New Baby Chickens!

Fifty-two baby chickens arrived on the farm last week. At least I think it is 52. They are hard to count, it's because they are so damn cute. Here's the thing, 25 of them are destined for the freezer, in a plastic bag. It's a grim fate. Buying the extra meat birds was Kelle's idea. She is very much a carnivore and has no problem killing twenty-five chickens. True, I did slaughter one of my very own chickens for Thanksgiving dinner, but I'm not so excited about twenty-five. Or raising them specifically for that destiny. Not that I disagree with the practice, I'm all about local food, especially meat, and it doesn't get any more local than your backyard, but these chickens grow up in my basement as tiny little peepers. I have to take care of them and make sure their buttholes don't clog up with poop (it happens to baby chicks a lot and will kill them). And when one of the babies is sick and isn't gonna make it and Kelle feels bad for it and wants to put it out of its misery, who's job is it to off the cute little baby chicken? Evan's job. Good thing there are so many and I can't name them all.

When I say they "arrived on the farm" I mean they were shipped here in a little cardboard box. This inevitably leads to a couple of the chick getting squashed on the way and having a much diminished chance of surviving. This time I was able to save a couple of them though. The unfortunate ones on the bottom of the pile end up with their legs spread pointing straight out in opposite directions. With the help of the internet I learned that if you tie their legs together with yarn it helps them stand up straight. I did this and it actually worked. Out of the five that had trouble standing, four are doing good. The one that wasn't, is no more. Someday I will raise all my own chickens from eggs, then I won't have to order them from a hatchery 250 miles away.

thank you

Today, as I revisited my blog for another post, I noticed that I had three hidden comments about my last post. I guess I clicked some button in the settings that made it so I have to approve my comments before they are posted. I didn't even realize I did it, and so I now have just read the most recent ones. I've changed it back so now I will see when someone comments. Thank you, to the ones who posted, for the advice and inspiration.

don't forget, writing is therapeutic

Last month it seemed like every week I had something new to write about on my blog. I was often feeling inspired. I've been reminded that a few people enjoy reading what I write, and it's not that I have forgotten about this blog thing, I just haven't been feeling as inspired this month. My posts in December were mostly external topics, but lately I've been thinking mostly about myself. Until now I hadn't really thought about trying to type what's going on in my head. Today I was reminded by someone who knows me well that writing can be very therapeutic for me. So today I'll try to articulate what my mind has been brooding on for a while now.

I live where I work. I work where I live. I don't want to separate my work life from my personal life. That is a decision that I have made that has very specific reasons behind it but that has also been the source of some confusion for me. At the end of the summer when I was deciding what to do with myself, to stay in Nu Mex or continue on, being able to live here on the farm was a big factor in my decision to stay. Why is living here so important to me? When I step out my front door every morning I only have to walk 25 yards and I'm at work. I don't like to make that distinction between work time and play time though. Sometimes I "work" on the weekends. I have to take care of my chickens everyday. If I had to drive to this farm everyday that would defeat the whole purpose. I'm here to learn a different way of life than the one I grew up with and the one that I thought I wanted as a high school and college student. To learn how to live for myself, to work for myself, to be as self sufficient as possible. My parents taught me all these things as a young boy but now I am relearning them in the context of specific skill sets associated with a small, diverse farm. As this farm exists today it is far from a sustainable system but at least I am learning something about what it takes to create that. It takes a lot of hard work. Dedication to what most people consider degrading work. Spending hours on my hands and knees pulling weeds. Cleaning up after a bunch of dirty chickens that shit where ever they feel like it. Shovelling dirt. Spreading mulch. Manual labor all day long. Of course, all farmers know that the manual labor is only one side of it and the difference between a good harvest and a great harvest is understanding all the processes that go on under their feet.


But why bother with these dirt jobs when I can get my food elsewhere with little or no work. The human race now has endless technology which allows us extract a miracle energy source out of the ground called fossil fuels. And our society runs on it. Mass produced, processed, packaged food is easy and cheap. It exists because of fossil fuels. The fertilizers that go into the ground, the fuel that runs the huge commercial farm equipment, the fuel that ships that food all over the country, the plastic that the food is packaged in, the fuel that powers my car and takes me to the grocery store. We take this miracle energy source for granted. Food has become a globally marketable product, and the food industry is one focused on profit, not on providing healthy food for the people of the earth.


The food industry is just one example of our dependence on oil. I'm not going to claim to be an expert on this but I feel strongly, and I know some of the people who might read this would agree that our over consumption of fossil fuels is drastically changing the planet that we live on. I don't need a scientist or Al Gore to tell me that global warming is real. I see it with my own eyes. I understand how an internal combustion engine works and I know that we have developed technology which allows us to extract natural resources from the ground at a rate that far exceeds mother natures capacity to replenish them. We extract fossil fuels, use them, change them, and release them into the atmosphere. This energy source, which took millions of years to create, is disappearing in the relative blink of an eye. But we lack the foresight to look forward into the future. Go 100, 200, 300 years into the future and look back on the age of fossil fuels. What will people think of the way we have abused the planet? Planet earth is a living, breathing organism, just like me. It is home to trillions of living, breathing organisms the same way my body is home to a community of organisms. I can't see them and mostly am not aware of their presence but I know they are there. I can't live without them and they can't live without me. The planet provides us with countless, mostly unseen, functions which enable life on this planet to exist. It is an ever changing and evolving organism. It's not a big, static rock hurdling through space. As we use fossil fuels we are changing the composition of the planet and changing the way it functions. Global warming. I see this as a huge problem and I don't think the answer lies in alternative energy sources. The answer lies in reducing our consumption and changing our lifestyles. Alternative energy sources are an essential part of reducing our dependence on oil but none of them can ever come close to replacing fossil fuels. None of them can provide such cheap energy that comes in such a convenient form. So we must reduce our consumption.


I want to reduce my consumption. I want to learn how to live a lifestyle where I can use a very small amount of fossil fuels. And so I have made the choice to live where I work. For now. I try not to take for granted how lucky I am. To get this chance to focus on myself and not have to worry about money, or food, or getting shot at or blown up. I ask myself, "if I had grown up a poor farm boy would I still have such a romantic view of organic farming?" If I had grown up without everything I wanted and needed, without TV and nintendo and computers, would I still have such a skeptical view of corporate America? Would I still be working hard at living a more sustainable lifestyle? Or would I be working hard at getting a well paying job so that I could have children one day and put them through college without them worrying about paying tuition, the same way my parents did for me?


It's hard to change your lifestyle. I've become accustomed to certain things. I love to eat tuna fish. Where does most tuna in a can come from? Thailand. I want to go snowboarding on the weekends. That requires driving at least a couple of hours each way. Sometimes I feel guilty about not having a social life, like I'm not living to the fullest. People seem to be puzzled when they see someone my age living alone on a farm spending more of my leisure time alone with my chickens then with a girlfriend. This is what I've been struggling with for the past month. Should I sacrifice my ideals to make myself happy in the short term or is waiting for something more really worth it? Is there something more? I've always been very patient. Am I being too patient and wasting my youth acting like an old man? Do I think about this stuff way too much?


Maybe I'm just being stubborn but I think I have to stick with it. Right now I am physically and mentally healthier than I have ever been before. I have found that the best way for me to get my exercise is by having a job that keeps me constantly active. I never want to have an office job. I can't work on my mind for one part of the day and then my body for a another part. I could rarely do it successfully as a student. I need to be using both all day long.


I think the hardest part is going to be keeping up with my ideals after I leave this posh farm job. I want to go back to school and I'm gonna have to put a lot of work into finding the right place for me.

Hovenweep National Monument

This weekend I had a wonderful adventure visiting my friend Miranda in Utah/Colorado. She works/lives at Hovenweep National Monument which is on the border of Utah and Colorado. Hovenweep is the site of some very mysterious 900 year old ruins. At one point they were home to the ancestors of the Pueblo Indians who currently inhabit this region. I've been to Chaco Canyon which is a larger site with much larger and more extensive ruins but visiting Hovenweep was a memorable experience. The ruins are scattered around a small canyon, seemingly miles from anything or anywhere that a human would want to live. The most mysterious thing about these ruins is the actual placement of the buildings. Many of the buildings sit directly on the canyon edge with doorways that open into nothing but air and a 30 foot drop. There are also ruins, like the one in the picture below, which are perched a top huge boulders and look like natural extensions of the rock. Granted, it's known that the ancient pueblo Indians built their homes with defense in mind but there is something more behind the placement of the ancient buildings at Hovenweep. The construction was completed around 1230c.e. but researchers believe the site was abandoned less than one generation later. One theory is that the people that lived there used up all the local resources and were forced to leave. Juniper trees grow to be very old but there isn't one within ten miles of Hovenweep that is older than the ruins. The people there had to put so much energy into the construction of the buildings that when they were done there was nothing left to sustain them in their everyday lives. Maybe they were a little bit vain and built on top of boulders and the edges of a canyon to show off. Nine hundred years from now people will probably look at the houses we live in and the cars we drive and think the same thing. We build and buy with little regard to the resources we consume. Mostly we think about the way things look.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!

Happy birthday mom! The chickens and I send our good thoughts. Me more than them, I have more thoughts in general I think. Hope your day is wonderful.

Love,
Evan

and the chickens

Owls

Over the past three months I have had a few great owl sightings. I think there is a pair that lives near the farm, I see one of them frequently at dusk when I go out to close the chickens in for the night. The sightings started in the early fall. One late afternoon, just as the light was failing, I saw one out of the corner of my eye landing on top of a gourd trellis in the middle of our fields. It was a pretty big owl, which is why I think there is a pair because the one I see more often is smaller. It stayed there briefly and then flew low to the ground to another perch in the orchard. I was awed. It was the first time I had seen such a large owl in flight and close up. The next sighting was a little more ominous. At the time the chickens were staying in their chicken tractor in the orchard. At the end of the day there were two hens and a rooster still outside the fence, desperately wanting to get back in. I assumed they were so upset because it was getting dark and they were too fat to fit back through the holes in the fence. But I think they knew something I didn't. After I picked each one of the chickens up and put them over the fence I climbed over and closed the door to their house on wheels. As I turned away from the tractor to check on their food and water, I turned towards an apple tree which was inside the temporary chicken yard. My eyes went immediately to the top of the tree where sat an owl which took flight the instant that our eyes met. It flew back over my shoulder and whirled me around to see it fly up into another tree across the driveway. I have since seen what I think is that same owl perched a top a very tall skinny tree which overlooks nicely the yard around my new chicken coop. Since the chickens started using the new coop I have seen it at least half of the time when I close the chickens in at dusk. Maybe it has already eaten one of my chickens, I did lose five this summer to unknown causes. But I haven't lost any since they have been living in the straw bale coop. Maybe the owl isn't interested in the chickens anymore and has unknown motives. Tonight I certainly thought it did.

Today it started raining around 11:30. It turned to heavy snow around 12:30 and kept going all afternoon until the sun went down. This prompted me to extend my evening stroll to include a trip past the orchard, the long way to the chicken coop. As I walked onto the driveway next to the orchard I heard my owl friend let out a screech. It came from the distance and I couldn't place its location at first. As I continued walking, the tree that it normally perches in came into focus through the fading, grey light. Fat snow flakes were falling straight down and sticking to the ground in big clumps. This owls favorite tree is ghostly. The maximum diameter of the tree from edge to edge is no more than four or five feet but it stretches forty feet into the air. Its branches writhe straight upward like long slender flames and the whole tree looks like it is the fossil of a column of fire frozen in time. It sits in a field away from all the other trees and with the dim light and heavy snow, tonight it looked like erie faded black brush strokes on a grey canvas. The owl sat at the very top of the tree. The part of the tree where the branches are so sparse that from my distance it looked like the owl was hovering motionless in the air just above the tree. It continued to screech. Then it flew over to the very top of the cottonwood that I was walking towards. They are big, broad birds and are majestic in flight. My owl friend moves quick and despite its size somehow manages to land and perch gracefully on the highest, smallest branches in its chosen tree.

Just before this all happened I was thinking about how much more time I spend outside as a farmer. Not just more time, but more time paying attention to the world around me. I used to think that mother natures greatest wonders only still existed deep in the last few untouched wilderness areas of the world but I'm seeing more and more of them everyday in my backyard. I guess it helps when your backyard is in northern New Mexico. It also helps when you open your eyes and look up.

Sunday Morning Snow Call

After a full day and night of rain, I woke up this morning to a nice dusting of snow on the ground. It's amazing how fast the temperature drops here. This week I installed a gutter on my chicken coop so all day yesterday I was collecting rain water in trash cans. This morning the third 35 gallon trash can was almost full. The roof is 24'x16'. Actually, that third trash can is probably almost full now that the snow is melting.

Installing the gutter on the chicken coop took me one step closer to its completion but there are still a couple of finishing touches before it is ready to house 50 chickens. The whole design and construction of the coop has been a big success for me. There are 19 chickens and one guinea hen (it moved in from next store) living in it right now. The chickens have been laying on average 8 or 9 eggs a day. Two days this week I collected 13 and I also had a couple days with 7.

The coop has semi-temporary straw bale walls which stand underneath a permanent roof. There are two rooms: one big room, which takes up about 75% of the space, is where the birds sleep at night. There are roosts and nesting boxes. The smaller room will be for raising baby chicks. The goal is to let a couple of the hens sit on a few eggs and then raise their own chicks. They need their own space while they are brooding so that the rest of the chickens don't disturb them. Eventually the yard around the coop will be divided into two sections so that we can grow something in one half while the chickens forage in the other half. This will primarily be their winter home. My goal for the whole farm is to have about 60 chickens. During the growing season they will be divided between three or four chicken tractors and will be moving troughout the fields and orchard. In the winter they will live in the straw bale coop.

My favorite time on the farm right now is the early morning. The days are so short that I have to get up at sunrise in order to get enough sunlight to maintain sanity. Yesterday was cloudy and raining, I was inside building a chick incubator out of an old wooden wine box. Today is bright and sunny, I'll be outside helping my coworker Wade build a small bungalow for he and his family.

One of my favorite things to do in the morning is take pictures. Today I got up and took a few of the chickens and the new snow. I went inside, downloaded my new pictures and ate some breakfast. When I left the house again to use the office computer to post this, it was a much brighter and sunnier day. So I went back and got my camera, unfortunenately the brighter, sunnier pictures are still on my camera.