every day is a good day
How much does a chicken poop in a night? I know it’s a question that has crossed your mind many times. Here’s the answer: A Handful. The picture above is proof. There is a single chicken who spends its nights, not on the roost with the other chickens, but in this nest. Every morning guess who has to clean it up?
Yup, in just one night, a chicken will fill your hand full of poop if you hold it under it’s butt, so don’t. That’s my advice.
We do all this work, and then we die. At times you wonder what the point is. We might as well die now and be done with it. But then the plum tree blooms, and the bees fly onto the blossoms, and the sun is shining, and it is like, this is paradise, who would want to die now? I don’t believe in heaven, but even if I did, it wouldn’t be nicer than this, so what would be the point of dying anyway?
[wpvideo OGZ9FNFw]
The bee is in no hurry to die. From flower to flower to goes. On a plum tree, the flowers are so close together, it doesn’t even need to fly. There’s one good drink of nectar after another. I’m watching something far more amazing than anything humans do. Watch the bee insert its long tongue into the flowers. Look at it’s antennae feel its way around. Those little wings, they look like a joke, and yet they carry the bee safely home.
And in the garden, the lovage is out. I’ll wait to die until I’ve at least tasted this season’s lovage. And then there will be one more amazing thing, and another, and another. Who knows, with so many amazing things to see, I may live to be over a hundred.
All the blossoms on the cherry tree are now open. On a sunny day like today, it’s a favorite spot for the bees. It would take one bee days to visit every flower on a tree like this. It makes you wonder if back at the hive they don’t have contests to see who can visit the most number of flowers on a single tree. Investigate closer, and some of the bees that buzz about might be keeping score to keep the competing bees honest.
“You did not visit 33,752 flowers on that tree because there are only 32,132 flowers on the whole tree!”
Or do they have certain honeycombs reserved for single source honey? “Yes, honeycomb 27 is all single sourced from the three hundred year old wild cherry on the other side of the pond. If you are coming from the gardens, use honeycombs 7 and 13.”
It’s odd to think that any honey you eat has gone through the stomachs of at least two bees. There is the worker bee who drinks the nectar from the flowers so the enzymes in its stomach can start processing the nectar into honey, and then regurgitates in the hive so a hive bee can eat it, process it some more in its stomach, before it regurgitates it in a honeycomb. And then the hive bees flap their wings like crazy to evaporite the water so the twice eaten, twice regurgitated (vomited) nectar can become the honey we humans like to eat. Almost makes you want to boil honey before eating it. Makes you wonder what delectable food products humans could make by upchucking and re-ingesting and upchucking food. Once something has been up and down the hatch a few times, it might not be bad. It works for bees. It could be a whole new way of cooking. Bee cuisine by humans. Call it Cuisine a la Anthophila and no one will be the wiser. Probiotics Plus?
Things are much quieter in the hoop house where some of the shallots and garlic are growing. With luck, some will be ready when Bow Little Market starts in June.
Mother and daughter, Hazel and Special, shared breakfast together this morning. Hazel, the dark hen, raised a clutche last year. She was an outstanding mother, and I hope she raises a clutch or two this year too.
Special will be a year old soon, and with her eardrum shattering voice, if she decides to raise chicks, I can hear her scolding them now. She’s apt to be quite the tiger mom. I can picture it already, me working in the garden and hearing her cries, making me wonder, what have her chicks done now?
Here are pictures of Special as a baby chick. She was so adorable and looked like a chick dressed up as a clown. You can see her mother thought she was special too.
The thimbleberry’s are unfolding their new leaves. This time of year, there’s something new to see everywhere you look. If you have a flock of hens, don’t forget to give them new nests from time to time. It’s not enough to keep their nests clean and add new straw to them.
Just like you don’t like to shop at the same store or eat at the same restaurant all the time, hens appreciate new nests in new spots. My sweet husband set up several new nests above some older ones. The next day, hens were already trying them out. Here’s Ungetsu-hime 雲月姫 about to lay an egg in one of them today.
“Hmm, the view is better from up here.”
“Wow, look at the nice curvature this nest has!”
“Black, always was my color.”
Who knows what attracts them to new nests. Just like you get tired of that new outfit you’ve been wearing the last few months, hens get tired of nests. New ones in new places make them happy. You want delicious eggs, you need happy hens.