a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

  • Getting to the Other Side

    HazelOnHerOwn

    This morning I found Hazel by herself, enjoying a quiet morning, drinking water alone after spending the night on the roost. None of her chicks were around. They were outdoors, on their own. Her mothering days are over. She was a great mother. Just yesterday, I took the picture below of her with her chicks around her. Two and a half months ago, in late July, she was basking in the glow of hatching a clutch of lovely chicks. The baby chick on the far right of the second photo below, is the chicken without neck feathers to the far left of Hazel. The gray chick in the middle the black chicken to the left of Hazel. The yellow chick is the yellow chicken whose head is behind Hazel’s tail. There are two more of her children not in the photos.

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    I wonder how hens feel when they finish raising their clutches. Are they relieved, exhausted, sad? Do they feel anything? The first hen I saw raise a clutch, Madeleine, went for a long walk in the woods when she finished raising her chicks. The look on her face said, “I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time.”

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    Madeleine would have loved the new bridge. It is a hit with the chickens. They use it all day long to get to the other side. Getting to the other side … it’s a big thing with chickens.

  • Yeah! No Rain!

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    Yeah! No rain! Unlike the other day when Tangerine had to huddle her chicks out of the rain, there’s no rain, and she and her chicks can take their after lunch nap outdoors, where chickens would rather be.

    It doesn’t matter how windy or cold it is, nothing beats a grassy spot outdoors for an after lunch nap. While she preens and stands guard, her chicks nap and preen, nap and preen, nap and preen. Though, lunch isn’t something chickens do. They peck and eat much of the morning. It’s more like a digestive break after an extended brunch, think of upperclass Victorian women resting after a long morning of tea, biscuits, and gossip.

    This afternoon the gray chick may have napped too long. Maybe it was having one of those dreams from which you can’t wake up. It got separated from its mothers and siblings. They were deep in the woods, scratching through the brush, and it was peeping frantically, running everyplace looking for them. After twenty minutes of running around, it found them and settled down.

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  • Something so Sweet, so Unknown

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    Get a good husband. You’ll never regret it. My sweet husband was clearing piles of brush we had lying around way too long. He spent all day running the brush through our chipper. I’d mention the make and model, but I wouldn’t want any of you to make the mistake of buying that chipper. At the end of the day he had a huge tote bag, one of those grain bags that hold a ton or more of grain, loaded with the sweetest smelling wood chip mulch I ever saw.

    “What smells so good? What did you put through the chipper?” We went through the list of brush we had: alder, maple, birch, cherry, cottonwood … cottonwood. Yes, that is what made the chips smell so delightful. It’s like wood chips walked on by the angels. Wood chips made from a mixture of cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, licorice root, and tangerine.

    Wood chips made with cottonwood is one of those life altering discoveries. There’s life before good husband, life after good husband; life before dog, life after dog; life before cottonwood chips, life after cottonwood chips. And yet no one ever talks about cottonwood chips. It’s one of those great mysteries in life no one is supposed to know about. I’ve been to countless hardware stores, garden stores, nurseries, and no one has ever mentioned, no one has even whispered, “Check out the cottonwood chips.”

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    Luckily for me, out in the woods lies the carcass of a cottonwood tree, specifically Populus trichocarpa – black cottonwood, the fantastically tall cottonwood which grows from California to Alaska. They can shoot up to a hundred feet in a few decades. I meant to cut up the cottonwood but had more important things to do, and now a forest of a thousand cottonwoods saplings has sprouted from its many branches.

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    One fully loaded wheelbarrow of cottonwood saplings will produce one full wheelbarrow of sweet cottonwood chips. These chips are so aromatic that I could see stuffing them into a pillow and resting my head on it. I’m sure I could have the most pleasant dreams breathing the lovely scent all night long. This wheelbarrow is destined for one of the hoop houses. There are ten wheelbarrow’s worth of cottonwood saplings to provide chips for garden paths and mulch around some of the trees. So get a good husband. Every day you’ll be thankful.

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  • Out of the Rain

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    It’s a rainy day. There is always food and dry places to rest in the chicken yard, but most of the chickens want to be outdoors where they can see the raindrops falling and see all the action. For a midday break, Tangerine has taken her chicks to a dry spot at the entrance of the wood shed. From their dry vantage point, they can preen their feathers while seeing what is happening.

    Do the neurotic chickens count their feathers? It makes you wonder.

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  • The Benefits of Thinning

    NapaCabbageBabies

    What are these? These are the delightful leaves of baby napa cabbage. The Japanese name for napa cabbage is 白菜 – hakusai, which translates as “white vegetable”. Baby napa cabbage is anything but white. Like swans, their beautiful white leaves don’t develop until they grow up. What is peculiar is that the word “napa” comes from the Japanese word 菜っ葉 which means vegetable leaves.

    I have these baby napa cabbage leaves on the kitchen counter as it is time to thin the rows of napa cabbage that are growing in the garden. Thinning is fun because you get to eat all sorts of baby greens. I doubt anyone else in the state had baby napa cabbage leaves for lunch today, which made today a very special day.

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    Making this week special is a pullet which started laying lovely light blue eggs. I haven’t seen which hen is laying these special eggs. Why settle for plain white eggs when chickens can lay eggs in so many colors?

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    KingRichard

    King Richard is strutting in front of a chicken barn, acting like a royal. He’s trying to impress a hen which is inside checking out the barn. She’s not impressed. He should have brought her a dish of baby napa leaves.