a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

Month: July 2014

  • What’s Old Is New Again

    PitchForkA

    From the The Farmer’s Friend at the Bow Little Market, I purchased this old pitchfork. It should come in handy for cleaning the chicken roosts, turning compost, and gathering hay. The only mark on it is “I-D-L Top” stamped on the handle. There are no manufacturer’s mark on the tines

    Even though I’m calling it a pitch fork, it may be a dung fork.

    Pitchforks typically have only two, three or four tines while dung forks have four or five, other types of fork even up to ten tines with different lengths and spacing depending on purpose (Pitchfork – Wikipedia).

    It could also be a straw or silage fork.

    The number of tines would mostly depend on personal preference and the job it is being used for. Over the years most forks have been made with two to five tines. The two and three tines forks (the ones most commonly referred to as pitchforks) were used for loose hay, straw, and bundles of grain. In fact they are sometimes referred to as bundle forks. The four and five tine forks are in fact manure forks and were made for that purpose. Other forks of six or more tines have been made for silage, potatoes, beets, etc. Even saw one listed as a compost fork recently (hobartwelders.com).

    PitchForkB

    In any case, the fork is now back at work, helping out at a man and his hoe®.

  • Early Morning Salad Picking

    MorningFlowers140731A

    On an early, Thursday morning, it’s time to pick greens for Tweets Café. There’s always time to enjoy the flowers on the way to the salad rows.

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    The baby kale are perfect for picking today. Light green on top, a soft purple underneath, they will make great salads this weekend.

    MorningFlowers140731E

  • A Chicken and a Snake

    Chickens are like ground vultures. They will scarf most any corpse they encounter, even a snake. A chicken has found a dead snake and the race is on to find a quiet spot where she can feast on it without being disturbed by the other chickens.

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    So would a chicken kill a snake? Some chickens do. Chickens are accomplished hunters. If they see something small and moving, they won’t hesitate to nab it with their beak. They can move with astonishing speed. These descendants of dinosaurs are formidable. If you close your eyes when they scream, you can hear a Velociraptor screaming.

  • The Cows I Love

    CowsOnPasture

    Biking to the post office this afternoon I saw that the cows I love were back in the main pasture. After disappearing early this year, I learned that the farmer has cancer and that the cows were at his brother’s place. They returned in June and have been grazing the pasture on the other side of the barn. Today they are back on the main pasture near the road.

    I stopped to enjoy them and the calves were curious as to what or who I was. Cows are very aware of their surroundings. You can’t sneak up on a cow. And as peaceful as they seem, cows are very strong and deserve respect. On Monday, a herd of 20 cows in Austria killed a German hiker. Evidently the cows were upset at her dog and rushed her.

    Just like a mother hen, a mother cow will do most anything to protect her calves if she feels they are threatened.

  • Butterball Mothers

    Mother hens fluff their feathers when they sense danger. They can appear to be twice their normal size. When they fan out their tail feathers, they look like turkeys. This behavior begins before the chicks are hatched. A sure sign a hen is sitting on eggs to hatch, is when she goes around fluffing her feathers.

    ButterBall1
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    The whole brood takes a break when mother takes a dust bath. A chick’s day is punctuated with frequent breaks: dust baths with mom, warm naps in her feathers, lazy time in the sun.

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