Yesterday’s respite from the daily storms revealed a wet, blue world. Many fields have turned into duck ponds. Swans are having a field day romping in all the mud. How do swans stay so clean when they spend hours wallowing in mud?
After the Rains
After the rains comes the rainbow. After the rains the trees are left stranded in the overflowing slough. When they see their reflection in the glassy water, do they ooh and ahh, saying, “Oh my, am I that beautiful? Look, that man is taking our photo. Which of my limbs is the most beautiful?”
After the rains comes a sky, bluer than before. After the rains, Margaret decides that it’s time to sleep on the roost again with the other chickens. Her chicks aren’t sure what to make of it. Why is their mother up so high? Why aren’t we sleeping in our usual bed? After the rains, the whole world changes.
Only 13 Days – The Excitement is Palpable
Margaret’s chicks are as excited as I am. It’s only thirteen days until the days start to lengthen here. On December 21 at 8:48 pm Pacific Time (December 22 at 4:48 am Coordinated Universal Time) the winter solstice occurs. The sun will reach its lowest level in the northern hemisphere and from that moment, it will start rising higher in the northern sky.
The growing pullets are excited too. More and more of them are starting to lay eggs. They seem to be trying to outdo each other by laying the greenest, bluest, most pointed, most round, most whatever egg a hen can imagine.
Even the kohlrabi are flush with joy. This is what kohlrabi looks like at dusk, after days of wind and rain. It’s survived weeks of deep freezes, and yet it springs back, sweeter than ever. You won’t find a better, happier, midwinter food than kohlrabi.
Tail Dragging Day
Today was a trail dragging day, rain from the get go. You know it’s raining a plenty when the roosters are dragging their tails on the ground. There are plenty of places they could go to be dry, but they would rather be outdoors, even if it is raining. It takes a downpour for them to seek cover. They do look sad, dragging their wet tail feathers behind them.
The next time it is raining all day, you can say, “It’s raining so much, the roosters are dragging their tails.”
Ruffle a Few Feathers
The wind blew all day long today, ruffling feathers and keeping the chickens in the brush. They’ll brave getting their feathers ruffled for sunflower seeds. On a day like this, they are glad they aren’t birds of the sky, getting tossed here and there by strong gusts. There are advantages to lying low.
That’s Hazel on the right and Cognac on the left. Cognac used to lay eggs with chocolate brown shells. She’s too old to lay much anymore, but she can still poop, and as long as a hen can poop, she’s worth having.
When Trees Sleep
The giant cottonwoods have gone to sleep. They’ve shed all their clothes. Their naked branches rustle in the cool, winter air. What is it like when birds endure their first winter? Oh, no! Oh, no! Everything is dying. Whatever am I going to do? For them, their first spring, when the cottonwoods awake, and new green leaves sprout, must be rapturous. It’s rapturous for me, and I’ve been through many a winter and spring.
Carrot Candies
The heavy freezes of last week are gone. The baby carrots are no longer stuck in the frozen dirt. Deep freezes turn carrots into orange candy. When it gets below freezing, the starches in carrots turn into sugars to keep them from freezing. What you get are carrots much sweeter than summer carrots. These little gems are what’s for desert.
At Dawn’s Early Light – a Pot of Gold, or the Party Never Ends
At dawn’s early light, BB and I came across a pot of gold, a dump truck’s worth of cottonwood leaves. During the night the cottonwoods decided to drop all of their remaining leaves. Was there a leaf shaking party we weren’t invited to? Did a parliament of owls shake branches all night long, screeching and hooting at the cascades of falling leaves they made? Or did the trees tire of their leaves and with a frenetic shake, toss their leaves to the ground, because they wanted to feel the wind and rain with their naked branches?
You know, nature so often does unexpected things at night that it makes you want to stay up all night, flashing a beam of light about, just so you don’t miss the party.
The owls and the trees had their party last night. I’m having my party today, raking up the leaves, mixing them with litter from the chicken roosts, to fill a bin of compost. Why not drive around in a small tractor and scoop up and mulch the leaves in ten or twenty minutes? Because then I’d just be sitting on my butt and missing out on all the fun of raking, and gathering armfuls of leaves, and having the chickens race after me as I dash to the compost bin.
Svenda and the other chickens do their chicken dance, round and round the compost bin, as I fill it up with one wheelbarrow full of golden cottonwood leaves after another. I don’t think the cottonwoods realized that when they partied during the night, the chickens would party the next day, dancing on their fallen leaves. That’s the way nature is, one party after another.
It’s Not Mayonnaise, It’s Skunky-aise
When you take one of Skunky’s eggs, it doesn’t matter which one, they are all perfect, and separate the yolk to make mayonnaise, you are on the right path to make Skunky-aise.
Add mustard, salt, pepper, lemon juice, and whip it with salad oil and there it is, Skunky-aise, a superb mayonnaise made from the egg yolk of the most phenomenal chicken ever, Skunky. To make this mayonnaise worthy of her, I added wasabi, paprika, and dill weed. When you’re using one of Skunky’s eggs, you can’t make dull mayonnaise. She deserves better.
