Monthly Archives: January 2023

Processing our own homegrown chickens

homemaking, homeschooling

This past spring/summer, my son hatched a bunch of chicks in his homemade incubator. He sold most of them, while holding back a given number for his own flock. His intention was to have more laying hens, but as they got older, it became clear that a number of the chicks were males.

He’s already gotten requests from a past buyer and from new potential buyers about his chicks for the coming season, and has close to one hundred eggs ready to incubate. For a few weeks I’ve been asking him to dispatch the excess roosters, but that hasn’t yet happened. When he mentioned being ready to start incubating his first batch of eggs, I absolutely put my foot down – no new chicks until the roosters are processed.

That was the motivation he needed, and he made arrangements for the shochet who taught him to come over.

As soon as Shabbos was over, I drove my sixteen year old son to the bus station so he could get travel back to yeshiva and was surprised when I got home to find a yard teeming with activity.

My fifteen year old son did all the shechita; the shochet was there only to oversee him. He shechted six roosters, five of which were kosher. The sixth was a mixed breed rooster, which is very hard to get a kosher shechita done on. This was additional validation of the decision my son made to move from raising mixed chickens to a heritage breed.

While he was doing the shechita, there was a chicken plucking party with five or six boys of different ages going on! They had a great time, and I was grateful to all of them for doing it so I didn’t have to.

The next morning my husband salted all the chickens as the next step in the kashering process, then rinsed them all and now they’re all in the fridge, ready to be cooked. When I watched him salting them, he commented that it’s a lot of work to process your own chickens.

Yes, it really is.

Is it empowering to raise your own animals, to know what they’re fed, how they’re treated, and to know they are healthy and disease free? Yes, absolutely. Our animals all enjoy a standard of living that is far above factory chickens. But it’s also a lot of work.

Is it a frugal thing to do? A lot of time, energy and feed went into raising these chickens. Honestly, it’s very hard to compete with industrially raised food on a cost-point basis. At this point it’s not a money saving endeavor, since my son has to make back all that he’s invested into the coop, supplies and purchase of his original chickens, which cost around three thousand shekels.

So why do it?

This is something that interested my son and as a homeschooling mother, I try to support their interests. Additionally, I value traditional knowledge combined with hands-on skills, skills that were widely known for centuries but have been lost to most of us in our modern lives. I want my children to have these skills, and I myself want to have these skills. Raising chickens is a skill-set, and my son has gained real life skills in the raising and processing of chickens.

As a society, we have become dependent for all of our needs on a supply chain that is becoming increasingly fragile. It’s nice to know that there are things that we can do for ourselves, and be less dependent on others to do them for us. I like knowing we can raise some of our own food – currently we supplement our store bought food with home-raised eggs, milk and now chicken.

While we’re very far from being independent in raising our own food, every bit of progress is something to feel good about. This was our first batch of chickens, and it’s taken time to get to this point. My son bought the mother hens as week old chicks that he raised, eventually incubated the eggs they laid when they reached maturity five months later, and now has raised those chicks to adulthood. It’s quite an accomplishment.

When my son first talked about doing this, it was just an idea. Now that it’s come to fruition, I’m more enthusiastic about him increasing the number of chickens he raises in the coming months.

Avivah

Recap of Ancient Israel herbalism conference

health, home remedies, personal development

Where do I start?!

I enjoyed every single second of this conference, which was wonderful in every way from start to finish.

First of all, the location was amazing. The conference was held in a resort in Poriya, and I don’t think you could find a more physically glorious location. The panoramic view in all directions of the Kineret and surrounding mountains was stunning. The weather was perfect, warm and sunny.

I didn’t think much about who the attendees would be when I registered; I was going for the opportunity to increase my knowledge. I didn’t expect to know anyone there other than two of the organizers, but I was pleasantly surprised! I met an attendee of the 2010 Torah Home Education Conference that I organized in the US (who recently made aliya), someone who contacted me a couple of years ago about potential communities to move to in Israel, someone who contacted me nine years ago for family advice, someone else who contacted me for a session, someone I had known online for 17 years but finally met in person, someone who had spent Shabbos with us in Yavneel…it seemed everywhere I turned I was seeing familiar names.

And it wasn’t just the people who I had some prior connection with who I enjoyed spending time with. There were a lot of really awesome people and I made some new friends. It was wonderful to be with people who shared my belief in the amazing ability of the immune system to heal, and are also interested in learning more ways to strengthen the entire body that are nourishing and non-toxic.

The speakers. Wow. What a lineup of incredibly knowledgeable and experienced practitioners. I attended as many workshops and lectures as I could, but it was impossible to be at three places at once so I can only share about the talks that I attended.

I missed the opening circle on Tuesday afternoon but got there immediately afterward in time for dinner, which was the perfect time to begin to meet other attendees. (All the meals were delicious and abundant, and every meal was a time that I enjoyed getting to know people.)

Afterwards, there was a talk by the three organizers of the conference. Conference founder Rivkah Asoulin, herbalist and fertility consultant, knocked it out of the park with her powerful comments about healing, intuition and bodily integrity, and Gilla Weiss and Chava Dagan were also fantastic as they talked about the role of feminine healing.

I then stayed for hours talking to other attendees, and got home close to midnight. That was really enjoyable but I didn’t get much sleep before the next day’s busy schedule!

I appreciated being able to attend on a day pass, which allowed me to be present for my kids in the morning, and then get there in time for breakfast. After arriving towards the end of breakfast, shortly after the first talk of the day began.

Sara Chana Silverstein, US herbalist, homeopath, lactation consultant and speaker gave an amazing talk about how to do intake of clients, which sounded like a dry topic but I think she must make every topic fascinating. I thought it would have no relevance for me since I’m not a practitioner but it was very interesting.

Nir Avraham, founder of Trifolium, Israel’s first one hundred percent herbal pharmacy, spoke about the healing power of assorted herbs in the mint family. While I was familiar with most of the herbs, I gained technical knowledge that I didn’t have.

Next I attended a two hour talk by Matthew Wood on blood indicators. While that sounds like another dry topic, it was fascinating. Matthew is the author of many books about herbs and has helped tens of thousands of people over his decades of practice. He’s filled with knowledge, experience and great stories, and is a genuinely down to earth person, caring person.

We had lunch, and I then participated in a plant walk led by Peretz and Roni Gan, herbalists, agronomists and founders of Al Alim Center for Herbal Medicine. During a plant walk, local plants are identified and the qualities of each are discussed. I especially these hands-on learning opportunities.

Herbalist and doula Gilla Weiss was an online friend of many years and it was a joy to finally meet in person. As a doula and herbalist, she is extremely knowledgeable and experienced regarding the use of herbs in pregnancy and postpartum, and I participated in her workshop for birth and postpartum herbs. I appreciated the opportunity to walk away with a lovely blend of herbs and while I made mixtures like these for myself in the past, I feel inspired to make more of these blends to share with daughters and daughters-in-law.

Next was dinner, followed by a musical ensemble. Since the night before I didn’t get home until almost midnight since I was enjoy chatting so much, I disciplined myself to leave earlier and got home at 10 pm so I would get enough sleep to more fully enjoy the next day’s session.

The last day began with breakfast, where I sat with a journalist who wrote for a well-known Israel international news site. I told him that seeing his articles in the first months of the ‘pandemic’ were encouraging to me at a time that I wondered if journalism was dead. He flatly replied, “It is.”

We then had a thought-provoking conversation about as a writer, what and how to share, and my conflicts in that regard. He suggested that I write – just for myself – all the things that I want to talk about, and then maybe at one point, maybe in years, I’ll feel ready to pull them all out. He made the decision to quit the news site he was writing for, and to leave behind the stress, high blood pressure and having to fight for every article that he wrote, and instead moved to a different organization. I could have sat there for much, much longer with him and his wife, but the next talk was beginning so we cut it short.

The first talk of the day was a talk by Matthew Wood on plant energetics. It was another interesting and educational talk with lots of great stories and examples.

I next attended a workshop on making herbal creams, with Boaz Tzur, Israeli herbalist and producer of his own line of herbal creams, tinctures and other products. I’ve made salve in the past and making a cream is just one step up from that. Now that I have some direction on how to do this, I’m planning to experiment with making a cream of my own after the wedding and Pesach are over.

Next I attended another plant walk, this time with a foraging focus, led by Kate Breslaw. I appreciated hearing a different perspective, and again seeing some of the plants I had first learned about the day before was very helpful. It takes time to learn to recognize plants and I now have two new plants to add my repertoire of wild edibles that I’m comfortable foraging (wild lettuce and cleavers), and a third, lambsquarter, that I’m not sure I’ll easily recognize but will be looking for it. (There were more than just these herbs talked about, but others I was familiar with already.)

Then we had our final meal at the conference, before continuing with the next workshops.

I was conflicted about which workshop to attend, and signed up and then unsigned up for both. The two options I couldn’t decide between was making a botanical beeswax candle, or herbs for veterinary use. I decided to do something fun, since I had so much information I was accruing, but after a few minutes waiting for the candle making to begin, checked in with myself and felt it would be a better fit for me at that moment to attend the pet workshop.

That was a great decision, and I enjoyed every minute of it! This was led by Chava Dagan, with whom I felt an affinity before I had any idea how many interests we share (that I didn’t know about until I looked at her website after the conference). I really enjoyed her presentation style, which was a natural fit for me, and the information about how to use herbs to keep animals healthy was validating and encouraging.

The conference ended with a panel of almost all the herbalists who had spoken, followed by a closing circle.

I got so much value for every single shekel spent, and was so glad that I attended. I don’t know what next year will hold, but if Ancient Roots Israel has another conference, I’ll certainly want to attend.

Now I need to go through all of my notes to process and organize the information, so it doesn’t stay on the written pages! I also want to order a couple more books on herbalism – I only have two – to have some good resource material on hand to easily access.

Avivah

Scrappy the Chick, who defied expectations to create a new life for himself

Uncategorized

Once there was a coop filled with chickens of all ages. Big chickens, medium chickens and little chicks, and the very littlest was a chick named Scrappy.

Scrappy was a little but he was tough. He had to be, because he was on the bottom of the coop’s pecking order. That meant that the big chickens pecked the medium chickens, the medium chickens pecked the little chicks – and everyone pecked tiny Scrappy.

It was hard being the youngest. Scrappy became more and more bedraggled and sad as his feathers were pecked away.

One day Mrs. Werner told Donny, the strong, kind boy who raised all the chickens, that the chickens could play in her garden. The chickens loved running around and had lots of fun. But after a couple of days, Mrs. Werner’s garden was a mess, so she told Donny that the chickens needed to go back to the coop.

When it began to get dark, all the chickens went back to the coop to roost. Well, almost all of the chickens. One little chicken didn’t want to go back to the coop. Scrappy.

Scrappy had wandered into the goat pen and liked it there. The other chickens who wandered into the pen went right back out when they saw the big goats. Not Scrappy.

Scrappy had the freedom to go wherever he wanted to go, but he didn’t want to go far from the goat pen. He felt safe in the goat pen with frisky Bambi, gentle Buttercup, steady Mocha, and powerful Oliver. He wasn’t afraid of being stepped on, because he knew the goats wouldn’t hurt him.

The other chickens looked at Scrappy from their coop, and clucked disapprovingly. “Tut, tut, tut! Chickens belong with chickens, and chickens belong in a coop. What kind of chick lives in a goat pen? That Scrappy doesn’t know his place.”

But Scrappy did know the place he wanted to be, because he knew where he felt good. He knew where he felt safe. He had plenty of food, lots of straw to scratch around in, friends to keep him company, and most importantly, no one to pick on him and peck him.

Scrappy got bigger and stronger and his feathers began to grow back. He loved waking up every day to a new adventure in a world where he felt safe and loved. He knew how chickens were supposed to act, but when he did what the other chickens did he was miserable and sad. Now he had chosen a different path for himself and was happy and living a life he loved.

The End.

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It takes courage to consider what makes you feel happy and alive, when it means stepping outside the expectations others have for you. There may be fears to counter but there’s a rich life waiting to be lived.

Deep contentment doesn’t need to mean looking different from others or doing things that are visibly different. The point is to identify what makes you tick, what makes your life feel meaningful and enjoyable, and then to move towards that at whatever pace or in whatever way feels right to you.

Avivah

Ancient Roots Israel herbalism conference – starting today!

frugal strategies, health, home remedies,

When I learned that the Ancient Roots Israel herbalism conference would be held this year in Poriya, not far from my home, I was excited that I’d be able to attend on a day pass. I could put my kids on the school van in the morning, daven, milk the goats, and make the fifteen minute drive over in time to join others for breakfast!

Then my daughter got engaged, and with so much to be done in a short time (the wedding will be the end of February and we have a short engagement period of just seven weeks), and I wondered if it was responsible of me to take two days out to learn about plant uses when there were so many pressing things to attend to.

Last week I concluded that busy or not, I would regret giving this up if I didn’t go. (Have you ever noticed how we parents so often give up the things that are important to us, to do the things that are important to other people?) Just a week before the conference was to begin, I registered.

There’s a lot I know about health and healing, but I enjoy continuing to expand my knowledge, and learning about the medicinal qualities of the plants all around us is empowering. I remember when I learned on a nature walk in Maryland about the ability of plantain to instantly soothe bee stings, and soon after used that knowledge when a boy next to us at my son’s baseball game was stung. (We were sitting on the grass, so I quickly picked some plantain growing right on the ground next to us, told him to chew it and put it on his sting. He was amazed that right away it felt better.) It’s not just for my own family but to help others that I want to learn more, though I have no desire or intention to pursue healing at a professional level.

Some of the compounds in plants have been isolated and used to produce pharmaceutical products, but many more remain unknown to most, despite having been effectively used for thousands of years in cultures across the world. Last year I went on a foraging hike and enjoyed learning about the plants growing locally, and my interest in learning more continues to grow.

Here’s the schedule of events for the Ancient Roots Israel herbalism conference. I’m planning to attend two of the plant walks, in addition to other talks. (They have also done free virtual plant walks, the videos of which can be found here.)

Since my younger boys get home at 2 pm, I’m going to be hiring my thirteen year old to take care of them during the afternoon hours I’m gone. My husband will give everyone dinner and put the younger boys to bed, and I’ll get up in the morning with them to get them ready for school. Initially I thought I might come back home during the extended breaks, but that may be stressful so I have the option of staying there for the entire day. The conference begins 5:15 pm today, and concludes on Tuesday at the same time.

I really wanted to let you know about it in advance, knowing that there are those of you who would be interested in attending, and am sorry that my time constraints didn’t allow me to share about it sooner. At this point, all the rooms are taken and only day passes are available.

Having said that, in the event that someone is spontaneous and wants to attend even though it’s the last minute but the last of room at the hotel room leaves you without a place to stay, be in touch with me (avivahwerner at yahoo dot com). I have guest rooms available for a small fee and will be driving back and forth daily, so you’re welcome to join me. 🙂

Avivah

Mazel tov! And mazel tov again!

parenting

Almost five years ago, our family was blessed with the engagements and the weddings of our two oldest daughters one after another. They were engaged within two weeks of each other, and married within twelve days.

Once again, we’ve been blessed with a double heaping of joy (though in a different form this time)!

I’m delighted to share with you that our youngest daughter Tzipora is engaged to Menachem Miller of Har Nof!

The l’chaim took place in Jerusalem last night; the engagement party will be in Jerusalem next week.

It’s not often when our family gets together that it feels like a small group, but that’s how it felt last night. Part of that is that our daughter is marrying into a similarly sized family to ours, but they are about ten years ahead of us so all of their children are adult size and have a strong physical presence.

The other aspect is that several of our family members were missing. Our oldest daughter and her family weren’t there, because they were in the US for a wedding. One son-in-law can only come to one of the events, and will come next week.

And lastly, our second son (who got married in August 2021) and his wife couldn’t come because….. his wife was in labor!

Less than twelve hours after our daughter became engaged, our newest granddaughter entered the world!

Knowing that a birth was imminent, we chose to stay overnight in Jerusalem rather than travel back to Yavneel as originally intended. This allowed me and four of the sons with me to see our new little beauty when she was just three hours old.

When my son called me to let me know his wife was in labor, I was so deeply grateful and thankful to be showered with so much abundance all at once. I was feeling very full of emotion and commenced driving when we finished talking. As I sat at the traffic circle immediately after finishing our call I waited for drivers to let me merge into the circle, and idly wondered if they thought my intense expression was because they weren’t letting me in!

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There’s always a sudden shift as soon as an engagement is announced, into a lot of action very quickly. Generally, the bulk of the preparations fall on the bride’s side, and I have an enormous amount of work ahead of me.

Usually I enjoy planning and preparing for events, but this time thinking about all that needs to be done feels more daunting than usual. That’s primarily due to the logistics of making arrangements for events in Jerusalem, when I live so far away and getting there is difficult for me, particularly since I have young children for whom I don’t have back-up child care options other than their siblings (who have very limited availability). It’s been almost year since our regular babysitter got married, and I haven’t had any luck finding anyone else to help out.

As a result, I’m considering outsourcing things that I usually enjoy doing myself. Of course that comes with a cost and I tend to balk at paying others to do things I can do just as well if not better, but it’s clear to me that I’m going to need help from somewhere.

Here’s what I do at times like this when feeling tension about all that needs to be done. First, I take time to sit quietly alone, and think through all the things running through my mind without the input from anyone else. It’s always before I have the time to sit with myself that I feel the stress of expectations and action items. I clarify what is most important to do right away, what can be done second, and then consciously put the other things to the side and focus on items one and two, in that order.

Sometimes, my first action is to sleep, since when you’re tired, everything feels much harder. This can feel counterintuitive, since when there’s so much to do, taking a nap or going to bed early feel wrong. But I very much believe in the principle of ‘sharpening the saw’ – you shouldn’t continue to cut down a tree with a dull saw because you are too busy to take the time to sharpen it. By seemingly taking time away from what you need to do to align your energies with the task at hand, you’ll find that everything that needs to be done flows more quickly and more easily.

This has been very helpful many times to me in moving from stressed and pressured, to focused and calm, and that’s exactly what I’m taking time for now.

Avivah