Hint: The chicken wins.
And those apple pests she eats, they lose too.
As soon as we mow the grass short around the trees, the chickens are happy to help us clean up any windfalls, bugs and all, that they find lying on the ground.
Happy chickens, happy trees, happy me!
The sky is overcast.
Rain, or something like it that is colder in a way that’s best not to acknowledge, is spitting down and the spring that seemed imminent just days before has blown away in the cold gusty wind.
Yet the howl of wind and wet is abruptly muffled as the door closes behind you. Replaced by a soft symphony of tiny peeps and a friendly ring of red light and warmth.
Baby chicks, delicate beings that defy everything about a cold spring day.
Tiny scraps of fluff proclaiming that spring is here.
A Friday ritual.
A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week.
A simple, special, extraordinary moment.
A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.
The chickens are ready for winter and it’s a beautiful sight. 
They live in an old hay wagon which was converted to chicken coop that we move every few weeks all spring, summer and fall. It works beautifully. The wire floor means I don’t have to shovel out a chicken coop and the easy mobility means the chickens can roam out away from the house and gardens all summer long.
I love my chicken coop.
But in winter the chickens need a little extra warmth. So every fall, at the last possible second, we pull them up close to the house, plug in a heated water bowl and stop up that drafty underside with a ring of straw bales. Today was the last possible second. John and I moved the bales around the edge as Clara jumped inside, out of the wind and snow, letting us know where we needed more straw.
Maybe my chicken coop doesn’t fit your definition of beauty but as I stood back, job finished, chickens ready for whatever this winter may throw at them, the sun peeked out through the clouds. The straw shone golden in the sunshine, it’s clean smell filled the air and it was just my kind of beautiful.
If you’d like to see what the chicken coop looks like without it’s winter wrapping check out:
I’ve heard it said that you have to try something at least ten times before you can truly decide if you like it. Therefore, as parents, we should just continue to offer new foods to our kids and eventually, after trying it enough, they may like it.
I’m not buying it.
In my experience, kids predetermine if they like things based on color, texture, smell and what their siblings say. It doesn’t matter how many times they try it, if it’s green, or slimy or the older sister says it’s gross, nobody likes it. Case in point, asparagus.
John is a huge asparagus fan. So much so that when road construction started on his asparagus guy’s road, making it inconvenient to drive by and see if he had any available, John stopped in and got his phone number. Now we can call ahead for all our asparagus needs.
John also is the kind of person who will buy much more of something than he was planning on because it’s such a good deal. Marketers must love him. So I was shocked but not surprised when he called me in great excitement to tell me he bought twenty pounds of asparagus.
Yes, I said twenty.
It was a good deal.
I had been out of town for the weekend and was happy to see that by the time I returned home we were merely left with about ten pounds. That giant bag only took up one shelf of the spare fridge.
In the last week, we’ve had grilled asparagus, and broiled asparagus, and asparagus pasta skillets, and asparagus pizza and asparagus soup. If cooking was happening the asparagus was in it.
Now, when it comes to the kid eating it, even my pathetic math can figure that with twenty pounds of asparagus, the kids would have to try a bit once every two pounds that crossed the table to make it to the mythical “ten tries”. And that’s assuming that they had never tried it before, which of course they have because John has the asparagus guy’s name and number taped to the fridge. Every meal the kids would dutifully try it, reject it, and painstakingly pick it out of the rest of their food. Every day I found myself feeding piles of asparagus shinnbles to my chickens.
Ten tries, my assparagus!
My chickens should work on upping egg production this week. After all John could use a little thank you for the five pounds of nice fresh asparagus he bought them!
Recently I posted about having too many roosters. Today I wanted to elaborate a bit on that part between having too many roosters and new package’s in the freezer.
Bare with me it won’t be as bad as it sounds.
…it was time for all the roosters to go.
And so, in an activity not usually reserved for Easter weekend, John and I butchered the extra roosters while the girls watched. The kids said goodbye to the pretty ones and pointed out the mean one that should go first. They drifted in and out, asked questions, refused my offer to share in the plucking and before it was all cleaned up they even learned a bit about hearts and intestines, lungs and gizzards.
We have been butchering our own chickens (and deer and an occasional turkey, duck or lamb) ourselves for their entire lives and so I didn’t have any concerns with the older girls, they’d been through this all before. But this was Jane’s first chicken butchering experience that she was old enough to really take in so I kept a bit of a closer watch on her. Perched on a stool through much of the process she gave a few birds one last pet before I handed them off to John and his axe. She asked a few questions, played with a few feathers and eventually left to play with Ivy who had declared the whole process, “Boring.” Perhaps it was because she was introduced to the scene at the tender age of two or perhaps it was because the rest of the family was unfazed but Jane seemed to take it all in stride.
A few nights later Jane was having a bit of trouble settling down to sleep. And by that I mean she was popping out of bed like a Jack-in-the-box every 45 seconds with a new ridiculous request. Having exhausted my entire line up of lets-go-to-sleep-now tricks I tried to give her a little pep talk about everyone who was sleeping.Your sisters are sleeping, the dogs are sleeping, the cats are sleeping…
Me: “…The chickens are sleeping, they are good chickens. I said “night ladies” and closed the door and they aren’t going to get up they are just going to sleep in their coop all night.” (Yes, I know, look who’s being ridiculous now. It was ridiculous sounding and ridiculous to think it would work – which it didn’t. Clearly I was desperate!)
When you have chickens, like we do, and in conversation you mention that you also have a rooster, like we do, one of two things generally happens.
Either, people say something along the lines of, “Of course, because otherwise you wouldn’t get any eggs right?” and then you try not to physically slap your forehead in frustration with the poor biology background of the general populace and go on to give a well rehearsed mini-biology lesson of your own.
Or, they say something along the lines of, “But don’t you worry it’s going to attack your children, kill your cats, run your dogs out of the neighborhood and crow night and day driving you crazy?!?” and then you try not to sigh, because they clearly have had a traumatic rooster incident and now you must gently explain to that despite the incident that scarred them for life that your rooster is quite well behaved because anything less than stellar behavior would earn him a quick trip to the soup pot.
Rarely someone will nod knowingly, perhaps a fellow poultry person, because they know that a good rooster in a free range flock is worth the chicken feed he eats and more. In fact, I will go so far as to say I would never want to have a flock without one.
I’m not exactly sure what goes through a hen’s brain as she walks around doing her chickeny things but none of it seems to have to do with awareness of surroundings and self-preservation. It’s possible the chicken crossed the road because the rooster wasn’t around to tell her it was a dumb idea. While the hens are happily meandering about, the rooster (the current one goes by name of Roosty) is on guard duty. A hawk flies overhead and the hens continue to scratch at the ground – until Roosty (yes, the kids named him) spots it. He’ll give an alarm call and quick as a wink the chickens all vanish under bushes and whatever else they can find, and hunker down until it’s gone. While we we’ve lost chickens to hawks between roosters, we’ve yet to have them get one since Roosty’s been on the job!
Whenever his guard duties aren’t demanding his immediate attention, Roosty busies himself by searching the ground for extra treats, calling his ladies over to share whatever he finds. And as his final rooster duty, he has proven himself with an impressive fertility rate on eggs I gave a friend to hatch. Since she lives in town with a cap on chicken numbers and a ban on roosters, the extras were sent back to us. When all was said and done we had seven extra roosters.
Not all roosters are created equal and chances of nastiness seem to increase the more you have. And this situation was no different. But even though the new roosters were crowing up a storm and starting to do quite a bit of posturing and mini rooster fights amongst themselves, the young boys were, well, scrawny. As we waited for them to get a bit plumper, Roosty had his work cut out for him.
All the birds would be peacefully roaming around when one of the young (and might I add slightly evil) roosters would spy a lone hen and take off like an arrow through the grass after her. Stretched out, flattened to the ground, running full tilt they’d race across the orchard, joined by any other young rooster that may have caught sight of them. When the youngsters caught the poor girl, the whole group would start in on behavior that would earn them a decent amount of jail time if they were human. Fortunatly Roosty was on the job. As soon as he heard the commotion, he’d go running and flapping across the yard and shove himself right into the middle of the chaos. I never saw him fight another rooster, he’d just strut into the middle and the young boys would break it off. Straightening up, they’d slink away as if trying to say “What? I wasn’t doing anything! Besides I was just leaving anyway…” and Roosty would usher the poor hen back toward the rest of the flock.
While watching this show was both entertaining and educational, it was also very noisy for us humans and looked exhausting for the chickens. We were all sticking it out waiting for the new boys to get just a bit bigger when one of them pecked at Jane. Not only did he peck her leg but then he stood watching Jane scream with feathers plumped in a threatening manner until I came at a run to give him the boot (literally)and rescue her. Sadly, Roosty’s fierce protective instincts don’t extend to anything without feathers. While I love having a rooster around, we have a one strike rule when it comes to aggression toward humans. Roosty has never so much as looked at us sideways, but this young rooster had crossed the line.
With that single and final strike, it was time for all the roosters to go.
And just like that we are back to lone rooster status. The crowing has receded to a barely noticeable level, the freezer has a few new packages and Roosty, still on the job, looks just a bit more relaxed without his added duties.
So next time someone tells you they have a rooster, nod your head sagely and smile because now you know. A good rooster is worth that extra chicken feed.
Louise longs for true adventure – and boy does she ever find it!
Would I recommend it? Yes.
“Goodnight ladies.” I say as I come up, shining a quick light through the coop to be sure the rouge possum that’s been about hasn’t found it’s way in for the night. The feathery bundles hardly shift from their toe warming hunker as I close the door. But if the chickens are indifferent to my presence the ducks make up for with their blind panic at my after dark arrival. Years of the same nightly routine and not even my “Hey Ducks.” called out as a warning that it’s just me calms them. So after a quick head count, I scoot the door closed on their frantic quacking.
Evening lock up done, I call the dogs and we circle back to the house taking the long way. The dogs happily bound ahead through the snow, no doubt hunting bunnies. The cold air is sharp on my cheeks but I’m bundled up against the cold and I turn my flashlight off, enjoying the sounds of the dogs, the glow of the snow and stars and relish the fact that I’m doing “chores.” As in, I’ve got to go out and take care of the birds. Have to haul that water. Have to make sure they have feed. Have to get the eggs. Have to close them up, safe from predators and the nasty wind that’s building.
Have to.
Twice a day.
I have to go out in the mornings when everything is covered in last night’s blanket of snow. I have to bring the dogs along and watch them tear through the fresh powder. I have to go out through the storms, hearing nothing but wind and snow, cocooned from the rest of the world inside the weather. I have to go out on the crystal clear nights and see the stars hanging low and bright. I have to go out where I can look back at the glow of the warm house through the trees knowing that if I’m a bit chilly, the fire inside will feel extra warm when I get back.
What a “chore.”
I head back into the warm house taking one last look at the bright stars, one last breath of the air that stings my nose and wonder – as much as I love the winter weather, would I leave my warm fire without those indifferent birds awaiting my care? Would I miss all this? I’d like to think not, that when the temperature drops I’d still be out just for the adventure of it all.
But I’ll keep my birds – just in case.
Oh my goodness, I’m so sorry! I can’t believe you are still sitting on that bench! Life just got the best of me for a bit, we took some trips out of town and John was gone and we all got sick and… well you know how it is- just life.
But please, please, get up. Let’s go for a walk, stretch your legs, we’ve got more to see!
We’ll head out the back gate here into the woods. Watch out for the dogs though. Well you can’t see them yet because they have already sprinted up ahead and do their best to catch chipmunks, but they’ll be flying back past us any moment. Storm usually has a giant — stick! Is your leg OK? LOOK OUT! I’m so sorry! The girls think they are being careful while waving big sticks around but obviously they aren’t! But if you can keep your footing with the dogs about and protect your eyes from the sticks, this trail is really rather nice. We’ll just follow it here as it winds about a bit to the far end of the property.
Alright, I can see that just looking at all that buckthorn and multiflora rose is making your blood pressure rise. Please try to look up a little higher and check out the oak, maple and pines instead and before you know it, we’ll be in the orchard.
Here we are! 
Careful! Don’t walk there! You’ve got to watch your step, there are downed apples everywhere and it’s such a nice day that the yellow jackets are out it swarms! Our orchard is small compared to the one you drove by when you came up the driveway. We only have about 30 trees. (Well 32 and one pear to be precise.) Of course you can have an apple! Try as many as you like – well not that one! You gotta watch for worms! Here try this one instead, it’s a Baldwin it’s John’s current favorite. Or over here you can try an Erwin Baur, I love that one. Clara’s favorite is the Yellow Delicious, Jane eats them all we just try to keep her from picking them off the ground. Go ahead and pick her one of those Golden Russets there, they look brown and weird but they are tasty. Ivy – no Ivy scorns all our apples for the neighbors – 32 varieties and we still can’t please everyone.
As you can see we are swimming in apples, we can’t even pick them fast enough this year.
But the chickens are loving the windfalls.
And so are the ducks who are living in the coop we moved. Didn’t I tell you about that? Well…. (The Tale of The Perfect Little Chicken Coop)
We’ve been making apple cider and apple pies, sauce, butter… And that reminds me, have I told you about John? Here we are drowning in apples and he BOUGHT ten pounds of apples! Yes, bought them and brought them home because he thought it would be “a good project” for him and Clara to turn them into dried apples.
Seriously.
What do you mean “What’s that”?
That is a bag for you. You can’t leave without a bag of apples! I’ll help you pick – Not on that! That ladder is a safety hazard, only John is crazy enough to use that one! 
Here, use this one.
You know, on second thought, let’s get you back to the house. I’ve got lots of apples all ready picked there and you finish the tour with the inside of the house. Just follow Jane and try not to get hurt anymore…
“Come on!”
So… have you always been this accident prone, or is this a new thing?
(continued in The Tour -Part 4)
Behind the Willows 