The Farm to Heart Initiative

Please make sure to catch up on how our Farm to Heart Initiative is taking root and find out how you can support our efforts to provide healthy food to elementary school kids and their families.

Donate Online

OR

Mail donations to:

Farm to Heart Initiative
c/o April Joy Farm
PO Box 973
Ridgefield, WA. 98642

Brad with flock of chickens during chore time at April Joy Farm.

Part 3 (Read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 4)

A little bit every day is central to Brad’s approach not just with firewood, but with all our animals. He’s a patient soul, and as you have seen from my weekly photos, the critters flock to him when he appears on the scene.

Earlier this fall, Midnight the hen decided that motherhood wasn’t all it's cracked up to be. You could say she flew the coop at a formative stage of development for her chicks. Good thing our sweet hen Pepper was willing to accept the orphans and raise them right alongside her four chicks. This group of seven youngsters have quite a lot of personality, as Brad, like any good friend, can clearly see.

Chickens are special in that they return to the same place to roost each night.

There literally is a pecking order when it comes to who gets to roost where. When we have to move or introduce new birds, it’s always best to gently set them on a roost at night, when it’s dark so there’s not a lot of commotion. Chickens have poor night vision, so they’re apt to settle right in and go to sleep. Amazingly, most chickens adapt quickly. Wherever they fell asleep is where they will return to the next night.

But as good a mother as she is, one thing Pepper wasn’t able to teach her youngsters was how to break a habit. ‘

Pepper’s Seven’ had been raised in our small movable Chickwagon. It’s a covered structure that keeps everyone safe from aerial predators.

But when it was time to join the main flock and roost at night in the ‘big chickens’ coop’, this group posed a challenge. As we had done with so many chickens over the years, we waited until night, then gently carried all seven youngsters from the Chickwagon to our main coop. We carefully found a long section of empty roost space and one by one, placed the birds next to each other. They settled right in and went to sleep.

Now sometimes it takes a few days for the birds to acclimate to a new routine.

So we expected we’d need to do the same thing the next two to three nights. But unlike all our previous birds, Pepper’s Seven were not having it! For over a week, we had to go through the same routine, every night moving the birds just to find the next evening at dusk they’d returned to the Chickwagon again.

That’s when Brad decided to employ another strategy close to my heart - entice them with food.

Instead of hand carrying the little beasts, he befriended them by sharing soft pears, juicy tomatoes, and cracked grains with them throughout the day. A little here, a little there.

Then, one night just before dusk, he went out and shook the feed bucket. They all came running to follow him across the yard and into the main roost.

What a sight!

It took another week of patience, practice, and letting the little ones traverse this new habit with their own two feet. But finally, our special seven have now adopted the new night roosting spot all on their own.

Brad feeding the chicks at April Joy Farm.

Witnessing Brad with his poultry pals night after night made me think of the song Inch by inch, row by row, gonna make this garden grow. One of Maine’s regional newspapers, The Portland Press Herald, interviewed the songwriter David Mallet and reported:

“Mallett wrote “Garden Song” when he was 22 or 23. He had been listening to the radio just before he joined his father out back to plant the garden. He had music in his head and work at his hands.

The first verse came as he was planting: “Inch by inch, row by row, gonna make this garden grow. All it takes is a rake and hoe, and a piece of fertile ground.”

He remembers walking around the yard humming what he had written. The next day, he was at a buddy’s house in Old Town and wrote the second verse. It was the third or fourth song he had ever written. He was just figuring things out as a songwriter.

To hear him describe it, the song was a gift. He started singing and the words fell into place.”

The song was a gift? He just started singing and trusted the words to come?

Wow. That really resonated with me.

Because how did I face the seemingly insurmountable task of starting a farm and growing a community around it? Yup.

Inch by inch.

Row by row.

A little bit every day.

Along the way, there have been so many seemingly unconnected challenges.

Being an authentic steward of the earth, cultivating a deep understanding of plants and soils and natural systems, continuing to push beyond my perception of what was possible, steadfastly educating and nourishing my community, opening my oft-tired arms to extend the boundaries of how and for whom I care, learning how to design and build and weld and plumb and wire and construct and repair, (oh- so much to repair!), developing a stable, viable, healthy business model aligned with my values… oh what gifts I trusted to come when I decided to start singing.

As I look back on my now fifteen year farming journey, I see how everything I just listed could appear to be very discrete and separate challenges. And yet, my beautiful, wild, generous, fascinating farm proves how often such audacious dreams really are different siblings of the same beguiling family. ~AJ