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<\/a><\/p>\nOne in the barn.<\/p>\n
And one in my pocket at work.<\/p>\n Which is my favorite one.\u00a0 Because it breaks windows in one quick tap.\u00a0\u00a0A very\u00a0satisfying, shattering, crunching, spider-webbing tap.\u00a0 Which makes up for all the years as children when\u00a0we were\u00a0told to stay away from the windows with balls and bats, sticks and posts, rocks and BBs.<\/p>\n After all,\u00a0we\u00a0might have broken a window.\u00a0 Which I assumed the adults did not want\u00a0us children to do because\u00a0glass\u00a0is expensive to replace.\u00a0 But\u00a0I know now they were worried that it might be so satisfying that we’d never be able to stop.<\/p>\n I’m sure you think I’m exaggerating.\u00a0 Please.\u00a0 Probably 1\/2 of the firefighters in every department are there so they can break glass and get paid for it.\u00a0 Ditto, with artists who work with mosiacs.\u00a0 Those crash test engineers?\u00a0 Yep.\u00a0 Never mind the new and upcoming field of glass therapy<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0 Breaking glass is gratifying, no exaggeration necessary.<\/p>\n But\u00a0on the farm\u00a0there are multi-purpose tools even better than those that break glass.\u00a0 Take the Jumbo Cornish Cross, for example.<\/p>\n The Cornish Cross just moved out of the brooder room.\u00a0\u00a0 Out of the back\u00a0 pen.\u00a0 Out of the buck pasture.\u00a0 And into the free range chicken coop.\u00a0 Where they have free access to the entire farm.\u00a0 And they are learning free range chicken skills from the rest of the flock.<\/p>\n Like how to drink from the automatic water bucket.<\/p>\n How to catch and\u00a0eat bugs.<\/p>\n And the joy\u00a0of dust baths in the coop.<\/p>\n Although they still tend to hover around my feet as if\u00a0my toes are\u00a0going to distribute chick crumbles at any moment. (I did mention earlier that I was due for a pedicure, right?)<\/p>\n Even though they don’t stray as far from the coop as the rest of the flock, they are doing a decent job of foraging, keeping their legs strong and healthy and\u00a0preventing them from laying around on their abdomens in a stupor.\u00a0 In addition,\u00a0all that movement\u00a0avoids large unhealthy\u00a0accumulations of chicken manure.\u00a0 Not that chicken manure doesn’t have its place in the scheme of things.<\/p>\n I took all the\u00a0used\u00a0shavings from the brooder room….<\/p>\n and all the wet bedding from the\u00a0back\u00a0pen….<\/p>\n and set\u00a0the piles in\u00a0front of the greenhouse.\u00a0 Where I had used some leftover pieces of wood to outline\u00a0a garden bed.<\/p>\n Then my work was done.\u00a0 Because the rest of the free range flock promptly arrived to scratch through the piles, combining the wet and dry ingredients, leveling the piles (there is nothing a chicken finds more offensive than a pile<\/strong> of soil\/mulch\/leaves\/straw\/anything scratchable!) and creating a nice new planting area.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n