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Muddy Valley Farm

~ Life on a tiny west coast hobby farm

Muddy Valley Farm

Monthly Archives: December 2017

Winter Solstice

21 Thursday Dec 2017

Posted by Jodi in Equines, Farm Life, Seasons, Weather

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The shortest day of the year, and I’m short on memory today! Literally every single trip out to the barnyard ended up being two trips, I forgot a critical item each time.

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Like the cat’s dinner. She is less than impressed.

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And the horse’s pellets. They smell delicious…I must be hungry! Apples and grass…mmmm.

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Luckily no falls yet though…and only one more trip out there to go for tonight (I hope).

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Haha, along with the equines’ farrier and worming record, the chalkboard in this pic shows my slightly macabre rat scorecard. 13 so far!

Looks like the dogs like the horse’s pellets too! Have a cozy evening, and happy solstice!

An Accidental Flowering

17 Sunday Dec 2017

Posted by Jodi in Farm Life, Seasons

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Mid-December and Mother Nature’s black velvet dress cloaks our muddy valley, accented here and there by defiant Christmas lights casting their colours into the void. We homo sapiens have celebrated light at this darkest time of the year for millennia, and so it continues. As perennial as the grass.

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Ninety km south of the 49th parallel, day at this time of year lasts less than 10 hours of every 24. Evening chores demand headlamps, while morning chores feature a soft, grey, drizzly dawn some days, a hard glittery white-frosted world others. I prefer the drizzle, less buckets to carry when the water lines are ice-free.

Holiday preparations are well underway, and along with the lists and the errands, the baking and unpacking, my sack of memories grows larger and heavier each year. How can I help but think of the halcyon days of our youth, as I stick childish brown construction paper reindeer and jolly red elves with cotton ball beards to the walls? Unwrap the tree decorations, so many inscribed with the year and recipient’s initials in my mother’s increasingly spidery hand, stilled forever too long ago. Pull out the red tea towels, won in a silly happy noisy family gift game instigated by my Dad’s dear second wife, taken from us far too early. I can still hear her laughter ring out across our crowded table.

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My heart aches, and yet, how ridiculous. These memories are riches. How must it be for those who don’t have my blessings? My children, my huge loving family, my comfortable home and happy marriage, my fulfilling work with like-minded colleagues, my hobbies and interests, my life.

So I shall bustle. Distract myself. I will not be blue, dammit! I will busy myself with projects, and wrapping, and cooking and shopping. With visiting, and trips to see the light displays, and I will smile at my checkout line companions and giggle at the parking lot gridlock and when I can’t stand the traffic, I will avoid it entirely, a choice I am fully aware is a luxury only granted to a few.

I will be grateful that I woke up. I will savour what each day brings, like this morning’s discovery; the accidental flowering of a discarded grocery store cyclamen, shoved out the back door months ago and left to fend for itself.

How lucky I am to have another day to spread some love in this big crazy mixed up world we share. It surprises me too, this accidental flowering of joy out of my own private darkness, and I reach out and hold on tight. Solace.

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Sitting On My Hands

10 Sunday Dec 2017

Posted by Jodi in Chickens, Farm Life

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After hatching 400+ chicks last year, I know well how much work it is raising chicks, and how hard to do so profitably. This year, I will take it easier, hatch a few to refresh my own flocks, encourage my broodies to do much of the work for me and mostly sell hatching eggs instead.

But before I can offer my eggs, I need to test fertility and hatchability, so I have a client doing a test hatch. So far, a week into incubation, fertility looks great, at least on the eggs she can see into when she candles. The Marans and Olive Egger eggs tend to keep their secrets for longer than the Wyandottes and Legbars.

Upon hearing her news, I am struggling a bit now, wavering in my resolve to keep life simpler…I want to set some eggs! Good heavens, if I feel this way now, how bad will it get when her chickies hatch !?! I think I have a chicken addiction, and the cravings are getting stronger.

Wish me luck.

Chicken for Dinner

02 Saturday Dec 2017

Posted by Jodi in Chickens, Farm Life, Farm Produce

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I took my last group of 2017 cockerels up-Island last week, seven big ones to freezer camp and eight scrawny ones to be donated to the wildlife refuge.

Butchered at 22 weeks, they averaged between 1.5 and 2 kilos each, dressed. The smallest was a Cream Legbar at one kilo, and the biggest was a Plymouth Barred Rock who weighed in at two and a half.

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This was our second batch of freezer camp boys for 2017.  It feels good to eat our own homegrown meat, but I still can’t take it lightly. Every year, on the drive up, I have plenty of  time to muse…about the food chain, and the circle of life, and the fate of chickens generally speaking in the whole scheme of things. I feel compelled to justify my actions to myself.

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I know these birds. I hatched them and raised them and fattened them. I brought them into this world and I am taking them out of it. I like to eat meat and my family does too. That’s just the way it is. I make my choices, and I live with them, and that’s just life.

I jointed all but the big guy, froze the pieces on cookie sheets and then bagged them. The backs and necks I saved to make broth. As I cut up each carcass, I scooped out and set aside the saddles. Those two little discs of meat are the best morsels on the whole bird, my mom always told me, and she was right.  For dinner that night we had a chicken saddle curry, and it didn’t escape me that every single bird was represented in that one dish. Such is the fate of a thoughtful carnivore.

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