Living the good life.

We got our little baby broiler flock last Sunday early. We drove to Vermont to pick them up! Thirty-five little, fluffy babies. It is our second year, I know the routine. I give them love, very good food and lots of grass and bugs and they give us meat. It is the reality of our food. My husband and I decided last year, the night before the harvest that if we couldn't do this we HAD to be vegetarians... some one else is doing the harvesting somewhere and at least we know that our babies are raised humanely, with love, good food and no stress or pain. We rarely eat beef and we try to only eat fish that we have caught in a river or lake that we know... and I have to say that our chickens are the most delicious we have ever eaten.

Our mobile chicken coop, totally made with beg, borrowed and recycled material. Not too cute, yet. A little green paint and oh well, you know, I will make it cute! We are going to move it out behind the horses in the field. We are trying to be good grass farmers and have the pasture well divided. So to keep the field healthy, I bought an old scythe last winter and we plan to cut/save some grass for the geese the old fashioned way this summer. And for the chickens we use our electric webbing fence that just sticks into the ground so that we can protect our flock and they can move around freely!

Have you ever read Small Farm Journal?

We want to wean ourselves off of corporate, industrial food. We try to eat like localvores, it helps being so close to Vermont and all of these farmers up here. It is like stepping back in time to live in New England, they are very proud of their farming, small town heritage. It is truly amazing and wonderful, especially for a flat lander like me. So every summer we are getting closer and closer to our goal of living simply and feeding ourselves for the entire year. We are hoping to build a root cellar in our basement this summer and green house out back... fingers crossed. So far we have a big chest freezer, a dehydrator and natural drying box.

Here are two of our four baby turkeys, two Bronze Breasted and three White Breasted. We hope to start breading the bronze and Narragansett next year too. This is our first year raising turkeys.

My darling holding one of our two lovely, sweet, kissable, huggable, Toulouse geese. He is holding Flory, Toulouse is in the pen. We got these two just as pets, no foie gras... they make great watch dogs and they are the cat's meow....

We hope they will keep our lovey goose company this winter...

And me, farmer girl, in clean clothes, such a rarity these days... you can't see the dirt on my hands, always have them in the earth these days! Life is good....

"Do the best that you can in the place that you are, and be kind." Scott Nearing.

Ah, my mantra.