trust the spirit
i wasn't the only one hit hard by tammy's passing. farm255's farmer/chef jacobia francois was a good friend of tammy's, and has a history longer than my own. francois taught me how to ride tammy--an activity i neither condone nor partake in--as well as how to have a several minute snorttalk conversation an inch away from tammy's open snout. she will be missed, and these are his words:
it’s truly—the end of an era. today I whispered a soft prayer to myself, kneeling in a busted, rusted, jalopy of a trailer—shades of rust and blue. entire sections of metal peeling apart—I kneeled with a bucket of slop perched in between my legs, tilting it forward with quiet hands. in front of me, just over a foot away, was tammy—our herd’s matriarch. a living legend. the mother of my own first pig, and the grandmother to so many in our herd. our mascot. and as a farm, and as a business, the cost of carrying a mascot, no matter how loveable or timeless, had become a giant money pit.
hunched over and kneeling sideways in the alley, with a soft grip on top, and a swift knife to it’s shins, I chomp down the lettuce bed, filling my tub. grazing with my fingers, picking weeds, and snacking along the way. the harvest is sweet and lush.
we have been blessed.
never before have I felt so alive as growing food makes me feel. it’s alive! I’m alive! beautiful! glowing! the colors! the smells! this way and the other, up and left and around. there is food growing out of the ground, and it’s alive. the ebb and flow of the season is driving the pace. the farm has awoken from its sleepy winter slumber and is again swirling with colors and comers and goers. watering, and watering, and watering the days go by—the fields layered with miles of small tubes—did you remember to plant the lettuce? are the carrots germinating? what’s this bug—it looks nasty. we better mow again. the peas need to be weeded. the carrots need to be weeded. the beets need to be weeded. the chard needs to be weeded. the weeded needs to be weeded needs weeded be weeded be needs…
this is a video from about two weeks ago when we moved our chicks out to pasture. it is remarkable how much bigger they are today than in this video. i'll make sure to post it soon.
seven am at the backyard moon. farmer root and farmhand nick wake up with me at first light to do the deed. our friend dan, from darby farms, reccomended we transfer the young chicks into crates while it was still dark, in order to catch them in as stress freee of a way as possible. not having crates, we came up with the half brilliant/half moronic plan of just transporting them in the bed of my truck. for the most part, it worked pretty well, but i think we can work out a few kinks for next time.
for those of you in the athens or atlanta area, make sure you look into buying your chickens from darby farm.
I'm High On Cooking | in Farm, VIDEOS, livestock | tagged chicken brooder, chicken tractor, pasture raised poultry 