Slacker, pt. 3 — Hungry chickens

A big part of the Great Thundering Horde here at Flying W Ranch are chickens. Hungry feathered flocking peckers, to be exact. Now we like to try to give all members of the Horde all the basics of a comfortable life: good food, clean water, warm, weather-proof shelter, wide-screen, high-definition television — it's the same list we all learned in biology class. But we also try to go a step further. We try to eat low on the pesticide ladder and higher on the sustainable scale. Sometimes, though, that's easier said than done.

The flocking peckers eat about 75 pounds of food each week, give or take a little. Organic layer mash runs about $16 a 50 (that's farm-speak for $16 for a 50-pound sack of feed) at the local feed mill. I went there the other day to talk about the possibility of getting bulk feed instead.

"Oh, well, the smallest bin we've got is about $1,900, but the feed's still going to be plenty expensive since there's not a lot of organic grain going on up here, so we'd have to find it, then pay to have the truck cleaned out so it's not contaminated by conventional grain, then have it shipped up here." The guys at the feed mill are really nice, but sometimes their news isn't the best.

So I went to plan B. I called Mark Thell in Carlton, MN, and ordered a half-ton of feed. Then I had a little road trip. Of course, that link doesn't really do the trip justice. It says I drove about 172 miles. Except that, feeling adventuresome, I took the scenic path. From Washburn (30 miles from my house, where I borrowed my friend's truck) to Cornucopia to US 2 to Duluth. Then up the Hill to Sears to pick up a dishwasher. Then back down the Hill (the same way, out of my way, thank you humungous construction project) to Hwy 35 and south to Cloquet, then out of Cloquet to Mark's farm.

Mark's a cool guy — into alternative energy and organic farming, but from a practical perspective. "I haven't gotten certified," he said, "because then if my neighbor wanted me to bale his field or something, I'd have to come back here and hose down and decontaminate everything that I used over there, even though he doesn't use any chemicals on his stuff either." Hey, it makes sense to me.

Anyway, after shooting the breeze with Mark for a little while and loading the truck, it was back to Ashland two hours and something away doing no more than 55 mph with the truck carrying it's rated capacity. I got home, unloaded the half-ton of feed, and the dishwasher, then took the truck back to my friend in Washburn (Thanks a million!), then picked the Wife up from work in Ashland (tired, hungry, and grumpy. Yeah, and pregnant and hungover ;-)), then finally got home again.

That's what I call a long day in the saddle.