How to Quit Amazon–and Why You Need to Do It Now

~ Crystal Sands ~ 3 Comments

I have a feeling that more than a few of my readers either quit Amazon some time ago or never used it. but I have recently been surprised by the number of people I know who still use Amazon. I hate to tell people what to do. It always just feels wrong to me, but if you are still using Amazon for anything, it is time to stop it now. Now. The end.

In this post, I will speak to why it’s so important to cancel Amazon right now, how I did it about two years ago, and in the end, I will share some of the hidden benefits of dropping Amazon–the good things I didn’t expect when we decided 

Good Reasons to Cancel Now

I mean, we did this to ourselves, but the only thing to do is start undoing it. Amazon has been devastating for local economies for years, but its power increased exponentially during the pandemic. Right now, Jeff Bezos is worth $252 billion. And, instead of paying workers fairly or giving them reasonable breaks, just a week or so ago, Amazon laid off 16,000 workers and replaced them with AI. In the same week, Jeff Bezos laid off about one-third of the workers at The Washington Post and has taken far too much control of the editorial board. Essentially, thanks to Jeff Bezos, an important newspaper that used to hold presidents accountable now bends the knee to one.

And we have to quit funding our oppressors, in at least as much as we can.

More than that, we have to think about our local economies. We need community, and we need community businesses to thrive. It is not going to happen over night. In the two years since we quit Amazon, there have been several occasions where we couldn’t find something we needed locally. The things were simply not available, but you know what? We lived. And, if enough of us quit Amazon and started supporting local shops more, maybe more things would be available locally. It only makes sense. We used to have a lot more local options for shopping before Amazon.

Finally, let’s face it. Humans do not need to be able to purchase whatever we want when we want it. We are gatherers. It’s too easy to get addicted to the gathering. We should have to work a little harder to buy things. We should have to pause. Amazon is engineered to ensure there is no pause. If you have not seen the documentary Buy Now, I highly recommend it. We are spending our money way too quickly on things we don’t need. Amazon has us destroying our planet and keeping ourselves poor. We are doing the work for the predator class, and I think we have to stop it.

I realize there are many, many steps in this process, but dropping Amazon is a really good place to start.

And, I promise. It’s easier than you think.

How to Do It

From the time we decided to quit Amazon to the point we actually cancelled took a few weeks. I spent some time researching what I was buying at Amazon over a year. The first thing I realized was that there were quite a few things I didn’t need to buy at all, so those things were easy to let go of.

I then explored the things we needed regularly that I was getting at Amazon, and I started to research to see if I could get those things locally. If not, could I get them directly from a company website?

I am going to be honest that I could not get some of the things from local stores. I live in a more rural area, and our choices are limited. Still, I realize that the only way we are going to get more stores locally is to start supporting local businesses. And, thankfully, most things I could not find locally I was able to get directly from the companies’ websites. I found that Weck jars for canning, for example, were actually cheaper at the company site than they were on Amazon.

For books, I now use a website called Bookshop.org. It offers the same kind of convenience of Amazon in that it just has all the books, but you get to create an account and choose a local bookstore to support with your purchases from the website. A percentage of every single book you buy goes directly to your local bookstore, so if you can’t get yourself to a local bookstore or it’s kind of far away for you, Bookshop is a perfect alternative to Amazon.

I did find that some companies only have stores on Amazon, which speaks to the monopoly of Amazon. It’s so bad that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) under Biden sued Amazon for illegally maintaining monopoly power. For the things that were not available outside of Amazon, I just had to find alternatives. One example was my son’s xl socks. He’s 6’4″ and can’t wear regular sized socks. They are too small. But the place I had been getting his socks for years had only an Amazon storefront For a bit, my son was short on socks, but I finally found another place that carried sturdy xl socks. The best part? It is a company that takes steps to support good causes. Was it time consuming? Yes. Was it worth it? Yes.

I also found great value in looking for things used. I tapped into local resources as much as possible and have been a big fan of using Facebook Marketplace, though I loathe Facebook. It’s another company I really need to cut ties with in the very near future, but if I could make myself have an account I never used other than just using the Marketplace to buy local, used items, that would be great. But there are also websites for buying used, and I am proud to say that I don’t think I have bought a single new item of clothing for myself besides shoes in the last five years. It’s especially easy to find good quality women’s clothing used.

There is certainly some work to this, but it’s necessary work. It’s hard to give up the convenience of Amazon, but it’s possible. And, I found some really important rewards to quitting Amazon–one was saving more money.

Benefits of Canceling Our Amazon Account

The first benefit of quitting Amazon was the satisfaction. I have been weary for a long time of power of the uber wealthy to control our lives in whatever way they want, so it felt really good to just be done sending my money to such a powerful and corrupt organization.

But the other benefit was that I shopped less and spent less. We have saved hundreds of dollars every year since we quit Amazon by simply buying less. This is good for our bank account and good for the planet. Amazon made shopping way too easy. Emotional purchases are a real thing that Amazon taps into beautifully. I had developed all kinds of strategies to keep myself from making emotional purchases online, from buying things I didn’t really need because they were on sale, but I found nothing worked better than simply cutting off my access.

I realize there are about a million problems we are all dealing with right now. None of us are really okay right now. One step we can take to help ourselves, our planet, and our local communities is to be more aware of how we spend our money. Right now, an easy but important step to take is to cancel your Amazon account.

photo credit: Sean Robbins, Unsplash

A Ruby Update and a Dream

~ Crystal Sands ~ 2 Comments

Last week, I had a dream that one of our chickens died. In my dream, I went out to the coop in the morning, and there, on the floor of the coop, was one of our girls passed away. I couldn’t tell who it was, but I could see it was one of our girls from our Easter Egger line, which made me very sad.

I woke up heartbroken. I lay there in the dark thinking about how sad I was going to be if I went out to the coop in the morning and one of our Easter Eggers had passed. We have two lines of Easter Eggers in our flock–one line from Schumann and Schubert and another line from Poe. Those three chickens were some of the most magnificent I have ever known, and their children and grandchildren, mixed with Rooster’s genes, are brilliant, difficult sometimes, but so full of personality. If you follow my blog, you will know them–Kate, Juliet, Bianca, Cora, Bertha, Lenore, and, of course, Ruby.

I have been slow to move in the mornings for all of January, I think, but that morning, I was up as soon as the alarm went off. When I opened up the coop, I was so thankful to see that no one had passed over night, but there, in the exact spot where I had seen the dead chicken in my dream was Ruby.

It just came all over me that I needed to bring her in and give her a health check. This is never fun because Ruby does not like to be handled. She is an independent bird for sure. But after I put the food and water in the coop, I scooped her up and brought her into the house.

She complained as I turned her every which way to check things. She knows how to bite with a pinch, which not all of them know to do. Ruby definitely hates health checks. Even though I know she has the same reproductive issue Poe had, she was not thin, which was wonderful, but when I flipped her upside down, I could see an issue–Ruby had mites.

Ruby has always been prone to mites, but I haven’t checked her since before the holidays. I gave her a treatment and will give her the second treatment tomorrow night. She is doing great, and I noticed yesterday that she’s moved up a bit on the roost. She must be feeling better.

I assume it was a rat that gave her mites. I think we are maybe down to just one rat in the coop. I really need to tell the great rat story of 2025, but it is a long one. In the meantime, I will just share that this one rat I keep seeing is giant and smart. It has figured out every single thing we try to do.

Just a couple of weeks ago, I was in the coop in the evening gathering up the food and water for the night when I heard a bustling from the top roost. I looked up just in time to see a rat on the roost with the chickens. I screamed, and it dropped. I was in between it and the door, and I don’t know who was more terrified.

I have no idea what we are going to do about that rat. but I am thankful for my dream. Ruby needed treatment, and I need to do better about checking everyone for mites. I can’t let the depression of things keep me from taking good care of those animals. My dream was definitely a wake up call.

A Mouse Love Story Part II

~ Crystal Sands ~ 8 Comments

I haven’t been able to write because everything is so bad in the world. Some of it is my anxiety (it’s hard for me to write when I am this anxious about things), but one reason is that it seems like a waste of time to tell people stories about chickens, ducks, turkeys, mice, green beans, and such when the world is falling apart. I feel instead, I should be writing exclusively about how to resist systems by growing your own food, repairing what you have instead of buying new, and creating local economic networks.

But I have ultimately decided that maybe telling stories about chickens, turkeys, and mice might be a necessary mental break for more than just myself. I hope I figure out a way to use Farmer-ish to help educate about self sufficiency and community, but maybe the stories are important too, just in a different kind of way.

This is Jeremiah. He’s all eyes and ears.

With that in mind, I have another mouse love story to share.

A little before Halloween, we lost Cynthia, Jeremiah’s true love. I was heartbroken, as was Jeremiah. He wouldn’t eat and just sat in the corner and slept most of the day for several days. The only good part of the ordeal was that Cynthia, thankfully, seemed to pass without suffering after the recovery she had made last time. I knew that we were going to have to get Jeremiah a new friend.

We decided to go on Halloween to Petco and find our next girl. I thought all fancy mice were white, but to my surprise, there were a few little female fancy mice this day that were brown or spotted brown and white. They looked like tiny little teddy bears, and I was super excited to get one of these girls.

We picked the one that seemed curious about us, and I told my son and his girlfriend to keep an eye on our girl while I went to get a worker to get her out of the cage. While the worker fished her out of the cage, we explained why we were getting her. We told him about Jeremiah, our rescued white footed deer mouse and how we had just lost Cynthia at 16 months. We told him how this mouse was going to live in a cage but would be spoiled with everything from fresh blueberries from the farm to organic popcorn and would get to live out her life.

That young man was so happy.

“They’re usually for food,” he said.

“I know it,” I replied. “This one is getting a reprieve.”

Since it was Halloween, we decided to name her Samhain (pronounced sow-in) after the Celtic end-of-harvest celebration on October 31.

When we took her in her little box to the check out, the young man who had been helping up followed us up to tell the ladies working at the front that this one was going to be a pet and not food. They were so happy.

“We never get to see one that isn’t for food,” the lady checking us out said.

“Do you want to see her? She’s so cute?” the young man offered to the ladies up front.

My cautious self was against this. I thought, if my little mouse escapes into this store and I lose her, I am going to be pretty mad. Thankfully, she did not escape, and the ladies oohed and ahhed over her. We were all joyous–the Petco workers, my son and his girlfriend, and myself. It was like we all needed a little joy.

And it was awesome to share that joy with people working in the store.

It was definitely less joyful getting her introduced to Jeremiah. I forgot the rule that they have to be introduced on neutral territory, and Jeremiah attacked little Samhain.

But I got her right out, kept her in a separate cage for a few days, and then followed the proper procedure of introducing them on neutral territory in a large box. It worked, and Samhain was able to move in with Jeremiah.

This is little Samhain, and I’m telling you pictures do not do her justice.

It was not like it was with Cynthia. I think, no I know, Jeremiah was still sad and missing Cynthia. He seemed to understand he was stuck with this mouse, but he took her food away from her for the whole first day and ignored her when she tried to play with him. Samhain would cry, and I am sure my giant human ears could only hear part of it.

I worried that Jeremiah would never fully accept Samhain; thankfully, he did.

A few days later, I saw that Samhain was giving Jeremiah a bath on his ears and head just like little Cynthia used to do, and Jeremiah seemed not to mind. He also quit taking her food. Every now and then, he still tries, but Samhain just takes it right back. Just like Cynthia, Samhain rally loves freshly popped popcorn and will not stand for that being taken from her.

It’s different though. Samhain has so much more energy than Cynthia, even when Cynthia was younger. Cynthia was just a chill personality. Samhain is not. She is all over the cage, all over the toys, all over the bridges. She is also bouncing off Jeremiah at times, and I can see on his face that he is not a fan.

But I can also see it’s better than being alone. They snuggle up to sleep and put their little arms around each other.

Ron said Jeremiah, who may live long enough to see three or four fancy mouse friends, is like the Highlander. Highlander has eternal life but has to experience the heartbreak of losing his loves over and over again. It’s interesting to think that, with Jeremiah, this tiny little creature I fed with a paintbrush before he could open his eyes, I share the grief of losing Cynthia.

We both mourn her and miss her, but we are both thankful for little Samhain. She has been bringing joy from the moment I met her, and every day, when I feed her and Jeremiah, she gets so excited and now lets me pet her more than a little bit, not as much as Jeremiah, but quite a bit. Mostly, I just sit and watch her and smile, and for a little bit, I forget how scary the world is.

Sending love.

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Happy New Year!

~ Crystal Sands ~ 4 Comments

“Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.”
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Friends, I just wanted to pop in and wish you all a very happy New Year’s Day! I am working on a post about rats, but I am still researching. Plus, it just seems wrong to spend New Year’s Day telling you all stories about rats. Those brilliant creatures were a burden on our farm in a big way in 2025, but I am not going to think about that right now.

I am going to think about the candles lit both inside and outside, the warm dinner we just had complete with our black eyed peas (If you are from the south, you will understand this. If you are not, please just know it’s about superstition and luck.) My son’s girlfriend and I are about to team up and take on my son and Ron in a game of Trivial Pursuit.

The ducks have had their peas. The chickens are tucked in, and the little ones are getting so big. Ron has carried each turkey to bed (a whole story I need to tell), and Boudica is outside barking for good measure right now. She has different barks, of course, and this one is for good measure. Bairre is there to assist. He loves this cold weather.

I hope you are all having a lovely start to your year. Please, oh please, say 2026 will be better. I think we might still have some struggles to face, but I hope will just continue to grow and learn and stick together.

Here’s to sticking together and remembering the wise words of Emerson, even in the hard times. Sending love, friends.

Blessings on this New Year’s Day!

photo credit: Danil Askenov, Unsplash

My Holiday Week in Pictures

~ Crystal Sands ~ 3 Comments

I hope you are having a restful holiday season. It has been quite the year for all of us, but here we are, figuring it out somehow, aren’t we?

It has been terribly, terribly cold here. We lost one of our young chickens, one of our two roosters, so that was a blow. I think it was mostly just unlucky genetics, but truly, it has been unusually cold unusually early here. I don’t think we have seen a December this cold since we started homesteading, so when we got baby chickens in August, we thought they would be plenty big before the bad cold hit. Of course, we thought wrong, and the cold has been hard on our little ones. They are fully feathered, but still.

The cold is hard on the young ones and the old ones. We mostly have the young ones and the old ones now, so Ron has been running the ceramic heater in the coop on the worst nights. I know you are not supposed to heat your coop, but we try to make careful exceptions to the rule.

On the bright side, it has been amazing for making ice lanterns, and I have made several. I have been using candle light both inside and outside to keep me in good spirits, and it has worked. I decided to take a lesson from the Nordic folk and just lean into the candlelight this year. It has been so helpful that I want to see if there is any science behind it.

I hope you are staying warm and cozy. It’s -1 here right now in our part of Maine, so I am doing my best. I hope you are doing your best wherever you are. I hope these photos make you smile. They are presented in random order with some random thoughts. I would love to see some of your holiday photos or at least hear some of your stories. Please share as well if you can!

I’ll start with Boudica. Here, she is asking me to come out to play in the snow, and I am telling her there is no way I am going out in that cold. I am telling her to come in the house and sit on the couch with me. She eventually came inside and slept next to me on the couch. She has been doing that a lot lately. Her tiredness worries me, but I am trying to treasure our snuggle time. She will be 10 this coming year.
I found out this year that I have a Jewish ancestor on my mom’s side, and I have always been so fascinated with Judaism and have studied a bit over the years. This year, I decided to try to learn how to celebrate Hanukkah officially, and my dear friend brought a menorah for me. I learned after this photo that you aren’t supposed to put all the candles in at once and that you burn the candles all the way down each night. I have much to learn, but this year, we celebrated Hanukkah, Yule, and Christmas, and it felt right to me. It seemed important to have all that focus on the light.
I was worried we were not going to have a Christmas tree this year. It was just a few days before Christmas, and I hoped a little tree from our property. It seems wrong to just cut down a tree for my own enjoyment, so I told Ron my idea of taking a tree from a patch of trees because they won’t all make it when they are too close. This tree has zero on the backside, but this side was perfect. I love her! We could not find a single tree stand for a live tree here in our part of Maine, so Ron bought a small bucket, filled it with rocks and water, and it worked! I was grateful.
The only perk I can see to this hard cold we have had this December is that I get to make ice lanterns. Aren’t they magnificent? If you live where it is cold you can make them too. I created directions for making them in the Winter Solstice issue of the journal.
I spent a good bit of this week making gifts for friends. This is one of the tiny Solstice cakes I made to share with others.
The tiny cake was inspired by this big cake. I make one every year and use the same snowmen candle holders every year.
I did my best at making a witch bowl candle, and it’s pretty good. However, I have much to learn. Hopefully, I will have them perfected by next year. They include oranges I dried plus cinnamon sticks, star anise, and whole cloves.
I also make these light balls made from Christmas lights and Solo cups. I gave this one to a dear friend to brighten her spirits. These balls of light are just lovely. I had hoped to make a bunch for our yard but rest took priority. Hopefully, next year, I can make more!
I made cranberry and popcorn strings for the turkeys on Christmas Eve. They loved them but not as much as they love Craisins (that’s a whole other story). The chickens LOVED theirs though, and that made my heart happy. The baby chickens were like, oh, we like popcorn!
This is my favorite stocking and favorite candle, so I felt they deserved a picture. Ron calls this candle my Ebenezer Scrooge candle. : )
It seemed proper to close my photos with one of Bairre on the couch on Christmas. He’s so happy when he’s on the pillows. Happy winter holidays, no matter what you celebrate, from all of us and Bairre. I hope you get some good rest like Bairre. He’s an expert at taking it easy.

First Snow

~ Crystal Sands ~ 1 Comment

Today was the first big snow for our turkeys and new chickens. The new chickens are still babies in spirit, even though some of them are about the same size as our smaller hens. They have grown up quickly, but they are a long way, every single one of them, from having a place in the flock that is anything other than the bottom.

I think a lot of people do not understand how important the social order is to chickens. They are so much like humans in this way. Because the young chickens are so far at the bottom of the pecking order, if they stay in the coop with the grumpy old hens, they will be bossed around and randomly pecked on the head from time to time all day long.

So, even in the cold and snow, they head outside.

I made sure I shoveled a good area near the covered dust bath, and as soon as I opened the door this morning for the flock to come outside, the little chickens made a beeline–at least most of them. A few of them were not happy with the snow on the ground, even though I had shoveled–and then swept with a broom–to do my best to get the snow clear.

(As an aside, as I type the words that I shoveled and then swept the ground with a broom to try to give my chickens dry earth, I realize that, tired as I am, I am willing to go a long way to give those chickens a good day).

One of the little Cuckoo Maran hens started her bee line and then suddenly froze. She realized she was in the snow, and then became paralyzed. She didn’t want to go forward or backwards. I watched her and realized I would have to carry her to her people, so I did. She normally makes a scene because she doesn’t like to be held. She got tired of it because I held her quite a bit as a baby. I have found over the years that the best way to have a hen let me hold her when she’s grown is to hold her a lot as a baby. Unfortunately for me, some of them still hate being held, no matter how hard I try. It’s a personality thing, but, of course, I try until they make it clear to me that they don’t want it. Then, I try to respect their wishes.

Ruby, for example, makes a full-on scene, scream and hollers and acts like I am killing her, when I have had to help her out of situations and hold her. The only exception was that time I found her stuck under the ramp of the coop. I still have no idea how she managed that, but she did let me help her out of that jam without making a scene that morning. Clara, on the other hand, always lets me hold her. She is a Lavender Orpington, and they are very sweet, chill birds. I can pick Clara up pretty much any time, and she goes right along with it. Interestingly, Clara is one of the few older hens who will hang out with the little ones. I wonder what that says about her.

Anyway, I took the little Cuckoo Maran (her name is Genevieve) to her fellow little people, and she was satisfied.

It is supposed to get down to -2 degrees Fahrenheit in the next few days, which is a bit of a rough temperature for early December around here. We are going to have to put loads of straw in the coop starting tomorrow.

The turkeys were very interesting with the snow. At first, they had a lot of hesitation. Well, I don’t think “hesitation” does justice to what they were. Turkeys feel everything so deeply, so they were really quite sad and seemed to be upset at us that this had happened. They moped quite a bit. I mean, you could literally see them moping about, so mistreated by us who allowed the snow to fall on the earth that they own because, rest assured, they own everything around here.

They eventually adjusted, however. We shoveled a path for them, but soon they were just out and about making their own paths. I think we got about 4 inches of snow, so the turkeys were able to walk through it–and they did. They were certainly more subdued today than usual, but mostly, they just went around as usual, barking at the FedEx delivery driver in fine form.

I got a little video of them this morning as I was wrapping up my part of the morning chores. I hope it makes you smile. I hate my voice, but this video made my heart so happy that I have to share it. https://youtube.com/shorts/bgjTrMPzcrE?si=RGyQMNGCmQqaodV9

The Turkey (and Happy Thanksgiving)

~ Crystal Sands ~ 1 Comment

More than ten years ago, I had just gotten chickens and had fallen madly in love with them. My son, just five years old at the time, was taking his first ever theater class for little kids. Everyone was guaranteed a part, and my son was a puppy in a production of Disney’s 101 Dalmatians.

One day, when we arrived at practice, I saw a Subaru in the parking lot with a personalized license plate–CHKNLADY. I have to meet that woman, I thought to myself. That evening, while sitting in the parent waiting room, I overheard a woman talking about her chickens and turkeys, so I had to ask if she was CHKNLADY. She was!

She was wonderful, and we had a lovely conversation about chickens that evening. She warned me though.

“Don’t ever get turkeys,” she said.

I asked her why, and she explained, “Let me put it this way. We got eight turkeys to raise for food. We planned to keep four for ourselves and then share the others with friends and family for the Thanksgiving holiday. We had no turkey at Thanksgiving, and instead, we have now eight turkeys that play soccer with my kids.”

Ten years later, I remembered that story but thought I was a hardened homesteader that had lost some of my sentimentality about raising animals for food. After all, I helped process many meat chickens and had come to accept it as a better way to eat meat. I thought we could be different than the CHKNLADY.

Our plan was to keep a small flock of one tom, four or five hens, and then raise turkeys for food, processing the toms as needed to feed our family and our Great Pyrenees. I have been paying about $125 every Thanksgiving for an organic, humanely-raised turkey. I thought we could surely do this ourselves.

What I have come to learn about turkeys has changed my life. Just as chickens changed my life when I got them more than ten years ago, the turkeys have had a profound impact on me. Not all of it is good because they can be exhausting. In comparison with chickens, they are difficult birds, but oh my gosh, they are magnificent! They hook you in, and you will do their bidding. Ron is their servant, and I am their assistant servant.

Since today is Thanksgiving, and our turkey named Thanksgiving is running around the yard, I thought I would write about what I have learned from these amazing creatures. I hope it doesn’t ruin your Thanksgiving. I am not against eating turkey. In fact, our hope is to hatch a few birds next year and work hard to ensure they do not imprint on us and then have a turkey next Thanksgiving.

Still, after getting to know these birds, I am definitely against the cheap birds in the grocery store because I know what kind of life they lived. If you can bear it today, please read what I have learned and make a plan to buy a humanely-raised turkey next year if you can. It will not be cheap, but if you can do it, it will be worth it.

Turkeys are majestic animals. There is a reason that Benjamin Franklin wrote they were “noble” and a “bird of courage” and a “true original native” of America.

And here are some things I have learned about them this year…

1. Turkeys imprint deeply.

It is difficult to care for baby turkeys. When they first hatch, if they do not have a mother, you have to teach them how to eat and drink–over and over. With baby chickens, you show them one time, and they are all set. It took me two to three days of constant feeding to get them where they could eat on their own. During that time, we bonded, and those babies imprinted on me. The bond just grew over the weeks because they demanded a lot of attention.

After about a month, I could no longer handle eight demanding little turkeys by myself, so Ron stepped in. They bonded so deeply with him too. These turkeys are difficult (see more thoughts below), but they love us, think we hung the moon, and are so sweet to us. This deep bond makes other aspects of raising turkeys more challenging, but I am in awe of the biology of it. It is a reminder of the bonds humans share with animals.

One way I know the bond is deep is that I can break up fights between the boys. I can get right down in the middle of these giant birds, little dinosaurs, just throwing down because the toms will seriously fight, and they will not hurt me. You can see they will be so angry at each other, but mama is sacred. No one hurts mama. This is the same for Ron. They love us so much.

*As an aside, we had three males and now have two. We had one male who was starting the trouble most frequently, and it was a devastating decision to make, but he left us no choice. Ron processed him last week, and the fighting has stopped. I will have to tell that story later. Maybe. It’s a hard one.

2. Turkeys are extremely social.

The turkeys do not just love us. They also have a love-hate relationship with each other. I think it’s more love, but they are very much like toddlers right now at just about eight months old. They have to be together though. If one of them gets separated, they will cry and cry until we go help them find their people. And they miss us terribly if we have to be away from the house during the day.

When we get home, they run up to us and click and chirp and the boys strut and show off. I tell the boys, “Oh, you are such a pretty boy,” and they immediately start putting on a show. They have done this since they were just tiny little babies strutting around in miniature.

3. Turkeys are extremely, extremely vocal but also communicate with color.

I’ll start with the vocal. I have never seen such vocal creatures. They talk constantly! And they have so many different ways of speaking. They are quick to let you know they are unhappy via their cries, but they click constantly to keep in contact with each other and have coos for talking sweet and a kind of curious coo when they see something in the sky, sometimes things I cannot see. And, of course, they gobble. The gobble is usually some kind of “out of sorts” expression. The first time they got in trouble from me was for picking on the ducks. I ran outside and grumped at all of them, and they just gobbled and gobbled about it.

But they also bark, like a dog that is a turkey. When someone comes to our house, they bark. If it’s someone they don’t know and that someone comes into our driveway, there will be braking plus gobbling. If the delivery people have to tell me something, I cannot hear a word they are saying. We have to stand in the driveway and yell over the turkeys. I always apologize.

The cutest thing is that they bark at the fence when people walk by, just like our Pyrenees. I do not know if this is usual or if this is behavior our turkeys learned from the dogs, but when someone is out on our country road for a walk, they will now not only be barked out by two Great Pyrenees, but a small flock of turkeys will bark and gobble at them. It’s so cute to see two dogs and then a row of turkeys lined up at the fence griping at our poor neighbors, who seem bemused but it all.

Interestingly, turkeys also communicate with the color of their heads. They change their head colors with their moods, much like octopuses, I suppose. They have three head colors–red, white, and blue–but there are a variety of shades in between that give you insights into what is going on in their little minds–and there is so much going on. The red means upset or excited, and the blues and whites are calmer. When we pet them, they turn blue and white. When they get dried cranberries in the mornings (they LOVE these), their heads are a combination of blue and red.

I am fascinated by all of it.

4. Turkeys are highly emotional creatures.

I had always heard and people continue to tell me that turkeys are mean. I can’t exactly disagree with this, but I also can’t agree with it either.

A few weeks ago, I was talking to our new doctor, who grew up on a farm, about our turkeys. He said he didn’t like turkeys because they are mean. I tilted my head and asked, “Are they though?” It was a question for myself as well because I can’t decide. The doctor looked at me with a look that said, “Yes, they are!”

I thought about that all day and evening, and the next morning, I saw the female turkeys chasing our blind duck, Anna Maria, doing their best to peck her on the head.

“Well, I guess they are mean,” I thought to myself.

I also thought back to the way the boys would sometimes gang up on Boudica and be mean to her. She is so deeply trained to care for the livestock that she just takes their abuse, but it breaks my heart.

However, in both of these cases, the turkeys have reasons for being “mean,” at least according to them. They are the most emotional creatures I have ever seen. They wear it all just right there for the world to see. There is no wall, no filter. If they feel something, they express it with vigor, like way too much vigor.

In Anna Maria’s case, I have seen her accidentally bump into the turkeys, as she is blind, and this offends the turkeys. I think it has taken them a bit to figure out she’s not meaning to confront them. And, in Boudica’s case, I think they get tired of her barking. In fact, Ron has said he’s certain of this.

I still side with Anna Maria and Boudica every time because, in my opinion, the turkeys are unreasonable, but I can see they don’t really mean to be. They are just really deep feelers who live honestly in their emotions.

I remember the first time I saw this in action. The turkeys were pretty young, just a couple months old, and I saw several of them sitting in a line on top of the duck house. I was just sitting out there chatting with them, when one of the boys pecked one of the girls on the head. The one he pecked is maybe the most intelligent of the five girls we have, and her face reveals a lot. I saw a look in her eye after she got pecked on the head, and I knew there was going to be trouble.

She was deeply offended and quite pissed. She tore into that boy like I couldn’t believe. She had his snood stretched out a mile. I went over to break it up and just couldn’t. I finally got the boy out of harm’s way, and that girl started attacking everyone else. She was not letting this go.

So I ended up having to pick her up and carry her around for about ten minutes. I could see she had calmed down, so I sat her down and hoped for the best. I am not kidding. She made a line for that boy and started attacking him again! It took me forever to calm her down, and I began to learn that turkeys are highly emotional creatures. They love big, and they fight big. And they are easily offended.

5. Turkeys are amazingly intelligent.

I think part of the reason turkeys are so easily offended is that they are highly intelligent. I have learned from the chickens and ducks and the most intelligent among them are almost always the most difficult to manage on a farm because they have opinions, and sometimes, those opinions are strong, and sometimes, those opinions differ from mine.

These animals are profoundly intelligent. They learn things quickly. They have amazing spatial awareness and understand either our language or tone of voice very, very well. When they get reprimanded, which is never more than us telling them “no” they can’t do something they want to do, such as eat from the bird feeders or be mean to the ducks, they cry and act sad and try to make up, especially to Ron. They desperately want to be in his good graces.

The best way I can describe these turkeys is that they are very similar to three year olds. They are smart enough to be terrors, are extremely self-centered, but are also so brilliant they are charming and interesting and really just absolutely fascinating creatures.

***

Truly, I feel like that just a fraction of what I could write about these amazing animals, who, somehow, are ugly in a way but, at the same time, breathtakingly beautiful. Maybe it’s their contradictions, so human like, that make me love them so.

One day, I will try to write more. I feel like I could write a 20 page essay on them, but who would want to read that? I hope this Thanksgiving ramble on the turkey was just right length. I hope you found it interesting and learned some things about turkeys.

And I hope you had a happy Thanksgiving.

An Update in Pictures

~ Crystal Sands ~ Leave a comment

I have been very busy with the animals. Cynthia passed away last week, and both Jeremiah and I were devastated. On Halloween, we went to Petco and purchased Jeremiah a new girl, but he was very upset about it. It took me a week, but Jeremiah and the new girl (named Samhain because that’s when we got her) are now living happily. I will have to share pictures and tell her story soon because Samhain is beautiful and is the same color as Jeremiah, even though she is a fancy mouse. I thought all fancy mice were white. Samhain looks like a cross between a mouse and a teddy bear.

Also, in the fall, male ducks always get too frisky, and our male duck, Spyro, injured Anna Maria pretty badly. It has been an epic few weeks of my working daily to keep Anna Maria safe and separate and healing. I am happy to report that she has healed and is able to sleep with the flock again. As you may remember, Anna Maria hates me on a regular day, but when she’s injured, she’s just on the edge and hates me extra.

Because I have also been sick due to a terrible flare of my autoimmune struggles, I was starting to wonder if I still had it in me to care for Anna Maria. But we did it! I am now back to just having to help her stay with the flock when she loses everyone because she’s blind. Just this morning, I picked her up when she got caught up in the turkeys and carried her to the rest of the ducks.

I held her like a baby over my shoulder and said, “I know you hate me, but I will love you until the day I die.” She can’t have too much longer in this world. She is moving more slowly and getting lost all the time. There must be something I am supposed to learn from my service to her. Maybe it’s just service. I am weary though. Thankfully, she is better again now.

And despite the challenges this fall, it has been a lovely harvest season. The baby chickens are good for my soul, and I love getting to know them. Ron has harvested so much good food from the garden. I made a ton of apple butter, finally mastered the cherry pie thanks to a cheat, and learned how to make homemade English muffins. It is more than a little joyful watching that dough puff up in the skillet.

I took some pictures of the baby chickens today, so I thought I would share an update of them along with a few pictures from around here. Wait until you see one of the male turkeys. Those turkeys are magnificent creatures!

This is my favorite baby. She is a Welsummer like our dear Rooster was. She lets me hold her still. When she was little, she was the only one who would come to me. I have no name for her yet. It has to be the best name. I wish to honor Rooster in some way, but that poor boy did not have a good name. Please help with ideas!
This is Bernice. She is the tiniest of all of the Delaware chickens we have, and she is so sweet. She likes to be wild and free though and will not let me hold her very much.
This is Pingvin. She is named for the Swedish word for penguin because she had a creamy white face when she was a baby and looked like a penguin. I spent the spring learning a little bit of Swedish. The main words that stuck were the words for bread, strawberry, thank you, you’re welcome, and penguin.
And this is Pumpkin, an old girl who came to visit with me while I took baby pictures this morning. She is about 7 years old and is the hen who disappeared for weeks and returned squawking outside our bedroom window one night in the middle of the night. Oh, I wish she could tell me her stories! She is just getting over a molt, so she looks a little worse for wear right now. What a magnificent girl she is!
These are the English muffins I learned how to make. They were inconsistent in thickness but consistent in their yumminess.
And look at this cauliflower harvest last week! I told Ron that October and November must be cauliflower’s favorite months. I have never seen him grow more beautiful cauliflower.
This beautiful boy shows out like this all the time. All three boys do. I learned they will not mate unless the females submit and allow it. So far, the hens seem like they won’t be ready until next spring, so the boys just walk around showing off like 80% of the day. I keep asking them if they get tired of it. I guess they just do not. What a beautiful boy! I have to write more about the turkeys. It’s hard though because they deserve much time and effort. I’ll just share this: Their heads change colors depending upon their mood. They have red, blue, white, and colors in between!
We had a banner harvest this year. We put up more food than ever, and the onions were so gorgeous this year. We keep learning a little more each year about how to put by food. The onions have been a staple for years, but they were so beautiful I had to share a picture of them in our cold room.
And definitely not least, this is the cherry pie I made. I cheated. I used the new Bonne Maman cherry pie filling, and now I can finally make a cherry pie. It’s still not as good as my grandmother’s though. Oh, to have her recipes!

Ruby and the Fall Babies

~ Crystal Sands ~ 2 Comments

I realize I haven’t written much since Rooster passed away. There was such a depression around here. I thought we were going to lose our other rooster, Dvorak. He was so down. He didn’t crow for weeks and just sat around with his head hanging low. I didn’t know if he was sick or if maybe he just had a broken heart like I did. I guess that was accurate because after at time, he started to crow again. He seems to be doing well now.

I am not sure what helped Dvorak’s depression, but mine wasn’t getting better on its own. Ron decided some baby chicks might help, and so we stayed up late one night and looked through the online catalog of a big hatchery. So late in the season, there were not a lot of options, but he wanted dual purpose birds while I wanted heritage. I wasn’t sure if we were really going to order them because we have been trying to downsize for a couple of years, but I guess a couple of years without baby chicks was too much for Ron too because, the next day, he told me he had placed the order.

We got nine Delawares (an old-timey, dual purpose bird), two Cuckoo Marans (a French heritage bird that lays dark brown eggs), two Welsummers (a heritage bird and the same breed as our beloved Rooster), and two blue Ameraucanas (not heritage but beautiful birds with a blue tint to the feathers; they lay blue eggs).

These birds are gorgeous–all of them.

The first couple of weeks we had them, I was working a lot and really sick. I did not get to enjoy them nearly as much as I had hoped, but I started to get better and was able to spend more time with them. I am getting to know them all now, and they are magnificent because of course they are.

But the most interesting thing about getting these babies is Ruby’s reaction to them.

Last year, we did not let Ruby raise babies when she went broody. She was always the most fierce mama and so quick to go broody. She loved being a mama and would spend the whole summer raising babies and then would just go broody again, but downsizing meant no babies for Ruby. This year, Ruby did not go broody. I assume it’s because of her likely ovarian cancer but maybe also because she’s getting older.

Either way, I was thinking just a month or so ago as I looked down at a poop Ruby had left in the garage–a poop that is the calling card of the ovarian cancer–that I have to treasure every day I have left with Ruby. Every day.

I am happy to report that Ruby is treasuring every day too.

When we put the babies in the brood box in the garage, Ruby would visit with them every morning. She watched them through the window and would make noises at them. They, of course, adored her, but Ruby would get busy and go on about her day after a while.

However, when we put the babies into a small fenced area connected to the main chicken yard, Ruby went to work. She would sit the babies for hours. She would show them how to scratch through the fence. The best thing was listening to her make mama noises at them. Ruby is so fantastic. Both Kate and Juliet run around the driveway too. but neither of them seem to care one bit about those babies. Ruby loves them.

Just today Ron was outside making kindling when he popped into the house to tell me a Ruby story.

He said she was scratching at the earth, working hard to get something. She was making all kinds of mama tidbitting noises. The babies were waiting through the fence to see wha she would come up with. Ron said, when she got whatever it was she got, she threw it through the fence with her beak, and one of the babies ate it!

How fantastic is that?

I want to let the babies out to be with her more, but there are too many. Plus, Ruby doesn’t seem interested in full-time care. Still, the fall babies are getting big, and after Halloween, they will go into the big run with everyone else.

I can’t wait to see what Ruby does.

A Mouse Love Story

~ Crystal Sands ~ 6 Comments

In May of 2024, my son rescued a tiny deer mouse with eyes still closed. It was after a big storm had blown through our area, and there, partially in a puddle in our driveway, was a tiny white-footed deer mouse.

My son had just been diagnosed with long COVID, so when he brought the tiny mouse inside in a shoe box, I told him it would be too much work and that he should put the mouse back, near where he found him. “Maybe the mama will come find him somehow,” I said. “But we don’t need another animal.”

My son didn’t say much, but that night, after I went to bed, I heard the blender going. I got up, went downstairs to the kitchen, and there was my son “making a mouse formula” from the recipe he found on the internet. The shoe box was sitting on the kitchen counter, and I hung my head because I knew what we were doing.

I looked in the box, and I could see why my son insisted on rescuing this little baby. It was so tiny and barely moving. I thought it was so likely to die but understood the need to try. We started researching and estimated the mouse to be about 9 days old. I told my son he would have to get up every two to three hours to feed the mouse, and he agreed. I was so worried about this because my son was so sick, but my son did it. The next morning, the mouse, with eyes still closed, was moving around better and liked to be held already.

After that first night, I agreed to take turns on the shifts to allow my son to get some rest. It was during those shifts that I fell deeply in love with this little mouse. We fed him goat milk and homemade formula from a paint brush. When that little baby (my son named him Jeremiah) opened his eyes and looked at me, I was in so much trouble.

But this is not that love story.

We learned from our research that a lone deer mouse will be too lonely. The. best way to give Jeremiah a companion was to go to the pet store and buy a fancy mouse, in particular a female because they would get along better. And because a deer mouse and a fancy mouse are different species, they cannot breed. I checked this about a thousand times and from like a hundred sources. I did not want mouse babies.

My son and I went to the store and bought Cynthia. She was a tiny little thing and so beautiful. But when we brought her home, Jeremiah was terrified. He ran up my arm, shaking, and hid in my sleeve. I drug him out and put him in the cage with Cynthia, only I put a clear plastic divider between them, so they could meet without having to actually touch each other.

The next morning, I found them sleeping side by side against the divider, and I figured I could take out the divider. I did, and Jeremiah and Cynthia fell in love. Jeremiah will usually share his food with her, which is saying something because he’s a foodie and a hoarder, and Cynthia gives Jeremiah baths. They cuddle up all the time and are the best of friends.

I love to study their differences. Cynthia has small eyes, a small head, and is all body. Meant for pet food, I am thankful to know her and thankful we saved her from a different fate. She is the sweetest creature and lets me pet her more than Jeremiah does now. She doesn’t store food like Jeremiah. She lives in the moment.

Jeremiah is all eyes and ears and head. His proportions are so different from hers. He’s sweet but wilder and loves to play and play and play. He also loves to hoard. He eats a little and stores a lot from his dinner every night. I always find a giant stash of nuts when I clean the cage, which makes Jeremiah panic. He hates when I take his stash, but I always give him more to start a new one.

Sadly, Cynthia’s life will be much shorter than Jeremiah’s. While a deer mouse in captivity can live 4 to 5 years, sometimes even more, a fancy mouse lives 12-18 months in most cases. Cynthia is 16 months old. A couple of weeks ago, I thought we were going to lose her.

She has been having health problems off and on all summer, but two weeks ago, I thought we had surely come to the end. Her abdomen was bloated terribly, like really terribly, and she was struggling with her breathing. I could see from the look in her eyes that she was really struggling. I read that the issue was likely tumors in her abdomen and that this happens near the end of a fancy mouse’s life. There is nothing that can be done. I also spent time researching the most humane way to kill a suffering mouse. Interestingly, it is what I thought it would be and what we do for other animals on the farm, but oh my gosh, I couldn’t do it.

On the second day of her being in terrible shape, I told Ron that I wanted to give her one more day, just in case. During her days of suffering, Jeremiah never left her side. Jeremiah was definitely the reason I said to give her one more day. He is usually wild and bouncy and plays in the wheels in their cage, bouncing from one to the other, but he was very serious about Cynthia. I checked on her about ten times a day, and every time I was in there, he was with her looking so very worried. He had his little head on her head and seemed so distraught.

I was so very worried.

I told my son we would likely have to get Jeremiah a new girl soon. My son said his goodbyes to Cynthia the night before the third day. I did as well.

And, the next morning, as soon as Ron had time after morning chores, he found a little box to put her in, and we went to the cage to get her to end her pain. It was a devastating feeling.

But, there, walking slowly but looking about half the size she looked the night before, Cynthia looked at us with bright eyes for the first time in days. She was walking, was not nearly so bloated and swollen, and you could see in her eyes that she felt better. Ron and I were both shocked! I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

“I think that was Jeremiah’s magic,” I said. “I think he willed her to get better.”

Then, I thought about the word “magic” and said, “Love is really the magic, isn’t it?

People don’t believe in magic, but I have seen miracles in the name of love. Maybe that’s the magic we have as creatures. I have to remember that.

Today, Cynthia is doing very well. She loves popcorn, so she had her popcorn last night. Jeremiah is back to his usual self. He’s busy stashing food and bouncing around.

I have no idea how much longer Cynthia has. I assume it can’t be more than a month or two, but I am so moved by the love story between those two mice from two different worlds that I just had to share. Love is so powerful, more powerful than the dark. We have to remember that.

Sending love to you all!