boat adventure and that Dad is there, looking out for me. I might be about to get wet, but I feel safe and exhilarated and salty. Thanks for bringing me up on boats, Mom and Dad.

The sand bar at Little Pickering, summer 2002 or 2003, probably. The Larson was my favorite boat, or maybe we just had my favorite adventures in it.

The sand bar at Little Pickering, summer 2002? The Larson was my favorite boat, or maybe we just had my favorite adventures in it.

Off Pond Island, summer… uhh… 2002?

Farm Chores Friday

Posted on April 11, 2014 by Keely

High five! You made it to Friday!

Tomorrow night is prom night (roaring 20s themed) so all of my students were wild to be in the cafeteria “helping” to set up. It didn’t help that the weather was perfect for languor at a picnic table, and all I could think about was napping in the sun. During my 8th period prep, I had several students just wander in and start chatting. Their classes were doing prom prep or their teachers had given up on accomplishing anything and let them roam free. I have a page-a-day bananagrams puzzle calendar, and A challenged me to a race to see who could finish a puzzle first. I took him up on it, since I have a considerable backlog of puzzles. I love seeing kids focused on hard problems just for fun, so A made my day. We tied. After the race, I showed him my post about Freckles and the chicks, and we talked about blogging.

“What is a blog?”
“Well, you write stuff, and other people can read it”
“Do you only see stuff that your friends post, like facebook?”
“kinda, but it’s more about writing than reading, like a cross between facebook and a journal”
“could I have a blog?”
“anybody can have one. It’s easy.”
“What do you write about?”
“I write about school and my garden and critters”
“You write about school?”
“You would too! You spend all your time here! You’d probably write about your horse, too, snap a picture and be like ‘check out my horse'”

Meanwhile, a couple of other kids came into my room and walked out with the pizza boxes that were sitting on my desk from the reward party earlier. They walked out again with the big stack, marched over to the gym and announced “hey y’all, we got the refreshments.” They retreated at a dead run when their deception was discovered.

A, if you’re reading this, because you totally heard me tell Erwin the name of my blog, you should totally start your own. You are an awesome guy, and I’d like to read about whatever it is that you think about life and school in Palestine, Arkansas.

When we got home, Sean and I decided to move the pigs. This involved taking down and setting up the electric fence, carrying the heavy and bulky shelter, and chasing a rolling metal water container down the driveway. When it was all ready, we had to catch the pigs. The first one, Daisy, was easy. We corned them just outside of the chicken house, and Sean was able to grab her as the other two ran away.

Daisy screamed bloody murder for what felt like hours as I tried in vain to corner one or both of the other two, who were becoming more and more agitated and wary as the screaming continued. Sean was afraid to leave Daisy in the new pasture because of Raccoon-Eyes’ escape attempt last spring. I chased the pigs around and around the chicken yard, lamenting the use of piggy calories for galloping instead of bacon. Sean finally had to trust Daisy to stay put and come help me: Levi and Sizzle refused to be cornered.

I had tried the flying tackle and the sneaky step. I had tried soothing talk and herding them into the enclosed chicken vestibule. Nothing was working. Finally, Sean thought of a hog panel, and I grabbed one of the metal gates that was left in our carport when we moved in. We were able to use that in conjunction with our cunning and speed to capture the other two. I ate some dirt.

I am not nearly as serene in this victory photo as Sean is above, but that’s because I probably ran a mile chasing those critters while he was babytalking Daisy down in the pasture. Humph! At least poor Sizzle isn’t screaming her head off in my arms.

All three pigs are now happily snurfling in a fresh green pasture, and the chickens are grateful to have their yard back. So far, they seem to be doing fine with the electric fence.

We watered the garden today, and I can’t believe how big everything is already. The brassicas (left) have grown enormous almost overnight, and it won’t be long before we’re eating garlic scapes.

Check it out! Strawberry shortcake, here we come.

We decided to leave the chicks in the nestbox tonight to give Freckles one more day with the fourth egg. Chicks can survive a day or two without food or water on just their yolk juice, so they’ll be okay until morning. We’ll move them down tomorrow to the enclosure that I devised. I’ll explain it with a photo in my next post.