I may have, as they say, screwed the pooch with my selection of beekeeping as an agricultural endeavor. And, okay, the chickens might not have been the best choice either. It turns out that trying to raise anything smaller than, say, a cow, is a decision that you, though not necessarily it, will most likely live to regret.

Several times in recent posts I have mentioned that there are a number of creatures wandering around Bainbridge Island which, given half a chance, will dash any hopes one might have of successfully micro-farming faster than your feathered charges can think “Ooh. What’s that shadow?” before being ripped from this mortal coil and deposited, still warm, upon the stick-built aerie of the local Majestic Bald Eagles. Sad as this might be, I can sympathize with the eagles but hope they will target the moles in the garden instead of the chickens in the pen. Wild is as wild does and leave the pets alone. But given that there are no squirrels, chipmunks, or outdoor cats within a mile of the micro-farm I’m not holding out much hope. It’s more than just the noble birds-of-prey though. There are any number of other predators wandering the semi-rural streets of Bainbridge Island, looking for easy pickings.

So far I have seen the wily deer, ravagers of foliage, which, after one incursion into the orchard early on, have learned that 9,000 volts DC is not a pleasant thing to apply to one’s lips and tongue. There are the aforementioned eagles along with a Red Tailed Hawk, Peregrine Falcon, and, as of yesterday, a Great Horned Owl. Then there are at least two coyotes in the hood. All of those I’ve seen, but there are more I haven’t. There are raccoons, otters, and skunks. There are bears. There are even cougars. The smaller critters are locals, the bears and cougars swim over from the mainland because food is so plentiful here. 

And so easy to get.

Consider the Butler Green Farm. This little micro-farm is about a quarter-mile down the road, nestled into a wooded vale. There is the obligatory 19th century farmhouse, ancient apple trees (apparently not to the deer’s taste once they reach that age), and an authentic split-rail fence to give the place all the homestead-cred it needs. Butler Green is a C.S.A. which, I was surprised to learn, does not mean they are still fighting the Civil War (see how living in North Carolina can skew one’s view of the world) but instead means that they operate as Community Supported Agriculture. Which is so something I wish I would have thought up.

CSA is a very crunchy concept in which harried office workers, too busy and stressed from their high-pressure jobs locked in cubicles all day trying to avoid becoming an unemployment statistic can actually participate in a bucolic agricultural enterprise without getting the merest speck of dirt under their well-chewed fingernails. They buy a “share” in the farm and, as the crops come in, get to go to the farm and snatch up a box of whatever the farm has produced that week. One of the selling points of a CSA farm is that, by helping keep farming in the community, the CSA members are helping to foster a healthy multi-use, diverse land base, blah, blah, blah, blah. In reality purchasing a share allows you to assuage some of the remorse you feel because you’re sitting around your cubicle all day helping your company figure out new ways to pave the planet or come up with a way to disconnect people from reality even more efficiently than Words with Friends.

What the CSA farmers don’t tell you is that, while you think you’re buying is a box of healthy, fresh produce, what they’re selling is a box of risk. They get your share regardless of the weather. Regardless of the pests and diseases. And, of course, regardless of the predators. You think you’re buying the diverse selection of veggies and meat shown on the website, but you could end up with twenty-five weeks of buggy kale.

Such is the nature of agriculture. 

Anyway, my walks frequently take me past Butler Green CSA Farm, Inc. on the way down to Bay Hay and Feed where I look at the plants and chickens and dream of what might be. When these walks first started last year Butler Green’s front pasture featured five sheep languidly nibbling on verge behind the authentic split-rail fence. Then there were four. Then three. Then two. Now none.

Behind the farmhouse was a small field packed with chickens; there must have been a hundred. Then one week, between a Tuesday and a Thursday, they all vanished. According to their website, this was where they raised their “free-range broilers”. But it’s been over two months since the chickens disappeared, with no activity that looks like they will be replaced anytime soon.

But the coyotes are looking very well-fed.

With the disappearing act that the local livestock seems to be pulling, Butler Green Farm did the only thing assured of success: they installed a couple of cows in the area recently vacated by the smaller, more conveniently-sized snacks.

That’s what we’re up against on the micro-farm. The question is not one of “what should we try and grow?” but “how do we keep it alive?”

This question rears its ugly head almost daily. Consider the bees. This week’s beekeeping class discussed pests and diseases of bees. Fair enough, but the thrust of the discussion was not how a beekeeper counters the threats but how to tell what your bees died from, after the fact. The pests talked about ranged from viruses to bears (they eat the larvae for protein, then stay for dessert) and included about every taxonomic entity in between. There were some treatment options put forth for the various diseases but I’m a bit leery of using products around the house which come with a statement of “half-life” on the warning label. Besides, the presenter, as he talked about the various chemicals, always put forth the caveat: “but you probably wouldn’t want to risk getting any of that in your honey, now would you?”

Not that honey seems a likely problem.

I know two beekeepers on Bainbridge Island. One of whom is fairly new to the game and the other an old hand. The newbie warned me that he has yet to see a “single drop of honey” from his hives. The experienced beek has been in the game for a decade and this year is the first time he had even a single hive survive the winter. And he keeps ten or eleven hives. I’m on the hook for two packages of bees but, jeez, if they don’t survive the winter I’m not sure I’d keep shoveling money into the tastefully painted boxes out back. That sounds too much like boating.

Then there’s the chickens.

The warning at the Baby Chicks Class down at Bay Hay and Feed was something like: “Yeah, a raccoon can snatch a full-grown chicken right through the one-inch mesh of a chicken wire fence. Dunno how they do it, but they do.” Normally I would write this off as so much hyperbolic terrorism so that Bay Hay can sell me more stuff at Bainbridge Island prices, but, in this case, I have a first-hand report from my sister on her New Mexico ranchette where such a thing has actually happened; although she raises her own predators for the job. It seems that her vicious Borzoi hunting dogs are perfectly happy to lounge for hourswithin striking distance of the fence. When, at long last, a chicken sees a tasty bug on the other side of the screen and risks a peck, well the dog is on the chicken faster than you can see. The result is a small pile of feathers inside the fence and a happy dog on the outside.

So I’ve decided to take a 9,000 volt page from my deer-security manual and electrify the chickens (ooh, now there’s an idea). I’m going to put up an electrified plastic mesh fence to keep the chickens corralled and to provide a first line of defense against half-hearted attempts to get at the pullets during the day. Then, inside that, will be a shield designed not to make the stealthy predators wish they hadn’t fucked with the chickens, but to wish they’d never been born.

The chicken’s nighttime accommodations will be enclosed by a two-layer net of chicken wire. The inside mesh will be grounded, that is electrically neutral, and will extend under the frame by a foot or so. The outer mesh will be a positively charged 9kV and isolated from the ground. The predator will approach the cage and stand on the grounded metal web. Then it will reach through the wire.

K-F-Zap.

I’m going to set up a video camera. Forget about the “cute cat whacking a hamster ball across a linoleum floor” videos on YouTube. My channel will feature smoking, dancing raccoons bathed in a shower of sparks trying to figure out how to let go of the wire.

That’s what I’m talking about.

I just hope the camera will pick up the vengeful grins of the chickens.

As with all our agricultural adventures so far this one is still in the planning stages. The first batch of chickens, the ones that lay green eggs, arrive Wednesday so I am on something of a deadline. First things first though, we’ve got to pick out some names, right now I’m definitely leaning toward “Sparky”.