Why I Blog/Chicken Scratch

I resisted to blog for a long time.  I am probably the last person to blog among my peers.  Farmer Boy and I were also the last people to get a DVD player, about 3 years ago.  I spent about the same amount of time weighing all pluses and minuses. 

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·      It is labor-intensive and time-consuming for me.  I am constantly fighting my tendency for perfectionism.  I would write a post, check and recheck it, try to pick a great picture, etc., etc., etc.  After several days I still don’t have a post on the blog. 

·      My topic is silly.  There are so many life-changing blogs!  I don’t think blogging about chickens is life changing, well, except in my case.  Our family members are blogging about their mother’s cancer journey.  I check and read their blog every day.  It is much more important. 

·      Loss of privacy – this is the topic Farmer Boy and I discussed for a long time.  It is easy to find who people really are, where they are, etc. 

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·      Chickens have taught me a lot about life and cycles of life.  It is surprising how many misconceptions people have about nature, farming, and chickens.  It doesn’t take a rooster to produce eggs.  Only if you want to have baby chicks.  Fortunately, there are more and more urbanites, who raise chickens in their backyards, so we don’t have to turn every social event into a fun presentation about chickens.   

·      Chickens make me and, especially, Farmer Boy happy.  If anyone out there needs Chicken Therapy, let me know.  This is how it works – you come dressed for farm work, feed the chickens, and spend an hour in the chicken yard watching them.  We will even feed you and supply you with tea or coffee.  It is much cheaper than regular therapy, and you don’t have to disclose any of your childhood traumas to us, only to chickens, if you want.

·      Blogging is essential for a good career.  I am a fan of Brazen Careerist by Penelope Trunk.  She wrote a lot about it and has a good/short guide to blogging.  I am still not sure how I can apply myself in the chicken world – Chicken Management???

·      Blogging is a good way of record-keeping - Farmer Boy knows and remembers everything, he doesn’t write it down though.  However, not many people know about Asil breeding.  Sometimes Farmer Boy forgets, and I need to check and double-check. 

·      Blogging enriches you beyond anything you can imagine.  I remember having anxiety attacks over privacy issues.  I didn’t really know whom to ask, so I asked someone very authentic and approachable – David Seah.  I am a HUGE fan of his blog.  He is not afraid to be vulnerable.  That’s why his blog is so amazing to me.  He emailed me back.  The header of his blog is "David Seah - Design, Productivity, Inspiration, and Empowerment".  And that's exactly how he is!  His responses were detailed, honest, inspiring, and simple.  I didn’t expect him, a very busy blogger, to respond at all.  His emails convinced me that only good comes from opening up and allowing new connections in your life.  Thank you, David!

I still don’t have a clear and direct answer why I started to blog about the chickens.  I know it will help me somehow some day in the future.  We constantly talk chicken stories, why not blog them. 

Best Food Writing 2005 and Chickens

It is about love, adventure, science, fiction, food, family, friends, random people, tradition and rebellion, obsessions and snobbery, and, most importantly, chickens!  This is the first book in the series I picked up.  I have been reading cookbooks for years, like many of us.  I have never read about cooking as life and art.  I have never seen food as a subject of affection, hate, and other strong emotions.  This is a book you take on a long trip.  The book has everything I ever wanted from a book – references to places, cafes, restaurants, books, cookbooks, historical/biological/chemical facts, cost of food, people, recipes, and solid cooking and non-cooking advice. 

Let me give you examples:

1.     Apples come from Kazakhstan.  Not many people know it.  Gina Mallet (As Asian As Apple Crumble) does. 

2.     The book talks about places I have been to and am nearby right now.  It makes me want to go places.

3.     Most importantly, it talks about chickens – killing a chicken (Killing Dinner), making an omelette baveuse (The Count and I), fried chicken in Georgia and Tennessee,  (A Sonnet in Two Birds), Nashville’s hot chicken (Some Like it Extra Hot), roast chicken at Zuni Café in San Francisco (Quintessential Californian), and chicken feet dim sum, which I love (Appendix: A Taste of Blogworld).

It’s too bad it’s only 317 pages long.  

Itty Bitty Chicken Committee Went to College

Yesterday was not a good day.  I woke up at 4:30 am because of a death cry.  Even if you never heard before a cry of a chicken being eaten alive, you will know it the moment you hear it.  The cry was short and abrupt.  I wasn’t fully awake when it happened.  A weird second of silence followed it.  And then all the dogs in the neighborhood went crazy barking.  This is not the first time we lost a chicken or several chickens to local wild life – raccoons, possums, fishers, and even unsupervised dogs.  However, I thought it was just a hen.

If I knew the whole day will get from a dead hen to a dead day, I would have stayed in bed emailing and watching TV.  It rained like crazy.  Farmer Boy had to work outside, got wet, and now sounds like he is having an active case of TB.  I went to fix a tiny chip on the car window and had to pay a substantial amount for it.  I got two letters of job rejections.  I had a hair appointment, which for some weird reason lasted almost 3 hours.  My stylist was precise and thorough, and I know he just wanted to make sure that my grey takes the color, but… but...  I came out with great hair color, but also with the scalp that looks like a 3-year-old took a black Sharpie to it. 

I know it will wash out, so the scalp color is not the reason why I want to pull my hair out.  It wasn’t just a dumb hen, that didn’t want to go into a coup at night and became an easy target for a predator.  The dead chicken turned out to be the mama hen and her 8 babies (aka Itty Bitty Chicken Committee), which lived in a very secure coop and never left it unsupervised.  Farmer Boy raged the whole day at every little thing.  I couldn’t figure out why he was going nuclear till he finally told me the details.  I am known to cry uncontrollably when babies die, so he wanted to spare me.  Farmer Boy is inconsolable.  This was his first and only batch of babies this year.  He picked his best rooster and best hen.  He managed to care for the mama and eggs through the worst snowstorm.  He lost only one baby of the batch during the first week.  We spent some hours trying to guess their genders and dreaming of which one would be in the Fair this year.  His breading and chick care has improved immensely within only 2-3 years.  He doesn’t lose babies due to lack of knowledge.  We used to joke about hens, that were killed by raccoons – “She went to college”.  The babies were too young to go to college.  All the possibilities for developing the blood line, all the awards and ribbons they could have won, and all of it is gone.

Good Chicken Book

I have been reading our collection of chicken books, which I should admit right away we did not buy.  Most of our friends and relatives think it’s a great idea to give us a chicken book.  Majority of those books are pretty bad, especially “101 Chicken Recipes”, which was a joke, but still, a bad book.  However, once in a while we get a good book – Living with Chickens!  

It is simply written.  It gives you a break down of cost, sizes, numbers, square feet, and many other concrete numbers and details.  I like numbers, I understand numbers.  When somebody says that I will need $X for feed to raise X number of chickens to X pounds, I get it.  The book talks about different options of growing your chickens – buying baby chicks, hatching chicks from eggs, and getting chicken from other people/sources.  I like how simple, detailed, and organized the book is.  

It talks about birth and death of birds.  The author doesn’t shy away from unglamorous moments of chicken lives – butchering.  The book also mentions how things are done on a small farm vs. big outfits.  It also doesn’t claim to have answers to all your questions.  

The best feature – chicken pictures.  If you ever tried to take a picture of a chicken, you will understand.  Chickens are worse than children, they also move faster than you ever imagine.  I am an adult, but I like books with pictures!  

I would highly recommend people, especially beginners, to read this book.  If you are into farming romanticism and funny anecdotes, then this book is not for you.  If you are serious about chickens, check it out. 

Farm vs. Metropolitan Market

Farmer Boy and I have a constant conversation about our farm share.  He believes he can grow everything we get from the farm cheaper.  I believe him, he probably can.  However, at this point I do not think it’s cost-efficient to grow it in our garden, which was destroyed by our chickens (they do eat everything).  Another theme was to cancel the share and buy it from a store, while our garden is under development.  So I decided to shop and compare.  Our weekly share costs about $34.  All items are organic and locally grown.  I am not including the time it takes to drive to the farm and back, and the cost of gas.  It is approximately the same if I drove to a grocery store and back (plus gas).  I couldn’t find everything we get from the share at Trader Joe’s, which is the closest grocery store to me.  I was also curious about one of the most expensive stores in our area – Metropolitan Market. 

 

My visit to Met Market was short.  I was impressed by the variety of items.  Now I know where to find really weird and exotic things.  However, the prices are overwhelming.  People were shopping there, so I guess it works for them.  I wrote down all the prices for my weekly share, but I forgot to look up 0.5 lbs of salad mix.  Not all the items at Met Market were marked as organic and/or locally grown.  I understand that it is not a fair comparison.

 

4 pears (apprx. 7 oz each – 1.75 lbs) X $1.99 = $3.48

12 apples (apprx. 8 oz each – 6 lbs) X $2.49 = $14.94

2 lbs of potatoes X $1.99 = $3.98

1.3 lbs of carrots X $1.79 = $2.33

0.8 lbs rutabaga X $1.79 = $1.43

1.4 lbs beets X $1.79 = $2.5

0.9 lbs parsnip X $2.99 = $2.7

0.4 lbs sunchoke X $7.99 = $3.2

4 onions (apprx. 7 oz each – 1.75 lbs) X $1.49 = $2.61

1 bunch of chards X $2.99 = $2.99

3 lbs wheat berries X $1.99 = $5.97

2 lbs of frozen blueberries X $4.66 = $9.32

Total = $55.45 + 0.5 lbs of salad mix.  I would say $58 easily.

 

So, Terry’s Berries - $34 vs. Metropolitan Market - $58.  I feel the share from the farm wins.  However, Farmer Boy thinks we get things from the farm, which we don’t eat and it goes to waste.  We both might be right.  Money-wise the farm is better.  Plus, it really makes me cook more greens and less meat.  However, if I shop at Met, I would probably eat less.  We don’t know how to resolve the veggie issue. 

Food Budget for 2009

Putting a budget together didn’t take that much time.  The total came to $32,160.00.  I allocated $3,000 for food, which doesn’t include going out or take-outs.  I tried to make sure my budget is under the Washington State Food Program indicators. 

Checking how realistic my budget is took a little bit more.  People in my zip code make on average $41,305.  You can see a profile of your neighborhood here, just enter your zip code.  EatingWell website is reporting that average income now is even less, $37,388, and people spend $3,666 on food annually.  It is very possible I will go over the budget by $2,000 due to price increases.  However, my spending from 2001-2008 on food did not go over $3,200 per year.  What I really need to watch is eating out and take out expenses.

I am sure there are many more ways to double-check your budget vs. reality.  I have been known to study new Federal Poverty Income Guidelines as they come out.  But budgets don’t have to be so severe.