a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

Category: About My Chickens

  • Tread Lightly


    Not having a Thursday farmers market to prepare for gives me time to start work on neglected forest trails. There is always something fascinating to see in the woods, like these mushrooms, squeezed between two logs. The chickens have taken chunks out of them, and lived. Is that a sign I can eat them too?


    Out in the woods, Russel and hens are inspecting my work. Normally we hear his high pitched warning cries frequently, but this morning, he was so quiet, I wondered if something had gotten him. But there he was, deep in the woods, guarding the Silver Laced Wyandottes and young Buff Orpington who have taken a liking to him. In the deep brush, the chickens can eat all day, hidden from hawks and eagles flying over head. It’s easy to see that their ancestors were jungle fowl.



    Back in the garden I do see that ducklings eat more than slugs and bugs. They aren’t against taking bit bites out of kohlrabi leaves, snacking on arugula, or foraging through sorrel beds. Everything comes with a price. If losing some greens to slug-gorging ducks is what it costs to have these predators of gastropods, so be it. It’s better than chickens who shred garden beds to smithereens with their feet and leave the slugs alone. In comparison, webbed feet tread lightly over garden greens.


  • 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?

  • 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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  • Moving Day


    After sitting for 28 days on Cayuga duck eggs from our neighbor, Claire hatched four ducklings on the 6th of September. I moved her into a small nursery on the 7th, and today it is moving day, time to move her and the four ducklings into a spacious, protected home, our hoop house in the garden.


    Goodbye tomatoes, goodbye peppers, goodbye eggplant. With just a single mother hen and four ducklings the plants may survive, but maybe they won’t.



    It took no time for Claire and the ducklings to settle in. The ducklings are ecstatic with all the bugs there are to eat. “Go for the slugs! Go for the slugs!” I root them on. Claire won’t show them that ducks are supposed to love slugs above all other things. It may be something I have to do, but I’m hoping it doesn’t come to that. Claire’s first order of business is enjoying a fresh dirt bath after being without one for a whole month.


    This is my first experience with ducklings. The biggest surprise so far, they peep a lot like baby chicks, which led me to ask, “When do ducklings start to quack?” The answer seems to be from about three to six weeks of age.