My Sunday mornings include listening to Lynne Rossetto Kasper and The Splendid Table®. Sunday’s episode included a discussion of “french chickens” sometimes called “Freedom Rangers” or “Colored Range” chickens – the chicken breed I grew this year.

Fresh snow is perfect for making snow angels.  And by tradition, Christmas is the best time to be visited by ghosts from the past.
Last year about this time, King Louie, Scout and Ace were still hanging around Two Mile Ranch.  It was March, after a long and loud crowing season, when the three pheasants moved
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The tradition of saying Grace – a prayer or expression of thanksgiving prior to a meal has personal meaning this week.
As I gathered each of the first 14 meat chickens I raised, I held each one, talked to it, and thanked it for allowing me to take care of it and for being part of
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I don’t assign human feelings to animals.
Despite the Disney love affair with anthropomorphism, and my personal respect of the work of Dick King Smith, (The Water Horse and Babe, The Gallant Pig)  animals are animals and humans are humans.  If anything, humans are more likely to affect animal traits than vice-versa. That said, I do
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It takes a brave man to blog about a subject he knows increasingly less about.
I am talking about  roosters.
When I bought the feed-store chicks in April, I wanted barred rock pullets, but the store had only straight run. So I rolled the genetic dice with the Z and W chromosomes and bought two chicks.  Both
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Life on a small farm is both science and art. Designing shelters for animals, poultry, or other livestock is based on good thinking, local custom, and what you have  to work with.  In this case, I’m using all three and we’ll see the outcome.
In Storey’s Guide for Raising Chickens, there is a simple  shelter for
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No, I don’t expect you to believe it either, but it happened.
The ducks are laying eggs.  In their duck house, they have scooped out a little nest in the straw, but most days, they lay eggs on the fence line between the duck pen and the pheasant pen.  Ducks do what ducks do.  There’s no
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There are things we do because they are the right thing to do.  This week, I have two examples.
My physical neighbors about a mile down the road have been good to me.  I met them the first time I high centered my tractor while bush hogging the front of the property.  I drove down the
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There is something odd in the idea of a couple of older guys who live on  farms going to Des Moines for a book reading and signing by the author on a Friday night.  Of course, if one of the guys is the author himself, he has a good reason.  I, on the other hand,
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