a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

  • Ruffle a Few Feathers

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    The wind blew all day long today, ruffling feathers and keeping the chickens in the brush. They’ll brave getting their feathers ruffled for sunflower seeds. On a day like this, they are glad they aren’t birds of the sky, getting tossed here and there by strong gusts. There are advantages to lying low.

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    That’s Hazel on the right and Cognac on the left. Cognac used to lay eggs with chocolate brown shells. She’s too old to lay much anymore, but she can still poop, and as long as a hen can poop, she’s worth having.

  • When Trees Sleep

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    The giant cottonwoods have gone to sleep. They’ve shed all their clothes. Their naked branches rustle in the cool, winter air. What is it like when birds endure their first winter? Oh, no! Oh, no! Everything is dying. Whatever am I going to do? For them, their first spring, when the cottonwoods awake, and new green leaves sprout, must be rapturous. It’s rapturous for me, and I’ve been through many a winter and spring.

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  • Carrot Candies

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    The heavy freezes of last week are gone. The baby carrots are no longer stuck in the frozen dirt. Deep freezes turn carrots into orange candy. When it gets below freezing, the starches in carrots turn into sugars to keep them from freezing. What you get are carrots much sweeter than summer carrots. These little gems are what’s for desert.

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  • At Dawn’s Early Light – a Pot of Gold, or the Party Never Ends

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    At dawn’s early light, BB and I came across a pot of gold, a dump truck’s worth of cottonwood leaves. During the night the cottonwoods decided to drop all of their remaining leaves. Was there a leaf shaking party we weren’t invited to? Did a parliament of owls shake branches all night long, screeching and hooting at the cascades of falling leaves they made? Or did the trees tire of their leaves and with a frenetic shake, toss their leaves to the ground, because they wanted to feel the wind and rain with their naked branches?

    You know, nature so often does unexpected things at night that it makes you want to stay up all night, flashing a beam of light about, just so you don’t miss the party.

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    The owls and the trees had their party last night. I’m having my party today, raking up the leaves, mixing them with litter from the chicken roosts, to fill a bin of compost. Why not drive around in a small tractor and scoop up and mulch the leaves in ten or twenty minutes? Because then I’d just be sitting on my butt and missing out on all the fun of raking, and gathering armfuls of leaves, and having the chickens race after me as I dash to the compost bin.

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    Svenda and the other chickens do their chicken dance, round and round the compost bin, as I fill it up with one wheelbarrow full of golden cottonwood leaves after another. I don’t think the cottonwoods realized that when they partied during the night, the chickens would party the next day, dancing on their fallen leaves. That’s the way nature is, one party after another.

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  • It’s Not Mayonnaise, It’s Skunky-aise

    Skunky-aiseA

    When you take one of Skunky’s eggs, it doesn’t matter which one, they are all perfect, and separate the yolk to make mayonnaise, you are on the right path to make Skunky-aise.

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    Add mustard, salt, pepper, lemon juice, and whip it with salad oil and there it is, Skunky-aise, a superb mayonnaise made from the egg yolk of the most phenomenal chicken ever, Skunky. To make this mayonnaise worthy of her, I added wasabi, paprika, and dill weed. When you’re using one of Skunky’s eggs, you can’t make dull mayonnaise. She deserves better.

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