Janet's Blog

Meagan decided to raise chickens this spring.  It was not a sudden decision. She thought about it for nearly a year, researched carefully, and built a secure chicken coop all by herself after finding the plans online.  All of this was precipitated by a single bad experience with store-bought chicken breasts.  She will explain in great detail if you ask her about it. Meagan's chickens Before she took the plunge into raising chickens, Meagan made sure that some experienced chicken farmers would be available to help with that daunting butchering process.  Guess who she chose?  Yup, Bill and me. When he was a teenager, Bill had helped his mom's cousin, Gertrude, butcher chickens when he was helping out on the farm near Albin, Wyoming, during the summer.  And some of my earliest memories include "helping" my mom catch a few frantic chickens with her special chicken catcher, then watching them flop around for a few minutes after she removed their heads....

I don't really remember what my family did on Sunday afternoons when we lived on the farm, or even after we moved to the Oxnard Hotel in Norfolk.  I think we probably spent a lot of time with grandparents and other relatives who lived in the same community; I don't remember, but I'm pretty sure, just the same.  But, after we moved to the Hotel Mary-Etta in Fairbury, things changed.  We no longer had much family close by.  And, since we lived in an apartment on the fourth floor, we had no real outdoor space to call our own. The Hotel Mary-Etta I suspect that our lack of a yard was a real hardship that my dad was not expecting when he first started managing a hotel.  I've never met a former farmer who doesn't love wide open spaces.  For some, a small backyard is little consolation, but it is better than nothing.  When we first lived in Fairbury, we didn't even have that.  So we compensated. Mom took us kids to play in the City Park, or up t...

It isn't easy to be a farmer in western Nebraska.  Work is hard and sometimes tedious, equipment breaks down at the most inopportune times, markets fluctuate.  And then, there is the weather.  That unpredictable, sometimes horrifying, often all-too-predictable weather. It's been one of those years. We are used to the wind here, but this year's weather has not been exceptionally windy. Farmers have gotten used to the drought, too, that has been a part of our lives in recent years.  They may complain about the cost of irrigating, and the hard work involved, but they get by.  Irrigation is a way of life for western Nebraska farmers. We all shudder at the thought of hail, but accept it, reluctantly, as a normal hazard of farming.  That's why farmers have insurance. May snowstorms, like we experienced this year, are rare, but usually provide only a minor hiccup in the farmers' spring routine.  And normal, occasional spring rains are always welcome...

We have all heard of Mother Teresa of Calcutta.  Even those of us who are not Catholic have stood in awe of her selfless devotion to the poorest of the poor in Calcutta, India.  In a devotion I read this week, she stated, "The meaning of my life is the love of God.  It is Christ in his distressing disguise whom I love and serve." God has not called me to serve him in Calcutta, at least not yet.  I have never been there.  But I have spent a brief time in India, in New Delhi and Mumbai, formerly called Bombay, when I was privileged to accompany Bill on a whirlwind speaking tour about fifteen years ago.   I have breathed (and smelled) the heavy yellow smog that hangs over the ancient city of Delhi like a smothering blanket.  I have ridden in a brightly colored, three-wheeled auto rickshaw, and gazed in disbelief at the dead man lying in the middle of the street, the one the taxi driver pointed out to us as he carefully drove around the body ...

What is it about kids and their innate fascination with baby birds?  I saw it again yesterday--twice. As I was heading outside, Levi called me over urgently, to come and see what he had found.  He was standing in the front yard, with a plastic tub in his hand, ready to capture a bird that was sitting in the grass.  It was a smallish gray, fluffy bird, sitting still on the ground with its wings outstretched.  Levi was convinced that its wing was broken, but I wasn't so sure.  To me, it looked like a fledgling who hadn't quite mastered the art of flying. We had to leave for an appointment, so I instructed Levi to leave the bird where it was, and wash his hands thoroughly with soap.  On the way to the appointment, I reiterated, yet again, how important it is to leave birds alone because they often carry diseases that can be passed on to people.  When we returned a couple of hours later, the bird was right where we had left it.  But, a while later...