Today the kitchen needed to be cleaned, and I was procrastinating. Old friends posting on social media about their kids returning to class turned my thoughts to my time in elementary school and my fourth grade teacher. She was one of the best.
Read moreWin Some, Lose Some
A recent and new win for us was that we successfully hatched our first French Toulouse goose in an incubator this year. We called her Couscous the Goosegoose. She had a crazy sideways smile (scissor beak) and a long left arm (angel wing) and was sweet as Farley’s Key Lime pie (always a win!)
Read moreMath — It’s What’s for Dinner
People who have the misfortune of spending a lot of time with me know that I have a slight tendency to talk about chickens. One person even went so far as to call me an expert. Flattering, yes, but I don’t expect there are enough years left for me on this rock to truly attain expert status.
Read moreThinking in Bets
We recently received a generous donation of red alder trees for planting on our property. A Washington-based non-profit provided us with trees as part of their mission to help land owners increase carbon sequestration on their land while providing natural habitat with native plants.
Read moreWho is That?
A funny thing happened to me when I came home from running errands in town last week — I got old. I fed the chickens, put my various store-bought items away, and changed into a cozy flannel and some slippers. After exchanging status updates with Farley as she cooked our dinner, I decided it was a good time to sit down and start reading a new (used) book I bought on our recent vacation.
Read moreFive Myths You Believe About Farming (number 6 will shock you!)
For a good solid decade, I was seduced by the romanticism of agrarian life, convinced that if I left the big town and tucked into some good hard hay stacking, I’d get fit, find fulfillment, and play my part in saving civilization from itself by helping it to rediscover the joy of real food wrought from the land by the hands of someone the eater knows personally.
Read moreThe Best Chicken Breeds
The modern homesteading lifestyle has been trending in the U.S. for a while now and the internet is loaded with chum (I mean, uh, content) to help you find the best chicken breeds for your farmlet. I love research and data analysis so I frequently revisit this subject to see what the hatcheries, blogs, youtubers, and assorted advertising pyramid schemes are recommending. Over the years I’ve noticed a number of valuable chicken breeds that are never mentioned…
Read moreNot Bad, For a Monday
Our first sheep had their one bad day today. As with our first pigs, I grew more anxious over the last week, mostly in anticipation of what could possibly go wrong. Sheep grow fast and local processors are perpetually scheduled a year out, so this time the labor of it could not be bought – it was up me to get it done.
Read moreHopeful Farming at Hop Frog Farm
While we have tried new things on our farm each year, it is still easy to fall into a pattern of “the same old way you’ve always done it.” Watching a kazillion farming videos on the internet until 3am can be a fun way to spend a Tuesday night, but we’ve found it much more productive to get hands-on experience under the guidance of professional farmers.
Read moreYear of the Sheep
Another year, another lesson (or two, or twenty) in self-taught farming. The Sheng Xiao says this is the year of the Tiger, but on the Star & Sparrow zodiac it is the year of the Sheep.
Read moreMeetings About Meetings
I read an interesting statistic in early April claiming that white collar workers are now spending 250% more time in meetings than they were pre-pandemic. As I remember it, just about all my non-entry level white collar jobs involved meetings for at least half my time.
Read moreBe Careful What You Wish For
Last year I was doing a little tractor work for a friend and had to stop in my tracks several times for mother hens and their chicks. To the owner’s frustration, two free-range hens decided to sneak off and hatch out clutches of fluffy cuteness. It was a welcome intermission to a dusty job, and I found myself growing envious of their self-sufficiently reproductive chickens. Thou shalt not covet they neighbors chickens!
Read moreBelly Rubs
An hour ago I was saying to Farley “I don’t think I’ve been off the farm in over a week!” She then reminded me that I was in town several hours yesterday for an appointment. I guess my body was there, but my mind really wasn’t. Instead, I’ve been almost singularly focused on the culmination of our pig-raising efforts over the last 8 months.
Read moreThe Gauntlet
A pair of farmer friends have a cartoon on their office wall. I first saw it only two months after we bought our property. I got the joke and thought it was funny. Two and half years later, I really get the joke, and it’s not so funny anymore.
Read morePolitics As Usual
The state of Washington has introduced a bill (House Bill 1838) that seeks to mandate the development of riparian zones along waterways on agricultural land.
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