Month: August 2009

Just in case anyone wondered why I live in the country, take a look at my morning walk.

My neighbor’s horses are always worth a look.

Our back pasture has some pullets on it at the moment, in one of our portable chicken coops.

The neighbors have a flock of sheep in their back pasture.

Our broilers are houses in hoophouses made by bending lightweight cattle panels into a semicircle and putting a tarp on top. The grass is getting pretty brown, but they still forage for what green stuff there is.

Karen at the gate that marks the boundary of Starker Forest property. Starker has a “good neighbor” policy that must be experienced to be believed!

Inside the forest. Most of my morning walk is like this.

I walk until I reach this giant alder tree. It’s important to say, “Good morning, tree” before turning around.

On the way home, the view is much the same, except for some good vistas of the farm, like this one:

I do this walk every day. It’s almost a vacation in itself!

Hens with the free run of a grass pasture not only lay more nutritious eggs, better-tasting eggs, they lay bigger eggs.

In spite of decades of selective breeding to ensure that most eggs fall into the Large size range, my hens insist on laying mostly Extra Large eggs. This is something of a nuisance, since customers prefer Large, but them’s the breaks.

The cause is presumably better nutrition. Like us, chickens should eat fresh greens in addition to processed stuff. Given half a chance, they do, and it improves the flavor, nutritional content, and size of the eggs.

Few people seem to know this, which is why people insist on building mud-yard free-range operations that have zero potential for producing a product that’s superior to what’s in the supermarket. The secret ingredient is not outdoor access, but grass.