AgriCulture bloggers Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week, Peter writes: There is a strange silence, an ominous stillness. It is around eight o’clock Thursday morning but instead of a steady brightening the morning continues to darken, the sky taking on a sinister dark gray hue. The air is heavy and moist and does not stir. Missing is the usual sound of birds, all of which have disappeared. We have been warned by the National Weather Service of the imminent approach of violent thunderstorms, sixty mile an hour winds, large hail, and—the unthinkable—the possibility of tornadoes. It is from the same weather system that has just devastated the South, with much loss of life, moving our way. It is the livestock that I am worrying about. Kay, a near neighbor, has just phoned to warn me of the impending arrival of the storm, which she has heard is heading directly for us. From my vantage point, an upstairs bedroom window, I notice that the sheep, usually out on pasture at this time crowded around their manger or lounging about on the grass nearby awaiting their morning grain treat, are nowhere to be seen. Clearly, they have taken refuge in the barn. They have done this before. They were, most of them, born in the barn or very close to it and spent their first days in its birthing pens bonding with their mothers. It is in the barn that they get their grain treats and where they shelter from the winter weather and heavy rains. The barn represents for them, at some level, safety and comfort. It is the center of their world.
What the barn means to them became clear to me several years ago when one beautiful spring afternoon our barn, to my horror, erupted into flames. The smell of the smoke and the sight of the flames terrified the sheep even though they had never seen fire before, and they could, therefore, not really know what fire is. Instinct, not experience, told them fire was a danger. So on seeing the flames and smelling the smoke, they behaved very sheep-like and rushed into the barn, their refuge. Even when the Germantown fire department crew forcibly ejected them from the burning barn, they returned twice more trying to get in, and finally had to be aggressively driven off. In their frantic state they apparently could not conceive of any other place of safety. It is my hope today that our sheep are right this time in choosing the barn as their refuge from the impending storm. I move to another window that looks out over the cow pasture, fully expecting to see it empty, the cattle having moved to safety in the cowshed. But, no, there they are scattered about the field, most of them lying down, brilliant white forms against the lush green. I thought that with their recently born calves they would have moved to shelter. But no, I come to realize, the cowshed is quite a different thing for them, serving only as a temporary refuge from the severest winter weather. It is not where they were born; cows prefer instead a secure spot on pasture, and it is not the place where they are fed. The cowshed, unlike the sheep barn, is not the center of their world. Probably, I conjecture, they will, when the winds build up, take shelter in a nearby low gully, their usual refuge from strong winds.
It is not so much for the livestock that we already have, however, as for the livestock whose arrival is imminent that I am most concerned. It is the morning I am expecting the arrival of the day old turkey poults, the start of our Thanksgiving turkey flock. Despite the imminent storm, and the various things I should be doing in preparation, I am staying close to the phone expecting the call from the post office requesting me to come to pick up the boxes containing our birds: 120 heritage turkey poults that have come all the way from Iowa. Should we get the full brunt of the storm, will I be able, I wonder, to drive to the post office to get them? And if I do will I be able if we have torrential rain to get them from the house safe and dry up to their brooders in the hayloft of the barn? And if I manage that, will the electricity still be working to power the heat lamps that keep the brooder pens heated to the requisite 90 degrees? And if our power has been knocked out, will I be able to get the generator set up and connected as a fall back? Turkey poults are incredibly sensitive to cold and wet and much more vulnerable than goslings, ducklings, and chicks. In the best of conditions the poult mortality rate is high.
As the morning goes on, the deadline for the arrival of the storm is pushed back several times, and for a while things begin to brighten, and then to go darker once again. And then the phone rings and it is, as expected, the post office with the announcement I have been waiting for, and I make the trip to Germantown driving in a light rain. But as I carry the cardboard boxes filled with cheeping poults up to the barn, the rain begins to intensify. Once in the barn and up to the hayloft, we (our farm helper, Darlene, and I) gingerly begin decanting the poults from their tiny box compartments into their heated brooder. Outside, the heavens suddenly open, and a torrent of rain beats down on the metal roof, the loud drumming occasionally punctuated by claps of distant thunder. Being just beneath a metal roof we are glad the thunder is distant. We count loudly as we decant. They are all there: 40 Bourbon Reds, 40 Spanish Blacks, and 40 Holland Whites. And not missing a beat, they begin their eternal slumber party—tiny, animated fluff balls bopping about, pecking everything in sight, exploring the perimeter of their brooder, quaffing their first water and pecking up their first grain as if they had been doing it forever, oblivious to the passing storm, which fortunately for us all, turned out to be nothing much at all. For the complete archive of past AgriCulture blogs, click here.
