In the summer there’s running water in my two barns, but in the winter the pipes are drained and I have to get water from the laundry room inside the house. Keeping everyone in fresh water took a lot of walking back and forth – a trip each for the two chicken waterers and another for the goat’s pail. Invariably some would spill on gloves or jeans. It was one chore that set me to cursing under my breath.

Luckily, I came up with a solution before the big storm!

This blue tub is a heated water trough designed for horses! It can hold 16 of those red buckets worth of water, a week’s worth, including what my thirsty, fussy goats require. We still have to cart water from the house, but it can be done in one fell swoop – at a day and time of our choosing (not when there’s two feet of snow falling!) When the wind is biting cold and the snow is deep, it’s such a relief to have water in the barn.

I still haven’t found a solution to keeping Candy’s waterer from freezing.  We swap her bottles twice a day; sometimes they freeze in between but it’s not a problem – she likes to drink from the chicken’s waterer.

As you can see, almost two feet of snow has fallen here at Little Pond Farm. Although Steve shoveled a flat space outside, the hens (and the rabbit!) are in the coop. A rule of thumb is to have at least four square feet per bird of interior floor space. The coop is larger than that, but still, the hens get bored indoors, and that can lead to pecking and bullying. However, it’s nothing that a rousing game of cabbage tether ball can’t fix.

(Note that I’m out of town with my oldest son touring a college. The two of us flew out before the storm arrived. Steve is home, shoveling. This now evens the score for all the times Steve was away on business and we had severe weather at home. It even pays back the time he was in sunny California, and  lightning struck our house. Thanks for shoveling, Steve!)

My cochlear implant was turned on yesterday. From now on, I will be hearing via electronic stimulation of my auditory nerve. I was told that at first, everyone would sound like Donald Duck. My audiologist was wrong. It’s more like voices have gone through one of those voice-changing machines that the bad guys use when they leave ransom messages.

My chickens sound like I imagine chickens would sound like if Darth Vader raised them. Does this look like a hen from the evil empire?

I’m a halfway-decent dog trainer. I’ve even managed to turn my crazy border collie/rat terrier mix into a dog that we enjoy living with. On top of the manners, I’ve taught her tricks to keep her mind and body busy. You can see her put away her toys here.

But, those dog training skills aren’t why, back in July, I got a call from a producer at Animal Planet. The new season of It’s Me Or The Dog was being filmed and they needed my expertise. I was thrilled! It’s Me Or The Dog is one of the few programs on television that shows how positive reinforcement and sane, appropriate relationships with your dogs can improve everyone’s lives (animals and their owners alike.)

So, I packed up my car with three of my animals and drove to Long Island for the taping. I’m not supposed to tell you who I brought, but I bet you can guess.

The episode The Castle Goes to the Dogs airs on Saturday, January 15 at 8 pm on Animal Planet. Check their site for listings – it goes into immediate and frequent re-runs.

(There wasn’t a make-up or hairstylist on site. I haven’t seen the show, but I’m already obsessing about my hair!)

1916 was a very good year for American farmers. Crops were abundant. The growing population in the cities clamored for more food, and improved transportation systems got it there faster and fresher. Even so, eggs remained a seasonal product, and they came from small flocks kept on pasture. Soon, that would change. Cold storage units were being built, so that summer eggs could be sold in the winter. Confinement systems were on the horizon, so that eggs would come from factories, not farms. But, in 1916, a farmer could keep a few hundred hens as part of a diversified farm, and make a good living.

In NYC, a dozen eggs sold for 31¢. That’s $6.22 in today’s dollars. Eggs were valued and not yet a cheap commodity. Of course, the farmer didn’t see the full 31¢. It would have taken as many as 5 middlemen to get that egg to market. Still, the farmer would have received 20¢ – about $4.00 today. $4.00 isn’t bad – it’s about what those of us who keep backyard hens sell our eggs for, and, as my numbers in my previous post showed, it’s enough to cover feed costs and then some.

But, why is it that the “organic” eggs being produced today and sold by huge corporations are getting the same price that I am, and the same that a small farmer in 1916 did? Don’t these huge modern concerns have economies of scale? Haven’t they crowded their hens into buildings that hold tens of thousands of birds? There’s a reason why the company that was cited for the salmonella outbreak this winter also produces “cage-free” eggs. It’s not because they care about their hens’ welfare. No, it’s because there’s money in it. The profit margin for “organic” is much larger than that for the usual carton of supermarket eggs. It infuriates me that these businesses claim “happy hens” and “farm fresh” on their packages, and illustrate the cartons with pictures of hens on grass. It goes beyond false advertising. It undercuts the small farmer, and makes it that much more difficult for the true farmer to explain the value of their product to the consumer.

The USDA cares nothing about these issues. The egg grading system (you know, “USDA Grade A Eggs”) was begun as a marketing tool for egg producers. It guaranteed the freshness of eggs traveling distances and coming out of cold storage. Plant inspectors look at the eggs, not the farms or the feed the hens eat. That’s still how it functions today. The term “organic” is regulated, but if you think an organic farm is anything like your backyard, or even like a 1916 farm, think again. It’s basically “cage-free” with better food.

I’ll be ranting about this more in the future. We’re working on an app that will help people find out exactly where the eggs they’re buying come from. And how fresh they are. It’s not an easy project. There’s a lot of research to be done and software code to write. There’s no master list of egg farms out there. There’s no accountability. We’ll be changing that as best we can. Hopefully, I’ll have something to announce by springtime.

(What I know about 1916 comes from several sources. One is “Poultry Breeding and Management” by James Dryden, a professor of Poultry Husbandry at the the Oregon Agricultural College. Published in 1918.)