Sad day in Small town America

Today is a very sad day in our little town with a population of 1,150. The Hometown Variety Store will be closing its doors after selling off the last of its inventory at 75%. Opened 4 years ago using local peoples' investments it sold all the things you might expect to find and then more. It was a local store, staffed and managed by local people that also sold many locally made products.  It sold our goatmilk soap, sold locally made jewelry, handbags, candles and ornaments. They had the best selection of quilting fabric for many miles and at half the price of most quilting shops within a 100 mile radius.The ladies that managed the store saw a need and  started a section for children's consignment clothing. If you wanted something not found on the shelves, they did their best to find it for you. Those ladies poured their heart and soul into making the store a success and they are the last people this town should blame for the store's demise.

We still have a few locally owned businesses - a hardware store, a florist, a butcher, a store with handmade goods, a few bars, restaurants and hairdressers. They all try to serve this small community in a way that allows them to remain a financially viable business. I am sure that as each owner looks at the Hometown Variety Store the thought must pass through their heads "There but for the grace of the locals....".

If anyone is to blame for the demise of the Variety store it is the locals. We all buy Office supplies, we all buy soap, we all buy small gifts for friends and family but we chose not to buy them locally. We can complain that they cost a few cents more locally but the closest Walmart/ Target, Big Box Store is 45 miles away and saving those few cents didn't make up for the gas we used getting there. The local stores don't expect us to spend thousands in their stores, they don't ask us to give up our monthly/weekly shop in the large stores. They just needed our support.....sadly this particular store didn't get it.

I doubt this story is unique to our little town, I am sure it is being repeated all around the country. It is something those of us living in small towns can do something about by choosing to buy some of our goods locally. They may not be able to compete with the prices in Big Box Stores but they win hands down with Customer Service. These small stores change lives, keep communities alive....they make a difference. Look around and see if you can make a difference by supporting them.

Keeping up egg production.

Summer is undeniably over; the autumnal equinox is behind us and the days are getting noticeably shorter. Since late spring our older hens have averaged 16-20 eggs per day, I am sure there have been some eggs that we didn't find, but that is the price we pay for pasture-feeding our free ranging hens. They are locked up at night for their own safety but all summer long they rota-tilled the old manure heap and the composting mounds that were the sites where we fed the sheep their hay all winter. They ate bugs, scratched and did what chickens do naturally. When we re-located the younger hens from the brooder house to the hen house we had to restrict movement to the fenced-in chicken yard until the young ones came home to roost in the hen house by choice. Now as winter approaches, they are restricted to the chicken yard, both to protect them from predators anxious to eat all they can before winter restricts their diet, but also to encourage them to eat all the left overs from the garden we toss their way. Some left overs are for sheep, some for hens and it is easier to keep them separated by keeping the chickens in their yard.

The last week we have noticed egg production decline. It always does as winter approaches but this year we decided that we wanted a little more return on our investment, especially as we now have almost 70 hens with the majority maturing to egg laying by the end of this month. We went to the DIY store and invested in a shop lamp and a timer. Not a large investment by any means. Like most sane people, neither of us has any intention of getting out of bed at 4 am to turn on a light for chickens, so the timer is as necessary a piece of equipment as the light.

Dusk is an important time of the day for chickens. It gives the warning of approaching darkness so they can hurry home and find their roost. Not a ritual you want to play with. If  darkness were to come at the click of a switch the birds would not be able to settle for the night, they wouldn't even know where to go to settle safely. We want their day to be longer than their night and set the timer accordingly. I hate repetitive tasks so right away I have our lights set to go on at 4 am and out by 8:30am, I may have to adjust it a couple more times before spring but we should be good to go for a while now. Within 48 hours egg production has increased again. 

We have regular egg customers so we are happy to be able to tell them we can continue to keep them supplied all winter but we are also happy to get some return on the extra feed they use as we move into our white world of winter when the chickens are unable to roam free. The light ( fluorescent) seems a small price to pay for happy and productive chickies.