a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

Category: About My Chickens

  • On the Road Again

    This mother hen has learned that the way to the potato patch and vegetable fields is through the road. The fields are protected by a six foot high fence from the rest of the property, but there is only a four foot high fence facing the driveway.

    By taking the chicks out into the driveway, she can walk to the potato patch, fly up to the fence and jump down, while her chicks wriggle through the wire fence. So we’re needing to quickly redo the fence between the vegetable fields and the driveway to keep this hen and her chicks out.

    This is one determined mother hen. Once I shoo her out of the vegetable fields, it doesn’t take her long to walk her chicks four hundred feet through the woods around the vegetable fields and back out onto the driveway.

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    Chickens love potatoes. They will scratch through the dirt and once they find them, will quickly devour them. Last year we lost many beds of potatoes to the chickens. This year we are keeping them. The vegetables, they don’t eat that much, but they will destroy entire vegetable beds digging for worms and bugs.

    Maybe next year I should just plant potatoes in various places where the chickens roam, so they will leave the potato patch alone.

  • Supper Is Served – Very Slowly

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    Slow food, we read about it often. This is what slow food looks like. First it takes five to six months for the rooster to grow. You won’t find chicken like this in any store. As this is a bird which spent every day of its life outdoors, running around and exercising, it needs to be cooked slowly … very slowly … at a low temperature. 225ºF (105ºC) is a good temperature. After five hours, it will be so tender the meat will fall off the bones.

    Take your time enjoying it.

    It’s odd how so many people are in such a rush. Running around faster won’t bring them any closer to being happy. A restaurant chain in Florida is guaranteeing to fill your order in 60 seconds. That’s all the time people can wait for their meal to be served. Eating is not a race.

  • Chickens Love Tomatoes

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    Chickens love tomatoes. Toss a few ripe ones and they will come running. Chickens are quite the omnivores. Their tastes range from grass to seeds to bugs to worms to field mice. But, they go nuts over ripe tomatoes and ripe fruits like berries, grapes, and melons. Give them half a watermelon and within a short time the only thing that will be left is a paper thin watermelon shell.

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  • Before the Sun is Up

    Before the sun peaks up above the forest to the east, it’s time to go out and weed the corn and beans. The chickens are taking it easy … wondering when they are going to be served morning coffee and toast. Often they come out of their covered chicken yard and take a perch. It’s as if they need to take a moment and plan what to do today.

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    The posts for a new fence are drying nicely. Soon they will be in the ground and support wire fencing to protect another plot from chickens and wild rabbits.

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    The sun comes out while I am weeding the beans and corn. This is my office, a riot of green and brilliant flowers. There are no desks, no chairs, no sitting, no telephones, no office gossip, just the sound of leaves growing and birds singing. But in the distant there is the rumbling of traffic in the valley, a constant reminder that I’m barely a stone’s throw away from freeways and shopping malls and endless ribbons of concrete.

    The urban sprawl of Seattle, 75 miles to the south, keeps metastasizing, spreading closer and closer to this bit of paradise. It used to be 40 miles away. Now it is just 30. How long before it is lapping at my door?

  • A Chicken and a Snake

    Chickens are like ground vultures. They will scarf most any corpse they encounter, even a snake. A chicken has found a dead snake and the race is on to find a quiet spot where she can feast on it without being disturbed by the other chickens.

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    So would a chicken kill a snake? Some chickens do. Chickens are accomplished hunters. If they see something small and moving, they won’t hesitate to nab it with their beak. They can move with astonishing speed. These descendants of dinosaurs are formidable. If you close your eyes when they scream, you can hear a Velociraptor screaming.