every day is a good day
It was Wednesday afternoon, a warm, sunny day. I don’t know who was needing a nap more, Hazel or her chicks. Snoozing next to or inside their mother’s feathers is what little chicks are meant to do. One day, some of her chicks will be doing the same with their own. This is what gentle farming is about. Not rushing things. Letting plants and animals grow at their own pace, do their own thing, and enjoy their lives.
The quality of these photos aren’t good, but they do give a sense of what happened. I found Hazel foraging with her chicks, except one was missing. It wasn’t too far away and peeping. I wondered why it wasn’t joining the rest. On investigating, I saw the chick had caught a dragonfly and was trying to eat it. The dragonfly was too big to swallow but the chick was not about to let it go. It didn’t want to join its siblings because if they saw it had a big dragonfly in its beak, they would want to eat it too. How many chicks ever get to catch a dragonfly?
Hazel came over to check on her chick and when the other chicks followed their mother and discovered the missing chick had a big dragonfly in its mouth, they wanted it too. The chick ran off into the bushes and managed to get the dragonfly down its throat before joining Hazel and the others on their foraging adventure.
Little chicks thrive on adventure. They need adventure almost as much as they need love. Hazel’s chicks are 18 days old. Like exuberant children, they can be a handful for her to watch.
Hazel’s love knows no bounds. Here she is showing her chicks how to eat sunflower seeds. It’s hard to see in the pictures, but she’s shelling them to show her chicks how good they are inside. As long as mother is nearby, the chicks are at ease and wanting to explore everything.
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It’s like camping for chickens. Skunky and some of the other chickens hatched this spring like roosting in this sequoia for the night. The sequoia is close to the chicken yard, but these young chickens would rather spend the night enjoying the cool night air in the tree than hanging out with the older, fuddy-duddies.
Looking at the sequoia, you’d be hard pressed to realize there are fourteen chickens roosting in it. I do worry about owls swooping in at night. But the chickens want to go camping and until the fall rains come, I’ll let them enjoy the sequoia.
August brings dreamland, mother hens tending their chicks, swelling poppy pods, cabbages growing, fattening sunflower buds, so many things to stop and dream about. I like dreamland. Chickens love dreamland.
