As I write this, Undici is bawling by the fence where she last saw her mother. Ayla died yesterday in the pasture we call The Last Supper. It was her time to go. For the past few days I have been anxious, fretting, awake nights, staring at the grass, fussing with the fences, making a detailed [...]
I did an experiment with my chickens this year. I ordered ten cockerels (male chicks) of the largest chicken breed: Jersey Giants. According to the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy, Jersey Giants were bred in the late 1800′s by two men in New Jersey who wanted a large chicken that could compete with turkey for its [...]
The past couple mornings I have opened my eyes feeling a heaviness that would hold me in my bed if it weren’t for the sound of the chickens on the porch, the roosters crowing, and the cows coughing at the water trough. I worry about the coughing and remember what’s it like to have too [...]
It’s harvest time on the farm. Here’s how it works… Hello past Crazy Wife Farm beef customers, You have the first shot at buying beef this year since you are past customers. I am planning to process two cows this year, one very large and one smaller. The large animal will be sold as quarter [...]
I just finished reading the Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck, as part of my continuing education about the history of food and agriculture. I wasn’t at all prepared for the ending. I like resolution. Toward the last few chapters of the book I was holding the paperback in my hands, a very thick slice [...]
As you approach the supermarket’s automatic doors you walk onto a conveyer belt where your retina is scanned, your bone structure is measured, and your weight flashes on a flat screen in big red numbers before the glass doors open to let you inside to do your shopping. As you place your hands on the [...]
I subscribe to a number of food industry newsletters because I edit a monthly digest of farm and food news stories for the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Working Group. One of the weekly newsletters I receive is about new equipment and supplies for industrial meat processors. This week’s hot topic is automated smoke stick loading robotics [...]
It’s Monday morning, the sky is grey, and it smells like autumn. A patch of leaves here and there are going from green to peach and the tall summer weeds are getting woody. I have a conference call at 11:30, the washer and dryer are full and waiting, and there are dirty dishes in the [...]
When we started farming, one of the things Chet and I realized was how repetitious our life had become. We always wrote notes to ourselves. But on the farm, we found ourselves writing the same notes over and over again. So eventually we wrote permanent notes and kept them handy in the kitchen where they [...]
Trim the goat’s hooves, brush-hog the pastures, take out the compost, clean the barn, muck the holding pen, clean the nesting boxes, muck the chicken coop, get the broken hay ring out of the pasture, put the new hay ring together in the pasture, fix the fence in the south pasture, weed the vegetable garden, [...]