There is something new every day. Even if you think there isn’t, during the night while you slept, the sun has taken you about 7 million kilometers, over 4 million miles, from where you were when you went to bed. Every morning you wake up in a new spot in the universe, millions of miles away from where you were yesterday, and there is no going back. Or as they say, “To infinity and beyond!”

Not as dramatic, but 15 baby chicks I ordered arrived this morning. It has been many years since I’ve ordered live chicks, but I wanted to add Brown Cornish chickens to my flock and have not been able to find a reliable source for fertile Brown Cornish eggs.

Since I had two broody hens, both sitting on wooden eggs, I ordered the chicks, and this morning, as soon as they arrived, I carefully placed them under the two hens. It was a lesson again as to why every chick deserves … actually every chick craves a mother. The 15 chicks were peeping their heads off when I arrived at the post office just after 7 a.m. to pick them up. They peeped all the way home. But as soon as I placed them under their respective mothers, all peeping ceased. Later this afternoon, I found the chicks singing. When little chicks are happy, they make a singing, chirping sound which you can hear in the video below:

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I’ve been checking on them throughout the day, and the two mothers have taken well to their new chicks, and the baby chicks are happy as can be. It’s a fallacy that baby chicks don’t need a mother. Oh, they’ll get by and grow up, but all that frantic peeping they do when they are tiny is them crying out for a mother who never comes.

Also at the post office this morning was the new tofu press I ordered from Earth First Innovations. The sturdy press has a wooden handle and a plunger that you hold down with sturdy rubber bands to press your tofu.

The timing was perfect. I was making tofu this morning. After filling up the press with curds, I pulled down the handle and secured it with two rubber bands. Thirty minutes later, I had a nice block of tofu.

So much happens in one day, it’s hard to keep track. Pepper has moved to laying her eggs in a nest in the chicken yard instead of in the nests near the garden.

The eggplants are coming along. In a week or two, I should have some ready for Bow Little Market. Ena 枝那 is exhausted watching me weeding.

The Roma tomatoes are turning red. Hopefully, enough will be red to have some for Thursday, the 21st’s Bow Little Market. And why is Sven resting in a nest in the middle of the afternoon?

Now both of the dogs are exhausted from watching me weed. I should be more tired than them. Some days I think I would rather be a dog, as long as I had an owner like me.

Old Billy enjoys a quiet moment with one of the older hens, Daisy. While Miasa-Hime 美朝姫 has taken to laying eggs in the nests near the garden where Pepper used to lay eggs.

And King Richard and his hens are going through what is left of the last compost pile. Just a few of thing things that happened today. I don’t have pictures of the bald eagle which flew low overhead and flew off when I yelled at it, nor pictures of the great blue heron who flew in to go fishing at the pond. There is never a boring moment here.

Raise chickens and from time to time they surprise you. Today I discovered that one of the chickens had deposited a dropping perfectly on a fallen leave. Did she do this intentionally? What are the chances of a chicken dropping landing perfectly in the middle of a leaf? If she did it intentionally, what is the message? Was it just for art’s sake, or to make it easier to clean up?

If you don’t like pausing to think, seeing wondrous things, or being surprised, don’t raise chickens.

Peace, it’s all we want.

What could possibly be as busy as a bee? Two dogs helping me weed a bed to plant potatoes, that’s who.

Takuma 拓真 and Ena 枝那 spent hours yesterday, and much of the morning today helping me prep a potato bed. What are they looking for? Gophers? Moles? I’m not sure. I did hear an occasional crunch when they found something worth eating. They don’t show any interest in the countless earthworms, but they are finding something to eat down there. Whatever it is, they aren’t sharing it with me.

Svenda has better things to do than help me plant potatoes. She’s looking for that special herb, that striking bug, to give her eggs a flavor all their own. With late spring’s verdant foliage, there is no shortage of good things to eat.