a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

Category: About My Chickens


  • After making a tofu delivery this morning, we ran into a flock of swans on the outskirts of Mount Vernon. Swans and snow geese have arrived in large numbers and are settling in for the winter. Both birds are very vocal, and when you stop and listen to them, you wonder what they are talking about all day long.


    This is my fourth year at making miso 味噌. It’s a relaxing process, soaking and gently cooking the soybeans. They need to simmer for four to five hours until they are as soft as clouds, and it takes just the lightest touch to squish them. This batch is half soybeans and half brown rice. I made such a batch last year and it was so good I want plenty more of it next year.

    All that is left after labeling it is to put a lid and a stone on top of it, and wait, and wait, and wait, and wait. Six to eight months from now, it will be done.

    The characters for miso 味噌 are interesting. The first one 味 means flavor. The second one 噌 means noisy or boisterous. It’s a fitting way to describe miso as it does have a very loud flavor. I guess I’d have a lot to yell about too if I was kept in a crock for eight months.




    Each mother hen is full of surprises. Butter Ball starting raising her brood on September 18 when they arrived in the mail and I put them under her. They are two months old now and still dutifully following her around, and she is still mothering them. Two months is on the long side for a hen to rear her young. Every mother I’ve had before has had her chicks up on the roost by now, but not Butter Ball. At night, she and her brood still bed down in a corner of the chicken coop, some on top of her.

    The one thing I did differently with her this time is that I kept her and her chicks separate from the other chickens for an entire month. Maybe because of that, they have bonded so much.

    She is a remarkable mother hen. I’ll try keeping future hens and their broods away from the flock again and see if it really makes a difference.

  • Learning to Share


    I love the blue of the sky this time of year. The billowing clouds make you think you’re driving through a Dutch Masterpiece from the 17th century.


    I went out to gather the last of the grapes only to discover that someone else had beaten me to them. Next year I’ll know to pick them when they are ready, though it wouldn’t be right not to leave a few for the other creatures, would it? You learn to share when you have a garden. What’s it like for a wasp to encounter a grape? Do they even entertain the idea of, “I can eat it all”? What would we do with grapes that are bigger than ourselves? Wouldn’t it be so much fun to peel such a monster of a grape?

    One thing wasps don’t worry about is how to pay for a grape. They just eat it. It’s how most of creatures operate, in an economy where everything is free, everything is up for grabs, and they’ve managed to flourish for hundreds of millions of years without ever needing a dime. Amazing when you think about it.




    This is probably my last brood of the season. Butter Ball is taking care of 14 chicks, a mix of Golden Wyandottes, Delawares, and Barred Rocks. She was broody for nearly three weeks, and on Friday I ordered the chicks. They were shipped on Monday. Wednesday morning I was at the Post Office before the mail truck arrived from Everett, and the chicks were under her by seven a.m.


    Now you see it, now you don’t. Hens seem to have an infinite capacity to hide chicks in their feathers.

  • Barefoot Gardening


    The clouds and rain come nearly every day now. The rain held off for yesterday’s farmers market. When I checked the forecast for next week’s Saturday market, it showed rain all week except Wednesday, and rain on into the following week. This morning the forecast has changed and the rain ends Tuesday with sun and clouds through Saturday. Which will it be, rain or sun? I’ll know for sure on Saturday when I set off for the market. Until then, there’s no point worrying about it.

    The moist earth beckons me to work barefoot. Shoes have no place in the home. Maybe they have no place in a garden either. If the earth feels lovely on your toes, you know it’s a perfect bed for potatoes.


    This year’s grapes are so delightful. With the skies gray and the sun off to its wintering grounds, the grapes are a reminder of summer’s blue skies.


    I took the seal off the white miso I put up in February. It turned out better than I imagined. You make a whiter miso by adding barley or rice to the soybeans. It’s time to put up next year’s miso. How much red? How much white? Barley or rice? If I make a batch and try some corn, will that be the first time anyone in all of history has made miso with corn?

    A quick check to see if there was such a thing as miso made from corn resulted in me stumbling on a blog that talked about the wondrous cooling power of corn silk. Evidently, it cools the body and is great for when you have a fever or hot flash. One site claims, “Corn silk is used for bladder infections, inflammation of the urinary system, inflammation of the prostate, kidney stones, and bedwetting. It is also used to treat congestive heart failure, diabetes, high blood pressure, fatigue, and high cholesterol levels.” It sounds like you could chuck your entire medicine cabinet and cure all your ills with corn silk. Odd that I’ve never heard of a doctor telling a patient to eat more corn silk.


    Happy has become quite the stately rooster. He has his admirers, and some of the young white roosters I unintentionally acquired this spring when I ordered Welsummer hens, look up to him and follow him around.



    Even with fall deepening, the maples keep unfolding new leaves. In the wet, soothing fall air, their new-leaf red will barely turn green before they turn red from the first frost.

  • Life Without Rhubarb is No Life At All


    Hard to believe that last spring, the lush row or rhubarb didn’t exist, and were just small, round seeds I pushed into the soil. Life without rhubarb is no life at all.



    Sunday night when I went out to the tofu cabin to soak soybeans, I heard the cries of a chick in distress. It was dark, and using the light of my phone, I found one of the Bielefelder chicks on death’s door, impaled on the thorns of a blackberry, dangling nearly lifeless. After rescuing it, I placed it under its mother in the chicken coop, fearing the little one would not make it through the night. But it did, and yesterday it was scurrying around with all the other little chicks as if nothing had happened.

  • All the Good There Is


    Watching tofu cooling in clear, cold water is so soothing. It’s an opportunity to reflect on all the good there is.


    The marjoram has gone to bloom, dainty pink flowers decorate the path out to the tofu cabin. The chickens walk past these flowers all day long. What do they think of them?


    The latest chicks arrived Wednesday morning, Bielefelder cockerels and Cuckoo Maran pullets. The chicks took to my broody hen right away, and Thursday morning, she had them out exploring the world.

    There are no Bielefelder pullets so I got some cockerels instead. The other roosters don’t know it, but I have sinister plans for them as these Bielefelder grow up, that is if the Bielefelder turn into the grand roosters they are reported to be.

    A mother hen’s devotion to her chicks is evidence that given sufficient billions of years, star dust will turn into kindness.