I hate trucks. I hate tractors. I hate depending on machines that break. Today the pickup truck’s transmission or transfer case (still undetermined) banged and then failed as I parked the borrowed stock trailer (our stock trailer has a gaping crack in the aluminum subframe) after a trip to the slaughterhouse. That’s also the plow […]
Menaced by Mechanisms Read More »
When I used to remodel houses, I allowed myself the time to be a perfectionist. These days I’m dealing with too many projects to obsess with detail. The hectic schedule requires that many things be slapped together just to move on to the next task. But I am most pleased when I can take the
While I was working on the new chicken brooder trailer the flock of ducks marched up the hill, enjoying the bright, warm day and especially enjoying the snowmelt puddles. They primarily focused on splashing and bathing in the puddles, but when they grew tired of that they would switch over to snow bathing as well.
Ever since the year before we started our farm, I’ve made it a point to attend one farming conference annually. This year I went all out and attended two, both this week. Farming conferences involve all the usual things you’d expect from any other conference: squeally microphones, polite but forced applause after each presentation, people
Farmers in Conferences Getting Coffee Read More »
We just received an old reefer trailer for our next chicken brooder. We’ve been using shipping containers for the last two years, and while we’ve been happy with most aspects of their performance, we found that their lack of insulation causes problems with moisture condensing on the inside surfaces and raining down, especially for the
Reefer (Trailer) Madness Read More »
We’ve added sage breakfast sausage patties to our lineup. Allie and I made “breakfast” sandwiches for lunch (why limit good food to the hegemony of prescribed mealtime orthodoxy?) and of course we went overboard with the layering. We barely could squeeze them tight enough to get a bite. But overdoing it is part of the
Breakfast Sandwich Read More »
We have an itty-bitty egg operation, with just a few hundred hens on the farm. Still, over the course of the last year we gathered about 110,000 eggs by hand, so we get to see our fair share of eggs. Most of the eggs just look like eggs. There are natural variations in size and
At my Queens/Flushing Meadows Lake delivery today I was surprised when I found these farm-breed ducks in among a large group of mallards. Being New York, the Mallards were resentful of the way the entitled Pekin and Swedish ducks were rapidly contributing to the gentrification of their lake and changing the character of their neighborhood.
Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to loseNothin’ ain’t worth nothin’ but it’s free Roger Miller via Kris Kristofferson This “freedom” line from Me and Bobby McGee is brilliant because it is challenging to parse, and as the song progresses it becomes clear that the freedom is at least partially ironic. All our freedoms
