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Author: theMan
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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.”
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
