Some Pictures

Animals and Miscellany First-

Here is the hill in front of the house that we did so much tree cutting on this winter.

Here is the bad hen who will not stay in the fence and has eaten more than her fair share of broccoli plants. I believe I will gift her to someone.

Here is the tractor with the mower attached. I have mixed feelings, but it sure is fun to use.

This is Elvis. He is a very good rooster. He is a lace Wyandotte.

This is Jerry Lee. He is not a good rooster. He is a New Hampshire Red. Note his magnificent comb.

Look how big Chappy is. We haven't seen her nurse in a few days. Maybe Violet has finally weaned her?

Here is my a frame chick brooder/grazer. It is too cool and wet for them to be outside today. Did I tell you Esme killed one?

Here is the pile of wood ready to be stacked. Look! It's only June, and we have our wood.

Here is our new rain gauge. Today is Monday, and I emptied it on Saturday, so over 1.5 inches of rain in two days.

Raising Chicks

If you've dreamed of raising your own chickens, you have probably read the long list of things you must do to keep them alive- keeping them an exact temperature, feeding them only chick starter, giving no scraps, etc. You may have decided not to handle them too much because they might get dropped. Maybe you've designed the perfect brooder.

I'm going to share with you a bit of advice the lady at the feed store gave me- "They're chickens!"

Many moons ago my friend got chickens, and within the first twenty-four hours she had offered them apple. It did not take long to assess that this would not kill day old chicks. When ours arrived the other day, we gave them their initial beak dip, a tray of chicken mash, and then a few seed heads from the garden.

I do use the chicken electrolyte stuff for the first couple of days because I figure being shipped is not that easy on a chicken's system. However, we are not using special chick food this time. Maybe they will not grow as fast, but I'm not too worried about that. And the seed heads lead to another way in which I officially disregard some of what I've read about raising chicks.

Those chicks were SO excited by the seed heads that I let the kids take the "pet" chickens outside to see what they would do. The thing that should NOT have been a surprise is that these precocial birds began foraging immediately. They love being in the grass and when given the opportunity, lay on their sides to try their hands at dust bathing. Also, they enjoy feasting on bugs; the children bring them crickets and grasshoppers, but they like looking for them.

They liked it so much that I began questioning the whole brooding them thing. We brood chicks in great big plastic tubs with modified lids. We put pine bedding in the bottom. The fact is, even with pretty rigorous attention, they smell. I have accepted a bit of odor as a given. However, seeing them in the grass made me think that even if they spent only part of the day in the grass the odor in the house would be less.

The next question was keeping them that perfect 90 degrees they supposedly require. I already do not use a thermometer. It is much easier to monitor the chicks. If they are all clustered together or peeping loudly, they are cold and need the light on or closer. If they are all avoiding the light, they are too hot. We were not keeping the light on at all within the first two hours because no amount of moving the light away seemed to bring them into a fluidly moving cluster. Once the light was off, they happily moved throughout the tub doing their chicken business. They still definitely want the light at night, and they want it pretty close to the top of the tubs.

Since they did not seem to want a light during the day, I decided to build a small chick "tractor". The idea was for it to be small enough that Ezra and Phaedra could carry it, but big enough for all the chicks to be in it comfortably. With ample help in figuring out how to do an a-frame, we now have a 3 x 5 grazer. It is about 3 feet tall. It is not predator proof and it has no nest box, but it means the chicks can spend part of each day on grass. There are, of course, problems.

The chicks are so small that it must be completely flush with the ground or they can pop out. You might think, "Big deal!" unless you have tried to put a stiff frame completely flush against the ground. Even very smooth ground has slight variations that would allow a chick to get out. The solution has been to put rolled up beach towels outside the edge to cover any gaps. And within a week or two, they will be big enough that this will be less of a problem.

I wish I has made it narrower because it is pretty hard to fish those little bits of fluff from the far edges. I did put in two doors, but that isn't that much help. I wish I had incorporated handles into the pieces that are about halfway up each side so it would be still easier to carry. I wish I had framed out the door area to give it a bit more security and rigidity.I'm wondering if a couple of squares would work better than a rectangle. And so on.

Still, I'm glad they can be on the grass some. I figure they will be better foragers, which is part of their work. We have been baffled in the past by how long it takes chickens to start foraging when we finally move them from the brooder to outside. Maybe this will solve that problem.

Language, Please!

I've always seemed "good". Your opinion of me might change drastically between the second and tenth time you talk to me because I seem to carry this shield of goodness or properness or uptightness.

Way back in third grade, I remember this girl named Angel, and she always had the right answers. But, that girl, you could not ever hear what she had to say, because she whispered every word she said. And the teachers gave conspiratorial winks as they urged this precious doll to give them the right answers.

Maybe you've known me a long time, and maybe you're thinking I was just like that, but no. Think back! I did not start talking in class until 4th grade and then I spoke right up. Why bother talking if you're not right AND heard? I had learned a little from the whispering Angel.

It was in 4th grade that I learned I had a double identity. Mrs. F was telling my mother that I looked like a cherub, all sweetness and light, in my beautiful red holiday dress and my hair in braids for the school Christmas performance of "The Night Before Christmas". My mother looked at her from beneath her eyebrows and said, "You don't live with her and she's no angel!"

This went on and on. People would meet me, think I was all proper and girly, and never notice that I did not own any lace-trimmed socks. Then, I would get comfortable and suddenly start saying what I thought, and they would be taken aback.

Here I am, one year from forty. I now can drive a bigger than small tractor, I milk a cow every day, I can carry more water in a morning than many of you probably haul in a week, I know the difference between bind weed and morning glories, and I am a pro at cleaning the vents of new chicks. And I hereby declare my right to swear in front of adults.

(There are some friends that I know would be terribly uncomfortable if I indulged this whim in their presence, and I have not lost sight of kindness.)

I know some say it shows a lack of imagination and a weak vocabulary, and I guess I don't care. It sure feels good to let a colorful word or two fly when I've been mowing pasture with a push mower for an hour and I hit a stray piece of fence that lashes into my leg. When the children are in bed and I'm describing an exciting moment with the cow, I will share my exact thoughts, which will definitely include a couple of curse words. And I'm tired of politely substituting all the work around words that everyone is silently translating into the word I actually mean.

Maybe, when I'm an old woman, I will wear purple, but for now, I think I'll just curse a blue streak.

If You Can't Give Me Your Attention

Then why did you call me/ come here?

Let's all pretend for a minute that it's 1998, and we've been invited to dinner. We've arrived, "Candle in the Wind" is playing on the cd player, and our lovely hosts just gave us a mojito to wash down the salsa and chips. This is nice! Just four or five people chatting.

Then, the host's phone rings. What is the "right" thing to do back in 1998? (Hint: answering machines were already common, and it's very rude to choose the person on the phone over the person standing right in front of you!)

So, listen up, if you're at a party (read: lots of people), you can certainly slip away and take a call on your cell phone in 2011. If you have a babysitter, you can do the same thing in a small group as long as you apologize to your friends. But, really, there are not that many things that cannot wait. And if it really cannot wait, then why did you come? I understand that plans change, so cancel instead of being rude.

And if you need to check your email THIS second, then please quit talking to me on the phone. I can call you later when you have time.

The Garden Is In

or- What Compromises I Made This Year

I am very happy that the garden is in. The weather has been very warm for late spring and I have felt pretty confident that even the cucurbits would be fine.

In the greenhouse, I put tomatoes and tomatoes, but I did interplant some things. My thought was to give a little variety in there and to give the tomatoes some personal space. So, there are a few marigolds and calendula, there are melons and broccoli. There are two carrot beds and another one for beets. I put two tomatillos in there just to see how they do in a greenhouse. I put in a few borage plants because they are beautiful and a good companion plant for tomatoes. They self seed which can be annoying, but then I can just transplant the seedlings or weed them out.

I did not plant any corn or beans for drying this year. I am trying to give each plant more space, as I think things were too cramped last year. I also managed to get carrots and rutabagas and beets planted in a timely fashion. I planted many, many cabbages and other kohl crops. I looked more to plant the things we buy if we have not grown them. We buy frozen peas and beans and we buy cabbages, so I tried to get more of these planted. I also started onions from seed, and I am happy to say they look good so far. I planted a lot of winter squash and no summer squash- we eat the one and not the other. I planted the cherry tomatoes in the lettuce bed by the house and I planted a couple of slicer tomatoes and cucumber plants in the bed by the back door. My thought is that these will be easier to put on the table if no one actually has to walk ALL the way to the garden.

I planted maybe 50 daisies here and there and everywhere. The morning glories did well and they are planted in a couple of places. I just stuck the nicotiana in the ground, and it will have to sink or swim. The nasturtiums did not germinate. I put sunflowers by our bedroom window again; they actually make pretty good shade once they get going. I'm putting pole beans at their base. I DID start some early, but they did not do so well. Hopefully, the direct seeded ones will get going pretty quickly.

Night of the Living Dead Chicken

This is a gruesome animal story, so skip it if you're feeling all vegetarian or something.

We have hens who are heading into their fourth summer. Mostly, people do not keep layers this long unless they're pets. Ours are in a gray area, and the older hens are scheduled for the axe this summer. There was one older hen who had pretty much quit acting like a chicken; she sat in the nest box all the time. And before you ask if she wasn't just broody, other signs of broodiness were absent and this has gone on for about three months.

The other night, Jason and I grabbed her and brought her up to the house to kill her. We had a discussion about which way to do it- chopping off her head or slitting her throat. I pressed for the throat method because it had been so easy, quick, and seemingly painless when I killed the spare roosters in the fall.

Time for a slight sidetrack. I once helped a friend with a chicken harvest; it was her first time and she was using killing cones and trying to kill them as humanely as possible. Something did not go quite right with the first few and they were still alive after bleeding for ten minutes. She tweaked what she was doing and the rest were dead within a minute. I decided then that I preferred being thorough and quick to being especially humane.

Back to the other evening- The bald, black hen put up no fuss and seemed pretty limp even when we took her out of the coop. Jason carried her upside down to the house because this position seems to calm chickens down. Really! try it sometime.

Jason held her by her feet and I slit her throat and she proceeded to not really bleed. There was a brief debate about whether she was so close to dead that her heart wasn't really beating strongly and I cut her throat more thoroughly. I think at this point one of us mentioned that the idea of zombies must have come from someone who slaughtered animals.

Still not much blood. I cut her throat until I hit her neck bones. Then there was a little more blood, but not like we usually see. I had gotten to her neck bones, so we put her on top of the compost and waited for her to bleed out. She wasn't moving, so we covered her with a thick layer of straw. I stayed outside another twenty minutes because I kept worrying we hadn't actually killed her. The House of Usher was definitely on my mind. I finally went in the house satisfied that she was dead under there.

The next morning, we went down to do chores. Jason carried milk up to the house and I went to turn off the water and glanced over at the chickens. (This is a good time to mention how far the chickens are from the compost pile right now. It's maybe a hundred yards with a steep, brush covered hill in between.) There was one of our few black chickens sitting outside the fence; you know, one of the ones left since we killed a black one the night before. And this chicken was looking pretty limp.

My thought was, "You've got to be kidding!" Then, Jerry Lee and his living hens all gathered on the inside of the fence, so I could easily count three living black hens on the inside of the fence.

Did a fox dig the dead chicken out of the compost and deposit her by the chicken fence? That was one of many thoughts racing through my head and I walked toward the chicken fence. Then, she lifted her head and looked at me. Telltale Heart, anyone? I scanned the field to be sure no one from PETA was watching and grabbed the chicken by her feet and marched up to the house.

Jason grabbed the cleaver and we severed her head completely from her body. She hasn't reemerged from the compost since, so we're pretty sure she's dead. I'm not going to check.

How's Violet?

We did get Violet inseminated In January, so we should have a calf right around my dear friend's birthday in October. Maybe we'll name the baby after her.

So, something funny that happened within days of the insemination is that our very exciting cow got very boring, but in a good way. From January until last week, she was easy to milk, she was reliably adjusted to our routine, she stood extremely still during milking, she gave me cues before she peed or pooped so I had more of a chance to get out of the way. Really, just the way you idealists might imagine milking a cow might be.

About two months ago, Chappy came into heat for the first time. What do you know about cows in heat? Well, if you don't want to know, skip this paragraph and maybe the next one. When in heat, cows mount other cows or they are mounted; it's called standing heat. Having a herd of only two cows means my dear, sweet little calf was mounting her mother. It means that she would nurse and then try to mount her mother. It means her mother got pretty darn tired of that nonsense and quit letting her nurse. The really fun part is that this recurs every three weeks. The last time Chappy was in heat, we took pity on Violet, and locked Chappy up for the day.

Every three weeks, Violet quits letting Chappy nurse, then after a couple of days she lets her nurse a little. We can tell when we milk whether Chappy nursed the day before. This past week, I'm not sure if she's nursed at all.

That's because our dear cows are now back on grass, and we have a new little excitement at milking time. Violet would much rather be on pasture than wait twenty more minutes while I'll milk her. We only had to force the issue one morning, but her attitude was so reminiscent of her pre-pregnancy behavior, that I'm sure glad we got her inseminated.