Weekdays at 12:30 p.m. CST from now until February 12, Jim Fleming will be reading Coop: A Year of Poultry, Pigs and Parenting on Wisconsin Public Radio’s “Chapter A Day.” Jim has a wonderful reading voice (I have learned he is a favorite of rural mail carriers) and you can listen to a live stream of the reading right here.
Missed a segment? The five most recent chapters are available here: http://wpr.org/webcasting/audioarchives_display.cfm?Code=cad&repeats=no
I don’t recall if I ever posted this. Last spring during book tour in Seattle I was invited to sit down with Nancy Pearl, the librarian who has her own action figure. If you are an author, going on Nancy Pearl’s show (“Book Lust”) is like having an audience with the Pope, being on the Tonight Show, and meeting Elvis – all rolled into one. As of this typing, I haven’t seen the whole interview, but I did watch enough to come up with a question of my own: Did I even answer her first question?
It’s fun to joke, but long before I met Nancy Pearl, long before I sat down to do this interview, she made couple of mentions of my books on National Public Radio, and those mentions had a very direct effect on the continued life of those books. So I am grateful, and if you think I look like I’m sitting for this interview in the manner of an eager first grader on his best behavior as he recites his spelling words for Teacher, well, so it was.
I’ll be on the “Back to the Farm” segment of To The Best of Our Knowledge this weekend. Find out where/when to listen here. I believe you can also eventually listen online here.
Late notice, but at approximately 8:10 a.m. Central I will be doing a live interview with Andy Schneider, the famous Chicken Whisperer. More info about Andy and the show here. You can listen live online here. The show replays at 11 a.m. Central, and when it is archived we will also provide that link.
POSTCRIPT: Hey, that was fun. Thank you to the Chicken Whisperer. We talked chickens, but also sneezing cows, and we both admitted we would be nothing without our wives. If you’re here to look for the book, click right here. We also have a mailing list signup here, Facebook page here, and I sometimes Twitter there.
But above all *cluck!* and welcome.
I have received word from home that another box of chicks has arrived. We already have a slew of meat chicks and several ducks just sprouting their first feathers, now another batch of fuzzballs. This new batch is destined for a life of laying eggs. Theoretically. They’re in the house right now. My nine-year-old gave me a full report, and I could hear her grinning over the phone.
The chicks in this photo were actually last year’s batch. Several of them grew up to be featured on a book cover.
It was so windy outside that the poor reporter who came to write this story wound up having to interview me inside the granary. We each sat on a piece of firewood. She was not the sort of person to complain. The photographs are fun. Don’t let the smile fool ya, I don’t much care for them two roosters. Anyways, here’s the link.
Footage of my morning TV interview at KATU in Portland, Oregon can now be viewed here. Farmer friends, please note I keep trying to wedge in the fact that I am not a real farmer. Added bonus: Enjoy watching the author scramble for ways to explain that he was bitten on the butt by a coonhound in terms that won’t get him hustled out the back door.
Did this on four hours sleep, nearly curled up on the overstuffed chair for a nap. Been on the road 13 of the last 14 days, I note I am getting to where I need a haircut. Will need to locate the proper high-tone salon.
They ran some clips while I was talking. The complete chicken coop video is here, and the complete dryer episode is here.
On page 252 in Coop I wrote a scene describing the first morning we had chickens on our farm. Here are two photos taken that morning after the fog began lifting:
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