Death on the Farm; Or, What Happens When Baby Chicks Arrive With Hernias

To date, in writing these posts Stephanie and I have for the most part confined ourselves to the happy, even idyllic, side of life as hobby farmers in Northwest Wisconsin.

However, in the name of journalistic integrity, sometimes the reader needs to know the full story.

As I sat at my desk writing the other day -- yesterday, I believe -- Stephanie came in with a sad gait and an expression suggesting something was amiss. The last I'd seen her just a few hours earlier she was still basking in the delight that accompanies the arrival of a batch of new baby chicks. These chicks, 50 cornish cross, are perhaps the cutest of all neo-natal farm life we have yet encountered. So the delight bordered on euphoria.

You probably know where this is headed...

"I don't like death," she announced.

"Neither do I," I added, happy to have established unanimity on so elemental a human subject.

"One of our chicks -- the one with the funny butt -- is going to die. And, I don't want to find it..."

"Hmmmm. I suppose I don't want to find it either."

"In fact, I don't much like being a farmer today," she added before leaving to go back to her desk.

...On the farm, death is quite truly a part of life. I'm not talking about the sort of death that our sadistic culture is obsessed with, namely Halo and the Poltergeist. No, I'm talking about the simple and terrible fact that all creatures die.

The sickly chick with the mysterious protuberance was a tiny example of creaturely finitude and of the fact that life is not only finite, but fleeting. Our heartfelt dismay at the loss of so insignificant a creature as a three ounce baby chick displays the bird's significance and the fact that even so small a life is indeed precious.

Almost every religion and philosophy has concurred on this basic, anthropological fact: life is hard and often terrible and we all have a deep and abiding sense that it ought not be so. Indeed, the various rituals that have always accompanied death in every culture in human history point to the fact that dying is something quite unnatural.

Nevertheless, we all die.

We like to fixate on the death of the animals that provide us food, but I suppose that death constitutes a sort of photographic negative to the less often observed fact that the creature in question was alive. One of the things that I'm most grateful for in the opportunity to live at the farm is that I now understand what meat is and what it isn't. It isn't a product -- after all, it wasn't produced. It comes from a creature; a creature that was born, lived a short while, and died.

The vitality of a barnyard full of creatures provides a beautiful and lovely setting in which to live. Sadly, those creatures die; but their lives are all precious.

The sickly chick is gone, having lived a meager life of three days. But the tender care given it by my gentle wife was a unique gift not enjoyed by many animals in this world.

No Such Things As Free.... Mulch?

I give you: free mulch:

Granted, the cost of a thing is not merely calculated in dollars and cents. But, as far as dollars and cents go, apart from the gasoline -- which is admittedly expensive these days -- this mulch was free. 

Surely the rhetorical hook has been set and you are wondering, "how did our clever hobby-farming friends get such a gorgeous pile of free mulch?" 

As with most things that are 'free' in this world, you have to 'know someone'. For us, generally speaking, that someone is Grandpa Don. Stephanie's maternal grandfather, Grandpa Don has been featured in several Magdalen Farm blog posts in the past. He is a character and a half: an 80 year old that can chain saw and split heavy maple tree trunks and do snow mobile tricks all day, provided he has access to enough of Grandma Arlene's cookies and homemade jams. Grandpa Don is also a 'collector'. He has buildings full of everything you could ever want or need. In this case, he has a mulcher.

Let's backtrack for a moment: As Stephanie and I discussed ways to improve our farm over the long, snowy winter -- er, fairly short and rather mild winter -- I stated that putting mulch between our raised beds and in a few other areas would really spruce up the joint. But thinking back to my days of lawn mowing and landscaping with Gaffer's Lawn Care I remembered that one actually needs a great deal of mulch to cover any sizable section of ground and that one seldom gets a great deal on such a great deal of mulch. Amidst these bleak midwinter ponderings I recalled aloud, "doesn't Grandpa Don have a mulcher?"

"I think he might...," added Stephanie, (known to Grandpa Don as Stephers). "Does he? It's so hard to keep track of such things."

Well, in fact, Grandpa Don does have a mulcher and about a week ago he dropped it off for us.

"That's all good and well," you're probably chuckling to yourself, "but a mulcher doesn't get you mulch without some branches to feed it."

But piles of old branches, my friend, is something of which we have nary a shortage. 

Since we moved in we've done a great deal of tree trimming and have also cut down a number of scrub trees that had grown up close to buildings and had begun to wreak havoc on the foundations. These piles had made for some charming, decorative landscape ornamentation... I can't even type that with a straight face. These piles needed to be gotten rid of and we were planning on burning them all this spring, but instead we've been mulching them. So far we have made somewhere around four cubic yards of mulch.

With that bounty of free mulch on hand (and plenty more yet to be had), we've had to decide how best to employ the woody fruits of our labor. The Mulch-Use Priority Rankings (MUPR) currently stand as follows:

1. Vegetable Garden Paths
2. Flower Beds Around the House
3. Main Flower Garden Paths and Beds
4. Raspberry Beds Along the Pine Stand

The great thing about our free mulch is that the actual creating of the mulch has been a lot of fun, too. It is a wondrous process to take something that was an eyesore, run it through a loud, vibrating contraption and have it shoot out into a lovely pile of garden-beautifying goodness!

I figure in the end we'll probably create around nine yards of mulch this spring. So for those 729 cubic foot of eye-pleasing, weed-blocking goodness we extend another hearty 'thank you' to our kindly benefactors: Grandpa Don and Grandma Arlene!

Belated Chicken Post

The six weeks between March 1st and April 15 have been some of the busiest for Chris and I, and virtually none of what kept us occupied was farm related.  Thus this very belated post:

A Barred Rock, considered "dual purpose" because they are
good egg layers and large enough to be used for meat.

A Leghorn hen.  These white egg layers are the breed used in
large-scale egg factories.  In their prime they lay an egg a day.

A young Red Star - the brow egg layer
equivalent to the leghorn.

A curious Sussex 

The molting Barred Rock.  Hens go into
their first molt between 12 and 20 months.
Over the course of 2 weeks they will replace
the majority of their feathers and egg
production will almost completely stop.

Two Buff Bramas snoozing in the sun

Rats!

No seriously, rats.

Truly, a rodent of unusual size

Stephanie proudly displays her largest victim yet

Hildegard and the Skunk Tail

What are the odds...

Missing the cut on getting into the earlier post by only a few short hours, Hildy vanished for an hour or so this afternoon. We called and called for her and were getting our coats on to go look for her at the VFW -- a favorite haunt of hers when she's on the lam -- when she turned up.

Now, whenever Hildy disappears she usually returns with some sort of treasure and it's generally someone else's trash. Today was a new one for us though. As we went outside to scold her for flying the coop -- so to speak, for, she doesn't actually reside in our coop -- we realized we had something new on our hands...

Here's what we encountered: a euphoric puppy delightedly playing with her favorite new toy... a skunk tail!

Hildegard

As our regular readers are well aware, this spring we added a dog to our bourgeoning menagerie and named her Hildegard. She comes from a local breeder that has cross-bred a few different traditional European guardian dog breeds and developed a sort of "Northwoods" Guardian Breed. These dogs are big enough to fend off wolves and coyotes and gentle enough to bond with livestock.

Little 10 Week Old Pup

Hildy, as we call her, has been for the most part a very happy addition to our farmstead. It's been great fun to have a furry little ball of affection 'assisting' in our projects: from harvesting rhubarb...

... to feeding the chickens.

Her best friends were far and away the pigs. Needless to say she was sad to see them go, though she hasn't seemed to mind getting pork drippings on her kibbles when we make pork roasts!

She has grown from a shy and utterly adorable little pup to a big, sprawling, hyper and bounding bundle of long-limbed energy. According to our calculations she is now around eight months old.

Scanning the Horizon for Predators

Her primary purpose on the farm, apart from being enjoyed by us, is guarding our pigs, turkeys, chickens and future livestock. Yesterday she bravely stood at the edge of the field barking at a crow that was munching on something a few hundred yards off... what a dog!

Off to see about a potential threat: the vicious and beguiling black bird

With the frigidity of Northern Wisconsin winter beginning to creep in, we had to build her a dog house. 

Naturally she had to inspect throughout the building process

Since she hates being confined we weren't sure how she would take to it, but when it gets below freezing she seems to love it.

Early morning wake-up call

In getting Hildy to 'bond' with our animals we were supposed to more or less ignore her so she could attach to them instead of us. We more or less utterly failed in that venture, but we're not entirely sure that we care, since she is very loving and a good companion.

Asking if we think maybe she should come inside for a visit

Fall Update

Greetings Friends of Magdalen Farm!

Wow-- it's been almost five weeks since our last post... far too long, we know. Since time for an extended update isn't currently unavailable and since you all seem to like our video efforts we decided to get creative and do a short video update.

We've taken a slew of pictures during our various projects over the past month, we just haven't had (or, I suppose, 'made' would be the better word) the time to put the post together. So, here's a pictorial smattering of what we've been up to.

Fresh Milk and Cream from Farmer Steve

Huntin' for Dry Oak

Carrying Dry Oak

Potato Plants Before Harvest

Potatoes Hardening Off

'Taters emerging from their perfect soil! 

'Taters Abound!

Neatly stacked and ready for storage in the root cellar

One of our harvests of tomatoes ready for saucing

A batch of fresh salsa

Canned Tomato Sauce 

Wild grapes

Wild grapes getting cooked into jam

Straining the grape remnants

Homemade grape jam

Homemade apple cider

Pumpkins!

Pumpkin elements: seeds for toasting and flesh for cooking

Steph loves these little guys! 

Our covered bed for fall gardening, including a lettuce blend 

Lettuce close-up! 

Hildy inspecting our work, while we frame out her house