The dogwood is getting closer and closer to blooming. On this beautiful evening, a mother hen with eight chicks is leading her chicks home for a good night’s sleep. She’s had her chicks on the move much of the day, taking them into the woods, through the garden, around the pond, and a long evening walk by the dogwood. Maybe she enjoys looking at the dogwood as much as I do.
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Taking Her Chicks Home
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Double Delicious
There seems to be a hen laying double eggs. I’m getting one of these two to three times a week. It does take a bit of an effort for a hen to lay an egg. Maybe I should be on the lookout for a hen who is having trouble walking.
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Shirohana-mame – White Flower Beans
This is one bean you probably won’t find in your store. The white beans are huge and delicious. Called Shirohana Mame 白花豆 in Japan, the name means White Flower Bean. The beans get that name from the beautiful white flowers of the bean plant.
I’ve been growing this bean for a number of years, and this year I am planting 3,000 of them. I may even have some left over this fall if you would like to try them. The beans are a runner bean, Phaseolus cockiness, and grow on long vines. They are originally from Central America. In Japan they are cultivated where summers are cool in the mountain valleys of Nagano, Gifu, Tohoku and Hokkaido.They aren’t a bean whose cultivation can be mechanized, which means they require a lot of hands-on work to grow. You have to grow them on poles and pick them by hand. This isn’t the type of food normal food channels want to deal with. So you’re left to find small farmers growing them with a lot of love. I don’t know of anyone in the US growing them on a large scale. By the time I have my 3,000 beans growing, I may have the largest Shirohana Mame field in the country. I’ll let you know this fall how mine did.
- 花豆 ~ 豆種協会
- 玉ねぎ 白花豆 北海道農業 『森谷ファーム』
- 白豆きんとん
- 白花豆の甘煮
- Shirohana Mame ~ Kitazawa Seed Company
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Duckweed – Desert for Chickens
The chickens are having a party. I hauled out a pile of duckweed from the pond. The chickens won’t dive into a pond to gobble up the duckweed like ducks do. But scoop it out for them, and they will devour it all. The duckweed is full of small pond bugs which the chickens like too. Through the summer months, there is an endless supply to feed the birds and fertilize the fields.
- The Charms of Duckweed
- Common Duckweed ~ Texas A&M
- Duckweed: Environmental Star ~ Rutgers University
- Lemna minor (lesser duckweed) and Lemna trisulca (star duckweed) ~ Washington State Department of Ecology
- Duckweed as Chicken Feed ~ Avian Aqua Miser
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Farming Is About Patterns
You can’t step outdoors and not see interesting patterns. And no two days are the same. Some days the sun’s light touches everything. Other days the clouds roll thick across the sky. Someone has moved the wheelbarrow. A bale of straw has been left out in the open, a rake propped against it. Patterns change by the hour, by the minute. Someone has left eggs on the tool cabinet. A hen walks right in front of your lens. A hen is stretching her wing in the sun. Someone is carrying in the eggs left on the tool cabinet. Things change before you have a chance to get bored.
