Week 2 Chick News and Life Lessons Learned from Chickens.

Hi everyone,

It's week two and the chicks are growing fast.  It's almost time to find them a bigger home.  I've noticed when chickens get crowded that they fight and peck at each other.  Once blood is drawn, that particular chicken is seen as a weakling and the rest will literally peck it to death.  So tomorrow, I will be looking for a bigger container to hold them until it's safe to put them outside.

But, before we sit back and point our fingers at the terrible behavior of chickens, keep in mind the human race's natural tendency to do the same.  First off, when we're crowded into one area with no hope for escape and have to compete for food, history shows that humans will do whatever it takes to survive.  If you're looking for recent evidence of this, then all you have to do is read reports from the New Orleans Superdome during hurricane Katrina.  I can't imagine what it was like for those people to be cooped up in there, trying to weather the storm outside when another equally deadly storm raged inside. 
 
As I mentioned before, once blood is drawn, the rest of the flock of chickens will literally peck a  chicken to death.  I've experienced this before with my human counterparts.  I remember sitting in a meeting and one person will bring up someone's negative trait or something maybe he or she did, stop and watch how many people jump on the bandwagon.  One person, usually someone with a strong personality will say something, and everyone else like a flock of chickens will quickly agree.  I've seen this done time and time again.  As a rule, I try to sit back and delay any sort of judgement until I know all the facts. 

This brings me around to the pecking order.  Back when I had a full flock of twelve chickens, I noticed that there were about five favored hens that surrounded the rooster almost constantly.  The other six hens hung out on the outskirts of the group.  Whenever one would get too close to the rooster or were too close to the food when they were all eating, they would get chased away by the favored hens.  To put this into human terms, when you walk into any gathering there is always a pecking order that is established.  If you have never noticed--probably you're at the top of the pecking order or you're one of those rare individuals that couldn't care less.  The learned pecking order starts when a child goes to school.  Every kid knows which kids are the popular ones in the classroom and which ones are gross and kept at arm's length.  Hollywood has capitalized on this, in that many teen movies tell stories of the poor kid on the other side of the tracks that just wants to be popular. 

The last lesson learned, is that hens don't really need roosters.  They will produce eggs without roosters and they can happily saunter through their lives without a rooster nearby.  In fact, if you have neighbors closeby that complain about crowing, you can have a few hens and they probably won't realize you have animals in your backyard.  I refuse to go into the man versus woman debate--it's absolutely useless banter and a waste of time.  Let's just say that nothing beats having a good man around and the same could be said of a woman....

But back to roosters, a rooster can be useful when you want fertilized eggs and want to hatch out your own chicks.  If you have a good rooster, he will actually protect the hens, as well as ensure that they eat.  Donnie, the best rooster of all time, never ate anything until all his girls ate.  Now, there's a man!!! 

Take care, All

New Chicks on the Homestead

Hello friends,

Today is a great day!  My friend hatched out some chicks and gave me half.  I ended up with eight.  What I really wanted was some guineas because they have very keen eyesight and will eat bugs--and I have an abundance of nasty little bugs.  They are also said to be great "watch-dogs" and are said to make a ruckus when anyone shows up at the house.  But when a friend gives you free chicks, you just don't say no.  I'm hoping that they're mostly female because I'm already salivating for fresh farm eggs and our old roosters used to hang outside the bedroom window at 5:00 a.m. and start crowing.  It pretty much set my bad mood for the day. 

Chickens are fairly easy to care for with providing food and housing.  I have to have a new coop, but I have a few weeks to get that finished.  I'm also planning to keep my flock small so it will be more manageable.  There was a time when I had 24 chickens running around and I couldn't step outside my door without stepping in chicken poop on my porch.  During that time, after tiring of tripping over chickens wherever I went, I decided to block off the front porch and fence it in.  It was at that point I noticed the chickens had more freedom than I did and I gave half of them away.  So now I'm back in the business of caring for chickens and I'm kind of looking forward to it. 

Take care, All.

My View on Extreme Prepping

When I was visiting my parents recently in Alaska, I had the opportunity to watch some television.  Normally, I don’t do this because we don’t get reception where I live and I’m too cheap to spring for cable.  Once I bought rabbit ears so I could tune in to local stations.  Only PBS came up (very fuzzy, I might add) and it was my bad luck that they were having a “Thomas the Train” marathon.  I took the rabbit ears back to the store since they were basically useless—unless I was four years old and then I would’ve been in something akin to heaven. 

So, back to my original story.  I watched some episodes about extreme preppers.  I have to say that out of all the crazy reality television shows, this one was the most entertaining.  I saw episodes where one guy dug a fox hole that he could disappear into if an invading army came his way, the family that was obsessed with some kind of flu epidemic and the guy who was going to ride out hard times on his sailboat.  I especially enjoyed the episode of the man with the vineyard that he planned to protect with extreme prejudice.  There were many other stories, too many to mention, but all brought up a few questions in my mind. 

First, why would someone who was prepping for the end of the world, want to go on television?  Don’t their neighbors already think they’re one brick shy of a load anyway?  Why would they want an entire nation to have the same sentiments?  And—why would they want to broadcast what they have and how “prepared” they are to an entire nation?  If they are prepping because they don’t trust the government, won’t this put them on some kind of list?  If they’re on television, won’t their neighbors and friends recognize them immediately?  “Hey, there’s Dave.  Cool, I know where I’m going if anything happens.”    

Second, I noticed that these same “preppers” only obsess on one aspect of prepping, like the family that believes there will be an epidemic so they practice donning their protective gear (gas mask, protective clothing, rubber boots).  They never take into account that the chances of them actually needing it are one in a million, and if something like that were to happen, I’d probably want to go outside, take a deep breath and get the pain over with quickly. 

Third, if you’ve watched the show, you’ll notice how defensive these people get when they get their scores back.  It’s usually low because they can’t protect themselves and live in an isolated bubble without outside interference.  If you’re locked inside a bomb shelter, sooner or later you’re going to run out of food and supplies and you have to come out.  There will most likely be someone waiting for you when you open that door and re-enter the world again.  Also, if you haven’t taken your community into consideration, all your preparation is pretty much useless.   

My thoughts on the subject:  There is absolutely no way to protect yourself completely for every inevitability.  Although you can do things that will help you get through tough times, like store a little extra food, sooner or later the masses will come—either in an armored vehicle or on foot they will come.  Also, I’m not sure I could exist with any form of happiness in a “Water World” or “Mad Max” situation. 

It’s probably more important to prep for everyday life—find ways to save money for a rainy day, get out of debt, and learn to garden so you don’t have to eat genetically modified foods that are sprayed in pesticides and you aren’t dependent on others for your food sources.  I’d also want a little extra food as insurance so I know if something did happen, that would not have to be a concern.  The last thing I would want if truck deliveries stopped for a period of time is to stand in a long line for rations.  Along those lines, you’ll want to find ways to improve your health in every way possible.  If something were to happen, I’d want to face whatever problems with a healthy body instead of a broken one.  So if this sounds good to you—get prepping.  

Take care, All

Remembering Victory Gardens during World War II while fighting my own war in my backyard.

     Did you know that "Victory Gardens" during World War II produced about 40% of the nation's vegetables?  Gardens were planted in spare lots, local parks, yards-large or small and even rooftops in the cities.  The US War Department felt that if the people planted their own gardens it would lower the price of vegetables needed to feed the troops.  Another factoid from this period of time is that America experienced a food shortage because the forced interment of Japanese-Americans.  About 40% of the vegetables in California were grown by Japanese farmers.  When they were forced to leave their farms, they left about 200,000 acres and the land was transferred to European immigrants or "Oakies" coming into California from the "Dust Bowl."  Since these newcomers weren't familiar with the California climate, they couldn't match the production of the Japanese farmers, thus resulting in a food shortage.          
     I've kept all this in the back of my mind as I've tried to ready my ground for my own Victory Garden. I call it my Victory Garden because I need one--I need a victory from being in a slump, from the drain of high food prices, or just for something nice to happen.  But before I can plant, I have to go to war against the waist high weeds in my garden area.  I realize I'm a month late in getting started because of the trip to Alaska.  But instead of letting it go and fighting two years of weed growth next year, I decided to go ahead and put it together anyway. 
     Every year I come to the garden with high hopes of a great harvest.  Memories of various years come to mind.  One year, I had a bumper crop of tomatoes.  It was beautiful.  Tomatoes everywhere--what more could a gardener want.  Then our friend came by for a visit.  I'm going to call him "Tom" just for the sake of giving him a name.  Anyway, Tom came by and "dumb me" invited him to the back yard to see my bumper crop of tomatoes.  He was impressed and I was very proud.  Then Tom wanted a favor.  He asked me if he could pick a few of my tomatoes.  Since I had plenty and some to spare, I agreed--after all, sharing is a good thing.  I went in the house and about twenty minutes later, here comes Tom with bags and bags of tomatoes.  "Thanks," he said.  "I'm planning to make some salsa.  I'll be sure and bring you some."  I was taken back.  He'd picked EVERY SINGLE TOMATO.  Then he said, "Oh, by the way, I took some of your peppers too.  I left a couple since they were too small to pick."  A few days later, he came back and handed me a "pint" sized jar of salsa.  It was unbelievable.  Instead of getting to enjoy my harvest, I had a measly little jar of salsa for my efforts.  That was the last time I had a good harvest of tomatoes.  I'm hoping one day I will have another bumper crop--then maybe I can look fondly back on the summer that I had bags and bags of tomatoes instead of thinking of Tom.  I need new memories.
     My goals this year include devising a plan to take care of general weed control in the pathways and surrounding the garden without using herbicides.  It seems like if I turn my back for one minute, like errant children, it will take over and waist-high weeds are followed by copperheads.  I would like to spend time weeding my actual vegetable garden instead of the pathways into and around the garden.  So, here's to a new year, and hopefully new memories and successes.

Take care, All

By the way, our book is up and ready. 
http://www.amazon.com/UNPLUG-From-Grid-Collection-ebook/dp/B00CBWMANK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1369425470&sr=8-1&keywords=Unplug+from+Grid

Back from Alaska

I'm back in Tennessee.  It was an eventful trip.  While I was in Alaska, my father passed away.  While it was expected, it was still hard.  I was grateful to be there and be able to say goodbye though.  I did get to see many friends who stopped by to pay condolences.  One friend, a chef-and quite a good one at that, stopped by for dinner.  I had marinated steaks all day from a recipe on the internet that promised the "very best steaks on the planet" and then found out when I was about to cook them, we didn't have any propane for the grill.  I ended up cooking them on a George Forman Grill.  They turned out all right, but it is very intimidating cooking for a chef.  The weather there was said to be one of the coldest springs for Alaska and I believed it.  It actually snowed the second week in May-not just a light sprinkling, but a full-blown snow storm.  It was very disheartening as I was looking forward to spring. 

The trip home was a disaster, which was also expected.  Of course, I packed too many clothes in the first place.  I didn't need quite so many since I spent the majority of my time in my pajamas--as one should.  When it came time to pack to go home, of course I came home with more than I'd left with.  I did the sitting on the suitcase as I was zipping technique, but still had to resort to a second suitcase.  Then, because the zipper broke, I ended up duck-taping around it several times.  I believe that will be the luggage's last trip.  In the end, of course I looked like a "hillbilly"--just one more humiliating experience to add to my repertoire. 

The trip home was eventful.  Halfway through the long flight from Anchorage to Minneapolis, the guy in the seat behind me kept shoving my seat forward so that it felt like we were experiencing constant turbulence.  I would've been annoyed, but since it's a given that we're all going to be shoved into the plane like over-sized sardines in a small tin, I let it go.  Now I'm glad I did.  It turned out he was having medical problems-some kind of seizure.  The flight attendants came over the intercom and called for a doctor (preferably one with a license to come to the back of the plane).  When we landed, everyone had to remain seated until the paramedics boarded and helped him off the plane.  The next flight was delayed for 2 hours because one of the flight attendants had a family emergency.  The new flight attendant suggested, over the intercom, that since we were so happy she came, we could leave her $5, or preferably diamonds if we chose as we exited the plane.  But she was so curt and bossy during the flight, I doubt anyone would've wanted to-despite being saved after a 2-hour wait.  I've come to the determination that flying is never fun.  So, in a way, I'm glad to be back--but on the other hand, I left quite a few loved ones behind and I was sad to go.

Take care, All

Back in Alaska and saying goodbye to my father.

I left a beautiful spring to head to Alaska to experience breakup.  Anyone who's been in Alaska in the spring time knows and loathes"breakup."  It's the time of year when weather vacillates between warm and freezing temperatures.  Snow melts, then freezes, then melts again, turning the yard into a giant mud puddle.  It's usually this time of year when Alaskans bet on exactly when the Nenana River ice will break.  The contest started in 1906 and is still a big deal around these parts.

However, I'm not here to enjoy the crisp, unpredictable weather.  My father passed away the week before last, so I came to help out and say goodbye.  When I think about the life of my father, I remember him as a lucky man.  He really did live a full life.  He spent a lot of time exploring the Alaskan wilderness, leading a team of pack-horses into the back country, either hunting or taking in a group of Sierra Club members to experience Alaska at its best.  He spent time teaching art at remote native Alaskan villages, as well as in Old-Believer Russian villages.  He would tell us the stories of how he'd have to get permission to enter the Russian villages from the elders who were trying to preserve their culture in an evolving world.  After growing up hearing his stories and seeing the fruits of his life through his painting and carving, I would be hard-pressed to find another individual who'd lived a more exciting life than my father.  It's my hope that I can enjoy my life as much as he did in his. 

Take care, All
P.S.  Our new book on how to build a solar home is on Amazon.  If you haven't had the chance to check it out, you may want to.  We also included a step-by-step guide on how to build a compost toilet and rainwater collection system. 
http://www.amazon.com/UNPLUG-From-Grid-Collection-ebook/dp/B00CBWMANK/ref=sr_1_3?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1367522034&sr=1-3&keywords=hillary+bergeron

Bombing versus the Balm of Gilead

The recent events of the bombing of the Boston Marathon has left me heart-sick.  Every time something of this magnitude happens, I feel a piece of my soul being chipped away and being replaced by an angry, unfeeling heart, intent on revenge.  I was contemplating the events of yesterday and how it brought about an effect that chased away any happiness.  I realized my soul needed healing from the thoughts of helplessness encompassing me.  The Balm of Gilead came to mind, an ancient herb used in healing a variety of ailments as well as is symbolic for the power to soothe and heal.  I needed some kind of strong medicine to combat the pure evil it takes to blow up a child.

Since the opposite of evil is decent,good,honest,moral, sinless,upright and virtuous, to combat the evils of society we can do something that would represent these terms.  So, today, if you feel overwhelmed by evils of society, do something decent and good for humanity.  Do one thing that will help relieve human suffering in some way.  This may take the form of donating to a good cause, gathering supplies for a women’s shelter or going to the rest home to visit someone who doesn’t get any visitors, reading them a book perhaps.  Just do something that will help wipe away the evil of the day.  Don’t let them win.  We will never be able to eliminate the evils of society, but we can do something to wipe away the tidal wave of negative feelings and fear they leave in their wake.

Take care, All