Chickie Babies!!

In the wee hours this morning, there was a screaming–couldn’t tell in my sleep whether it was cat or chicken. If it was cat, it was kitten (yearlings), and we needed to help, and if it was chicken, it was predator, and we needed to help. So we ran in circles and banged into each other while we woke up enough to get around the dogs, who were running in circles and banging into us too, and then we all tumbled down the basement steps and outside. It was a chicken, screaming like the fox was dragging her off into the woods!! Steve and his wee flashlight got to the chicken house first, but as I approached the door, I heard a chicken outside the chicken house, so I went to it. It was a lone hen, in the chicken yard, in a corner. She was fine. A bit discombobulated, cuz when the sun goes down, the chickens go to sleep and you can do anything with them after that. They don’t have what it takes to take care of themselves at night. So I scooped her up and brought her back inside. Steve was outside the house, saying something about something, asking if she was OK, and saying something about the eggs. I set her on the perch (carefully, cuz like I said, she was not functioning very well), and then heard Steve say something about the hen sitting on the eggs (Flopsy or Mopsy. Mopsy is the bigger one, but I can’t tell unless they are together). I counted the chickens on the perch, and they were all there, so this must be the brooding hen. I scooped her up off the perch and set her on the floor in front of the cat carrier/brooding box, and heard peeps and whistles!! Babies had hatched!! So I backed off to let her go back in herself, and she did. She climbed right back onto those lumpy peepy things, which whistled and sounded happy. Then I heard another peep that was somewhere else and sounding not very happy at all. Now, Steve had given me the wee flashlight (the size of my pinkie finger), and I used it to, well, shine to find the errant chick. It was like the cartoons where the bad guy is creeping across the wall, and the spotlight shines on him and casts a huge shadow, only this wasn’t a spotlight so much as a vague lessening of the darkness. There was no dramatic shadow, but there was a round shape where there should just be hay and wall, so I climbed over the perch (which is higher than my crotch, so it wasn’t just a step-over kind of situation, and chickens don’t care where they poo) and scooped up a wee chickie. I put it back by the broody hen, watching to see what kind of reception she was going to give it, and it whistled and walked right on in and became assimilated. Soon there was just a really big chicken sitting there, with soft peeps and whistles emitting from her nether regions.

I have no idea what made that chicken scream like that. Maybe it was the first egg hatching, and it freaked her out? Or maybe she dreamed that she was on the toilet and something came up and bumped her butt? I dunno, but there were no feathers amiss, no blood, no fear, no anything that I could see. But it got us out there to save the one baby!! Woo Hoooo!! And to return the hen to her bed, cuz I doubt she could have gotten there on her own. She was very disoriented!! We saved ALL the babies!! Yay us!! We are heroes!!

So, to have made a short story long, this means that I need to get to work baby proofing the chicken house. I have to clean out the old hay (which needed to be done, I was just waiting for the garden to be ready for some nice chicken poo hay), lay down fresh hay (the easy part), and create a safe space for chickies that will encourage the hen to stick around (otherwise we do it the light and cage way), and keep her and the babies safe from the other chickens, cats, kittens, and those foxes, plus the dirty hay (after a winter of poo). And I have to make sure they get their tiny beaks dunked in the water, so they know how to drink, or else they will die quickly. To be honest, I would rather go the cage and light way, but Flopsy or Mopsy and Steve both seem to want to do it the natural way, with the one chicken raising everyone else’s babies (When she started brooding, Steve kept slipping eggs under her, so she went from having one egg to having eleven in three or four days. That probably means that the eggs will keep hatching for the next three or four days. I have to read up on some stuff!! <UPDATE!!! Steve counted 16 (sixteen) eggs in there!!>). That means that I need to set up chickenkeeping in the chickenwire chicken house, which is a whole nother ball of wax!!

Gotta love Spring!!!

Getting the Garden Ready

We have a defined garden space now, thanks to the chickens.  Chickens are very hard on garden plants, and they love tomatoes more than is good for them.  Last year we just grew tomatoes with the chickens running free in the space.  We had to fence off the tomatoes, and it made it hard to get to fruit in the center of the bed, through the bars.  And the chickens kept trying to get to them. They stand there, beaks pointed at the sky (or the tomato they are going for), then they hop up, maybe using their wings if it is high.  It’s almost cute enough to let them get away with it.  This year we have a fence around the whole garden, and the chickens are offended that they are no longer welcome in there.  I don’t blame them, but they have taken over spaces I hadn’t planned for them to, so it probably evens out somewhere.

Anyways, now that the garden has boundaries (I’m astonished that I feel this way), I have been able to decide where things will go, and how many beds we will have eventually,   It’s all very exciting for me.  I have been working on this garden for 8 years now?  I started just cleaning out the horses’ stalls and putting the wheelbarrow loads on the ground and I let it sit till I got around to digging it up.  I have had some success and even more failures.

I kill thyme.  This year I went to the place I had planted it before and I looked and I looked but I just couldn’t find the thyme!!  Same with mint.  I kill it dead in less than a year.  I did plant some black peppermint several years ago that seems to be migrating to where it is happier.  Very little is remaining where I planted it.  How exciting it is to see it coming up so many other places, after years and years of killing it all dead every time.  I’m happy that this one feels free to move about.  Granted, the area it is cropping up in is a pile of horse dookie that I haven’t turned under yet.  I don’t know what will happen when I do turn the stuff I need to to create these gardens.  Will I kill off this 5 year old dark, aromatic mint?  I hope not!!  I plan to leave plants in places where I can.  I have also brought in more mints–chocolate mint, catnip, lemon balm, and a spearmint.  What wonderful teas!!  And I thought I saw where the bergamot was growing, but I couldn’t find it yesterday.  Oh, and I got two more Corsican mint and planted them where they would be protected from the hottest part of the sun.  This is on my list of usual murder victims.  I keep trying, more and more intentionally as time goes by.  Now that the garden is protected now, it makes it so much easier to do!!  Woo Hooo!!

There is a bed that has been planted using the square foot gardening technique, and another that has been prepped with those ratios in mind.  Those are where we planted our seedlings that we have gotten.  We got some basil, parsley, rhubarb, jalapenos, and that might be about it.  There is room for more!!  I am experimenting with the distances between plants, like whether parsley belongs tightly together in 1 square foot or does each one need a foot?  And Steve insisted that we get a dozen more tomatoes, so they got one of the beds themselves.  We have gotten 3 more beds dug and mixed up with horse poo so that in a few months, or by next year for sure, the beds will be ready to be planted with something delicious!!  I want to do 16 square feet of onions!!  That’s 256 onions, give or take!  How cool is that??!!  Oh, and garlic!!  Must have several places of garlic!!  Some permanent!!   And I have 5 kinds of lettuce, two heading varieties and 3 leaf lettuces!!  Heck yeah!!

I’m an air force brat, so I never grew up with gardens, which are more a sign of stability and roots.  I’ve read about gardening for 20 years.  I’ve been preparing the soil and getting everything ready here for almost 10 years,  and I have an endless supply of horse poop, and now chicken poop as well.  Just having worms should make everything thrive, shouldn’t it?  Even I shouldn’t be able to kill everything?

I have this keyhole that gets sun, hopefully more than 6 hours, for the raspberry bushes that need planting.  There are wee baby plumlets all over both plum trees, although a lot are falling now,–Nature’s way of making sure they don’t over do it.  They have been there four or five years.  I just planted two pear and a tartarian cherry tree.  I’m seeking a bing cherry tree to replace the other cherry I got that died.  The fig has baby figlets started already.  I found it fascinating that fig trees flower in the stem, and the figs come out fertilized and fruiting.  I wonder what a fig flower looks like?  Does it resemble a flower that opens the “normal” way?  Is it one blossom, or is it a series of tiny ones that the plants juices flow over, doing the deed, as it were?

It’s very exciting to me to grow food for us.  I’m newly able to, so I have those born-again, self-righteous images of what we’re doing.  I want to create a homestead, not something to be sold off for lots, but a place that has value because of the food it produces just by existing.  It even makes having livestock be a valuable part of the cycle.  Everyone contributes to the whole, and receives from the whole.  Also, I think this is my Scandinavian blood activating in me.  I’ve been here long enough to have a history with the place, and now it’s time to make it more than just a house in the woods.  It should provide and be provided for.  Birds, bugs, plants, flowers, herbs, vegetables, fruits, nuts, critters, and us.  We’re all neighbors, friends, and we depend on each other.

I want to grow some critters for food, like chickens and rabbits, maybe some sheep…a pig a year,  I don’t think we have enough room, with two horses.  I cannot remotely imagine selling the horses, so they are here for the duration.  I have just been toying with the idea of moving to a place where my values are shared, my values as an artist and a writer, and my need to reconnect to the Earth and write about that.  I’m surprised to feel this way, but I believe that it follows the path that leads to my dreams.  Life is good!!

My God’s Bigger Than Your God

When I look around at the rest of the Earth (the non-human parts) , I see diversity, I see all other life forms giving with the taking, I see Abundant Life. I see Beings with effortless jobs, each one of value to the larger community just because of what they are. Vultures, trees, plankton, water, fire, everything has a purpose that doesn’t require them to try to be other than what comes naturally for them. They don’t have to give illustrated papers or stamped metal discs or plastic carriers of electronic numerals for the land they live on, the food and the water they must consume, or the death that comes to all.  There are no poor or rich.  I see life leading to Life, and death leading to Life. I cannot fathom why humans want to be apart from that, yet our beliefs and actions make us very much so.

Humans are raised with a sense that we are more important than any other Being on the planet. Yet only humans think humans are God’s favorite. When I walk in the woods, the deer and squirrels don’t line the path and bow as I pass: the songbirds do not drape garlands of dewy flowers across my shoulders as they serenade me. Only humans think humans are sovereign. Also, we believe that the way we handle our dead makes us better. When another Being dies, it lays where it dies, and becomes food for other Beings. Its death means life for multitudes of others. Yet when humans die, we burn, we embalm, we box in airtight caskets, to prevent just such community feasting. Our refusal to give back to the rest of the Family is proof enough to me that we are NOT God’s favorite. God is all about Life, and sharing, and lots of lives taking what they need and giving what they have to the betterment of all of Life.  Every life has something unique to offer that other life needs, and it is that diversity that makes Life possible.  Humans want to make this planet a monoculture, with no room for wolves and bears and salmon and whales and trees and water and fire, and by doing that, we act as a cancer.

That Life exists is proof to me that God exists. That Life springs from Death is further proof. The electron microscope images I have seen of the tiny mites that live on our eyelashes, mites covered with with their own tiny hairs, is proof to me that no matter how small a Being is, it is an entire world to other Beings. That we can hear only a range of sound, see only a specific part of the color spectrum, see stars flowing in patterns across the night sky, is proof to me that no matter how big something is, it is a building block of something so much larger. Our limited perceptions are proof that we can know only a minuscule aspect of God, and yet there are many who purport to have the answers and are bound by their god to make everyone else see things the same myopic way. How pompous, and how tragic.  And our works will one day be a layer of sediment in this planet’s history.

What Would Women Do?

This is a man’s world. The decision-making aspects of our lives are dominated by men. They have created the political systems, the health care systems, the food supply systems, the educational systems, the (you fill in the blank) systems… The supportive and caring roles are dominated by women, making things work with the resources provided. Obviously there are glaring exceptions to this statement, there being many wildly successful women in business and politics and such, and there being male nurses, male teachers, and more and more stay at home dads, but those ratios do not reflect the male/female population ratio.

We are challenged by issues today, from pollution to health care to education to housing to joblessness to energy… you name it. Our world is going through upheaving changes that no one is sheltered from, including those creature folk who dwell in the deepest recesses of the ocean. We are mired in red tape and political posturing, and most attempts to make a difference are stalled out before they get anywhere.

I have often wondered how women would handle things, given the opportunity. How would women do things differently? What if we were called on to look after our children’s and our grandchildren’s health care, education, and quality of life?  How would we proceed?  Would one or two women jump into the limelight and take over, or would we give everyone a chance to be heard?  How would women govern as women, as opposed to being able to do things the men’s way, which is what it takes to be successful right now?  What would we create instead of prisons?  What would our old folks’ last days look like?  What would television and movies examine?  Would we hold the individual up, or the welfare of the community up, as being more important?  Or is there another’s welfare that should be looked out for?  Do women understand fertility and what it takes to bring life into the world better than men, who have a very different role and perspective?  Do we understand the need for diversity, because we understand how lives intertwine in the garden and in the world?   If women were powerful, would there be pornography?  Or rape?  Why are men so afraid of angry women?