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 [...]
In the morning after chores I feed Moon, and while he is digesting his food, I meditate for twenty minutes. This morning as my brain was twinkling, the chickens screamed in panic, Moon barked and ran to the door, and I very reflexively jumped out of my meditation and ran to open the door for [...]
I am trying to teach Moon to speak chicken. My previous dog, a 150-pound bullmastiff named Henry, spoke perfect chicken and he taught me how to hear it, too. There is a difference between the cackling of hens laying eggs, the decoy screeches as they run across an open space without air cover, the social [...]
Farming is entirely weather dependent, so days when the weather is absolutely perfect tend to be good days on the farm. The weather in the Berkshires has been in the 80′s with clear skies and low humidity for a few days, and looks like it may stick around for a few more. In some places [...]
Each year I hope for one of my hens to go broody, an expression that means she wants to sit on a nest of eggs and hatch them into a brood of chicks. Typically, a broody hen will sit for a few days in the same place, on an egg or three, to demonstrate her [...]
The last post gave me a chance to complain and get all my angst out of my system. The big picture is actually lovely. I should be thankful that Moon has turned out to be such a cool dog, my sheepskins took only 30 lbs of salt and not all of Utah to cure, my [...]
I was interviewed for a newspaper article on farms that produce eggs. So many chicken myths came up in the discussion. “Chickens don’t lay eggs in winter,” and “you need artificial light to get chickens to lay eggs in winter.” Wrong. Chickens start to lay eggs when they are seven months old. It doesn’t matter [...]
Every group of living things has a pecking order – the most dominant creatures are at the top, the weakest and therefore most submissive creatures are at the bottom. It’s obvious among the chickens – the most dominant birds get the highest rungs on the roost, and the weakest birds get their feathers pecked until [...]
My seventh flock arrived today in a cake box full of holes, packed with straw, and fifty day-old chicks. The chicks were born on April 6th, shipped on April 7th, and arrived at the farm on April 8th. From the time they hatched in Ohio until the time they arrived at the farm in Massachusetts [...]
My fabulous bullmastiff, Henry, died on November 4th. I didn’t think I was going to get another dog. More than one friend challenged me. ”You can’t have a farm without a dog.” But I just wasn’t ready for the emotional attachment or the risk of loss or the extra work. Then one morning I was [...]