Sprung

Here on the farm, spring has arrived in full force. The fields are green again, the trees are budding out, and there's a certain energy in the air. Of course, it's been an uncommonly sweet April so far, making everything seem a little rosier, with warm, fair days far outnumbering the rainy and drab. And, shaking off the winter, we've jumped into the new season with no looking back.

The pigs were the first to get an upgrade, getting moved out into the hickory grove, onto pasture. With a solar charger and some step-in plastic fence poles, setting up an enclosure for the swine was a simple afternoon's work; moving them to it was another story. The first attempt was a disaster, when the pigs refused to cross the concrete bridge spanning the creek. A few days later, in a jerry-rigged trailer clabbered together from a flatbed and a dog kennel, we finally wrangled the hogs (who each are topping 200 lbs. now) over into their new homes. They took to the new space with ease and aplomb, rooting for fallen hickory nuts as if nothing had changed. They're out there now, happy and content, turning up the swampy ground and working to restore what would otherwise be wasted space.

The chickens got a new upgrade in real estate too. They've been growing like weeds, and were well on their way to outgrowing the barn stall they'd been living in. After building two secondary frames of 2x4s and chicken wire to cover the doors at either end, the bay that housed the steers for the winter proved to be a perfect space. The birds now have room to spread out, stretch their wings, and get ready for their eventual lives in the great wide world.

The steers got a new address as well, moving out onto the fresh green pasture behind the house. This is my first real experiment in rotational grazing: the cattle get a few days to eat a section down before being moved on the new grass. Right now, after devouring their first area in a few scant days, they're on section two. In a week or two, they'll have mowed the entire region down, pasture by pasture, and then the fun of trying to get them across the bridge begins.

There have been several new additions to the farm as well. Earlier this week we picked up a small dexter steer named, originally, Dexter. Dexters are a small breed, and Dex is always going to be a slight fellow. He's leggy and fit, sporting a pair of odd conical devil horns; an interesting looking guy overall. He's become fast friends with #1, and relaxed into the eternal spring-time bliss of eating and sleeping.

New pigs have arrived too, ten of them, just pink and spotted mutts, but cute none-the-less. They are smaller than the Tams were when they came, but are bolder, learning the fence in a matter of hours. They have a bit of a mean streak, at least with each other, but they're mellowing as they get used to their new freedom.

Most recent of all, the farm acquired a rooster, a stately Americauna by the name of George. He's a stunning and pleasant bird, and his crow could come straight off a movie soundtrack, so typically rooster-ish is it. Luckily, you can't hear him from the house. The neighbors across the road might not be so lucky...

Hope is the Thing With Feathers

After my stint last week as Debbie Downer, I must say the weather for the last six days has made me thoroughly eat my words. I woke up tuesday to find a clear, warm sky above, and day by day since, the temperatures have crept up into the high sixties and, scarcely believable though it is, the low seventies. Yesterday was without doubt the finest day of this young year so far, and though rain and cloud-cover stand on the horizon, this week has been enough of a shot in the arm to see me through.

Oddly, one of the clearest signs of spring, symbolic of the coming seasons of plenty, have been an abundance of birds, of all sorts. Birds, for me, have always been something of an afterthought: the charisma and kinship of mammals have always drawn more of my attention. Yet increasingly, birds have turned from being the mere background noise of the animal world into the miraculous things they are. When was the lost time you stopped and thought about what it actually means to fly? Yeah, me neither.

If I'm speaking of birds, first perhaps I should talk about the chickens, who are doing quite well.

They are now just three weeks old, but already are growing at a rate that is hard to believe, doubling in size at least. I've given them the entire stall as their brooder room, and they've made good use of the space, trying out their fledgling wings in hopping, awkward flight. The birds have begun to molt, and like teenagers, they look rangy and thin, with long necks and oversize feet. Also like teenagers, they eat quantities of food that would put the pigs to shame. They chirp and preen and make short little bursts of running that always seem to take them right into one of their brooder-mates, bouncing off each other like little feathered projectiles. They pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and go right back to eating.

Outside the barn, the chickens' wild relatives have also turned up in greater numbers. The bluebirds seemed to be the first, darting about the pasture weeks ago. Starlings, obnoxious though they may be, were next, and then the chickadees, who have been here all along, made their presence known with constant calling in the trees by the house. A redwing blackbird came soaring over-head today, mourning doves fly to the newly filled bird-feeder in pairs, and robins have begun to skip about the yard in droves.

Other birds, less obvious, make their presence known as well, for good or bad. A cock pheasant, solitary holdover of the hunting season, managed to dodge a winter's worth of coyotes and hawks, and he came strutting down by the bridge and along the creek yesterday in all his iridescent finery as if the farm belonged to him. A duck was not so lucky. I found its remains in the high field yesterday morning while walking the dog, and though it was newly killed, there was little left to judge just what the bird had been. White feathers with large, hollow quills, a deep breastbone; one of the domestic ducks from a local farm must have been carried off in the night. Even more mysterious, I found an owl pellet today, an even slighter clue. What species the owl was, I've no idea. I've never heard one here and certainly never seen one, but there was the evidence none the less, filled with the tiny bones of the mice and voles who new the owl in a more intimate, more terrible way.

Other birds have spring in their veins as well. At least one woodcock has begun to nest in the scrub thicket in the center of the main field, getting up with a twitter and circling around every time the dog and I approach. Killdeer wheel and call back and forth together all day. At first there were three of them, but now only two seem to be around, a male and female, ready to nest when the grass gets taller.

Most amazingly, I happened to catch the red tails mating the other day. I was walking from my car to the barn and nearly missed it; one hawk alighted in a hickory tree beside the stream, nothing special here where the hawks make their home. But as I watched, the second hawk, the male, ghosted down to land with the first hawk, and in a rustle of feathers that was brief and without ceremony, they coupled, and then flew off to separate trees. Hmmm. Maybe they're on the something...

Everywhere, the farm is coming alive again. Green is slowly seeping back into the fields, almost unnoticeably, and the snow is gone from even the deepest gullies. The bees are coming and going from their hive once more, and along the roadsides daffodils are sprouting from the earth. And the birds, over-head and all around, are taking this opportunity to flaunt their disregard for the dull pull of the earth. The hunters, the lovers, the prey, and the survivors; they all take wing together under the same spring sun.

Learning Curve

Nine PM, saturday night, I received a call from the Waterbury Post Office: there was a box of chicks there with my name on it. The birds weren't supposed to arrive until tuesday morning, but that point was moot. They were here, whether I was ready or not. I was not.

That first night, with the heat lamps and pen in the barn yet unassembled, the chicks came into the house with me. I settled on two plastic clothes hampers for temporary quarters, under a reading lamp appropriated for what heat it could give. I cranked the thermometer up to around 75, unbearable for me, but not even warm enough for the infant birds. It was past ten by the time I was ready to open the chirping box and see the fluffy cargo.

Inside, crowded together, were 101 day old chicks of various colors, representing perhaps half a dozen brown-egg laying breeds. There were Rhode Island Reds, Black Australorps, and breeds I won't be able to identify till they're older. All were equally cute.

It's almost impossible to avoid hyperbole when describing the cuteness of a baby chick. They are built as if with the specific intent to tug on the heart strings, so small, so innocent, so...cute. Few other words fit so perfectly. They trundle around, peeping, taking tentative steps, preening their downy fuzz. As I gently transfered the chicks from the cardboard box to the hampers, it was as if I was dipping my hands into huddled life itself, coming up with soft handfuls of sweetness and light. It was tough to not melt right away.

I'll interject to say the birds, despite being shipped across country from Iowa in a cardboard box, in late February, arrived in good health. I'll give due credit to the McMurray Hatchery for fine chicks (though I'd no basis for comparison) and an expertise that brought the birds swiftly and safely to me. I'll use them again.

After a night of constant chirping that no doubt drove Blitz crazy, I woke early to set up a more permenant home for the chicks in a barn stall that I'd begun to turn into a brooder room. I'd read extensively about just how to keep the newborns, about the temperature needed, about food, water, space, and about just how fragile the little chickens were, vulnerable to drafts and dampness of any sort. I'd read that keeping them close was fine for the first few days, better than having them spread out over a larger area, and so I hung the heat lamps over a large rubber trough, which I'd bottomed with layers of hay and pine shavings. I filled a tray with feed, and placed the waterer in the center, and after a few hours of leaving the heat lamps on, I used a thermometer to make sure the temperature was right for the birds. I moved the birds first back into their traveling box, then down into the barn, and slowly placed them into their new home, taking time to dip their beaks into the food and water, so they knew where it was. They were a little crowded when they all were unloaded, but they seemed warm, and were finding their food fine. They seemed perfectly ok, and I checked in on them constantly through the day and into the evening.

This should be a fluff piece about getting chicks for the farm, about how cute they are, about how having birds is great. But this post isn't about that. It's about how the next morning, I came out to the barn and found 18 of the chicks dead, crowded into their waterer, and once wet, unable to make it through the night. 18 was a lot, and as I slowly gathered them from out of the water trough, one by one, the count seemed to never end. Wet, limp, they seemed even more frail, even more slight than they did when they were fluffy and alive. Two other chicks seemed destined to die, weak, damp, listless. I left them in with their sisters, and hoped for the best.

The chicks died because I didn't know what I was doing. The space I'd provided the chicks was not enough for them, and now, in hindsight, that's very clear. In the grand scheme of things, 18 dead chicks out of 101 might not be so uncommon, and in comparison to the thousands of chicks and chickens that die or are killed every day, my tragedy was trivial. But it stung. I had been entrusted with this chirping mass of innocence and naivete, and within 48 hours I'd let the birds down. It was a taste of something that I'll have to get used to as a farmer. It's a feeling I'll no doubt have when I kill a pig or send a steer to slaughter. But this was different; this was a mistake.

When you're dealing with living things, when you take that resposibility upon yourself to raise them, when you only have secondhand experience at best, the learning curve can be very sharp. Those 18 dead chicks are a taste of failure, a taste of what I'll have to face up to again, if I really expect to do what I'm doing. It hurt, more than you'd think given the tiny stature of the victims, but there was little to do. I tried to focus on fixing things, pushing forward.

I built a new space for the chicks, a frame made of tall plywood, with ample room for movement. I bought a third heat lamp, paranoid about keeping the chicks warm in what's turning out to be a bitter early March. By early afternoon Monday, the chicks were in yet another new home, and this one finally seemed a proper fit. One night passed, with no deaths, and the two chicks who seemed on death's door began to perk up, though even now one seems to be less fit than its fellows. Relief began to fill me, and I began to feel good. The next morning, though, one chick was dead. One chick, I told myself was not bad, comparatively. It really wasn't. I don't know why that chick died, it could have been anything, since the body was dry, and the crop was full of feed. Though I was responsible in the bigger picture, it wasn't my fault. In the days since, I haven't lost a bird, but I know I could at any moment. It's something I'll need to get used to, this occasional loss, this sense of having let down something blameless.

There's a learning curve there, a sharp one, and one I'm just now skidding into. I keep my hands on the wheel, and my fingers crossed.

Farm Fresh

So, I'm starting a farm...

Hickory Hurst is a retired dairy farm in Morris CT, last in operation sometime in the late sixties. Somewhere around 90 acres of mixed wood-lot and pasture, for the last thirty years the land has been owned by our family friends the Hachems, and, apart from the house and barns, maintained only as hay fields. Now, thanks to the family's generosity, the land will be put back into full-time production as an integrated, sustainable, organic farm.

Following a model perfected, if not pioneered, by farmers like Joel Salatin of Polyface Farm (most notably described in The Omnivore's Dilemma), the goal at Hickory Hurst is to focus on grass-based, low-impact farming techniques, including utilizing animals and crops in complementary roles. The health and ethical treatment of livestock is as much a priority as high quality meat and eggs, and both well-being and product are tied directly with the health of the land itself.

My plan right now is to spend the fall cutting back sections of wood, and performing up-keep and cleaning on the barns and pastures. If all goes well, in the spring I'll begin fencing and acquiring stock. I'll be starting out small, and hopefully expanding in coming years to a level sustainable with the size of the farm. Here's my initial target for spring purchase:

*about ten head of beef cattle, possibly a heritage breed, maybe Herefords from a local breeder. Fed only grass and hay, the cattle will grow slower that their feed-lot counterparts, but produce a leaner and more flavorful beef.

*10-20 hogs, ideally Tamworths, a heritage breed know for their foraging ability. 'Pastured' in wooded enclosures, finished on pears, acorns, and hickory nuts in the fall, the pigs should be a perfect fit. Mmmm, bacon...

*200-300 broiler chickens; pastured, used as insect control, given room to move and lots of sunlight, there is nothing better that a fresh, well roasted chicken.

*150 laying hens; I'm already trying to design mobile coops to follow the cattle in the fields.

*25 sheep and a few goats, money permitting.

In the second year, I intend to convert a six acre front field into vegetable rows focusing on heirloom species and New England specific crops, as well as personal favorites. A second three acre back lot, currently consisting of rocky, poor soil, is destined for reclamation, and I'm going to experiment there with a 'milpa' system, a free form Mexican diverse crop mix. Corn, beans, squash, and melons are sown together and allowed to proliferate, providing ground cover, water retention, nutrient fixing, and, if nothing else, feed for the stock.

I plan to sell at local farmers markets, most notably in Litchfield, but also need to support of friends, family, and the community. I'm looking to develop a meat CSA, and if you're in the Northeast and think you might be interested, give me a shout; chickens and eggs should be ready in the early summer, pork in the fall.