Chicken season ends, Haulin' Hogs, Are we Prepared?

No more meat birds. We emptied out the remaining chicken shelters for harvest early in the week. It feels good to complete the season. Only one shelter with growing egg layers left in the field to be moved daily. My chicken load is now much lighter. I tell myself that I’ll now have more time to focus on other parts of the farm, but daylight hours are disappearing along with the chickens. Though we have no more meat chickens in the field, we have plenty of whole chickens in the freezers. If you’re looking to stock up, now’s the time. Buy 10, get 1 free for the rest of this month.

Amy and I are still sorting inventory and trying to fill your chicken shares and orders. Even though we parted about 1200 chickens this season, we are already sold out of breasts and tenders. I think we still have drumsticks, thighs, quarters, and maybe some wings. As inventory on real farms fluctuate in seasons, another reminder to join the herd. Those who have beef, pork, and chicken shares will get their meat every month. 

The aftermath of Helene produced no shortage of firewood options. I’ve spent the past few years burning dead ash trees to heat our house. I’ll likely be spending the next few years heating our house with blown over trees from Helene. 

With a trip to the processor coming up on Monday, we hauled some big pigs from the woods back to the barn. Before loading them, I had to redo some of the pig pens due to limbs falling on them during the storm. Amy and the kids helped put fresh bedding down for the pigs in the barn. 

Hallie had a scare with the 4-wheeler this week. I was in front on another 4-wheeler with Carter and Wren and didn’t see it. Hasten saw the accident from behind, but thankfully Hallie was by herself and not seriously injured. It wasn’t in a dangerous spot, and she wasn’t driving fast or reckless. A slight overcorrection flipped the 4-wheeler. A few scraps and bruises, but it scared her more than anything, as it should. Scared Hasten just as much. 

The Circle B boys came and worked on a water trough and fixed a couple leaks in the line. When it comes to fencing and water, they are hard to beat. Good fellers. 

In response to the almost week long power outage caused by the storm, we doubled our propane storage. We need to be better prepared. My gut tells me more hard times and crises are on the way. I hope I’m wrong. But I want to be ready if I’m right. Other adjustments still to be made. 

Our internet has not been restored since losing it 2 weeks ago. It’s not a big deal to me, but it’s presented challenges to Amy as she uses internet to teach the kids, teach a Barn2Door class, communicate with airbnb guests, and tries to keep up with incoming orders and inquiries. Sorry if we have been slow getting back to you. 

On top of cleaning cabins, filling orders, and helping me catch chickens and load pigs, Amy made two batches of chicken bone broth this week. Their school week was more steady this week than last but still filled with interruptions. I was one one of those interruptions, calling for her to come rescue me from the side of the road. Ashamedly, I ran out of gas on the way across the mountain to Marion. 

More mechanical issues that were not as easily solved as adding gas to the tank. Amy’s meat hauler, the transit van wouldn’t start Friday evening as we were filling coolers for the Abingdon Farmers Market the next day. So we had to re-group and flashback to the old days of packing coolers into every square inch of the suburban. On Monday the truck wouldn’t start, and on Wednesday the log splitter wasn’t cooperating. 

On a brighter note, I finally found a Jeep replacement for my old Jeep that burnt up a couple months back. Even through this one has over 200,000 miles on it, Hasten said, “This Jeep is way too nice for us to have.” Ha. It has some big tires to fill. 

I misplaced my bluetooth headset and therefore didn’t do any book listening early in the week which was actually nice. After finally finding it, I’ve been listening to “The Warrior Poet Way” by John Lovell, wishing I would’ve listened to it weeks before the hurricane. 

“Think of it like preparing for a big storm that’s coming through that might knock out your power for a few days.”

If you know me at all, you know my passion for freedom. Lovell points out that freedom is not simply political. Many things can interfere with our freedom. The more we are dependent on systems we don’t understand and can’t control, the less free we are. 

“Freedom as our forefathers understood it was to be able to exist apart from a powerful ruler, war lord, or government. Freedom meant self-sufficiency. Self-sufficiency is the act of not relying on any government, institution, or organization to take care of you. It means that you can provide for your family’s basic needs without being dependent on a supply source controlled by someone else. While this was a common reality upon the early American frontier, nowadays, in our era of grocery stores, Amazon deliveries, and power plants, self-sufficient people are as rare as unicorns. In recent years, we’ve run into supply chain issues in various manufacturing crisis. With the increase in inflation, rising prices for basic goods, and after seeing two years of lockdowns because of COVID-19, there has never been a better time to learn to live more self-sufficiently.”

As dreamy as it sounds to be totally “self-sufficient,” it’s not very realistic. To me the goal should not be aimed at being independently self-sufficient, but to be interdependent on people around us. On our community. Our dependencies should be relational.

“How would you feed your family?… Imagine if you grew your own food and already had those basic necessities at your disposal. So long as people are dependent on a system, they can be bullied by that system into complying. If a system provides you with all the things you need to survive, then that same system has the power to take away what you need to survive.”

There are a lot of people in the world that depend on food. A lot of things we don’t really need. We all really need food. Preferably daily. It wouldn’t require a total collapse of the food system to cause the vast majority of the population to go hungry. It would only require the collapse of a single part of that system, such as transportation. If the trucking industry were to break down, even for a few weeks, lots of people would go hungry. But people who are fed by their local farmers would continue to eat good. Our farm can’t feed the world. But if the world gets hungry, we’re going to continue to feed those that we’re currently feeding now. 

“We enjoy immense prosperity and dilute ourselves into thinking our current situation will last forever. When the ideas upon which our culture was founded are called into question, as they currently are, our very way of life is threatened.”

“Many Americans live as if their current reality is all there has ever been or ever will be. But things are always changing, and never in the history of the world is there a long-standing age of peace and comfort… It’d be naive to assume this state of things can and will last. To think that the good times will keep on going is naive and stupid.”

“I don’t know what’ll happen in the near future, but I don’t want to be caught on my heels when it does.”

Have a good week. 

Will