a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

Month: December 2014

Happiness is Greens in December

Despite the hard freezes of last week, the lettuce in the hoop house is doing well. What’s not to smile about when there are fresh greens for lunch? For Miasa and her growing chicks, happiness is a feeder full of grain.

Happiness is finding a few last beans while pulling the vines off the trellises the beans grew on during the summer. Unwrapping the vines makes you wonder why the beans do what they do. They grow vigorously, wrapping endlessly around anything that will take them higher and higher. Then they flower, grow plump white beans, and die. I’m glad they do it. The beans are wonderful. But what’s in it for the beans? Are they happy while the grow? Are they competing with each other to see who can put out the most beautiful blossoms, the biggest leaves, the longest vines, the fattest beans? Only the beans know.

December 10, 2014
Camouflage

The winds are howling this morning. We woke up to a morning, warmer than most summer mornings. A quick check showed that it was as warm here at 8 a.m. as it was in Phoenix, a balmy 58ºF. It’s most unlike a December morning. But Miasa’s chicks aren’t concerned. They scurry about among the fallen leaves, perfectly camouflaged. When they sit still, you can’t even seen them, except when they poke their heads up to see where their mother is.

December 9, 2014
Spring in December

Is winter over before it even started? One of the forsythias has started to bud out. Usually the forsythia don’t bloom until the end of January or early February. Chickens love eating many kinds of flowers. In the spring, fallen cherry blossom petals are their favorite. Will they eat these forsythia too?

December 8, 2014
An Unmatch of Wits

If only dogs had wings, great blue herons would be no match for them. But they don’t, so all they can do is sit, and stare, and bark at the big bird sitting high in the trees. The herons will sit and wait, one hour, two hours, as long as it takes for the dogs to give up in frustration, and leave them be, so they can swoop silently down to the banks of the pond to fish.

The herons have great patience. They need it to be good fishers. They can stand in the water, as still as statues, until a hapless fish swims too close, and they stab it with their long beaks.

I dread to think what would happen if the dogs ever caught a heron. A few times they have come close.

December 8, 2014
Eggs in December

Eggs in December. These days, no one ever thinks how odd that is. Before electric lights, eggs in December were like tomatoes in December. Stop any one in the street and ask, “Are eggs a seasonal food like fruits and vegetables?” The idea that eggs are seasonal sounds absurd. No matter what time of year you go to a supermarket, you will see carton after carton of eggs.

Yet, egg laying hens are sensitive to the amount of daylight. As the days shorten in late summer and fall, their egg production drops. In December and January, the hens here lay only a sixth to a fifth of the eggs they do in spring and summer. The number of eggs the hens lay starts to increase in February, and by March, they really go into overdrive.

The way the large egg producers keep egg production up year round, is by keeping laying hens bathed in artificial light. They also don’t keep laying hens very long, from 18 to 24 months. Then the hens are done with. A hen is born with all the eggs she will ever produce. You can either get her to lay all those eggs as quickly as possible using artificial light, or let her take her time laying her eggs over a longer period of time.

Which makes you wonder how it is that year round, we are able to buy most any type of produce in supermarkets. None of it comes out of thin air. Someone has to plant it, tend to it, and pick it. Here is an interesting article as to how much of the fresh produce in our stores is produced: Hardship on Mexico’s farms, a bounty for U.S. tables

December 7, 2014