Final Farm Walks
Hi fellow Hiveians,
Today I wanted to post somberly about the coming to close of the farm season.
Final Farm Walks
With the coming changes of seasons, one of the things that's always sad for a few reasons is the coming to a close of the farming season here in New England. It's bittersweet for us in that we won't be getting as much fresh food as we do throughout the summertime. We've learned a lot in the last year and are better prepared and already have another farm lined up that we are going to start a winter share at however it's not going to be the same as our favorite farm here.
This place we happened upon several years ago when we were looking for another CSA program to sign up for. CSA programs, or "community supported agriculture" is an incredible way to get farm fresh food at better prices than you would at a grocery store. It also allows the farms to take less farm loans on so it reduces their overall cost at the end of the year. A win in several ways that's for sure!
One of our favorite parts of this farm here has definitely got to be the chicken coop! These people have hundreds of chickens, I believe last I heard it was 300 chickens. That's a whole lot of delicious, incredible farm fresh eggs! Lol. We get a large share of the CSA program here so that means every other week or every 3 weeks we get a dozen eggs. It really pays off! These eggs are wonderful and what's cool is these chickens are fed really well which is nice.
I love this shot below, so cool to catch her looking directly at me! She looks very serious hahaha. "Whatcha gonna do homie?! Gimme your finger and I'll bite it!"
The chickens here are fed really well for sure. Most places will feed the chickens some type of grain feed like corn or some other stuff. These chickens do have access to pans that are filled with feed every day so that they certainly don't go hungry but they also had access last year to a covered outside chicken run. Some of them ruined it though by escaping hahaha there will always be ones that figure out how to escape!
In addition, the farmers have been feeding the chickens a dozen or so heads of lettuce at the end of every day. It really adds some awesome flavor to the eggs and gives them some great nutrition! Whenever we go to the farm here, the people that check us in for the share program know us and love the little man, as well as all the other kids that come around of course, and they give us a head of lettuce or a few strands of lettuce for us to feed the chickens with. I didn't realize that the chickens would eat it but they suck it all down and love it! We then spend a bit of time picking some of the taller grasses that grow around the area and toss them into the coop here and the chickens go nuts over that too.
The evenings are my favorite time of day to go visit the farm because of the beautiful look of the evening as the sun is setting on the chicken coop here. The coop is facing east to west so the sun rises behind me and sets in front of me there and produces some pretty cool scenery to take a few pictures of here and there!
I don't know what they do with the chickens at the end of the season. I know that they do import the chickens from another farm at the late spring time so that they don't have to house them in the wintertime. I'm sure they've got some type of deal worked out with wherever they get them, that they will raise them for a few months and get them ready for slaughter at the end of the summer and early fall. October is the time of year that the CSA program ends and it's certainly the right time for it this year as the temperature has all of a sudden got pretty damn cold! It's sad lol. But that means that it's time for the chickens to move onto their next purpose in life and that's slaughter.
It's challenging sometimes thinking of these things but at the same time that's the cycle of life. That's one of the things that I've tried to instill in my son. Not everything in life is easy and that's a good thing because we have to go through situations to know and appreciate things. The chickens serve the purpose for us in that we take care of them, feed them well and eventually they will end their life cycle by being slaughtered and turned into food for us. It's a bittersweet lesson to teach but I think it's an important one. We need to get to better terms with these facts of life and the way nature works and has worked for millenia.
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You know you could've titled this one I Got Your Cock Right Here and got away with it, right?
Hahah I'm not as crafty with witty titles like you are! That would've been a great title for sure.
We should learn more about what happens before our food gets to the table. A lot more
Oh for sure! There is a lot of effort to reduce the things that people know about farming and the food that gets to our tables. That's a crime IMO!
People have a disconnect from what it takes to keep them alive. Society believes everything to be automatic
The CSA program sounds really helpful. We have farming land lying around in our home province, and my father's side of the family is not making the best of it because they lack the financing.
But that chicken coop looks really crowded?
The CSA program is critical for us! We don't have a good space of land to grow our own food at the moment where we live so having some farms close where we can get into a program like CSA's is great for us and them.
One of the things that we can do is make small changes that will improve our food. If you plant things that you use frequently then it likely won't cost much financially. If we do small things like compost the waste food that we use so that it can break down and put the nutrients back into the soil, turn it over and get back into the things that nature does itself to keep the land healthy we can make a small piece of land produce lots of good food for us. Taking something you eat a lot and keep the seeds from it and planting it can be an easy step to use the land. For example potatoes if you eat them, you can plant a few potatoes in the ground and they will grow and produce more potatoes and turn it into a good food source for small money.
The chicken coop is a lot bigger than what we can see in the picture here. It is a little crowded when they are all on one side but there is also lots of open area for them to run around which is great.