Half-caff. You coffee drinkers know the
term. It’s not quite the “real’ thing but still your favorite drink, with
enough kick to enjoy. It’s something you switch to for reasons of age or
health… your best effort to live a long life on your own terms.
I’m an avid coffee
drinker myself. In fact, coffee is 50% of my evidence that God is good. Chocolate is the other share! (Chickens never made the list.) In any
case, I’m the one who dubbed us Half-Caff Country.
Some introductions
are in order. I’m Zoë… a soon-to-be-sixty widow, mom and grandma. I
was born and raised in Chicago, but had the gift of farm family in
southern Indiana. By the age of four I had an unnamed – but very much
felt – connection to the land. Later I set a life goal of marrying
an Indiana dairy farmer (he turned out to be from Michigan and he’s
long-since deceased, but that’s a different story). When the weather is
nice I still miss the cows, but now that the snow is flying I’m content to
listen to my neighbor’s beef cattle.
The other human
character in this adventure is Ruth, a former nun - born and raised in
town - who brags about being much younger than I am. Well, it is nine
months, after all! The only livestock Ruth ever owned was a cat
named Korky, and I’m not sure it ever set foot outdoors. But despite
that void, Ruth, too, feels very connected to the land. The rest of our
family consists of a year-old, over-grown pound-puppy named Elle who
doesn’t know she’s a dog, a half dozen ceramic fish in a full-sized fish
tank, and our newly-arrived rooster, Little Buck, and his girls.
A year ago Ruth and I
made a leap of faith, pooled our resources (a.k.a. credit scores), and
purchased an old farmhouse in rural Michigan. We’d love to be a
traditional, completely self-sufficient homestead, but our more
realistic hope is to grow old in our flannel shirts and work boots,
living gently on the land… with a mortgage, of course.
Our little piece of
paradise has all the right stuff: five acres with a bit of woods, some
open “pasture” area, a bit of wetland, a beautiful creek, and a great area
for a large garden. In our dreams, it includes assorted small livestock -
including rescue animals, fruit trees, berry bushes, enough vegetables to
winter us over, and sacred spaces to feed our spirits. Unfortunately,
there’s not an outbuilding or fence to be found on the place. So when we
made the decision to move beyond our first garden and add animals, I said,
“Let’s get a few chickens. How hard could it be to raise chickens?”
Now, keep in mind
that my experience is with dairy cows. I know about milking,
breeding, helping deliver calves, even doing CPR on them if they’re not
breathing at birth. With chickens, I knew nothing. All I had was
questions. How many breeds are there? Do we want pretty or practical?
Brown eggs or Easter eggs? I knew the name of only one breed - Rhode
Island Reds - and I prefer brown eggs. And neither Ruth nor I even knew
for sure if we needed a rooster in order to get those eggs. You
should have heard the comparative anatomy conversation that question
prompted! The comedy had begun.
Since there’s nothing
in our area that even compares to a good, old-fashioned feed mill/farm
store, we sought advice from the modern homesteader’s best friend… the
Internet. First was the breed question. I stumbled across
Henderson’s Breed Chart
that listed many breeds with straightforward comparisons, including
information about size, coloring, temperament, laying tendencies,
winter-hardiness, etc. Two breeds stood out: Buff Orpingtons and
Buckeyes. We needed winter-hardy birds that were adaptable to some
version of free-range conditions. Also, the grandma and teacher in me
wanted gentle animals that would seem more like pets than livestock. And
it probably didn’t hurt that both breeds showed up on the first page of an
extensive alphabetical list.
After narrowing down
our choices, we had to find out what was available in our area for a price
that we could afford. Two sites were particularly helpful in that
regard:
www.localharvest.org and
www.BestFarmBuys.com, both of which allow you to put in your zip code
and find resources in "your neck of the woods." We found some of each of
our top choices and began the e-mail photo exchange and negotiations.
Buckeyes, from the Local Harvest listing for Wind Racer Farm, won out. We
jumped in our little pickup truck, armed with the dog carrier and total
confidence, to go get our new brood… herd… flock… what do you call
a group of chickens?!
