a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

Author: theMan

  • Raking Dead Sunshine and Devil’s Cats


    All summer long the cherry trees have been soaking up the sunshine and converting it into green leaves. They are falling to the ground, and lie quietly, no longer shining, thousands of sunshine corpses. It doesn’t take long before there are mountains of them.

    Before the chickens lay waste to the piles of fallen leaves, I need to cart them away to the garden. A flock of mischievous hens can destroy piles of fall leaves in minutes. Each flick of their legs sends a hundred leaves flying. Leave the piles unattended for long, and you’ll come back to fallen leaves scattered here and there, and chickens looking at you and wondering what they could have possibly have done to make you frown.



    While carting the leaves to the garden, I ran into this phantasmagoric creature. How many barbs does this golden, slinking bit of fuzz have? If I were a bird, I’d think twice before swallowing this caterpillar of many quills. Interesting bit about the word “caterpillar”, it could be a variant of the French word “chatepelose” which means “hairy cat”. The Swiss German word for caterpillar, “Teufelskatz”, means “devil’s cat”. They must have similar caterpillars in Switzerland.

  • The World is Iridescent


    On a sunny fall day, the world is iridescent. A luminous green fly shines on a corn leaf. A forest of corn is an insect haven. Every leaf has a fly, a wasp, or some other insect.




    The sunflowers have reached the sky. They tower over the towering corn. Will I be lucky enough to harvest sunflower seeds this year? Last year, the birds plucked them bald all before I had a chance.



    Some chickens are quite iridescent. I haven’t named these two yet, but the Turken, the one with the featherless neck, has some amazing feathers on her head and her back. Is the plain Buff Orpington jealous of the Turken’s coat of many colors? Is she wondering why she isn’t the iridescent one?

  • Summer Closes Its Door, Fall Opens Its


    Summer closed its door this week and is gone for good. Fall’s door opened with gentle rains, sprinkled with a few lightning bolts and thunder. Two days of cool rain and the forest paths are soft and moist again. It feels like we are back in the Pacific Northwest.

    We are enjoying fall greens this evening, picked fresh out of the garden. The dogs? They won’t be needing much if anything. They are feasting on wild rabbit they caught in the pasture while I was deciding which cabbage to pluck.

    No one told me that one of my duties would be severing a dog-slaughtered wild rabbit asunder so that the two dogs would each get a half. Dogs are not good at sharing. Takuma carried the entire carcass into one of the dog houses and was going to eat it all himself. It was up to me to drag it out, divide it in two, and give half to Ena. I’ll spare you the gory photographs. Suffice it to say that nature is often not kind. Everything is eaten by something. It is a fact you are reminded every day when you live in nature. You’re just thankful it wasn’t you today when you lay your head on your pillow at night. I guess if my posts cease without notice, you’ll know something gobbled me up.

  • Ducklings Love Tofu


    Ducklings love tofu, which isn’t a surprise. It is a favorite of the chickens too. Little ducklings are voracious eaters. No manners with them. It is gobble, gobble, gobble with them. I can see how slugs don’t stand a chance when ducks are after them.

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    You’ll notice that ducklings like nibbling on greens too, which means I’ll need to navigate a way to protect seedlings from them as they scour the garden for slugs and bugs. Growing up, I often heard, “Where there is a will, there is a way.” You get to my age and you spend a lot of time pondering if the “way” is worth the effort.

  • After the Rain


    After last week’s rains, it’s as if we closed the door on summer and opened it to fall. The air is clear without a hint of smoke. The rain toppled many a blooming stem, and now they lean down and sigh, tired from standing upright all summer, and ready to go to sleep.


    Sunflowers bare their faces to the waning sun, their petals pulled back to expose their faces to as much sunshine as possible. Along the garden paths, the chickens gather and cavort. Novels could be written from all the intrigue, deception, scheming, and clandestine affairs of the hens and roosters. No sooner does a rooster establish his dynasty, than along comes another rooster plotting to toss him off his pedestal. Hens he thought were loyal to him are of no help. They can be as fickle as passing clouds.



    Claire doesn’t have to worry about any of that. Safe in the hoop house, alone with her four ducklings, she doesn’t even have to worry about the rains or winds. She can devote all her time to feeding her brood. As you can see in the short clip below, she’s quite adept at digging up bugs and worms for her ducklings to devour.

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