Hospice

“What’s new?” a friend asked me on the phone today. “Oh, you know. We fertilized the garlic, one of our chickens died,” I answered.

A week ago, we noticed one of the hens was limping a bit. We didn’t think too much of it. The next day while Joe and I were doing the evening chicken chore, we found her hiding in a laying box unable to walk. Because chickens love to pick on their weaker peers, the next morning we moved her out of the orchard. We thought she’d likely have to be killed since we can’t do much with a hen that can’t walk. So we called the quiet pen we set up for her ‘hospice’. She had fresh minors lettuce to feast on and I put a bowl of grain and one of water so close to her that she could reach them without moving. The next day as we weeded the strawberry field we took all the grubs we found in the dirt to her.

Probably just because I was the one to initially get her food and water set up, I took to caring for her. But maybe the reason I was so drawn to her was because she was the first chicken I’ve ever held. We started calling her Hospice. Everyone asked about her throughout the day. I talked to her each time I walked down the path past her pen. Janet kept the positive attitude that maybe just some rest would let her foot heal and she’d be fine. Since I don’t know much about chicken health, I adopted Janet’s attitude. The following day we delivered more grubs to her as we prepped the new beds for apple trees.

Over the three days, she only moved herself twice. The first time was in freight of me, but after that she seemed to recognize me was comfortable with me tending to her. The second time she moved herself was just before dusk on the second night, and I thought that must be a sign of improving health. I excitedly texted Janet and Jeff, “Lil’ hospi hen moved herself a bit to settle in for the night, she may pull out of it yet!”

Each morning I moved her to a fresh bed of hay since without walking she pooped right where she lay. Each evening, I notice her energy decreasing, and her poop looking more and more sickly. We read up on chicken diseases and found no matching symptoms. On Saturday morning, she barely was holding her head up, she hadn’t moved herself since Wednesday night, and her poop had become bizarre. I walked to Janet and Jeff’s cabin to deliver the news. It was time to slaughter her.

Janet asked if I wanted to help. I said no. Apparently it didn’t go too smoothly. But the next time I walked down the path the pen was empty. Her carcass was composted and she will continue to be part of creating life here on the farm. It’s still sad to walk past her empty pen. But caring for her allowed me to overcome my aversion to chickens and to realize how soft their bodies and feathers are and how smooth and tender their creepy looking feet actually feel.

So, yesterday Hospice died. Today I tended to the garlic. Tomorrow we’ll plant raspberries. Such is what’s new on the farm.

Equal

The equinox passed without much notice on the farm today. The clouds were emotional all day – coming and going, lowering and rising. Just before sunset I happily stood in a brief shower and watched the heavy rain as it fell before of a backdrop of green hills and slanting sunlight.

Janet and I spent the later afternoon seeding trays of flowers in preparation for Joe and my July wedding. It was wonderfully warm inside the greenhouse as we worked and chatted, and it’s opaque arching roof made me feel distant from the world outside. Like being teenagers sleeping in together under Janet’s big down comforter. Placing the last of the six seed trays on the table, I noticed how lovely it felt to be anticipating the bouquets that would arise from the black compost. What a different experience from picking out flowers in a floral shop refrigerator. This was the first piece of our vision for the wedding to be materialized. Everything else for the wedding – from the clothes, to the food, to the decorations – will all be made by hand, and therefore likely very close to the July deadline. But I will get to watch and water these seeds everyday for the next 17 weeks. Perhaps they will offer me a daily reminder to keep it (both the wedding and life in general I suppose) simple and eager for growth and change.

It was actually a perfect spring equinox. And the vision of the sunlit-rain, green fields, warm greenhouse, and Janet and my palms full of tiny seeds as we stand side by side will likely dwell in my memory.

Land

Today we tilled new rows in a hillside to become a 1/3 acre raspberry bed. It was an oddly lovely feeling to be participating with the land this way. Not just planting and growing in already established areas, but rather watching the growing space expand down the hill. At first it was strange to be tilling up open space, but as we moved down the hill with each new row, it felt right to be using this farm land for food production. It felt like the right thing to do.



In the morning before we tilled the new beds, we went to a neighbors farm to help plant trees in his stream restoration project.

An honored mentor of ours once told us that one of the great challenges of our generation will be to rekindle the difference between land and property. As I approach my 25th birthday, I feel swept up in the tide of my peers looking to buy houses. As Joe and I consider when in the not so many years we might have a child we dream of a yard that we can dig up and grow things in. But as I live on a piece of land that supports 5+ households and is the stomping ground of 4+ lovely young children (and 10+ lovely less-young folks) I feel even more compelled to find a way to nestle ourselves into this community for more time. To be part of this land. To raise a child as part of this land.

Being on this land reminds me that our sense of place is not about ownership. It's about how we relate to the space around and beneath us. Whether it's prepping space for growing, or planting trees to protect salmon habitat.

Compost

Cleaning up from brunch this morning, I stepped outside to toss the compost over the fence into the chickens in the orchard. As I crushed up the eggshells in my bare hand, I thought about whether all farmers compost.

While it is hard to imagine any person who relies on the soil and the strength of tiny plants for their livelihood tossing their potato peels in the trash, people farm for many different reasons. In reality ¬there is probably no safe assumption about organic versus conventional or small versus large-scale farmers and their composting values. But to me, composting is one of my favorite parts of growing things.

One of the first lessons I learned when we began volunteering on farms was that crops that never made it out of the field – for lack of labor or time to harvest them or unfavorable weather getting to them first – are not waste to be lamented over. It is just part of the nature of farming. Part of the annual cycle.

There are many choices we can make on a farm to keep the cycle close to home. Yesterday Janet drove down the road to a horse farm to get a truck-load of aged horse manure. After burning the prunings from the raspberries, we put the ash into the compost pile. The pigs we get in June will dine on apple pulp all fall while we press cider. The chickens are an important part of tilling and fertilizing the soil as they are rotated around the farm.



Finnriver produces a lovely list of food that keeps our meals delicious and close to home:











Eggs
Chicken
Pork (soon!)
Potatoes
Beets
Rutabegas
Parsnips
Carrots
Leeks
Onions
Garlic
Blueberries
Raspberries
Strawberries
Marion Berries
Blackberries
Currants
Logan Berries
Apples
Tomatoes
Tomatillos
Peppers
Eggplant
Melons
Zucchini
Beans – fresh and dry
Cucumbers
Cabbage
Kale
Chard
Radish
Lettuce
Spinach
Squash
Wheat
Oats
Hard Cider
Hops
Honey






















And it all comes from and goes back to this



Compost.

The Great Chicken Escape

For three days this past week Joe and I were in charge of what we jokingly call the Finnriver Chicken Farm. Janet and Jeff were out of town, and we were to see to the two, and then three, groups of chickens. There are the two-year old laying hens in the upper orchard. And the two-month old pullets, which will start laying in June, that live on the hill above the blueberry field. And on the morning of the third day, we rose at 6:30am with a phone call from the Chimacum Post Office informing us that our shipment of 250 chicks had arrived.



We worked quickly in the morning light to unpack the noisy boxes. Janet and Jeff had left their shelter all set up and ready for them. All we had to do was settle them in with food and water and turn on their heat lamp. After just a few delays of keys to the grain room, resetting the electrical outlet, double checking what color the written instructions said the feed label was, and fixing one heat lamp bulb, we were happy to welcome these adorable little peepers to their new home. It almost made me reconsider eating them in 12 weeks.



But before I had the pleasure of holding the little fuzz balls, we had two days of wild chicken escapes.

Bright and early on our first morning as chicken keepers I stumbled into one of the laying hens at the barn. It was one of the types that are known for sneaking their way into fenced off areas of the orchard. But this little lady was quite a ways away from the orchard. Now, until the day before, I had never in my memory picked up a chicken. In recent years I’ve even developed a bit of a phobia of chickens. But here I was, keeper of the chickens. Running into one in the driveway. Luckily, this expert escapist knew the route back to the orchard and all I had to do was follow her and help her find a hole in the fence to squeeze back through. No touching required, phew.

That same morning when we arrived to feed the pullets we were greeted with young birds that had learned they had wings. As we threw one back over the fence, another took flight at our heads. It was quite a battle to get them all back on the right side of the fence. And the rest of the morning was spent rebuilding a taller fence.

On the second morning I was once again greeted at the barn by a chicken. My frustration level with the chickens was running high and I actually chased this one at a run back to the orchard. I thought maybe I could scare it enough to discourage it from exploring too far again.

I must admit, after these past four weeks, I’m no longer afraid of chickens. I happily feed and collect eggs each evening. And over the course of our first month here, I’ve even begun to develop my sense of protection for them. You see, as a chicken farmer, your enemies become red tailed haws, bald eagles and coyotes. When we take pause from pruning blueberries to admire the soaring juvenile eagle, we have to balance our awe with reality. Farming is one of the best ways to connect with land and nature. But it is a very different connection than you are provided on a day hike. In the past several years I’ve been working to develop my eye to spot hawks, eagles, vultures to know which birds to pull the car over for as the passenger dives for the binoculars. Now I must learn to use my knowledge of the wild to protect the domesticated. This even requires encouraging the farm dog to bark at hawks overhead or coyotes by the creek.

So while the chickens and I will continue to learn to work together, I will also continue to find the balance of a farming nestled among wild woods.