A cap comes in handy if you leave the egg basket in the house. You can get a lot of eggs in a cap. I brought in fifteen this afternoon in my cap.
Category: About My Chickens
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Straw Is For Chickens
For chickens, a bale of straw is all fun. They come running from a long way off to investigate. They pick and scratch. They jump on and off. Fresh straw! New bedding for our nests! Clean spots to lay our eggs! What’s there not to like?
BB isn’t impressed. He can’t see what all the excitement is about. You’d have to be a chicken to understand.
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In the Hunting Stream
Special is being courted, but she’s far more interested in seeing what juicy morsels she can dig up in the stream than she is by the young rooster’s performance. Chickens enjoy hunting in streams. It’s not something you read about in books about chickens is it? “Be sure and provide chickens with a hunting stream.” Have you ever read that? Actually, you rarely read that chickens are adept hunters. I’m glad they are small birds. We’d be on their menu if they were giants.
Bit by bit, we’re preparing for next winter. There is a slow, steady beauty to cutting wood and stacking it. You spend all spring and summer cutting and stacking it, only to slowly tear down the stacks through fall and winter.
We had a surprise this afternoon when we accidentally uncovered a wintering northwestern salamander. Before covering it up again, I took a picture. With the pond and woods, there seem to be plenty of these salamanders around. It’s always a joy to see one.
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Special’s Voice
Special, one of Hazel’s chicks, has a call all her own. There is no doubt who has laid an egg or who has something to say when she opens her mouth. “Special, what are you up to now?” I think when I hear her call from the other side of the garden. She may have missed her calling to sing in a punk band.
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Sunshine in the Pacific Northwest
A sunny day in the Pacific Northwest. If there is a circular glow in the sky, it’s a sunny day. If you don’t get wet when you step outside, it’s a sunny day in the Pacific Northwest. Light gray is considered a shade of blue here. The hens are out in the pasture early in the morning. Blue skies and brilliant sunshine, a Pacific Northwest glow, or steady drizzle, it doesn’t matter to them. It shouldn’t matter to me either, though if they knew there were places where the skies are blue most of the time, they’d probably ask me to take them there.
The rhubarb is sprouting. You haven’t lived if you haven’t tasted rhubarb’s first spring stalks. The Tokyo Bekana I didn’t pick in the hoop house is in full bloom. Many vegetables are so beautiful in bloom, that you’re better off not eating them all. Let a few bloom and dazzle. One plant will provide more seed than I can possibly plant. How great is that?
Ginhime is relieved. She waited and waited this morning to get on this nest. At times, there were several hens in the nest, laying eggs. Never mind that there were plenty of empty nests nearby. She wanted this nest too. Now she has it all to herself. What a relief.