Serenity Yoga Farm

We made the decision to pull the kids out of school and shut our gates. We are not buying into the fear mongering; instead I believe we are being thoughtful and cautious about what is going on right now with this state of public emergency we are in.

Yes, we have stocked up, but maybe not in the way “normal” people do. Instead of stocking up just on canned goods, we have stocked up on animals that either are food or make food. We have meat chickens coming in the mail; something I would never have thought I would say. True, they take 6 weeks to reach maturity (for shame not to buy a heritage breed, I know! But we don’t have time for their more typical 4 month grow time) but at least it’s something. We got three Cornish to try out, chickens that we hear if you don’t butcher at 6 weeks or so will die soon after on their own b/c they just aren’t “made” to last. We also bought multi-tasking (okay so it’s really called dual purpose) chickens: Barred Rocks like we had before and then we’re trying some Black Australorps and New Hampshire Reds. The Australorps are supposed to be very good at hiding from predators and also great egg layers and meat chickens. We’ll see. We were actually supposed to be picking up two adult livestock guardian dogs this weekend (Great Pyrenees that have been raised on a poultry farm) but since we’ve closed ourselves in that won’t be happening right now.

Before we closed ourselves in we bought 3 adult Easter Eggers so that we can have eggs right now.

Three out of four of us don’t eat eggs but they’re good for Christine and also the dogs and cats can eat them if necessary (we give them raw a few times a week). These girls belonged to a friend so I felt good about the purchase in general.

Why did we decide to close up? We canceled visitors, goat yoga, regular yoga, and about 10 appointments I’d made that were supposed to be happening next week while the kids are on spring break. This article is the reason for our decision; I can’t say I’ve seen a better one explaining why we all need to do our part in not spreading the sickness around.

So what are we going to do? We have a lot of library books, other books that have been on our shelves for years unread. We can watch Netflix, assuming sh*t doesn’t go down so much that the internet goes for a while. We have 80something board games to play. We have cute baby goats to play with and train (they bucklings are on step one of cart training: learning to be calm with a head collar). We can take walks. We can sprout (we bought a ton of sprouting seeds for quick, easy protein). We can spray our mushrooms to get them growing (mushroom kit!). We already have a date night planned “going” to museums. Honestly we have much more to do here than we would in the city if we were choosing to lock our doors there.

Schools are not technically closed here; they are closed in Austin, the biggest nearby city. Next week is spring break. Who knows if school will happen the week after. This kind of thing makes me realize how fortunate we are that we have food and we have the ability to be home. I think of all those who rely on free school lunches to feed their children and it’s heartbreaking. What will those children do? This is a screwed up situation that could have been prevented.

My prayers go to those who are less fortunate and those with lung/respiratory illnesses and those who are in the high risk age groups. I worry about my grandmother in her old age, my dad with his significant lung damage, my aunt with asthma. But the best things we can do are stay calm and ALSO informed. Meditation, yoga, smiling, laughing, gong music…all of those things boost your immune system. And for God’s sakes please stop eating sugar which weakens the immune system. Take some liposomal vitamin C and zinc and Vitamin A and Colloidal Silver and D3 and maybe throw in some Echinacea. Smile. But also be prepared. Toilet paper is the least of our concerns.