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Chicken killing time in Kentucky

The last three great white chickens went out the same way their brethren did: execution style, with a .22 to the back of the head.

Which is not to say that I was anywhere near the killing. They had me spreading fescue seed well away from the plucking and clucking, and I suppose that's in part because the seed needs spreading but it also reflects some concern for my yet-tender heart.

Three of the 24 chickens didn't make it into the pot for one reason or another. One of the final trio had caught fire on the heat lamps, so they had to throw out the hind quarter which had been, um, pre-barbequed. We are having gumbo for lunch, which will use up all the okra we froze last fall.

But in the end they ate too much and were filled with fat, and needed killing. Not much of a lifespan, not much of a life. So the story goes. Went. As dumb animals go, chickens are really dumb.

Another batch of chicks -- a different breed, or breeds; they don't really tell me all that much, and wisely so -- is due in another week or two. They're supposed to eat less, produce eggs, be more mixed use and less meat, although the roosters are still dinner. (Sorry, boys.) And then we'll build a second chicken condominium on the side of the barn next to the garden, and maybe we'll rig it so some of the chickens can get out and feast on bugs and such.

If we get the strawberry beds in. If we get the new trees in the orchard caged and protected from the deer before the green bits show up at the end of their limbs. If we get some string up for the blackberries to climb. If we get the clover seed tossed where it will bring bees to the orchard, but not so close as to entice deer. If my father-in-law gets the plugs and oil changed on the tractor, which he will. If the weather holds, which it might.

Meanwhile, the rooster little Maggie dubbed Survivor #1, the sole representative of our first "barbeque special" (the first 24 chicks we got died on arrival; the replacement batch has been tender eating all winter) has all his tail feathers in, and is fine voice. Lucky him, he's not one of the twelve-pound white monsters. Last night he was placed with the six laying hens my father-in-law and wife traded for, and they ought to give him something to crow about.

The question comes what I will do when the magazine closes, and the answer is that I don't know and I don't have to know yet. After all, I get one more issue to play with, and I shall try to treasure it and not mourn until it's done.

But the garden will keep me busy, and I can use the exercise. The quiet. The solace of a spring sun, and mud.

It is argued that the era of ink on dead trees is coming to a close. Perhaps that is true, though it is far from clear to me that what replaces it comes close to doing the same job. I think magazines have rolled over and played dead when confronted by television and the internet, rather than counting their blessings and playing to their strengths. ND's decision to stop printing is a reflection of changes within the economy of our particular publishing niche; it's not a referendum on magazine publishing. Though I do worry that the barriers to entry for other small publishers are far higher than they were when we began.

More even than the loss of ND what hurts is the suggestion that everything I have spent my entire adult life trying to understand, to...master (or at least achieve bare competence at) is now utterly irrelevant. Nobody cares. Print is dead.

Well, maybe.

In the mid-1980s I sold my typesetting machine, a big blue Compugraphic 7500 that weighed 750 pounds, spun an 8-inch floppy disc and produced fairly blurry type, all things being equal. I saw the Mac coming, knew it would put me out of business, and made a choice not to learn desktop publishing. I spent those years writing, or trying to write, or pretending to write. All of that.

The suggestion now is that print is dead, that I should learn to code websites.

Maybe I should. Maybe in a year or two that will seem like fun.

But I've spent years trying to understand how print works. To understand typography, magazine structure and pacing, to build a file of photographers and illustrators who can more than do whatever job I put before them. (And trying to catch up to the software I once swore not to learn!)

For most readers, I presume, ND was about the music. And that's good; hell, that's the point. But for me it has always been about the ideas the music opened up. And it was about the magazine itself, about the process and pleasure of physically creating this thing that we all held in our hands and fought about.

And, right now, I'd rather cap a chicken than learn to code HTML.

(I do reserve the right to change my mind tomorrow. You do know that, right?)

Posted by grant on March 4, 2008 10:42 AM | Permalink

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