We're about to take the plunge. We've been reading up on them, asking everyone we encounter, generally learning like mad...
...and now, we're poised to order ours!
I started working on a hen house over spring break, building it (as always) of recycled and reclaimed materials. I think I spent 50 hours online just researching the design ideas for that! Ours is an A-frame design with exterior nesting boxes. The floor is elevated 20 inches off the ground. I am eager to finish construction, but I am still debating where to put it.
Chicken moat--see several previous entries on this. I've wanted to do a chicken moat since the 1980's. The latest hold up has been material costs, but I finally have a good supplier on chicken wire (cheap, used, industrial grade). I finally have a stock pile of utility poles. About all I'm waiting for now is confirmation we can get along w/o a tractor tiller--once the moat is built, it would be hard to get such an implement maneuvered around in the garden.
The chickens--my kids are crazy about chicks at every farm store. I know they grow up (both chicks and kids) but I think there's lots of opportunity there. I want to get the kids excited about some kind of animal husbandry, and chickens seem like a good starter.
We've shopped around locally, combed CraigsList, visited with some who own chickens...and it's always a different story. I think ultimately we'll just get'er done, buy some and start out. If it's a failure, we'll change up.
Last I knew, we were looking at an assortment of 'exotic' chickens to complement more traditional heavy layers.
Regardless, I want chicks on the ground by Easter!
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Happy Birthday, Bill!
I missed his 80th birthday (spring break) and thus the 3rd annual "talk like Shatner day."
I just had to post this, anyway, for it's one of the better clips of him on YouTube. It's not a parody or spoof or in any other way bringing him down as an actor/performer. (There's plenty of that out there.) At any rate, you can surely hear and feel his classic Shatner delivery!
I wish I could meet him and have lunch. I think I'll add that to my bucket list!
I just had to post this, anyway, for it's one of the better clips of him on YouTube. It's not a parody or spoof or in any other way bringing him down as an actor/performer. (There's plenty of that out there.) At any rate, you can surely hear and feel his classic Shatner delivery!
I wish I could meet him and have lunch. I think I'll add that to my bucket list!
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Keeping up with the Joneses
I'm reviewing my blog here and realizing something--I'm not keeping up with my students! I've only written about 18 entries since the start of the term, while I'm demanding 3 weekly from students (about 27 to date). Fortunately, they aren't reading this journal/blog anyway, so they'll never know/care.
Keeping up with the Joneses is a problem. Comparing with others is always a problem. I suppose it can be argued that it can be healthy, motivational. On the other hand, it can be damning. One might see that someone has a shiny new house and Lexus, for example, and feel stepped on for they only have a hovel and fleet of broken-down vehicles.
The urge to keep up causes us to be rabid consumers of everything, rampant omnivores. I am guilty of this, even though I am very aware of it. Such insatiable need to feed creates in us this discontent, usually at first with our earning potential, but eventually general discontent with everything.
I have to fight to keep this in check. I'm losing the fight. My buddy is building a new house. Another one has a sweet home in a small berg nearby. Another is remodeling a groovy ranch-style home I am coveting for its efficient floor plan. Someone just tore down a cool farmhouse and homestead (see other entry) that I would have loved to have as my own...
...then again, I have a house with some history. (Part of it was built in the very early 1900's.)
It's on 11 acres, which gives us the luxury of campfires, cookouts, raging crazy parties on the property...we have the ability to raise a garden of any size we want. We can have livestock, burn trash, etc. We can learn of the prairie on the east side and develop the cropland on the west side. We virtually live on a park, a prairie reserve!
And it gives me space (without zoning laws and restrictions) to build composting areas, a hen house...even a pirate ship playground!
We also have the luxury and blessing of a multi-generational blended household, giving my kids an intimacy with their relatives that I never knew.
I need to remember such things. When the front door jams or the other door leaks rain and ants, when the vehicle breaks down (again and again), when an investment in triple A is a necessity just for the towing package, when we cannot pay all the bills for our craptaular house and fleet of beaters...I need to remember we have it good.
And I need to quit thinking of it as a competition.
That's just stinkin' thinkin' after all.
Keeping up with the Joneses is a problem. Comparing with others is always a problem. I suppose it can be argued that it can be healthy, motivational. On the other hand, it can be damning. One might see that someone has a shiny new house and Lexus, for example, and feel stepped on for they only have a hovel and fleet of broken-down vehicles.
The urge to keep up causes us to be rabid consumers of everything, rampant omnivores. I am guilty of this, even though I am very aware of it. Such insatiable need to feed creates in us this discontent, usually at first with our earning potential, but eventually general discontent with everything.
I have to fight to keep this in check. I'm losing the fight. My buddy is building a new house. Another one has a sweet home in a small berg nearby. Another is remodeling a groovy ranch-style home I am coveting for its efficient floor plan. Someone just tore down a cool farmhouse and homestead (see other entry) that I would have loved to have as my own...
...then again, I have a house with some history. (Part of it was built in the very early 1900's.)
It's on 11 acres, which gives us the luxury of campfires, cookouts, raging crazy parties on the property...we have the ability to raise a garden of any size we want. We can have livestock, burn trash, etc. We can learn of the prairie on the east side and develop the cropland on the west side. We virtually live on a park, a prairie reserve!
And it gives me space (without zoning laws and restrictions) to build composting areas, a hen house...even a pirate ship playground!
We also have the luxury and blessing of a multi-generational blended household, giving my kids an intimacy with their relatives that I never knew.
I need to remember such things. When the front door jams or the other door leaks rain and ants, when the vehicle breaks down (again and again), when an investment in triple A is a necessity just for the towing package, when we cannot pay all the bills for our craptaular house and fleet of beaters...I need to remember we have it good.
And I need to quit thinking of it as a competition.
That's just stinkin' thinkin' after all.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Sick at my Stomach
You know what makes me sick? (That's Earl Pitt's famous opening line, and I'm stealing it today.)
I cannot drive down my country road any more without being repulsed. I truly, honestly get nauseous whenever I pass by the spot where it happened. No, it's not where I hit a deer, nor where there was a grizzly accident.
Nope. Now it's nothing but more field. That is what is so disgusting to me. Now, down the road 10 miles these jokers have cut down and plowed up about 500 trees (not much of an exaggeration, if any) along a dry creek bed. They have had heavy equipment in to sculpt the land with new terraces, etc. I know what they are doing. I know why they are doing it. By eliminating the trees and creek bed they are hoping to gain a few more acres of ground to till, and by sculpting it as they have, they are likely to have a much easier time working the ground and harvesting the crops.
I say, however, that the best laid plans of mice and men Gang aft a-gley! That's right, I said "gang aft a-gley" dammit. When we first cut up the prairie with fences, it wreaked havoc with the migration patterns of many animals. This was further complicated with our infernal criss-crossing of underground petrol-product piping and blacktop roads. Now, as we bull-doze every stand of trees, what is left in the wake? Nothing but a field. That leaves little shelter for deer and other wildlife. It makes this beautiful part of the country look too much like western Kansas. Windbreaks are valuable! Here's what was offered in a KSU study, NON-AGRICULTURAL BENEFITS OF WINDBREAKS IN KANSAS:
So, down the road, I am seeing farmers plowing up trees by the hundreds. These people are no longer stewards of the land but slaves of Monsanto. Yet, I digress.
What really turns my stomach is a former homestead now-turned into another field.
This place was easily 80-100 years old. It had an impressive stand of trees surrounding what was likely 4 acres of old homestead land. There were out buildings (a barn, a chicken house, a well house) and a very impressive two-level house with big columns out front. It looked like a small abandoned plantation house from the road.
I wish I knew the history of that old house and farm. I wish I'd known the people who'd lived there, who'd built the place. I wish I had some way to travel back in time and watch the property evolve. Hell, I wish I'd stopped and wandered the property one of the thousand times I have driven by and thought about it.
I grieve for this old place. To me, places hold memories, maybe even ghosts. To destroy them for factory farming is a heinous and criminal act. Where I grew up, every tree was rare and sacred. I'm not tree hugging fairy nymph, either; don't get me wrong. I'm just offering that by slaying 100+ year old trees we're disrespecting our elders. We're spitting in the eye of mother nature. We're pissing away some great shade, wood, possibly walnuts. To bull-doze it all with utter disregard for its worth is disgusting.
I am thoroughly disgusted....so on that, I shall return to my regularly scheduled programming.
__________________________
Details on the phrase, found here:
Meaning: The most carefully prepared plans may go wrong.
Origin: "of mice and men"
From Robert Burns' poem To a Mouse, 1786.
It tells of how he, while ploughing a field, upturned a mouse's nest. The resulting poem is an apology to the mouse:
...
But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane [you aren't alone]
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft a-gley, [often go awry]
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promised joy.
...
The poem is of course the source for the title of John Steinbeck's 1937 novel - Of Mice and Men.
I cannot drive down my country road any more without being repulsed. I truly, honestly get nauseous whenever I pass by the spot where it happened. No, it's not where I hit a deer, nor where there was a grizzly accident.
Nope. Now it's nothing but more field. That is what is so disgusting to me. Now, down the road 10 miles these jokers have cut down and plowed up about 500 trees (not much of an exaggeration, if any) along a dry creek bed. They have had heavy equipment in to sculpt the land with new terraces, etc. I know what they are doing. I know why they are doing it. By eliminating the trees and creek bed they are hoping to gain a few more acres of ground to till, and by sculpting it as they have, they are likely to have a much easier time working the ground and harvesting the crops.
I say, however, that the best laid plans of mice and men Gang aft a-gley! That's right, I said "gang aft a-gley" dammit. When we first cut up the prairie with fences, it wreaked havoc with the migration patterns of many animals. This was further complicated with our infernal criss-crossing of underground petrol-product piping and blacktop roads. Now, as we bull-doze every stand of trees, what is left in the wake? Nothing but a field. That leaves little shelter for deer and other wildlife. It makes this beautiful part of the country look too much like western Kansas. Windbreaks are valuable! Here's what was offered in a KSU study, NON-AGRICULTURAL BENEFITS OF WINDBREAKS IN KANSAS:
"Windbreaks may provide recreational opportunities, scenic beauty, fuelwood, and wildlife habitat in addition to agricultural benefits. Quantitative studies demonstrate that windbreaks on the Great Plains provides important wildlife habitat for woodland edge species, substantial opportunities for recreation, a potentially important source of fuelwood, and enhanced scenic beauty."And this is to say nothing of erosion control.
So, down the road, I am seeing farmers plowing up trees by the hundreds. These people are no longer stewards of the land but slaves of Monsanto. Yet, I digress.
What really turns my stomach is a former homestead now-turned into another field.
This place was easily 80-100 years old. It had an impressive stand of trees surrounding what was likely 4 acres of old homestead land. There were out buildings (a barn, a chicken house, a well house) and a very impressive two-level house with big columns out front. It looked like a small abandoned plantation house from the road.
I wish I knew the history of that old house and farm. I wish I'd known the people who'd lived there, who'd built the place. I wish I had some way to travel back in time and watch the property evolve. Hell, I wish I'd stopped and wandered the property one of the thousand times I have driven by and thought about it.
I grieve for this old place. To me, places hold memories, maybe even ghosts. To destroy them for factory farming is a heinous and criminal act. Where I grew up, every tree was rare and sacred. I'm not tree hugging fairy nymph, either; don't get me wrong. I'm just offering that by slaying 100+ year old trees we're disrespecting our elders. We're spitting in the eye of mother nature. We're pissing away some great shade, wood, possibly walnuts. To bull-doze it all with utter disregard for its worth is disgusting.
I am thoroughly disgusted....so on that, I shall return to my regularly scheduled programming.
__________________________
Details on the phrase, found here:
Meaning: The most carefully prepared plans may go wrong.
Origin: "of mice and men"
From Robert Burns' poem To a Mouse, 1786.
It tells of how he, while ploughing a field, upturned a mouse's nest. The resulting poem is an apology to the mouse:
...
But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane [you aren't alone]
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft a-gley, [often go awry]
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promised joy.
...
The poem is of course the source for the title of John Steinbeck's 1937 novel - Of Mice and Men.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Bombing
While I was ramping up for spring break and missing St. Pats parties, while I was troubled over the hardships of the Japanese and worried about the economy, something entirely new happened in the blink of an eye.
We declared a no-fly zone, chased by air strikes of Libyan 'strongholds.'
How is it that the UN arrives at such decisions, that the US is so heavily involved, and then it all happens in a heart beat? I need to pay much more attention to the news. I had heard that aircraft carriers were deployed a week or so ago, and that seemed puzzling then, but I shrugged it off. I'd heard people say that we seemed more responsive to Libya than we ever did to other parts of Africa where casualties were over a million! I'd come to understand that national sentiment regarding Libyan leadership was as unstable as their leaders....
...but another 'war front' just astounds me!
I am too uninformed to offer much more than my astonishment, but I am willing to go on record that I'm very, very troubled by it. I don't know that it was the right thing to jump ahead like this in Libya. I'm unsure of too much right now, and I imagine too many others range from unsure to "welp, the UN decided it, so it must be good." I would wager far too many of us are either ignorant or in denial.
Such people are an easy mark.
We declared a no-fly zone, chased by air strikes of Libyan 'strongholds.'
How is it that the UN arrives at such decisions, that the US is so heavily involved, and then it all happens in a heart beat? I need to pay much more attention to the news. I had heard that aircraft carriers were deployed a week or so ago, and that seemed puzzling then, but I shrugged it off. I'd heard people say that we seemed more responsive to Libya than we ever did to other parts of Africa where casualties were over a million! I'd come to understand that national sentiment regarding Libyan leadership was as unstable as their leaders....
...but another 'war front' just astounds me!
I am too uninformed to offer much more than my astonishment, but I am willing to go on record that I'm very, very troubled by it. I don't know that it was the right thing to jump ahead like this in Libya. I'm unsure of too much right now, and I imagine too many others range from unsure to "welp, the UN decided it, so it must be good." I would wager far too many of us are either ignorant or in denial.
Such people are an easy mark.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Parkour
Parkour (aka free-running) intrigues me. It seems to be mad running and jumping and traversing all terrains, in a no holds barred fashion. Growing up, we used to do this. We called it 'run like hell.'
I like it because it's non-competitive, it uses no gear(not even a uniform), it is an active sport (no spectators here), and it's a little edgy. (I guess in some cities, they are trying to outlaw it...of course.)
This video is a great look at it.
One could also watch the documentary Jump|London.
I'm thinking the boys and I are going to romp all over the farm with greater intention, now that it's recognized as a sport.
I like it because it's non-competitive, it uses no gear(not even a uniform), it is an active sport (no spectators here), and it's a little edgy. (I guess in some cities, they are trying to outlaw it...of course.)
This video is a great look at it.
One could also watch the documentary Jump|London.
I'm thinking the boys and I are going to romp all over the farm with greater intention, now that it's recognized as a sport.
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Bucket List
I cannot find a bucket list on this blog, and it's something that I've done a dozen times. For the record, I thought I'd share something of one, off the top of my head:
Places to go...this is a big list by itself
- become fluent in multiple languages
- take comparative religions course/study group
- skydive
- master harmonica or banjo or drums or something musical
- publish quality novels
- finish my pirate ship
Places to go...this is a big list by itself
- tour USA in RV
- vacation in Hawaii
- tour castles in Europe
- take kids to Disney land/world
- spelunking in Viet Nam
- see Victoria Falls, Africa
- visit the great pyramids of Egypt
- be Indiana Jones on some ruins in a rain forest
- tour some country I've learned the language for
- swim in every ocean
Tuesday, March 08, 2011
To Do List
So, friends, it's almost spring. For some, that means sweeping the porch or cleaning out closets. For me it means gearing up for gardening. We are mapping our garden out this year being conscientious of sun patterns, of irrigation, and of....chickens.
We are going to build a hen house, fence in parts of the garden to allow chickens, other fencing to thwart chickens from scratching up and destroying tender young plants.
I've long admired the full-blown chicken moat (promised to build last summer, but...chickened out). It's too ambitious and too expensive for me right now, I think.
I am all about using found/available materials, and it so happens I have many hog panels and a good long run of chain link fence (albeit, only 3-4 ft high) that I could employ. I have a great little out building that would make an awesome hen house and garden supply shed, but I don't know if it can be relocated (might be easier to build new).
So much to do, so little time.
I seem to be one of those people who's always overwhelmed, even when there's seemingly nothing to do. I recall a time in life when there was nothing undone, nothing to do, when I could just kick back and bask in the limbo of nothingness. I wonder if one ever, ever gets caught up any more. ???
We are going to build a hen house, fence in parts of the garden to allow chickens, other fencing to thwart chickens from scratching up and destroying tender young plants.
I've long admired the full-blown chicken moat (promised to build last summer, but...chickened out). It's too ambitious and too expensive for me right now, I think.
I am all about using found/available materials, and it so happens I have many hog panels and a good long run of chain link fence (albeit, only 3-4 ft high) that I could employ. I have a great little out building that would make an awesome hen house and garden supply shed, but I don't know if it can be relocated (might be easier to build new).
So much to do, so little time.
I seem to be one of those people who's always overwhelmed, even when there's seemingly nothing to do. I recall a time in life when there was nothing undone, nothing to do, when I could just kick back and bask in the limbo of nothingness. I wonder if one ever, ever gets caught up any more. ???
Sunday, March 06, 2011
Tuesday, March 01, 2011
Slowly, Intentionally
I admire my father-in-law, the Karate blackbelt. He knows how to sit, to meditate.
None of my kids know how to sit, period. They can squirm, and they can run, but they only stop moving to sleep (well, and sometimes to veg out in front of the television if I am not there to police their activity).
We watched a great documentary in my English class, PBS's Frontline piece, Digital Nation. One alarming claim of the film is that we are going so fast, so frantically busy, that we are not learning deeply and fully any more.
I wonder about this. I worry about this. I mean, here I am a proponent of all-things-digital, yet maybe I'm doing the students a disservice? Maybe I'm corrupting my own children, too?
Maybe I'm just enamored with all this digital stuff because it's shiny. Novel. Fun. It would be a terrible thing if I had fallen for the trap, fallen down the rabbit hole, and found myself swimming in the Kool-aid. (BTW: it was actually Flavor-Aid, for the record.) Ugh. If all these bells and whistles--which to me seem to streamline and improve research and writing--if they're really making us more shallow, then, like, wow.
Honestly, I do see the potential for immediately gratifying content to corrupt us. I know that I've even wanted to Google the whereabouts of my own keys (or on a true absent-minded professor day, my car itself). It's easier not to think, to just have access, but to really access the content I'm attempting to lead students into, one must think. One must be patient and diligent. I am now struggling with the question of whether or not this can be taught. Can one teach patient research to anxious youth? Can one teach a struggling community college student to let go of everything else and simply think a while? Can they let go of dollars and cents, familial woes, pressures of school, work, and family--just to entertain an idea? Can they feed that idea and take it for a walk? Can they roll around a word on the tongue just to feel it at play?
Some days I am not so sure.
None of my kids know how to sit, period. They can squirm, and they can run, but they only stop moving to sleep (well, and sometimes to veg out in front of the television if I am not there to police their activity).
We watched a great documentary in my English class, PBS's Frontline piece, Digital Nation. One alarming claim of the film is that we are going so fast, so frantically busy, that we are not learning deeply and fully any more.
I wonder about this. I worry about this. I mean, here I am a proponent of all-things-digital, yet maybe I'm doing the students a disservice? Maybe I'm corrupting my own children, too?
Maybe I'm just enamored with all this digital stuff because it's shiny. Novel. Fun. It would be a terrible thing if I had fallen for the trap, fallen down the rabbit hole, and found myself swimming in the Kool-aid. (BTW: it was actually Flavor-Aid, for the record.) Ugh. If all these bells and whistles--which to me seem to streamline and improve research and writing--if they're really making us more shallow, then, like, wow.
Honestly, I do see the potential for immediately gratifying content to corrupt us. I know that I've even wanted to Google the whereabouts of my own keys (or on a true absent-minded professor day, my car itself). It's easier not to think, to just have access, but to really access the content I'm attempting to lead students into, one must think. One must be patient and diligent. I am now struggling with the question of whether or not this can be taught. Can one teach patient research to anxious youth? Can one teach a struggling community college student to let go of everything else and simply think a while? Can they let go of dollars and cents, familial woes, pressures of school, work, and family--just to entertain an idea? Can they feed that idea and take it for a walk? Can they roll around a word on the tongue just to feel it at play?
Some days I am not so sure.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
