Poultry News

Someday when Freeloader Farms is a multi-hundred dollar corporation, we'll send out a fancy newsletter with full-color photos for all of our screaming fans to read up on the latest updates around the farm.  But for now, I'll just post them here for the 3 people that read this blog to enjoy.

Flock Increases by Seven
   My "chicken ticket" birthday chickens arrived about 5.5 weeks ago.  They were special ordered from Meyer Hatchery (who is big enough to not only have an email newsletter but also has a very informative catalog with beautiful photos available for viewing online or by mail order).  Even though they were all supposed to be my chicks, I only ended up with two of them as the others were claimed by the kids.  These chicks weren't handled quite as much as last year's chicks, mainly because the boys had more concern about ending up with manure in their hair from carrying them around on their heads (not necessarily a bad thing to be concerned about).  But the chicks are still very loved and still living in our kitchen.
The chicks added to our poultry roster were named:

-Eggy (GD's chick, named after a chicken in a random foreign kids' movie we found at the library that GD loves.  I don't understand the movie, I've only seen about 15 minutes of it, but there's a line that references the old musical "The King and I," so it must be ok right?)

-Green Layer Like Gecko Is Green, known as simply "Green Layer" by friends and family (GE's chick, he wanted a chick that laid green eggs because chickens don't lay orange eggs and Gecko, his favorite PJ Masks character, is green.)

-Princess (KM's chick, named by her brothers because KM is the princess of the family)

-Watermelon (my Buff Orpington chick, this was one of my specific requests because Buff Orpingtons are so docile, named after our original Buff Orpington who never got to fulfill her lifelong dream to be a mother)

-Sunshine (another one of my chicks, G won't let me name our children hippy names so I might as well give the names to our livestock.  For the record though, I think G was very wise to not allow me to name KM Galilee Sunshine as I had wanted).

-Miss Fritter ("The school bus of death is after me!")

-Cupcake the Fluffy Cloud (GD wanted to name her "I Am A Fluffy Cloud" and GE wanted to name her Cupcake).


Missing Chicken
Missing: one adult hen, answers to the name of Daisy
Description: breed unknown, white with black at her neck and feathers on her feet
Last seen: wandering the farm about two months ago, did not come home in the evening after a day of free-ranging
Other pertinent information: will be looking lost, lonely and confused; may have gone to the nearest chicken therapist for help working through some unresolved trauma related to last winter's chicken massacres


Obituary
I am sorry to report the Obadiah Jonahmicahnahum Habakkuk is no longer with us.  He was an odd little fellow and his fear of grass and hens was simply not compatible with life as a chicken.  There are many stories I could tell of his inability to cope with life, but we are all very sad about his passing and so I will save those for another time (or my first children's book).  He was buried in a private ceremony in which he was, as GE says, "planted in the garden, but he's not there anymore, he went away" (not sure if that is his understanding of chicken souls of just his misunderstanding of death).  Obadiah is survived by his sisters Josephine and Henrietta.


Turkey Narrowly Escapes Death
Just a few days before Tom and Frieda were scheduled for butchering, Frieda started laying eggs.  It is highly unlikely that the eggs were fertile.  Broad-breasted bronzes don't breed well due to their broad breasts (say that 5 times fast).  But on the outside chance we could have baby turkeys, we built an incubator out of a foam cooler, struggled to keep the temperature and humidity the same conditions as a turkey's bottom, and ultimately hatched a couple of rotten eggs that made the house smell like low tide.  The eggs were unfertilized.  Frieda stopped laying eggs.  The turkeys are back on the waiting list for our freezers.

The World's First Pig Farmers

   Tens of thousands of years ago cavemen were realizing that they could domesticate animals. I wonder during those first years of animals domestication if our ancestors really had plans for the animals or if they were just making it up as they went along. Which is totally what we're doing with this whole homesteading thing. I imagine the first humans to raise pigs may have experienced something like this.

   Father Caveman arrived back to the cave late from hunting and gathering one evening. Mother Cavewoman was slightly annoyed but still curious when, after he tossed the squirrels for supper on the fire he pulled out a box (chiseled laboriously from rock of course) with air holes and presented his children with two new strange animals to befriend and turn into something useful.  The animals were small and pink with flat noses and curly tails. 

    "What are they called, Daddy?!  Where did you find them?! What do we do with them?!"  The Cave Children asked excitedly. 

     "I found them for free in an ad carved on a cliff while I stopped to eat my lunch today. I picked them up from some one named Craig after hunting and gathering. They are called piglets and I don't know what they're good for, I just thought the cave drawing of them was cute."

      The Cave Children were delighted with their new pets. Mother Cavewoman did not want to keep them but Father Caveman thought she might be more agreeable once she got some squirrel and foraged roots and mushrooms in her.  

        "After supper we will build a pen for them."

       Soon(ish) the pig pen was roughly constructed from rocks and tree limbs the Cave Children gathered while Father Caveman carved food and water barrels and Mother Cavewoman cleaned up from the lovely squirrel dinner and tried to keep the Cavebaby from climbing the cave walls and swinging from the overhead torch. 

     The Cave Children excitedly cared for their piglets.  They tirelessly tried to train them to do....something.  Even if they couldn't be work animals they could still be pets and maybe even protect the family from wild dinosaurs (the timeline for this may be a little construed). The piglets would dance little jigs when they saw the Cave Children coming, but as the pigs grew all they wanted to do was sit in the mud. The pigs grew larger than the Cave Family could have ever imagined and soon were consuming more than the family could forage. Fortunately there was bulk feed available at the elevator in the next village over (that village was much more advanced than our cave family's village, obviously). The smell of the pigs became overpowering and manure was piling up.  The pigs dug and rooted and made a mess and were constantly destroying their living enclosure.  They repeatedly knocked over their waterer and Father Caveman had to recarve it three times. As winter approached Father Caveman was finding it harder to keep their water thawed and had to rig up a thermostat-controlled fire to thaw their waterer.  The pigs were not too smart either. Father Caveman was getting smoke signals like "Pig stuck in feed barrel" from Mother Cavewoman while he was out hunting and gathering. 

      Finally the family had had enough. The pigs were not earning their keep around the cave and the family could not afford to keep them.  So they did what they had to do....
      After several hours of huffing and puffing, Father Caveman finally loaded them into a livestock cart (this was after the wheel had been invented), to take them out and hunt them.  He brought home so much meat the family had to carve another ice box to store it until meat curing could be discovered.  With all that meat available, Father Caveman no longer had to devote his entire day to hunting down squirrels and could now spend time working the land and inventing agriculture.

Or something like that.  

You can never have too much poultry.

     I was woken up one morning a couple weeks ago by a new sound. At first I thought there was something dreadfully wrong with GE. But then I remembered, Oh, yeah, we have a rooster in the kitchen.

      The day before G decided it had been too long since he showed up with livestock and picked up a rooster and a couple chicks off Craigslist.  These weren't just any chicks, though. These were the Silkies he had been talking about getting for 3 years now. And as a bonus, the Polish-Silkie cross "cockadoodledooster" came free with the purchase of the chicks. 

      These are not the chicks he is giving me for my birthday, those come next week. These were just because we can never have enough poultry in our life. 

       The boys were not real interested in naming these birds, I think they're saving their chicken names for the special chicks they're getting next week.  G had nothing, so I claimed the privilege of naming them. I had just told GD a few nights before while he was working on memorizing the books of the Old Testatment that Obadiah would be a good name for a rooster. So Mr. Rooster became Obadiah, middle name Jonahmicahnahum, last name Habakkuk.  He goes by Obie for short.  The girls are Henrietta and Josephine because I thought their fluffy little bodies deserved vintage-sounding names. 

     The chicks and rooster lived in our kitchen for a couple days before being moved downstairs for a birthday party and to keep down the smell. However, Obie stopped crowing as much and I determined he was lonely and depressed in the basement, so now he gets to grace our presence and to make sure we're awake several times a day from his container in the kitchen. 

Catalog Nostalgia and Insecurities

      The Sears catalog used to arrive at our house in late September, bringing with it the excitement that Christmas was coming. My sisters and I would dog-ear the first page of the toys so we could quickly find it without having to flip through the pages of linens and men's suits first. I would excitedly turn to that dog-eared page time and again to browse through the dolls, only to be disappointed once again that in the whole five-inch thick catalog there were only a few pages of toys sandwiched between the housewares and the electronics (maybe it wasn't quite five-inches thick, but it sure felt that heavy to my five-year-old self). And so I'd flip to the front of the catalog and contemplate that year's version of Santa beaming on the cover, because that's what the catalog really was--a symbol of the coming holiday season. This waxing and waning of excitement about the Sears Christmas catalog would occur several times as I waited for Christmas to come: I would pull the catalog out of the end table we stored it in, open to the toys, and then once again be disappointed to be staring at VCRs a few pages later.

I don't even think Sears sends out a Christmas catalog anymore, but a different yearly catalog mailing causes a similar pendulum emotions in our household: 

The Burpee Seed Catalog. 

We received our copy of the Butpee seed catalog in early January. G brought in the mail grinning and asked the boys to guess what came in the mail that day. As soon as the saw the cover, the boys grabbed the catalog out of G's hands and plopped themselves down on the couch to admire the brightly colored flowers and vegetables and make their "lists."  GD would have copied the whole catalog if we had let him. 

"You guys can pick out a couple things but we're not planting a big garden this year."  I think I told them that five times. And then told G it again for good measure, adding, "We don't have time for a garden or canning this year." 

But then it was my turn with the catalog. It wasn't long before I grabbed a pen and started making a list too.

Maybe we could plant a garden. A smaller one. With just enough plants for a few weeks of fresh veggies during the summer. 

But we do like our canned homemade tomato sauce....

 As my list grew longer and longer with every turn of the glossy pages, I got excited about the huge garden we were going to plant this year and all the glistening jars of preserved food we would have in our pantry. 

      Then I looked over my lengthy list, became overwhelmed, and started crossing out vegetables. 

      Then I went back and circled some of the ones that I crossed out because I really hadn't meant it. 

      Then I proclaimed loudly and resolutely that we were not planting a garden this year. 

Well, maybe a small one. 

Ooh, look at those bright purple eggplants....and I've never heard of a potato squash before, I wonder if the kids would eat that....

We do not have time to weed a garden. 

Beans that are 18 inches long, that might be neat...

But what if we put all this work into a garden and it floods and the goats eat it like last year?

Let's try sweet potatos this year. 

And that's how my feelings about the garden have been swinging for the past two months. Despite my decision to not grow a garden this year, over the weekend I had my kids collecting manure and poking holes in 200 Dixie cups and my husband mixing a special seed starting recipe and setting up a plant stand with grow lights. 

This is going to be so much fun!  We will have so many vegetables!

BUT WHAT IF NOTHING GROWS?  What if it all dies?  What if it floods?  What if the livestock eats it? 

  

GD has also been having these strong farming insecurities. We should both take a lesson from GE's simple solution to everything in life, "Well, then we'll just buy some at Walmart."

       

A Happiness

      My mom likes to compare GE to the ornament Noel from the children's Christmas story. "He has a Happiness," she says. GE's joy has been exploding out of him since the day he was born. I have never known anyone so genuinely content and thrilled to be alive than GE. You can feel his happiness from across the room, but chances are you won't have to because he would love to come over and give you a hug.

       He always has something positive to say. He starts his day rejoicing in what most others would find mundane: that it's morning, that he woke up in his bed, that he still has feet, that he's wearing pants, that his fish is alive, that he woke his brother up, that he didn't wake his brother up...and on and on the list goes. Seeing anything orange is cause for celebration, but he gets pretty excited about any other color too. Needless to say he's pretty easy to please. Even when he's told no about something he usually responds, "Alrighty!" (But sometimes he asks about it 37 more times because he's 3). 

      Earlier this week the weather was beautiful for the end of February. "It's warmer for me!" he exclaimed over and over. 

      Then it got colder again and rained all day. Then it got really windy. Then the rain turned to sleet. And then to a heavy, wet snow coming down sideways. We were pretty negative about the weather but despite this GE wanted to go outside  to "play in the snow."  So Daddy took him out anyway (because we've learned that's the best way to convince a three-year-old it's cold out). He went out and happily tried to catch the blowing on snow on his tongue, told G it was "good!," outside...but when asked he did admit he wanted to go back in. 

      G came in a said it was pretty nasty out. 

     GE came in and brightly reported that "It's not raining!" always finding the good in everything. 

      The next day GE was playing outside and took a big fall off the tube slide. He looked at the ground, which he hit pretty hard, and congratulated it, "Wow!  That was a nice catch!" I don't think he even realized he should be hurt because he was so proud of the ground's nice catch. 

     GE regularly cheers for his older brother when he finished he schoolwork, compliments the rest of us on everything we do (I got a very excited praise for giving him the right amount of ketchup at supper tonight), and serenades with whatever song is going through his head at the moment (today he was singing a song he made up about happy rainbows).  Most people would be exhausted from being as happy as he is all the time, but GE has maintained this level of genuine joyfulness since he was born. I don't know how he does it but I hope he never loses his Happiness. 

Nothing Says Love Like Poultry

    There was a time, many years ago, when G would give me nice jewelry for special occasions. This was when we were seriously dating and after the time he would get me teddy bears but before the time we were an old married couple and gave each other practical things like spatulas and zip ties. After observing and talking to other couples I think these phases of gift-giving over time are pretty common. 

     G and I have now been together 15 years (yes, we're really old) and our gift-giving has evolved  further. I'm really not sure quite how to describe this latest phase of gift-giving, perhaps quirky, or grotesquely practical, or maybe just down-right odd. But last week on Valentine's Day G showed up with a poultry crate of two full grown turkeys just for me. (This was a few days after I received 6 "chicken tickets" to pick out hens or even roosters of my choice for my birthday). I was actually pretty excited about our new feathered friends.  Originally, it was my choice whether I wanted to send them straight to the chopping block or keep them around and try to let them become parents this spring. 

     How fun would it be to breed turkeys!?!?  I quickly started to research what I would need to do get my turkey family started. Unfortunately I found that my turkeys are "broad-breasted bronze" turkeys (say that five times fast), and due to their broad breasts they cannot "breed naturally."

      How fun would it be to artificially inseminate a turkey!?!?

      I actually did consider the possibility of doing this.  It probably would be comparable to my goat-milking experience.  Except...where do you source that kind of thing?  (I'm guessing you might be able to find some on Craiglist, they have everything.). And just think of the educational experience for the kids....

       So, even though "breed turkeys" has been added to my homesteading bucket list, I decided that Tom and Frieda (of course they're Tom and Frieda, just look at them, what else could they be?) would make better drumsticks than parents. 

         I also decided that I would not be butchering my own Valentine's Day gift. That would be terribly unromantic. G wasn't up to trying his hand at butchering yet either. He said something to the effect that he was concerned he would botch it up and we would have a headless half-dead turkey running around the yard. 

        Of course it wouldn't be hard to find someone to process that kind of thing around here, right? With as many farms and homesteads there's sure to be a butcher that does turkeys. 

        But after calling around to local butcher shops we found that people are expected to process their own poultry. 

        Meanwhile, poor Tom and Frieda are cramped in the little chicken coop awaiting their fate while I try to not become too attached to them. 

         Finally, G did find someone he works with who may be able to take care of the turkeys for us.  This coworker is in the 2.4% of the county's population that is not American-born Caucasian; he comes from the Middle East (it took me a good 10 minutes to figure out how to be PC about that).  When I asked G if this man would take good care of my Valentine's Day gift, G replied, "Yes.  He will even pray over them before he butchers them."  What better butchering service could you ask for?

The Art of Home Decor...with Children

    It was a cold December day right after Christmas.  My oldest son had graduated from rocking on his hands and knees to a full crawl a couple weeks before.  Up until this day he was perfectly happy to crawl laps around our first floor without touching anything, showing off his newfound skill.
   But then suddenly that just wasn't enough for him.  Nothing was off-limits, nothing was safe. If our house was a dodgeball game, the elementary school gym teacher had just blown her whistle and shouted "FREE FOR ALL!"

      That night my husband came home to every lamp and knick-knack we owned along with most of our furniture piled in the garage. I'm pretty sure I was sprawled out on the couch, one of the few items that survived the day, with my head spinning. 

       G chose his words slowly and carefully, "Do I want to know why everything is in the garage?"

       "That is everything GD knocked over or tried to climb today," I told him, still bewildered at the destruction our 7-month-old caused. Then I babbled and cried about how I couldn't control our baby and how I was failing as a mother and how I just wanted to get rid of all our belongings and pad every surface. 

       G likes to tell this story to first-time parents.  I don't think he's trying to scare them, just let them know they're not alone when their child starts climbing the curtains and repelling off the furniture. And he thinks the whole scene that day was funny. 

       That day marked a big turning point in my home decor philosophy.  I had long been a collector of quirky secondhand furniture, lamps, and knick-knacks. Throughout our home you could find end tables made completely from mirrors, lampshades with large dangling beads, giant glass flower lamps, and a varied assortment of glass bowls and vases.   The "flea market curiosities" decorating phase of my life came to an abrupt end.  Having a mobile child quickly turned me from a clutter-collector to a clutter-minimizer; from a displayer of unique and artistic furniture to a displayer of only softly padded and absolutely essential furniture; from an antique glassware enthusiast to shatter-proof plastic enthusiast. 

       I was kind of like one of those end-of-the-year furniture sale commercials, where the announcer echos, "EVERYTHING MUST GO!"  Our house was stripped down to the essentials, and everything that was deemed worthy to stay was kept 42 inches or higher off the ground. 

Well, except toys. Toys started to accumulate everywhere. 

       Over the course of the past five years I have moved a lot of items onto new lives at thrift stores throughout the area. I tend to be sentimental; there is a hoarding gene deeply embedded into my DNA. I look at things in our perpetual donation pile and think, "But it could be worth something someday!"   But then I stop and consider the likelihood that it will even survive to that ambiguous someday of worthwhileness, and how much space it will take up in the meantime (which would be inefficient) and the survival instinct that is hard-wired into all humans overshadows the hoarder in me. After all, humans may not have survived for thousands of years had we kept heavy and breakable knick-knacks within the reach of younger generations of our species. And with that reasoning off goes another diaper box of dangerous items to the nearest Goodwill.  

         This hardly means our home is empty. Just that the decor is much differently than our pre-children years.  The quirky, breakable, sharp-edged furniture has been replaced with tractors, farm set-ups, Legos, monster trucks, and plastic food. And more Legos and more tractors.  Every empty square-inch of carpet is now being converted to farm land. And Lego building space. The glass collection has been replaced with a growing collection of security items.   And Legos. The interesting knick-knacks have been replaced with items we're keeping out of the baby's reach. And Legos. 

Have I mentioned there are Legos everywhere?  

        However, one large and exceedingly dangerous item managed to stick around through the birth of three kids and subsequent furniture reductions. . Surprisingly my curio cabinet full of antique glass has stayed intact (well...for the most part) and not hurt anyone (too badly) over the past five years. 

       I'm not saying it's never been licked. Or had chocolate smeared all over it. Or stubbed numerous toes. 

       It has just never came crashing down into a pile of glass as the kids go barrelling through the house.

        Yet.  

        And let me tell you, that potentially horrifying scene has played over and over in my head. 

       It really is a miracle that it never has happened in real life, considering how many laps the boys run by it in a day and how many items have been thrown off the upstairs landing onto it. 

         We decided we were really pushing our luck. 

         

    In a family of little kids and varied livestock, the big glass structure just really didn't fit in anymore. The curio cabinet was the first thing you saw when you entered the house.  I'm sure to visitors it was a strange sight after dodging the manure on the sidewalk.   I used to live the way the light reflected off the glass, but where I used to see the appealing reflection of light, all I see now is the potential for head injuries and lacerations.  Why didn't my former self start a shatter-proof plastic sippy cup collection?  (Well, I guess I do have a rather large one of those now, and I display it in every room of the house.)

         So one day several weeks ago, as my toddler wandered through the house and attempted to walk right through the curio cabinet into another dimension, we decided that we have exceeded the number of children that can safely coexist with a glass collection and curio cabinet in a high-traffic area and that they should be removed before they shattered into a million razor-sharp death stars.
     The curio cabinet was listed on Craigslist and found a new home with a retired gentleman who was going to use it to house his model train and tractor collection.  He agreed that it was not an ideal piece of furniture to have in a house full of kids and entertained the boys with a story of how he sliced his arm on a glass coffee table as a kid.  (Sometimes it's fun to do Craigslist deals just to meet new people).

        I was slightly sad to see it go and was wondering what we would do to fill the space it vacated.  Maybe a hall tree, or some large photos on the wall....
        We didn't have to wonder long.  Within 24 hours it had been replaced with an airport and a wigwam village.