SPRING!

Merely a Yodel Away.

I don’t know anything about yodeling, which is why I feel pretty confident in saying that it likely started when beautiful Swiss people would break out of their winter hibernating dens and announce their return to the mountain wilds with undulating cries that beckoned the slumbering spring out of the earth’s crust. They probably claw their way up through the last vestige of winter ice, thirsty for that first drip of sunshine upon their face as they clamber to their feet and begin to yodel, much akin to a babe’s first breath.

What a majestic people.

Speaking of babes, Kayla is back! The cow ladies seem to be much happier to have their quieter, gentler, non-heavy rock-listening mama back in charge of them. I do think Bella gives me a little bit more leeway than she has in the past, such as being able to halter her and lead her without playing “grab the ring as I swing my head back and forth” as an example. Not my favorite game. Bella and Freya are both doing just fine, and we are now operating on a 12-hour on/off with the calf on mama. Freya has adapted to a little rope halter we put on her when feeding in the morning and to lead her around, and beyond Bella occasionally grumbling at us about letting our girls near Freya, the pair seem very content to continue their existence on the hillside.

On one side of the house is the herd on the hillside, and just around the other side are our 100 chicks! The Cornish Cross are now 2+ weeks old, and the red broilers are just over a week old, and the size difference between the two is incredible. I’m going to be honest in saying that from here on out, I don’t really like to hold the Cornish or engage with them beyond checking their health and daily maintenance. They are so weirdly shaped and behaviorally different from other chickens that they are somewhat in a poultry-based uncanny valley, which is where something is eerily close to being real but the viewer can tell there is something off. It is one reason why I wanted to try the red broilers, which are a meat bird that take about 4 weeks longer to reach production weight than their counterparts. While they take longer to grow out and I am spending a little more on feed to raise a bird that is marketable, I am hoping they won’t be like the CC, who are so muscle-laden they wobble when walking and spend a lot of time lying down because the breast meat is so large it tires after standing for too long.

With that being said, here is a shameless plug to order chickens if you are interested. The Poultry Pals will be doing at least 300 chickens this year if they are attainable from hatcheries, and we are also taking pre-orders for turkeys starting at any time. Despite giving the Cornish Cross the side eye for being genetic weirdos, their breast meat is not able to be beaten in terms of size, and they are a great option across the board as a source of protein. Here are our processing dates that we are spreading out so we don’t get processing fatigue and so our customers can spread out their buying amounts as needed:

• 04/13

• 05/04

• 06/01

• 07/13

• 07/27

• Turkeys around November.

Our stock of egg-laying chickens and other poultry is slowly dwindling. We lost two ducks and a chicken to a predator on the last week of February; nothing but a pile of feathers left where the birds were snatched. What was interesting was that the evidence of the crime was located outside the coop, with the poultry inside the coop being none the worse for wear and not even a peep heard out of our “guard” guinea. The single surviving guinea fowl out of seven is now a year old, and she was the only one who went inside the coop consistently, whereas her deceased brothers and sisters opted for not-the-coop…aka death. I guess I can’t blame her for being quiet.

During the day, though, the chickens are back up to being a menace near our house. We moved them closer to the foot of the hill in anticipation of the creek breaking her banks (close this year, probably within a foot or two), and they are under two very bushy eucalyptus trees that they have taken to flying up into and laying their eggs. What FUN! If just one of them went broody and sat a whole bunch of eggs, I wouldn’t even be mad about the loss of the other eggs because our PP’s are coming into a ton of eggs and we can just buy from them and their beautiful chickens. It has been on my dream board for a bit to get a whole bunch of chickens that roost and live in trees, and we can put them down along the creek with a feed wagon in the middle of the pasture with nesting boxes. I know it is cray-cray, but I have chickens in trees…step 1 complete, right?

Lastly, here is a picture of our very slightly modified milking area. The stanchion was beefed up a little bit with heavier duty posts, and the canopy is now tall enough to cover both milker and stanchion instead of half of one and none of the other. Before Bella went down two weeks ago, the plan was to surprise Kayla upon her return with a new milking parlor built on a design that Zach and I are working on together for milk, sanitation…and poultry slaughter.

Get out there and yodel the spring into existence!