Rebuild from Depression Blog

We live on about five acres on the southern edge of the Sequoia National Forest. We make up for in land what we lack in convenience. We are an hour from any major supermarket and so we need to have our meals planned. We rely on foods available in our freezer and on our property.

Fresh eggs are a big part of our plan.

We have a chicken coop with an enclosed chicken yard but on most days we open the coop and allow the chickens free reign of the property. At night, they head back to the coop to roost and we lock them up to protect them from predators.

But in the country chickens are easy pickings for wild animals. We have lost a number of hens to wildlife during the day time. We lost a hen to illness and we have lost one to a night time predator when we forgot to close the door to their coop. Just this week our flock went from eight hens to six. A flock of thirteen hens over two years ago has turned into six. It's time to restock.

We had planned to order various exotic breeds for our next batch of hens, but the loss of one-quarter of our flock this week sent us down to Porterville Feed for a batch of chicks. We hit the store tonight and bought most of their final batch of chicks for the season. We have ten Rhode Island Reds and ten Barred Rocks.

The chicks rode in a box in the back seat next to Frederick's car seat. As we drove home listening to Ella Fitzgerald and peeping chicks, Frederick said "Mama, do you think the chicks are singing to the music?"

Our new chicks have first-class accommodations here at Hilltop House. Chicks are very sensitive to cold and nature intended them to stay with their mothers who would transfer her body heat to them. When you buy a passel of chicks in early November in particular, you could have a rather long time of babying them to make sure they stay healthy.

Frederick's suggestion was that our current batch of six hens could be their mamas. I tried to explain that they likely have other interests. We could have also opted to keep them in the bathtub for a few days under a heat lamp. This is what we did with the first batch of chicks in my household growing up. They literally lived in the bathtub for a couple of days until their accommodations were ready. I have found memories of the chicks in the bathtub but I was about seven years old. Thirty years later, I am much less impressed.

What we opted to do was move a large chicken cage inside, fill it with leaves, put a lamp on top, and cover the whole business with a blanket and towels. It looks terrible but we have a very large house and anyone bothered by the zoo inside our house can go into other rooms. My son checks them throughout the day so they serve a bit of a role in providing child care. And anyone worried about the possible house fire due to the blankets over the lamp-it has crossed my mind as well. Various connectors don't touch the blankets so our risk is reduced somewhat.

As these chicks become chickens, they will provide us with our own source of free-range eggs, rich in Omega-3 fatty acids. The eggs are nature's own depression-busting foods, good for breakfast, good in casseroles, and exceptional in dessert. Read my article on Omega-3s and eggs.

Stay out of the garden. Stay off of the porch. If you can't find another home, you will soon be dinner. You are a depression buster food, after all.

In early 2006, Michael Moore put out a call for stories about the health care industry for his documentary Sicko. While I didn't have a specular story (thank goodness), the email hit me at the right time and it inspired an email campaign to Michael Moore. I'm sure that wine was involved (not the best thing for a person to be drinking who is rebuilding from depression) but I am not sure how else to explain my willingness to beat on a rabbit.

This one is from some time in early February:

Hi Michael.

I intended to write to you back in the early 90s with a marriage proposal after seeing "Roger and Me." Apparently I was too busy with college to follow through. But we're both married now (and perhaps you were then), so I write to you some 15 years later in response to your request for "Sicko" content.

I have a pretty compelling story about what the health care industry should be providing but it isn't because it is making too much money by not providing it.

Below is a draft of an article I am working on for a magazine and it will give you the flavor of what I am talking about. It begins "My grandmother died at the age of 61 of complications from postpartum depression."

Read it for old-times sake.

The article content comes from a book I am writing about depression. (I'll send you a copy in a few months.) It provides medical research on the link between nutrients and depression. Things like zinc and magnesium are at least as therapeutic for depression as pharmaceutical options, they just take a while to correct.

And if I don't make it into "Sicko" based on this content, perhaps you could squeeze me in for a cameo. I would be happy to color-analyze you incorrectly or beat on a rabbit or two for old-times sake.

Send my best to your wife.

Amanda

Perhaps our craftsman home designed by architect Irving Gill was not meant to be a chicken coop.

Perhaps your mother has never told you, so let me tell you in case you did not know: raising chicks in your house creates very bad indoor air.

My poor husband Sander has an office next to the porch room where the chicks were living and he has lung problems. It's a bad combination.

Researchers are concerned about indoor air. The air in most of our homes is of poorer quality than the air in Los Angeles on bad days. That's not good. Fumes seep from glues in particle board and other manufactured lumber. Vinyl floors and carpet fibers emit fumes. Carpet glue and carpet pads emit fumes. Animal dander irritates our skin and our respiratory system. All of these irritants must be processed by our body and filtered out. That filtration system requires nutrients.

Chick dander doesn't make the list of scientific studies because most people put the chicks outside in a chicken coop. That's a real good idea. I am not sure how much B-6 or B-12 I've burned through with this chicken dander, but the chicks are moved out now into their permanent home. They will be a bit cold, but Sander will breathe a whole lot better and the house already smells a lot less rangy.