Well, well, well… It has been a while since I have written.. so let me catch you up on things…
Traci and I are doing well. The winter here in Florida was mild compared to Colorado or Pennsylvania, but according to Floridian standards it was too cold here. A lot of the more tropical plants down here were killed over the winter, but now it is warming up and looking beautiful down here. Traci and I have been putting a lot of time into working around our house. We really enjoy living here and the setting of our house. I have thought about it often over the years, but I really think I would enjoy being a farmer. We have a pretty good sized raised bed garden out back. Last summer I dug a long trench and put in another sprinkler station to water a garden we put in. We have been composting quite a bit and I think we finally have a pretty good system working now that turns our compost into usable soil in about 4 weeks now.
We watched a film called Food Inc. [http://www.foodincmovie.com/ ] I don’t know if you have seen it or not, but it is a great film. It will change the way you look at food and the whole food industry. I feel that the way this industry has completely changed the way it does business is what is at the heart of much of the economic change we have seen in this country. It really strikes a cord with me to explain much of the heartache we see in the small farms from the area where I grew up. So, if you get a minute, check it out. Here is the trailer for the movie if it peaks your interest.
As a result of reading a lot and seeing that film, Traci and I have made efforts to eat healthier for us and for our children. We started by baking our own bread. We also got chickens a few months ago. We got them as day old chicks, but now they are almost full grown. There are a lot of great sites and books out there to learn a lot about chickens. Here are a few:
After reading a lot, we got our chicks. I was thinking that they were going to be a lot of work, but they really aren’t too bad. I think they are even less work than a dog. We ordered 10 hens of 5 different types (2 each). We got Rhode Island Reds, Buff Orphingtons, Vermont Reds, Barred Rocks, and Americaunas. I ordered 10, but they sent us 20 chicks to be sure to keep our 10 warm. They said the other 10 would be roosters and dipped each of their heads in a green dye so we could clearly identify them. We got them from Ideal Poultry [ http://www.ideal-poultry.com/ ] in Texas and had no issues with them at all. They sent them to us in the mail. There are a lot of small portable coop designs on wheels these days that people move around their yard to eat grass and fertilize their yard. We decided that we wanted to have a larger coop with a few more birds, so we built a larger coop. My Dad did a lot of the building while I was at work when they were here visiting us. It is a 7’x5’ coop, and we made a pretty big fenced in area for them to get out. We put an ad on Craigslist to get rid of the roosters. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need a noisy rooster to have eggs. So, we sent them on their way 3 hours after posting the ad on Craigslist. The hens are much more quiet. We are having fun with them. Chickens are a great compost asset. They peck at and shred just about anything you put in their pen. We put some yard debris in there and they shred it down into small pieces in no time at all. They also dig up and turn over the soil like a rototiller would in a few weeks. I built a large feeder out of a 6 gallon bucket, a toilet flange, and some PVC pipe that holds about 50 lbs of food. We also have a 5 gallon watering can for them. Those things make it pretty easy to take care of the chickens. 50 lbs of feed will last almost a month right now. I fill up the water can about once a week. The coop has a wire floor, so cleaning it out once a week is pretty easy. Like I said, it is pretty easy to take care of them. The kids love it. They are always out playing around with the chickens. They are pretty friendly animals. I think they are very social and enjoy being around people and each other. We get them out to run around the yard when we are working outside. They don’t ever run off too far and always come back to the coop at night. Like I said, they are pretty easy to take care of and we are having a lot of fun with them. If you have any thoughts about getting chickens, give it a shot. Hens are quieter to have around your house than a dog. I’ll let you know how the eggs are as they start laying in a few weeks.
I really enjoy the time around the house these days. We put our chickens in during the night to give them some shelter to protect them from possible predators. They go in the house on their own now. We let them out each morning to start the day. It sounds funny, but it is something to look forward to each day now: drinking a cup of coffee and walking out to let the chickens out in the beautiful weather we have been having… it is great. Life is good.
I can’t say enough about how much we really enjoy our new church here in Navarre. Traci and I have had more time to be involved in different ministries there, far more than the time we had during previous assignments where I was far too busy. We are really enjoying it. We have taken the time to help out with teaching a Sunday school class to 3-5th graders. We are also helping out on several different construction projects at the church and with different members of our church. I really enjoy doing the work. I enjoy figuring out the materials and piecing everything together. It is rewarding to see the final results after a lot of thought and planning goes into that kind of work. It is surprising to me more and more how some folks don’t have much of a background in understanding how things work or how to fix things. When I was a kid.. and still now, that was just a part of life. I was always curious to understand how things work and applying the concepts we learned in school to practical experience (i.e. Leverage, electricity, etc.). That is just how things made sense to me. It is foreign to me to meet people that completely separate book knowledge from practical living. I guess I am just wired differently. All of that aside, I have really enjoyed working to help people in different ways.
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