The Bottom of the Chest

and a Farm Update!

The 246th independence of our country is just around the corner, a time when families and friends come together to celebrate and be merry long into the evening. A time when the sky remains alight with a fantastic array of colors far into the night thanks to giant semi-legal or illegal explosions. It is also a time when one can reflect on the history and challenges of our young nation; something I feel is lost in the holiday. With the 4th looming and thanks to a visitor we hosted on the land one Sunday afternoon, my mind has been preoccupied for several weeks now. He asked me a question that caused my fatty human brain to perform several cartwheels inside my skull as the synapses shot off in every cardinal direction, searching for the answer in the depths of my grey mass. He then kindly waited for something other than a thin line of drool to leave my mouth, but nothing did.

Norwegians are so polite.

I’ll come back to that because life carries on regardless, and my littlest girl turned six! We have a big ol’ beautiful piece of land and my kids love to camp, so I threw a dads and kids camping bonanza in the pasture! As an adult, it is hard to remember just how much simplistic fun one could have by running with a handful of other kids. Questions about spiders and bugs abounded, there was a flamingo strung up in a tree bearing candy treats, a generator-powered bounce house with water features, and a lot of falling into muddy patches in the pasture because we had just irrigated a few days before.  I also had my friend Legolas bring out what I can only presume was a 300lb draw on a bow, and I am almost certain my arrow ended up somewhere in Tracy or the sun…somewhere in between.

It wasn’t glamping though! Feel free to ask one of the dads who woke up with the crowing of the roosters at 2 am and stayed awake with them as they sang on into the night! They’re gone now, Derick! I promise there is very limited crowing occurring on the land besides the occasional red broiler trying out his vocal cords in a teenage cackle of a crow, followed by his older brothers laughing at him.

“Ohhhh, yeah. right there. The author has two older brothers and is just reliving some teasing. 10cc’s of quit-whining should help”

Processing chickens is becoming a little more fluid and natural, and we are now to the point where we are having people come out and join us, which has been a lot of fun. There was such an interest from our previous farm visitors and through friends the Hyers had at their church that we decided to open it up and let others come out and help or watch. I had several young teenagers and older kids assisting throughout all of the processes. They initially started with gathering the birds out of the back of my hot and stinky truck bed and bringing them to me to then bleed out. Then some of them moved to scalding the birds followed by running the plucker and cutting feet and necks; eventually, with some encouragement, they were cleaning out internals. One of the kids, a middle sibling (in my opinion the best sibling position), watched what I was doing at the bleed station and I noticed and asked if he wanted to try. He was immediately interested, so I told him to let me do one more and I would go a little bit slower and explain what I was doing.

Best lesson of the day: Don't Setup the kill station in the SUN!

After I finished with the teaching chicken and any lingering questions had been asked and answered, he selected a chicken in a cone and gave it a great last day as though he had been doing it all morning! I could see in that young man’s eyes that it was an experience he would remember, and I was later told he went up to his older brother and showed him where he got a little bit of arterial spray on his face. There was no joking or mocking of the animal. Just pride in a job well done and maybe a little bit of testing one’s limits in terms of what they are capable of, and comfortable, doing. Call me prejudiced, but man I like how cool home-schooled kids are!

Since we are talking about poultry it only seems fair to bring the conversation around to the turkeys and ducks. We laid out our land around our home based on the permaculture mindset, or as much as possible, and we are slowly developing the land to reflect it. Permaculture in its most basic premise teaches that there exists zones ranging from one as the closest to five as the furthest. Things you use most often or needs the most attention go in zone one, where as the meat birds and pasture would likely be zone four, and five would be the creek and tree line. Our gardens are likely zone two as we do visit them, but not as much as the herb garden in zone one. With that said, the ducks are supposed to be an important part of our zone 2 garden environment because they are voracious bug hunters, slaughtering massive amounts of unwanted pests like slugs and beetles. In reality we are going to have to make some form of protective covers that will fit over the in-ground beds until certain veggies are big enough to not be trampled by the bug brigade in their enthusiasm to sift muddy water.

Ya know, learning curves.

The turkeys have their own little section of the garden until they are another month old or so. There are multiple reasons for them being in the garden, safety and ease of access for watering and feeding vie for first place, but beyond that they are our most expensive initial purchase (each one is close to $12), and I would hate for anything to happen to them, because there is no popping by the turkey store to pick up replacement chicks. They are also incredibly loud throughout the day, their little chirps carry far enough that if no one is talking I can hear them around 100ft away. The last reason is that turkeys are susceptible to blackhead disease, which is a protozoan disease that chickens and other fowl carry that turkeys are particularly susceptible to. Until we are able to sanitize a tractor and move them over to a brand new patch of grass where the other poultry haven’t been this year, the turkeys have to remain up in the garden.

It feels like everything is trying to kill everything else, all the time. I know that has always been the way of the world, but every year I raise animals I learn about something else that is comin’ for my babies!

The day after the dad camping bonanza was particularly exciting because I found my way over to the Amtrak station near the house to pick up a guest who was coming out to spend the afternoon and some of the evening with us. Peter had found us on Realmilk.com, which had led him to our Substack page where he was able to contact me. We shared a little bit of dialogue back and forth to the point where I was fairly certain that it wasn’t some weirdo trying to squat on the land and I told him I would be in touch for a video chat.

Fast forward several days and I had my day job take me out to the bay in the middle of the week. It just so happened that Peter was staying in SanFran inbetween traveling for his thesis, and we met up and talked for an hour in person about a myriad of topics, ranging around farms and raw milk.  At the end of the hour I told him that I was fairly certain we would have him out to the farm for a day where we could talk in more detail about what we are doing and what he is working on.

In short, and I am sure he could word this much better, Peter’s thesis is looking at ways in which libertarian centered Americans are attempting to etch out as free a living as possible, and how products like raw milk and small farm products are able to assist in that. Yeah, I said the same thing “well…that’s what we are trying to do!”  

I don’t know if we were the first American homestead he had been on, but I feel confident in saying we were the most fun! We took the farm tour, which seems to be getting longer every time I give it, and for the first thirty minutes Nora would bring him whatever green thing she found in one of the gardens, and he would eat it. Every time. It was great!

As the tour continued it was surreal to see him so interested in what we were doing and how concepts were falling into place for him on how sustainable a small farm can be, and our philosophies behind why we believe it is important to be a steward of the land, not a dictator. Peter grew up in a city and was unfamiliar or new to many of the regenerative and permaculture traditions and means we discussed that day and it was great to revisit the reasons for every single thing on the land. Any time I get an opportunity to provide my perspective on farming and I can get it across in a way where I can see the gears turning inside someones noggin is a good day for me!

During the heat of the day we took a seat outside and Kayla told Peter it was now his turn to talk and that we were going to feed the poor lad! To share the wealth of our land with a visitor turned friend was, is, and shall always be more of a blessing as the giver than the receiver. While the steak was cooking Peter would take the time to tell us of a festival he had been to recently in the east that was a homesteading/libertarian/anarchist meet up. He showed us a 1/1000^th gold oz bill that was really quite intricate and artistic to look at and about the raw milk movement in other states. How much California does allow in comparison to other states is quite surprising.

I don’t think it was this particular one, but similar.

It was during this afternoon sit, sip, and chat that Peter casually asked me “What does freedom mean to you?” and I didn’t have an answer. I decided to double check and consult the Britannica:

Freedom:

The state of being free: such as the power to do what you want to do : the ability to move or act freely

Well, that is also what I think freedom is! Shoot, I think everyone would have a similar description! As Americans we have that freedom to the letter of the law, no doubt about it. It is ingrained from childhood that we are free! We have flags everywhere because we are proud of the freedom our country represents! We go and free nations from tyranny and inject pure freedom into their countries! We have choices in everything from insurance and healthcare to jobs and past times. Could we possibly be any more free?

That last question is the one that matters the most to me because everything else before it feels hollow and superficial. Freedom is not a cup to be filled and emptied by others at their design or on specific holidays, it is a treasure chest of your God-given rights and it must be cherished and defended; however, people stopped protecting the chest a long time ago as we were lulled into complacency by the promise of comfort, wealth, and indoor plumbing.

I am not casting blame on previous generations by any means. I have done enough personal research into the past 120 years to know that the living conditions were a lot more cumbersome in comparison to modern standards. I think anyone would have jumped at the chance for a more comfortable life, and most did; they just didn’t realize that the cost of it was having their rights taken away with slow, measured, and deliberate thievery. Common people (us peasants) just want to live and experience daily life. A life which in the past 30 years has had more and more distractions, both naturally and purposefully, added to the point where most people can’t remember what happened 2 weeks ago because there is so much garbage entering our heads on a daily basis. In the past century alone our understanding of psychology and the human mind has grown in leaps and bounds; to think that those new means of subconscious understanding and control would never be employed against the American population by those in power is naïve.

I turned thirty-eight this year and not once in my life can I recall a moment where the actions of the government have benefited our collective freedom more than they have hindered or outright removed them. Our farms are being consolidated into larger plots that are mostly investor owned and serf worked while our livestock are shoved into confined spaces where their health, and thus ours, suffer in the name of cost benefits. The way we keep our animals is why we have such a problem with evolving bacteria and pathogens, which in turn gives the monopoly man a viable reason to control our food supply to the point where it is taken away from us, heavily processed into stuff, and only then returned as a blessing of being allowed to eat it.

Raw milk is on the chopping block due to the avian bird flu, just fyi. So is Backyard Poultry for Salmonella

I’ll share an example that helps keep me aware of how vulnerable our freedom is. I keep chickens in a fence where they have food, water, and safety. They are free to run around, squawk, sun tan, post selfies, fight with one another, and watch survivor. Free livin’ based on our modern perception of freedom; however, one day I will go and seize all my chickens and kill them specifically because the reason for their lives is to profit mine, and they also never tried to stop me or tell me I couldn’t. The mirage of freedom is all that I needed to keep a whole flock tied to one piece of land, even when they can see actual freedom through the fencing.

Have a safe 4^th everybody and enjoy the freedoms we yet retain, because the bottom of the chest has been showing for a while and they are not done taking.