It was all a joke, Little Gerry

No, no, you’re not actually For Sale.  And, yes, we all had a good laugh over it.  Of course, you didn’t laugh.  How could you?  You’re a calf.  I never REALLY meant to sell you.  I was just so mad that last time you broke into the garden – again!  You slithered right under the sturdy fencing that we had erected, just like a small dog, and then proceeded to totally decimate our corn patch – you chomped the plants right down to the root!  That crop had taken several weeks to grow, and we were just about ready to harvest the corn.  I wanted to put you on the barbecue right then and there!  And, yes, I offered you up for sale in a fit of fury!

We had a few offers too – but all too low (we wouldn’t let them insult you that way…).  Nobody understood your value.  The reality is, Little Gerry, you are not for sale at any price.  We shall keep you here at the farm, where you can continue to enjoy the pastoral life, and we have taken steps to reinforce the fencing.  However, Little Gerry, if you annihilate the garden again, Big Gerry is going to get served the best steak he’s had in his life…

No Turkey for Thanksgiving

Well, Mr. Turkey didn’t last long.  One morning, when Jose went out to feed all the animals, he found him dead in the hen house!  We were serving him a special protein-enriched diet, he was doing so well with the hens, and the weeks just went by in idyllic avian fashion.  So his sudden death - with not a mark on him - came as a real surprise.  Was it blackhead disease – Histamonas melagridas?  We didn’t go to the expense of an autopsy, but asked around if anyone knew anything about turkeys.  A neighbor told us that they are more delicate than hens; that sometimes they just keel over for no apparent reason.  Well, so much for Thanksgiving turkey…

As we have found out very clearly living here this long, you should stick with what works locally, go native….  In the case of poultry, we shall stick to ‘criollo’ hens.  The Finca hens live the good life.  They spend their days outside, pecking all around the stable-yard, helping us to control insect larvae.  The compost is produced so much faster with the hens pecking away at it, and they also add their own nitrogen-rich droppings to the mix.  Even if we didn’t eat the eggs (which we do with much gusto), we would still keep hens out at the stable to control the insects.  At night, most of them return inside, though some prefer to roost outside up in the trees.  But they stay very close; we live in a forest with predators close by…

The eggs taste ssooooooo good.  We’re just approaching a population size now where we should cull some of the flock, especially the roosters – or else they will kill each other.  In the past, we didn’t have that problem, as predators always got to them first.  I just reread the ‘Omnivore’s Dilemma’, by Michael Pollan, and it just keeps delivering fresh insights.  The author found the chicken-killing experience unpleasant – who wouldn’t?  But he did it nonetheless.  The chickens had lived a good life at Polyface farm, and grass farmer, Joel Salatin, made sure that they were quickly killed and processed; very 4H.

But can I actually kill a chicken?  I don’t know.  I definitely will not pluck one – we’ll rent one of those machines I read about in Pollan’s book.  The whole thing will have to be organized with help from experienced farmers.  In any case, we can at least say that we know where our food comes from.

We mostly eat vegetables and fruit grown right here on the farm, and the animals play a huge role in improving the soil in which we grow everything.  Horse and cow manure, composted with stable bedding, chicken droppings and kitchen, produces a compost mix that, I contend, has greater value than gold.  The soil keeps getting better and better, as we continuously add more organic matter.  Gardening is something everybody can do to make his or her life a bit more enriching – in health and in spirit.  You see nature at work and you begin to deeply understand how interconnected everything is – how life circles back around through the soil.  Pollan describes this very well in ‘Omnivore’s Dilemma’.  You can’t read his books and go back into the grocery store like you did before.  You learn where your food comes from; you’ve gotten a glimpse of the industrial food business and the brutal treatment of animals.  And you want to eat food grown locally, even better grown by yourself!  The gardening experience brings so many benefits.  I truly believe that, to comprehend nature, you have to go beyond observation; you have to engage in it – growing and rearing things yourself - and then you really begin to learn the lessons.  Plants and animals tell us what they need just by looking at them!