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I didn’t catch them at it, but this morning there were two beautiful palest blue eggs in the coop. They could only have been laid by Feather and Spalty, even though only Feather has shown all the signs of maturity.
One of the girls was apparently taken by surprise and didn’t quite make it to the nest box. Nevertheless, both eggs were delivered safely, and without apparent drama.
One Patch, on the other hand, continues to raise high the roof beam with cries of indignation for an hour every day before she lays.
Incidentally, the eggs are crazy delicious.
*since originally posting this, I’ve made a terminology change. I’d thought my girls were “Araucanas” but they’re almost certainly not. They could be “Ameraucanas”–a white and “blue wheaten” perhaps. Or they could even be “Easter Eggers,” Araucanish mutts. Regardless, the eggs are beautiful, and so are the birds.
I was there when it happened!
I went out the door to check on the girls, and I thought I heard an egg song so I dashed inside for my camera before walking over to the garden. I looked in the nest box. No egg. Big circular hole in the straw, though, with the linoleum showing through. I went and got some straw to add to the nesting box, but when I got back One Patch was already there–fussing and making swirlies in the straw and playing with the wooden dummy egg. No more complaining, just quiet clucking.
Then she settled in and just sat. I took a picture or two. Lumpy and Two Patch came up to visit and watch her. After about 10 minutes of me watching them watching her, I was ready to head inside and leave One Patch alone for a while.
I took a look at the other birds, who were hanging out in the downstairs of the ark. I inspected the 4th Barred Rock for distinguishing marks–they’re quite hard to tell apart. Just as I’d decided it was Jumpy, two more Barred Rocks came down the ramp. And then another. Drat! I thought, now I have to figure out who you-all are too. And then Wait! that’s 4 Barred Rocks! Who’s minding the nest?
I went round to the egg door, opened it, and there it was, a beautiful light brown egg exactly the size of the little wooden dummy egg sitting next to it, but speckly and yes! still warm!
The flock is exactly 21 weeks old today.
One Patch the Drama Queen, not knowing what to expect when she’s expecting.
Well, the girls are 21 weeks old tomorrow, and we’re all waiting anxiously for the first egg. There’s been pacing, and growling, and constant checking out of the nest box. And that’s just me.
One Patch (Barred Rock) has been ahead of the game all along. Her comb and wattles were the first to redden, and a couple of weeks ago she started to do the “egg squat,” flattening herself to the ground and spreading her wings. Since then, Feather (Ameraucana), Stripèd (Silver Laced Wyandotte), and Jumpy (Barred Rock) have all started doing it too. The others still run off, skittishly, when you try to pet them.
We’ve moved the portable ark to garden bed #2 and fenced it in with bed #4, so the girls have a place to play, forage, hunt for bugs, and generally be chickens while cleaning up the debris from my tomatoes, pole beans,and cucumbers. After they’re done here, we’ll move them down to beds #4 & #6, #6 & #8, and so on till winter, when they move into Chickhenge, the fortress-like permanent winter coop.
Today, One Patch has been more edgy than ever, pacing the edge of the fence and popping into the ark several times an hour to look at the next boxes. She’s being very vocal, too–a sort of raspy, downward, protracted, complainy kind of growl, like a rusty barn door being opened and closed repeatedly by a restless toddler. It’s about equally cute and annoying.
I understand all of this is pretty typical behavior for a pullet about to lay. (Some people call it “chicken PMS”.) And I know that first egg could be today, tomorrow, next week, or November. But it’s sure hard to wait…which is probably why I’m sitting here balanced on the corner of the asparagus bed with my laptop on my knees.
It’s been silent and cool in the household these first few weeks since the kids have returned to school. The only sound has been the subdued but furious clacking of the keyboard as I catch up on stories I scheduled for the fall re-entry, plus maybe the occasional gasp of bemusement when I’m checking in with the ongoing election coverage.
In the garden, late blight has romped through Bed Number Two, sparing only a few last Sungold cherry tomatoes. Squash vine borers have claimed the zucchini and pumpkins. The garlic and fingerlings are out of the ground, replaced by a buckwheat cover crop. But the tender, slender Nickel haricots are still bearing pods, and great fans of chard and kale still wave over Bed Five. Along with the inevitable failures, there is always at least one bewildering success, and this year I have oceans of flat-leaf parsley I have no idea what to do with.
The once-miniature chicks are now 19 week old, “point of lay” pullets. I know not to expect eggs until November, but I can’t help checking the nests every day anyway. One Patch has the brilliant red comb and wattles of a fully developed young hen, and is even doing the “egg squat”–squatting submissively when you put out your hand to pet her, an indication of maturity. And I heard someone singing the “egg song” (the distinctive cackling of a hen who’s just laid an egg) the other day, although no egg was to be found. I wonder if the singer imagined she had laid the wooden “teaching” egg I put in the nests to show the girls where to set…!
We almost lost Spalty, our chestnut and russet-colored Ameraucana, a couple of weeks ago, when she swallowed some mystery object she shouldn’t have. She went from hiccuping to choking in the space of a few minutes, and lay down, gasping for air, with what seemed like every intention of expiring. We frantically called our neighbor Macaylla, the chicken guru, who urged us not to lose hope. We isolated Spalty in the movable chicken ark overnight, fearing the worst. But in the morning she was up and about, pecking and fluttering, and her labored breathing was gone by the following evening.
Meanwhile, Husby has taken on the excavation of our decrepit entryway and demolition of our sagging, propped-up porch roof in preparation for a new porch (a 12-year-old dream at last coming true). The 6th grader is entering fencing tournaments. The 1st grader has homework for the first time.
I often feel in the quiet of September, dreaming up a new workload, sipping my coffee, watching the kids walk down the street to school a few inches taller than the previous spring, that I too am being re-invented. In the coming year I don’t know what stories I’ll tell, what thresholds I’ll cross, or how I’ll turn out in the end–but even the freedom not to know seems unaccountably precious and rare.
It’s the first true week of summer, and the garden is brimming with good things. The shell peas are done already, but the sugar snaps have climbed 8 feet to the top of the trellis and the fat pods are in full spate.
The prickly yellow flowers of the cucumbers are budding, and the vines began to run overnight. I can never quite believe those tiny flowers will set actual, life-sized cucumbers. Why is it that a cucumber’s flowers are so minute, while a zucchini’s are as big as a hibiscus–when the fruits turn out roughly the same size?
The complex, beady green clusters that will burst into white blossom are emerging at the junctions on the Nickel filet beans. Carrots are ferning, lettuce is bolting. And after years of wishing, I have eaten my first harvest of fava beans, fat and emerald green and worth all the trouble it takes to shell, skin, and blanch them.
The borage volunteered this year, flecking the beds with stars of brilliant blue.
Meanwhile, I am scratching my head again over a mystery plant. I started my usual two types of tomato seeds in April: Sungold, the popular golden cherry bursting with sugars; and Rose de Berne, a well-formed small pinkish-red tomato with deep, carrying flavor. I planted the Sungolds in one row and the Rose de Bernes with some Purple Cherokees from a friend in the other. But now that they are setting fruit, I see that many of the Sungolds are not Sungolds. Instead of setting small, alternate branches of many tiny fruits, they’re setting lusty, assymetrical branches of large and irregular, faintly striped fruit. I’m sure they’ll be delicious. Still, I’m baffled.
Meanwhile, the chicks are 7 weeks old and pullet-shaped. The Barred Rocks have lost many of the markings I used to tell them apart, and they look like almost-identical quadruplets. But if I look very closely, I can see that Two Patches’ almost-gone pale markings give her eye an almond shape, and she still likes to forage away from the others. One Patch’s patch is gone, but her beak has a dark band. Jumpy’s lost her J, but her beak has a light, spotty, disorganized pattern. Lumpy still has a lumpy pink beak, complains all the time, and is the last to arrive. They’re so busy pecking and scratching in their movable run, though, that I can rarely get a still glimpse of their faces.
The Wyandottes are quick on their feet, fearless (for chickens, anyway), and enterprising. Stormy is the most endearing bird in the flock–she comes running when I start pulling weeds and never leaves my side while I work. Here Stripèd does what chickens do best: hunting for bugs, and incidentally keeping sections of my garden weed-free.
It’s days like these I remember why we moved to this crazy old farmhouse, this scruffy and uncivilized property, this place of frostbound winters. It’s not always an easy row to hoe, but it sure is a rich one.
Who can not love a vegetable garden in June? A hundred shades of living green begging you to touch, pick, taste. Blue and celadon shadows of green under the leaves, lime and chartreuse on the sun-facing fruit.
I was making up my weekly grocery list yesterday when I suddenly realized: it’s the first week this year I don’t have to buy any produce! The garden is its own produce aisle, no refrigeration necessary. After I finish out my formal recipe-testing for the current cookbook, it’s time to ponder the delicious dilemma: what can I make with spinach, peas, scapes, baby fava beans?
I’m not 100% sure yet, but maybe I’ll make some paneer for saag paneer. The scapes will go into scape pesto. The favas will be tenderly turned with mint and maybe some butter. And the peas! Well, the peas will likely never make it to the table. They may not make it past Bed 16. They’re simply too adorable, too perfect, too delectable just as they are.
On a day like this I can even lose my heart to turnips, even though they are turnips. (They’re only babies, smaller than a ping-pong ball, crowned and shaded with papery greens.)
Stormy explores the Great Outdoors.
Technically, I think they’re “pullets” now that their lovely feathers have grown in. Last night Husby made good on his promise and finished the chicken ark just in time for the girls’ 4-week birthday. He and our friend Mark hefted the monstrous thing–4′ x 8′ and full of plywood–into the garden, where it is now parked.
The girls get down to business.
Initially, there was clucking and panicking. But by this morning, everybody was not only still alive but acting all casual, like, “OK, now what?”
I let two chicks out at a time to free-forage while I worked in the garden, figuring that with just two (just like kids!) I could keep an eye on them before they did any damage to the tender greens. Mostly, they were just interested in digging around in the moist, weedy edges where the beds meet the ground, and that was fine by me.
Working girls take five.
Meanwhile I eradicated most of the tall grass inside the garden. While not exactly a vision of order and rest, it’s still a very pleasant place to be: 17 big beds of vegetable goodness, plus some random stuff like the pea trellis, the strawberry refugium, and the blueberry bushes.
They’re basically unrecognizable–I only know who’s who from watching them every day. Their bodies are about the size of a coffee mug, and they weigh about 3/4 pound. They eat all the time. Instead of sounding like a squeaky bicycle wheel, their voices have lowered just a little and now sound like songbird conversations, complete with trills and some proto-clucks.
Zoe and I helped take care of her kindergarten’s incubator this month and got to see some chicks hatch. It was hard to believe that our own birds were that small 21 days ago, so I decided to do a Before & After. Hopefully this will be helpful to other new chick owners trying to figure out what their birds will look like as they grow.
[Barred Rock] Lumpy, former thug, has mellowed. She and Two Patch didn’t grow as fast as the others, so they tend to hang back a bit. Lumpy’s still a speed demon at catching ants though.
[Barred Rock]One Patch has become a very competent flyer and often hops up to join Jumpy wherever she’s just perched.
[Barred Rock] Two Patch is the runt of the litter. She’s still a bit of a loner, and it’s hard to catch a shot of her because her head is always in motion.
[Ameraucana] Feather is enormous. So enormous she can’t fly really at all. When everyone else flies up to the side of the box, Feather stays behind at the feeder–still eating.
[Ameraucana] Spalty, though almost as big as Feather, can still hop and fly pretty well. She’s usually the 5th up to a perch, after Jumpy, One Patch, Stripèd, and Stormy.
[Silver Laced Wyandotte] Stripèd is developing some of the distinctive silver-white plumage her breed is named for. She’s very fat, a good flyer, and somewhat domineering.
[Silver Laced Wyandotte] Stormy, who was almost identical to Stripèd a few weeks ago, has darkened and now looks like an Edward Gorey character in a fur coat. Like her sister Wyandotte, Stripèd, she carries her considerable bulk easily on short hops and flights.
In a week, they go outside to live in their chicken ark! and truthfully, though I love having them around in the kitchen, I can’t wait. The dust baths are getting out of control, and they are desperate to forage outside and enjoy some more space…
Read the NPR story here: Stand Back When Snapping Turtles Crop Up In the Garden.
This week my garden had a couple of uninvited guests, in the form of Chelydra serpentina, the common snapping turtle. I had accidentally left the garden gate open and–apparently–in strolled a 30-pound snapping turtle. At first I thought she was a leather briefcase or something and I had to check with myself–is there some reason I might have left a satchel in the strawberry patch? Maybe? Maybe I’m a GP, and I was making house calls, and I took a shortcut through the garden and left my bag there?
My friend Macaylla, who happened to have stopped by, removed the turtle for me. But an hour later, I returned to check my favas for blackfly, and there in Bed 12 was *another* snapping turtle. This one just a little smaller. I went back in, got my boots and gloves, and came back full of purpose, only to lose my nerve at the last minute in the face of those prehistoric, beady, “Despicable Me” eyes. Instead I took a picture.
Yesterday morning, it became clear that Mrs. Snapper had left behind more than just a photograph, as I discovered while putting the zucchini and peppers in the bed she had occupied . The eggs couldn’t stay in the garden, so I stashed them in a couple of transplant pots.
This, apparently, was the wrong thing to do. But I only found that out later, when an NPR friend encouraged me to submit the story to the site’s food blog, The Salt, which I’ve admired for a long time. I immediately began to acquire a very, very large quantity of facts about snapping turtles very, very quickly.
Many thanks to all who contributed their opinions, experiences, and helping hands this extraordinary Week of the Turtle.
Just 13 days out of the shell, and the gallinaceous octet has doubled in size and character. Their voices have dropped just a bit, from Geiger-counter peeps to squeaky bicycle wheel. They’ve gotten the napping down to a science–15 minutes at a time, in unison. All together now!
Their favorite activity at this age is preening their beautiful and rapidly emerging feathers. (Pretty soon they’re going to be traveling in packs to the mall and asking to borrow the car.) The Barred Rocks are getting kitted out in flamenco gear, while Spalty looks more like a rare hardwood than ever. Meawhile, tiny toenails are being articulated, and a pert fan of tail feathers helps with balance.
All eight are also big fans of Eating. When they wake up from nap, they stagger over to the trough and plunge their heads in mindlessly, insensible to all other stimuli. At these moments, their resemblance to their principal caregiver is impossible to dismiss.
At 1 am on Friday night, I was awakened to what I’ve come to recognize as the “Man Down!” alarm–it sounds a bit like the scoring of the shower scene in Psycho. I turned over in bed, hoping it would stop, but the urgency of the cries was unignorable. I came downstairs to the sight of precocious Jumpy, standing outside the box on the floor, completely disoriented, like Dorothy in Oz. As anticipated, she was the first to consummate her leap to the edge of the box, and, having arrived at the climactic moment, lost her balance and toppled (she’s since learned to balance). Since then Stripèd, Stormy, Lumpy, and One Patch have successfully followed her example (you can see a few of them taking notes in the picture).
While only a handful have achieved the upward hop-jump-flight, all have mastered the wing-assisted downward plunge. It’s a must when you are constantly being scooped up by a 5-year-old and placed on her shoulder. Many choose to escape immediately, but a few, like Stripèd here, occasionally elect to hang out.
cookbooks for dinner 