How’s the farm in the winter?
To the question I frequently get:
The farm is fine. The farm is cold and windy right now. If snow is on the ground, it is eerily quiet save for the buzz of our electric lines and the chickens.
Right now, on the sunflower farm north of us, they are harvesting seeds with a gigantic moving machine.
I make lots of lists during every season. Apart from our off-farm work, here is a list of what is happening in the winter months:
Marketing
Finding interns
Farm workshops
Grant proposal(s)
Setting deadlines for plant starts (started inside on light tables)
Seed shopping
Truck shoppingOngoing:
Manure pickup and composting
Chickens
Tractor repair
Truck repair
Body repair
Mind repair
-Julia
The rooster has me scared.
Just minutes ago, Puff Daddy defended his hens with an extra hardy thump and several charges at me in a very small and enclosed space.
Todd is usually the one interacting with the chickens and asserts his calm and masculine energy over Puff by picking him up and moving around and around in a circle to make him dizzy. In a way Cesar Milan might swing a bird. But tonight it was I who was assigned to collect eggs and shut the chickens in their coop.
Let me set the stage:
5:30 pm, cold and snowing with gusting winds
When I first entered the coop, I did a count to make sure everyone made it inside. Everything was calm and cool. The wind howled. I felt decidedly content.
I checked their food, grabbed some eggs.
sound of feathers rustling
I turn slowly.
His scary eyes!!!! His scary beak!!!! His scary prehistoric feet!!!!!
If you were the pizza delivery guy from Mr. Giggles and had arrived only 15 minutes earlier than you actually did, you would have seen a sliver of light coming from the coop as it bounced a little side to side. You would have heard screaming and kicking and the muffled sound of someone falling down in layers of chicken “bedding” followed by more screaming and thrashing. Just when you thought it was over, more screaming and thrashing. And, as the pizza delivery guy, you would have been even less likely the next time to deliver pizza to this lonely looking property in rural Manteno. Puff Daddy didn’t react at all to my air kicking but thankfully I emerged unscathed. I guess I’m embarrassed by the whole spastic incident, but not embarrassed enough to keep me from telling my story. Let all be witness.
Runny yolks in my pocket,
-Julia
