every day is a good day
Who is the mystery pullet laying eggs in the woodshed? It’s Skunky! I peeked into the woodshed this morning and saw Skunky in the nest. A short time later, she was gone and there was her egg.
A little over five months ago, Skunky was just a tiny chick, trying to figure it all out. Now she’s a graceful hen laying eggs of her own. What is intriguing is that her mother, started incubating another clutch of eggs this week. They are due to hatch September 27.
Every day something special happens. Is it the amusing whirligig stuck in the fence I found this morning? Maybe it’s the bee having a feast on the sunflower. What goes through a bee’s mind when it finds a sunflower this large? “Oh my god! Oh my god! Look at that flower!” Is that what it shrieks when it buzzes around it? “The bees at the hive will never believe me when I tell them how big this flower is!”
Or maybe the special moment of the day is spotting Special on her nest, laying an egg? It’s always special spotting her, but the special highlight of the day was finding four pullet eggs in a nest. I hadn’t checked the three nests in the woodshed for a while, and today when I looked, four olive colored pullet eggs were waiting for me in one of the nests. A hen hatched this spring has started to lay eggs. These are clearly eggs from the same hen. The mystery is which young hen is it?
Wednesday morning while I was working on the fence, BB spotted an injured chick. It was one of Hazel’s. I took it into the house to nurse it. It had injured its legs and couldn’t stand up. I didn’t have much hope for it.
Thursday it was better, and after keeping it indoors, feeding it and making sure it got plenty to drink, we decided to let it spend the night with its mother and siblings. When it got dark, we tucked it underneath Hazel for the night.
Friday, I brought it back indoors as soon as Hazel left her nest shortly after six in the morning. We kept it indoors, watching it improve, and put her back under Hazel for the night so it could sleep with its mother and siblings.
This morning, I brought it back inside when Hazel got out of her nest. During the early afternoon, Hazel was in the backyard with her clutch, and I let the chick spend time with its mother and siblings. It still had trouble walking around but loved being with its mother again. When I brought it back inside for a rest, it peeped a lot, letting me know it wanted to be with its mother.
This afternoon around four, I took it back out to be with its mother. This time it did much better. Following Hazel around and getting steadier the more it walked. Within an hour, it was running with its mother and siblings with little difficulty. Tonight it is sleeping peacefully under its mother.
Watching how happy it was to be with its mother again after spending a few days in the “hospital”, and seeing how it improved when it was with her, taught me that even for a chick, nothing heals like love.
What is Hazel doing? She’s hunting bugs for her chicks. When she spots a bug in the leaves, she knocks it to the ground for them. Over and over she does it, sometimes jumping up to knock a bug off a high branch. How many chicks get to eat a bug picked for them by a mother who loves them?
Today was the last Thursday market for the season at Bow Little Market. It’s been a fun summer taking produce to the market on Thursdays from June through today. After finding out from customers what they would like to eat, I’m looking forward to growing a greater variety of produce next year.
What do plants think when we plant them in straight rows? In the wild, plants never end up that way, all lined up, in rows that march on to the horizon. When they pop up and see all their siblings lined up in front and back of them, do they wonder how the heck that happened? Does it drive them nuts?
While planting French breakfast radishes, I came across this curved twig, which turned out to be the perfect radish planting tool. The curved tip made it easy to poke holes for the radish seeds. This one is a keeper.
The previous radishes which used to call that bed home are on their way to the compost bin. Radishes grow to be rather large plants with flower stalks that reach three feet and higher. One plant will put out hundreds of pointy seed pods and thousands of seeds. With so many seeds, it’s a wonder the world isn’t one big radish field.
