Happy Harvest Blog
Greenhouse living and the drama of the popcorn string
This has been a good winter to be a chicken around here. The winter was mild, and I don't think there was ever a time that the birds were truly locked in for more than a week due to snow. Any time there was bare ground, they got released for at least some hours of foraging entertainment. And of course, they had their side yard always accessible, although all the birds tend to stay in when there's snow. So morale was good this winter, not much cabin fever.
Nosey wishes everyone a Merry Christmas today
And wonders if perhaps it would be cozier with a fire... Actually she sees her reflection. Nosey took to letting herself into the house this fall whenever the door was left open. She wouldn't stay very long, just do a lap, walking casually all around, checking for crumbs, and then pop back out the door and leave. I just had to know what was going on.
Nosey is auditioning for role of house chicken.
Nosey the Nosy thinks that I have a chicken-shaped void in my life, and she’s the chicken to fill it. I see that you don’t have a house chicken at the moment. I’d like to leave my resumé. It’s true, it’s been a long time since Cheeks moved out. Nosey has an unusual degree of interest in the house. With the door always open and the screen on, she spends a lot of time standing on the threshold looking in. And riffling the screen with her beak.
Saturday shirking
It’s sunny, it’s Saturday. The house is a mess, the woods are a mess, I have so much to do but will probably do less. 2/3 through that I thought I should make it rhyme. In celebration of shirking, here’s a chicken in the act of discovering me lying on my back in the weeds.
Profile: Nosey
All chickens have their own unique chickenalities, but some chickens distinguish themselves more than others. Nosey has been her own bird from a young chicken, and unlike everyone else, it is rather tame. She got her name from always being excessively interested in my business, and always really into being near me. She’d be the first at the door, have her beak up in whatever I was doing, sit on my shoulder, and generally tag along or be underfoot.
An unexpected guest for dinner
You again!? If rabbits are joining us, I’m leaving. I guess she got over it and decided to share. I’ve seen this rabbit around more recently than the pictures were taken, and she seemed hugely pregnant, with her belly dragging on the ground. So no wonder she was too hungry to wait for the chickens to go to bed to glean.
Well, I left the bag of dirt on the porch.
What? Nothing to see here. I’m brown. I almost didn’t see her at first; she was holding still. Set down a basket for two seconds and it draws a crowd…and a fancy caterpillar.
We have different cultural ideas about how we should look after a bath.
We had rain! (Blessed rain!) Dust baths are closed, mud baths now available. I was pretty surprised to find this little enthusiast digging in. Really digging in. Naturally, onlookers.Because when you’ve planned to go to the spa, you go to the spa.What? Some people pay good money for this. The Colonel included for dirtiness comparison. Yes, the Colonel is still the big boss, my v first rooster from my v first collection of chickens.
An extra puffy tail
The little (lone) Silkie chick has just had one extra puffy tail sprout out today, along with a tiny head crest and tiny feet feathers on those little black legs. Looks especially good with evening back-lighting. It's funny what a transformative difference a day makes - chicks grow so fast. Feathers just pop out here and there, and they go through some pretty funny stages. This poor little chick is now only one third the size of its nestmates, which are bigger than some of the other chicks get before their Moms move on.
box princess
There are three sets of chick/s running around at the moment, that I see have yet to be introduced, my bad...The other White Chocolate hen, sister to the loaner, has three chicks; the shirt chick was adopted; and this little Silkie hen has three- two Cheeklings and a Silkie chick (got rescued into the greenhouse on rain day). This particular hen's quirk (they all have at least one), is that she does not, ever, want to go to bed in the coop.
chickens lounging in the sun
They do love a good sunny day. This one started it all (Cream Puff). Oh, that looks like a good idea. Whatcha doin'? Then the participants change. What's even happening here? (There are three hens)Then everyone's in on it. There's also a dust bowl a little ways from the sandbox. The guineas like to lie in the grass in the sun.
The loaners
Two hens are on loan to another family who needs some chicks. They are sitting on eggs and will return when their chicks are grown enough to not need their moms like Cream Puff did last year (with a boyfriend in tow). Broody hen rental service. The hens, one Silkie, and one standard got boxed and transported at night, installed in their brooding accommodations, and after a day to adjust, they have settled in extremely well. I visited.
Knock knock?
Cheeks progressed to spending all day outside. She started eating from the trough with the other hens, then started laying her eggs in the nest box of the coop! I hardly saw her from the morning post-yelling eviction until the evening. She would still come to the door of the house at bedtime, or if it rained heavily. Hello. I still live here. And I'd put her back in her banana box for the night. I can't reach the handle. Ah!
Nosy guineas
I was sitting on the sill of my open front door, a convenient place I've found for potting upstarts, my dirt and trays arrayed in front of me, when the guineas wandered up. They arrived quite suddenly, maintaining their constant twittering conversation about everything, and they came right up on the deck to see what I was doing. Whatrya doing? I was so glad I was in arms-reach of my camera. I thought they were after the green stuff, but they didn't make a move for it.
Boxed In day
You're doing it wrong. This little rooster is cerebrally challenged. In other words, he’s kinda dumb. The last surviving rooster of the refugees from the horrible, terrible chicken place (all the hens recovered and relearned how to chicken, although they are all super small), he gets to stay in with the hens because of his beautiful colouring and mild, meek attitude. His brains, on the other hand, leave something to be desired.
Happy holidays
Hope everyone has a Merry Christmas today, if that’s your culture, and maybe a delicious meal! No need to eat it with this intensity, though:) Happy Cheeksmas!
I feel like some aloe today
Says Cheeks. She took a whole arm off of this plant (right), and a couple of beak shaped bites out of another arm. Then she took the tip off another plant. She really ate quite a lot of it, despite the bits she left behind. Apparently, today she just wanted some aloe. It’s good for her. No one else is eating it (I’ve tried, I find it bitter). This is the box she stands on, to eat, and just to hang out for a lot of the day.
New things! New things! - Greenhouse Rearrangement
I got some more work done in the greenhouse. Specifically, I untied all the strings crossing the top third, that suspend tomatoes in the summer. You can just see the strings in this pic. So I’m taking them down and crochet looping them up to decommission them until next year. The guineas will be able to fly around in the upper third of the GH again. This festooning makes sense to me. Then the irrigation came out, and the pool went in, and coops were shifted – oh my!
Instagram.
I may not make a blog post every day, but at least I Insta.
Bite size.
