by Laura Parker Roerden

The news on the weasel front here at the farm is not good. Despite the heroic efforts of just about anyone who would be on my desert island list because of their superior survival skills, the weasel is winning. Killing has escalated, no doubt because winter is approaching and weasels are notorious for building a food cache. I’ve entered the barn in the morning to find as many as four more birds dead in one wild spree.

Since this whole weasel incident started three weeks ago, we’ve tried everything. We’ve airlifted sentimental favorites to a safe house. We’ve chalk dusted the perimeter of the barn each night with hopes of revealing the animal’s entry point. I’ve stayed up all night with a baby monitor crackling near my head, (not) sleeping in my clothes, flashlight and shovel at the ready. We’ve set traps; arranged for ways to re-home the entire remaining 80 birds. We’ve positioned two different types of critter cams using our most recent intelligence on likely entry points. We’ve had a team of friends, my nephew Ed and niece Tracy, farm campers, and our trusty handyman Keith helping to find holes as small as two inches and cover them with chicken wire; each time we look finding new holes. Hey, I’ve even got an former Marine on our team, so we’ve got some pretty good moves in our arsenal despite our ineffectiveness to end the slaughter.

I don’t like to lose. I never have liked it, but that’s not the point. Three weeks of awakening to birds you have nurtured since chick-dom decapitated and splayed on the ground of the coop affects a person. In my sleep deprived state, here are a few random things I’ve learned.

1. Chickens are surprisingly silent many, many hours each night, though they nearly always percolate with a low level cooing that sounds like the lapping of waves coming in to a dock.

2. Several roosters together have a call and response pattern to their crowing that makes visible the end points in a coop. I am certain I could navigate that dark coop now, using only their crows for guidance as if listening for a fog horn navigating dangerous shoals.

3. Roosters wake up at 3:00 am in the morning. Really. That might be the real reason the weasel is killing: to make them stop.

4. Weasels are the LeBron James of the northeast woodland community. They have nearly supernatural capabilities. Built like torpedoes to fit through the smallest of holes (2 inches or smaller), they are still have strong and big enough jaws and teeth to snap off the neck of an animal several times bigger than they are.

5. Front row seats to predation has a way of complicating things. Yesterday, despite the fact that I needed to get the beef stew I had planned on making into the slow cooker as early as possible, I simply could not stomach cutting chuck roast into smaller bits. I instead went to the barn and fed our cows their hay; lingering with them and appreciating the wisps of steam snaking up from their noses into the cold, thin air as they ate.

6. We have the kindest friends, kids, family, farm campers, handyman, and tribe around us who have showed up in ways too numerous to even list. I’m pretty sure that weasel didn’t intend to remind me of this, but as we head into Thanksgiving I am grateful for this deepening awareness.

7. Sometimes what we see when we lift the veil is admittedly not very pretty. But if you are willing to walk the perimeter of the dark, torn edges you’ll find a never-ending stream of new holes where light still gets in.

by Laura Parker Roerden

We’ve had a couple challenging weeks here at the farm. A weasel has been getting into the chicken coop and biting heads off of our newly-raised heritage breed Delawares. Mornings I’ll enter the coop and cringe—another headless chicken lying on the ground, already stiff.

At first, I could joke about it. “It’s either Ozzy Ozbourne or it might be a weasel.” Or “The least they could do is pluck it for me, too.” I’m not laughing now.

One of the birds killed was the smallest of the flock and my youngest child’s favorite. Most days Ben would come off the bus, go to the barn, and come back to the house with this little Delaware in his arms: he called her Lucy. He sobbed when I told him I had found her dead. Ben and I buried Lucy in a driving, cold rain. He made his own little homemade cross to put on the grave.

We’re up to about twenty birds taken, despite five separate attempts by three different men at closing holes in our 18th century barn. “The place looks like Fort Knox,” my nephew Ed said just last week, when he showed up again to help solve the problem. That was three or five chickens killed ago. I’m not sure. I’ve lost count.

Our handyman Keith is here again today, closing up more holes, investigating the crime scene, dusting for prints. It can feel discouraging, like playing Whack-a-Mole. Solve one problem on a farm and another surfaces.

Yesterday, I had our trusty Farm Campers here (ages 8-14), helping to close up more holes and restore order to the coop. Two of the eight year old boys found over seventy eggs hidden among the hay bales for the cows.  We laughed as the eggs in the pail mounted as more and more clutches were found: one clutch on the top of the bales; another between two bales; a third beneath the second and then a fourth in a nest of hay on the ground. I think we all have a soft spot for renegade hens, who make their own way in the world.

The Farm Campers left the barn last night confident, having safely tucked the chickens in for the night and turned off the lights.  We felt ready for our next challenge, discussing over dinner the lambs we were planning to purchase in the spring and the llama we thought it prudent to procure as a guard animal.

And then BAM, I found another bird this morning behind the nesting boxes, headless, when I went to the barn to feed the cows. Most of the time, I take these setbacks in stride. But this morning, I just couldn’t. I fell apart, my entire body heaving with tears, a new wave of grief about my father and my brother Dave’s passing washing over me. This sort of thing would have never have happened on their watch, I realize, and fresh sobs come. Grief is just like that weasel, finding holes to squeeze through.

Once I had calmed and disposed of the bird, I sent out a text to my gang: my nephew Ed, the farm camp manager Evan, our handy man Keith, my co-farm camp leader Yvette and within moments offers of help came in. One would find a critter cam; another was on his way with a hammer; and a have-a-heart trap was being procured. It can be amazing, just like that, too, this thing called farming.

My tasks for today included sorting through pictures of our recent Farm Camp Friend-raiser, which we held Columbus Day weekend. The Farm Campers, ages 8-16, had pulled off a wonderful afternoon and evening at the farm, complete with old fashioned games like sack races, donut-on-a-string eating, and egg ‘n spoon races; seasonal treats like maple sugar cotton candy and home-made baked goods; tractor pictures; a BBQ; a chance to feed the animals; songs by the bonfire; and an ending paper lantern ceremony with over 80 wonderful friends and family in attendance.

In doing so, they had raised enough money to buy their very own lambs so that they could learn how to run a farm micro-business.

As I opened and edited pictures, my heart filled with gratitude and a sense of a different kind of farm family, the kind that Evan Maeitta referred to when he surprised me with this, “We’re not just farm hands, we’re a farm family” on the back of the Jo-Erl Farm Camp t-shirts.

Yes, it’s true we’re a fifth generation family farm. But we’re also a farm family, the kind that sings around a bonfire, roots out hidden eggs, and does our best to keep weasels at bay.

The Jo-Erl Farm Camp is currently taking new members, ages 8-18 (meeting on Thursdays after school). There is no fee for being a part of Farm Camp, but the kids do run fundraiser here and there to fund their special projects. Farm Camp is currently selling two fabulous items.

Own a Jo-Erl Farm Camp sourvenir mason jar mug (16 oz.) or a grain bag tote bag, each for $10.00. The grain bag totes feature different animals and are a wonderful solution to mounting grain bags that can not be recycled.

Just leave a message here if you’re interested in purchasing either with your email address and we’ll be in touch.

Please consider yourself part of our farm family.

It’s spring, which means it’s time to incubate and brood baby chicks. But which ones to add to Jo-Erl Farm this year? Normally, we purchase  50-75 new laying hen chicks to diversify and stabilize production. I think of these hens as the workhorses of the farm.

Rhode Island Reds and White Leghorns are what my grandfather had on our farm when it was solely a poultry, before my father made it into a dairy. My grandmother used to say with a certain eye roll that they had to have both brown egg and white egg layers in those days because people were particular about which type of egg they bought. Both of these breeds are great layers (6-7 each a week) and are bred for the cold New England winters.

When we added chickens back to our farm we started with the heritage breed Rhode Island Reds and then added some others: Dominiques, which were what the Pilgrims and other European settlers brought with them to the New (to them) World and Araucanas, a breed from Chile and the only chicken breed that lays green and blue eggs uniquely shaded to each individual bird. Really! You can tell which bird laid which egg by the shade of the bluish green in the egg. (We think that’s extraordinary; every morning our nesting boxes have eggs that call to mind paint flecks in colors like seaglass, freshwater, thermal spring, or blue Nile.)

Why Heritage Breeds?

In the last century, we have lost nearly 75% of our food diversity because of the focus of large commercialized poultries on single breeds. Some of those old fashioned breeds had nearly died out because of disuse. Heritage breed farmers commit to bringing those breeds back, adding genetic diversity back into the food supply, as well as into our diets. We can think of a lot of reasons why we like heritage breeds here at Jo-Erl Farm. It just seems right to have the breeds milling about that were common when our farmhouse and barn were built pre-Civil War. And we know that the diversity that these breeds add to a farm promotes disease resistance.

Each year we add one new breed, so we can keep track of the age of the birds. One year, we’ll add Rhode Island Reds (which are conveniently red); the next year Dominiques (which are speckled black and white.) But what to add this year? We do not currently have all black or all white birds, so the obvious choice in our garanimals approach to chicken farming is one of either all white or all black heritage birds.

So what did we order? (Drum roll please. . . )

Black Australops, which are designated as “recovering” on heritage breed lists. They are great layers, with a friendly disposition, and also considered to be dual purpose (meat and laying) birds.

We’re also offering all natural fed, free-range heritage meat birds this year: The Delaware, which grows to an average of 6.5 lbs. Unlike the birds bred for commercial chicken meat, which are hybrids bred to grow frighteningly quickly, this bird will take a full four to five months to mature, making them available for meat CSA customers in August.

We are also entertaining the odd request from one of the children or Farm Campers—mostly to satisfy a whim. We really want a couple of these crazy looking Polish Hens! They don’t lay many eggs, but they sure are cute.

(Shhhh. There’s talk about starting a Chicken Showroom (TM) in one of our other barns. . . So you might want to plan a visit to the farm this summer. More surprises in store.)

by Laura Parker Roerden

Many of you know that I’ve been a green ambassador for Karina Dresses for some time now—bringing tips for green living to the Karina Nation through their blog.

Karina Dresses and Jo-Erl Farm have a lot in common. Founder Karina Cousineau is from Uxbridge, MA, where Jo-Erl Farm has fed five generations during our various incarnations as a poultry, a dairy, and now offering grassfed beef and pastured poultry. I remember Karina and her mother Lorraine and sister Pat sewing in her childhood home back in the 1970s, where I would visit with Karina’s younger sister Su and a large group of closely knit girls including Jane Clarke, Gail Carey, Lauren Steele, Christine Gervais, Deb Lamontagne and Jeanne Beaumier. I’m grateful to say that 45 years later, that group of close knit girls all still retain our friendships as women, along with our fondness for things local, home made, and sown (or sewn) with care.

Karina has founded her company on those very principles: her dresses are handmade here in the U.S. with love. And her commitment is to empowering women of all ages with dresses for every body. I like the slightly nostalgic feel of her designs and their easy-wear comfort, which reminds me of the dresses my grandmother wore every day of her life on the farm. I’ve worn Karina Dresses to the beach, to meetings, on dates, to evening functions, fundraisers, to church, and yes, even occasionally to the barn, before I dash off to somewhere else.

This Valentine’s we want to show YOU some love by offering you a chance to win a Karina dress in a giveaway. We are partnering with other bloggers to show all the ways to wear a Karina Dress. The Frockstar™ Nation Event will show how a Karina Dress truly is a dress made for every body.

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Entry-Form

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By Evan Maietta and Gabby Morrow

It was 28 degrees here at Jo-Erl Farm today. It gets pretty cold up here on the hill. We had our full “Farm Camp” crew of eight people, which is pretty unusual since everyone’s schedules are so different.

We tried to clear any debris from the lower pasture, but being so cold, we took a poll and the majority voted against staying outside. We made our way into the Free-Stall Barn to check on the cows and then Ben, our youngest farm camp member, fell off the top of the hay and got a nose bleed.

After that incident, we ventured into the chicken coop, to collect eggs and put new pine shavings in the nesting boxes. We soon realized that Mucky, one of our beloved silkie chickens, was missing! Almost crying, we split up, sending Maria, Eli, Lucas and Ben into the fields to search for her, as she tends to be a wanderer. Emily and Zach searched the front of the barn, and we stayed inside to double check. Soon realizing how stupid we’d been, we found Mucky safely tucked in a nesting box. In our defense it was dark and Mucky blends in pretty well. We all gave Mucky a hug and returned her to her new favorite spot, the bottom, rightmost nesting box, as silkies are not roosting-chickens.

After the whole Mucky situation was sorted out, we went to sort, weigh, and label the beef that had just come back from the butcher. Using our superior mathematical skills, we quickly finished the job and got the meat back in the freezers. It was now around six o’clock and we went back to the farmhouse for our weekly ritual of meat lovers and Mediterranean pizza.

This week’s MVP Farm Camp award went to myself, Evan, for starting this “Farm Camp Chronicles” feature on the farm blog and for managing farm camp in general.

by Laura Parker Roerden

I leave magazines in our bathroom. It’s a slightly subversive act because I tend to stock the ones that my three sons wouldn’t pick up and read on their own: National Geographic, Modern Farmer, Orion, Harvard Magazine.

I myself have learned some of the most amazing things about the world in these unexpected moments in our bathroom. Dogs can be trained to sniff out cancer. Sheep whose wool is best for carpets come from rainy climates. I now smell rain in every wool rug I encounter. That the strange and beautiful relationship between bison and prairie dogs coevolved to shape a prairie now impossible to replant without them. The cows in our pasture are apparently a package deal.

Photographs and illustrations informed by months of research from a master artist’s eye enrich my life in a flip of a page. A phrase from a poem seen in a glance becomes a mantra for living, smoothing the rough rocks of my life seemingly instantly by the cool river of inspiration.

My children emerge from the bathroom twenty minutes after entering, magazine in hand spread open. They casually plop down on the couch to continue. I smile, but do not even speak for fear of interrupting this moment. They are on a quiet journey through the stacks of life’s library, led by their imaginations.

These moments of reading are just that—small unaccounted for slices of our day that do not show up on any to-do list or any intention set in my morning. They more resemble times when you stumble upon a dollar bill on the ground or run into an old friend in a city teeming with strangers. They enrich our lives in ways we do not even know we needed.

So much of our lives are focused on a specific goal as if we were panning for gold and our lives depended on it. Sifting and sorting, repeating tasks and doing for singular purpose; wishing for a specific outcome. It’s as if we are living our lives to create the Big Moments: the vacations, the graduations, the promotions.

But as our bathroom magazines can attest to: it’s the unexpected, tiny moments where the real living happens.

Last night laying in bed with my soon-to-be twelve-year old son and talking about our days, we burst into laughter at a story he shared about his substitute math teacher tossing beef jerky to the winners of a math game they had played. We laughed until tears ran down both our cheeks at this quirky moment. Life had thrown us both an unexpected bone.

I remember when my mother was dying from cancer, I was searching for what to say; what to ask. If ever there was a Big Moment, surely this was it. Another blazing sunset had settled over our farm’s pasture and now was reflected on her bed covers; her room was extremely still.

She had singularly brought each and every one of us into her room throughout the day and said her goodbyes. But she hadn’t yet called me in. I sat with her and could feel her stirring in what I imagined was pain, but she reached for my hand. She needed to go, but wanted to say something. But she had already lost her ability to speak.

I wish I could say that I felt some sort of awakening in that moment or some sort of jolt of philosophical reckoning. But instead I remember feeling anxious, like I was sitting down for a test I didn’t study for or worse: that I wasn’t up for the task for what was about to happen. I wanted her to speak to me in the very same way you crave water when you’re parched. What would she have said to me? I ached to know.

My mother looked at me with anxiety in her eyes. As my six-week old first-born infant outside the room could attest to:  it was my turn to do the mothering. The torch had been passed. For a moment a list of things I should do intruded. I needed to call my sister who had gone home back to her bedside. My father was upstairs having already gone to bed. My mother’s sister Jackie had said a final rosary and kissed her on the forehead; should I call her back? But I held my mother’s gaze long enough for answers to come all at once, like the fluttering open of those folded origami fortune tellers we all used to make as kids. I knew whom to awaken or call and who not to. And none of that was important right now.

In my mind’s eye, I was back with my mother playing in the the surf at Old Orchard Beach, something my husband and I had done every year as grownups, visiting my parents while they were on vacation. In this particular moment, the post-storm waves were towering like buildings falling down around us. My mother and I were trying to stand our ground, but were getting slammed into the sand. After each set of waves and a tumble or two, we’d stand up, find each other and wordlessly come back together, bounding forward in that child-like way you move against water, with your hands fluttering like birds on either side of our heads. I had looked my mother in the eye while we both were laughing. She was smoothing back her hair in a simple gesture of grace. I stopped and realized she was stunningly beautiful, her eyes like sapphires against the gun-metal green water and fair sky; her smile the picture of pure joy. I fell completely into her radiance, as the sea water shimmered into a halo of light all around us. I remember at the time telling myself to treasure that moment; that it held a truth I would always need to come back to.

And here I was, needing that memory: my mother’s blue eyes now darker in the dusky light. I grabbed her hand and said, “Mom, I know you think we need to have a special moment—some Big Goodbye. But every moment in our life together was special–even the small ones. I love you. It’s okay to go now.”

The sky had opened and I saw that indeed it was true, that those found moments in our lives when we think we’re heading someplace else and find a treasure instead are when the real living happens and that there is never a need to create anything more special.

© Laura Parker Roerden 2012