Newsletter
Times sure do change. Instead of keeping newsletters on our webpage we now have a blog. So, all of the newsletters, starting in 2006 can be found at http://bullrunfarm.blogspot.com/.
Do you want to be on our newsletter e-mail list? Send your e-mail address to: newsletter@bullrunfarm.com
A dozen or so past favorites:
- Ice
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The 'come out and see the beautiful fall leaves' farm lunch and hike is next Saturday - 1 pm. Bring your own lunch. If you don't know the way to the farm, send me an e-mail requesting directions.
The leaves are just starting, yellow for the poplars, red for the maples and dogwood. The oaks should start changing to reddish-orange this week.
Yes, we do have pumpkins. They were planted to be ready the week before halloween. If you come out to the hike you can pick your pumpkin then.
We had a spotty frost last Thursday night. It didn't appear to do any damage but I picked almost 1000 bell peppers that day just in case. I also picked all of the regular and Asian eggplants. There are still Thai ones growing.
As you have probably noticed, the season is rapidly coming to an end. We have plenty of stir-fry and salad mix. A deer got in and ate half a row of mustard, but there is still plenty. I have exiled the dog to the mustard patch during the night for the duration. We will have pac choi and Chinese cabbage for stir-fry this week and frost hearty mustard the last week.
And speaking of frost - do you remember the first time you were aware of winter coming on?
I still remember that morning clearly.
I was in third grade.
We had just moved back to DC from Texas.
But I remember that morning at my grandmother's house in DC. I went outside and the bucket she kept under the outside faucet had a thin layer of ice on the top of the water.
I stared at it in amazement.
I don't think it got below freezing once during the five years I lived in Dallas as a child.
I reached into the bucket and touched the ice then quickly turned and ran into the house to get my grandmother and dragged her back outside to show her my discovery.
We stood there staring at the bucket of water.
"There's ice on the water," I said.
She told me that water froze that time of the year.
"You mean it's normal?"
She told me it was.
I don't think I believed her.
Each night after that I would make sure that bucket had water in it and first thing in the morning I would rush outside to look.
And each morning the ice would be a little bit thicker than they morning before.
About the time the bucket froze solid was the time that I lost interest and decided that water freezing outside was a natural phenomenon.
But I can still remember that sense of amazement the first time I saw the ice.
I hope that I will always be capable of having that same sense of amazement.
- Magic
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Once, it was late May, I was sitting on the banks of the Virgin River, outside of Hurricane in Southwest Utah. Actually sitting in a pool carved out of the Utah red rock. The pool was overflowing with water from a hot spring that bubbling out of a cliff face.
I was watching the Virgin melt out of the mountains through a gorge in the red rock.
For the past week I had been peddling my mountain bike from the eastern side of Utah near Dinosaur (don't you like all of these Utah names), taking only dirt roads and trails, until I hit Zion, and then I'd peddled through the park and to this bed and breakfast with the hot spring.
I was waiting for Wenonah to drive in from Las Vegas.
But back to the subject - which is water.
As I sat there looking at the river, I had a sort of epiphany (and not at all drug induced) that the water was not much different than lava, or molten metal.
Water just liquifies at a much lower temperature. (The muddy river water looked a lot like lava).
And that gravity was a really magical force (come on, can you honestly say that the theories that explain gravity don't sound a lot like someone saying "its a magic spell").
Anyway, to get back to reality: The past couple of days, I've been thinking about another sort of magic as I've put about 3500 garlic cloves in the ground. Making sure the root side of the clove faced down, toward that big mass of gravity magic, and the narrow end, the end where the stalk will grow come spring, facing up toward the sky.
And thinking about the magic that would turn the 100 pounds of seed garlic into 450 pounds of eating garlic come next summer.
And then I would put a couple inches of dirt over a clove and go on to the next one.
And while I was doing all of this, I was constantly picking up rocks and throwing them to the side of the field.
You see, our fields grow rocks. Every year more and more rocks bubble out of the ground (as though either gravity doesn't really apply to field stone, or these rocks are like plants and they are growing, up toward the sun).
Which makes me think of having a rock picking party. I've done this before. I've invited friends out for a hike and dinner and instead got them out in the field with a bucket picking up rocks. One time a friend had out-of-town company and I got them all out there picking up rocks for several hours.
Around here, there are always rocks to pick up.
You are invited out to the farm, too. And I still have almost 50 pounds of honey to give out.
(Notice - I made it through the entire newsletter without once mentioning deer).
- Birds Need Mothers
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Birds need Mommys too. Or at least that's what I told a friend we had over for dinner this weekend.
He's an engineer, an engineer from the city, and he was telling us all about the nature of intelligence.
"Human's learn, animals know." he said (or something like that).
I couldn't help but chiming in: "That's typical human arrogance."
And it is.
You take humans away from their culture and they are just dumb animals too. You take turkeys away from their families and they are.....turkeys. (Wild turkeys are smart -domestic turkeys, which are raised without turkey culture, are dumb).
Imagine what it would be like if human babies were put in a room (a clean room) with just other human babies. Then, fed (not by grown up humans) from a trough and allowed only the company of other babies their age?
They would be as dumb as domestic turkeys.
(I taught high school for almost ten years and there is a common belief among some teachers that this is indeed how many humans are raised).
I mean, come on, humans are the product (for better or worse) of thousands of years of developing human culture. Farm animals have their culture destroyed with each new generation.
No wonder some animals are so dumb. What they know, they either learn on their own or is instinctual.
(An interest study would be to raise humans like we raise baby chicks - with all culture stripped away, I bet, we would quickly find out what is instinctual with humans and what isn't).
Remember 20 years ago when there was the debate of whether to take California Condor eggs and raise them in captivity or to just let Condors go extinct. The argument for letting them go extinct was that a Condor without its culture was no longer a Condor.
So, you might ask, why does this concerns me, on this rainy morning?
The answer - Guinea Chicks.
I just received two dozen in the mail and I must admit that these are some of the dumbest birds I have ever encountered.
Yesterday I moved them from a box in the sunroom to the henhouse attached to the shed.
What a mess that was.
I spend all morning scrubbing out the room I was going to put them in (clean room), but when I carried them out to the shed and carefully took them out of their box and put them in their new home, they ran and hid.
Guineas with their heads sticking in cracks, Guineas stuck behind loose boards, Guineas with their heads hiding in the wood chip bedding.
And, unfortunately, I had left the door open. Five chicks made a mad dash into the shed.
And hid.
I chased them, but have you ever tried to find a camouflaged ping pong ball in a room of junk?
I spent the next two hours with a flashlight looking under old cook stoves, around unused bee boxes, and in-between antique farm tools.
I only found three.
The other two, I imagine, are still hiding. Still, with their instinctual little heads in the sand.
Now, imagine what would have happened if those chicks had been raised with a mother? A mother who had also been raised by a mother. And so on, going back hundreds if not thousands of generations.
Oh well. I'm going to try to catch our two grown guineas (the only 2 out of 25 who learned how to outsmart the local wilely bobcat) and put them in the room with the chicks. Maybe some of their acquired 'culture' will wear off on these dumb baby birds. Sort of like what we expect to happen in human high school.
The greenhouse is up, and is it big (I've been telling Wenonah that instead of building a new house, like she wants, we just put up a big greenhouse and move in -plenty of windows and this greenhouse has a cathedral ceiling). I have yet to put the plastic on, which will happen as soon as it stops raining.
If you are one of the people planning on starting your own seedlings, you can come out this weekend. I have a smaller greenhouse that is ready for planting.
- Wind Goddess
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I've spent most of today worrying about how to appease the wind goddess.
There must be a way.
At 10 am this morning she ripped the outer sheet of plastic off of the greenhouse. At 11 she tore two pieces of roofing tin off of the goat barn.
And this isn't mentioning her blowing buckets, bird feeders, trash cans and even lumber around all day long.
I was thinking that a quick sacrifice of a goat would be called for, except, if someone sacrificed a goat to me, I would take it as an insult.
A sacrificed goat, I would think, would mean that the person has just found an excuse to get rid of a stubborn animal who has been out jumping his fences, killing his trees and eating his vegetables. If I was the wind goddess I would think about making the wind blow twice as hard if someone sacrificed a goat. I'll take his greenhouse and blow it to the next county.
Anyway, those are the sort of thoughts one has when they are as obviously dependant on the natural environment as are farmers. Over the past half a dozen years my ideas about the wind goddess have greatly developed and matured (such as how I know it is a goddess and not a god). And I have noticed that over the past half a dozen years she has become more and more powerful, or maybe more irritable.
Or maybe it is just climate change that is giving us the unusual wind storms.
Oh well.
Besides worrying about wind damage, today, I've been out 'educating' the young goats about electric fencing.
Goats don't just naturally know that electric fences are something to be avoided. Electric fences are something they must learn. Electric fences only work because animals (this would also apply, I guess, to most* human animals) don't enjoy getting shocked.
(*This might not be true with all humans. About ten years ago we had a family gathering out here on the farm, and back then all of my brothers and sisters children were much younger and I looked out the window and here these kids were holding hands in a long chain and the one on the end would touch the fence and they would all giggle when they felt the shock. Which means...... I don't know what).
Anyway, back to goats: To know you don't want to get a shock you have to know that a shock isn't something you want (which for all of us who didn't trust their elders to know what they were talking about, means experiencing it).
So the way to train a goat is to set up several strands of electric fence wire, hook the wire to the solar fence charger, put a bucket of grain on the other side of the wire.
And then go away.
The young goat will see the grain and run up to feast.
As they stick their noses through the wire they will get a shock.
At first they will just step back, wonder what happened, but being goats, look back at the grain and try it again.
They will get another shock. And then maybe another, and maybe another, depending on how soon they figure out that touching the fence is maybe not something they want to do. And that maybe eating grain is less desirable than avoiding a shock is desirable.
Then, the theory goes, everytime they see electric fence wire, they think, shock, unpleasant, stay away.
Which mostly works.
Except when they look through the fence and see something they really, really want, with my luck, probably a nice young recently planted apple tree, and then they look at the fence and they think:
"I can get through that fence with only a momentary shock, and if I do, there is that beautifully tasty tree bark to eat.'
That's also sort of like human behavior. (For you who took ethics courses in school - doesn't this sound like one of those values clarification exercises or maybe that Chekhov short story?)
On a happier subject, the greenhouse is now full with almost 20,000 seedlings. It looks impressive. In three weeks when things have had time to grow some (and if our favorite goddess doesn't blow the house away) we will have a green ocean of seedlings.
After that it should take over a month to put all the seedlings in the ground and then, depending on the plant, 6 to 16 weeks to produce vegetables or flowers.
The vegetable season is just around the corner. I can't wait for a nice, fresh, homegrown tomato.
- Toad Orgy
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I was going to announce a 'name the last day of frost' contest this week. But the toads beat me to it.
The toads announced there wasn't going to be another frost this year.
They do this every year. Somehow they know when the last frost has arrived, and they announce it in their own peculiar fashion.
This year,the announcement came at 6 on Friday evening. I was sitting out on the front step, taking off my work boots when suddenly, the toads started marching (or should I say hopping) toward the yard.
At first it was just one toad, and then a couple. Followed by dozens and then scores. It was a coordinated attack. Coming from all directions.
They were gathering for the annual Toad Orgy.
This is the truth.
I don't know who sends out the invitations or whether they even have e-mail. But each year, just after the last frost, toads start hopping out of the forest, across the fields, under the fence, through the grass. And leap into the gold fish pond.
By early Saturday morning there were over a 100 toads in the pond.
100 toads in the pond having sex.
It's absolutely embarrassing. We can't invite company over. It's just too mortifying. All of those toads and the guests who inevitably ask about what is going on.
'What's that noise coming from your front yard? Over by the gold fish pond? What are those frogs doing?'
Everybody has to look. We all stand around, staring down at the pond. Looking at these toads, the large females and the little bitsy males. Their bodies in compromising positions. Sometimes three and four together.
A good fifty percent of the people who insist on looking at the pond do not realize what is happening. With innocent looks on their faces they ask: 'What are those frogs doing?'
'Well, they are.... You know, they do this every year about this time. It's the strangest thing.'
This time, the toad orgy, has been going on for three continuous, non stop days. The pond is filling up with tadpole eggs. Pretty soon, at this rate, there won't be any room for the poor fish.
And speaking of goldfish, I wonder what the fish think about these going on in their pond?
I wonder if the fish realize that the toads signify spring. And that it is now safe to start planting seeds into the ground.
Which is what I'm going to do. As soon as the ground dries a bit I intend to start putting lettuce, arugula, mizuna, tatsoi, and all the seeds for the other greens right in the ground.
I've already planted 4000 (more or less) onion seedlings, along with an equal amount of leeks.
This year I'm not going to try to grow spinach. Instead, I'm having a local gardener (they grow organic lettuce and greens on about an acre of land) grow the spinach for us. I am tired of feeding spinach to the deer and figure it is better to contract it out to people who have less of a deer problem. Hopefully, this way, we will get more spinach in the shares than in years gone by.
Let's see, what other news on the farm: a dog came by the other night and took a bite out of our turkey. The turkey is still alive but I don't if it will survive much longer. I also don't know whose dog it was. A black bird dog.
The bobcat was out howling when we came home late one night last week. She was just out in front of the house, on the other side of the field. Here it is late at night, now, and a few moments ago there was a sharp scream from a large bird out in the forest. I wonder if the bobcat is out hunting and just found a meal.
The deer are still sleeping behind our house. Two mornings ago, I leaned out my office window and yelled at them. They ran away, but this morning, there they were. One had stuck its head through the fence around our yard and was nibbling on a lily plant. Something has to be done, and soon (the young guard pigs aren't due for another month).
The bees, though, arrived by US mail on Friday and Saturday and were successfully introduced into their new homes. This might sound perverse to some, but I truly believe that there isn't a more pleasant leisure activity than sitting on a nice spring day, beside a healthy, happy beehive, watching the bees leave and then come home with a store of bright orange pollen stuffed in the sacks behind their legs.
And if you want to come out and sit by a beehive on a sunny afternoon and just watch. You are invited to visit.
- Toads
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Here is a sad story of unintended consequences.
A story of party goers taking a short cut across a field and encountering a fence, an electrified fence, and instead of going around, trying to go through the fence.
The party was last week, a warm up event for the wild goings on that happens annually in our front yard.
The party goers, in this case, are toads.
And the electric fence is the one that surrounds and protects our chickens from wild, chicken eating, animals.
But let's get the farm news out of the way before we delve into this tragedy any further.
The greenhouse is almost full. Over 22,000 seedlings started and growing. Flowers, herbs and vegetables.
We have direct planted salad greens in about a third of the greenhouse space. I will keep you updated, but we should have salad mix for shareholders to come out to the farm and get in about 3 weeks.
Last week, just before the rain, we planted 250 pounds of seed potatoes. We still have 50 pounds of Blue potatoes to plant.
This week 10,000 onion seedlings should arrive from Texas along with 3000 leeks. Hopefully the ground dries up enough to plant them.
Also this week, 750 asparagus roots arrive from a grower in Virginia.
Now, with asparagus, it takes several years for the plants to mature enough to harvest. So no asparagus this year, but some next, and a lot the year after that.
Finally, we have located 100 more pullets, so everyone that has requested eggs will get eggs.
Now, back to the party, really an orgy, that goes on about the time of the last frost.
One night, usually the middle of April, word gets around, as it does for such things, and starting at sundown, toads start hopping from all directions, leaving their hiding places in the forest and converging on our front yard.
And our goldfish pond.
This is a party with hundreds of frolicking toads.
Quite an event. And it goes on for days. Loud, raucous. Promiscuous. Almost obscene. Definitely unbelievable.
Well, last week, there was a trial run for this year's event. A couple dozen toads jumped the gun and decided to have an early party.
The night was warm, the sky full of stars, the moon full, and starting at about 8 pm there were toads out front croaking and looking for a good time.
I went out with a flashlight, not being a voyeur or anything, but just checking out the situation. Counted the number of toads involved. Realized it wasn't the 'big event'.
And went back in the house and to bed, only waking up occasionally to listen to the sounds of the party in the front yard (you know, loud music, breaking bottles).
Watering the seedlings in the greenhouse. Feeding the chicks in the shed, collecting eggs.
Only when I got to the hens I realized that something was wrong.
On the far side of the electrified chicken fence came a sizzling sound.
I carefully walked around the hen yard, careful not to touch the fence and receive a shock until‚
Until I came upon the toad.
A fried toad.
Sometime during the night a toad had hopped across the field on his way to the pond and coming across the fence tried to hop through it.
And, I guess, what to me, or you, or a fox, or even a coyote, is a shock, is, instead, to a toad, an electrocution.
The poor thing jumped into the electrified mesh and was quickly killed.
And his body, throughout the night, slowly cooked.
I sadly looked down at the toasted toad, and then with a stick removed his body, pushing it inside the chicken fence where he was sure to provide a meal to a hungry chicken.
Maybe, I thought, before the annual toad regalia really begins I should move the chickens so their fence isn't in the way of party goers.
Or maybe, for just that one night, I should turn the fence off and hope that the predators of the forest, the crowd out there that really loves chicken meals, doesn't realize it.
It would be risky, we could lose a pullet or two.
But, I absolutely do hate to interfere with anyone's good times, even a toads.
- Comets
-
The other night, after spending most of the day down on my hands and knees putting broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage seedlings in the ground, I was in the woods soaking in the hot spring* looking at the stars through the trees and listening to the night forest sounds when a huge comet streaked out of the north and burned all the way across the sky until it disappeared over the southern horizon.
I don't remember ever seeing a comet that dramatic before. As though a giant sparkling ball had been thrown across the sky.
Which of course got me thinking about how if I wasn't up in the woods bathing in the stone pool, or if I was in the city, with all of the background light, I would never have seen it.
Which, of course, made me think about the rapidly advancing city.
When I was in high school I took a bus from where I lived in Arlington down to Charlottesville. This was before I-66. And I remember the bus going through Haymarket, and thinking at the time that this was a little hick town way, way out in the country.
Today, Haymarket is almost as much a suburb of DC as Arlington.
Our farm is located a mile past where Disney attempted to built its theme park. Now, a huge developer is putting up 4000 houses on the same site, and the Boy Scouts, to who Disney donated some of the land, is right now building a 1000 car parking lot and has plans to construct a large office building on land that was just last year a farm. The word is the Boy Scouts, believing in the virtues of sprawl, intend to move its national headquarters from the city and put it in the middle of the once farmland.
I guess I'm being selfish, but the city, to me, seems like a petri dish with some sort of rapidly growing mold covering the surface.
At the way things are growing, within a couple of years, the city lights will be filling the skies above our farm, and the next time a comet like the one from the other night streaks across the sky, no one will be able to see it.
Oh well.
The seeds I planted last week out in the field are starting to come up. Arugula, lettuce, tatsoi, yukina savoy, mustard, raab. Today before the thunderstorm hit, I put a hundred early tomatoes in the ground, to go along with the several thousand broccoli, pac choi,cauliflower and cabbage plants I planted over the weekend.
It's time to take the other 18,000 seedlings out of the greenhouse and put them in the ground. If anyone is interested in some part time work, spent planting seedlings, I am looking for help. Give me a call and we can discuss it.
And lettuce. It needs harvesting. Come out and get a bag full of salad mix. Also, there should be more mushrooms this weekend.
Oh, and thanks for all the good ideas about the guineas. I haven't used any of them yet. But I will. What I am going to do, is put up a guinea proof fence around the bird door to the hen house they are living in. Then I'm going to put some bird netting over the top so they can't fly out.
This way, I hope, when I let them out, they will get accustomed to the outdoors, and when I finally give them their freedom, they will stay around instead of going out in the woods to be eaten.
And speaking of eating. It is time for the guineas to get out and do their duty. Within minutes of putting out the pac choi a little tiny insect called a flea beetle was on the plants. A flea beetle eats little holes in plants like arugula and pac choi and will totally consume small egg plants.
Guineas eat vast quantities of insects. Especially flea beetles.
And finally, here is the question of the week. Yesterday, in between planting, I sat down along side several of the beehives and watched the workers come and go. How do you tell an old worker bee from a young one? This is not a trick question.
* it is hot and the water comes from our spring. Several years ago I quarried stone from the side of the mountain and made a pool below our spring.
The spring water, though, is ice cold. So, I bought a propane hotwater heater and put it up in the woods and heat the water that goes into the pool.
- Guard Pigs
-
I woke up this morning and there were ten deer sleeping out my back door.
It was 6 am, I was at my computer reading the news when I looked out the window, and there they were, sitting in the clearing below the house.
They were just like humans. A couple of the morning deer were already up and jumping around, but you could tell the night deer, they were still trying to sleep and looked aggravated with the sounds the others were making.
Now, those of you who have been getting vegetables for several years now know my opinion of bambi. And our new subscribers will soon hear more than they want to ever hear about the close resemblance I think country deer have with big grey city rats.
Two years ago deer ate over $7000 worth of our vegetables. Last year, with the use of guard pigs, we reduced the damage to about $3000. This year we have been working at putting up fence for another field for the guard pigs. The theory is: no deer damage in 2001. (Sure thing!)
Now, you might not have heard about guard pigs before. And I must admit, they are something new. Something really Special.
Guard pigs are selective. They only guard against deer. (And maybe humans who are afraid of pigs).
Here is how it works: First, put the pigs in a field next to your vegetables.
(Normally deer, who have exceptionally smart noses, smell vegetables from miles away and shortly jump all of the fences in between where they were and where your vegetables grow, and are soon munching away at the spinach and broccoli and pepper buds and anything else that their little hearts desire).
Now, with the pigs in the next field, the deer don't go near the garden. They don't jump the fence and they don't eat the vegetables.
I don't know why. Maybe its the pig smell. And maybe it's that deer are afraid of pigs. And maybe its just that deer and pigs don't mix.
But, regardless of the reason, it really works. From my experience, it is the only thing short of a shotgun or a twelve foot tall chain link fence with razor wire on the top, that keeps deer out of the vegetable garden.
And speaking of vegetables, you should see the arugula in the greenhouse. It's almost a foot tall. Wenonah came back from Paris last night and we had to have an arugula salad. If you want some too, come out next week and I'll cut you a bag. The mizuna, tatsoi and lettuce growing in the greenhouse should also be ready in a week or two.
I haven't been down in the woods to check the shittakie mushrooms, but I suspect they will also be ready in a couple weeks.
In other farm news:
The new bees are coming later this week. 30 pounds of the sweet insects. They are being shipped from several bee breeders in the south to replace the bees that the pig (think, 350 pound guard pig) killed this winter. That, and the bees that died from the mites this spring.
That's another story, though, and I'm running out of space.
If you want to help put bee packages into hives, drop me a line and you can come out and help.
Besides bees, I will be putting the baby leek and onion plants in the ground later this week. That, and planting potatoes and peas.
Yes, I know I'm late with the potatoes, but the ground has been so wet and muddy I hated to take the tractor out in the fields and make a mess.
We are now about 3/4 full with vegetable subscribers. It looks like we are going to be delivering to Cabin John, Bethesda, 16th and P NW, Butler Center, 3rd and D SE, PBS in Alexandria, and near the East Falls Church metro. There is interest for a north Arlington drop off near courthouse or Rosslyn, but still not enough people. If you have a suggested drop off place, get in touch.
- Chicken Culture
-
I've been doing a lot of thinking about culture this week.
That's chicken culture. As in, the culture of chickens.
But first for the news.
Deliveries begin this coming week. There are going to be a lot of greens (mizuna, arugula, lettuces, pac choi, tatsoi, raab) and very few of what most people consider vegetables. Remember, things like squash and tomatoes, peppers and corn are not locally ripe until July at the earliest (we might have tomatoes later this month, though).
Those beautiful ears of corn that you see in the grocery store, I don't think, are even coming from this country. Corn doesn't like to be planted until the soil is atleast 70 degrees and then it takes atleast 80 days to grow. That means for the corn you see in the grocery stores now, it had to be planted in a place where the day time temperatures have to be consistently 80 in early March.
Where is that? And just think of all the fuel it takes to get it to us.
I could go on and on about our food distribution system (as in, if we are what we eat then we all are Californians-- and in the winter, Chileans. And, what do you think about the regulations and control of which pesticides and how much are sprayed on vegetables in, lets say, Guatemala?). But I will spare you, this time.
So, back to the subject. This week's veggies should be stir fry and salads with a few radishes thrown in. Additionally, in the morning of the delivery I will send out an e-mail with the herbs available that day. Herbs are a by request thing, so you will need to get back to me. I'll, also, give you a good stir fry recipe on delivery day.
Bags. I just bought 2000 grocery bags but you can help the matter by bringing your own bags. If you want to recycle that closet of plastic grocery bags, bring them with you to the delivery and we can use them for bagging up people's veggies.
By now you should have received specific delivery addresses, days and times. If you are still unsure, get in touch with me.
So back to the chickens. And their culture.
I don't know how many of you have lived in close proximity to chickens. Even with all the predators around here (someone down the road shot a coyote last week, and my neighbor's dog got pretty much eaten up by a bobcat last weekend - the dog must have found the bobcats den and was taught a very specific lesson) we still have about 50 chickens running around the place.
There are two hen yards. And the fences mostly work. Except when the chickens fly over, or press around the gate.
Though, the chickens that live in the hen yard down by the house pretty much come and go and they please. Living closer to us gives them a lot more latitude. Less animals to make meals of them.
And as I have been working this spring, I have been watching them. Watching where they go, which chickens hang out with which chickens. Whether hens really stay around a specific rooster, whether they have friends among the other chickens, specific birds they spend their days with. Whether the chickens had routines (as in, going to the coffee pot when first getting to work).
Or whether chicken culture is sort of like Hobbes vision of human life before civilization --'short and brutish'.
Now, I won't bore you with all the details. (My life really isn't that boring that I have nothing better to do than watch a bunch of chickens scratch in the hen yard). But I have come the some opinions on the subject.
Chicken life isn't all that brutish.
There is a entire social arrangement going on out there.
And while chicken sex, to an outsider, does not look all that appealing. Chickens seem to get along with each other. They seem to like each other's company. To have specific friends. Rituals. Habits.
There is some sort of society going on out there in the hen yard. They aren't just a bunch of dumb birds.
At least those are the chickens that live in our yard.
I can't speak for the chickens that live in Frank Perdue's contract hen houses.
What I have really been thinking about, though, as I watched those chickens is what humans would be like if they were brought up in the same way that Frank Perdue forces his contract farmers to raise their chickens.
You know, packed shoulder to shoulder. No adults to teach the young anything. Nothing to do but to eat. The lights left on at night so they eat more.
Or for that matter, what if we were stuffed three to a cage, like laying chickens are (did you know that once a chicken's 'production' level drops to below 60% it is replaced --What do those factory egg laying operations do with old chickens??)
Anyway, those were my thoughts this week as we planted lima beans, more cukes and did a whole lot of weeding.
Again, if you want to come out for a visit you are invited.
- Bright Blue Light
-
I was going to write about the bright blue light that came out of the night sky last week. I think it was Thursday (June 27th), about 11 at night. We were going for an evening walk down the driveway and were at the place where the drive drops down to the creek when suddenly the sky lit up.
As bright as day.
With a blazing blue ball straight up and slightly to the north.
At first I thought it was a flare. An illumination flare.
Except it was completely silent. No rocket or gun shooting the flare up in the air. No hiss or smoke as it burned.
And then it came down, over our heads, dimming as it descended and then, appeared to touch down somewhere up on the mountain.
We were left standing, again, in the dark.
I was going to speculate about that light (did anyone else see it?) (what could it have been?) (did it really land on the mountain?) but then, over the last week, many more important things have happened.
One is, the summer crops. They are starting to ripen. As I walked through the garden this morning there were bell peppers and hot peppers and eggplants, cucumbers and tomatoes on the vine. Even the squash plants are getting ready to flower.
And did you notice how large that garlic in the shares this week were? They are bigger than the seed garlic I bought from the 'professional' garlic farm last fall.
It is always exciting when the summer, traditional, crops start ripening.
But then, there is the lack of rain (do I begin to call it a drought?) to worry about. We haven't had a rain in 3 weeks now and there is no forecast for even a thundershower in the next week.
The soil is getting real dry. Over the last week we've started irrigating. I was up in the middle of the night moving sprinklers around the garden. We are very lucky to have such a good source of water.
And then finally, last night we climbed the mountain to sit on top of the cliffs and look down on the firework show over at Great Meadow. We were up about where the blue light landed when I looked down off the cliffs and there, on a ledge outside of a cave, were the five goats, at one time, my goats, that got out of the fence weeks ago.
The goats were bedding down for the night, in the caves under the face of the cliff.
I wonder if the goats, as they looked out of the cave opening last week, saw the blue light too. And if they did, what did they think?
- Tomatoes
-
Let's see, what happened on the farm this week?
On Saturday I almost got mugged. Right in the middle of the farm. In broad daylight.
On Sunday we hiked the length of the valley, down along the creek from our farm out to Thoroughfare Gap and then back along the ridge top. The entire hike, we didn't see one other person, but we did see a lot of blue berries. We stopped in one place for over an hour picking and eating.
Wild blueberries turn your teeth blue.
Monday I saw the first squash growing out in the field. A middle eastern squash.
Tuesday we harvested the last of the spring lettuce. Red oak leaf. No more lettuce until September. That evening it rained a quarter inch.
Wednesday it sprinkled all day. An eighth of an inch. I noticed the little white furry caterpillar type insect. When you touch them they sting like nettles. There were a couple in the fields last year. This year, many more. What are they? A type of asp? I had never seen one on the farm until the past couple of years.
And even though this week I really wanted to tell you about my assailant and to remind everyone about a proposed holiday, National Berry Picking Day, Let's, instead, discuss something really, really important instead.
Tomatoes.
Right now the crop is just starting to trickle in, but hopefully, if everything goes as expected, in the next couple of weeks we will have a flood of tomatoes. Early Girls, Big Boys. Big Beef, Sun Golds, Valley Girls, Green Zebras, Lemon Boys, Brandywines, Romas, and another dozen varieties I can't recall off of the top of my head.
If everything goes as planned, there will be hundreds and hundreds of ripe tomatoes each day.
This means I will not be individually handing out tomatoes. We will put them in those yellow boxes and let you pick your own.
But lets set some rules first, OK?
Our tomatoes are fundamentally different than those things that you see in the grocery store that are sold under the name 'tomatoes'.
Corporate tomatoes, the ones that you buy in the grocery stores, are a completely different creature than what we grow.
First, corporate tomatoes aren't grown around here. Almost all of America's summer tomatoes originate in California. This is the truth. Most of America's summer tomatoes are grown in the fabulously polluted San Joaquin Valley and then shipped across country.
And in the winter, America's tomatoes come from Chile or Mexico or greenhouses in Arizona (the East Coast's winter tomatoes, just a few years ago, were mostly grown in Florida, but NAFTA changed that. Florida couldn't compete with Mexico for cheap labor -which when it comes to picking tomatoes by hand, is a large part of the cost. Most of the large Florida tomato growers have gone out of business in the past couple years).
And how is something as delicate as a tomato transported all of those thousands of miles?
Simple. They are picked green and often treated with a gas to make them turn red.
And why, you might ask, would anyone pick their tomatoes green (unless they took a fancy to green fried tomatoes)? The answer -tomatoes picked green are firmer, less juicy, more capable of bouncing around in a box, and in the store, being pick up and squeezed.
It takes an awful lot to make them go squish.
Corporate tomatoes have what home grown tomatoes don't have. They have 'shelf life'.
Fresh, picked that morning ,tomatoes are different. They are full of water. Juice. The fruit walls are tender.If they are given a squeeze, they go squish. As in, tomato juice. And if you put them in a box and shipped them half way around the world what would come out at the other end is tomato juice, not tomatoes.
This lesson took me a number of years to learn.
Every year I would just put out our tomatoes like I do the rest of the vegetables, and let people pick their own.
Each day, as I drove home, 20-25% of the tomatoes I had picked in the morning, would be sitting in the back of the truck, all squished up.
I thought, at the time, this was just the price of doing business. 'Tomatoes', I thought. 'just don't travel well. You need to pick more to account for the short shelf life.'
Then, one year, because we were having a poor crop of tomatoes, instead of just putting the tomatoes out for people to pick themselves, I gave the tomatoes out.
And I learned something.
Only 1 or 2% of the tomatoes got squished in transit.
I found out that what was damaging all of those perfectly good tomatoes was people picking them up, giving them a little squeeze, just like they would do to a corporate tomato in the grocery store.
But, unlike the corporate tomato, ours would go squish.
Local, homegrown tomatoes, are a completely different creature than those corporate vegetables. They are full of juice. They can't handle being squeezed.
Oh well.
So, to make the story short, when you are picking out your tomatoes, just look at them, only touch the tomatoes you are going to put in your bag. And if, by chance, you don't particularly like that tomato after picking it up, put it in your bag anyway, and get another one.
We should have plenty of tomatoes in a couple of weeks.
And that's my tomato lecture for the season.
And since I've taken up some much space talking about tomatoes I'll save National Berry Week until next week. And I guess I can also tell you then about being attacked, in full daylight, by a ferocous, take no prisoners, set on drawing blood, rooster.
Have a bodacious week.
- Prison Break
-
We have several things to discuss this week.
Prison breaks, F-16's scrambled from Andrew's to chase down a blue light, and an invitation for people to come out to the farm this Saturday.
But first let's go over this week on the farm.
We were out of town this last weekend, but the rain gauge shows there was 1.25 inches of rain. That's really good. The watermelon vines sure loved it. I think they tripled in size the day after the rain, (there is just no substitute for rain water). Remember, though, most garden crops need about an inch of rain a week for healthy growth.
Monday we finished planting the last of the winter squash. We have about five hundred extra pumpkin and winter squash seedlings. Are you interested in a couple?
Tuesday we finished digging up the last of the potatoes. There are, stored in the shed, probably enough for about 3 more weeks of potatoes. When those run out do you want me to buy some non-organic potatoes from my friend on the Eastern shore? I haven't called him, and do not know when he is harvesting his crop, but I imagine it will be soon, if he hasn't done it already.
A number of people responded with their requests for fall greens. Arugula, tatsoi, oak leaf lettuce, escarole, spinach, Italian and Russian kale (we grew Siberian this spring), radishes, baby pac choi, and both of the mustards we grew in the spring.
Over the last week we started kale, collards, mustards, kohlrabi and spinach seedlings. In the next week, will be starting our first direct seed planting of arugula, lettuce, tatsoi, mizuna and mustard. I'll look for seed for escarole and Italian kale. Next week we'll start the first pac choi seedlings.
And that's probably more farm news than you want to hear.
Here is the url for a Post article that mentions a blue light in the night sky, I guess, similar to the one we saw the month before.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8131 2002Jul26.html
Now, for a report on the great prison break of 2002!
We have built a prison. Over by the old tractor, next to where the leeks are growing.
And, as is the case with most prisons, if you build it, soon you will fill it.
In this case, with violent, destructive, criminal box turtles.
So far, we have captured and sentenced nine of these threats to society (and vegetables).
You would not believe how many tomatoes turtles eat. Hundreds. Thousands.
And they don't eat the whole fruit either. Turtles, particularly box turtles, are vandals. A bite here, a bite there. And soon your tomato crop is ruined.
You wouldn't believe what these turtles were doing. And there was no civilized way to stop them. It is was so depressing, to go out in the tomato patch and find all of those damaged tomatoes and then, to see the felon in action. With her head stuck all the way inside a tomato. Munching.
At first, our idea was a kind of felon relocation project. Sort of like the English and South Carolina or Australia (except we didn't have an ocean). We did, though, take them down the road and deposit them on the other side of the creek, thinking, the water would be a barrier.
But, no luck. the turtles, apparently, just swam across the water and marched the half mile back to our tomatoes.
The destruction continued. So finally we decided the only solutions was imprisonment.
In the back of the barn was the frame to an old water bed (yes, Rosemarie, that is your waterbed) We hauled it out, put it back together, and, presto, a king size prison. A rectangle fortress with foot high walls.
Surely, enough of a prison to keep little box turtles imprisoned.
And once the prison was completed, we quickly arrested half a dozen felonious turtles, caught them in the act of eating tomatoes and put them, we thought, away for the rest of the tomato season.
(We feed our captives rejected tomatoes. Tomatoes damaged (or squished) during delivery.
And all was fine. Every day the population grew. Here a felonious turtle, there a felonious turtle. Until one morning we went out to the prison for roll call and were shocked to find that one of our captives did not answer.
We turned on the spot lights, searched through the grass, under the water dish, searched everywhere and came to the conclusion that one of our prisoners, during the night, had escaped.
But how did she do it?
The first thing we did was to look for tunnels. Who hasn't seen at least one of those prisoner-of-war movies with the tunnel going under the wall?
But no. No tunnel. There were signs that they had tried to dig out, but its hard to tunnel in our rocky soil.
But how did she do it, how did she escape?
We were left clueless. And then, several days later, there was yet another missing turtle. Another prison break.
And still no clues on how it was happening
Until, the next day, right in the middle of the day, we caught them, we caught the jail breakers in the act of scaling the walls.
Three turtles had crawled into a corner. One had climbed on the back of another, and then the third turtle climbed up on the backs of the other two and balancing there, reached up with its front legs and was pulling herself up over the wall.
This is true. I have witnesses. A planned, coordinated, turtle jail break.
Oh well.
We are thinking about building the walls higher, maybe with armed guards. You know, little guard towers.
If you want to come out to the farm this weekend, visiting hours for the prisoners are 11-3 this Saturday.
Besides visiting the turtles, I'll show you around the farm, point out the various weeds that we are behind on pulling. Shareholders can come out and pick up some of the winter squash and pumpkin seedlings, and a small bunch of flowers. If you want, you can go for a hike.
- Spilt Honey
-
Our annual slightly after fall solstice 'come out to the farm, see the leaves, maybe hike to the top of the mountain, and then sit around a bonfire' is scheduled for October 14th. If you come, you can pick your own pumpkin.
I will give more details in the next several weeks.
And as to honey. It's not ready yet.. Next week. I will give everyone about a pound. Bring a jar, or honey bear the week starting September 25. One pound is just about 2/3 of a pint.
And for all of you thinking about honey, here is a story that I tell every year. If you have heard it already, I'm telling it slightly different.
It happened back when I had about 60 bee hives.
Beehives were everywhere.
In groups of eight sitting on the driveway.
Down old trails.
Even up on the side of the mountain.
During the summer I would collect almost two tons of honey.
4000 pounds is a lot of honey. I would work for a week doing it. Taking the honey off the hives. Cutting off the caps. Extracting.
And then carefully pouring all of that honey into jars.
Back then my day job was teaching high school English. I sold honey to health food stores and road side stands during the summer.
I would finish with the honey just as it was time to go back to school.
Usually, I would leave us several hundred pounds sitting in the honey tank for use over the winter.
Back then we were on a 'no sugar' regimen. This wasn't for a particular health reason. It was more philosophical. 'We have all of this wonderful honey, why buy other sweeteners.'
So the time I want to tell about was the time I had 600 pounds left over. Almost a third of a ton of honey sitting in the large honey vat.
This is a big tank with a valve at the bottom.
At that time I kept the honey in a storage room off of the sun room, a room with a flagstone floor and no heat.
One evening Wenonah was cooking and asked if I would get her some honey, "I need about a quart," she said.
So, I took a half gallon jar, went back to the honey vat, opened up the valve and waited.
You have never seen anything as slow as cold honey. Traffic in a traffic jam when you are late to work is a lot faster. Waiting for the work day to end when you are stuck in a lousy job seems like a roller coaster ride in comparison. Waiting for cold honey to flow is like waiting for... Anyway, it is like waiting for something that never happens.
I stood there in front of the vat and watched and waited and thought of all the other things I could be doing and still the honey didn't flow. I got down and looked at the valve to see if something was blocking it.
Nothing.
Finally, some honey slowly dripped through the valve like a stalactite ( or is that stalagmite?) Barely moving.
I was impatient and I saw that this was going to take a long, long time. I waited a little longer, the stalactite finally reached the bottom of the jar. Only 10,000 more years to go until it filled the jar.
I left and went back into the sunroom.
As I did, I said to myself (or at least one voice inside my head said), "Don't! Don't do it. Don't go in the other room. You will forget the honey and it will spill all over the place and you will be very, very sorry."
But whoever listens to that voice. I answered back, "I will remember. What do you think I am? Anyway, it will take at least 20 minutes to fill the jar."
The other voice just made a disgusted sound.
But I smirked, turned around and went back into the main part of the house. I think I sat down, read a little Proust (what else do beekeepers read during the winter?), listened to some jazz, sipped a glass of wine, and went to bed.
And woke up at three in the morning screaming . "Oh my god."
But it was too late.
All 600 hundred pounds had dripped to the floor and once again proven that gravity does in fact work.
We must have had a heat wave during the night to make the honey flow that fast. When I got downstairs honey had crept under the utility room door and had spread across the sunroom floor.
It was just like that 50's movie "The Blob". The whole room was covered. The stone floor of both the utility and sunroom were buried under what seemed like a half foot of honey.
What a horrible, horrible mess.
And it hurt. It really did. It hurt so bad that I felt like kicking myself or banging my head against a wall, or whatever it is that people feel like doing when things like that happen.
But mostly I just stood there in disgust and looked at all of the wasted honey and thought about all of the work I had needlessly caused myself.
Do you know how long it takes to clean 600 pounds of honey from the floor?
The short answer is - a very long time.
It is a slow, painstaking, laborious task and all the time you are cleaning you are so mad at yourself for not listening to that voice. And all the time, as you scrub and scrub and scrub that voice is telling you how stupid you are for not listening in the first place.
I'm not going to tell you about the brilliant idea I had of bringing a bee hive into the sunroom, closing the door and expecting the bees to pick up the honey.
I won't tell you because it didn't work. It only made more of a mess. Can you imagine what it is like to have a sunroom covered with honey and 10,000 bees at the skylights and windows trying to get outside?
What I ended up doing is heating up endless gallons of water and pouring it on the honey and then scraping it up. Luckily for me, honey is water soluble or I am sure that mess would still be on the sunroom floor.
- Handful of Grain
-
There was a large animal in the trunk of our car last Friday.
This wasn't planned. I hadn't put it there.
In fact, I didn't know it was there until I climbed into the driver's seat. And turned on the engine.
That's when I heard the thumping. It was loud. Real loud.
I turned the ignition key off.
But the thumping continued.
My fear, with our old car, is that one day soon I will hear a loud thumping sound that will announce the death of our ancient automobile. 210,000 miles is a long life for a engine. Even a Toyota.
This time, though, the thumping wasn't coming from the engine.
It was coming from the trunk.
I sat there listening. It sounded like someone was locked in the trunk. Someone like in, a human.
Was a person in our car's trunk? (I had visions of gangster movies).
That morning, I had used the car to drive Wenonah to the commuter train. On the way home, I stopped by the feed store. The chickens were almost out of food. I went into Southern States and bought a couple hundred pounds of feed.
I threw the feed in the trunk.
When I got home, I was in a hurry. I had to take the truck to the shop to have a major oil leak fixed. So, in a rush, I opened the car's trunk, took out a bag of feed. Fed the chickens.
And left the trunk open.
I ran down to the shed, got my bike, and threw it in the back of the truck before driving the truck off to our local mechanic.
This all happened because Friday is my day off. I don't have to pick vegetables or deliver. So, my plan, that morning, was to leave the truck at the mechanic and then go bike riding.
For my 51st birthday next month Wenonah has bought me a plane ticket to Moab, Utah to go bike riding in the desert.
But if I'm going to go riding in the desert I need to get into shape. Which means I need to start riding.
There are a number of really nice bike rides out our way. Little country roads without any traffic going past huge hunt country estates.
The last four miles to the turn off to our farm go past the Currier family's extremely large estate. I think they own (or control) something like 20,000 acres.
On one side of the road is a massive stone wall and on the other is a barb wire fence.
As I was riding I was day dreaming, thinking about a photograph I'd seen in my college newspaper over 25 years ago.
The photo showed backcountry Colorado. In the background were massive mountains, with thousands of acres of snow covered prairie in the foreground. And in the middle a lonely barbed wire fence.
Hanging from the fence was a skeleton of a deer. The hind leg caught in the wire.
I remember seeing a similar skeleton ten years ago. It was hanging from another barbed wire fence. This one across the road from the Currier's guardhouse.
I had been riding my bike that time, too, and had a flat tire. One of the Currier's guards drove down the road in his jeep and stopped. He got out and walked up to me. One hand resting on his gun.
He looked at me, he looked at my bike and then he asked what I was doing.
"You know this is private property."
I told him that the last time I checked the public road system hadn't been privatized.
He didn't think I was funny.
I went on to ask if he would give me a ride into town. 'to fix my flat.'
He gave me a long hard look and reminded me, again, about trespassing before returning to his vehicle.
I ended up walking the bike home.
Which is a backward way of getting around to mentioning the goat.
Goats are a lot like deer (or maybe certain types of people). The main difference being, goats are willing to trade their wildness for food.
They will do just about anything for a handful of grain.
So when I got out of the car and opened the trunk --there, along with a ripped bag of chicken feed, was a goat.
One of my goats.
It looked up at me. Gave out a long baaaaaa, jumped up, and sprang out of the trunk. I watched it run up the hill to were her sisters were waiting.
Do you have the picture of how she got in the trunk?
I imagine the herd of goats had walked along the drive, eating. Had seen the car. Came closer, saw the trunk open, saw the bag of feed,
And started fighting over who could get to the grain first.
One goat ripped the bag open, several others climbed into the trunk, fighting over the grain. The ones that couldn't get in the trunk climbed on the roof.
A goat slipped, or was pushed, jumped on the trunk hood.
The trunk slammed down. One of the goats is knocked down. And there you have it.
A goat locked inside.
Typical goat behavior.
Fall hike. October 14
How about people come out at 3:30 for a hike up the mountain. Remember, the view from the top of our mountain is one of the best within a hundred miles of DC (you can look down on the Currier's massive estate). We can have the potluck at 5. And then a bonfire starting at 7:00. About the time it gets dark.
It sounds like fun.
- Attack of the Party Chickens
-
On our farm we have a class system for chickens. I don't recommend, as a policy, a class system, but somehow it just evolved to be that way.
First we have the Deltas. They are a pretty chicken - white with brown flecks. They produce large white eggs and seem to do nothing else but eat and roost. We picked up these chickens last February from a family owned egg operation over in West Virginia. They cost 50¢ each if I bought 50 or more.
What a deal.
So, I packed up my 25 dollars, put my trusty rabbit cages in the back of the pick-up and drove over to Charleston.
In W.Va. The Deltas lived 3 to a cage that was suspended at eye level in a hen house with all sorts of machinery for hauling in food and water and hauling out eggs and chicken poop.
The farmer was getting rid of the chickens because they were two years old and were on average only laying eggs every other day. For a commercial egg operation, a chicken that lays eggs less than 60% of the days is considered expendable. Old chickens lay less eggs than young ones.
The farmer seemed like a nice guy, we talked about growing sweet corn "if you grow it, they will come," he said. "Finding people to buy sweet corn isn't a problem." He also said that raising laying hens was what saved his farm, "If we didn't have this egg house my wife would have to get a job off the farm. This way she has an egg route where she sells eggs to stores."
He also said that Delta's were a hybrid created by Monsanto and if you incubated the eggs the chicks that hatched didn't lay eggs or look much like their mothers. "You have to keep buying chicks from Monsanto."
We went into the hen house and began collecting my 50 hens, grabbing the hens by their legs and putting them into the rabbit cages three at a time. When we finished I covered the cages with a tarp and double checked the cage doors.
"You need to be careful about keeping the cages locked," the farmer said. "Delta's don't stand up too well to flying out of the back of trucks and landing on passing cars."
When I got these chickens home, without losing any, I put the cages in the chicken yard and opened the doors.
The chickens, though, didn't want to get out of the cages, and then, when I reached in and pulled them out, they just stood there on the ground looking around bewilderedly.
They had never been outside of a cage before.
Finally, with great trepidation, they started walking. Taking slow steps as though they were walking on the moon.
Truthfully. It was quite a sight.
They would put one foot out as though they were stepping on some strange substance. Moon dust I suppose. And then slowly put their weight on that foot before carefully putting out the other foot.
I believe it was the first time the chickens had ever set foot on solid ground. Up until then they had spent their entire lives on wire - as in cages.
You could tell it was a unique and unsettling experience.
That evening, when it was time for the chickens to go into the hen house, nothing happened. They didn't go inside. Instead, they all huddled together in a corner of the chicken yard. All 50 white chickens with brown flecks on top of each other. It was a strange sight.
I went into the chicken yard and picked up each chicken, one at a time, and throw it inside the hen house.
The next morning I had to go in the hen house and pick up each chicken and throw it outside. It took about three days of this until the chickens learned the concept of walking back and forth between the outside and the inside on their own.
And that wasn't the only problem. These chickens, Monsanto's Deltas, had to be taught about roosting. As you probably know, chickens like to roost. It comes to them naturally. Something instinctual. Most chickens are hardwired with a circuit that makes them feel really secure at night if they fly up into a tree and perch out on a limb. Most birds do this. I think the majority of birds that don't roost have long since gone extinct. Sitting up in a tree is a great way of avoiding being eaten by a fox or cat or for that matter, a human.
But not the Deltas. Apparently Monsanto, in its godlike wisdom, considered roosting a waste of time. At night I would have to lift each one of the Deltas up on the roosts inside of the hen house. Once up, they stayed there, but it took almost a week for them to learn that they could do it on their own.
Since then, I've had no trouble with the Deltas. They are really manageable chickens. They go out in the morning, they eat, they drink, they come in, they lay eggs and then in the evening they climb up on the roosts and do whatever chickens do when the rest of the world (except for things that eat chickens like foxes and coyotes and weasels) sleep.
Now for the other class of chicken, the Rhode Island Reds. There are 17 of them and they have been spoiled every moment of their lives.
They were born in Bethesda, Maryland last May. My cousin's kids, as a elementary school science project, hatched eggs into chickens. They had fun. The only problem was that really quickly Little Peeps stop staying in boxes and start jumping out and exploring classrooms. It doesn't take the teacher long to say to the child that brought in the incubator and eggs that it is time for their mother to collect the chickens.
"Your Mom probably wants to take the chicks home now."
This happened. My cousin went to the school and brought the little peeps home and put the box in the corner of the dining room.
But the chicks didn't stay in the box at home any more than they stayed in the box at school. And while chicks are cute they have less than sterling sanitary habits. Everywhere they go they leave a brown and white trail.
So my cousin called me up and explained that chickens really weren't working out in her Bethesda home and would I please take the chickens off her hands.
I did.
First, I kept them in the rabbit cages, then I kept them in a corner of the yard and then when what was once a peep quickly turned into a pullet, I took them out of the yard and put them in the chicken yard with the Delta's.
Good in concept, poor in practice.
While the Reds just naturally knew about roosting and going in and out of the hen house by themselves, they also had other ideas of their own.
One idea I didn't particularly like was their feeling that they didn't have to stay in the hen yard if they didn't want. In the morning, after the Reds had scratched around the hen yard a while, eaten some chicken scratch and drank some water they would look at the fence imprisoning them, flab their wings and fly over the top.
It was as simple as that. Once on the otherside they were free to start exploring. First our front yard, then the flower beds and finally the garden.
Wenonah thought it was sweet. I did until they reached the garden.
There is another difference between the different classes of chickens.. Come evening, the Deltas go to bed early, real early. Some Delta's come back into the hen house and start roosting for the night as soon as they have taken care of the business of eating, drinking and laying an egg. Sometimes as early as one or two in the afternoon you will see the Deltas sitting up on their roosts.
But not the Reds.
The Reds are party chickens. They stay up late. Actually they are out and about, running around, squawking, catching insects and pecking at the grass until it becomes pitch black. Only then do they look for a tree to roost in for the night.
Since we have a Komondor (large white dog known for its protective instincts toward farm animals) to keep the Foxes and Bobcats and Raccoons and Possums away, this was fine. Nothing ate them. And after all, it was cute with the now very large red chickens running around the yard, trying to eat the dog's food when the dogs weren't looking, and exploring further and further away from the house.
"One of these day's, though, " Wenonah said. "Those party chickens are going to go just far enough from the house that the dogs won't be their to protect them and a fox is going to jump out of the bushes and make a meal of one of them."
That didn't happen. Something else happened first.
They expanded their area to the garden.
Last week I went out to pick tomatoes and there, running
through the rows, were the party chickens. One of them had a cherry tomato in its beak. Another one had a large red tomato on the ground and was pecking it to death.
That was the end of the party chickens, at least the end of their free ranging lifestyle. They now live in the chicken yard and the goat pasture behind the hen house. I got more wire, taller wire and put it up. I caught all of the cute red chickens and I threw them over the fence into the hen yard. Their wild days, hopefully, are over. Since then we have been trying to ruthlessly enforce a classless chicken culture.
There is probably a moral to this story, too. But I'm not quite sure what it is.