The weather has been very mild lately. We’re in a pattern of freeze and thaw, freeze and thaw. The snow is mostly gone. Some days it looks and smells like spring. Other days we have freezing rain. This morning we had heavy fog. For being the middle of January, I can’t complain.
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| Fog this morning. |
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| The beaver pond this morning. |
Nothing very interesting or exciting happened most of the week. We moved through our routines of school and work and chores and meals and sleep -- the same old comfortable stuff. One of my chief delights these days is the time I get to spend down at the barn with the chickens.
I did not grow up with chickens. When my father was a lad, his father kept chickens and my father had to tend them. From that experience early in his childhood, he learned to hate chickens. He would not even eat chicken – fried chicken, chicken noodle soup, chicken and dumplings – none of it. During my childhood, the only time we had chicken for dinner was when my father was out of town. Later in life he grew out of that. I don’t know if it was some sort of deep-seated act of rebellion or what, but when I got married, one of the first things I did was get a flock of chickens. We’ve had chickens almost continuously ever since.
The first few years we were married, Stacey and I lived in an apartment and we kept our flock at her brother Bill’s house on the other side of town. He had an acre of yard with a barn in the back. After a few years, and a few children, we rented a house, half of a duplex. The yard there wasn’t very big nor was our flock. Over the years we moved several more times and in each new home we always had a small flock of chickens.
When we moved here and finally had a bit of property (three whole acres!), we decided to have a big flock. The size and location of our chicken coop evolved over the years. It started out in the old outhouse, which we realized, after a few years, was too close to our house and to my gardens. The smell of the coop during the summer and the flies were too much. And being close to my gardens, anytime the chickens got out (which was too often when small children were tending them), they would go straight to the gardens. You can hardly believe how quickly chickens can destroy a garden. Finally we moved the flock down to the old garage (which ever after we referred to as our “barn”) at the front end of our property. At first the coop took up one third of the barn (the other two thirds being occupied by rabbits, turkeys, pigs, and even a cow at various times), then it was half the barn, and now they occupy the whole lower floor. When the barn roof collapsed several years ago we had a loft built over the barn where we now keep bales of straw, buckets of chicken food, and all the barn tools.
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| The barn. |
Our flock at present is made up of about 40 hens and two roosters. We don’t eat our chickens. When they are past their egg laying years, they get to live out their lives with the flock and die of old age. I get new chicks every few years to keep egg production going. In years past we assigned our children most of the tasks associated with caring for the flock. Over the years of their growing up they took their turns feeding and watering them, collecting the eggs, and cleaning out the coop. I don’t know if all of them enjoyed the work, but I think it taught them valuable lessons. As the older children left home, the barn chores eventually fell first to Daniel and then to Josiah. They tended the flock longer than any of the other children and I think they enjoyed it more than the others. I now tend the flock on my own and I love it.
Despite what most people think, chickens are not really stupid. They are as smart as chickens need to be. The different breeds have different characteristics. Some are flighty and nervous, some are mellow and calm. Some seem especially clever. My flock right now is a mix of several breeds – Light Brahma, Red Rocket, Black Australorp, Buff Orpington, Barred Rock, White Leghorn, Americauna, and a few other odd breeds. One rooster, Copernicus, is a Polish Crested. The other rooster, Pedro, is an unknown but very pretty breed.
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| Our rooster, Copernicus, whose tail never grew back when he molted this year. |
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| The large hen in the middle is a Light Brahma hen. |
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| One of the odd breeds, our hen Doris. |
I enjoy taking care of my chickens. Every day around 3:00 p.m., about the time I’m expected home from school, they gather at the back fence of their yard. As soon as they see me, they get excited and start to make noise. Any chicken who isn’t already waiting at the fence comes running when they hear the noise begin. Right now, because it’s winter, I have to take water down to the barn every day. I fill a five gallon bucket with water at the house and carry it, along with the egg basket, and the slop bucket, down to the barn. The first thing I do as I approach the crowd waiting at the fence is throw them the slop, which is leftovers from our dinner or other food waste. They scramble for that. Then I open the loft and throw them a few bowlfuls of scratch, which is a mix of cracked corn and other grains. Then I fill their feeders. When we had the loft built, we put tubes through the loft floor that allow us to dump feed into the feeders in the lower part of the barn. There are two feeders, one at either end of the coop. After filling the feeders, I leave the loft and go down and around to the front of the barn and into the lower coop. Here I give them water and collect the eggs from the nesting boxes. I keep a chair tucked into the rafters of the coop and when the weather isn’t too cold, I like to take it down and sit with the chickens for a while. Sometimes I take a bowl of scratch with me and toss it in the straw on the coop floor and then sit and watch them hunt and scratch for it. It’s fun to observe their interactions, the pecking order at work, and the minor dramas that happen among them. I think they enjoy my company as much as I do theirs.
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| The crowd waiting for me at the back fence. |
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| Going into the loft. |
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| The tube to the feeder. |
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| The lower barn with my heated waterer and feeder. |
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| Eggs in a nest. |
The big event this week came at the end of the week. Sarah, Tosh, and Miriam arrived on Friday evening. They will leave to go home tomorrow. It’s a very short visit, but so very welcome. It’s nice to have children at home again. In the short time we’ve had together, we’ve had some great food, some good games, and fun just talking.
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| Playing games on Saturday night. |
Yesterday it was warm, in the low 50's, and Miriam accompanied me on an inspection of the gardens, the beehives, and the orchard. There wasn’t a lot to see, but it was nice to walk around without winter coats. The fruit trees look good – we saw no winter damage except some deer nibbles on low branches here and there. The beehives haven’t fared as well. My Amish friend, Irvin, was supposed to come and take the hives last fall, but he hasn’t yet. It looks like two of the three hives are dead. The third hive was active with bees flying out, taking advantage of the warm day. Since the hives are still here, I will wait for a cold day when the living bees are inactive and I will dismantle the two dead hives and take all the honey and wax I can.
Out in the gardens there are a few good signs. The tiny tips of snowdrops, daffodils, and crocuses have emerged. I hope they don’t get too rambunctious and shoot up too far too soon. I’m sure there’s plenty of hard winter weather ahead. But it was good to see them there. It renews my hope in the orderly movement of the earth through its appointed seasons.
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| The tips of daffodils emerging in the garden. |
It is warm again today – the thermometer shows 54° right now. After church today I took another quick walk around the garden just to look at the tiny shoots emerging from the cold earth. It may be because of this warm weather or seeing the early signs of spring, but I have a feeling of hopeful optimism despite the bad behavior of much of the human family over these last days, months, and years. The earth is good at healing and renewing itself if given a chance. Human society is sometimes slower to heal, but with effort and patience and charity, it can happen. The times and seasons roll on, spring will eventually come again. I see proof of that all around me, and it gives me hope.
