Spring Has Sprung: A Blog Entry by Jodie

I was going to write my posts on food related topics, however, there are so many things going on at the farm that I have decided to branch out!

Since the turkey deaths and the general feeling of dying during the fall season, spring has brought lots of life back to our farm.  When I say spring, I am really meaning since January!  We arrived back from our Christmas vacation to 100 baby chicks that arrived in the mail.  We are living in the attic of the dorms so the chick’s bulb heated home was directly below our apartment.  Synova and I had so much fun grabbing chicks in our hands, holding them next to our warm bodies and running up to her bedroom to play.  We played games like skateboarding chicky, chicky rides on a school bus and chicky makes a new friend – strawberry shortcake!

Enjoy the video of skateboarding chicky…

Only weeks after the chicks arrived, the goats started giving birth to kid goats.  It was very exciting to meet these wobbly-wet-“Bambi” looking creatures.  Synova and I were able to watch a goat give birth to twins.  The first one came out normally – head and front hooves first but the second one came out breech.  I have a video of the breech birth.  It came out quickly so the video is short and I cut the video off before you can see the little goat get up…oops.

We have a two herding dogs to protect our herd of goats and one of the dogs gave birth to seven puppies.  She was very protective and did not let people go near her young for quite some time.  Once we finally could visit them, Synova fell in love.  She fell hard for the white puppy whose name is Zoey.  She would literally carry this puppy all over the farm.  The funny thing is the puppy totally let her!  One time Synova was running with the dog in her arms and tripped; she fell, the dog went flying and neither on of them made a fuss.  We did however, come up with a new rule of not running while you carry a dog!

The most recent addition to our farm was the arrival of five piglets.  They were just weaned before arriving on our farm and are already approximately 50 lbs!  We have purchased a quarter of a pig and have named him “Pigger”.  I think we will butcher them sometime in July.  So far it has been lots of fun to bring our food scraps and watch them fight over the mush.  Synova cannot decide if she will eat the Pigger or not.

Here are a couple pictures of our baby bunnies and baby ducks.  

Thanksgiving Turkey: a short reflection

Turkeys

How time passes quickly—since all the ‘dying’ of autumn, we find ourselves in the ‘birth’ of Spring.  However, before we can get to a description of Spring’s activities, I must finish the story of the turkeys that started when I arrived on the Farm, and the lack of free time mentioned above has kept me from writing more on the turkeys.  Some friends have noted that Thanksgiving (“American Thanksgiving”) has come and gone with no mention of the two, dark days leading to the holiday feast when 95 turkeys were killed and dressed.  I will try to relay some of those days.

Turkeys in a trailer before "processing"

***Warning the photos below contain images of turkey slaughter***

I have mentioned the amount of time I spent caring for the turkeys.  Each day could be marked by the three times of watering and feeding.  It was wonderful to watch turkeys being turkeys and try to create opportunity for each bird to live their lives like turkeys (as opposed to being a mere meat bird being given enough to sustain it in artificial growth). 

From the trailer, turkeys were placed in the killing-cones

As Thanksgiving approached, I prepared for “processing” the birds (“processing” is a euphemistic term used to describe the bloody, smelly, slimy, and rather unpleasant job of slaughtering, eviscerating, and cleaning the turkeys).  I made a ‘to-do’ list and created a ‘things-to-find’ list.  On the second list were such items as “killing-cones,” knives, whetstone, plucker, eviscerating tubs, and sanitizer, among other things.  In a strange way each item helped prepare me for the inevitable—they would not let me drift off to a world where death was not necessary to sustain life—the end of the turkeys was always before me.

The turkey is soaked in hot water to make de-feathering easier.

The members of the Farm community also prepared for the slaughter.  At our morning devotions, we reflected on death, wrote poems, sang songs, talked freely of life, and tried to make a space to mentally prepare for the two days in which we would process 95 turkeys.

De-feathering a turkey with our "plucker"

All too quickly, the turkey-slaughter days arrived.  At the beginning of each day we would thank God the life of each turkey and asked that we would not take life flippantly, then we walked through the entire process from killing cone, to bagged turkey with everyone working that day.  It was hard.  Each person had a different reaction: some were silent, some asked questions, some cried, some walked away. 

Each of the two days was long.  I started at 7:30am and did not finish until about 6:00pm each night.  During these days, those working realized the significance of music to our ability to work a difficult job.   

Eviscerating

 After nearly eleven hours in the processing building, I was exhausted.  Furthermore, since I was in charge of the whole thing, my busyness had kept me from finding the time to express the emotions bound to raising and killing the turkeys; it came out on the first night as I listened to a band called Explosions in the Sky.  That night, I made a playlist for the second day—the music helped keep the work environment positive while we performed difficult work.  In addition to the music, humour arrived on day two; I think it was a way of coping for many (myself included).

Putting a processed turkey into a bag

Some of the people who purchased the turkeys wanted to come out and see the process for themselves.  They came for different reasons, but many felt the need to observe a turkey moving from alive to packaged if they were to eat turkey.  One man brought his family (with two young kids) to witness their turkey being killed, eviscerated, and bagged.

Turkeys in the fridge

The whole experience, for me, was a strange one.  On the one hand I was sad to see the death of the turkeys for which I had been caring; on the other hand, I am glad to know the life of any poultry, including how they are slaughtered and dressed.  I was able to eat some of the turkeys I raised, and I thought they tasked very good.

Because it has been nearly four months since Thanksgiving, the emotions of those days have mellowed.  I often think about eating meat and how much time, energy, and emotion went into it.  When I look in our freezer, I still thank God for the life of the turkeys. 

When to Work

The work on a farm never really ends.  I have been waiting weeks to have a moment or two when I feel rested enough to write a blog.  I always seem to envision a time of content solitude—it is mid-day and I have a warm cup of tea in my hand while the activities of the past week swirl in my head, ready to receive my attention one-by-one until they have been mentally processed.  This never happens. 

It is more common to find me yielding free time to a lengthy to-do list that occupies the many small pages which are scattered all over—my bed-side table, mailbox, desk, Village Store counter, pockets.  The pages, it turns out, are a good way for me to organize both my thoughts and my tasks.  The scattering of papers are sometimes consulted, but many times they are not (once I write things down, my brain has a way of capturing the item, instruction, or task list such that it will be completed by its deadline). 

But the never-ending tasks create a problem for me.  I am often feel split, and the end result in loss of time and energy.  I enjoy details.  Many friends (and especially Jodie) have mentioned the extent to which I focus on details.  The comments have, of course, been both compliments and critique alike; but as it pertains to taking time, my attention to detail has meant that I take time to perfect the small parts of the task that may or may not be worth the time. 

But I am also very committed.  This trait encompasses everything I do, and I want to give as much energy and time as possible to what I am doing.  At this time, some of the parts of my life (which, by the way, are not actually disconnected—they meld together such that it is often difficult to tell where one ends and another begins) that I wish to give energy and time to are Jodie, Synova, family and friends in Canada, learning, spiritual contemplation (this list, for those who are wondering, is not exhaustive).  Though I know it is impossible to do all these things “full-time,” and yet, I try.  The results have been disastrous: recently, I neglected to calculate the time I would need to complete a project in the Village Store; when I completed the task, I had missed spending the weekend with Jodie and Synova—the very thing I had been looking forward to.  The problem was that I over-committed and felt a strong urge to complete what I had committed to even when it was silly to do so.

It is very good for me to had identified these things now.  I regret that it has taken me four months to recognize these traits, but I can now resolve to keep a watchful eye out for when they begin to take my energy and time.  Furthermore, I have informally enlisted the help of Jodie and many friends on the farm; they will tell me when I am becoming “too thinly spread.” 

There will always be more work to be done on the Farm.  I wonder if the biggest part of my education here will be learning to know when to stop.