Two and a half weeks ago, our first batch of chicks hatched. It’s always magical, to see the eggs turn into living creatures.
It’s really nice for the kids to be able to interact with the chicks. They need oversight to be appropriately gentle with them, which is a good lesson. It also means I need to be present with them in the coop, and that means I can’t be doing house things, so the kids can’t play with them as much as they would like. I would love to sit and relax with the baby chicks, but I haven’t found even one minute for that!
Today we’ll start incubating the next batch; we didn’t do it sooner because we didn’t want chicks to hatch when it’s Pesach since their chick feed is chometz and they wouldn’t be able to survive with a homemade non chometz supplement. The current chicks will be old enough by then to survive for the week on other foods, and the new chicks will hatch a few days after Pesach.
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Two and a half months ago, Joel Salatin, America’s best known regenerative farmer, came to Israel. While here, he taught full day sessions on regenerative animal raising. Though geared towards large scale farmers, anything Joel teaches is of interest to me. I’ve been familiar with his work since he was featured in Food, Inc. in 2008, a documentary about industrial food production – and so I traveled to the Golan for a day of workshops. (I also went to his very first workshop in Israel hosted in the Jordan valley three years ago.)
In the US he’s often speaking to groups of hundreds, and with it being a much smaller group here, I enjoyed the opportunity to chat with Joel.
A nice benefit of this day long convention was getting to meet other like-minded people. During the first workshop session, I asked a question about raising goats. During the break, someone who also has goats on a small scale approached me with additional information, which led to an exchange of phone numbers.
Following his visit, an English language WhatsApp group for Israeli homesteaders was started. When the same woman who had spoken to me about goats at the workshop posted that she was interested in a trade of chicks for Khaki Campbell ducks, I connected with her again.
She and her husband came to visit, and 17 of our adorable balls of fluff were traded for a male/female pair of four month old ducks.
I had planned to put the ducks in the coop I currently have my purebred Brahmas in. My intention was to move the Brahmas hens to our bigger coop, and process the roosters. I scheduled her visit for the day after the shechita of the roosters was supposed to take place, so that the coop would be vacant.
But the shochet wasn’t available at the time we expected, and when the ducks arrived the Brahmas were very much still using their coop. We needed to quickly create a different plan. For the first couple of nights, we kept them in a closed dog crate in the large chicken coop. The children’s playhouse was turned into a predator proof home for the nighttimes, and the adjoining garden bed was closed off to make a run for them to enjoy during the days.
The morning after we got the duck habitat finished off, I received an early morning call- the materials to close in the porch upstairs would be arriving in a short time. On one hand, this is great because hopefully there will be time to do some work closing in the porch before Pesach, and turning it into a couple of bedrooms. It’s a huge project.
On the other hand, we still need to do the shechita, which my husband scheduled for tonight, which means cleaning and processing the birds tomorrow morning. That’s a lot more work than it may sound like.
So there’s a building project, and a shechita…and of course, there’s Pesach preparations. I actually made some progress yesterday, but when I turn my attention to cleaning and am not actively supervising the kids, things happen that require me to spend additional time cleaning up the messes made.
For example, ds13 took everything out of his room and piled it into the hallway. I told him that was excellent, and now it would be so easy to do sponja (mop the floor). I went outside to check on the twins, and found that instead of playing in the yard, they went into the muddy fields (we had extreme rains the last few days) and got very muddy.
Not covered in mud – I think people use that term who don’t know what it really looks like. Covered in mud is what happened on Friday, right after our yard flooded and I hired a private tractor to dig out the irrigation ditch next to our house since the water was rising fast. Later the younger boys went to play in the freshly dug ditch (getting stuck in the mud and remaining unable to get out for almost an hour, which was a relief since I didn’t need to keep an eye on them during that time!) But when they came out – every part of them from head to in between their toes was coated. That’s being covered in mud. Ds20 had to spray them off with a hose before we could let them in the house to take a shower.
So the twins at this time were just muddy. While I was dealing with them, ds13 took the initiative to begin mopping his floor, industriously began pouring soapy water all over his bedroom floor, then pushing it out of the room – all very appropriate, but I wasn’t there to direct him to first pick up the dirt piles, clothing and toys that were in the hallway…so all the dirty soapy water was pushed on top of all of those things.
Hours later, the toys were all washed, the clothing was washed and hung, and the floor was mostly clean. And thankfully, the boys room is ready for Pesach. That’s just one example of what happens when I’m not actively watching everyone, and things like this are literally happening all day long.
So Pesach cleaning is happening…and it will all get done. And the chickens will be processed. And our porch addition will be built.
And I will hopefully stay calm and pleasant to live with during this period, because I am making a conscious effort to be calm and pleasant! It’s not easy having my time chopped up into so many little pieces and hardly making progress on one thing before being interrupted. But that’s how it is for every family around the country right now, I would guess.
But all of this is much nicer to focus on than missiles and war.
On the very lovely side – do you know how relaxing it is, to plunk a chair next to the duck run, and watch the ducks? I really enjoy watching the chickens when they are roaming out of the coop, and always think of it as Chicken TV. Now I have a second channel to watch, Duck TV. Here’s a little clip for you to enjoy; I hope you find it offers you a moment of restfulness in your day.
Avivah