These happy chicks are three days old today. Ever since they hatched, they have been showered with love and attention 24 hours a day. They are now well bonded with their mother and stay close to her, watching her every move, and mimicking what she does.
Swift Forktails
One of the hoop houses has a healthy population of Swift Forktails, a type of damselfly. Swift Forktails are black with dabs of turquoise on the tips of their tails and their sides. They float through the air looking like flying gems.
Related to dragonflies, damselflies eat many harmful insects and keep their numbers under control. And unlike pesticides, they don’t leave behind any chemicals that can harm you. You don’t have to worry about inhaling any harmful dust. You don’t have to worry about reapplying poisons. The damselflies will keep working all summer long and into the fall.
Summer Blooms
I enjoy these hydrangea. Instead of blooming all at once, they open slowly, a few flowers at a time, which means they stay in bloom a long time.
A Mother’s Love
These chicks, hatched yesterday, are getting a lesson about drinking from their attentive mother. Little chicks are very curious. They look at everything with wide eyes, but they stay close to their mother.
New Life
The web is littered with videos showing the horrendous treatment many chickens receive on industrial farms. Here are some pictures of mother hens and their chicks which hatched earlier today. Rest assured, there are a few places where chicks are still hatched by their mothers and grow up knowing the loving care of those mothers.
Beauty of Vegetables
Heading out to take some pictures of carrot flowers, I pause for a moment at one of the rhubarb plants. I find a calm forest underneath their expansive leaves.
Next to the blooming carrots, a raspberry has fallen into the crevice of a squash leaf.
Carrot flowers are spectacular, lacy creations. It would take a human with very nimble fingers hours and hours of delicate work to recreate a flowerhead like this. But carrots seem to do it effortlessly. They send up tall flower stalks and over a period of time these exquisite flowerheads simply unfold. They start out simple and get more and more complicated until they are in full bloom.
The next time you bite into a carrot, take delight in knowing that the seed for that carrot came from a beautiful flower.
A red soldier beetle feeds on the nectar and pollen of the carrot flowers. Like many beneficial insects, even though this soldier beetle also eats aphids and other insects, it also needs the nectar and pollen of flowers. Which is why it is so important to have plenty of flowers. Instead of using poisons to manage pests, turn to flowers instead, and use the flowers to attract the insects which will manage the pests for you. The bees, the wasps, the other insects, the plants, the field mice, the earthworms and other organisms in the soil will all thank you for keeping your bit of earth free of pesticides.
- The Importance of Herbs
- Biodiversity and Insect Pests
- Soldier Beetle ~ InsectIdentification.org
- Soldier Beetle ~ Wikipedia
- Soldier Beetle Facts: Attract This Bustling Beneficial ~ Mother Earth News
- Red soldier beetle ~ BugGuide.net
- Soldier beetles, leather-winged beetles ~ UC Davis
The Art of Baking
The bread dough’s been sitting all night long. This morning it’s time to put it in the oven, and while it’s baking, to make a batch of oatcakes.
There is a simple beauty to baked goods as they rest on a cooling rack. An ephemeral beauty, this scene won’t last but for a short time. Life is like that, creating one fleeting piece of art after another. At times it feels like I’m racing through an art museum all day long, spending a few minutes enjoying one piece of art after another, pieces of art which are gone forever shortly after viewing.
BFFN – Best Friends for Now
Back in March, these roosters had just hatched. Back then, they were little fluff balls, snuggled together under their mother. Now they are more than three months old and well on their way to becoming mature roosters.
As they become teenagers and young adults, roosters like to hang out together. Get too many of them in a group, and they can turn into roving teenage gang bangers. In groups of two to three, they mind their manners and are best friends for now. Single young roosters who don’t have any rooster siblings, may pal around with an adult rooster for company.
Eventually, as they get closer to being a year old, they start to assert themselves and their bffns turn into rivals.
Forest Birds
My chickens spend a lot of time in the forest. It’s where there ancestors came from. It’s where the mothers like to take their chicks. Hidden in the brush, they must feel safe from predators. They seem to find lots to eat by scratching through the forest floor.
Below are two month old siblings. Once their mother leaves them, chicks hang out with their siblings. These are bonds which will endure for a long time. The wire fence gives the impression that they are caged. The wire fence is the dog kennel which is open most of the time. The chickens are free to come and go through the kennel. They can also fly out of the kennel if it is closed.
How a Mother Hen Protects Her Chicks : May 4
Just Three Days Old and All This Fun : May 1
Teaching Them to Feed : Apil 29
The two mothers jointly raising the two chicks are getting along pretty well. The chicks have bonded with both mothers and go freely between the two.
See also:
Importance of Love
Summer Musings
More on the Interracial Lesbian Moms
Interracial Lesbian Mothers
Two Mother Hens
Picked Today
It’s Thursday, time to deliver eggs and produce picked this morning to Tweets Café. This week I have three cartons of Ruby Streaks, a carton of kale and chard, and some shallots, and of course eggs. In few weeks I’ll start making an extra delivery of fresh salad greens to Tweets on Saturday. Eventually, I plan on delivering fresh salad greens every day they are open and expanding my service to other restaurants which want to serve their customers produce picked that day.
On the way home, I dropped by Bow Little Market, a country market held on Thursdays in Belfast, Washington. This is the fifth year for the market and it has grown a lot since it first began.
Bow Little Market was started by Chuckanut Transition, “a group of rural, independent and capable people learning to live cooperatively with each other and our natural world.”
Bow Little Market is held next to Belfast Feed Store, on North Green Road near the intersection of Old Highway 99 and Bow Hill Road. The nearest freeway exit is exit 236 on I-5 north of Burlington, WA.
