The Early Bird Gets The Self Love

Hey you. Yes, you. What are you doing today to practice self-love? Repeat after me: I am strong, compassionate, loyal, and a source of love and light to those around me. Also: I have a great beard. [Your mileage may vary on that last one, but the first sentence is nothing but truth.] — Heebeejeebees

Here’s What’s Happening At Good Spirits Farm

• It’s peak planting season! We’ve got many of the spring beds cleared of weeds (with many left to go!), and our lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbages, peas, leaks, turnips, and radishes are all in. Today I’m putting in the beet seeds, and tomorrow I’ll plant potatoes.

• We’re struggling a bit with Juliet’s legs. She’s been bow-legged from birth, and the advice from long-time shepherds was to straighten her legs via splinting. That’s not really helping, unfortunately. Yesterday, I took her to the vet to get bloodwork done. We’re testing her for a mineral deficiency as well as a bacterial infection that apparently could cause an issue like this. Cross your fingers that there’s something else we can do to help her.

  

• The meat chickens move out on pasture this week! It’s always fun to see little chicks experiencing grass for the first time. This is how chickens deserve to be raised. They’ve been chasing bugs and chowing down on clover and taking sun naps in the late afternoons.

  

• Poor Chicki Minaj had a bit of a freak accident this week. She somehow got her leg stuck between two boards in the chicken shack - we have no idea how she did it, the physics just don’t quite make sense (but that is so often is the case with farm animal calamities). Luckily, my husband went out to do an egg roundup and saw her lying motionless in the corner, exhausted from trying to free herself. We got her out, cleaned her up, gave her some electrolytes, and kept her isolated for a day to give her time to recoup. Yesterday morning she was the first one out of the coop to go look for bugs, so I think she’s on her way to a full recovery. Never a dull moment around here!

Here’s What I Loved This Week

David Epstein’s new(ish) book “Range” takes a deep look into why being a generalist sometimes pays off. Maybe I liked this book because of confirmation bias - I’m kind of an extreme generalist when it comes to journalism. I’ll write about anything! But I also found it useful from the standpoint of granting myself permission to explore all the things I am interested in. The world is such an interesting place, why limit your learning?