a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

Category: About My Chickens

  • Essence of Summer


    Grass flowers are underrated. Are they even rated at all? Waving in the summer breeze, they are the essence of summer.


    The Japanese name for Lupine is Nobori-Fuji 昇り藤 which means climbing wisteria. The word to climb, noboru, is an interesting word because it can be written three different ways, 上る or 登る or 昇る. All have the meaning of climbing, but with subtle differences.

    上る is used when referring to climbing stairs, climbing up a slope, climbing onto a train, and putting things onto a higher place, such as a table.

    登る is used when you are climbing onto something with purpose or with a lot of effort, such as climbing a mountain, or getting up onto a rostrum to give a speech, or a platform to give a performance.

    昇る is used for things rising high into the sky, such as the sun or smoke, and in the case of the lupine, wisteria climbing into the sky.

    One word, three different ways of writing it, and there are many such words in Japanese, which give it a richness when it comes to expressing yourself in writing.




    Ema and Snow have gotten serious about incubating their eggs. Ema’s nest is a huge mound. My first experience with brooding ducks, it’s interesting seeing the difference between them and chickens. Chickens don’t build such elaborate nests. They don’t cover their eggs when they leave their nests. They don’t hiss the way ducks do when you approach their nests. Chickens stay quiet, until your hands get too close, and then they draw blood.







  • Summer Days, Summer Colors


    We are past the days of new green. The only tree that hasn’t leafed out and settle in for the summer is the mimosa. The chickens spend hours exploring the lush forest floor.


    Soon, bright red thimble berries will be right for eating off the stem. From petal fall to sweet ripeness happens quickly. All it takes is a few weeks of bright sunshine.




    The scent of peonies wafts through the garden. The white ones are as glorious as thunderheads rising above the mountains.



    A few weeks ago I was concerned that I didn’t have any brooding hens yet. I even borrowed this broody black hen to mother a clutch of Welsummer chicks I ordered. This week, four of my hens have gone broody. I will have plenty of mother hens to raise many chicks.

    The brown chicks are Welsummers. The light ones are Redstar roosters the hatchery added to keep the Welsummers warm on their two day journey here. Though, since I ordered 18 of the Welsummer chicks, it is more likely the hatchery added the Redstars to get rid of them. Oh, well, it is what it is. Summer is no time to be upset, not with peonies in bloom.

  • There Should Be a Name


    One of our duck hens had made a nest, and for the past days, I’ve been collecting the eggs the ducks laid, and adding them in the nest. I think I counted eight yesterday in the nest. This morning, when I opened the hoop house where the ducks spend the night, Emma was not there to greet me and scold me for locking her up all night the way she usually does.

    I found her tucked away on the nest. What a pleasant surprise. She may just be laying an egg, though I doubt it. I’ve never caught her laying an egg at this time of day. And she hissed at me when I got close. My heart’s dancing with joy at the possibility that she is brooding.

    If she is, the ducklings will be a mix of Welsh Harlequin and Welsh Harelquin-Cayuga mix. If she is brooding, today is day one. Duck eggs take twenty-eight days to hatch, which means, if all goes well, there will be beeping in her nest June 10 or so. And even if she isn’t brooding, or things don’t go well, I enjoyed a moment of great delight this morning.


    The apple blossoms have lost their petals and are on their way to becoming apples. What do we call blossoms at this stage? There seems like there should be a name for them.

  • Early Summer – Dreaming of No Waste


    Today’s clouds are a welcome relief from the early heatwave of the past few days which gave us a taste of July and August in May. The yellow dandelion flowers have turned into fluffy white balls, which float away with the slightest breeze.


    You’d never know that the woods are full of chickens, their favorite place to be. It’s not until you hear their alarm calls, that you even know they are there.


    The cherry blossoms have become baby cherries. Another month or so and they will be plump, sweet, and irresistible.


    I’m getting bountiful rows of pulled weeds clearing the garden beds. They should make good potato beds. I’m covering them with gunny sacks with holes cut out for the potatoes to grow through. Come mid summer I’ll find out how well this works.


    Working in the garden and woodland, I’m in awe that nature never has any waste. There are no garbage piles in nature. Everything that is made can be reused, recycled, composted.

    There is a small town in Japan, Kamikatsu (no English on the town’s home page, but fun to click through anyway), on the island of Shikoku, which has a goal of becoming a no-waste town by 2020.


    They recycle 80% of all their waste. They have a recycling center where the townspeople bring their waste, and sort it, not into simple categories like paper and plastic, but into many categories. For example, there are 9 categories just for paper products. There is a chart of 1,152 items, from aluminum-coated paper candy wrappers to whiskey bottles to dresser mirrors, listing which bin to put each item.

    Try as they might, they can’t yet get down to 0% waste because of the way products are manufactured. To get to 0% waste, they need companies to rethink how products are made and packed, and to design 100% recycling into the products before they leave the factory.

    It‘s inspiring to see a small town in the mountains of Japan taking on the goal of reducing waste to zero. Their efforts have attracted attention from around the world. How different things would be if producing zero waste was taken for granted, and it was the way everything was made. Nature does it. Why can’t we?

  • First Potato Celebration


    I celebrate the sighting of the first potato sprout. Yes, this will be a good year, comes to mind when I see new potato leaves. They are a sign that it is time to start gardening in earnest.


    A lot of things are in full bloom by the time the first potato leaves poke above the spring earth. Elderberries with their space-age white odd spiky flowers.


    Before they turn their salmon colors, salmon berries are green. Even ripe, they can have a bitter bite. Eaten at this stage, they might make you cry.


    The trilliums are carpeting the forest floor with their big, green leaves. Most of the trilliums here are white, so the pink ones are always a surprise.



    I never know what awaits me in the coop. A hen trying to tell me she laid a dozen eggs. Three hens crowded into two nests, one on top of the other. It’s impossible to be bored.