Appenzell Blog

Who are the Chickens in your Neighborhood?

Sun, 14 Aug 2011 22:20:23 -0600

Home

Mon, 6 Dec 2010 22:15:37 -0700

I’ve never intentionally conjured up the tugging excitement that I feel every time my plane lands at Salt Lake International Airport. On the contrary, especially of late, I am fretting about car seats, carrying-ons, the quickest routes to a bathroom, the crayons under the seat that I couldn’t reach….the list goes on and on. But the minute I take my first breath of Utah-air I am punctured with homesickness.
People say Utah has a dry air. Quite frankly I think it is like comparing brands of bottled water, but somehow my lungs crave the difference. It isn’t air-quality, it is air-nostalgia.
The next excited tug comes the moment I see the mountains. Those glorious towering heaps of rock! Who knew rock could be so wonderful? When my eyes see the mountains, my soul starts to come out of hibernation. It is the same every time (for I make this trip about twice a year) and every time I am exasperated at how quickly my body knows–I’m home.
Home isn’t Salt Lake, but it is a start. Home is farther north, through a canyon named after little canned fish, a place that seems to always have either inclement weather or perfectly vivid colors. Then, at the gaping mouth of the canyon is the lip of a Valley that sits in a protective mountainous bowl. My home is the farthest north of that bowl, about where a spoon would sit.
People know Utah for being red or white. Red like the arches, in southern Utah, or white (the GREAT PHENOMENON OF SNOW) like our trendy ski resorts. I know Utah for being green. It is a little secret of the valley that I love. A dessert of green.

I haven’t lived “home” for almost ten years. I have lived as far away as Russia (shout out to me Russian pals!) and as close as Utah’s neighborly Wyoming. I have lived in the mid-west though I prefer to call it just the “mid” for two reasons: 1. It baffles mid-westerners and it is so fun to baffle mid-westerners. And, 2. Haven’t you ever looked? The mid-west is more like a mid. I have experienced home life on the east coast and have even ventured to the Island Oahu. If hometowns across the United States were a buffet I have stuffed myself. Still, the place I will always have room for is the simple, beautiful, place I still think of as home.
The most common wide-eyed-and-wondering question I get about my travels around the world is “How was it living in Paradise?” (No one ever asks much about my stay in Iowa…) I know they are referring to my stint in Hawaii, but I am tempted, always, to answer back “How is it for you, living HERE in paradise?”

My most recent trip home was painful, because I had always assumed it was the landscape and the memories that held my tender feelings. This time, as I drove up a familar long stretch of road I found myself, out of habit, looking for an old blue farm truck, or listening for the slow growl of a four-wheeler.
As I passed by fields of grass and cows my eyes ached for a tractor and a wave; or the sound of a laugh so deep it could part a sea of silence.
This trip was for my grandfather, John Fred Krusi, who had passed away earlier in the month.
If anyone owned this portion of the Valley, it was my grandpa, because he oversaw the workings of the town long before it exploded in size. I am not the only one missing him in the landscape, because he was a part of the landscape. He was the person you waved to, on your way to work, and the person you chatted with on a quick trip to the grocery store. He was the expert on gardening, farming, trees, and the appropriate time for kids to start wearing jackets to school. He was everyone’s neighbor, no matter where you lived in the Valley.

His story was the beginning of mine. It is not my purpose to retell it, because since his passing I have come to understand how much of his story I didn’t know well enough. Yet I always find it remarkable to see that it isn’t just genetics (I have the same cavity-free chompers as he) that are passed along.

He was the first farmer, and now that my family has started the Appenzell Farm venture, it feels important to acknowledge that. The farm sits on land that he loved and cared for. It is protected by trees that he planted and nurtured, fences that he built, rock piles he made.
It was his spirit of love for the land that instilled an attitude in my mother, who instilled it in her children. We were never taught to “live green” or to be “environmentally aware” in a trendy new age way. It was a moral virtue as real as manners and ethics. We were taught, because that is how we lived: improve the land, take ownership, be grateful, experience awe, and reverence.
My grandfather’s passing was a surprise, much like the weather in Utah. One day it was warm and vibrant, and without warning the frost has come and the growing season is over. Life on a farm is busiest during this season, as you gather up all that you have nurtured the rest of the year. While my mother handled the funeral and its arrangements I became the extra set of hands tending to the necessary details on the farm. It seemed strangling fitting, almost like a memorial and tribute, to perform simple farm chores and to meditate upon the life of my grandfather.
I am the prodigal daughter, the one that left, and that has stayed too long away. But this offers me an advantage of perspective, to see things as they really are. I see my parents and my brother fill days so full of work it outlasts the sun. Their daily diligence is just a hope that the little things they touch will grow, and that a farm that is just a vision will someday have fruit. Their desires for growth are literal and imperative, but from my perspective I see different seeds, seeds of values, that have been planted, and are taking root.

Mr. Fox

Thu, 2 Sep 2010 20:49:59 -0600

I apologize that updates have been a bit sparse around here lately. If I had a blog post for every time I kissed my cute n’ cuddly little baby you may actually be able to call me a blogger. Then again, it might be redundant for me to say over and over how yummy baby cheeks are. Day’s go by surprisingly fast with two kids because EVERYTHING takes a hundred times longer. (Do the math on that one! 2 x any activity= 100(time)?)
I regret that so many posts were never typed because I really had so much to say from my trip to Utah this summer. I LOVE APPENZELL farm! There were so many neat things to write about. I wanted to tell you in detail about how I learned how to process chickens, about theCache Valley Gardeners’ Market, and the really neat customers that I got to give tours to.
The trip also gave me so much to think about. As a family we read and discussed hot topics from The Omnivores Dilemma in a family colloquium, spent a day processing chickens together, and doing what my family does best: working.
My parents worked hard when I was a kid, and taught us the importance of work as well. But, that doesn’t compare at all to how much work I saw them do during our visit. If there is one thing that impressed me the most about our stay was how much work, patience, love, and early mornings go into each little chicken egg!
So I apologize to you readers, because I really wish that I could draw up all my memories into delightful posts that brought you through our summer’s adventures from the farm–and there have been adventures!–like the goat de-budding, the great Sabbath cow hunt (in which half a congregation of church-goers were late due to two sweet little swiss cows) and many a story about chickens, and rabbits, and turkeys….
So forgive me quick because I have a foxy fun story to tell you.
Jesse (Buff the chicken boy) emailed me early this morning for a fun game of “I spy.” At first glance I thought, “Ok Jesse. More pictures of chickens…..” Then with a little help I saw the critter at the top of the fence line.

Jesse had just come out of the Chicken Mobile where he was gathering eggs when he spotted this foxy foe smacking his lips for a chicken sandwich. Since our chickens are free range chickens all that keeps them from natural predators (and some unnatural but determined dogs predators) is an electric fence and a chicken boy with plenty of good sense. Luckily, this particular fox was able to make a mouse burrito and satiate his appetite before any chickens even knew he was there.
Our family has a love/kind-a-get-annoyed relationship with this particular four legged creature. To every other farmer they could easily be stereotyped as cohort with the skunk or the raccoon. But lets face it. Its a compliment to be called foxy. There is just something respectable about the fox. They are sleek, cunning, and graceful. Their only major disgrace is they don’t get along well with chickens.
My soft spot for fox started when I was young because my mom’s favorite folk song is about a fox who snags a chicken for his pups. My mom laughs while she sings verse after verse and always sings it a pitch higher when the little pups tell their dad to “go and get some more!”
Or maybe its because when I was little, long before we had chickens, we had a mother fox raise her family in our horse pasture. Jesse and I would share binoculars and watch them from our room. One day our cat went out to meet them, and surprisingly, didn’t become their lunch and instead had a Fox and the Hound moment where they romped through the fields together.
Still, I have to admit, the fox could be the number one predator to our chickens. (Number two being unleashed dogs and number three being the garbage truck driver who doesn’t know that we are totally on to him when he revves up his engine just to get the chickens and the turkeys to warble and gobble….at six o’clock in the morning!….)
For these reasons we obviously don’t clap our hands for joy when a fox shows up. Instead we just pump more juice through the electric fence, hope the chickens remember their way to the chicken mobile, and try not to feel bad that Mr. Fox is going to have to be on Weight Watchers.
Watch being the key word here.

P.S. Don’t the chickens get to live in a beautiful place?

Isabelle and Iris

Wed, 5 May 2010 07:18:25 -0600

Isabelle and Iris
Poor Quincy.
If I didn’t know better I would have thought that Buff had taken him to the mall and signed him up to get his photo taken by one of those companies that offers you a million different copies of the same picture (in wallet size!) with the choice of three different awkward poses and six different fake looking backgrounds.
What I am trying to say is, this picture looks a lot like a previous one in which we announced that Appenzell now has goats.

Friend or Foe...or Fiona?

Sun, 25 Apr 2010 19:13:16 -0600

So yea. This is Fiona.