Chickens are Ingrates

We have a chicken coop with world class laying boxes.

So where do some of the chickens decide to lay their eggs? Next to a tarp-covered bale of hay.

Fort Knox

We have finally finished sealing the garden away from bad influences. Yesterday, we put up the last of the netting designed to keep cute little songbirds and other nasty vermin out of the garden. Here is the netting on the ground being cut to length and sewed together.

And here is the final result.

As we were creating this cozy little fortress in the wilderness, we decided that it would be a great place for grand kids to sleep out in. I can hear the following dialog already:

• Grandchild: Mom, I don't want to sleep in the garden.
• Mother: I know, but can't you do it for just one night? It makes your grandparents so happy.
• GC: But Mom, it's creepy. There is bugs and stuff.
• M: Just humor them, OK? Put the sleeping bag outside, and they will forget all about it in twenty minutes.

Bring out your dead...

Monday evening (the 11th), after finally hermetically sealing the garden against chickens and other nasty foul (down to the size of a 1"x1" square), we planted the plants that were living the the laundry room. Here is the plan according to which they were planted:

Here they are, all happy to go into the rich, fertile soil:

Here is the proto-vet, putting them into the rich fertile soil:

And here is what they look like after less than a week in the rich, fertile soil:

You will notice a lack of green stuff in much of the garden boxes. That is because many of the plants have turned white and died. This is quite disappointing. One possible explanation for their failure to thrive (failure to live?) is the excessive heat we have experienced this week. It has been above 90 on several days.

This reminds us of a story told to us by a good friend. He was planting grapes one spring; planting grapes apparently looks like burying sticks in the ground. His neighbor, seeing this, remarked "I see you are saving time by planting things that are already dead."

Move the duck?

Call it busy minds otherwise occupied with more important matters or just a lazy habit, we are Post-it users in the worst way. Even with technology at our fingertips nothing speaks with the authority or clarity as a reminder (almost always on the microwave) of a post-it note.

That seems normal enough until I looked at this note with objective eyes. "Move the duck". How weird can one family get? I laughed out loud.

Then I remembered with fondness, the story of a morning of one of my mentor-moms, when she was overheard yelling, "Don't let that bunny go downstairs!" Carolei was famous for being uber-normal and in control of her larger brood. If she can have a rabbit loose in the house I am in good company with ducks that need moving. At least they weren't inside the house......yet.

Protecting Our Stuff From Our Animals

We have noticed a disturbing pattern in our farming activities. We acquire some animals (40 chickens, for example). Then we discover that these animals have a deleterious effect on something (our tomatoes, for example). So we end up spending a Saturday or two or three and somewhere between $50 and $250 to animal proof whatever needs protecting.

Exhibit number one. Some of the chickens figured out that they could fly over the fence to eat bugs (good) and produce (bad) and bathe in the soil (bad) in the garden; cute little song birds have also eaten many of our finest tomatoes. So we have sealed off the garden to anything that can't fit through a 1" hole by draping the whole thing in bird netting. (The filmy green mist you see in the picture below is not the steel tubing sending forth the first shoots of spring; it is the bird netting that is turning the garden into a fortress.)

Exhibit number two. The cats that live on the back porch were using the flower garden as a litter box. But no more! The flower boxes are now protected by chicken wire, with holes for the flowers carefully cut out with a Dremel tool. So now they have started using the gravel between the flower beds.

It's Spring and Those Chicks are Just Popping Out of Their Eggs

Last Tuesday (the 26th), all of Red's hard work came to fruition as a baby chick pecked its way out of its egg. It was joined on Wednesday by another. So now we have two baby chicks (plus an egg that we are 90% sure is not going to hatch, but we don't dare throw it away yet even though Red stopped sitting on it yesterday but we don't want to accidentally commit chickencide). Baby chicks are about the cutest things on the planet (cuter even than baby bunnies; bunnies just sit there looking cute, while chicks look and act cute).

Of course, this happy news comes with a future dark side. Assuming that each chick has a 50-50 chance of growing up to be a rooster, and that this probability is independent from chick to chick, there is a 75% chance that at least one of these adorable little balls of fluff with turn out to be a testosterone driven pain in the butt. We already have seven roosters, which is four or five more than we should have; sadly, we have not yet figured out how to decide who gets voted off the farm. So the chance of one or more of these adorable little chicks will go bad casts a dark shadow on this otherwise joyful event. (Kind of like in the poster for Star Wars Episode I where Anakin Skywalker's shadow is shaped like Darth Vader.)

The Apple Tree is Not Dead (Yet)

The apple tree is awash in blossoms. The pruning does not seem to have hurt it at all. Yeah for miracles!