Release The Chickens! No! Wait! Get Them Back!!

I have to start by saying I totally love my chickens.  Not in the "diaper them and let them roam the house" kind of way (and yes there are people out there who do that) but in the "I am raising my own meat and eggs and they are fabulous fertilizers, bug patrol and entertainment" kind of way.  We have been raising chickens for probably 5 years now and I think we have a decent handle on how they act and what they need.  But I got myself into trouble the other day because we were entirely to excited about letting them free range.

We have two flocks currently.  Our layers and then our chicks which are mostly for meat (save for 7 which will be kept for breeding purposes).  The chicks were living in a chicken tractor that we have used for the last two years and were doing ok, but things were starting to get cramped.  I hadn't made it to fit 30 large birds in (even if they are only 12 weeks old).  When Forest and I got back on this permaculture horse we started wondering why we weren't letting them free range.  I mean, they can do it, right?  And they will be happier and healthier and we wont have to move the tractor twice a day.

Our brilliant plan was to move them over to the garden, about 50 feet away from where the tractor currently was resting.  Forest heaved and hoed to move them all the way over (because of it's location we had to go around a bunch of things and wood and tin doesn't make for the lightest of tractors).  Once there we opened it up and sat and watch as the chicks slowly discovered that they could get out, and the wonders that awaited them outside.

All this happened in the morning, and it was fun to watch them range all over the yard.  We would come outside and they would come running.  Like a loving dog or something.  They had great fun, as did we.  Little did we know the best was yet to come.

After the kids where in bed and it was starting to get dark, forest and I went out to check on them and make sure they were back in the tractor.  Unfortunately, for us, they were everywhere but the tractor.  "Oh yeah!"  I suddenly remembered, "We haven't let them be in one spot long enough to know where their home is.  They have no idea how to get back to the tractor!"  Most of the birds had congregated in the area where the tractor had been that morning.  They were looking around, completely confused, and it was starting to get dark.

Forest and I spent 45 minutes, luring, herding, capturing, yelling, banging pots and chasing those chickens up the road and down and through the lilac bushes and around the chicken tractor and through the 6 foot tall weeds.  I had our youngest on my back the whole time and was in a dress and Forest was out in his boxers.  Oh what a sight we were!  Eventually we got a system down where we herded them from opposite directions and then Forest would pounce and I would carry whoever was caught back to the tractor.  The last five were in the lilac bushes (and by "bushes" I mean 15 feet tall, by 15 feet wide, by about 30 feet long) and we somehow managed to get them all into one place so we could catch and then take them home.  Forest got bit and scratched quite a few times from the bushes and the mosquitoes were eating us all alive.  But in the end, the chickens were safe and sound and we could still laugh about it.

Upon finally coming back inside I reflected on all the things I had learned, and remembered, about chickens:

• Chickens have to know where their home is, before they can come back to it.  Letting them out so soon after moving them had been a bad move.
• Chickens are hard to herd and hard to catch with a baby on your back
• It's highly entertaining and rewarding to talk with chickens (They seemed quite happy when I was carrying them back to the tractor and thanked me for it)
• Chickens cry.  Not with tears, but more like a dog will whine.  As it was getting dark and they were trying to find a place to roost, we were chasing them and they were tired, they would cry this sad little sound that was weird but rather moving.
• Next year we're making a chicken tractor big enough to comfortable house the birds we get and made out of pvc so it can be moved easier.
• A free ranging chicken is a beautiful thing, as long as it know where to got to bed and be safe at night.

The next two days we kept the chicks in the tractor and moved it around in the garden area and then finally moved them into the main chicken yard with the other flock.  It took a little while to establish a pecking order, but they all seem to be interacting really well.  It's cramped in there right now.  There are nearly 60 chickens in there total, but we will be butchering about half of them in the next couple of weeks.

Ah life with chickens.  There is never a dull moment!

So, How "Permy" Are You?

During the last week in my varying research about permaculture and hugelkultur I found myself checking out the different conversations happening on the Permaculture Forums.  I have hardly touched on anything there.  But one subject that caught my eye was that of a permaculture/eco rating system a few people had come up with.  One post by Paul Wheaton in Montana says:

Level 1:  is thinking about the environment.  Bought fluorescent light bulbs.  Is trying to do a good job of recycling.  Reads an article or two.

Level 2:  30% of purchased food is organic

Level 3:  Has an organic garden and 80% of purchased food is organic

Level 4:  Grow 40% of their own food.  Studying permaculture. 

Level 5:  has taken a PDC and/or grows 90% of their own food

Level 6: Moving away from fluorescent light bulbs.  Living a footprint that is 10 times lighter than average.  Maybe living in community.  Maybe living in something very small.

Level 7:  Permaculture teacher

Level 8:  Doing things that are currently improving the world in big ways

Level 9:  masanobu fukuoka, paul stamets, art ludwig, bill mollison, ianto evans ....

And 10 was Sepp Holzer.  His first post was a little more complicated and more like the number of people that were at each step in the scale instead of how one would be placed in each level (which I will admit confused me).  You can read the thread buy clicking here for more about what they are talking about.

If I followed this example I my family would be between 3 and 4.  Some years are better then others.  This year I had a baby and last I was pregnant and sick as a dog, so we haven't done much recently.  The two years before that though we gardened quite a bit probably getting 90% of our food from the garden and anything we didn't grow was always organic.  Maybe next year we'll be more of a solid 5, I hope.

Still there was another scale which I liked as well, posted here by Old Hammy:

I agree that there is a definite spectrum of eco-ness out there and I think I understand your need to try to classify things with an eco-scale... I'm not sure I agree that your scale defines what you are trying define though. Too much seems benchmarked against how much food consumption is home-grown while not taking into account what practices are used to grow the food. Obviously, there is also more to being eco than just growing food...

I recently engaged in a debate over the usefulness of the term "green" specifically with respect to how it's used in describing a house. My contention was that the term "green" is essentially meaningless since its definition can be written to suit any situation you want. Ie: "I am green because my house is green. My house is green because I put in bamboo floors and curly light-bulbs." Never mind the fact that the bamboo was steamed across the ocean, the 4000 sq ft floorplan or the petrochemical foams used to insulate and "save" energy. Within these "shades of green" I think are where the 0s and 1s reside on your scale.

I would like to propose my own scale if I may:
0: People who just don't care, who don't understand or who view being "green" as a marketing opportunity.
1: People who care or think about being eco but who are not actually able to bring themselves to change anything meaningful about their consumeristic lifestyles and who think that simply buying "green" things is doing their part.
2-10: People who have gained the awareness that being eco or green involves constantly changing the way you live on the earth. 2 would be where most people start when they achieve their awareness and 10 would be a theoretical pinnacle of sustainable living. The numbers between 2 and 10 represent each individual's journey of self discovery and lifestyle change.

I like this scale because once you become a 2 or more, it acknowledges that you understand where you need to get to but gives people the room to not feel depressed about where they are (think of the guy who has an epiphany while in the middle of his 2 hour commute). I'm not sure anyone can be a 10 since there's ALWAYS more you can do to be more eco...  like the Zen equivalent of reaching enlightenment.

Another thing I like about this scale is that it separates two totally different points of view. In other words, there's no reason for a 2 or more to disparage against another 2 or more since idealogically they should be on the same page despite the fact that one individual may not be as far along the same road to eco-ness.

I was just going to post a snippet of that, but the whole thing was so good I just had to post it all.  Kudos Old Hammy!  On this scale I would still say we are a 3 to 4, but like Old Hammy said,

...once you become a 2 or more, it acknowledges that you understand where you need to get to but gives people the room to not feel depressed about where they are....

Very cool.  Hopefully we continue up that scale at a decent pace, but if we don't it doesn't make us lower then other people.  Sometimes fitting children and work into the picture makes things a heck of a lot more complicated.  So we do what we can and continue on the path to enlightenment. :)

Of course, this whole eco/permy rating system is really just for the fun of it.  But it did help me get a little bit better perspective of what we're doing here.  Sometimes I feel totally "eco-er then thou" and other times like a complete loser because I'm not growing my own grain to make my own bread and raising cows or goats for cheese and butter and yogurt and meat.  With this knowledge about where we are I can get off my high horse, or stop beating myself up and just be happy knowing I am doing the best I can at the moment and will always continue to grow and try harder.

So, the question now is: How eco/permy are you?

Resurrecting Our Passion For Permaculture

In the last year and a half our dreams and ideas about permaculture and sustainable living have gotten buried under our everyday chores and the more dramatic things that have happened in that time.  Like my fathers death and the pregnancy and birth of our third child, Gabriel.

While we live in a century old, seven bedroom farm house, only three of the rooms have been usable up to this point.  Essentially we are a family of five living in a studio apartment.  A big one to be sure, but still, the living room has been our bedroom for the last three years and now with three kids, it's starting to get cramped.

So we have allowed our minds to wander other directions.  Sometime to the house, but in most cases to Forest's work with his family and to the kids.  Permaculture and sustainability have been on our minds but we haven't had any extra energy to put into our dreams until just recently.

About a week ago Forest was talking with a good friend of ours who has a farm he is perming (ya know, permaculture-ing) down in Illinois.  We lived with him and his wife for a short time several years back and their inspiration and dedication to permaculture is so inspirational.  I don't know the full content of the 2+ hour long conversation that when on, but I do know that when Forest got off the phone he was beaming and excited about permaculture again.  That conversation made both of us realize that "the now" is a great place to be, but dreaming about the future is just as important.  Something we have lost sight of for a while.

Our friend told Forest to look up Sepp Holzer, a man who has created an amazing farm in the Austrian Alps.  Everything he has done is from watching and learning what his land does natural and in a place where you would imagine nothing (or hardly anything) growing, he has created micro-climates and is growing things like cherries and citrus.  I was shocked and had to pick my jaw up off the floor when I started watching the videos on youtube.  Seeing what he had done was beautiful to me and inspired me so much.  Hey, if Sepp can grow cherries on the tree line in the Alps, surely we can do smilier in the rich fertile prairie in central Minnesota.

This last week, since our re-awakening, both Forest and I have done a bunch of research.  Forest, when he's not working, has been watching videos, studying videos about Sepp Holzer, Bill Mollison and permaculture in general.  Constantly absorbing new informations and new ideas.  And I, when not entertaining the kids, have been researching pigs and hugelkultur.  It feels wonderful to be waking up again.  The smell of the earth is so sweet and inviting and there are so many things we can start doing right now, even if we can't put a lot of energy into it just yet.

I'll leave you with the first video of Sepp Holzer that I watched.  The possibilities seem endless right now and it's such a freeing thought.