Dropstone Farms » I lol’ed

The perils of heritage livestock.

garth — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 01:15:31 +0000

Heritage chickens. They have great foraging instincts and they love to explore. It’s great and it’s the reason that we raise only these breeds. It’s wonderful to raise an animal that acts like an animal.

Additionally, we raise our birds outdoors from the day we get them. They are on grass and dirt (and straw. and under a heat lamp) from the day they show up at our long-suffering post office. We think that a heritage breed on soil and grass is unmatched from an animal welfare and a taste perspective.

However, there is a downside.

They get out.

All. The. Time.

You know 1″ poultry mesh? So do they. They like to go through it. My theory is that the squeeziness is reassuring to them. Temple Grandin is with me on that one.

Excuse me, I need to collect a chick.

Lest you think that’s a rhetorical device, I assure you that I just stepped away from my computer to collected a panicked, five-day-old chick. What does this look like? Let me show you.

Yep, it's a hat full of five-day-old chicks.

This is not, I confess, the chicken I just went to collect. She was only a single escaped chicken and the ones in the photo and my hat are the chickens that escaped when I was at our other farm, dealing with our other chickens.

Lauren’s dog is, in general, an amazing animal possessed of a tremendous amount of mothering instincts. Seriously. I’d sooner trust her with a newborn than an electric mesh fence. She has been a tremendous asset in identifying and locating escaped chicks this year. She’ll hear a distress peep long before we do and zero in on the poor little peeper in the way that only a critter with ears that big can do. Good girl.

But she’s bored with it by now.

What? This is a hat full of chicks. Seriously?

I’d like to have a really awesome punchline right now… Something that just drives this whole anecdote home… But I don’t, so I’ll leave you with the thought that I’m currently wearing a hat full of baby chicken poop.

It’s not a baby elephant, it’s a FARMAL CUB!

garth — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 16:52:18 +0000

Now I love Craig’s List. I love what the site does, I love the architecture/usability of the site, and I love that the founder has stayed true to the vision of an accessible community site. And a measure of the success of Craig’s list in being an accessible community site is the number of posters who are clearly not what some corporate types refer to in “webinars” as “Young Digital Natives.*” As a result, there’s a lot of humor both intentional and unintentional. My current Craig’s List obsession is with the True Tale Of The Farmal Cub. For best results, pronounce “Farmal” to rhyme with “caramel” if you’re from Wisconsin and Harm’ll if you speak standard American English (EN-us).

There was an ad for a Farmall Cub tractor on the Craig’s List but, due to a typo, it was listed as a FARMAL CUB. So I clicked through based on equal parts fondness for tractors and amusing typos and what did I find? The following.

It's a Farmal Cub

Or the full ad:

Not to be confused with a baby elephant.

So that’s kind of weird. That someone would typo Farmall in such a way that it sounds like they’re selling a baby farmal. It does sound very cute. I want a baby farmal! And then the next day the following shows up:

Note the text. “Today’s ad should include a picture of the tractor instead of the baby elephant picture on yesterday’s ad.” Why!? How did this happen? I’m haunted. I don’t understand. And yet I love it. I love the tiny farmal cub.

*Have I lately mentioned how glad I am to not have that job anymore? Seriously.

I’m Not Saying That We’re Approaching Critical Mass Or Anything…

garth — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 19:58:34 +0000

…but Mighty God King [You may safely assume that all links contain swears and off-color humor] a blog that’s primarily about comic books, jokes about bad science fiction and an unhealthy obsession with Rex the Wonder Dog has published a short essay on sustainable agriculture and responsible meat consumption.

My dog did this just the other day. (Stolen from Mighty God King with respect.)

In Which I Score A Bargain.

garth — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 05:48:58 +0000

We got an email off a farming list the other day stating that a nearby greenhouse owner was moving and she was having a greenhouse sale of all the now-superfluous equipment. So I fired the truck up and went to see if I could find a bargain. I managed to pick up:

A 55-gallon compost tumbler
A smallish garden cart
Six greenhouse table tops
12 brackets for building tables from 2×4s
A hula hoe
12 large seed-starting trays
Six tomato cages
A mess of domes
A billion seed flats
A mess of small seed-starting trays

All for the princely sum of $87. I am awfully pleased with myself. In the spirit of giving back to the gardening , I offer up the following jpg.

Sources close to the Obama administration assure me that this is Tom Vilsack's own farm in Iowa.

I’m Not Saying That PNW Winters Are Predictable, But…

garth — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 17:18:06 +0000

Ruby’s Life is Hard -or- Maybe I Should Turn on the Electric Fence

garth — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 15:04:28 +0000

We pasture our chickens with a combination of a chicken tractor and electric mesh fencing. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to get a good charge on the fence and, in combination with the dogs being friendly with the chickens and keeping predators down, we don’t turn the electric fence on. It’s just a big mesh pen.

However, in combination with the dogs’ fondness for chicken feed/poo, this can lead to some entertaining antics.

See below.

Ruby's life is extremely hard.

I helped her out as soon as I managed to a) stop laughing and b) take a picture.

Poor Ruby.

Update: Famous dog is famous.

Because It’s Got a Picture of a Fracking Cat On It

garth — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 01:57:59 +0000

Sometimes someone writes a really well-researched and well-written book on our relationship with food and sometimes someone draws a smart-assed web comic about the same thing.