Forget Early Birds, Do Life On Your Time

Sometimes the bravest thing is allowing yourself not to be brave. Feeling safe is an act of self love. The big, bad world will be there whenever you’re ready to face it, little chickie. —Sonia SotoLayor

Here’s What’s Happening At Good Spirits Farm

• Poor Sonia SotoLayor had been trying to hatch a pile of shavings for about six weeks and had lost a lot of weight in the process. I’d tried everything to try and get her to give up on her shavings, but she wouldn’t. When our feed store had chicks at 50 percent off, I thought, well, here’s a solution. I bought four, but my first attempt to give them to her (during the daylight hours) resulted in her trying to murder them, so that wasn’t going to work. That night, when she was sleeping, I slipped them under her floofy belly and: Success! She loves them and is so happy to have “hatched” four little babies!!

• I’ve not been having much luck getting Julia, one of our cows, halter trained. This is important because someday I may need her to stand quietly for medical care. Unfortunately, she’s just really, really shy. So this week I tried a new method: Using a clicker! I’ve clicker trained my horses and it works so well and…it turns out it works on bovines too! Progress!

• I have two experts coming out over the next few weeks to look at our pastures. Well-managed grasslands can sequester a ton of carbon while also feeding ruminants, and, in turn, people. It’s an amazing closed-loop system with the ruminants nurturing the grass and the grass nurturing the ruminants, but you have to manage it right. I am excited to learn from folks that know much more than me!

Here’s What I Loved This Week

When I made a joke about clicker training my cows, someone sent me this hilarious piece about clicker-training a spouse. Honestly, I’ve been thinking about it ever since!