Berry season is fast approaching. Salmon berries are starting to turn golden. Thimble berries are taking shape and will be turning red in a few weeks. Raspberries are just about ready to be picked. Berries make the long, wet winter worth enduring.
Month: June 2014
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Upcoming Berry Season
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Chickens Travel …
The mother hen with the eight chicks, who are now forty-one days old, is walking them through lawn and brush some 250 to 300 feet from the little barn they roost in at night.
How far does she take them each day? Thinking about all the different places I see her and her chicks in the course of a day, one of the grand circuits she makes can run from a quarter to a third of a mile. It wouldn’t surprise me if she took her chicks up to a mile in a single day. For a animal that weighs one thirtieth what a human weighs, that is a long distance to travel every day.
Along the way they encounter all sorts of plants and bugs and animals. Sometimes they are out in the bright sunshine on grass. Other times they are in thick brush. At times they are in forest. Chickens are rarely still for long times. These are animals with a mission. Set them free to live surrounded by nature, and they will thrive.
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40 Days of Love and Care
After forty days, the chicks are too big to all sleep under their mother. In the evening they crowd around her, but not for too much longer. She’s done a great job raising them. Another two to three weeks and they will be on their own. It’s fun looking back to see how they grew up.
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It’s Hard to Have a Bad Day When …
A favorite saying of mine is Yunmen’s words, “Every day is a good day 是是良日.” It’s hard to have a bad day when it starts by discovering a nearly-ripe raspberry. More-than-we-can-eat supplies of raspberries are around the corner.
And it’s hard to have a bad day when your bicycle ride back from your post office is as beautiful as mine. The rest of the photos on this page are of places I pedal by on my way home from our post office. For a June day, a sky this blue is something people throw virgins into volcanoes for. Most years, June is a month to be endured under slate-colored, sodden skies. Usually we don’t see this amount of blue until mid July. About now, we are scraping the moss out of our hair and between our toes. Not this year.
The hay fields are ready for cutting. At this rate, the cows will be happy all winter long.
This afternoon, it is the bees who are gorging. I pass this climbing hydrangea nearly every day. It is in full bloom and buzzing with bees. Today I had to stop and enjoy it for a few minutes. May you live in even more beautiful surroundings than I do.
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On the Board Today – June 5, 2014
Greens for this evening’s meal include young onions, chrysanthemum greens, lettuce, and arugula. Vegetables are best eaten as soon as they are picked, and yet few live in an environment where that is possible. If you can step outside your door and harvest the produce for your meal, consider yourself infinitely blessed.
