In doing some research I found that the two nights were probably different predators. The first chicken I found had its abdomen chewed open and all the entrails were gone.  Looking into the aspects of the kill, it looks to be the work of a possum – “One or two birds killed; mauled, abdomen eaten.” The body was right by the fence. Curiously, the next day’s egg was not eaten and remained intact in  the body.

Last night we woke up to the hens going on and on with a sustained amount of squawking. I wasn’t much interested in going out there since they sqwauk every damn night, but something seemed a bit different this time. Kristin was also persistent. I tried to get 80 to help me out, but she was too busy sleeping on the couch. When I got out to the coop, part of the door covering was ripped. The chickens were huddled in a corner of the coop, off the roosts. A quick count showed one was missing.

There was no sign of the body, a small clump of feathers right by the door, and part of the fence was down. Again, going to the Internet – “One or more birds dead / missing; no more than one removed; pile of feathers” – it appears to be the work of a fox.

While our coop is not pretty enough to be on the Durham tour of chicken homes, Kristin is reinforcing the door today and hopefully making the coop a decent and dependable fortress. There is no doubt that these critters will come back.

I am the first to admit that I am sometimes very cranky to deal with especially if I get woken up. A few weeks ago, Brother was analyzing his bowling ball fetish at 11:30 at night. The backstory is that Gray found a blue bowling ball in the dumpster, brought it home and gave it a roll across the grass. Brother immediately took a fancy to it and began making a very strange sort of noise that no one had heard him make before. The strange thing is that he does not make the noise with any other type of ball or stick or animal. Only the bowling ball provokes this response.

So back to a few weeks ago. The sound of Brother’s yipping echoed through the trees, through the grass and through the tarp that covers the area behind my pillow. I calmly put on my head lamp and rubber boots, walked down the path and past the trampoline where Gray and Adah were giggling, found Brother’s glowing eyes and squeals of joy, took his bowling ball from him, threw it into a ditch full of water and quietly went back to bed.

Now the bowling ball lives in the ditch full of water, waiting for the summer drought. Brother also awaits the return of the romance.

Kristin and I kept one turkey to eat for ourselves. It was a big one for the two of us, probably 16 pounds. It was the bird that Gray and I practiced the slaughtering process on, hoping that things would go smoothly when it was time to kill the rest of the birds.

There were a variety of sizes, anywhere from 5 pounds to 18 pounds. We had thought that the birds would be much bigger given how long we had them and how much food they ate, but it just didn’t work out that way.

We decided that we would ask that the people who bought the birds to come out and help with the processing. Pretty much everyone was willing, so we had plenty of people out to help and even a few folks who just wanted the experience.

There was a lot of teaching going on as well as a lot of specialization. Rob, Jennie and I did most of the gutting while Gray, Noel and Ben took care of the killing, scalding and de-feathering.

Amber, Chris and Will each processed their own birds.  Jeremy and Matt helped in the gutting even though they would not end up taking a bird home.

The whole process took about four hours, from start to clean up. The entrails went to the pigs to eat, the feathers went to the compost and the birds went home with their eaters.

By the end of the day, the turkey pen was disassembled, all the posts put up and the water and feed buckets emptied.

We raised Midget White and Burbon Red, both heritage breeds.

Hard to believe that we got the turkeys when they were just one day old. They lived in the brooder for six weeks before moving into their “training” pen which we moved every few days.

Usually folks would start with the poults and move to the finished meal, but I think the story does better in reverse. I welcome your thoughts on that…

This year there is a new shelter, a scavenged bamboo and baling twine number that I built over the course of a few days.  It isn’t much to look at, but it is dry and, more importantly, lightweight.  Moving last year’s pig house was a nightmare.  It was heavy and unwieldy; I cursed it, the pigs destroyed it as they aged, knocking out the floor and the walls.  Now its shell sits with last year’s scarecrow along the forest edge, waiting for new purposes and locations.

The new house is basically a tent with one open wall.  It can be staked down after moving in case it is windy.  But that is all boring stuff… Who wants to see the two day old piglets!

Five weeks from this coming Saturday the piglets will be weaned (according to the Animal Welfare Approved time line).  Shortly after that, the pigs will come home and join the rest of us animals.

I knew that the stories of how that big buck came to be dead would be floating around the house until they could be recited, with all the groan inducing embellishments, by people in the house who were trying hard not to listen.  I could probably dig deep enough to remember one or two of those stories, but who gives a shit really?

My grandfather also told stories, the ones that I have forgotten, the ones about how the deer tricked him or showed him up or maybe never even existed.  He never seemed to be about the perceived glory of shooting something in the face; when a deer was in the freezer before December he seemed satisfied with the knowledge that, with the deer’s help, he and his family would have food for the Winter.  He didn’t regale in the winners and losers of what most sane people would see as a wholly lopsided conflict heavily subsidized by civilization and its tools – a heavily armed human against an unprepared, unwilling and unaware opponent.

My grandfather’s task was brutal regardless, but maybe less so as there were no mounted heads on the walls of his home like there were in our home. The need for those stuffed and preserved reminders is something that I couldn’t explain back then, but know now is an indication of small mindedness, a dedication to the outward projection of dominance when you know that you are inescapably weak inside.  You are a collector with no sense of how to interact with the dead or the living, both phases of life simply reminders of inadequacy, weak interpersonal skills and low self esteem. If you have a deer head or a stuffed fish on your wall, go look at it and ask yourself what reminder it serves that could not otherwise be captured by a photograph or poem. Is it there to show your friends and family what a hero you are?

When I was younger, I volunteered twice to travel with a New York DEC deer ager on their rounds.  For fourteen hours we visited deer processing places as well as any house that had a deer hanging in the front yard.  My job was to write while the ager examined teeth and called out the ages of each dead deer.

I think it was during this time that I became permanently desensitized to the sights and smells of dead non-human animals.  At each processor were dozens of barrels and drums and tarps full of various parts; piles of legs next to buckets of guts and tails; lines of deer carcasses waiting to be disassembled by hacksaws, band saws and reciprocating saws, mostly frozen in rigor mortis or by the depth of cold in the evening air.  Steam escaped from some of the recent arrivals, a sign that they were less than an hour dead.

*****

There can be nothing more brutal or common or necessary than taking a life in order to eat and sustain a body. Non-human animals do it without question, without any perceptible remorse or hesitation. What makes our actions so much different?

We pull carrots from the soil, ending their run from gravity, ending their gathering of sugar and all the processes that made them a living thing. They may not scream or run or struggle much, but a carrot is a living thing nonetheless and we must kill it in order to eat it.

Eating a carrot is nothing like eating an animal, which is why many choose not to eat the latter at all. I respect that choice; it was a choice that I had once made as well. As with eating it, killing a carrot is nothing like killing an animal. Animals articulate their disappointment in our choice to kill them in blood gurgles, screams and the twitches of ending nerve impulses. We destroy them in order that we can live; we destroy them for other reasons as well, reasons that have no bearing on survival. If you do not believe that then you deny that your meal had any previous life beyond its packaging. I apologize, but I can’t let you do that.

As the busy day of butchering ended, those who drink bourbon were entitled to their sips.  Sips turned into larger sips and those sips turned into songs and poetry and stories about Henry Hudson and the Catskill Gnomes.  A fire maintained through a little lingering drizzle as people kept nibbling from the tables full of pork.

There was a ragu with trotters, braised belly with apple cider and tenderloins melting in their dishes.  And there were people from the city connecting with the farmers and the farmers connecting with their butcher.  It was an introduction to food sources that will continue beyond the empty bottles and fire warmed feet, beyond the apple orchard and the muddy ruts.

The next morning it was back to work on the pork, cutting up the remaining pieces and getting the fat ready for sausage making.  Fat was also rendered for frying apple fritters and doughnuts, greasy little snacks that went well with the monotony of grinding the sausage.

When the work was done I took the train back to Manhattan, carrying a package of sausage for a friend in Jackson Heights.  We ate some for breakfast the next day.  At that point I was at the pork threshold and could eat no more.

When I wake up I have to clear my throat to get words to come out, words like “hey piggles, you wake up too!”  or “get off the bed you lazy animals”.

I am ignored as the cat just twitches an ear, irritated but with a full belly and another eighteen hours of sleep to look forward to.

It feels like I just wander around on those alone days, tinkering around on slightly neglected projects, working from a list that has no written equivalent.  It isn’t until everyone returns that I realize I have accomplished anything, making me realize that I do have a function even if no one is around to prove it to themselves or to report it to others.  It is simply me moving through the life I have chosen.

It is those alone days that I know concretely that I have chosen well, that all five of us non-human animals have chosen well, that we are some of the luckiest people to ever sign a land title.

Watch out, we are just getting started.

Floretta had her baby, Madeline, a few weeks ago.  Madeline is growing her horns and is old enough to be separated from mom for the night.  That means milk in the morning for the human animals on the farm.

The milking process starts out easy enough and gets progressively more interesting.  Especially when one of the morning helpers (me) does something dumb.  It goes something like this -

1 – Clean out the milk container and strainer.  A glug of bleach will do it.  Or a drop.  Or a quarter cup.  Or don’t worry about it.  Sources of information vary as with anything else you attempt to research on the Internets and apply to do-it-yourself type situations.

2 – Fill up the feed basket with corn, oats and hay.  Floretta really loves corn, so you have to hide it under the hay in order to slow her down.  That said, she knows where the corn is from the moment it leaves the bag and will be ready for it whenever you are.  And she’s feisty.

3 – Get Floretta onto the scrap wood milk stand.  Fairly self explanatory but not necessarily easy.

4 – Lock the head gate and get the feed bucket ready.  Floretta will want to get to the feed bucket before you are ready to give it to her no matter if she is attached to the head gate or not.  If an eye pops out just stick it back in and put bleach on it.  Or don’t.

5 – Lock in the feed bucket.  Watch your fingers.

6 – Start milking and hope Madeline keeps quiet…

7 – Trace has disturbed Madeline, so she is getting very loud, and Floretta is getting antsy, so Noel milk faster! before she kicks the damn bucket of milk over, oh come on be quiet Madeline, sorry just isn’t good enough Trace, you idiot!

It didn’t really go like that, but it felt like it to me.  Madi got very loud prompting Floretta to get agitated.  The milking was cut short during this little demonstration session.

8 – Madeline won’t shut up.  Reunite mom and kid before something breaks.

9 – Drink milk.  Try again in the morning.

The more I read about using pigs as tillers, the more I realize that they need to be in a smaller space for an extended period of time in order for the process to be effective.  I may start moving them around in fifty by fifty sections in the larger fenced area.  This will concentrate their rooting and digging efforts.

I’m thinking that if left in the large area, they will focus on the easy spots and basically defeat the purpose of having them on pasture.  They may just wait for me to come feed them, loaf off the rest of the time, occasionally digging up a worm here or there to satisfy some instinctual piece of evolutionary memory.

But maybe I’m wrong and the pigs know what they are doing.  I mean, they haven’t even been with us for a week, and I can already tell where they have been working.

Kristin moved up in November, easing the loneliness and becoming an inspiration to get some things done.  We split wood, carried cedar posts out of the forest and tried to get our little room in order.  That continues as Kristin builds kitchen cabinets from scratch.

A few weeks ago, Gray came to live with us.  Then Noel started living at the farm most of the time.  In a few days, Danielle will be here and the farm will have its full crew.

The animal workforce – in addition to the human mules – is trickling in to the farm.  A few weeks ago, Noel brought five barred rock chicks home.  Gray built them a small chicken sled, which is a variation of chicken tractor but without wheels.

We use our daylight free time to watch the chicks’ evolution from little puffballs into dirt scratching, bug eating, fertilization helpers.  Their first contribution to the farm is their crap, with eggs still months and months off.

Oh, and just so you know, the chicks are Bosco, Scritchy Scratch, Rufous Beaver, and Peachy Tips.  One remains unnamed, but Kristin wants to call it Mike Slaton.  I said it might be confusing when it comes time to put Mike Slaton in a roaster.  People might get the wrong idea about us if they overheard the conversation…

Speaking of Mike, he is hoping to raise up turkeys on some adjacent land:

If you are interested in having a delicious, pastured, naturally raised, Heritage breed turkey on your table for Thanksgiving this year please consider purchasing one from me.   Here is how we are going to do it:

In order to meet everyones’ demand for a turkey this year, a CSA type situation would work best.  In order to help me as a farmer with the initial costs, including buying the poults, feed, structural needs, etc.  These considerations and processes are starting now, because it can takes up to 7 months to raise Heritage breed turkeys to maturity.  If you are interested please let me know and we can discuss the CSA process (which will more than likely be an initial $25 payment up front, and the rest being paid upon pick up or delivery). Depending on your desired weight, etc.

As of right now the breeds I am highly considering are:

Bourbon Reds (Originally bred in Bourbon County, KY. Bluegrass region in the late 1800′s)
Narragansett (Brought to America by English and European colonists in the 1600′s)
Black Spanish (Originated in Europe as a direct descendent of the Mexican turkeys carried home with explorers in the 1500′s)

Each of these varieties size up to be beautiful, heavy breasted table birds with a very rich flavor.  Your interest and support in this venture will be helping to promote raising livestock sustainably, on pasture, just the way they were meant to be.  While also supporting locally, environmentally responsible young farmers!  Please feel encouraged to contact me with any questions about this CSA program, Heritage breeds, etc…

Mike Slaton – Sustainable Farmer – Pittsboro, NC

Last Sunday I helped Gray put in the last row of posts for the new goat fence.  Floretta the goat arrived Sunday night, but the fence wasn’t finished for her arrival.  It still isn’t…

Floretta is getting into her new surroundings and her new collar, eating up the tall grass and pine saplings.

She is also getting used to the dogs, which she has headbutted a few times.  The dogs got the message…