The Farm Report: Hot Chicks Flocking to Surf City

Man, it’s cold out there.  Tonight is supposed to be the deepest of the deep freeze, so we’ll see if the power stays on.  The wood-burning stove is already cranked up just in case.  I also decided to post tonight in case the -5 temperature snaps a power line and takes us off the grid for a few days.

Some weeks ago, Chareva ordered a new flock of 25 chicks.  I believe the purpose (since we’re certainly not running short on eggs) was to have more variety in the color of the eggs.  Also, she wanted to make more work for herself, since caring for two flocks of chickens, two hogs, two dogs, two children, one cat and one husband isn’t enough.

These were mail-order chicks that have to be shipped soon after they’re born.  Apparently they’re fine in a shipping box for two or three days, but only within a specific timeframe.  Chareva received an email notifying her that the chicks were shipped on Monday, which means they were making the trip from Iowa to Minnesota to here during one of the coldest spells of the year.  She and the girls prepared themselves emotionally to receive a box of dead, frozen chicks.

The chicks arrived today and, amazingly, only one of them had died during shipment.  Tough little critters, I guess.  The hatchery usually sends extra chicks anyway, so we ended up with 29 live ones … a mix of Araucana/Ameraucanas and Cuckoo Marans, plus one of some other breed we can’t identify yet. They’re happily congregating in their temporary home under a heat lamp. So we’ll be constructing another hoop house or two in a few weeks.

The first two winters after we moved to Tennessee, there were substantial snowfalls.  After spending their toddler years in Southern California, the girls were thrilled to finally go sledding.  The “hill” was a wimpy little thing in a neighbor’s yard, maybe a five-foot drop and 15 feet of total sledding.  So when we bought the farm with the big ol’ side hill, I thought to myself, “You think sledding down that little mound was fun?  Wait until you go down this bad boy.”

Three winters came and went with barely a dusting of snow each year.  Best the girls could do was sled down our driveway a few times in the morning before the afternoon soon melted the snow.  I actually slept through one snowfall last year.  By the time I was awake, it was already gone.  I only knew we’d had snow because Chareva told me.

Not this time. The mix of ice, sleet and snow that hit our area this week won’t be melting until at least Saturday, if then.  So the girls finally put the big hill to use – along with the driveway for old times’ sake.  They insist that what they’re doing out there is called “snow surfing.”  I created a video for them to remember the occasion.

The bailouts near the tree line are intentional.  (The others aren’t — they’re falls.) You can’t see it in the video, but the big hill ends at a sudden drop-off into the creek – not something you want to hit going full-speed on a sled.

Chicks and surfing … just what every guy dreams of during a deep freeze.


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38 thoughts on “The Farm Report: Hot Chicks Flocking to Surf City

  1. Dave

    Hopefully, you guys won’t lose power! I live in the southeast, too. The most annoying thing about this cold weather is the fact that it is warmer in some parts of Alaska than it is here!

  2. Dave

    Hopefully, you guys won’t lose power! I live in the southeast, too. The most annoying thing about this cold weather is the fact that it is warmer in some parts of Alaska than it is here!

    1. Tom Naughton Post author

      I told them to wear helmets after feeling the ground, which was hard-as-brick ice in many areas.

  3. Becky

    Man, that takes me right back to childhood. Way more fun than sitting around staring at little game screens. Kids today don’t know what they’re missing. Thanks for the trip down memory lane!

  4. Becky

    Man, that takes me right back to childhood. Way more fun than sitting around staring at little game screens. Kids today don’t know what they’re missing. Thanks for the trip down memory lane!

    1. Tom Naughton Post author

      It’s a trip down memory lane for me too. Sledding down the hills near my childhood home in Iowa was way big fun.

    1. robert

      Seriously, who will read this? The first thing that put me off was the fact that the table of contents doesn’t list any page numbers at all. Clickable links? Nope! Is there an index in there somewhere, I couldn’t easily find it. The form seems to be matching the content.

      1. Boundless

        re: … table of contents doesn’t list any page numbers at all.

        And some pages are apparently just scans of a paper document, which makes them not even searchable text, unless you process the thing with an OCR app. Conspiracy theorists might see this as deliberately preventing full text search, but it’s more likely just compositional incompetence, which would consistent with the core content incompetence.

        My impression is that the master PDF was just assembled from all the component PDFs (using Acrobat Pro “insert pages” or similar), and all the component PDFs are probably from random WP/DTP apps.

    1. Tom Naughton Post author

      They’ve learned that cholesterol in food isn’t so bad after all. That’s about it so far.

    2. robert

      Seriously, who will read this? The first thing that put me off was the fact that the table of contents doesn’t list any page numbers at all. Clickable links? Nope! Is there an index in there somewhere, I couldn’t easily find it. The form seems to be matching the content.

      1. Boundless

        re: … table of contents doesn’t list any page numbers at all.

        And some pages are apparently just scans of a paper document, which makes them not even searchable text, unless you process the thing with an OCR app. Conspiracy theorists might see this as deliberately preventing full text search, but it’s more likely just compositional incompetence, which would consistent with the core content incompetence.

        My impression is that the master PDF was just assembled from all the component PDFs (using Acrobat Pro “insert pages” or similar), and all the component PDFs are probably from random WP/DTP apps.

  5. Jim Butler

    One thing we always did in New England was fill all the bathtubs before a big storm.
    Since we had a well, which needs power to get water from, filling up the bathtubs gave us plenty of water for flushing…which becomes a critical need not too long after power goes out 🙂
    I also had 2 of the plastic 5gal water jugs that were part of the routine so we had plenty of well water for coffee/cooking, but bathtubs were best for flushing.

    Jim

  6. Linda

    Hi Tom,

    Just wondering how you and your family are bearing up. Just listened to a weather forecast that said in the south that Tennessee was getting the brunt of the bad weather, with more than half the deaths from weather in Tennessee. Wondering if your little farm is surviving well?

    Two days ago, here in Lake City, Florida (north central Florida,) at 23 degrees, we were colder than Fairbanks, Alaska! As a child, I wore shorts this time of year right here! Can you say global warming- uh, nah! Let’s all just say climate change!

    Linda

    1. Tom Naughton

      Humans and animals are all doing well. The biggest issue has been not being able to go anywhere. Our driveway is U-shaped: high near the house, sloping down to the creek, then sloping up again to the highway. So far, my car won’t make it up to the highway. I was out there yesterday in the rain trying to break up the ice with a pick-axe, but didn’t make enough of a dent yet to clear the ice. I’ll try again today.

  7. Jim Butler

    One thing we always did in New England was fill all the bathtubs before a big storm.
    Since we had a well, which needs power to get water from, filling up the bathtubs gave us plenty of water for flushing…which becomes a critical need not too long after power goes out 🙂
    I also had 2 of the plastic 5gal water jugs that were part of the routine so we had plenty of well water for coffee/cooking, but bathtubs were best for flushing.

    Jim

  8. Linda

    Hi Tom,

    Just wondering how you and your family are bearing up. Just listened to a weather forecast that said in the south that Tennessee was getting the brunt of the bad weather, with more than half the deaths from weather in Tennessee. Wondering if your little farm is surviving well?

    Two days ago, here in Lake City, Florida (north central Florida,) at 23 degrees, we were colder than Fairbanks, Alaska! As a child, I wore shorts this time of year right here! Can you say global warming- uh, nah! Let’s all just say climate change!

    Linda

    1. Tom Naughton Post author

      Humans and animals are all doing well. The biggest issue has been not being able to go anywhere. Our driveway is U-shaped: high near the house, sloping down to the creek, then sloping up again to the highway. So far, my car won’t make it up to the highway. I was out there yesterday in the rain trying to break up the ice with a pick-axe, but didn’t make enough of a dent yet to clear the ice. I’ll try again today.

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