Haiku: Watching And Waiting

25 November 2021 ~ Carrie

Our laying flock must see us as egg thieves: each day – multiple times a day if it’s especially cold out – we collect their freshly-laid eggs. If a hen is sitting, we reach under her fluffy feathers and feel around for eggs – a treasure hunt, of sorts. Most of the girls in nest boxes enter a trance-like state, which I like to call “the zone”, and they don’t even seem to realize that an egg thief is there to take their eggs – they don’t move, protest, or do anything but remain blissfully docile. Most.

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Haiku: Peeking Petals

17 November 2021 ~ Carrie

Even though today is an unseasonably warm one, we’ve had several cold snaps lately that have caused temperatures to plummet below freezing. The plants have reacted accordingly: many simply dying on the vine, others becoming dormant. The colorful flowers of summer have all but disappeared…almost.

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Haiku: Rainy Day Ruminations

12 November 2021 ~ Carrie

As the day grows darker, morphing from mild and breezy to downright gloomy and even ominous, my thoughts turn to why we, as a species, have made so little progress on averting (and now, mitigating) climate disaster.

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Farm Fowl: Beatrix’s Bedeviling Bumble

9 November 2021 ~ Carrie

This sassy red hen is Beatrix. While she’s generally a healthy girl, she developed an infection called bumblefoot. I’ve seen it just a couple of times in the many birds we’ve raised and it can range from minor to serious (as in Beatrix’s case). If you raise chickens, it’s important to know what to do when you see the signs of bumblefoot so that you can take action to keep your birds healthy.

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Haiku: Fall’s Finery

3 November 2021 ~ Carrie

What constitutes a “perfect” Fall day? For me, it’s cool temperatures that bring crispness to the air and a touch of frost to the grass; clear, deep blue skies; a kaleidoscope of fiery leaf colors ranging from gold to salmon to crimson; and the welcome softness of the season’s light. It’s this quality of the light, in particular, that always causes me to take a moment to fully recognize that summer has departed for another year.

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Around The Farm: Spooktacular Spiders

31 October 2021 ~ Carrie

What’s Halloween without spiders? Certainly, bats, witches, ghosts, and all manner of ghouls are heavily featured in the day’s imagery, but spiders are right there, too. Despite the widespread biases against spiders, they are beautiful and fascinating creatures, worthy of respect and appreciation. We’re lucky to have a great variety of spiders on the farm, like those you’ll see in this post.

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