Happy Harvest Blog
Livin' in the greenhouse
The two broody Silkie hens co-hatched two chicks. What with all the competition and apartment swapping, there is no apparent parentage of the two new chicks. Even the hens don't seem to be clear. I installed both of them in the chickery with a broody box and new eggs. This is for their comfort, for protection from the amorous roosters (How I have longed for you!), and the teenagers who pile in at night. No one wants teenagers around, even your own.Broody hens are so funny, they act like it's Christmas when you give them eggs. Eggs?! You shouldn't have! Cluck cluck cluck, and they settle right on, like they're slipping into a warm bath.
Rare sighting: the bathing chicken
At the beginning of the winter when the chickens were first incarcerated in the greenhouse for the season, we prepared some bird baths.
Shifting play structures
You know when something is overwhelmingly interesting when ALL the birds fall silent. They're that busy. Too absorbed to talk about it, to make announcements. Then little burbles of speculation.All three of the resident breeds explored the new apparatus, hopping up and over it and sidestepping along the high poles, but - I didn't anticipate this- the Silkies wholly claimed it as their own.
Chicken Vay Cay Day!
On warm days, I let the chickens out to play. Whoohoo!They resent their incarceration in the greenhouse in the winter. They glare balefully. We are bored out of our tiny skulls! They do not buy that it's for their own good. We've got survival skills, yo!
...with songs they have sung, for 1000 years
My bees are alive!(with the sound of buzz-ing)We had an extreme cold snap (relative, very relative) here with a -20C night. I didn't think they'd made it. I kind of had a feeling. I'm really on the fence whether this hive will make it through their first winter. Neither death nor survival will surprise me.
Time to feed the birds!
This means, what's in the recycling right now I can make a feeder from?It's always fun to see how long it takes for the birds to find it. Under an hour for a full banditry of chickadees to show up.
Insulating the hive
As I worked, a few sentry bees came rocketing out, angry. It was cold though, so these were suicide missions. They would come out, buzz around angrily, then land on something, and be too cold to get back into the hive. I picked one still bee body up off where it was clinging to a branch and placed it on the upper hive doorstep. Within a second, pffft! The bees threw the body back out. I guess that one was dead. I put another motionless bee on the doorstep. They pulled it into the hive! Maybe for a little bee cpr.
Look who I found crossing the path today
I'm sad for all the animals; this weirdly long winter must be so hard on them. The robins are in a high-profile crisis, and I've noticed the dwindling numbers and variety at my feeder, leaving the dauntless corps of constant chickadees and woodpeckers.
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