Like Mother, Like Daughter

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Usually chicks look nothing like their mothers. Their baby colors are usually different than their mother’s feathers. This little chick is the same shade of reddish brown as her mother. Will it grow up to look like it’s mother? Maybe, maybe not.

All the News That’s Fit to Print

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It’s a busy day in paradise. There is so much going on. Where to begin? Here is a condensed version of this morning’s news:

  • A handful of blackberries were picked for breakfast
  • A dog dug furiously when he smelled a mole in the ground
  • Redwood branches welcome fresh dew on their leaves
  • A new chick hatched during the night
  • Corn blossoms fell like rice grains on a squash leaf
  • The sweet smell of corn blooms perfumes the morning air
  • Corn ears are fattening
  • The morning sunbeams are playing hide-and-go-seek behind pumpkin leaves
  • Onion bulbs are swelling in the sweet earth
  • Cabbage heads are tightening in the garden
  • Overnight, a growing cabbage head has invented fifteen new shades of green
  • Poppy buds are bursting with joy at waking up with a million beads of sparkling, diamond-like dew drops
  • A wasp is waking up after spending a night sleeping in a sunflower flowerhead
  • A happy dog soaks up love

Don’t let the news media tell you otherwise, paradise is all around you, you can see it, you can feel it, you can smell it, you can find it, it’s everywhere.

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Signs of Fall

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It’s mid August, the coolness of Fall is in the morning air, the stacks of firewood have dried, dry leaves are gathering on the grass, baby melons are swelling, champagne grapes are turning purple.

So much happens outdoors every day, it’s hard to spend time indoors. What am I missing when I’m standing at my desk doing bookwork? What are the chickens up to when I’m in the kitchen cooking? What color are the corn tassels now? Outdoors is where it all happens.

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Gentle Farming

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It was Wednesday afternoon, a warm, sunny day. I don’t know who was needing a nap more, Hazel or her chicks. Snoozing next to or inside their mother’s feathers is what little chicks are meant to do. One day, some of her chicks will be doing the same with their own. This is what gentle farming is about. Not rushing things. Letting plants and animals grow at their own pace, do their own thing, and enjoy their lives.

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Babies in the Rain

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For the first time in their lives, baby kohlrabi are getting a soft shower of rain drops. What do they think of the rain? Does it taste better than the well water I use to water them? A few more weeks, and the baby kohlrabi will grow up and be ready for market. Isn’t odd that you never hear about humanely grown vegetables? You can get someone to certify that you have raised your chicken, pigs, and cows humanely, though those certification standards are abysmally low. How about humanely grown produce? What would that mean to a kohlrabi? Having soil free of pesticides, herbicides, fungicides? A biologically rich environment? Rich soil full of earthworms wriggling around your roots to keep them aerated and fertilized? No heavy tractors rolling through the fields, compacting the soil and terrorizing the inhabitants? A quiet field so you can hear the songbirds? Clean air flowing through your leaves?

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Things Never Die

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A number of years ago, a dead cottonwood fell over in a windstorm. It’s now home to a thick bed of moss and brilliant yellow something. They have years and years of food in that cottonwood trunk. No worries for them. As long as there is enough moisture, they won’t go hungry.

I’m outdoors much of the day, and it seems that most things in nature never work. I saw Hazel taking her chicks around the pond, through the woods, and out by the compost bin. No matter where she took the chicks, there was something for her and the chicks to eat. I never once saw her working, earning money, and paying someone for the food she found for her chicks.

It’s the same with the trees and bushes and grass. None of them are working. They lift their leaves toward the sun, and at no cost to them, absorb the energy they need that is streamed, free of charge, to them from 93 million miles away. They don’t pay anyone for the rain or the wind that blows through their leaves. How many trees and plants and animals would exist if they had to live in an economy where they had to work and pay for everything they needed?

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One Thing Leads to Another

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We’ve been here more than ten years now so I’ve looked at this circle of beech trees many times. This morning I saw a cedar had sprouted between two of the trees. Trying to take a photo of the cedar sapling, I looked inside the circle of beech trees for the first time. Ten years here and I’d never done that before. Wow! Instant art. Wonderful, delightful things are everywhere. All you have to do is look.

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To Catch a Dragonfly

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The quality of these photos aren’t good, but they do give a sense of what happened. I found Hazel foraging with her chicks, except one was missing. It wasn’t too far away and peeping. I wondered why it wasn’t joining the rest. On investigating, I saw the chick had caught a dragonfly and was trying to eat it. The dragonfly was too big to swallow but the chick was not about to let it go. It didn’t want to join its siblings because if they saw it had a big dragonfly in its beak, they would want to eat it too. How many chicks ever get to catch a dragonfly?

Hazel came over to check on her chick and when the other chicks followed their mother and discovered the missing chick had a big dragonfly in its mouth, they wanted it too. The chick ran off into the bushes and managed to get the dragonfly down its throat before joining Hazel and the others on their foraging adventure.

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Little chicks thrive on adventure. They need adventure almost as much as they need love. Hazel’s chicks are 18 days old. Like exuberant children, they can be a handful for her to watch.

Signs of Late Summer

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It’s late summer when plump blackberries dangle in numbers beyond infinity. It’s late summer when you’ve eaten so many blackberries you can’t eat another one.

It’s late summer when the anemones are dancing. Anemone comes from Greek and means “daughter of the wind”, a fitting name for a flower which dances with the slightest breeze.

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Love Rules Us All

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It’s the season of color. There’s something celebrating every day. Flowers in full bloom, and Billy crossing the bridge to see who is on the other side. Will he get lucky or will she go? A rooster’s fate is to court, court, court. No matter how many times he is turned down, he can’t stop from trying again. Which shows what a powerful force love is in the lives of chicken. It rules their lives.

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The beans express love by blooming. They have nurturing gifts in delicate, beautiful, enticing packages for the bees. They don’t ask for much in exchange. Just go to the next flower and the next and taste all of our love. “Love us all,” the beans sing to the bees.

Ruled by love, the beans reach for the skies. If the poles were long enough, could their love reach the clouds?

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The rainbow chard have no shame. Such brilliant colors. Is this really food? To fully appreciate rainbow chard, you have to see it growing out of the ground. How does it do that? How does it take sunlight and nutrients out of the earth and explode with such color? Can you do that? It’s a magnificent plant and tastes twice as good when you pick the leaves yourself.

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Hazel’s love for her chicks is boundless. Love is the missing, essential nutrient on 99.999999% of poultry farms. Chicks should never be deprived of their mother’s love. If you’re lucky enough to get one of my eggs, know that the hen who laid that egg for you, grew up bathed in her mother’s love. If you close your eyes and let the yolk linger on your tongue, you can taste the love.

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