The Circle of Life

The circle of life is complete at the Smith homestead. Yesterday Winnie the Wyandotte died. I first noticed Winnie was sick yesterday morning. I did my morning head count, and she was lying on the floor of the coop beneath the perch where the whole gang sleeps every night. I thought she had died on the perch and fallen to the floor. I went to pick her up, and she moved, but I could tell she was sick. So I put her in a warm box with some oat grass from the garden and went inside to do a little research about caring for sick chickens. What I read informed me that it would be a good idea to look after her nutrition and hydration, so I made up a concoction of Gatorade, water, boiled eggs, egg shells, oat grass, bread scraps, and dirt and blended it all up in the blender. Then I took a syringe and started injecting it into her mouth a little at a time. She was swallowing, so I took courage and started to give her a little more at a time. I put three squirts of the stuff into her mouth and waited for her to swallow in between each one. Even though I didn't see her swallow, I somehow didn't connect the fact that the stuff was still somewhere in her head or neck, so I just kept squirting it in. She started turning her head upside down and flapping her wings lightly like she had been doing earlier in the day as I was caring for her, so I didn't think anything of it at that time, but I think that was the first sign she was choking. After the third squirt, I got the idea I should slow down, but it was already too late. As I watched for her to swallow, I began to smell a bowel movement. I thought it was the poop that was caked in her feathers from lying under the perch, but I looked down to see a fresh BM running down the side of my legs as well as Winnie's legs stretched out backward as far as they could go--signs she was struggling to breathe. Her head and neck were relaxed in my left hand, and I knew she was dead. I had killed her.

My first moment of true sadness as a homesteader had come. It was not from the monetary loss of livestock--she cost $8 a couple months ago. It was not from the mere loss of life that I felt the sadness. It was from the knowledge that I had caused a poor animal to struggle, suffer, and die.

Since I work overnight, I went to sleep in the afternoon. When I woke up later in the evening, I went out to check on all the animals again, and what I heard lifted my spirits. First there was the BAAHHH! mmBAAH! of the yearlings. Then the mmaaaaaah! of the 2-month-old billies, and then the mmmaaaaaaaaah! of the new baby goats! Hilda had given birth to two boys and a girl, and they were so teeny and cute! They sounded like Chipmunk goats! There wasn't much to the birth from our perspective. I just went out there and there they were. We cleaned the umbilical cords and gave some extra feed to Hilda, and then I laid a pallet inside the goat house and covered it with carpet so they would have somewhere respectable to live in case it started raining. Hilda wasn't happy when I moved the babies from the middle of the forest into the house. She's a pushover, though. When we get near the babies, she approaches with one single step and looks very concerned, but if the babies are already near her, she will run away. I'm trying to make friends with her so she won't worry about us trying to hurt her babies--and because I want her milk in several weeks! But food is proving not to be the best way to this goat's heart. I just hope we can find out what is soon. I think rope works, but I don't want to have to go that route.

So the circle of life is complete here at the Smith homestead. We had a good time today installing a brand new tire swing with parts harvested from our forest!

Firewood

A couple days ago, I got a return call from a guy who had posted an ad on Craigslist for some free firewood. He is in the tree cutting business and wanted to find someone to take the wood away after he finishes a job. So I was the lucky candidate, and all I had to do was drop everything, hook up my trailer, drive 35 miles, help load up a little less than a cord of firewood, completely demolish my trailer's footjack on the way out of the driveway, and store the wood up in my shed for use next year. Now all we need is a wood-burning stove. Soon.

The pictures in this post are of Em and me enjoying the first eggs from our chickens, the first load of firewood I ever got, the chicken coop I built (er...am still in the process of building), our attempt at making boston creme donuts at home, the doghouse I am DEFINITELY still in the process of building, a load of free pallets I scored from the local Ace Hardware, a video of my daughter helping move firewood, a picture of the goathouse I built, and a picture of my son being the cutest thing on the planet.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like a Homestead

My homesteading efforts may not be paying off very big yet, but it is paying off. And, from the looks of things, you'd think I've been doing this for years! I unloaded a bunch of firewood yesterday and stacked it up in my shed. I have eggs from my chickens, and my pregnant goat has huge udders. So my wife and I wrote a song. Well...we wrote one verse of a song.

It's beginning to look a lot like a homestead
Everywhere you go.
There's some firewood in the shed.
There are chickens laying eggs
In our own back yard!

Now I just need to come up with the rest of it--and 9 or 10 more songs--and I'll have a whole album!

Pictures

I haven't put up any pictures of all the exciting things I've been talking about, so here they are all in one big batch. Enjoy

First Eggs!

This morning I posted about the first eggs I harvested from my free range chicken operation in a post that was about ten miles long, so I thought I'd give this event some more attention in a dedicated post.

Last night I went outside around two in the morning to work on the chicken coop. As I was setting up my work area, I happened to shine my headlight on a spot of ground inside the goat house and saw an egg lying there in the forest groundcover. At first, I felt like I was back at Doug's house (the man who sold us the chickens). He had over 100 chickens and lots of eggs lying around his yard. There was even a hatched chick lying dead right next to its shell on top of one of his cages. So when I saw this egg lying in the dirt inside the goat house, my first reaction was to think nothing of it since that was the first environment in which I ever saw home-raised eggs laid. Then, a split second later, I thought, "Wait a minute! That's an EGG! From MY CHICKEN!" I hurried over and picked up the egg excitedly, let out a great big YAAAHOOOO! and began inspecting it. It was what you'd probably call a small egg by grocery store standards. It was tan in color, and its shape was a lot more like that of a fig than a typical supermarket egg. I was about to turn back to the house to go wake up Emily to show her the eggs. I was so excited I didn't care if I had to wake up my pregnant breastfeeding sleep deprived wife to show her the evidence of our newest achievement in life. That thought quickly gave way to the thought that it would be much more pleasant in the long term to wait until she wakes up in the morning to show her the egg. As I started back to the house to store the egg inside, I stumbled upon another egg lying under the eave of the goat house and gave another forest-echoing holler for joy. I started back to the house with both my little eggs in tow. Emily was awake with the baby when I got inside, so I showed her the eggs briefly by holding them up in the light of my headlight. I just stood there, not saying a word, awaiting her response, which came quite as quite an anti-climax to me. She simply gave a thumbs up and said, "cool." To her credit, she did just wake up in the middle of the night to feed a crying baby. But we both enjoyed eating the eggs together in the morning! We got pictures!

This morning I went outside again to clear out the lean-to to make room for the load of free firewood we picked up today. I began removing items one by one from the shed when I saw my small dog, Mori, standing outside looking up at me with a look of shame holding an egg in his mouth! As soon as we made eye contact, he started running away, but I said, "MORI...DROP IT!" He stopped, gently placed the egg on the ground, and ran away, probably to hide his wounded little self-esteem somewhere. My poor Mori is would be a manic depressive if he were a human. Anyway, I stopped to wonder where the heck he picked that egg up since he was outside of the fenced area where all the other animals were. I continued with my work and went back into the shed to find the fourth egg of my little adventure today lying on the ground in the corner. I conjectured that Mori had probably picked up his egg from this same spot as it had been a well secluded, private corner hidden by a shelving unit before I moved it out of the shed. So...that was about 9 hours ago. I'd be willing to bet there are some more eggs waiting out there for me to go out and harvest them.

Another Nature Rant

We think we are so advanced with our technology. We think nature is "primitive" and that people who live close to nature are somehow backward, but I for one think that nature utilizes the most advanced technologies.

Here's a thought. We think it is impossible to achieve a 100% efficiency rate in any kind of energy transfer whether chemical, thermal, mechanical, or a combination of these. It is impossible, we think, to put any amount of input into an equation and receive an identical amount of output. If you're driving a car, you have less than 100% mechanical efficiency because some of the energy from the fuel you burn is absorbed by the engine as heat, not converted directly into mechanical energy. Some of the motion created by the engine is not converted into forward motion because as the mechanical energy is transferred from the pistons to the crankshaft to the transmission to the drive shaft to the wheels to the road, that energy becomes less powerful. It's like a row of balls running into each other. If you line up ten balls in a row so that they will collide in succession, the last ball in the row will not move as fast as the ball that struck the first one because each time that collision takes place along the line, it loses some force. Some of the motion that does make it to the road is lost with the flexion and reflexion of the tires as well as wind resistance. We humans think we must always receive LESS than what we put in.

Compare that to the technology nature uses. A tree grows from one seed and produces many other seeds. The leaves of the tree fall to the ground along with the seed, providing its own source of nutrition for the tree itself and the next generation tree, or the seed. So, so far, this single seed has taken nutrients from the soil and created enough matter to grow itself, feed itself with its own waste products, and establish a descendant which will do the same things. The seed sprouts up and continues the cycle. Now, assuming the soil had to be amended to grow the tree in the first place--which would only be the case for the very first tree ever created-- and taking the existence of soil for granted--after you get the first tree going, you have a seemingly never-ending cycle of tree multiplication. Think about it. That means that if you take one single seed and allow it to propagate and reproduce, that single seed can be the source of millions of trees later. What this means is that nature has achieved chemical and mechanical efficiency rates of over 100%! Indeed, if you consider that trees and all other vegetation can and do reproduce spontaneously in the right conditions, that means nature's mechanical efficiency rate is INFINITY!

We think we know that matter can neither be created nor lost, and perhaps we're right. If we're not right, I think that would explain how nature is able to perform so impressively. If we are right, here are two possible explanations:

The earth is like a battery. Everything needed for an entire human race to survive for a several or so millenia (since I'm not sparing anyone my religious views, I think the earth is really only 7000 or so years old and that it won't be around in its current form for much longer) was packed into the earth when it was created. That means that somewhere deep in the layers of the earth, beneath all that seemingly useless uncultivated dirt (which may not seem to be so useless if we were a little more advanced in our powers of observation--Darwin and the earthworm, anybody?) all the material to create all those trees is just slowly being pumped to the surface of the earth by some unknown geological force, which means that one day the earth will run out of new materials to add to the cycle and no more new trees can be created without an equal amount of old ones dying first. Hey, it's been working that way for decades with our consumption of oil. Why can't dirt be the same way?

If the battery theory is correct, it would offer another explanation for the phenomenon known as desertification. All the fertile vegetation is leaving one part of the earth to fertilize another place on the earth. This movement could be governed by some sort of geological "survival of the fittest" criterion.

The second possible explanation is that we are not as smart as we think we are and that matter really can be created. Either explanation, whether true or not, provides an opportunity for us humans to slow down and think about our place in this world and in the universe and consider that perhaps there is a "next big thing" out there for us if we were open to the opportunity. I think those who are looking beyond the mark by placing faith and trust in their own creations end up ironically focusing through their distorted lenses on what is pitifully short of the mark--themselves.

Nature provides us with everything we need. Yes, modern technology has advanced our ability to utilize what is available to us, but we will never be able to manufacture oxygen. We will never be able to provide food for ourselves without nature. Unfortunately, because of our technological state, most people I've ever met don't understand the importance of nature and the importance of our being attuned to its harmony and knowledgeable about its processes.

A person who chooses to associate himself with and benefit from that entity which possesses the most advanced wisdom and technology doesn't seem to ME to be very backwards. It is said that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. I hope one day we can all find ourselves ready to receive the teacher. When we do, we will find that she has been right there under our noses all along.

Chicken Story

So here's what happened with the chickens.

We went to see this guy named Doug who lived on two acres with about 150 chickens, three goats, two cows, two dogs, a wife, and two grown children. He was a really nice fella. He walked around his property with us for about two hours showing us his operation and answering our questions about raising chickens. During our visit, my friend Jesse called me, and Doug even took the time to talk to Jesse on the phone and answer some questions for him. I'm really glad Emily went with me because she came away from the whole experience with the realization that it doesn't take a whole bunch of time and money to raise chickens. She also really surprised me by helping me load the chickens into the car. We didn't bring a camera with us, but I still have a perfect picture in my head of the way she looked holding a chicken upside down by its legs in either hand and the look on her face. It was Emily, through and through. She was like a child who really wanted to go play in the mud but didn't want to get wet and dirty, finally succumbing to the peer pressure and the look of having a really good time. She was a bit standoffish toward toting the chickens around on her first trip from the coop to the car, but by the second trip she was an old pro, proving me (and probably herself) wrong that she would never make a good farmer's wife.

We left that day with 13 chickens in tow and no idea how we were going to keep them. (Are you starting to see a pattern here? Yeah, we're learning.) We thought the feed store was closed already for the night, and we knew we didn't have an adequate long-term shelter for them. I only realized the feeding would be a problem after we had parted company with Doug, so I called him back for advice, and he said they should be alright until the morning since he had just fed them. Still, I wasn't content to know that I didn't have a plan in place to feed my new avaian constituents. Luckily, Tractor Supply Co was still open, so we stopped there and bought some layer feed. Much to our surprise, however, being the green city folk we were at the time, when we let the chickens into our dirt-floor shed and started clearing out the clutter lying on the ground, the chickens went absolutely nutty cleaning the bugs out of the place! There had been some old bags of concrete, plywood, and other things sitting in the shed for a long time, so the insect populations thriving in these little hidden crevices. The funniest part was when I removed a piece of plywood that was leaning up against the wall and walked away. Seconds later I began to hear, "knock...knock...knock knock knock...knock knock...knock." I went back to look, and our rooster was massacring a community of crickets that had made their home on the wall behind this plywood.

About ten days after we brought the chickens home, we had to leave town for a few days. We asked around at church for someone to watch our animals for us and found a lady who thought it would be a good idea to have her kids help out. We had them over to see the animals before we left and show them where everything was, and we left some written instructions for them in case they had forgotten anything. Two days into our trip, we got a call from the lady saying one of the chickens had died. It was just dead on the ground in the shed. No marks, no body parts, just a dead chicken. I thought it was a normal part of raising animals of any kind to have at least some kind of mortality rate, so I didn't think much of it at the time, especially since there was nothing I could do about it anyway.

As a little side story, the lady called and told my wife the chicken had died, who then told me, who then asked my wife, "What did they do with the chicken?" My wife said the lady didn't know what to do so she had left the chicken in the shed, to which I replied, "Did it not occur to you that it is not good for chickens to live around animal carcasses so you should ask her to remove the chicken from the shed?" to which my wife replied, "No, it didn't occur to me." My sweet wife--she's a baby tank and a hard worker and an excellent lover and very intelligent and thoughtful and kind and and and--but she's not a scientific thinker at all. She said, "Do you want me to call and ask her to go back to the house and get rid of the chicken?" to which I replied, "Uh, YES!" She called back a few minutes later to ask the lady to remove the carcass, but she told us that she had spoken to her husband on the phone who also said it wasn't a good idea to leave the chicken in the shed, so she was already on her way back to the house.

See?! We men are good for something!

We arrived home two days after the chicken died. The first thing I did was to check on the chickens. When I walked in, I was a bit angry about what I saw, I'll have to admit. It was night time and the lamp had been left on, so my first thought was, "Oh, they left the light on all the time, so the chickens never slept." Then I noticed the water pot had chicken crap and flies in it, so then I thought, "...and they never changed the water." The next thing I noticed was that the feeder was no longer hanging from the ceiling but was instead sitting on the ground, AND the stack was completely filled, so it was going bad collecting dirt and feathers. I cleaned and fixed things up and thought about the whole thing. First of all, I didn't leave specific instructions about how much food to give the chickens, so they just filled it to the top. Makes sense, right? That's my fault. Second, the water pot was almost always knocked over when I went to check on the chickens the first few days, so the fact that there was water in the pot at all was evidence that they had paid attention to the water pot. The fact that it was--a pot--and the fact that I hadn't made better arrangements for a clean, secure water source for my chickens was, again, my fault. Third, the light was left on, but they said they turned it off every night, so I was willing to let that go since it's really not that big a deal. And, last and most, I went out to check on the chickens again two hours after I got home, and another chicken had planted face into the ground dead.

I got the big idea that perhaps placing 13 chickens in a shed with no sunlight or ventilation for two weeks was a bad idea--which was MY bad idea, and not the fault of the sweet people who agreed to come to my house to care for my animals twice a day for four days. I immediately moved all the chickens out to the goat pen where they began the next day eagerly scratching and hunting for food. I have lost two more chickens since the move, but none for improper accommodations. One was killed by an unknown canine assailant after she left the safety of the pen, and another disappeared the day after we moved the chickens into the pen. I think she either ran away to live with the neighbor chickens or got eaten by a dog. It's weird, though. I never found a carcass, but there were Barred Rock feathers spread around the yard--and not very many of them--not enough to make it look like there had been a struggle or any *YUK YUK* FOWL play!

I have since learned that ventilation is very important. Duh. What land-lubbing vertebrate can survive without fresh air? See...these are the important things mankind has forgotten in our "advanced" state. We think we are so advanced with our technology. We think nature is "primitive" and that people who live close to nature are somehow backward, but I for one think that...oh, I'll save it for the next blog post. So the chickens are definitely very well ventilated. In their pen they foraged for food for a couple weeks in addition to feeding off the layer and finisher feed I combined in their feeder. Then I had a talk with my best friend in the whole world Jesse, who has two chickens. He told me about how he kept his chickens in their little pen for months until one day he decided to let them out in the forest in his yard to free range and eat a natural diet of bugs and vegetation. The results, he reported, were healthier chickens as evidenced by their deep red-colored, enlarged wattles and the fact that they didn't begin laying until he let them free range. And the icing on the cake from a poultrykeeper's perspective is that they snuggle up together on the rail of his front porch at night. Even though he lives a stone's throw away from the downtown area of an established suburban city on an acre of land with no fence on a two-lane road, his chickens go to the forest to eat and then go to the porch to sleep. They don't run away, and the predators in the neighborhood are so domesticated they wouldn't know what to do with a chicken if they found one--much like the predators in my neighborhood, I've found. Of course he still has his pen for what it's worth, but it's not like his chickens wouldn't survive without it.

The next night, I was out bottle feeding the baby goats before going to work, and I was worrying about what I was going to do to feed and house all these animals when I said, "Ya know, all kinds of birds and four-legged animals survive in the forests all over the world without any human intervention of any kind. With the human interventions of food and shelter, they become loyal to a place and that becomes their home. So...number one, this 20' pen is a pathetic excuse for faith in nature. And number two, this 20' pen is going to cost me a whole lot more money and time than free range goats and chickens would."

So, I ripped off my shirt, beat my chest, screamed into the darkened forest thick, stood there for a minute thinking, "Man, that was overboard," then then stooped down to lift up the bottom of the chain link fence to let all the animals out into the forest.

It has been, gosh, at least two weeks. That was before Thanksgiving. I have fed my adult goats and all the chickens nothing except a daily refreshing of the waterer and a couple small scoops of cracked corn and sweet feed in the last week or so once a day in the morning when we go out to feed the baby goats.

My results?

My goats and chickens are all still alive. It's near freezing here at night, and my goats don't use the shelter I built for them--even when it's raining. My chickens stay inside the fence most of the time, but even when they don't, they stay in the general area. And, the best part is that my chickens have begun laying, too! Last night I picked up the first two eggs from my free range chicken operation and gave a great big ol' "YAHOOOO!" for each one even though it was two in the morning.

This is healing.