Buddy Read for Locally Laid

[Booknblues]

Theresa, I've started reading and I'm about 80 pages in. I know you generally read much quicker than I do, so whenever you are ready to start feel free to jump in.

[Theresa]

I'm way behind on Proust but will have to catch up before the end of next week when discussion group meets. So my reading the next several days is Proust. But Locally Laid and my Trim, The Lost Vintage, are up to be read after I get caught up. So maybe by Monday I can start.

But soon! It doesn't look like it will take me long to read it.

[Booknblues]

The author is able to keep it peppy and interesting so it isn't a slog to read. I am enjoying it.

[Booknblues]

Theresa, I finished it. I'm looking forward to discussing it with you.

[Theresa]

I am behind but definitely looking forward to reading and discussing.

[Theresa]

Starting now...I need a change of pace from Proust. At least for a couple of hours of reading.

[Booknblues]

Theresa wrote: "Starting now...I need a change of pace from Proust. At least for a couple of hours of reading."

Despite it being nonfiction, it is a pretty light read, especially with your background as a farm girl and I'll bet there were chickens on your farm as well.

[Theresa]

I have chicken stories....

I also raised pheasants for 4-H - got as chicks, raised to young adult then released into the wild to help keep the native population up.

[Booknblues]

Theresa wrote: "I have chicken stories....

I also raised pheasants for 4-H - got as chicks, raised to young adult then released into the wild to help keep the native population up."

I've raised turkeys, but never tried my hand with pheasants.

[Theresa]

I am enjoying what I have read so far. Although it does feel like she glosses over somethings and I want more info. But it is very early yet, so jury remains out.

I did have to chuckle over the opening dilemma about chickens not knowing how to be chickens...reminded me of the sections in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life where Kingsokver was in despair over teaching her turkeys how to mate.

And the whole discussion about allowing free roaming in pasture had me rolling my eyes. Now I grew up on a dairy farm and we did have a flock of chickens to provide us with fresh eggs and, as they aged and stopped producing, chicken for the pot. I believe we did have a section of pasture adjacent to the coop that was wired off for the birds to wander into if they wanted, but it was fixed in one spot.
This was normal. My memories are vague as my dad had enough with the chickens when I was around 8 or 10 and the flock became future dinners. My memories were tgat ggey were mean, smelly, and a royal pain. Our flock had around 20. They were never named.

One of the local farmers ran a large chicken farm operation. Chicken poop on a large scale smells far worse than cow poop. No one voluntarily humg out at that farm!

[Booknblues]

We had free roaming chickens, but not a large flock. I would guess 20 to 30. We didn't name them either, except for one my sister adopted and named Peggy.

I remember days we would cull the flock because they had gone past their peak and my aunt and uncle would pitch it and help with the butchering. It was an assembly line around the table. They were definitely stewing hens.

Later as an adult, I raised chickens as well. I enjoyed doing it.

Have you reached the point where her husband tells her he wants to start a chicken farm?

[Theresa]

Booknblues wrote: "We had free roaming chickens, but not a large flock. I would guess 20 to 30. We didn't name them either, except for one my sister adopted and named Peggy.

I remember days we would cull the flock b..."

Oh yeah. That dinner scene was CLASSIC! I laughed out load and totally felt for her. I am where he has just returned from Myron in Iowa of the questionable farming practices, and checking on his first group of pullets. How she writes about the contrast Jason experiences between his 5 chickens who like listening to the Beatles and the thousands in the barn Chez Myron - very vivid.

[Booknblues]

It was classic. It reminded me of when my ex told me we were moving to California when I had a cast on up to my hip and was trying to finish my BA. We did move and I never came back. He left first while I was still in a cast. I've never forgiven him, especially when I saw where we would be living.

Myron is a real character and not terribly concerned about the welfare of his birds.

[Theresa]

Booknblues wrote: "It was classic. It reminded me of when my ex told me we were moving to California when I had a cast on up to my hip and was trying to finish my BA. We did move and I never came back. He left first ..."

Myron doesn't have much concern for the welfare of anything from that brief description of his farm.

Nor should you have forgiven your husband!

[Theresa]

I am FINALLY free from Proust for at least a week, maybe 2, and I am joyously back to this!

Up to the point where they are struggling to pass inspection.

I am enjoying this but I also bounce between my cheering them on and what were they thinking? I will freely confess to being a farming snob and disdainful of all the urban idealising of farming and sustainability and so on. Which of course stems from a real single family dairy farm life as a child where the entire financialbsupport for tbe famiky was dairy farming. I think that Lucie being the narrator, the adult with serious doubts which she pretty freely expresses in the book, walks that fine line in narrating the journey.

I also just glanced at their website. Will have to go back for more.

Now to read! Well after folding laundry.

[Booknblues]

I checked out their website as well.

Lucie clearly loves her husband and extols on his virtues, but they went into this blind as bats and with very little knowledge.

They are lucky their deal with Myron didn't do them in.

My dad quit the dairy business, shortly before we were born, because of excessive rules. We had the farm but only worked hayfields, kept chickens and gardens and rented pastures. Farming is not an easy life and you have to do it for the love, not the money, when we are talking about family farms.

[Theresa]

You have to embrace the life because it is a life, full on all hands on deck in the family, or else you can't survive. It was a great way to grow up but my mother firmly pushed us to college and other careers.

When I was 16 my dad was forced to sell the herd and technically retire early (he was 62) because NYS legislature adopted new laws that meant he could no longer sell milk to distributors without an huge financial investment in modern equipment replacing the old-fashioned milk cans and cold water storage system he used. With 3 daughters under 16, a wife who had just developed health issues, and a son who was a landscape architect with his own young family, he had no choice. He ultimately supplemented social security with work as a handyman for one of the few dairy farms that survived this period.

I so identify with what they were experiencing with the inspection having experienced my father selling when he did. While Jason makes me rol my eyes a LOT, his being a dreamer and an optomist had a lot to do with their surviving those huge hurdles.

[Booknblues]

Theresa, your father's story is so similar to mine but just a different era. I did not experience it but only heard about it. Growing up we had cattle on our rental pasture we also had Tennessee Walkers and ponies .

Jason is a dreamer and an optimist, you would expect with his profession he would be more practical, but he wasn't. Lucie was more practical, but also visionary and was great with advertising and promotion.

[Theresa]

Yes, Jason & Lucie ended up being a good team for doing something like this. Plus Jason was surprisingly adaptable to shifting the vision, working steadily to improve it. And he never really quailed in front of the hard work it required.

There is another tough cycle happening right now. The family who rents our farmland (my siblings and I still own the farm though none of us live there or farm it ourselves) is going through bankruptcy in part because of the recent bankruptcy of 2 of the major milk distributors in the area. It's a third generation family farm, one of the very few dairy farms still operating in an area of NYS that was once one family dairy farm after another up until the mid-1970s. About 20 years ago, there was a big loss of dairy farms as speculators inflated per acre sales prices and bought up farmland on top of the Marcellas Shale because they expected NYS approval for fracking. Well, Cuomo gave that the kibosh due to environmental concerns (this area is quite close to one of the major upstate water reservoirs serving NYC), but the farms were already gone.

I'm not quite done yet - they are just entering into the contracts with the Amish Farmers, but the business that is evolving is fascinating.

[Booknblues]

Theresa wrote: "Yes, Jason & Lucie ended up being a good team for doing something like this. Plus Jason was surprisingly adaptable to shifting the vision, working steadily to improve it. And he never really quaile..."

I enjoyed seeing how their business evolved and I liked them working with the Amish.

We sold our farm in 1994, hard to do when it was in the family for well over 100 years, but none of us live in the area and my mother was moving to Pittsburgh Pa to be near my older sister. We tried to sell it to locals but ended up selling to a couple from Cortland who wanted to use our large barn for a dog kennel, shades of The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. They have made quite a few improvements, but they leveled the land and bulldozed it in several places and took out many of our trees. They gutted the house and transformed it into a more modern house.

I used to have dreams about the house transformation before, I found out they really did it. It was very unsettling to me, but we sold it and no longer have any claim, even if we sometimes feel an investment. I don't return to Elmira any longer it has vastly changed since I last lived there.

[Theresa]

One of the reasons we have not sold it is because I wanted to be sure we were all ready to let it go. It has only been in out family since late 1920s. My grandparents bought it for their 3 teenage sons to have a livelihood. My father, the eldest, eventually bought out his brothers and lived there until he went into a nursing home when he was 91. He passed away at 96. 2 of my siblings lived there off and on for a while. But the time has come I think to sell.

I finished Locally Laid! I was cheering them on during that contest, a real underdog story. Because of all the stuff about the campaign, website, and blog, I was able to slot this one into the Popsugar prompt for social media which I thought would be tough to fill! So pleased.

And really pleased about Lucie sticking up for what she preferred vis. where they actually lived.

Oh! And the moment where Jason says starting Locally Laid was his midlife crisis...it was start a chicken farm or have an affair....oh, yeah.

[Booknblues]

Yes, I was thrilled when she finally stuck to her guns about what she wanted.

Selling is tough. It helped me buy my house in California, but as you are well aware, the southern tier of NY and Chemung County has long had one of the most depressed housing markets in the country, so I sold in one of the most depressed/cheapest and bought in one of the most expensive.

I still have regrets about it, but I'm not going back there. I have become soft when it comes to cold weather and I truly love California.

Good luck with whatever you decide to do with your farm.

Reading Locally Laid has been a fun journey with you. We couldn't have found a more perfect book.

[Theresa]

Are you sure you don't want to move back? I know of a lovely little farm available only an hour from where you grew up😉

This was such fun to read together! I really hope others are inspired to read it, even without farming backgrounds.

[Joanne]

If it was 1990, and I could I start all over...I would buy that farm in heartbeat Theresa.

This has been fun reading your comments. You two farm girls make me smile

[Booknblues]

Theresa wrote: "Are you sure you don't want to move back? I know of a lovely little farm available only an hour from where you grew up😉

This was such fun to read together! I really hope others are inspired to rea..."

Hah! A part of me would love to, but I can't take the winters and I don't have the energy or desire any more for it.

It was a joy to read this together.