My Life on The Poor Farm: September 2012

If you had told me a year ago that I would be living 250 miles across Washington State, away from my loved desert, on The Poor Farm with chickens, goats and a garden the size of regular yard, I would have told you that you'd gone mad. While I have never been a city girl, I never pictured myself here. When I used to think about where I wanted to end up, I thought that five to ten acres with a dog and a couple cats and MAYBE a rabbit thrown in for fun was as far as I would get to "living the country life." 65 acres, 12 hens, one roo, two goats, a barn cat and my trusty border collie Lucie, is down right over the top. And I hate to admit that it's been hard for me to resist getting some nanny goats to milk every day.

Sustainable living has been something that has always intrigued me. In high school, my senior project was on the Olduvai Theory. I've always had a little bit of "doomsday prepper" in me. The idea of being self sufficient is exciting, satisfying and gives me a pretty good sense of accomplishment. The country life is calling to me more and more with each day. I have never been a big fan of designer clothes and fancy cars. My favorite vehicle is a '92 VW Cabriolet and I'm perfectly content purchasing the majority of my clothes from second hand stores and yard sales.

So when we decided to pickup a box of 28 chicks, I was all game. We ended up with 14 roosters, and 14 hens. Then we picked up five sickly Rhode Island Red hens from the local store who are about four weeks older. Three of them didn't make it. But the two that did are alive and kicking. You can see them in the group shot on the lower right corner. Currently, we have one Roo who is staying with the flock and then three waiting to be eaten.

The bear with one of the baby chicks at 8 days old.

A month ago we separated the hens from the roos. At that point, we decided it was probably a good idea to butcher a few of the roos to eat. I guess that can come off as cruel, but having that many roosters is cruel to the hens. They had already killed one of the five Rhode Island Reds earlier that day. I learned the hard way that egg laying chickens don't make good roasted chicken. From here on out, we'll be throwing the roosters into the crock pot or just making soup out of them. I logged my "butchering" experience on instagram. Not going to lie, I did a lot of loling at the comments and the amount of people who unfollowed me because of it. I sure hope that they are not meat eaters..... As far as I'm concerned, those roos lived a good life. They had all the fresh food form the garden that they wanted, sun shine and room to run. Commercially, I'm pretty sure the roos are killed at a day old and made into animal food so you can be the judge on what is humane. While we did all the butchering, The Bear sat inside watching Homeward Bound happily and was extremely eager to eat her "rooster dinner." She knew exactly what she was eating and why. The roosters couldn't be kept any longer because they were mean to the hens and they probably wouldn't lay us any eggs if we had kept them. I see the whole thing as an excellent experience for her. So that night, we had a dinner that I had grown 100% off of the poor farm. Veggies from the garden and chickens from the barn yard. It was amazing.

Now our hens and one roo are living happy and for now are free range. We've got a serious problem with them going into the garden but have yet to put a fence for them or the garden. We need to plan out both the goat pen and the garden fence before anything is set into the ground. But for the mean time, things are working pretty well. We've got some super happy chickens. Our roo may have to end up on the kitchen table though. He seems to be a little aggressive towards The Bear. Her job used to be chasing the chickens out of the garden. About two weeks ago, I told her to get them out and and I heard the usual growing and barking that she does. (The kid is totally convinced she's a dog and her teacher even informed me last week that she's the class doggie.) But the barks and growls quickly turning into frantic screams and "mommies." Down she came from the barn running as fast as I've ever seen my little knock kneed girl run and she had that nasty rooster right on her tail. Everything I've read says that keeping a child aggressive roo is a bad idea. That's a gene you don't want to pass on and there are roosters who are friendly and more importanly, kid friendly. But that hasn't stopped The Bear from naming him "Nemo." I do hate to get rid of him because he's mighty handsome.

Last Sunday we got our very first egg. It was from Opie one of the Rhode Island Reds. She had been being very vocal for the last couple of days and had scoped out the nesting boxes that I had set up. We put some small woofle golf balls into the boxes because I had read that it peaks their interest and encourages them to lay in the proper spot, not some some random place that you'll never find. The Bear and I had gone up to give the chickens the slop bucket after dinner, and we decided to check. She was the first to see it, but I'm pretty sure that I was more excited. She ended up eating it for breakfast the next morning before school but hasn't really shown much interest in eating any since. Which is ok with me because I could eat five eggs a day.

Our first egg!

Our first egg next to a large egg from the store. They'll get bigger as the girls figure out this egg laying stuff

Then on Saturday, Maple who's my favorite laid her first egg. I walked past the hen house after picking some blackberries and saw a hen in one of the boxes out of the corner of my eye. I peeked back in and saw that it was Mrs Maple. As soon as she saw me, she squaked and got up and ran. I figured she must have just laid an egg and ran into to see, but no such luck. When I put the chickens to bed that night, I noticed a rock in the barn that looked oddly like an egg. But since it was right where the chickens walk I passed it off and went to bed. Then yesterday I checked for eggs and found one in the box next to the one that Opie has been laying in all week. I picked it up and decided to inspect the rock in the barn. Sure enough. It was an egg. Cold and NOT broken. It was very clearly a fist egg because it was tiny and dark brown spots on it. I'm assuming that as Maple ran out and I checked the boxes, her egg popped out and she was running away form me. I had both for breakfast today. Now I'm trying my hardest to stay away from the chickens except for a couple of times a day. It's just so exciting. Every time I head squawking coming from the chicken house, I want to run up and watch. I do a little happy dance every time that I find an egg. The pictures below are The Bear holding Maple and one of her eggs.

I can't wait for the rest of the girls to start laying. They should be producing green eggs. They will be SO pretty! Opie and Maple are probably around 24 weeks old and the rest of the girls are coming up on 20 weeks. In the last week I have noticed them becoming very vocal, checking out the nesting boxes and their combs and waddles have grown and turned red which are all signs that the hormones are in line for egg laying. Fingers crossed that it happens in the next two weeks!