In honor of thi$ week$ book club $election, I will be writing a very obnoxiou$ly punctuated fir$t $entence. I can't say I've ever listened to anything by the musician Kee$ha*, but if replacing an s with a dollar sign makes you hip, than call this guy Miles Davis. Or Mile$ Davi$ if you prefer.
That's Joel Salatin. Visionary. Entrepeneur. Chicken Farmer.
Enough flither flather. Let's get to the review. I've previously told about my extracurricular job fun. Well, my genius** brother put this book in my hands. It is a quick, clear read, written with down-to-earth colloquial honesty. One of my favorite lines is when he states "The world revolves around five-gallon buckets" without a hint of irony. Salatin shares his model for raising and selling broiler chickens. Happy chickens. Able to live their brief but very content life grazing on delicious grass. This makes for a very delicious bird and one that is free of antibiotics and hormones. There seems to be so much potential in these pages. We'll see... In fact, TODAY my brother and I went to Lowes to pick up the lumber to make our very first chicken tractor. These are the portable pens that the hens live in. Free-range chicken usually pecks one area down to a dirt patch. The pens help the not-so-bright chickens to move along. Sample some new vegetation. Much better for the earth, as they spread their manure, naturally fertilizing the soil, whereas too much chicken doo is too much nitrogen for the soil to handle, creating barren land. There I go, sharing chicken details you probably don't want to know. This book sucked me in to the world of poultry, and it should be an interesting adventure. We'll get our first 100 chicks in about a week...* After finishing this post, I googled Kee$ha to see if I had even spelled her name right. I have not. Normally, census takers take special care to spell names correctly, but since this is not the official deal, I'm leaving it be for posterity's sake.
** Tell him I called him a genius and I'll deny it. I don't think he knows blogs exist.
I love reading about your families chicken adventures. I actually googled "chicken tractor" to see just what it was. This site had quite a few pictures of them, in case anyone else is curious what this contraption looks like.
ReplyDeletehttp://home.centurytel.net/thecitychicken/tractors.html
There was a picture part way down the page of a guy sitting inside one, which has me confused and a bit concerned for the well being of his marriage. Would being banished to the chicken tractor by your wife be a step up or down from being banished to the dog house? And with that thought to be pondered, I will attempt to go back to bed and stop burdening you and your readers with my long rambling comments. G'night!
To demonstrate my OCD, I am hereby issuing a correction to my previous comment. I love reading about your family's chicken adventures. I plead lack of sleep for the previous grammar offense. And blogger must have it's clock set to west coast time, because I posted that at 2:30am, not 12:30. Ok, I will stop posting comments until you make another post. I promise.
ReplyDeletehey funny man. so sad i haven't been able to devote more time and attention to this. i could have really used this blog in february.
ReplyDeletegood luck with the chickies.
Elizabeth, that 2:30 post was wonderful. You can be the Andy Richter to my Conan O'Brien. The link is also quite excellent. First, it gives many more exciting design possibilities for the future. Second, I don't think I could have picked a more perfectly funny man to be sitting in the chicken coop if I had tried.
ReplyDelete