First Chicks, Join “the Herd”
No easing into chicken season this year. Amy picked up over 1000 baby chicks from the post office this morning. We just finished getting them settled into the brooder where it’s warm and dry with plenty of feed and water. The chicks will stay there for the next couple weeks until they’re big enough to move out to the shelters in the field.
We cleaned out the brooder last week, so this week we had to set it back up with heat lamps, partitions, feeders, waterers, and wood shavings. Ms. Desiree, who is back in the valley staying at one of the cabins for the month of April jumped right in with the work and helped. We’re glad she’s here.
You’d think by now I’d have everything cleaned and patched back up from Helene. Nope. Still pulling trees and fixing fences. I wish I could say I was getting close, but there’s a lot still left to do. At least we don’t have to look far for firewood. Though we’ve had some warm spring days, our outdoor wood stove is still burning, heating our house and water. We’ll likely keep burning wood for the next few weeks.
Thankful for more spring rains. Amy ordered some new outdoor furniture for the rental cabins, so Hallie and Hasten helped me assemble them during the rain showers. If you’d like to plan a peaceful cabin getaway to the farm, check out the links below.
For the first time in a long time, we sold out of mild sausage. With the farmers market season picking up, we hate to disappoint hungry customers. Our pig numbers are low, and piglets have been hard to come by. Real farms are not factories that mechanically pump out food to meet consumer demand. On real farms, circumstances change with the seasons. Fluctuations in inventory often change with them. We appreciate your understanding and your willingness to try some of our other sausage options. As always, one reason we are out of mild is because we used it to fill ORVF monthly herd shares. Want a regular monthly amount of local meat? Consider joining the herd. We should have additional chicken and pork herd share openings soon. Let us know if you’re interested or waiting to join.
As you all likely know, our chicken production is seasonal. I love the change in the seasons and the change in our workload that comes with it. The kids were overjoyed with excitement and anxious to help with the arrival of our fist batch of chicks this year. If we had chicks coming in every week all year, would they still share the same excitement at the arrival of the baby chicks? Not hardly. I’m sure the excitement will wear off by the end of this season. There is a newness with the change of seasons that is only exciting if we’re willing to adapt to the seasons. We are not seasonal for the sake of excitement. We are seasonal because that’s the way God designed the seasons. Birds fly south for the winter. They return in the spring. Our chicken production is seasonal because that’s what’s best for the chickens and likewise what’s best for the land. Excitement for the change in seasons is just a bonus for us farmers that comes with it. Lots of work also comes with it.
Speaking of seasons, this week while pulling trees into a pile for future firewood, I listened to THE WINTER ROOM by Gary Paulson, as a young boy gives his perspective on the change in seasons.
In summer, “The days are long, and the nights are short. Many times we eat supper after 10:00 when it’s dark.”
Fall is the killing season. “And there’s blood and blood and blood and more blood, and I hate fall… I know it has to be done. And every year mother explains it to me again, though she doesn’t come to the barn when the killing happens.”
“‘It’s the way of it,’ father says, ‘something has to die so we can live.’ Mother nods.”
Much of winter was spent in “the winter room” telling stories. Stories that weren’t just told. They were lived. Though some stories seem larger than life.
Have a good week.
Will