Chicks to pasture, field trip
Early in the week we moved about 1000 chicks from the brooder out to the shelters. All four kids helped Amy catch and crate the chicks while I loaded the filled crates onto the trailer for the short haul to the field. Before doing so, we spent a half a day setting up the waterers, feeders, shelter lids, hoses, chains, hooks, and buckets. 16 shelters to move daily.
Though we emptied out much of the brooder, it didn’t stay empty as another batch of newly hatched chicks arrived this week. Shout out to my mom for making a trip to the post office to pick them up and bring them back to the farm while we were welcoming kindergarteners from Rich Valley and Saltville Elementary schools who came to the farm for a field trip.
We’re blessed that our kids get to grow up on a farm, and we’re excited to share a day with other kids in the area and give them a taste of life on the farm. I don’t know how much they actually learned about farming, but they sure loved all the animals. One thing that Amy and I tried to emphasize to them is that these animals are raised for food. They are not pets. Yes we care for them and work hard to give them the best life we can, but ultimately, we sustain their lives, then they sustain us. That’s life.
The field trips were fun but exhausting. Amy and the kids set up an obstacle course for them to run through to get some energy out. Hallie brought the horse over. I gave a hay ride to see chickens and cows in the field while Amy showed them chicks in the brooder and piglets in the barn. Then time to catch up on a day’s worth of work after the buses pulled out that afternoon.
This is probably the first time since COVID we’ve been sold out of both mild sausage AND ground beef. One of the challenges to selling meat locally is projecting and planning. Given that our cows are harvested when they are about 2.5 years old and our hogs are harvested when they’re close to a year old, our inventory availability this month is based on farming decisions we made in 2024 or even 2023. Likewise, our inventory a year from now will be tied to the decisions we’re making now. Chickens have the quickest turnover, but the seasonality of their production requires just as much speculation.
Fortunately, we got more pork and beef back from the processor on Wednesday. Amy and I sorted through it and put it in the freezers while the kids were helping my dad and brother work baby calves. We need to fill herd shares before knowing how much sausage or ground beef we’ll have left to sell. My guess is we’ll be sold out of both again before our freezers get restocked with the next harvest.
On top of everything else, Amy has been making broth and keeping the rental cabins cleaned. With right at 1 inch of rain since last Friday, the grass is growing, which means cabin yards needed mowing.
This week I started listening to THE LITURGY OF THE LAND by Jason M. Craig and Thomas D. Van Horn about homesteading.
“Life on a homestead is good because it brings us closer to our family, to nature, and to our local community, yet the greatest motivation to take up this lifestyle is that homesteading can help orient us more fully and simply toward our true and lasting happiness which is God himself.”
“Many can speak well of the low price of food, but the cost has been the loss of farming as a way of life, a general reduction of crop diversity, and lower nutrient density in food, less healthy food… The cost of cheap food is much higher than we have acknowledged.”
“With the advent of artificial intelligence, we are now eager to even let machines think for us. In many ways, by homesteading, we are taking work back from the machines, so that we can enjoy it once again, as God intended.”
“We don’t just pray our work goes well, but the work itself becomes actual prayer. Our faith is the very life of our homesteads.”
Have a good week.
Will