It's Spring!

Last night was Spin Night and I worked on this.  It's Corriedale pencil roving from Crown Mountain in the Silk Road colorway.  I wasn't really thrilled with it while I was spinning but once I plied it (tonight's fun), I really started loving it.  It's nice and soft.  I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it.  It will felt beautifully so it may have a future in some felted project.

I've been thinking about chickens a lot lately.  Normally that might be pretty weird but I still plan on buying some land in the country in the next couple of years.  Free-range eggs taste amazing and free-range chicken tastes just as good.  Sunday I checked out the McMurray hatchery website to see what kind of chickens they sell.  They have a huge variety from the common to the exotic.  Since I want to keep the egg layers and eat the meat chickens, I've decided to do what my parents did:  the meat chickens will be white and the egg layers will be colored.  It'll make it much easier to distinguish between the ones for the coop and the ones for the freezer.  Of course, this is all assuming I can get someone to butcher and prepare the freezer chickens.  I'm far too tender-hearted to do it myself.  I remember coming home once when I was a teenager and seeing a headless chicken in the kitchen sink.  My parents and brother were in the back yard doing the deed and since they hadn't seen me come in, I snuck up to my room to hide until they were done.  I like to eat them but I'm perfectly happy to pay someone to do them in for me.  The way I look at it, I can buy chickens and eggs at the grocery store that lived horrible lives in tiny cages or I can grow happy chickens that spent their lives wandering around my little farm eating bugs and green things and seeds.  Besides, the older I get, the more I realize we need to take care of this planet.  My way of doing that is to do what I can to decrease my ecological footprint by growing some of my own food, animal and vegetable.  Part of my family believes that global warming is complete nonsense preached by paranoid people.  Personally, I don't know if global warming is real or not, but shouldn't we err on the side of caution and act as though it IS real?  Shouldn't we do something now just in case?  If it turns out global warming isn't actually happening, won't it be a good thing that our actions now, though they should prove unnecessary, mean the air is cleaner in the future?  The way I see it, it's a win-win.  But humans are a short-sighted species and we're more interested in doing what's the easiest and cheapest now without regard for the price that will be paid by future generations.  I find that very sad. 

Comments

[val]

i really like the colour of your corriedale - very nice - too pretty to felt ;)
i will post pics of our chickens when they arrive :)im thinking of getting ISA Browns as they are good egg layers :)

[Nicole]

That's a good idea to get two different colours of chickens. My mom has been raising dual-purpose breeds (Buff Orpingtons especially), but although they're great for eggs they grow a bit too slowly to be good meat birds.

Your yarn is gorgeous!