Wow. There's been a lot going on since my last entry. The first batch of chicks is starting to look almost full-grown. The second batch is still adorable and fuzzy but they're starting to grow their wing-feathers. The two groups met for the first time the other day in the portable coop. We were grateful that they didn't attack each other but they weren't all over each other either. They stayed in their separate groups and every once in a while the small ones would run over and rush the big ones. Just like middle school.

This picture isn't great but you can kind of see them hanging out together. A huge heat wave is hitting the Bay Area right now and it is HOT. In this weather, there's no risk of the chicks freezing so we put them outside in the real coop this morning. They seemed happy to have some vertical clearance and the be able to stretch their wings. 

Meredith, our friend and fellow chicken farmer who lives in Santa Cruz, had her baby at our house last week! It was really exciting. Well, actually, I was scared out of my mind at first because when she was driving down to Oakland, she thought that she was really in labor and I was the only one at home. My mom called me and told me that I was going to have to deliver the baby by myself. I've seen births before, but I've never actually helped, so I was a little nervous. Luckily, by the time she arrived her contractions had stopped and my mom and her midwife had time to arrive. It was a very loud birth, but it was over quickly. Our next-door neighbor was too stoned to complain. Meredith's labor started at 8:30 p.m. and by 10:15 the baby was out and the cord was cut. Welcome to our hippie commune, Enzo! 

That's the type of thing that goes down at the Levy-Sheon house. We have long, anthropological discussions with chickens, our fridge is full of home-made kimchee, sauerkraut, and fermenting milk products, my father and the mail man call each other up on the phone to talk about the right way to make injera, our friends give birth at our house, and, to top it all off, we have Meredith's placenta in our freezer, right under the Trader Joe's samosa burgers. 

I don't know if you remember when I talked about Novella Carpenter and GhostTown Farms. Well, I finally read her book and I HIGHLY recommend it. It's perfect for anyone who has ever wanted to grow their own food in their backyard and doesn't know how, or doesn't think they have enough space, or just needs that extra push to get their butt up off the couch and down to the feed store to buy some chicks. Plus, it's absolutely hilarious and a quick read. I guarantee you will not be able to put it down. 

We went to her open house today to see how her farm was set up. The vacant lot that she's turned into a garden is dense and lush and wild and amazing. It gets full sun so her vegetables are ENORMOUS! We especially wanted to check out her goat enclosure. We learned that they like little, cave-like spaces and they also like to climb stairs and be high up. Their natural habitat is the mountains, after all. My dad has plans for a drawbridge from our tree house over the chicken coop and down into their pasture area - a "Goat Skyway." We'll see how that goes... If you want to read more about GhostTown Farms, visit Novella's blog.

Well, school is starting on Monday. I'll try to post as often as possible but I don't know how much time I'm going to have. 

Here's a video of the babies that my father made. Enjoy!

Chicks from MyPetChicken.com from Nicolas Sheon on Vimeo.

And here are some more photos (because I know y'all can handle some more cuteness) of our neighbors, Scott and Kenda, with the chicks.

(This is probably my favorite all-time chicken photo: McNugget: Ninja Master!)

Here are some links to some veg and small farms articles

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/julia-moulden/how-small-farmers-are-sav_b_260242.html

This is an article that I just saw on Huffington Post today about small farms, urban farming, the battle with "The Man", and what you can do.

experts.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/06/03/meat_the_slavery_of_our_time

This presents the arguments against eating meat, it's good to know these things, even if you don't want to become a vegetarian. At the very, very least you should be conscious of what you are eating and know the health and environmental risks associated with your diet so you can make an educated choice.

www.huffingtonpost.com/kathy-freston/shattering-the-meat-myth_b_214390.html

When I was in France, an argument I heard a lot was that humans evolved eating a largely, or even almost exclusively carnivorous diet. THIS IS NOT TRUE!!!

www.huffingtonpost.com/kathy-freston/future-shock_b_210545.html

I personally find this article hilarious. It's a scene in a future classroom where kids are shocked that their ancestors actually ate other animals. 

Please know that I do not expect everyone to be vegetarian and you can be an amazing, wonderful, beautiful person and eat meat. I don't hate omnivores. However, I believe that everyone should educate themselves about what it is that they're eating. The same goes for not eating harmful pesticides or products that might be contaminated or poisonous. You should know about the potential effects on your body. 

Also, if you want to be vegetarian but it sounds too daunting to wake up one morning and never eat meat again, you don't need to do it that way. Some people can go cold turkey (no pun intended) but many people start slowly. Try eating plant-based meals one day a week, or one meal a day, and see how it goes. After a while you will probably be able to extend it to two days a week and so on. And if there's one food item that you can't give up and that's keeping you from going vegetarian (ex: I can't go vegan because I love ice cream, I can't be vegetarian because I love cheeseburgers too much) then just don't eat any dairy except for ice cream, or try to be vegetarian and then eat a cheeseburger when you feel like it. 

The planet and your body will thank you for it. The meat industry causes MORE THAN HALF of global warming and cutting back a little bit makes a BIG difference. Think about it.

New arrivals!

Guess who's here!!! Our one-day-old chicks arrived in the mail today. They literally arrived in a cardboard box with air holes, cheeping madly. Here's a picture of them in their basket:

There are five (there's one hiding in the corner) and they're all different: Speckled Sussex, Goldenlaced, Leghorn, Silverlaced, and New Hampshire Red. We really can't tell who's who at this point except that the yellow one is the New Hampshire Red.

(above) This one Scott named McNugget

The post lady arrived with the box, looking REALLY confused. It's not every day that a cheeping package arrives at the Dimond Post Office with live chickens inside. The reason they can ship them in the mail is that after they've eaten themselves out of the egg they are very full and they don't need to eat for a day or two. We immediately took them inside and put them in the bathroom, which is always the hottest room in the house (if you've never taken a shower next to baby chicks, it's a great experience), and gave them food and water.

We couldn't tear ourselves away from them! They are SOOO small that all five of them are about the size of one of our other teenage chicks. I even took them in the car to go to my chiropractic appointment and Scott and my mom played with them while Kenda was adjusting me (she felt their spines and made sure that there weren't any problems).

We're not sure how long we need to keep them separated from the others, but we don't want to keep them apart for too long or we're scared that they'll fight with each other. The other babies have graduated and are now in the coop. We turn on a heat lamp at night because their feathers aren't all the way grown in. They seem happy to be out there and to have room to fly around. During the day if we're home we put them in their portable coop so that they can eat bugs and things.

I can feel that we're getting closer to getting goats. My parents have decided where we're putting the pen, and sometimes I go outside to find my father sitting on a bench in the future goat pen making milking motions with his hands. It's a little frightening. They're going to have an open walking area and a sheltered "dormitory" with raised beds with rubber mats to sleep on. My dad's been scoping out other goat situations to get ideas. I'm so excited! Indigoat Farms is really starting up.

Now, the big question: why am I vegan? It's not because I'm lactose-intolerant or because I was raised that way or because I don't like cheese. Cheese is delicious and most of my family eats meat. I'm vegan for a couple of reasons:

1. I know that virtually no human society developed without eating some form of animal protein, but we have a tendency to over-estimate the amount of meat that our hunting and gathering ancestors actually brought home to eat. Hunting was not their main source of calories. It was a political and social-status-assuring venture undertaken by the men in the community that served to bind the tribe together. Any animals that were killed were shared by everyone in the village and some was given to neighboring villages as well. Their main source of protein was ALWAYS roots, nuts, berries, and vegetables.

2. The way we raise animals today is DISGUSTING! Most people choose not to read about factory farms or look at pictures of them and they like to imagine that the meat that they by in the supermarket, even the organic, "free-range", expensive, Whole Foods meat comes from happy cows and chickens running around on pastured hills before being caught by the farmer's wife, killed humanely, and brought to the supermarket on a covered wagon. But we all know that that is not what goes down. I refuse to support the huge corporations that run those factory farms and the meat and dairy products from those places are nasty, anabolized, antibiotized, pus-filled, and generally unfit for human consumption, much less for our fragile environment. 

The catch? I'm vegan because I know enough about its positive effects on the environment to know that it makes a difference. So... I eat the products of chickens and cows and goats that I know for SURE are not being exploited. It's really not that hard to find. There's a guy in Berkeley who has a farm in his back yard and my dad went there to milk his goat and brought back THIS cheese. 

THIS, ladies and gentlemen, is the ORIGINAL  chevre. And you can taste the difference. The goats that made this ate what goats are supposed to eat, and their milk is very, very different. It doesn't even taste like goat! We brought it to an East Bay Fermenter's Club meeting and everyone was raving about it. I can't wait until we're making our own. Take a look at the other things that we ate:

     in the foreground: seaweed sauerkraut.

In the back right, home-made kombucha.

   vegan walnut noodles with steamed veggies
 (sadly) non-vegan peach tart that looked DELICIOUS!!
 kimchee and pickles (both home-made)

And a lot of other stuff besides. The East Bay Fermenter's Club was started by my father and a few other people. They meet periodically when one of them needs more sauerkraut and they make things that they eat at the next meeting. I'm not as obsessed as they are but I LOVE sauerkraut. If you want to learn about making Kim Chee in your closet and making the best damn pickles you've ever tasted in one week, they're the people to talk to. 

Word from the Homestead

  (Fluffy)

Indigoat is in the Dimond District in Oakland, in our back yard. As of now we have two cats, Fluffy and TJ, and five chicks. Before this batch of chicks we had 5 others. They had names when we first got them but they were all Barred Plymouth Rocks and it was too hard to tell them apart.  

Our new chicks are probably about a month and a half old now, and they're starting to grow some real feathers. The Americanas are Banana, Britney, and Chickosaurus and and Black Austrolorps are Dusk and Luna.  When we first got them they looked like 3-inch-long puff-balls with a couple wing-tip feathers. Now they are starting to fly around and look more like teenage chickens. In the day time we keep them in a triangular enclosure in our yard which we move throughout the day so that they can find new bugs and weeds to eat. We also like giving them treats like worms from the compost buckets or bags of old lettuce that we find in the street. (photo: C. holding Chickosaurus)

Chickens are great pets and their capacity for personality is often underestimated. All of the chicks are already very different. Banana is the dumb one. We let her out next to our neighbor and co-chick-caretaker's dog and she tried to run right into its mouth. Luckily we caught her in time. She only has two speeds: pecking at bugs in place and 100-miles-an-hour. Britney is the nasty one. When her sisters poop she'll peck at it and then rub her beak in it. This is especially bothersome when the poop in question is on your shirt. Chickosaurus is the bully and she likes to climb over the other ones and push them

 out of the way. Dusk and Luna are a little hard to tell apart. They're both very sweet and affectionate. Dusk doesn't run away if you put your hand out to pick her up - she'll actually stretch her neck out like a cat that wants to be petted. (photo: from right to left, Banana, Luna, and Britney; Chickosaurus in front)

Our homestead is far from completed. We are an urban farm in progress. Five more chicks are arriving in a week and we're planning on buying a couple of goats in the spring. We've been reading a lot of books about city-farms and we've been very inspired, especially by Novella Carpenter's book Farm City. I haven't actually read it yet but it was her book that inspired my mom to want to get goats. We're going to visit her farm, Ghost Town Farm, in a couple weeks when she has a barbeque/tour/book signing. 

When I tell people that I have chickens, their first reaction is "Don't you live in the city?" and their second is "Do you kill and eat them?" The answer to the first question is yes, we do, but we are blessed to have a large yard with lots of weeds to eat, and they really don't cause any problems. They may sqwauk a little in the mornings when they're laying eggs but other than that hens are quiet, docile animals who like being left alone to peck and take dust baths and fertilize the garden. The answer to the second one is NO!!! Not everyone in my family is vegetarian, and we claim to be hard-core farmers, but our chickens are pets. We eat their eggs but we would never slaughter them. Our first ones died of old age and raccoons. We do know people who would slaughter them for us if we wanted to but we become so bonded with them that they are like a part of our family.

   

City of Ten Thousand Buddhas

             

On the way back from Camp we always stop at a huge Buddhist temple in Ukiah called the City of 10,000 Buddhas. There are houses where the monks live and where people come on meditation r

etreats, an elementary and a secondary school, a temple with (literally) 10,000 buddhas, in niches along the walls, a resident herd of peacocks that just walks around and leaves feathers on the ground, and a delicious and relatively affordable lacto-vegetarian restaurant (there is no red meat, poultry, fish, or eggs). We went there with our meat-loving, definitely non-vegan friends and we ALL ate ourselves sick. I can't even remember all of the things we ordered but I'll try to remember.  Seitan satay (which H. thought 

was chicken until I told him), fried tofu, stir-fried eggplant and basil, napa cabbage with mushrooms, hot and sour soup, fried spring rolls, fried rice, and udon noodles with vegetables. The only bad part was that we ate almost all of it! My god we were full. I recommend it if you're ever up in Ukiah. There are very few vegan restaurants that have H. and C.s' carnivore stamps of approval. 

My sister (who I'm going to call Madeleine until I ask her what she wants to be called) and C. went on an epic search for peacock feathers. There weren't as many as last time but they still found quite a few. Here's a picture of the two of them pretending to be peacocks.

Once we were stuffed to the brim with food and ready to die from heat stroke (it was over 100 degrees) we headed over to Real Goods in Hopland, not far away. Real Goods is a solar living center that does a lot of workshops on sustainable living and has a nice bookshop where my parents wanted to research goats. We didn't find any books with any useful information but the kids were glad to get popsicles and we were happy for the air conditioning. H. and Madeleine bought portable fans because they were off to Camp Winnarainbow for session E and it was promising to be a hot two weeks (at the beginning of session D it got up to 107 on the first day). 

Before dropping the kids off at camp (except for C. who still isn't allowed to go), we hit the used bookstores in Willits. My dad found a book about natural goat care, Madeleine bought about seven vampire books that she hadn't read yet (I don't know how that's possible), and I found another book about the sociology of gender (dad can't understand why I won't read normal books). Now I have two weeks without my little sister! The house is so quiet without her. I'm hoping to be able to get some serious homework done. 

 

               

 (The garden at Real Goods)

Back from Camp

This blog isn't about anything in particular and I think the header explains it all. I'm just going to jump right in. (I'm not g

oing to talk about my recent trip to France on this blog: to read about that go to www.myspace.com/saskiainfrance).

            

I just got back from Camp Winnarainbow and I'm still adjusting to life in the "fake" world (I attest that Camp IS the real world 

and the rest of the planet just hasn't caught on yet). Camp Winnarainbow is a summer performing arts camp where you sleep in tipis (teepees? tipees?) and learn circus skills from hippies. It's run by Wavy Gravy, the ex-MC of Woodstock ("What I have i

n mind is breakfast in bed for 40,000!") 

I was teen staff this year and I had a BLAST!!! It was a lot of work, and I learned just how hormonal 12-year-old girls can be, but I also learned a lot about preteens, working with kids, life, and myself. It was also a wonderful experience

 to bond with the other teen staff - talented, passionate, creative teenagers - who were warm, accepting, and helpful. Many of them had many more years' experience than me and almost all of them had known each other before going. 

I mostly did theater - I was in a project called "A Kiss For Little Bear" which was a hig

hly stylized children's bed-time story white actors interacting with paintings and cool things like that. I also helped with singing class - we sang a song called "Pay Attention" that was written by campers from the previous session. 

If any of you are the least bit interested in Camp Winnarainbow, please check it out. They even have an adult camp! It will change your children's (or your neighbors' or family members' children's) lives. I know that most likely would not be alive if it wasn't for that place. They're suffering from the economic recession and they deserve to stay alive. There's my publicity speech. 

     massage train!!

 Wavy Gravy in costume (left)