How does my garden grow?

Truthfully, the garden isn't much to brag about.  A lot of vegetable seeds didn't germinate, possibly because of a dry spell that came along at the wrong time.  

So there are spaces where nothing is growing in the row of sugar peas, and also and the beets and lettuce; even the corn is spotty.  At times like these, I remind myself that I don't have to have garden produce to survive; it's a hobby that provides me with good exercise.  Any food I get from it is just a bonus.  
On the plus side, the potatoes are doing well, and the short row of green beans.  Tomato plants are coming along OK too.  

Here's another iris that opened up today; I'm pretty sure this was called a black iris when I ordered it, but I'd call it dark purple.  Last year I planted a red iris, and I was so anxious to see what it looked like.  It had the start of two big blooms, but then we had high winds that broke off the stalk.  I'll have to wait another year to see those.    
In an entry last week, I said this:  "I keep remembering the old superstition about things happening in threes.  First Blue, now Sadie.  I only have a cow, a steer, and two chickens left.  If something else has to die, I hope it's one of the chickens."  
Friday night a varmint, most likely an opossum or raccoon, climbed the eight-foot-high fence surrounding the chickens and killed them both.  I won't attempt chickens again; it just isn't worth the effort.  One thing about the chickens, I wasn't emotionally invested in them.  And it's no surprise what happened; it's occurred often enough in the past.  
Oh, if you've made it this far through my entry, I need some feedback:  You may have noticed the new picture on my header.  When I look at it, the "Just Me" is white; my sister-in-law says it's blue on her computer and she can barely see it.  What color are the words "Just Me" when you look at my header?

Chickens

I've wanted a couple of chickens for a long time; unfortunately, Cliff didn't want them.  For one thing, I had hopes of securing some nifty sort of pen, or even better, a chicken tractor that I could move from place to place so my chickens would have access to grass each day.  Cliff really didn't want to get involved with anything that requires building something or buying something.  He also knows how my interests can wane, and if I lost interest in my flock, all that work and money would be invested for nothing.  
Yesterday we went to Feldman's to get acetylene and oxygen, and I noticed all the peeping baby chicks for sale.  I looked at the different varieties and saw there were some Barred Rock pullets that were fully feathered out.  That means no shoving them in a box and keeping a light on them, because they can handle the weather just fine.  

I hunted Cliff up and asked him what he thought about keeping a couple of chickens in Mandy's old pen, which has only been used for lawn mower storage since my dog, Mandy, died four years ago.  
To my surprise, he agreed.  
So I came home with two pullets, Gertrude and Lois (after Cliff's remaining two aunts).  Don't ask me which is which; they're identical.  

Yesterday they seemed unhappy to be out in the big world, with only each other for a friend.  This morning, though, their peeping took on a more cheerful tone.  I'm going to have to buy a feeder and waterer for them, but for now they're eating and drinking from cut-down Folgers cans.  
At least I have somewhere to go with my table scraps now.  
They will have to stay in the pen; we witnessed a neighbor's rooster being attacked by a hawk one time, and the only thing that saved him was his weight.  The hawk couldn't lift off with him.    

Facing reality

This little chicken house, with attached pen, is advertised on Craigslist for $150.00; it's twenty-five miles from here. Judging by what I know about chicken houses, it's well worth that money.

I love fresh eggs, and I would enjoy having a few chickens around again. They're fun to watch, and they eat table scraps that would otherwise go to waste. I love hearing a rooster crow in the morning.

Cliff and I watched a public television broadcast, "Except For Six", about how hospice comes in to help dying patients and their families. (Stay with me here, I'm making a point.)

One man expressed his intentions of traveling to Colorado just one more time.

He was too far gone, though, so the trip never happened.

Cliff and I reminded one another that we've pretty much done all the things we really wanted to do: I won't be saying, on my deathbed, "I wish I had gotten just one more Jersey cow," because I did that.

And Cliff won't be saying, "I always wanted a big Oliver tractor; if I had enough time left, I'd get one," because his Oliver is sitting in the shop, waiting for a paint job.

Cliff agrees that if I want some chickens, I should go for it; he'll go get that chicken-house.

But you know what? $150 would buy a lot of eggs, and that's not even talking about the cost of the chickens and feed. Cliff works with a lady who would sell us all the fresh eggs we want.

Guess how many eggs we use in a week? Maybe six, unless we have a lot of company and I'm baking and making noodles.

I think I'll pass on this whim, at least for now. If Hospice comes in for me and I mention the chickens, just remind me I had my Jersey cow, so shut up about the chickens.

By the way, if your PBS station airs "Except for Six", by all means, watch it; it makes you appreciate Hospice, but more importantly, it will make you appreciate this day and this moment. You can see the trailer HERE.

Chickens

I used to keep chickens all the time; they're a pleasure to have around, and fresh eggs bear little resemblance to the ones you buy in the store.

Hens you've raised yourself can be downright sociable, singing at your approach and running to meet you; they get rid of lots of table scraps you'd normally throw away, and really appreciate the novelty of something new in their diet. They'll pick watermelon rind clean.

Because of varmints, particularly opossums, my chickens always had to be confined in a pen, but after the experience of losing all but one of my flock to opossums, we moved the chickens closer to the house, and Cliff constructed a better pen.

I suppose it's been fifteen years since I last kept chickens; trouble is, I read Patsy's blog all the time, and she makes me realize how I miss them.

I don't want a big flock, just three or four; that number of hens would produce more eggs than Cliff and I use. Although I love to hear a rooster crow, I'd pass on keeping one, this time around, due to Cliff's sleep schedule. A rooster would just be eating unnecessary food anyway.

I'll add this for you city slickers: hens don't have to have a male around in order to lay eggs.

I want a "chicken tractor". That's a movable coop that serves as living quarters for the hens; two people can move it from place to place in the garden area. The chickens eat bugs and weed seeds and grass, and of course, deposit fertilizer. You can see pictures of various kinds of chicken tractors HERE.

Ideally, I'd buy some chicks next spring and they'd lay eggs all through the next winter. I've never had any hens lay eggs year-around after their first winter, although I've been told that if you keep a light on them all night, or feed them suet, they'll continue to lay eggs all the time, throughout their lives.

I'm a skeptic on that point, but I won't argue about it.

So, now all I have to do is convince Cliff we could use a couple of hens. Wish me luck on that.

broody hens

Lori asked in a comment (previous post) what "broody" means, so I'm going to go down memory lane with the chickens again.

Old-time breeds of chickens lay a clutch of eggs (twelve to eighteen eggs, usually no more than a hen can sit on and hatch); then they'll stop laying and start setting on the eggs. They get very grumpy. If you reach toward a hen as if to get her eggs out from under her, she's liable to peck you. (Chicken-pecks don't hurt much, and as a kid I'd stick my hand in the nest and let the hen peck away at me.) The maternal instinct starts the day she starts incubating those eggs. Hens like this are called "settin' hens", and it used to be common to hear the expression, "madder than an ole settin' hen".

While a hen is incubating her eggs, she'll only get off the nest once every two or three days to eat, drink, and poop. And let me tell you, it's a huge poop when she saves it up for so long. (My apologies to those of you who might be eating breakfast.)

Modern breeds seldom, if ever, go broody; it's been bred out of them so they'll produce more eggs.

When I was growing up, as I've written before, my mom kept chickens. Once in awhile a hen would "go broody", and Mother had a perfect solution: She'd put the hen under an upside-down bushel basket (the old-fashioned fruit-basket kind, so it was dark) for a couple of days with no food or water. When the hen was let out, she was over her maternal spell and would start laying eggs again in a few days.

Guess what I found on Youtube? a video of a broody hen!

chickens of my childhood

Being raised like an only child (my siblings were both gone from home by the time I was two), and many times isolated from other children once school let out, I learned at a young age to use my imagination and entertain myself. I played cowboys and Indians, switching between characters as needed. I rode my imaginary horse, which trotted at a leisurely pace anywhere I wished to go... although I remember wishing my imagination worked just a little better, because I could never quite make myself believe I was on a real horse.

Until we moved to Kansas City, my mother always kept chickens on the place, wherever we lived. Even in the small town of Eagleville, we had a chicken-wire fence creating a yard around the hen house. I loved to play with the chickens and watch their behavior. No need to be bored with them around!


Early in the spring Mother would order fifty or a hundred day-old chicks, and I remember riding to the hatchery to pick them up. It was exciting to hear the peep-peeping coming from inside the cardboard box they were in on the ride home; there were round holes in the sides of the box to let them get air, and you could see the yellow fluff of their bodies moving, through the holes.

It seems most of the chicks were yellow (which means they'd be white as adults), but usually there were a couple with black on them; I always claimed those as my pets, since I could tell them apart from all the others.

The chicks started out in a room upstairs (so the poultry smell didn't invade our living quarters) in a brooder similar to THIS. There were light bulbs in it to keep the babies warm, and trays for food; a glass fixture that went on an upside-down mason jar gave them water.

I learned as a very young child to tell if the chicks were happy or sad, just by the sound of their peeping. The sound of happy chicks peeping is one of the most pleasant memories of my childhood. If they got chilled or ran out of food or water, their peeping got a desperate sound to it.

The chicks grew fast, and they were soon taken outside to a brooder house, where a heat lamp was hung over them for heat; they needed a source of heat until they were well "feathered out". I recall one time at my grandma's house, rats got in her brooder house and killed some chicks.

Usually Mother got straight-run chicks, which means an assortment of male and females. The males were destined for the skillet; the females would supply us with eggs; I believe back then we could take extra eggs to the grocery store and receive money for them. I'm sure my cousin Carolyn remembers how it all was, since she spent her childhood on a farm up the road from Grandma. When Grandma went to town on Saturdays, she never said she was going to shop: She said she was going to do her "trading".

Fried chicken was almost the only meat you'd ever see on our table. We didn't have a deep freeze, so when company was coming, Mother went out and killed a chicken or two the day before. She simply stepped on the chicken's head while holding onto it by it's feet, and pulled. What fun it was to see a headless chicken flopping around all over the yard! Then she'd dip the chicken in scalding water to loosen the feathers and turn it over to me to pluck all the feathers off.

If there was a hen that wasn't laying, she had the distinction of ending up in noodles. Once in awhile Mother would be mistaken about the hen's non-production and there'd be eggs in formation inside her. What an experience, seeing the miracle of how eggs were formed!

I got so many great anatomy lessons watching my mom "dress" chickens (I always found that term peculiar; shouldn't it be "undress?). I was fascinated with the craw, which was full of rocks and sand. Mother explained to me how, since chickens didn't have teeth, the craw did the chewing for them. The words "craw" and "gizzard" were used interchangeably; but checking online, it appears they might not quite have the same meaning.

My mom, and all my aunts, made the best fried chicken ever. I've never tasted any like theirs since. When the chicken was done and the cast iron skillet cooled off a bit, I'd pick out all the little crispies left behind in the skillet. Good stuff, Maynard!

That's my trip down memory lane for today. By the way, if you want to meet someone who keeps chickens as pets, go visit Kelly. That lady LOVES her chickens!

HAWK!!!!!

That's my steer, Meatloaf, in the background. But I took this picture to show you the feathers all over the ground. Those are from my poor rooster. (Click on the picture to make it larger.)

We have one rooster (who used to belong to our neighbor) and a hen Cliff brought home because he felt sorry for the rooster. They roam around the place all day and roost in the barn, on the hay, at night.

We were getting ready to get on our motorcycle this morning when I heard Mr. Rooster squawking like crazy. I looked toward all the ruckus and saw Rooster and some big bird flopping and half-flying around the calf pen not twenty feet away from me. My brain wasn't processing the whole thing until our renter yelled out her front door, "Hawk!"

Indeed, a hawk had a death grip on our old rooster. I commenced yelling at the top of my lungs, and finally the devil-bird took flight. Cliff headed to the house to get his shotgun (yes, we know it's illegal to shoot a hawk) and I watched the evil creature circle and swoop near the ground looking for his prey. By this time, though, Rooster had taken refuge in the calf shed (which you can see in the picture) underneath a hay baler; and his bride had run to the barn.

What really irks me about this whole thing is that I had my camera IN MY COTTON-PICKEN' HAND and didn't get a picture of the attack because I was so taken by surprise and horror.

I hate when that happens.

When we got home from a four-hour motorcycle ride, both the rooster and the hen were in the barn, still scared to come out. Poor things.