Posts Tagged ‘COOP’ | Next Page ⇒  

In Coop, I wrote:

Every time I stack firewood, there is this moment at the finish when I step back and survey the neat row, and a yoga-like calm fills me.

I find myself doing the same thing every time I move the chickens.  Earlier this week I moved them from a scratched-up, denuded patch to a patch filled with wheat and clover.  It was a bigger move than usual and it took me over an hour to get everything repositioned and reset.  But when everything was in place and I opened the coop door and all those birds came spilling out and immediately scattered and set to pecking and scratching and making those quiet contented cluck-clucks, why, I just had to stand there for a while and let it soak in.  Ommm-cluck.

I enjoyed speaking with Kacey (she was in New York’s Hudson Valley, I was in the back room of Racy D’Lene’s Coffee Lounge).  You can listen to the interview here.  I think it is important to note that as I understand it, this would never have happened if not for Kacey’s persistent sister, so thanks, Maria!

A while back I talked about pigs with Yael Grauer of the food magazine Spezzatino.  The entire interview is available here as a downloadable .pdf.  Yael asked some good questions that led the conversation off into a few less-common corners.

I’m back home.  I can hear the rooster crowing even as I type this.  So good to see my wife.  Her blue-eyed smile.  Have just had a great morning in the office with my girls.  They drew and cut up scrap paper while I unpacked the accumulations of the road.  Also took a walk out the lane with the young one on my shoulders to check the corn…I got half of it cultivated before I left.  The cultivated half is thriving.  The uncultivated half is pale green and stunted, but I believe it still has a chance if I get out there in the next couple of days.

Regarding the tour and things in general, I expressed my thanks via yesterday’s Shelf Awareness post, and remain grateful.

And now for fun, a couple of pictures.  During the tour, we often discussed local foods and sustainability (although I tend to avoid the “s” word, as it is in danger of becoming over- and mis-used).  We regularly patronize Eau Claire’s own Just Local Food cooperative, run by friends and neighbors of ours.  Lately there has been some obstructive road construction near the store, and it was fun to open my email in the motel room the other day and find some photos from Larry Glenn (the man who did the live recording of my humor albums Never Stand Behind A Sneezing Cow and I Got It From the Cows) illustrating how the Just Local crew has been dealing with the traffic trouble (their logo is a carrot):