My little pony...

Danni passed vet today, with flying colors! I wrote the check, and now she's mine! She's a Dutch warmblood 2-year-old, daughter to Idocus, granddaughter to Titan. She's downright magnificent in motion. Sweet, smart, and BIG. She'll mature to probably 16.3 or 17 hands. I've had her here long enough to teach her several things---loading and unloading, standing still for grooming, how to pick up her feet (but not how to hold them up!). She learns quickly and wants to please---a great combination! Everyone who has seen her falls in love. Because she's a beauty. And now she's mine.

Day 3

I had planned to lunge Danni again today, but when I got her out, J was messing with the sprinklers, so I had an opportunity.

I walked her around in the front, with the sprinklers going, cars driving past, dogs barking, all kinds of excuses to be bad. She lOOked, for all she was worth, and only jumped once, when the sprinkler spray hit her hind legs. Cutie. That's probably pretty scary, if you are a two-year-old prey animal!

Then I worked with her in the barn for a while, introducing her to truly scary things like fly spray, getting her legs brushed, and standing quietly in the cross-ties in the barn aisle. At one point, she got her foot caught on the stall mats, then whipped herself turned around in the cross-ties, and I was never so glad that we've made those break-away! So she broke them, and then was immediately quiet, and allowed me to move her back where she belonged and go on with her brushing. She forgot about her panic moment, and moved on. A good sign about how she thinks.

Tomorrow, I have a long 'ordinary day' at work, filled with the types of things that I am actively working to minimize or eliminate completely. But I should be home by 6pm, to spend a little time with this precious girl, and see what else I can find out about her. We've been joking that she is my 'midlife crisis'. I'll be 40 this year, and by the time Danni is really hitting her potential, I'll be in my early 50s. Which is maybe just a rationalization for doing what I want to do anyway... ;). She's spendy, but not THAT spendy. Just a little stretch, that shows what she might mean to me, as a present to myself. So I'll wait for Wednesday, and Trisha's input to make my final decision, but I've been working my whole life to be worthy of a horse like this one---one with the brain and the talent to go all the way to the top. I've been learning all those lessons: control over my emotions, control over my body, how to think of six legs, two backs, two necks as though they were one. And now I have more to learn, just to keep up. Isn't it great?!

Dear God

An exact quote, startled out of me by Danni's extended trot. I put her on the lunge line today, and she appears to just float above the ground. When I asked for a canter, she stretched her whole body out, with hind feet overstepping her front hoof prints. She looked like her famous father, and she's only two.

By the way, she hasn't been lunged in months, because she's been turned out with a crowd of other horses. She mostly remembered exactly what to do!

Tomorrow, we will try lunging 'in gear'---I.e. With proper tack on. Almost the hardest thing is refraining from trying everything at once!

But she's only two...baby steps, grasshopper...

And one more

A little closer. She's actually hard to get pictures of, because she wants to be right next to me in the paddock, which makes for a nice picture of a nostril or a shoulder! Not that I'm complaining. She's sweet.

Maybe baby...

This is Danni. She's 2, and we have her here for a week to see if we are a match! So far, she has totally charmed us all... babies do that!

She's an Idocus daughter, and a Titan granddaughter, and if she tops out at less than 16.3 hands, I'll be surprised. Not only does she look nice standing there, but she floats across the ground, like a li'l butterfly. With her breeding, she should be more than capable of the upper levels. And so far, I'm finding her mind as impressive as her body. She's completely unfazed by a two-hour trailer ride and all new environment!

Tastes like chicken

Ever since we got our first three chickens, oh, maybe six years ago, we've been talking about what has to come at the end. One of the big ideas we used to rationalize our chicken acquisition was the idea that "if we don't like having chickens, we'll just eat them.". Easier said than done, of course, for a couple of gen-Xers who had once made a mess of killing a sick, half-dead mouse.
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And for the last few months, we watched the twelve new chicks get bigger, taking more and more room. The ten old ones slowly decreased production, with fading feathers. We knew the clock was ticking.

Because here's the thing. These animals are the backbone of our civilization and our entire food supply. It's obvious that eating meat requires the death of an animal. Other things, not so much. Maybe you think that eating eggs doesn't kill a chicken? Then you've never wondered what happened to the male chicks that hatch. And you've never wondered what happened to 'spent' hens. And you've never seen hens in battery cages, absolutely, positively stark raving mad; like Rochester's wife in Jane Eyre, they'd set fire to the place if they could.

And maybe you think that drinking milk is ok, or eating cheese, or yogurt. No cows get killed to bring you dairy products, you think. But then you've never connected the dots between pregnancy and milk production. And you've never wondered what happened to the calf that is born each and every year to each and every dairy cow. Hint: think milk-fed veal. A surprising number of really smart people that I personally know, have never made the connection between milk and babies.

Or maybe you think veganism is IT. You'll just eat plant products. But you never wondered where fertilizer comes from. And you never asked about the danage to the soil from heavy crop rotations. And you've never wondered about the best way to help a field recover from years of heavy crop rotations. And it never occurred to you these systems evolved, (and were bred, in some cases,) to support each other. The animals and the plants all form part of an inter-connected set of loops. If you pull out one piece, the whole thing becomes a rat's nest of tangles, like when you accidentally start the yarn skein by pulling the wrong turn. This is what the dust bowl taught us---that animals and plants go together. Modern, out-of-the-box thinkers like Joel Salatin are proving that imitating the intensive grazing of bison or antelope results in dramatic increases in soil fertility, crop production and animal health. That putting animals on the land is the BEST way to rejuvenate it. And then what?

All of which may be seen as a rationalization for what we did today, or as a genuine conversion, over several years, to a different way of thinking. To a vision of the connectedness of the world, in which I play a significant part in the life and death of its creatures. I could hide my head, and pretend I have no responsibility and no part to play. I could let all of my sustenance be gathered by underpaid, overworked people in horrible working conditions from animals living in conditions that I would not allow to exist inside my toilet. Or I can be vegan, and eat adulterated soy products, full of salt, and unpronouncable chemicals, made from soy obtained from farmers at prices that don't produce a living wage. Or maybe i could be vegan and eat only beans and rice, grown with petroleum-based fertilizers and huge carbon inputs in the form of tractor fuel, pesticides and herbicides. Or maybe I can be vegan, and eat only beans and rice produced on organic, sustainable farms. In which case they'd better have some animals around for fertilizer, and I'm back where I started... Or I can open my eyes, walk in the world, and be as humane as possible, as grateful as possible, while still realizing that infinity chickens is bad for everyone. We can't keep them all when they are done laying. Death comes to everyone, and it's not clear to me that it's more humane to let them get sick and suffer and THEN die.

So we killed a chicken today that we knew well. We knew her waking and sleeping habits. We knew what she was like when she was brooch, and when she wasn't. We knew that she would invariably peck the younger chicks fiercely on the top of the head when they tried to get to the water. We killed her. Then we ate her. She was a tough old bird, so we made broth and chicken salad out of her, and it will take us at least a week to finish every (truly flavorful) morsel. It wasn't easy, and it wasn't pleasant, and I would not say I enjoyed it. But it was the responsible, grown up thing to do. And there is satisfacton in knowing that she did not suffer. She had a really good life, and about 3 really bad seconds. I should be so lucky.

'NATURE is cruel. But we don't have to be.'---Temple Grandin

Home again...

And this one looks East, the other way, towards the mountains. Our ridiculously beautiful and beautifully engineered arena, Trinket in the back field, Music Man in his paddock, a giant pile of wood chip mulch left over from last year's trees that came down... Home.

The flock...

This morning, J and I were talking about 'the ladies'. We have ten laying hens, acquired at different times. They went off the lay about two weeks before Thanksgiving. (We have no reason to think this is because we were going to be having turkey!) so we were discussing what might be happening with them. It's been cold, but not all that time. It's been snowy, but they've never minded that in the past.

And then it struck us, and we started trying to figure out how old they are. Hens can be expected to live about ten years, if they are coddled a little bit, and a maximum of 30, if they more or less live in the house with you (!). But the typical lifespan is closer to seven years for pet chickens, which is a heck of an improvement over the handful of months for factory broilers, and the 18 months for battery hens. Egg production falls off after 18 months, so typically, they are turned into dog food, or whatever, at that age. Most hens stop laying all together after about five years, although this number is 'fuzzy'.

Our six oldest hens will be 5 in the spring, we think (I lost the record when I had to take down the old blog). This is roughly the age at which they stop laying. The other four are younger. We got them from friends, so are uncertain as to age. Probably, they are going to be three in the spring.

So now we have to decide. Are we running a retirement home for aged hens? Or are we running a productive homestead? If the former, we should just keep going to the IFA, and buying them food. If the latter, we should go ahead and slaughter them, and get new chicks in the spring.

We need more information. So this weekend, we're going to slaughter two of the ladies, to find out what that's about. We have illustrated instructions. We have a basic knowledge of anatomy. We have dogs to clean up after our mistakes. But actually, we have no idea what we are doing. This should be interesting.