The hens have definitely decided it’s time to start laying eggs. Along with the magnolia, the cherry, the apple, all blossoming, the change in the light has convinced them that spring is here–rainy or not.
Today I got my first, tiny Americana pullet egg, a green jewel among the brown.
And the hens themselves are looking sleek and fluffy and they want to eat continuously.
Luckily, gorgeous eggs for breakfast make everyone around very cheerful.
I spent the weekend putting extra fine mesh over the two-inch mesh that lines the bottom of my chicken coop. Rats had been tunneling under and squeezing in to eat the grain. It was a long and tedious job on hands and knees, but hopefully will deter the marauders.
Then yesterday, I was outside just enjoying the chickens. That is, I was turning over dirt with a pitchfork and watching them greedily gobble the worms and bugs that emerged. It’s especially fun to watch them eat worms (or at least what I call fun). They sort of suction them out of their holes and eat them like strands of spaghetti. While we were happily engaged, there was a crash and a shriek, and suddenly the chickens were fleeing madly towards their house.
I turned around to see a young redtail hawk that had swooped in from the wooded side of the run. It had chased a few birds and wound up in the covered corner of the run, unable to get out. It hunched up facing away from me. Luckily I had my phone in my pocket, so I could capture the hawk digitally before turning it around with a long stick, and herding it out to the open area, where it could fly away. Continue reading “Everybody wants the chickens”
After my trip to New England last month, where gardens are pretty much over for the year, I doubly appreciate being able to start a garden for fall and winter. I took all the dead tomato stalks, pea vines, and other debris, and turned them into mulch with the Eco-shredder, then planted seedlings and nestled them in:
The raw debris
The debris shredded to mulch
The mulched seedlings and garden.
Theres lots more, of course–seedlings waiting for planting, herbs flowers and spinach in the labyrinth, wildflowers sprouting up unasked for. What’s such a contrast to the winter I grew up in is that this is really the start of the been season here. I love it!
And here’s a Monday poem, by that garden master, Theodore Roethke, with his own thoughts about debris and the life force:
Nothing would sleep in that cellar, dank as a ditch,
Bulbs broke out of boxes hunting for chinks in the dark,
Shoots dangled and drooped,
Lolling obscenely from mildewed crates,
Hung down long yellow evil necks, like tropical snakes.
And what a congress of stinks!–
Roots ripe as old bait,
Pulpy stems, rank, silo-rich,
Leaf-mold, manure, lime, piled against slippery planks.
Nothing would give up life:
Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath.
Theodore Roethke
The kittens are adolescents now, but they are still a team that roams around getting into trouble pretty much all day long.
I couldn’t resist making a video of them yesterday. I love how they seem to forget about the bag for a minute, and then jump right back in. Continue reading “PhD in Cuteness”
I have been doing the hard work of promoting my little book of translations (more about that another day). In between doing this work of pure attachment to the world, of assiduously courting its recognition for this project that means so much to me, I’ve been mulling the idea of faith.
Margaret Holub, the inspiring Mendocino Coast Rabbi, talked about this on Rosh Hashonnah. She read a passage about “coming to God as children or as slaves…” and noted that most modern prayer books change this language, as it is too hierarchical, too patriarchal. We’re uncomfortable with it, uncomfortable with the very idea of a patriarchal God. But this year, she said, those words had been ringing in her ear because she felt that they addressed the recognition that we are not in control.
None of us knows what will happen in the coming year, or even who will be here next year at this time. This acknowledgement that we have no control is the basis of faith, of acceptance not that “God will be good to us,” but that life will happen according to its mysterious, unknowable unfolding. A conscious acceptance of that can be a luminous thing. To have faith in the Divine Order, an order that contains suffering, terror, uncertainty, to be joyously open to that, is a definition of faith. She suggested we “act as if” we have such faith, and see how that colors our perception.
As a control freak myself, this is a challenge, but one that intrigues me, and I’ve been thinking about it as I go about the varied tasks of fall: clearing and redefining the labyrinth, culling the chicken flock, cutting old growth, preparing for planting once the rains begin.
The chicken flock is now down to six hens, no rooster, and nine pullets (almost two months old). I’m planning to put them together tonight, as the pullets are outgrowing their coop, and I have faith(!) that they are old enough to endure a little hen-pecking.
Laying slows down as the light wanes, and I couldn’t see keeping 11 hens through the winter. They are voracious, and while I love giving away the extra eggs, the feed bill/egg ratio tips in fall.
Now on days when all the hens are laying, I get two white, two brown, and two green eggs.
What did I do with the rooster and the rest of the hens? I sold two of the good laying hens, and gave the rooster and the four older hens to my Ethiopian friend to eat. I’m willing to kill and pluck a young meat chicken, but not an older bird. And she’s very glad to get them.
How can I love them and name them and then have them killed? This is the reality of farming (well, not necessarily the loving and naming).
But what I’ll do when Houdini, my little Hamburg, and Selina my favorite banty are too old to lay, I’m not sure.
Hopefully, they’ll get broody this spring and raise some chicks for me. That would justify my keeping them another year.
It’s the time of year when everything is overgrown and it’s very hard to harvest without treading on something. Next year, more order in the garden! But for now we have loads of produce, the kittens are having a lot of fun exploring, and they have discovered the tree. They’ve even learned how to climb down.
I posted this photo the other day, when the first of the Epiphyllum flowers bloomed. Yesterday, I watched a bee drench herself in pollen till she could hardly fly…
That little gold lump is the pollen pouch on her leg–almost as big as she is and one on each side!
Then I wrote this, which I’ll probably regret posting in its unedited state, but…
Epiphyllum
From squat slabs of cactus flesh
they flame up:
crimson tinged with fuchsia,
these giant
scentless
siren calls,
filigreed with pollen.
Even I
want in.
As for the bee,
she can’t get enough,
her back legs
so doused
with pollen
she drops straight down
before she can
struggle back up
and fly.
I’ve had this Epiphyllum for a long time, but it’s been languishing in the wrong corner of the garden–too much sun or not the right sun. A few months ago I moved it towards the street where it gets filtered late afternoon sun, and I’ve been watching it revive and bud… This morning, the first bloom.
And lots more to come…
All of which made me think of Stanley Kunitz, as I often do when I’m in the garden, as he was almost as famous for his garden as his poetry.
But often, when weeding especially, creating my own little piles (both physical and metaphorical), I think of this poem by Louise Glück…
I like watching you garden
with your back to me in your purple bathing suit:
your back is my favorite part of you,
the part furthest away from your mouth.
You might give some thought to that mouth.
Also to the way you weed, breaking
the grass off at ground level
when you should pull it by the roots.
How many times do I have to tell you
how the grass spreads, your little
pile notwithstanding, in a dark mass which
by smoothing over the surface you have finally
fully obscured. Watching you
stare into space in the tidy
rows of the vegetable garden, ostensibly
working hard while actually
doing the worst job possible, I think
you are a small irritating purple thing
and I would like to see you walk off the face of the earth
because you are all that’s wrong with my life
and I need you and I claim you.
Louise Glück
So deceptively simple and darkly complex! Now we’ll wait and see what the deer think of the Epiphyllum–I doubt my feeling if they eat it will be complex at all.
A reader asked, “Why haven’t I seen anything about them lately?” There are currently 11 hens and a rooster, the soft-voiced, gentlemanly Cloud, a Lavender Americana. The flock consists of three of my original six Americanas, four young Americanas, a Black Sex-linked hen, a Silver Wyandotte hen, and two banty hens. It’s almost impossible to get a picture of them altogether, but here are most of them, busily hunting for a handful of grain.
Because they are voracious, they have been eating away their hillside habitat.
So much so that the black and white banty, who I have renamed Houdini, has been finding little holes where the dirt is eroding, and escaping daily into the garden. To begin to remedy this, on Saturday, three strong guys came and salvaged enough concrete from the hillside to build the first level of a terrace:
The wall is three and half feet tall and about thirty feet long. Apparently, people in this neighborhood just toss old concrete down the hill when they remove it. My neighbor said he has this much embedded in his hillside, too. There’s a sizable pile of leftover concrete–but I’m not planning on tossing it down the hill.
As soon as it was built, 
the chickens settled into their
new terrace for a dirt bath. It’s fun to watch them toss dirt all over their feathers.
But all in all, feed, maintenance, etc., makes me understand why “pasture-raised” eggs are over six dollars a dozen. I’m sure I’d have to sell my eggs at at least five dollars each to break even at this point.
Still, it’s hard to beat chickens for entertainment of a livestock variety.
And there’s nothing like fresh eggs and greens from the garden for breakfast. I’ve never had an egg at any price that tasted so good. I’m going to have to think about a few new chicks, to make sure I have eggs this winter.
Sometimes I think that garden photos are about as boring as photos of someone else’s unknown family members on vacation, but this month, I can’t resist. Everything is just so lush:
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And I made my first dinner completely from the garden last night: Fava, parsnip, onion, garlic and tatsoi stir fry. Yum!
Everything here is blooming, spouting, burgeoning. The hens are laying, the bees are busy, and I watch the vegetables grow as much as an inch a day:
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It’s hard to be indoors at all…
Yesterday was the last Saturday of the month, which is the day of the great Berkeley compost giveaway. From 7:30 in the morning till it runs out, energetic Berkeley gardeners can shovel as much compost as we want into whatever vehicle or containers we bring.
This was the scene about 10 minutes before the official start of the process. I was in the middle, so this is about half as long as the compost mountain stretched. Nonetheless, people come early, as I did.
Then I spent the day carrying bags of compost downhill and spreading it in the unplanted sections of the garden.
As I have most of the growing sections fenced off, I decided to let the chickens participate. They went right to it, picking out weed seeds and bugs, taking deep dirt baths, and generally mixing up the soil for me. For once, they did just what I needed, and left my seedlings alone.
Plus they were very happy to do it.
