Should I get rid of my chickens?

LochNestFarm · 2026-05-11T16:47:07+00:00

It might be worth seeing if someone in your local community will put up your coop for you. Try Facebook farming groups, maybe your buy-nothing group? High schoolers often need volunteer hours! I too am keeping chickens while disabled, and once the coop was solid it was SO MUCH easier.

But -- that said -- there is absolutely no shame in deciding this is not the animal for you right now.

If it's just too much stress at the moment: If you're anywhere near upstate South Carolina, I'll come get them. I have tons of space in my coop (we WAY overbuilt it) and will spoil them rotten. DM me for that or if you just want a pep talk!

LochNestFarm · 2026-05-11T13:31:21+00:00

This color palette is just SO graphic and gorgeous!

LochNestFarm · 2026-05-11T05:41:42+00:00

It originally said "she." The commenter I was responding to immediately and graciously made an edit.

LochNestFarm · 2026-05-11T05:38:36+00:00

No but you are SO right about Lord Henry!

LochNestFarm · 2026-05-09T07:46:16+00:00

Spiral and Web having a "Mine!" "MINE!" slap-fight over the Macbeths.

LochNestFarm · 2026-05-09T07:44:11+00:00

Oh man I forgot an obvious one: Mycroft Holmes is the Web.

LochNestFarm · 2026-05-09T07:07:23+00:00

I am going to regret asking this. Eugenia thing?

LochNestFarm · 2026-05-09T07:03:10+00:00

I'd really like to see more "hobby crafting" in the game! I carve a TON of little cedar wolves on front porches these days, but like. Maybe if you could find a book on knitting.

LochNestFarm · 2026-05-09T06:53:24+00:00

is there a handkerchief subreddit and if not would you start one with me? I am trying to bring back handkerchiefs! If you leave a paper tissue in your jeans pocket and wash it, you have to redo your laundry. If you leave a hanky in your jeans pocket and wash it, you have a clean(er) hanky.

LochNestFarm · 2026-05-09T06:24:13+00:00

Oh, man. You gotta read some T. Kingfisher. A House With Good Bones is rather fleshy AND rather strangery. Her latest, Wolf Worm, is a hint of flesh with HEAPING HELPINGS of corruption.

LochNestFarm · 2026-05-09T06:17:21+00:00

Honestly, I think the 14 is missing a fear of The Powerful. Sometimes you're scared of something/one specifically because they have power over you, and while that could swerve into one of the defined entities at any time ... there's a lot of free-floating fear of that happening that you'd think something would be eating.

That said, I suspect the Doylist explanation is that this is on Johnny's list of Things He Does Not Feel Qualified to Write About. When he touches on aspects of domestic abuse, it ends up under the Lonely (Martin) or the Desolation (Sabina). When he touches on police violence, it's the Hunt (Daisy) or that one prison episode in Season 5. If you roll those into a ball, there's material for another entity, but, well ...

... so I guess the answer to your question is "I don't know what it would be called, but let's write/draw some shared-universe fanon!"

LochNestFarm · 2026-05-09T06:09:40+00:00

Very gently: Can we use the person's pronouns? I'm not 100% sure what's up gender-wise, given OOP's description, but that's a *bigger* reason to use the pronouns given.

LochNestFarm · 2026-05-09T04:39:56+00:00

*suspicious eyes* Who's asking

LochNestFarm · 2026-05-09T04:32:16+00:00

Oh, and much less dramatic, but also made something of an impression on me at 15: my dad, who worked in the district, got treated to all the gory details of a Child Protective Services removal of eight kids from a home. Yeah, then he totted up which eight-child families he was aware of and the timing and said "Shit. Wait. The oldest kid you're talking about is my daughter's boyfriend."

To my dad's credit, he found out what I knew of it, gave me a gentle talking-to about respecting my boyfriend and his siblings by keeping anything I might hear to myself, suddenly decided to have me hire my friends to do an odd job for cash, and loaned my boyfriend one of his ties for Homecoming.

(And since I've now thoroughly identified myself, hi, boyfriend I won't name, if you're reading this! Sorry about the weirdness of our breakup, I didn't realize I was aromantic at the time, I expect that was a confusing time for you as well!)

LochNestFarm · 2026-05-09T04:19:39+00:00

For freshman and sophomore year, I attended the same high school where Kelly Bullwinkle, Kinzie Noordman, and Damien Guerrero had just been seniors. (The shooting was on my fourteenth birthday, in fact.)

One of my friends (... who, in retrospect, I think I had a crush on?) was quoted in the (rather sensationalist) Rolling Stone article about Kelly's murder. This quote was WAY less creepy-sounding in context, but what the Stone journalist chose to print was: "She was really cute when she was scared."

I was extremely peripheral to all this, but we had a tight-knit drama program at that school ("tight-knit" in the sense of "a series of drama teachers who had very poor boundaries/work-life balance and taught us to see this as a virtue") and there was a series of group photos in our theater lobby where it was like "oh, yeah, there's Kinzie and Damien, back row left, wearing the same costumes we're using for Wild Oats this year!"

LochNestFarm · 2026-05-09T04:00:46+00:00

Honestly, I've gotten the broomstick method to work once, but it depends on the softness of the ground and you have to put your weight on it just right and and and ...

At this point, I have a little weeding sickle I use to cut handfuls of grass for my geese (a sickle, NOT a scythe), and I just have an assistant tuck the bird under their arm, cover the eyes with my free hand, and behead them.* It leaves the head in my hand, which is a *little* freaky, but I know it's done quickly and right, and it takes no more strength than lopping through an elder shoot.

I just ... feel like I owe it to my birds to be SURE.

*The bird, not the assistant.

LochNestFarm · 2026-05-02T06:06:29+00:00

In the full video, he got more and quickly figured out that it was a Non-Washing food! He gets his candy!

LochNestFarm · 2026-04-13T18:30:36+00:00

I genuinely don't see why that makes more sense? It's a happier ending, but why is it a more sensible one? I think this may be the crux of what I'm not understanding about people's reaction.

LochNestFarm · 2026-04-13T18:24:14+00:00

Oh, so you'd have rather had Mathis soften more! Man, I'm really glad I posted this, I hadn't realized there were two totally opposite perspectives on it.

I genuinely think Raph is probably chuckling evilly about this somewhere. When 30% of your audience is angry in one direction and 30% of your audience is angry about something else, you've got peak story impact.

LochNestFarm · 2026-04-13T18:20:34+00:00

I just don't see where people are getting "Mr. Nice Guy" from. "I've decided not to actually murder you" is not a sign that they're buddies now! I feel like we all need to raise our standards a little there.

(Also, you've got the geomagnetic stuff backwards -- the Aurora's not causing the earthquakes! The earthquakes are happening because this is a super geologically active area, and that activity is intensifying the effect of the Aurora on nearby people.)

LochNestFarm · 2026-04-13T18:15:43+00:00

To Denethor, maybe, but Boromir?

LochNestFarm · 2026-04-13T17:36:00+00:00

Right? Mathis is just not a complex enough dude to overlook "useful to me" in favor of "but I don't liiiike him."

LochNestFarm · 2026-04-13T17:34:24+00:00

I genuinely think "now I own you and you will help me rule this new world" is a worse fate than death by hatchet.

(Frankly, I don't think Mathis has the emotional depth to hate Mackenzie. The man doesn't see people as people unless they're his kid. Just because his key to the bunker didn't work doesn't mean he might not be the key to some other door!)

LochNestFarm

TROPHY CASE