3:00 snapshot #731

I have to release these snapshots well spaced out, so that you people aren't knocked over by the exotic glamour of my daily life.

Today I'm going back to my old work, Drumlin Farm, to take a course on Backyard Chickens! I'm pretty excited about it, it's a real step forward to changing our lives in a way that I wasn't sure was ever going to happen. We pass by a neighbor's chicken coop when we walk around the block, and they are quiet and unobtrusive, and the coop doesn't smell. (And I don't see any signs of a pest infestation, but I haven't done a close inspection. No obvious burrows or droppings along the fence line.)

The goal (in my mind) is to produce ourselves a bit more of what we consume. It's a small step, as we won't be laying the eggs ourselves, or even producing the chicken's food. But right now we exchange money and gasoline for eggs of completely unknown origin (well, presumably they come from chickens). I don't intend to directly eat the birds themselves, since they will be alive and adorned with inedible parts like feathers and big scaly legs, and full of digestive systems and other organs.

The process of going from living bird to edible meat is daunting. I was really happy to see that a local poultry farm put a slide show of the process on their website. They teach people this lost skill and the images are straight-forward and dispassionate. I think there should be many more people who are able to turn living animals into food. It's only fair to the animals that compassionate skilled folks have the ability to slaughter and process animals.

3:00 snapshot #732

Our friend belen1974 came over and helped with the yard work! The heavy snows this winter brought down some huge white pine boughs. We were about to hire a company to come with a wood chipper to get rid of them, when I started cutting them up with a hand saw to see if I could. We ended up making a few wood piles, and a huge pile of pine needles and twigs. It was a lot of hard work, but with our friend's help it went pretty quickly, and it felt great not to spend money to do have it done! Then we dug out the knotweed.....