update on michigan’s anti-pig crusades

here’s an article from the april 23, 2012 detroit free press

thanks to neon vincent for his constant vigilance and keeping me in the loop. he also sent me another link to a blog post about this issue, which i first cribbed from a natural news link, and am trying to re-post here as well. thank you to everyone who is following this story.

(here’s the sign of a good and organized friend: he posted this in the comments section last night: Glad to help!  I’ll see what I can do about that other story.  In the meantime, the link to it is here. http://www.resilientcommunities.com/big-ag-fights-back-michigan-turns-small-farmers-into-felons/)

They’re huge, they’re invasive, they reproduce quickly, they eat everything in sight and now, they’re illegal.

Sound like Asian carp?

Nope, these are wild Russian or Eurasian boars and their relatives, illegal to possess in Michigan as of April 1. But the backlash against a new order that designated them an illegal invasive species has gone viral on property-rights and natural-foods websites across the country.

Hunting ranches that stock the boars and some pig farmers who raise specialty breeds that have some boar-like characteristics say the new rule will wipe out their business, and they are fighting back.

Since April 1, when enforcement of the new rule began, the Department of Natural Resources has searched two ranches with warrants and inspected 18 others to make sure all their wild boars were destroyed or sold. Three ranches and a pig farmer have filed separate lawsuits, saying the new law violates their constitutional rights.

Internet sites have painted the DNR as a government agency out of control, bringing in jackbooted, weapons-carrying officers to take private property and turn farmers into felons.

“I am hereby calling for the armed citizens’ arrest of DNR officials who must be brought to justice for their crimes against Michigan farmers,” said the editor of NaturalNews.com.

“That’s very irresponsible rhetoric,” said DNR spokesman Ed Golder. Officers do carry guns but despite assertions, the DNR has arrested no one and has shot no pigs, he said.

The DNR said it added the boars to the Michigan Invasive Species Act in late 2010 because feral hogs that have escaped over the years from hunting ranches have bred and spread, uprooting crops, destroying wildlife habitat and carrying diseases that could spread to the state’s pork industry and potentially to humans.

The agency estimates there are 1,000 to 3,000 feral hogs in the state; as of late last year, it said 340 had been spotted in 72 counties, and 286 had been killed. In Michigan, it is legal for anyone to shoot feral hogs on sight.

Supporters of the order included the state’s largest hunting and conservation group, the Michigan United Conservation Clubs, and the Michigan Pork Producers Association, owners of megafarms.

Opponents note that the Legislature rejected bills to outlaw boars. Instead, the DNR director outlawed the creatures through an administrative order, adding them to the list of animals banned under the existing invasive-species law.

Wild boars are popular shooting targets on the state’s 60 unregulated hunting ranches, where hunters pay to hunt animals year-round.

The DNR filed a lawsuit April 10 against Renegade Ranch in Cheboygan County, which hosts such hunts, to enforce the new order. Armed with a temporary restraining order, officers descended on the ranch after the owners refused entry days earlier, and the DNR said it did find prohibited swine. Violating the act can lead to civil or criminal fines of $1,000 to $20,000.

At a hearing in a packed courtroom Friday, a judge ruled the ranch can harvest its existing boars through paid hunts by clients, but cannot buy more. The DNR can inspect the ranch again in the next four weeks.

Another hunting ranch owner, Dave Tuxbury of Deer Tracks Ranch near Fife Lake, turned DNR officers away and told them to come back with a warrant. On a website, he described in gory detail shooting dozens of boar sows and piglets. When the DNR came back with a warrant, there were no illegal hogs left. “It has been a sad few weeks,” Tuxbury said.

Shooting preserves may have been the main targets of the new act, but family farmers who raise European breeds of pigs, some related to boars, have been swept up in the controversy.

Near Cadillac, Mark Baker of Baker’s Green Acres raises hybrid Mangalitsa pigs for chefs, who prize the tasty, naturally raised meat. Baker said his pigs, crossbred with boars, are now in danger. Only purebred Mangalitsa are exempt, the DNR’s Golder said.

Baker has become a hero in the pig fight, raising cash and national attention through videos on his website, bakersgreenacres.com , decrying the state’s attempt to take his pigs.

“I have no problem with exterminating feral swine,” Baker said Saturday. “But my pigs are my property.”

An Air Force veteran who also raises chickens and produce on his 80-acre farm with his wife and eight children, Baker has filed a lawsuit saying the DNR’s actions are unconstitutional when applied to his pigs.

Baker said he believes that the state’s factory farms are to blame for the boar ban, because they want to put small farmers like him out of business.

He said his pigs would never become feral, because they’re domesticated. They live behind fences, never attempting escape.

Baker’s attorney, Joseph O’Leary, said Saturday that the DNR’s definition of the banned species is vague and unconstitutional. Farmers cannot tell whether their hogs are banned or safe, he said, and instead, “the DNR assures us that it will know an illegal pig when it sees one.”

The DNR order states it applies to wild boar, wild hog, wild swine, feral pig, feral hog, feral swine, Old World swine, razorback, Eurasian wild boar and Russian wild boar, but not to domestic swine. It defines banned pigs by color, tail structure, ear types and even color of fur.

Marc Santucci of Okemos, who raises purebred Mangalitsa, said he has been assured by the DNR that his three dozen or so pigs are safe, but said the agency has done a poor job of explaining itself, leading to fear by farmers.

“I’ve gotten calls and e-mails from all over the country,” from other farmers worried Michigan’s actions will spread to other states, he said.

Celebrated chef Brian Polcyn of Forest Grill in Birmingham has bought Baker’s pigs and is a fan of breeds such as Mangalitsa for their tasty meat and creamy fat. “I think the government went overboard,” Polcyn said. “These are farm animals.”

The DNR said halting invasive species is one of its missions. Golder cited Asian carp, imported to Arkansas in the 1970s for food and sewage-pond cleaning, as similar. The carp escaped from fish farms and government ponds and now pose a costly threat to the Great Lakes.

“These are Asian carp with legs,” Golder said. “They pose just as serious a threat on land as Asian carp do in water.”

Contact Tina Lam: 313-222-6421 or tlam@freepress.com

how funky is your chicken?

not very funky at all, thank you very much

but doing well- petunia included, who except for a slight limp is almost back to 100% happy chickenhood.

people keep asking me why we got chickens, and i find the question sort of perplexing.

at first i was just so excited i would go through the entire genesis of how it came to be that we finally got the chickens. but that wasn’t really the answer to the question.

then after a few times, i realized the question confused me; it was sort of like someone asking me why i decided to grow eyelashes. or how i decided to be five feet tall. some things just are. they come into being by a force of nature and you play the hand you’re dealt. us getting chickens feels like that kind of a thing. but then i remember that we didn’t have chickens in oak park- that we couldn’t have chickens in oak park- and it’s like trying to remember how your life was before you have children. you can remember in theory, but it’s not the same as really remembering how that life was…

so obviously at some time i made a concrete decision to actually buy the coop and find the chickens and go get them. they did not just spontaneously generate out of the soil, or evolve from amoeba (sorry darwinists)- i set this thing in motion, so i should be able to justify it, right?

well, the honest answer is maybe.

there are reasons i wanted chickens and reasons i got chickens, but those reasons don’t always seamlessly line up.

there are reasons i have chickens, and reasons i enjoy having chickens, but those reasons aren’t always the same.

it’s so cool that in seattle we can just have chickens, and it’s no big deal- just another seattle family doing their wacky thing. but ironic that as we’re in the groove of having the chickens, as we’re getting now about 3 eggs a day and our two youngest chux should start laying by the summer, some of our chux have turned into bandits and have started nibbling the neighbor’s flowers.

and these are not just any neighbors. these are nice neighbors.

these are close neighbors who we like and wave to every day. they are neighbors who we’d like to stay friends with.

so now we are trying to figure out how to constrain the chux while still giving the dogs some freedom and giving *h somewhat of a nice yard and giving the neighbors a nice flower garden and giving me chux and giving the family healthy fresh eggs…

no wonder i have migraines, huh?

anyhow, we are loving the chux (this is code for: i am loving the chux, *h is tolerating the chux with his normal good humour, the teenagers are mostly grossed out by the chux, my next son- the former chicken whisperer- is slunking around hoping i won’t ask him to do any chicken related chores, and my youngest is still giddy with collecting eggs…).

i still think getting and having them is a great thing. i’m intoxicated by having fresh eggs in my fridge and knowing at least most of what went into their making (minus, of course, the neighbor’s flowers and some treats they get when we aren’t looking like pancakes with another neighbor and various bugs and creepy crawlies they find around…).

last night *h ran around while they all chased him so they could get some cherry tomatoes and we sat in my window and watched. it was the most fun i’ve had in a good long time, and when our neighbor drove up, he thought so too

so the chickens have given us a source not only of protein and good omega 3s and 6s, but a source of laughter and smiles and stories and inspiration. they have cost us more than we initially thought, but i have grown to like them much more than i initially thought i would too.

did i ever think i would really and truly own chickens?

about as much as i thought i would put a veggie garden in my front yard.

and we all know how that turned out.

don’t be jealous about our chickens- be inspired! if you live somewhere that doesn’t allow chickens, maybe this should be your next project. for food safety and security they are a great deal. they are fairly low maintenance and fairly high return.

someone i met the other day was really surprised that i named my chickens. she was literally in a state of disbelief.

“you NAME your chickens?”

well duh.

my daughter beat me to it!

guess what? my oldest daughter is a published author!!!!!

that’s right! here is the link to her book on amazon.com:

http://www.amazon.com/A-Tangled-Destiny-Elyana-Bass/dp/1466495146/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1334601753&sr=8-2

i’m a little bit flipping out and a lot proud!

please check it out, and maybe even urge your local library to get a copy or 7

OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

so now i’ll be waiting to hear your feedback on thrity umrigar -but way more important- the now-famous elyana bass!!!!!

petunia- that’s one tough chick(en)!

here’s the update on petunia grant the great:

she’s still gimping around, but is her normal cheerful self. wattles are bright, comb is bright, coloring is great, feathers are beautiful, and i’m feeling very full of chicken wisdom that i even now know enough about chickens to have written that sentence. her eyes are clear and alert, her appetite is good, she is still laying, AND she even made the effort to hobble on up the ramp (*H and i call it walking the plank) to go into the nesting box to lay her egg as usual. because why disrupt a routine just because you appear to be in a world of hurt?

so, petunia is a trooper and a role model. she is an inspiration and one cool chick. but she is still essentially a one-legged chicken in a two-legged world. and i’m still perplexed.

she has no obvious injury, but is in so much pain that her foot literally quivers when she holds it off the ground. she won’t put weight on it, but she seems quite fine to just hop wherever she needs to go, which makes me feel like a big huge baby for complaining when i have a migraine. because if i was spasming in pain, you could be darn sure i wouldn’t be laying any eggs.

i gave the girls some sour cream today, which i globbed on the ground (*h loves being married to an american, and my elegance in serving food is just one of the many reasons why), but i gave petunia the container for herself. when a few jealous cluckies came over to “share”,  petunia let them right in, whereas i would have been like, “I DON’T FEEL GOOD AND I HURT! GET OUT OF MY SOUR CREAM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

so she is obviously more highly evolved than i am as well.

hmmmmm. i have a lot to work on, i guess.

but back to petunia grant.

she is getting around better and looking healthier than the first day she was hurt, which gives me hope that chickens possess some secret power to mend wounds that we humans just don’t know about.

or maybe she’s been faking the whole time, just hoping i’d get the hint and throw some sour cream her way.

smart chicken…

in any case, please keep doing whatever it is that you’ve been doing, because it seems to be working. i’ll keep you posted on her and the rest of the gang. tomorrow we are moving the coop from the front of the house to the side of the house, which i think may turn out to be a colossally bad idea, but we are trying to get them away from our teenagers’ bedroom windows, since the older kids aren’t loving waking up to parfum de farm…

this new location will be smack outside of our kitchen windows (can you say large screen TV for dogs- all chicken channel, all the time)- in a narrowish corridor that will be both harder to clean and harder to access.

but we’re all about keeping the teenagers happy here on the bass family farm, so stay tuned for the next installment…

daffodils- who knew?

i’m not a flower person.

no, i don’t refer here to any post 60s throwback mentality. i just mean that, all things being equal, flowers don’t quite move me the way they do some other people.

a friend suggested a field trip for my family about an hour’s drive from us. we could go to this place where they have lots and lots of tulips. and we could look at the tulips. and we could enjoy looking at the tulips.

and i was like, “um, is there anything else to do there except look at tulips?” and she was sort of incredulous that i would ask such a dumb question- like in the face of such clear and overwhelming beauty, why would you need to do anything? and she told me again how very very beautiful it is- that as far as the eye can see there are just these beautiful colorful tulips… and i was like, “yeah no. that doesn’t sound like something i would do. but thanks for suggesting it.”

*h learned early on that i am not a flower girl. when pressed, i would accept carnations, preferably in a cheesy dyed color, like blue. but i don’t really like flowery smells (exception: real lilacs when they are actually growing on real trees). i don’t really like flowery prints or fabrics or designs or patterns. you get the picture.

so imagine my surprise when up popped in my very own backyard, completely unbidden, a very quaint and completely unobjectionable flower. i’ve seen them in books, but never in real life, so i asked a friend what they are called. and apparently they are daffodils.

and apparently they grow wild, or close to it in seattle, because these guys are everywhere. which kind of piques my curiosity: why hasn’t someone decided to exterminate them like they do to other things that grow freely and naturally?

just asking.

and then, guess what? we gave someone a baby gift, and as a thank you, they gave us a quaint little bouquet of sunny yellow daffodils.

which i put on my sunny windowsill.

in a happy vase.

so now i am officially a cliché.

or a hallmark card.

and i don’t really care.

so it appears that i do actually like flowers; it just took me half a lifetime to find the right ones.

and they are daffodils.

how happy

on a completely unrelated and less happy note: petunia, our champion egg-layer and all around sweet gal, is gimping around today with some sort of foot or ankle injury. my friend’s chicken did this for about 24 hours and then dropped dead (from sorrow, perhaps?)- so could you send some healing chicken wishes her way? short of that, or in addition to that, could you send me some ideas about how to help her? i think if she dies, i may bury her near the daffodils in the backyard (unlike the other chux who’ve died in their service to our family, who i rather unceremoniously threw in the trash. i know- i may have some bad karma coming my way for that…).

at this point, i’m thinking that if she’s not better in the next 24-48 hours, i might ask my more “ethnic” neighbors if they know anyone who would be willing to dispatch her quickly and put her out of her misery. or i might just OD her on pain meds…

but, let’s try to stay positive- let me know what you know and send some love to petuntia…

 

life would be perfect if only…

i just finished reading a book called life would be perfect if only i lived in that house, by meghan daum. it’s essentially about one woman’s quest to own a house, set against the backdrop of other houses she’s lived in, and the story of her finally buying a house, and the relationships that ensue in and because of that house (that was a super long sentence, wasn’t it?). it has some kitschy charm, but it’s one of those books that makes me think maybe i should write a book, maybe about my kitchen utensils or some such thing, and it could be a big hit.

it’s born of the same urge that tells me i should be a doctor every time i go to the ER. it’s that feeling of observing a finished product and saying, “yeah. i could do that,” without actually appreciating the toil that went into creating that finished product. because, don’t get me wrong, i could be an awesome doctor. but could i be a lowly med. student taking orders from everyone on 10 hours of sleep a week? no way. could i be a resident doing all the scut work a hospital has to offer, getting paid next to nothing, and working 60 hours a day? nope. so yeah, i could be a doctor but in the land of reality i don’t have the currency to pay those dues.

i think there’s a similar phenomenon at work when it comes to writing a book. could i in theory produce a great finished product? maybe. in my finer moments i would answer with a resounding ‘yes!’- but the other day at the dollar store i saw one of my bad dreams in real life.

one of my all-time favorite authors- one of the most talented (yet perhaps unknown and unrecognized?) authors of our time, is thrity umrigar. if you own a library card, or have a friend who does, or better yet- if you have some spare cash you want to throw around- get your hands on one of her books. any of her books.

so guess what i saw in the book jumble on the shelf in the dollar store? a book by thrity umrigar. not a cheapy softcover that might have really cost $1. this was a real true hardcover book. and there were several copies, so it wasn’t a fluke- like someone was reading it and was so spellbound they couldn’t put it down so they brought it with them into the store to do their shopping but then their child fell out of the stupid undersized cart and had to be rushed to the hospital and in their hasty dash to the ambulance they left their precious book behind. no- this was an on purpose attempt to sell her books in the dollar store. i feel slightly sick as i type that just now…

the rescuer in me wanted to buy all of the copies and maybe give them out as gifts- anything to redeem them from the indignity of sitting on that dollar store shelf of shame. but not everybody loves good indian fiction, and we all know that i do love uncrowded space, so with a heavy heart i left thrity in the store (i’d make a lousy marine, i know). my only consolation is that i still wrestle with myself over whether i should go back and buy the darn books, which reassures me that i do indeed have a functioning conscience…

i will briefly digress here to tell you something mildly amusing. i tend to go through reading jags where i will latch on to a particular subject or author or type of books and then read piles and piles and piles of them. for a while, when i was going through my indian fiction phase, i would jot down words or phrases i wanted to know the meaning of. since *h worked in a company with an on-site tech department, he worked very closely with lots of very nice people from india. i asked him to ask a co-worker if it would be ok for me to send in my list for him to translate. he said it was fine, so *h gave him the list, and later that day the co-worker suggested we should all hang out some time. when i got back the list, i got a bit of insight into why he thought i might be a really fun person to hang out with: while a few of the things on the list were cheap indian snack food items, most were either curse words or sex terms. judging based on my apparent prurient interests in trashy novels, salty language, and raunchy pastimes, he must have thought i was one heck of a party girl! i guess that should serve as a cautionary tale somehow, but i haven’t figured out exactly how yet…

but back to the issue at hand- and that is my 1) fear of writing a book that winds up in a dollar store (i literally have exactly that fear!); 2) inability to stay with my true voice for any length of time before i start to wonder what this person or that person would think if they read it (which i believe is a killer of truly good writing); 3) lack of discipline/selfishness/commitment/? to carve out the time i would need to write an actual book; 4) unwillingness to hand over my writing- my personal stuff- to some person sitting behind a desk so they can cross out and rework and dissect and deconstruct me by deconstructing what i wrote (this last one may be largely irrational since a good editor will probably work with you and not against you. they will probably make your writing even better than you knew it could be. this fear is probably born mostly out of ignorance more than anything else); 5)  plethora of excuses to hide behind rather than take a risk that i’d rather not take. let’s face it and call it by it’s true name: it’s easier to imagine i might be able to do something cool than to try it and fail.

isn’t that stellar?

this isn’t a pity party, and yes, it’s the opposite of what i teach my kids. but honestly guys, my kids are all potential. my kids are unfolding stories. they are fruits ripening on the tree of life.

i’m a wax pear with a few too many layers of dust sitting in your dead grandma’s fruit bowl that you can’t bear to throw out for sentimental reasons.

no- i just threw that last one in to keep you on your toes

but really, i’m at the stage in life where there aren’t a lot of surprises left. truly, there ARE people who begin training for their first marathon at age 60, and i COULD be one of those people. i MIGHT write an awesome book in midlife, and honestly there’s no reason why not. but i don’t know that i’m as much aspirational as reflective at this juncture, and that just doesn’t provide the UMPH you need to kick-start a big project.

i have this weird thing where if something good is in the works i don’t like to talk about it because i’m afraid to jinx it. but a few months ago i was talking to some people at reader’s digest who were thinking about doing a story about the whole garden business. (on a side note- i sometimes meet people here who have never heard about the garden thing, and i’m always a bit shocked- i was so notorious in oak park- like america’s most wanted. here i’m just julie bass. i’m mellow me. it’s a reinvented smoother me.  it’s kind of west coast groovy    ) the article fell through- probably because i jinxed it by telling someone about it – but the person i had been speaking to let me down gently by telling me that she’d really like to think about running it in the future. who knows- maybe one day i’ll do yet another cool thing? take THAT, world!

why do i bring this up here and now? because it really inspired me. i inspired me! during the interviews with the digest, i reread old documents and rewatched old news clips but this time with enough emotional distance that i didn’t break out in hives, and i was like, “go, julie!” that was a person i would want to know! that was a person who had spirit! that was a person i would want to be friends with!

and high from that high i wrote fan letters to both joel salatin (blog link is on the right side of mine) and roger dorion (KGI- link also on the side of mine, i think) and gushed to them in typical teenager fan/groupie style and then asked them both for advice about what to get involved in next. (haven’t heard back yet, and i actually found answers on joel’s website and in some of the interviews i’ve read subsequently with roger- but still kind of girlishly hoping that maybe they will write back one day…maybe i could, like, totally make a scrapbook or something…   )

but that was the kind of thing that made me want to write. so i wrote on the blog. and that fills me up. and that’s awesome!

so, for now at least, this is my novel. you are my audience, and i don’t feel like i have to censor myself (although i do often feel a vague sense of guilt that i don’t try harder to use capital letters). you can read at your leisure, and i won’t even charge you $1.

and here’s another freebie book recommendation: cold zero by christopher whitcomb (but skip his fiction)

but start with the thrity umrigar. and let me know what you think…

the power of protein

here’s the timeline just so we’re clear:

chicken whisperer visits monday morning and suggests more protein for the girls to increase egg production.

i start them on yogurt monday afternoon.

tuesday afternoon we get 2 eggs, thus doubling our egg production within 24 hours.

coincidence?

you be the judge

on a different note, last night madge ”pasted over” and i had to clean her off- a job she and i both hated, and i hope i never have to do again. i thought this only happened to chicks, but this actually killed daisy a few weeks ago (sorry i forgot to tell you). any thoughts on why this keeps happening? i’ll ask our new chicken guru, but i’m wondering if any of you have experienced this with your flocks and you have some insights…

on the happy side, madge is up and around today, happy and robust as ever. she is none the worse for the experience, whereas i am severely traumatized. she is clearly a farm animal and i am clearly not a farmer. but, it’s a learning process, and hopefully i’ll toughen up.

today i’m cleaning out cabinets and doing a bunch of laundry- both things i am good at- reaffirming my belief in myself that i am good enough, i am gritty enough, and gosh darn it, people like me

thus spoke the chicken whisperer

today i had a delivery of a custom blend of chicken feed from a wonderful small farmer who was willing to sit and give me advice regarding the lack of laying around the bass ranch.

he admired my chux (always a big plus!) and said they look healthy and happy. awwwwwwww, shucks (insert proud mommy blush…).

one curious girl actually came right up to him to check him out, which was quite interesting, since they are not usually the shmoozy type. it’s like they knew that this was a guy who has a unique connection to the chicken world… the rest of the pack snuck around the edge of the trash cans to scope him out and then very bravely came to hunt for bugs right at his feet. very cool girls indeed. and he is a very cool farmer, so i’m really glad i made the connection.

after watching them for a few minutes and asking me some questions about their habits and their diets, he has preliminarily suggested i try giving them more protein for a week. if that doesn’t help, i can call him to troubleshoot and he has other ideas i can try. he totally nixed the idea about extra lighting, but i did run that by him, as well as the other ideas you all so generously posted here on the blog. in the meanwhile, it will be leftover milk from the kids’ cereal bowls, yogurt, and mealworms if i can find them somewhere close by. i may stoop to making them some fish (i can actually picture my family cringing at this, buy hey, a mom’s gotta do what a mom’s gotta do…).

i know you are all on the edge of your seats watching this drama unfold, so i will try to keep you updated as soon as there is news.

stay tuned…

to lay or not to lay…

that seems to be the question around here…

and as much as i don’t want to be the mad poster…

as much as i want to keep up posts for a while before i knock them down by putting up a new post…

i must know if you all have any ideas…

how do i get my chickens to lay???

*h has some photos of the first egg being fried up with some sausage for his lunch- but he continues to passive-aggressively not send them to me.

or he continues to be really really busy and has more important things on his mind than putting up photos of an egg frying on my blog… can you imagine???

but the real question is, why aren’t my girls doing their duty?

there is enough sunlight, even in rainy seattle.

they free range and get enough food and water.

they have a clean pleasant coop and room to roost and nest.

they have had a few weeks to settle in.

i have checked their-um-private parts and everything seems to be as the books say it should be.

according to the lady we bought them from, their ages (10 months to 2-1/2 years) put them in laying territory, and they were laying when we bought them. i know that maybe she lied, but i’m really wanting to believe that wasn’t the case. she sold them so cheap that she could have advertised them as stew chickens and sold them for the same price, so it’s not like she made gobs of money by lying about their laying status…

they don’t look “bleached”, they don’t seem to be molting, they don’t act sick, and i don’t notice anything obviously wrong.

so, chicken sleuths- any ideas what we could do to inspire these girls to give up some eggs?

currently we are getting precisely one egg a day, laid each afternoon by petunia grant, neatly in her laying box.

other hens have looked broody for a few hours at a time, but no eggs.

we have set up some nesting boxes around the yard, in clumps of bushes where they like to recreate, but they don’t seem to understand the purpose of these “work stations”.

we have seeded the nests with golf balls, but they haven’t gotten the hints.

we have told them, whispered to them, and tried to inspire them, but to no avail.

so, now i turn to you.

our future eggs are in your hands.

back on the homeschool front…

“The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.”  Gustave Flaubert  (this quote seems a fitting one to open this post, which i wish i had written myself. flaubert is *h’s friend angus’s favorite author, and although i doubt that angus reads this blog, i’m gonna dedicate this post to him)

 

here’s an excerpt from a post that was linked on my friend avivah’s blog. she posted the list, but i read the entire original post at tess bomac’s blog (very worth a read if you have the time). i don’t mean to displace neon vincent- the next post down on my blog- but this was so good it has me on fire… i can’t wait for your feedabck!

from tess:

The only types of schooling that worked for me were homeschooling and college. I’ve never been good at staying focused on tasks that are drawn out. If learning a new math skill should take 10 minutes to teach and 50 minutes to practice, then so be it—I’m your girl. I’ll listen closely, work hard, and follow your advice. However, I have never been able to focus on a 45-minute lecture while sifting out the 10 minutes worth of usable material. My response in school was always, “I guess I don’t really need to know this, since nobody can explain how it works or why it’s useful.” Asking things like, “How can I use this information?” or “How will I know that I’ve mastered this skill?” were treated like mutiny. (I don’t remember this, but eyewitnesses swear that it’s true: when I was a junior in high school, a few weeks into an allegedly tough English class, the teacher, who routinely graded papers with college-level rubrics, had us pick out plastic animal figurines from a bag, then sculpt our bodies so that we resembled the animal. Apparently my response was, “This is malarkey; I am not doing it,” and then I walked out of the classroom. I do remember dropping the class and homeschooling myself in English, German, and humanities for the rest of the year, taking just a few classes for the rest of high school.)

Based on my experience, I believe that students in regular classrooms learn many self-defeating lessons from their teachers and classmates. These include:

• The rules are always changing, and since you never know when the teacher is going to enforce them, try to get away with as much as you can until she starts screaming. Then blame your neighbor.
• You don’t need to think about your education. The teacher will decide what you should learn, you’ll do the things that she decides matter, then she’ll give you a grade that represents how well you can follow arbitrary directions.
• While the teacher can make mistakes and move deadlines all the time, you will be penalized if you misunderstand the directions.
• Almost everything you learn is a measure of your docility, not your intelligence or your effort.
• Working with others is more important than learning actual content. Group projects, no matter how unfair, inefficient, and tedious are here to stay, and if you complain about it taking 10 hours out of class to make a collage that demonstrates 15-minutes worth of learning, tough. Life isn’t fair.
• Life isn’t fair, so thus it is okay for me to be unfair.
• Don’t question textbooks, even though most of them are riddled with errors and omissions.
• Learning is for school, school is painfully monotonous, so learning must be boring, too.
• Learning is for school, so once the day ends, you’re free to do whatever you find fun.
• Learning can only take place in hard plastic desks, in crowded classrooms, while being told exactly what to do.
• Nothing is more important than fitting in. If you don’t fit in, there must be something wrong with you. Maybe you should buy some more accessories? Try a different hair style?
• The earlier you start dating, the more important and grown up you are.
• Talking about Jesus is for people who are “not open minded” and are “trying to push their beliefs on others.” Incidentally, would you like to wear a rainbow pin to support the gay marriage?
• Reading in school? Are you crazy? We have to get ready for the state tests!

As an adult, I find myself reading and studying to make up for the fact that, during most of my years in “regular school,” I didn’t learn anything. Nothing. I can barely describe who fought in major wars, the type of government France has, the capitol of more than half of our 50 states, how to calculate compound interest, how to diagram a sentence, how mitochondria fuel cells, or how electricity makes its way through power lines and into my computer. Given the state of education, I’m lucky I can read, and that was something I learned while homeschooling.

I spent eight hours a day, 180 days a year, waiting for the teacher to get to the point or for the class to stop talking or for us to stop reviewing, for the third time, the material we had already learned, in order to help the kids who had talked right through it the first two times. School is tough on the good kids, because they don’t have the solace of goofing off and enjoying time with their friends in class. They might spend 30-50% of their time in school watching the teacher manage the behavior of other students, while getting scolded for reading during the downtime.

Modern-day schooling is a daily exercise in mediocrity, or worse. Students are taught in hundreds of ways, all day long, that your output doesn’t matter, how much you’re learning doesn’t matter, what you think about it doesn’t matter. What matters are grades and popularity.

http://www.ladiesagainstfeminism.com/training-children/why-a-schoolteacher-is-quitting-her-job-and-homeschooling/