a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

Category: About My Chickens

  • Let There be Dust


    Months of rain make having dry places for the chickens a must. Rolling around in the dust is a favorite pastime of the chickens. Sunshine pouring down on them as they roll around in the dust is just a fantasy this time of year. Come spring with days of warm sunshine, and the chickens will be dancing for joy during their dust baths. On these endless cloudless days, a dry spot will do use fine.






    Lee is not happy that the nest she wants to use to lay her egg is occupied. Her frustration is mounting, but Ruby couldn’t care less. There are empty nests on either side of Ruby, but Lee wants that one. It has to be that one, it just must, the world will end if she doesn’t get to use that nest.

  • Before the Storm


    The forecast is for another windy night and a blustery day tomorrow. Before the trees and branches come crashing down, while it is still calm, I sneak off into the winter woods. One of the first things I encounter is a vine maple leaf stuck to a fern. Instead of falling gently to the ground, this leaf landed on a fern, and through the winter storms, it has stayed there, slowly disintegrating. I suppose the fern will be glad when the rains finally wash it away.


    A small Douglas Fir branch with cones that was ripped off during the last storm dangles in a vine maple branch. You can tell it is from a Douglas Fir by the three pronged bracts sticking out of the seed scales.

    I could see someone collecting these three pronged Douglas Fir bracts and doing something with them, making a necklace from them, bundling them up into a brush, or filling a pillow with them.



    In the damp woods, any fallen log or dead stump becomes a garden of moss, lichen, and ferns. It doesn‘t matter how dry the summer is, it takes but a few fall raindrops for these mosses and lichens to become soft, feathery beds.



    Tomorrow is the first delivery of the year. The eggs are ready to go. Last year, the hens laid over 5,500 eggs. It sounds like a lot of eggs, but it isn’t even a drop in the bucket compared to the vast commercial hen houses churning out several million eggs a day. I can’t fathom what it must be like to be one hen among more than a million, to never see the sun, never take a dust bath, never explore what is on the other side of that fern deep in the woods, to never flirt with a rooster.

  • Hidden Life of Trees


    2018 ended with one last tofu delivery to the Anacortes Food Co-op yesterday. These are not serene lakes reflecting the mountains, these are flooded fields in the Skagit Valley. In the summer, these “lakes” will be fields of waving wheat and corn. Hard to imagine at this time of year when the flooded fields are full of ducks and swans.



    A break in the steady winter rains and the chickens are deep into the woods. The forest floor is all fluffy from the constant scratching of the chickens.

    I’ve been reading Peter Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees the last few days. It’s given me a new appreciation of the wonders of trees and forests, and the complexity of what is happening in the woods around me. The relations trees maintain have with other trees and fungi is far more complex than we can imagine. For example, the fungi Laccaria bicolor can sense when the pine trees it relies on for sugars lacks nitrogen, and the fungi releases a toxin in the soil which kills minute organisms which become fertilizer for the pines.

    Anastassia Makarieva from Saint Petersburg in Russia discovered that it is forests that serve as a water pump, transporting moisture far inland from the coasts. Without coastal forests, the interior of continents would be much drier than they are.



    Maybe I should invite scientists to unravel the effects of chickens on temperate, coastal forests. They certainly have an impact on nutrient recyling, consuming vast quantities of of bugs and worms, and converting them into fertilizer. The way they aerate the top few inches of the forest floor must have an effect too.


  • Royalty on Display


    The Prunus subhirtella is in bloom … delicately. From fall into early spring, this cherry is a pleasant reminder of what spring will bring.


    On a warm, sunny, December day, King Richard struts his stuff. Have a few roosters, and you are never far from royalty. Roosters are as vain as any king. They all think they are nature’s gift to any hen. Hens often have a different opinion.

  • Frosty Mornings


    Stepping outside these mornings is a trip into magic. Clear days, clear nights, create the perfect conditions for frost to spin its white web over everything.






    In one of the hoop houses, the young chickens have a warm place to sleep and spend these frosty mornings. A little over two months of age, they are looking like young adults. The Blue Laced Red Wyandottes are especially outstanding. They are like living tapestries.