Culling the Flock-with an entourage

Today I traded a dozen eggs and a luffa for a hired gun, that's right-a sharpshooter. I needed help. My poor hens were suffering from a non stop show off of "I have more cock-a-doodle-do than you do" game amongst the resident roosters.  Here is a little history about our "roo-splosion," then I will explain the bit about my entourage.

Last August we received our first mail order shipment of chicks. It was a "bargain bag," meaning an assortment of leftovers. What a deal right? Not so much. Twenty six adorable chicks arrived. Of those twenty six we have had to dispatch eighteen roosters. One still remains, or I should say at least one still remains as we are still a little unsure of the sex of two more, which secretly deep down means we think they might be Roos too.  Don't get me wrong, when I orderd straight run chicks I knew I was going to have to cull roosters, however I didn't expect it to be quite as dramatic as it has turned out to be. 

About six weeks ago my husband and I, despite chilling rain took care of nine. I was totally tired of feeding so many roosters, not to mention tired of watching them begin to torment the hens.  It was cold and wet outside and the kids wisely stayed inside to play Legos. As my fingers were starting to numb around rooster number six I began cursing myself for allowing this to happen. Removing feathers is a total pain. The birds looked so skinny. (Because they were heritage birds, not a standard grow super fat quick meatbird) It was beginning to feel like a whole lot of work for a little bit of meat.  On the bright side, not growing up on a farm, I was gaining confidence in dispatching and eviscerating a chicken. Afterall apart from a few well chosen books recommended from Mother Earth News I had learned all of my skills from an assortment of YouTube videos including but not limited to a chicken evisceration performed by a young woman with a toddler wrapped in a sling on her back and a dispatch done by an authentic hillbilly under his deer stand. Anyway, I was thankful that I had only managed to catch nine. I would have cried if I had had to pluck one more bird under the slow and steady drizzle of a winter rain in Georgia.

Fast forward a couple weeks. I head to the coop to let the chickens out. On my way I resolve that if I can catch a rooster I will engage myself in the gruesome task of rooster culling. At this point I have attempted a few catches before and the roosters seem to be up on my game, so much to my surprise I was successful in catching not one but three more. Here goes. This time I go at the whole thing alone. Husband and boys spending quality, non violent time together. Three is bearable I say to myself. I can do this. I did. I was super proud of myself.

Another week or so, I catch one more. Only one more. The others are getting savy and my tricks of treats are no longer effective. Neither apparantely is cornering.  Well, I have one. He is bothering the hen. Better get to work.  Again, all by myself. Something about being all by myself is peaceful, even though I am hardly doing anything peaceful. I am killing a chicken and ripping its guts out. Gross.

I keep trying to snag the remaining roosters. I would like to admire their tenacity and allow them to live. I can't do that though. I love my hens. I love my eggs. My hens are suffering a relentless assault of rooster ego. And dinner is good, my family needs dinner. So I keep trying.

Now here we are back to today. I resolve to get help, aim and shoot help.  This may seem cruel but my hens really were suffering. I ask my husband to invite a gun loving friend to help us out.  Now comes the entourage. The friend comes with his two beautiful children, eight and two. My kids love friends. Now I have four kids curious about this rooster killing thing. My kids know what has been going on. They know where their dinners come from. My first kill both boys were there, eager to learn.  The second time they understandably asked to play somewhere else and were rather reserved about eating meat at dinner. Apparantely they have come full circle. They watched the last rooster evisceration with curiosity, questions, and respect. Still I wasn't quite prepared to do the whole job with four big pairs of eyes and hands.

At the coop my hired gun gets two Roos. I bring them back to my chopping block and sever the heads. This is where it got a little weird. The kids were very interested in the head. They were very interested in the death throws. They had questions. Why is the beak still moving? Thus the resulting stick poking at still moving chopped off chicken head. The death throws at our house are explained as the chicken flapping its spirit away helping it make its journey to its friends. My kids are used to this, it seemed to go over well with our visitors. Let's all help wave the chicken spirit off to chicken heaven and honor their lives.  

Now I have two chickens handing upside down bleeding out and I am beginning to wonder if this is an appropriate activity for a group of kids to be a part of on a Sunday afternoon. It is just kind of gruesome, it makes my heart beat faster, I get a little ache in my stomach, and honestly I can't wait for it to be over.  I want a beer. Or two.

It's not over. Time to scald and pluck. Yes, the kids help. Curiosity still the motivator. The question is still rolling around my brain, what kind of mother am I? Nightmares anyone? 

I move my operation and begin cutting off the feet, cutting the poor bird open and removing the guts. Interest is peeking on the kids part so as each part is removed we talk about it and look at it, the heart, lungs, never ending intestines, and the windpipe. The teacher in me approves of this. Anatomy. Biological science. In house field trip. I am a good mother.

Wait a second. These children just watched me point out a kill and finish the deed with my own hands. I am a murderer. Bad mother.

Why am I conflicted about this? What is my adorable little entourage teaching me about my choices? 

Luckily the children's interest had waned for round two. I had a good bit of time to think about these questions as I moved through the motions on my own.  I am bravely concluding that I am not a bad mother because I allowed my children to watch me kill an animal, more than once. I am not a bad mother because I plan on allowing them to watch me do it again and again. I am not a bad mother because I hope they participate more as they grow.  I am making a conscious choice not to shelter them from the sometimes unpleasant realities of life. I take pride that our friend felt it was a good choice to bring his kids and encourage them to participate in a brutally real event.  This is closing the circle allowing it to continue going round and round. The circle of respect. The circle of thankfulness. The circle of need. The circle of giving and sacrifice. The circle of life.

We ate curried rooster and biscuits for dinner. It was good. I had a homebrew with it. I deserved it. My kids are happy. I don't think they are going to have nightmares. Their father is reading stories to them  right now. I hear giggling. There are two more dinners in the freezer. Tomorrow we are going to transplant some strawberries. Tomorrow is not going to be gruesome. This spring will be sweet.  If it ever comes. I am tired, but I am smiling. 

Sweet dreams.

My First Eggasm

Did the title get your attention? I hope so. There really is such thing as an eggasm and it is amazing! My husband coined the term this winter when I came running into the house with Evoline's first egg.   I was overflowing, grinning ear to ear, my thumb and forefinger delicately holding up a tiny light green egg for everyone to see, somewhere inside thinking that everyone would or should be as excited as I.  Evoline was a special bird, the first to hatch from a clutch of eggs I was incubating in my classroom. Evoline was actually lucky enough to have most of our elementary school watching and cheering her tough journey out of her egg on their classroom smart boards via a live feed I had hooked up above the incubator. As her comb began to redden, a sure sign laying will ensue, I stalked the hen house even more vigilantly probably annoying all its occupants.  So yes it was very exciting, even exhilarating to finally discover that little egg. 

 I like my husband's term, even though it was clearly poking fun at me. I like it because I think it explains a lot of my motivation in the pursuit of homestead happiness. It is hard work spattered with failures and disappointments. Just last week I nearly cried when we returned from a week away to find that my entire row of kidney beans sprouted and molding in their pods after a week of steady rain. I mean they were beautiful when we left! I was expecting the usually painfully dry July weather to scorch the beans into dry legume heaven. Or how about that melon that I have stalked since pollination? Know what happened to that one? My good friend the squirrel decided to have just enough to ruin the whole melon. On the bright side the chickens got a good treat that day. We also thought we were so smart to  take free mulch from the local public works. Amazing stuff. Makes everything grow like crazy. Little did we know that one or two loads was heavily laden with a hidden demon, a weed we call Bermuda grass. Yup. Bad stuff. And guess what it grows in that super rich mulch like the plant from Little Shop of Horrors. There is always work to be done. Wood to be chopped. Animals to be fed. Blisters and backaches. Predators. Grass to be mowed. Weeds to be pulled. Harvest to put up. Pruning. Cleaning. Blah blah blah. But amidst all that toil are moments of Eggasm! It is not just for eggs, although if you like receiving gifts I highly recommend raising some chickens because collecting eggs everyday feels like Christmas everyday! It is the first bean sprout that erupts from your painstaking efforts to cultivate the darkest soil ever. It is the first squash blossoms and finding the bees busy at work pollinating. A full wood shed before the first frost. The first baby green tomatoes, the first hint of red, and finally the first bite. Cooking with your own garlic. Watching the beans climb your newly designed trellis just like you imagined!  Your child's smile after that first bite of fresh corn on the cob picked that morning.  Staring at your pantry filled with your own preserves relived through the dark winter months as you spread blueberry heaven on freshly baked bread.

When I tell people that I am trying to grow as much of my own food I can the first response I get is in reference to how much money we must save on groceries. Someday I do hope that to be true but that is not at all why I do it, and honestly we just aren't that good yet. First and foremost I want to raise a healthy family and I just don't trust or respect our current food system to support me there. I respect our planet and I want my actions to benefit her, again not happening with our current pesticide laden, monoculture food system. But let's be realistic here, I could carefully monitor every purchase, peruse all the local farmers markets, join a CSA, be off the hook for all the toil. If I chose that route however, where would all the Eggasms be?  

If you haven't yet experienced a real Eggasm, I want you to find a seed. Plant it. Nurture it. Cry if it dies but please don't give up. Find another and try again. I promise you once you have your first Eggasm, you will never turn back. 

I Love Dirt!

Life on the homestead is pretty dirty right now. Spring planting and bed preparation has begun in earnest, Adam is bringing home nightly pots filled with transplants discarded from client's homes, spring garlic is finding itself in the cast iron skillet, garden greens are getting tossed in vinaigrette, flowers are popping everywhere! The dirt under my fingernails is now a permanent fixture, alongside blisters, poison ivy, splinters, and an occassional scrape. Inevitably someone needs something from inside and few of us are patient enough to unlace so the floor bears a gritty shine, soap dishes are lined with dirt splashes, the chopping block even sports a few dirt crumbs carried in by radishes and gloves, a pile of dirt-caked overalls and socks linger at the back door too dirty to wait in the hamper for wash day, and dare I speak of the lovely ring around the tub! This is life! I am going to cry when I have to return to school on Monday, once again closed in by four walls and a mountain of paperwork, luckily I work with amazing children and have managed to cultivate the beginnings of a decent school garden, so technically I am still engaged with dirt in my professional life, and so exhausted by being indoors for so many hours a day, that upon my return home I find myself rejuvenated by the possibility to get really dirty before preparing dinner, tubbies, and bedtimes, that I jump right in, weeding with a grin!

What is this love affair I have with Dirt? Could it not be the most amazing substance on Earth? I think of the Native American Folktale, "The Earth on Turtle's Back". I read it recently to my fourth graders who are beginning a unit on Native Americans. I chose the story to illustrate the theme of Survival but as I think about my affair with Dirt, this story comes to mind. Could it be that Dirt = Survival? Quite possibly so. Shall I share a quick version of the story with you, I am glad that you agree...so in the beginning there was only water, Sky Woman has a dream that the Tree of Life is uprooted, such a powerful dream must come true Sky Man orders the tree to be pulled up. Curious Sky Woman leans over to see below and falls, falls, falls down toward the ocean abyss. The water animals look up and see this creature falling. They send the swans up into the sky to catch and cradle Sky Woman. Immediately they recognize that she cannot live in the water, clearly her body lacks the appropriate adapations. The concerned animals decide they need to build her a place to land and live so one by one they attempt diving to the ocean bottom to bring up some Earth. Failure after failure occurs, and just as they are ready to give up teeny tiny muskrat says she or he (I can't remember and do no wish to offend...) will do it or die trying. (This is the survival theme I was shooting for with the kids; determination, motivation, etc.) What do you think happens, is little muskrat successful? Do we walk upon Earth everyday? (please don't argue this one with me, even if you walk on concrete most of the day, Earth is hiding below, just waiting for a breath of fresh air.) Yes, muskrat barely makes it to the surface, clutching one handful of Dirt. The ocean animals are all quite impressed, but quickly realize there is no place to put this Dirt. Wonderful, wise old turtle volunteers his or her back for the Dirt. Muskrat's hand lays the dirt on turtle's back and it begins to multiply covering all of turtle. The swans gently lay Sky Woman on turtle's new Earth back. In her clasped hand is the clutch of seeds she grabbed attempting to catch her fall out of Sky Land. She lays the seed in the dirt, and alas life as we know it began. Isn't that a wonderful story? It speaks to so much of why I love homesteading. I want to be an active participant in my family's survival. Is it a lot of work? Yes. Are our goals overwhelming at times? Absolutely. Is it worth it? Hands down the best life I could imagine for my family.

It is such a strange world that we live in now. In so many ways it is so disconnected to what we are, dirt. We can walk down any aisle in a grocery store and pick out just about anything we want, regardless of season, distance, or practicality. One might argue that this privilidge is so healthy, I mean fresh strawberries in December, yeah vitamin C. But is it healthier? Is it really any better, is there really any vitamin C left after the genetic modifications, long journey from Florida, and ripening in a truck? What happened? Have we completely fooled ourselves into thinking that having everything and in quantity at our fingertips is natural or normal? No wonder our student's lack the art of patience! How many have to wait, or resist the oh-so-tempting urge to pick their strawberries before they are ready?

Anyway, back to Dirt. We are what we eat. What we eat comes from dirt. We are dirt. It is our responsibility to care for it. If, anything at all, please start a compost bucket in your kitchen. Delegate a hole in the corner of your yard, or invest in a small home composting tub. Give dirt back what it gave you and I promise you it will not dissappoint you, or your children, or your children's children...

I started this post over a hot cup of tea last night, after a long busy day deconstructing pallets and recycling them into raised potato growing bins, preparing and planting our new addition to the farm titled "Cherry Lane", and scooting the chicken tractor around the yard to all the juicy clover patches. It must have been more exhausting than I realized because when my son asked me to read him some stories before bed, and asked me to snuggle him to sleep, I too drifted off, not to wake until the sun came up. So, I finish this post next to a steaming cup of coffee and a beautifully long list of to-do's for Saturday at the farm, no doubt involving OUR best friend, DIRT!