Something To Never Be Sheepish About

You are worthy of love, even if you’re so shy that no human has ever touched you (hi Titania), so careless you sometimes poop in the water trough (hi Peaseblossom) or so goofy you occasionally bowl your human over in your quest for attention (hi Puck). Let yourself receive love—from yourself, your critters, and your human crew—this weekend.

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Here’s What’s Happening At Good Spirits Farm

I’m going to be trying to practice my own message after spending most of this wee beating myself up for an unfortunate incident here on the farm. Last Sunday I wanted to have dinner with my folks, which meant getting home after dark. I figured the flock of meat chickens, which live in mobile pens out in the pasture, would be fine if I shut them up a little later than normal.

They were not fine.

I have an electrified net fence around the mobile pens, but a cloudy day (it runs off solar) plus the thick grass grounding out the charge must have made it so the fence wasn’t actually hot. Something (I suspect a coyote or three) ripped right through the $250 roll of fence. All but three chickens were gobbled up. The three that survived hid in the nest boxes of the rolling coops.

Sure, these birds were all bound for processing in a couple of weeks, but I feel terrible that their last moments were probably pretty awful. When I saw what had happened, I scooped up the three survivors, brought them up to our layer hen house, then came back inside and cried for a bit. “Grocery stores exist for a reason” is a thing I sometimes hear myself saying when all of this feels really, really hard.

The good news is that a friend is helping me install an automatic coop door for the main layer coop. This door will open and close at dawn and dusk all by itself, so Heebeejeebees and Ruthie and Chicki Minaj will all be safe if I ever get home after dark. (And….I’ll be able to have a bit more flexibility. Right now my life does feel very ruled by chicken bedtime!)

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Here’s What I Loved This Week

Getting my new covid booster. There are so many animals relying on me, I don’t know how I would manage this place if I got really, really sick. I’m grateful we have new boosters to help me try and protect myself. I hope you’ll consider getting one. (Annecdata: I had really minimal side effects this time around - I just needed a short nap. By far the easiest of all the shots for me.)

Also: The baby chicks are starting to learn how to use the ramp to get into the coop at night. They’re almost there! That will mean I no longer have to manually scoop them and mama up each night to put them all to bed. I’m all for less work!