Month: April 2016

  • Before You Can Eat an Apple

    AppleBlossomA

    Before you can eat an apple, it has to bloom. That delicious apple that goes crunch inside your mouth was once a beautiful flower, dancing in the spring air, and getting tickled by buzzing bees.

    Apple blossoms have a delicate, sweet, slightly spicy fragrance.

    AppleBlossomB
    AppleBlossomC

  • 5,000,000 Flowers

    DandelionFieldA

    This is what five million dandelions look like. I pass this meadow on the way home from the post office. It’s about four acres or 174,240 square feet. There are about 30 dandelion flowers per square foot. Multiply 174,240 by 30 and you get 5,227,500.

    DandelionFieldB

  • A Whole Meal in One Worm

    BigWormA

    Hey! How’s this for an earthworm? The chickens would go crazy if they found it. It would be smorgasbord time. The overnight rain brought this large earthworm out of the ground. There are snakes smaller than this earthworm. You can see that it wouldn’t take too many of these earthworms burrowing through your soil to keep it light and fluffy. Have 25 to 75 of these per square foot, and they will do a bang-up job aerating the soil and keeping it very porous. The last thing you want to do is till the soil. One pass with a tiller through a vegetable bed, and you’ll kill thousands of earthworms.

    BigWormB

    The hens don’t know what they’re missing. Or maybe they’ve all gorged on giant earthworms already and are stuffed. They have been up for several hours. It’s gossip and preening time.

    MorningHens

  • Fog to Sun

    FoggyMorning

    All it takes to transform the place to a hideaway high in the mountains is for the fog to roll in.

    FoggyMorningB
    FoggyMorningC
    FoggyMorningD

    BB enjoys a walk as the fog starts to lift. In the afternoon, with the sun out, and the fog but a memory, the chickens are out foraging under the blooming cherries. It takes wide open spaces for chickens to be happy and lay the best eggs.

    FoggyMorningE