One more note on chicken poop and a day of field work

Today some friends and I cleaned the poop out of a smaller chicken coop.  It is a coop that holds our "meat birds" --birds raised only for the meat, not for laying eggs.  The particular breed we have has been designed to grow quickly and be ready for slaughter by 8 or 9 weeks old.  For as economical as this may sound, it is an unpleasant thing to watch.  They grew so quickly that the feather building process couldn't/wouldn't keep up.  Now they are seven weeks or so, their legs are thick but not strong enough to hold up their bulky, meaty body. Here is a little video clip of the poor things:

Their coop is heated by lamps so they don't have to expend energy keeping warm.  They have food and water at beak-level.  They rarely go outside because their bodies are so ungainly and it isn't safe walking down the foot-long gang-plank to the outside.   Here is a video of two adventurous ones sitting outside.  Those specks on the ground are chicken scratch--delicious morsels of grain that chickens love:

Because it isn't mobile, this breed of chicken must lay it it's own excrement day by day.  There are all sorts of choices a farmer must make for the good of her farm and for managing a budget.  This option may not be a good fit for me.  We student farmers are growing these birds for our own consumption and we will have the opportunity to choose a different breed to raise next spring.

Field work:

The roots have grown!

We began our field work by harvesting parsnips and leeks.  We took a little break in the middle of the morning to examine the garlic we had planted two weeks ago.

Loading the straw on the trailer

Nate demonstrating straw mulch

Mulching to the end of the bed

Remay, unfurling

Rosalind from Haiti

In the afternoon, we loaded straw on the wagon and then spread the bales on the strawberry beds.  We also streteched a piece of "remay" across the garlic beds--like unfurling a sail, says Nora.  Both straw and remay will keep the tender roots of our overwintered plants from freezing.  Our day was highlighted with the visit of Rosalind, a garden educator from Haiti.  We all tried out our French on her and began learning about her work with children ages 9 to 20.