It's been a rough few months on the homestead.  Mark had two close family deaths, which entailed two long trips and one shorter trip plus a lot of emotional anguish.  Then there was the surprise major dental work that knocked him out for the better part of a week, and another illness that he's still recovering from.  All told, my poor husband has been out of commission from a farm-work standpoint for a significant part of the season, which means I've been trying to do both of our jobs...and cutting a lot of corners in the process.

One place we cut corners was with chicken killing.  Our australorp broilers should have gone in the freezer at the end of May...but we only got around to them on July 1.  Letting heirloom broilers grow past the three-month mark means the cockerels start fighting and are a bit ornerier during processing day (plus, you spend more money for every pound of meat you get back), but the heavier birds will be a treat this winter.  And we now get to enjoy the lower entropy resulting from having only the designated rooster remaining in our pullet flock.

With winter breathing down our necks, we also decided to hire Kayla's husband to come in and cut a few trees into firewood.  Mark's been wanting to open up the area in front of the barn for years, so I figured those trees could come down (despite my deeply ingrained tree-hugging tendencies).  A few walnuts and one dead box-elder filled up about a third of the woodshed, so hopefully a few more evenings of Andy's hard work will get us back on track in the winter-heat department.

Overall, while it's been tough (and less fun) running more of the farm by myself, it's also empowering to know I can do it...as long as I put in a few extra hours' work here and there.  Just a few years ago, I think everything would have crashed and burned (or, rather, would have grown up in ragweed and poke over our heads) if Mark had been forced to take a few weeks off the job during the summer.  I sometimes wonder what the farm will be like when Mark and I are old and gray, but this experience makes me hopeful that Mark's right --- we'll have everything so streamlined that even octagenarians can handle the labor.

In the meantime, I'm pleased to be able to report that Mark is starting to feel better, and the farm is starting to come back into shape.  If you want to send your happy thoughts his way, though, good energy is always appreciated.  Thanks for sharing our journey!

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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