The News of the Farm newsletter.
(The News of the Farm letter has been "published" to the "Friends of the Farm" email list since 1997,
making it one of the first farm email newsletters in the nation.)
making it one of the first farm email newsletters in the nation.)
To Subscribe or Unsubscribe to the email notice about each new issue of News of the Farm, click Here.
To read Past Issues of The News of the Farm, click http://www.boggycreekfarm.com/pages/news-of-the-farm.php.
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The Open Door
February 22, 2010
PPS: Please put this date on your calendar: Sunday, April 11, 1PM to 5PM. The East Austin Urban Farm Tour (EAUF) will feature tours of Springdale Farm, Rain Lily Farm, HausBar Farm, and Boggy Creek Farm. Chef tastings & beverages at each farm. Ticket sales ($35 advance; $40 gate) benefit the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance, the org that is defending citizens' rights to NOT have to chip their pets and farm animals (which has resulted in USDA dropping the current NAIS proposal!), their rights to obtain and drink raw milk, and their rights to buy "leafy greens" from their family farmers. http://www.farmandranchfreedom.org. More info and how to get tickets coming soon! This will be a great tour of four very different farms located within a few blocks of each other in the historic farming area of Austin, East Austin.
To read Past Issues of The News of the Farm, click http://www.boggycreekfarm.com/pages/news-of-the-farm.php.
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The Open Door
February 22, 2010
Greetings Friends of the Farm,
Strangely, the wind blew open the door to the Hen House this morning. Leaving the door open (duh!) Don Lupe came out to the back field, where I was organizing drip tape, to give me this news. Since he limps, and since I was almost 200 feet away, the trip took a long time....Gads, 120 hens plus Rusty Roo, twins Harry and Hank (the roosters), all out, eating the farm, UP! Since the Hen House interior duplex door is now open and the two populations (Matrons and Young Hens) can access both sides plus the large run, the potential was that they’d ALL be outside!
Oh, if they’d just stay in the yard, scratching out all the pansies, nibbling the winter grass, sifting through the mulch and spreading it all over the place, that would be fine. But an entire day out on the farm drives them, first, to boredom with the pansy displacement, and thence, out to the salad bar growing in the fields. I ran. While I still can, thinking that, with more of these dramas, I too will soon be limping.
(Boss Chick, working on the pansies....)
Like most of you, the chickens LOVE salads. So much, that in salad season, I let them out for authorized ramblings only in late afternoon. Within just an hour or two, they can quickly get their fresh grass greens, work the mulch, stroll around, dust bathe in the barn and generally run hither and thither with great cackling joy. Then, sensing the end of things, especially with the waning light, they migrate back to the Hen House -- with no encouragement from me --eat their bedtime snacks, imbibe a bit of water and then to the perches they go, willingly.
(With the sun setting, the hens think about retiring, although two young hens are enjoying the people's perch....)
Even if they have to hop on one leg, like Aunt Tootie’s twin sister, Hoppy J. Tootum. She enjoys her outings, but since it is too far to hop for the spring grass, I bring her some. She eats without interference, as the savvy hens are busy elsewhere and the slow to catch on are stuck, trying to figure out why they are in and even Hoppy is out. All they can do is enviously watch Hoppy eating her greens.
(The hens are carefully focused on Hoppy; they hope that she will be sloppy and send some greens their way...)
As for those out and those in, it’s all different for Boss Chick and the Bossy Babes. Being the youngest, at just over three months old, they still reside in the big cage in the barn. To let them participate in the Big Time Out, I pull their run cage away from the big cage to create a doorway. They figured out that remodeling right away and merrily exit for their favorite area, the “kitchen garden” next to the farm house. They love the back porch too, and long to go inside the mysterious people house. They’ve heard that Aunt Tootie has that privilege.
(Busy Bossies...)
And while the Bossies are wiping out the larkspur and pansies in the garden, the big hens, fascinated with all things not theirs, visit the Bossies’ run through the same portal, and even try to squeeze through the narrow doorway into the big cage. One of these days, after eating all of the Bossies’ grain, the big hens may not make it back out through the doorway, but so far, they are squeezing pretty well...as if they were Larry, posing for a photo, with my helpful instruction, “Pull it in!” For the next few seconds, he doesn’t breathe. Thus it will be for the big hens. Until the big cage system, outgrown, is put to rest.
It’s time for the Bossies to move into the Hen House. Boss Chick and two of the Babes are also almost too large to squeeze in through the big cage doorway. Only Babette, the runt of the litter, is small enough to skip through easily, and she is so smart that she has found lapses in the junction of cage and run and slips out for solo ventures on the farm. She’s not alone out there of course, as favorite hen Aunt Tootie and her understudy, the croissant-snatching Harriet, are out every day, along with one of the Starlette Juniors, and one of the “Rumpless” Araucanas. The latter young hens fly their way out of captivity. Of course they all go their own ways, except for spending as much time as possible underneath the big cage, eating the grain that the Bossies kick out. And the little stinker Babette is scarfing it up with them! The Bossies understandably are peeved about Babette’s ability to leave them in the cage, but what are they going to do?
(Boss Chick squeezes through the narrow doorway into the big cage....)
They wait for me to hand feed them beet leaves through the chicken wire of the run. They love that I am their surrogate mama hen holding the leaves so they are taut and more easily pecked. Babette notices this special treatment, can’t resist getting in on the leaves, and suddenly I snake one hand out to grab her by both legs, and she is instantly “beamed” into the run with the other Babes. After the initial indignant squawking, she’s OK, as she too now gets the hand-held greens. They are the best kind. Like mama’s cooking.
(All the Bossies, except Bossy Babette, eating their beet greens....)
In the early evening, the Bossies are the last to go to bed. Teenagers are like that. Tootie’s on the perch, the traumatized Starlet (Senior) is with her, even Rusty Roo has retired, along with the Matrons. All of the younger inhabitants of the Hen House are moving, if slowly, to the perches. But the Bossies still have places to go, mulch to scratch, and grass to nibble. They just can’t put it all down.
And they say adamantly they do not want to move into the Hen House. They like their privacy and their privileges.
But soon, very soon, some dark night, I’ll open the top hatch on the big cage, and scoop them up, one by one, off their little bamboo perch in the corner, high above the plump poop piles on the straw below, and carry them tenderly to the perches on the Matrons’ side of the Hen House. I won’t put them with the older teenagers, as they will peck them off the perch like the Bossies are “fresh-hens,” in a high school for hens. The Matrons won’t bother them much, and regardless, the Bossies can out run any of them.
Eventually, I won’t be able to tell the Bossies from all the Starlet Juniors, as they are all hens and all white. That will be a slightly sad day for me, the mama hen. They will have -- as humans oddly say -- “left the nest.”
Carol Ann
Oh, if they’d just stay in the yard, scratching out all the pansies, nibbling the winter grass, sifting through the mulch and spreading it all over the place, that would be fine. But an entire day out on the farm drives them, first, to boredom with the pansy displacement, and thence, out to the salad bar growing in the fields. I ran. While I still can, thinking that, with more of these dramas, I too will soon be limping.
(Boss Chick, working on the pansies....)
Like most of you, the chickens LOVE salads. So much, that in salad season, I let them out for authorized ramblings only in late afternoon. Within just an hour or two, they can quickly get their fresh grass greens, work the mulch, stroll around, dust bathe in the barn and generally run hither and thither with great cackling joy. Then, sensing the end of things, especially with the waning light, they migrate back to the Hen House -- with no encouragement from me --eat their bedtime snacks, imbibe a bit of water and then to the perches they go, willingly.
(With the sun setting, the hens think about retiring, although two young hens are enjoying the people's perch....)
Even if they have to hop on one leg, like Aunt Tootie’s twin sister, Hoppy J. Tootum. She enjoys her outings, but since it is too far to hop for the spring grass, I bring her some. She eats without interference, as the savvy hens are busy elsewhere and the slow to catch on are stuck, trying to figure out why they are in and even Hoppy is out. All they can do is enviously watch Hoppy eating her greens.
(The hens are carefully focused on Hoppy; they hope that she will be sloppy and send some greens their way...)
As for those out and those in, it’s all different for Boss Chick and the Bossy Babes. Being the youngest, at just over three months old, they still reside in the big cage in the barn. To let them participate in the Big Time Out, I pull their run cage away from the big cage to create a doorway. They figured out that remodeling right away and merrily exit for their favorite area, the “kitchen garden” next to the farm house. They love the back porch too, and long to go inside the mysterious people house. They’ve heard that Aunt Tootie has that privilege.
(Busy Bossies...)
And while the Bossies are wiping out the larkspur and pansies in the garden, the big hens, fascinated with all things not theirs, visit the Bossies’ run through the same portal, and even try to squeeze through the narrow doorway into the big cage. One of these days, after eating all of the Bossies’ grain, the big hens may not make it back out through the doorway, but so far, they are squeezing pretty well...as if they were Larry, posing for a photo, with my helpful instruction, “Pull it in!” For the next few seconds, he doesn’t breathe. Thus it will be for the big hens. Until the big cage system, outgrown, is put to rest.
It’s time for the Bossies to move into the Hen House. Boss Chick and two of the Babes are also almost too large to squeeze in through the big cage doorway. Only Babette, the runt of the litter, is small enough to skip through easily, and she is so smart that she has found lapses in the junction of cage and run and slips out for solo ventures on the farm. She’s not alone out there of course, as favorite hen Aunt Tootie and her understudy, the croissant-snatching Harriet, are out every day, along with one of the Starlette Juniors, and one of the “Rumpless” Araucanas. The latter young hens fly their way out of captivity. Of course they all go their own ways, except for spending as much time as possible underneath the big cage, eating the grain that the Bossies kick out. And the little stinker Babette is scarfing it up with them! The Bossies understandably are peeved about Babette’s ability to leave them in the cage, but what are they going to do?
(Boss Chick squeezes through the narrow doorway into the big cage....)
They wait for me to hand feed them beet leaves through the chicken wire of the run. They love that I am their surrogate mama hen holding the leaves so they are taut and more easily pecked. Babette notices this special treatment, can’t resist getting in on the leaves, and suddenly I snake one hand out to grab her by both legs, and she is instantly “beamed” into the run with the other Babes. After the initial indignant squawking, she’s OK, as she too now gets the hand-held greens. They are the best kind. Like mama’s cooking.
(All the Bossies, except Bossy Babette, eating their beet greens....)
In the early evening, the Bossies are the last to go to bed. Teenagers are like that. Tootie’s on the perch, the traumatized Starlet (Senior) is with her, even Rusty Roo has retired, along with the Matrons. All of the younger inhabitants of the Hen House are moving, if slowly, to the perches. But the Bossies still have places to go, mulch to scratch, and grass to nibble. They just can’t put it all down.
And they say adamantly they do not want to move into the Hen House. They like their privacy and their privileges.
But soon, very soon, some dark night, I’ll open the top hatch on the big cage, and scoop them up, one by one, off their little bamboo perch in the corner, high above the plump poop piles on the straw below, and carry them tenderly to the perches on the Matrons’ side of the Hen House. I won’t put them with the older teenagers, as they will peck them off the perch like the Bossies are “fresh-hens,” in a high school for hens. The Matrons won’t bother them much, and regardless, the Bossies can out run any of them.
Eventually, I won’t be able to tell the Bossies from all the Starlet Juniors, as they are all hens and all white. That will be a slightly sad day for me, the mama hen. They will have -- as humans oddly say -- “left the nest.”
Carol Ann
PPS: Please put this date on your calendar: Sunday, April 11, 1PM to 5PM. The East Austin Urban Farm Tour (EAUF) will feature tours of Springdale Farm, Rain Lily Farm, HausBar Farm, and Boggy Creek Farm. Chef tastings & beverages at each farm. Ticket sales ($35 advance; $40 gate) benefit the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance, the org that is defending citizens' rights to NOT have to chip their pets and farm animals (which has resulted in USDA dropping the current NAIS proposal!), their rights to obtain and drink raw milk, and their rights to buy "leafy greens" from their family farmers. http://www.farmandranchfreedom.org. More info and how to get tickets coming soon! This will be a great tour of four very different farms located within a few blocks of each other in the historic farming area of Austin, East Austin.
For this week's Produce Offerings: http://www.boggycreekfarm.com (Scroll down a tad, please)
Thanks for supporting local agriculture!
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