A Sunday Story

It was the Henderson's turn to host the preacher for Sunday dinner after church and Mama, somewhat reluctantly, had sacrificed several of the young chickens she'd been planning to trade for sugar, coffee and calico at the nearby Mercantile. Every last one of the young uns needed new shoes too, what with winter coming on. 

But the pride of the family rested on how well the preacher was fed at their house so Mama fried up four young cockerels in the big black frying pan atop the Modern Maid cook stove.  Snowy biscuits, green beans simmered with sidemeat, creamed corn, smothered potatoes, turnip greens with vinegar and chopped onions, home-churned butter, an assortment of jams and jellies and pickles crowded the table, along with pitchers of sweet milk and buttermilk.  Mama looked at her work and saw that it was good.

The family waited, heads bowed and hands folded while the preacher asked a blessing. No sooner was the 'Amen' out of the preacher's mouth than he reached for the platter of fried chicken and scooped up two large pieces of white meat.  

"That ol' preacher can sure hide him some fried chicken!" Little Clete whispered to his brother as the platter made a circuit of the table and the preacher  reached for more. He talked and he munched and he reached for more till a pile of chicken bones grew on the table beside his plate. 

As the meal continued and the platter of chicken was reduced to a wing, a back, and a gizzard, Papa whispered to Mama and she rose, with a look of thunder on her face, and made her way to the kitchen.

If the preacher heard the back door slam or the clucking of chickens scurrying for cover, he gave no sign but just reached for that last wing.

If he heard the thunk of the axe on the stump or the sizzle and crackle of more chicken parts hitting the frying pan, it didn't stop him from accepting the back and gizzard when the platter came round again.

And when Mama returned, her mouth set in a tight line and her eyes steely, the preacher didn't notice her lowering expression but smiled happily  and helped himself to another piece of white meat as the second platter of hot fried chicken was set before him.

But even preachers finally get their fill and as Mama was clearing the table, the preacher leaned back with a deep sigh of satisfaction.

Just outside, the rooster began to crow long and loud. The preacher smiled indulgently.  "Just listen to that feller, won't you? Don't he sound proud?"


"Humph!" snorted Mama as she collected the pile of chicken bones from beside the preacher's plate and piled them on the second empty platter. "You'd crow too if you had six sons in the ministry."

Only the first photo is mine. The others are from the Internet.

 

Do Butterflies Have Knees?

Monday was a perfect day to get out in the garden as rain was forecast for Tuesday. I had a few more potatoes to plant as well as some broccoli and kale and parsley starts to put into my box beds. 

This row of beds above has benefited from the helpful biddies in the chicken tractor which was carefully constructed by John to fit the beds. The girls eat the weeds and weed seeds and bugs and leave behind a bit of high powered fertilizer.

The swallowtail butterflies were knee-deep in the thrift. (Do butterflies have knees? Allegedly, bees do.)

Such beauties --  they seemed almost drunk on all that nectar!

You know I took more pictures...

Early Spring Mosaic . . . with Chickens

The handsome fella in the middle is our Buff Orpington rooster. I always name our roosters Gregory Peck but this guy was raised by Justin and Claui who named him Reginald Dukakis.

It doesn't matter; he won't answer to either. 

 

We have to keep our biddies in a pen, due to predators -- hawks, foxes, coons, and, alas, our own dogs. The birds seem pretty content -- they've got room to move around, a house to shelter in, dirt to scratch in, and we make a points of bringing them green stuff.

Reginald/Gregory is starting his little rooster dance -- preparatory to jumping on the hen's back and mating -- ah, chicken foreplay.

We have Buff Orpingtons and Gold-Laced Wyandottes, who lay pinkish-brown eggs and Ameruacanas, who are responsible for the pretty bluish eggs. 

They are laying well now, after slacking off during the dark days of winter -- fourteen hens and most days we get ten eggs.

Good thing Easter's almost here! There'll be plenty of eggs for the Easter egg hunt!

Around and About

. . . odds and ends from the past few days . . .

I'm still trying to get a picture of all four banty chicks but Mama hustles them indoors as soon as I point the camera their way.

They are feathering out and are beginning to need more space -- in the next few days, I believe, John plans to move the little family to Justin's chicken tractor, currently occupied by two banty hens.

When I was on my way to the grocery store a few days ago, I was stopped by an outbreak of two naughty calves. They had slipped under the fence and were out for an explore. The mother in the lower left corner is saying something like, "You better get back in here this minute!"

Fortunately, Justin and Claui were taking their dogs for a morning stroll (click on the picture to see what's happening) and quickly turned the bad babies back in with their mamas.

You can see that the calfies aren't a lick repentant and will probably get out again as soon as we move on.

The garden is coming along well -- squash plants are bigging up; tomatoes look good -- thanks to John who mulched them heavily. The broccoli, however, was so full of worms ( I know how well the bt stuff works -- but with all the rain we had, there wasn't a chance for the spray to get a foothold. When I plant more, I'll use row cover to protect them.) So yesterday I yanked out the wormy, buggy plants and gave them to the chickens -- who were delighted.

I'm trying to get out in the garden in the cool of the morning -- then spend my afternoon and evenings writing. Just now I'm back in 1887, with the DeVine sisters at the Mountain Park Hotel in Hot Springs, NC (formerly Warm Springs). I'll tell you more about the hotel (which unlike the DeVine sisters really existed) tomorrow.

Another Day in Paradise

Garden work Monday -- mainly pulling weeds out of a day lily bed that looked so awful I couldn't bring myself to take its picture -- so instead here's a look at the part of the garden John hoed while I tied up and suckered the tomatoes a few days ago.

The wild raspberries are beginning to ripen -- one of the prettiest of fruits, I think.

I lurked by the mama hen's apartment hoping for a picture of the babies -- her four chicks are doing well but she mistrusted the lady with the camera and sent them back inside whenever they dared to look out.

Heading back to the house I poked my head into the greenhouse -- the resident Northern Water Snake was sunning him/herself as usual. This snake is so used to me that it ignores me even as I move plant pots around on the lattice right by it. I was fascinated by its cozy pose -- when you're a snake, you can keep yourself warm!

A big rain (an inch) cooled things off in the late afternoon . . .

. . . and the skies cleared once more. We're loving all this rain after several years of drought -- the pastures and the woods are happy and content -- and so are we.

A Broody Hen

One of the Wyandottes has, for some weeks now, been broody -- no, not depressed, but caught up with the desire to hatch out some eggs and become a mother. She's been camping out in one of the nest boxes and swelling up and pecking at our hands when we attempt to see if there are eggs under her.

The nest boxes are for laying eggs -- not for hatching chicks. These boxes are high off the ground but vulnerable to snakes -- and John saw a big blacksnake in the hen house recently. Plus this would-be mama couldn't settle on which nest she wanted. Something needed to be done.

So John built a snug little brooder -- one nest, a panel that shuts with the tug of a string to keep the hen in or out as need be, and a pocket-handkerchief front yard. He used very strong wire with a small mesh in order to exclude snakes. There is even wire on the bottom to prevent any creature tunneling in. (The peeping of baby chicks is like a dinner bell to predators.)

Wynona, as I've decided to name her, seems to have taken the move in stride -- and we've put seven banty eggs under her. Three weeks is the incubation period -- we'll see what happens. I have had hens sit faithfully for 18 or 19 days and suddenly abandon the idea of motherhood -- and the eggs as well. But I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

A room with a view -- Wynona can keep an eye on what's up back in the chicken yard.

Should you want to know more about the process of letting a hen raise a gang of chicks, you can go HERE.

The Fox is on the Town-o

Fox went out on a chase one night
Prayed to the moon to give him light
He had many a mile to go that night
Before he reached the town-o . . .

You've all likely heard that folk song. It dates back at least to the Middle Ages in England, if not farther. The fox comes to the farmer's pen and grabs the grey goose while Old Mother Slipper Slopper sticks her head out the window and hollers for her husband, "John, John, the grey goose is gone and the fox is on the town-o!"

Well, this time it was chickens, not a goose, and old Mother Slipper Slopper slept through the whole thing. John, however, awoke to a great commotion below and took off down the road to the chicken house where he discovered that the Great Chicken Massacree had taken place.

There were eight corpses lying about, a hole dug under the fence, and feathery evidence of a body's being carried off. John took the truck down the road to where we have suspected there is a foxes' den and sure, enough, there he/she was, toting a deceased chicken toward the pile of rocks where, presumably, "there were the little ones, eight, nine, ten."

So the tunnel under the wire has been filled, the chicken wire reinforced, and now we close the chickens in their house every night. A pain, but necessary.

We still have a fair number of chickens. As luck would have it, most of the victims were the old girls, some of whom had pretty much quit laying. And Gregory Peck, the rooster, died, doubtless defending his harem.

We've taken advantage of this change in the status quo to shift birds around. Justin's chicken tractor had three full-sized birds - a young Buff Orpington hen and rooster and their mother. Unfortunately the younger ones were driving their mother crazy (teenagers!) so we brought them all up to our chicken house where the young rooster will have other things to think about and Mama can have her space.

Meanwhile, in our chicken tractor, the Brassy-back Bantam rooster had taken against the two Brassy-back hens, preferring the company of the evidently more interesting Dutch Cream hens. So the poor Brassy-back girls stayed in the upstairs apartment most of the day, moping, reading romance novels, and writing bad poetry.

Not anymore. They've been moved to Justin's chicken tractor where they seem much happier. We are hoping someone will go broody as now we could use a few more banties -- maybe a nicer rooster for these two...



The young Buff Orpington rooster is a handsome devil. His tail feathers are just starting to sprout but his color is magnificent. Justin and Claui tell me that his name is Reginald Dukakis.

And Reginald's once down-trodden mother has quickly gone to the top of the pecking order in her new home, kicking butt and taking names, as they say. (She's the large buff-colored hen in the center of the picture above.)

Chicken politics! Aye, law!

Meanwhile, Brer Fox is waiting, raising up a gang of little foxes. We've been delighted at the occasional glimpse of the foxes -- such beautiful creatures. But a slaughter like this -- eight or nine chickens in one night
-- seems . . well . . . excessive.

UPDATED: The Jesus Billboard & a Theory on Chickens.

Every day, as a I drive down the highway to work, I pass a huge billboard that reads:



And at the bottom it asks you to text your answer to a *####.


The advertisement is for a church.
And I wonder...what kind of responses they get?

Some answers I thought of were:

a God.
A son.
A carpenter.
A really cool dude.

I'm tempted to text an answer that might not be kosher.
hehe


I'd love to have a giant billboard asking a big question like that,
just to see the answers.


Questions like:



What is the Meaning of Life?

or

Which came first, the Chicken or the Egg?

or

Why did the Chicken cross the Road?





I'm not obsessed with chickens, I promise.
Although, I used to have to close the chicken coop every night growing up on our ranch.



I remember my dad wringing a chicken's neck once,
and it ran around with it's head flopping for a few minutes,
which traumatized me for life.



My 12 yr old son informed me a chicken lived one whole year running around without it's head.

Huh.

Maybe if it was an ALIEN CHICKEN.

Come to think of it.
Maybe all chickens are aliens.

Oh! Maybe that's the answer I'll text to the giant billboard tomorrow.

Jesus was an alien chicken.


What would your answer be to the Jesus Billboard?
If you could put a question up, what would you choose?


I think I'm going to go take my meds now.


UPDATE: I tried not to have a wreck while reading the billboard backwards on my way home. I found the number and texted it my answer.

Then black helicopters showed up in the sky and followed me home...

When Growth Is Good

Those baby chicks that were hatched on June 22 and received on June 24 (above) are almost completely feathered and will soon be out of their brooder and into the chicken house. Most of the chicks, the ones with gray-green legs, are Ameracanas -- layers (god willing and if nothing gets them) of blue-green eggs. The four dark ones with yellow legs are Golden-Laced Wyandottes -- and I'm eager to see if they grow up to be as attractive as they're pictured.

And those tomato plants I put in back on May 7 . . .

. . . are performing magnificently! We have are lots of plum tomatoes for sauces and roasting and then there are these big Cherokee Purples. They won't win any beauty contests but their flavor -- deep and rich and sweet and just acid enough -- makes them the best tasting tomato we've grown.

A lot of you have probably read it already but I can't resist putting a link to my article on Tomato Porn

An Everyday Miracle

This is the next stop for the Christmas tree's cranberry-popcorn string. Like the pumpkin left over from Halloween and Thanksgiving and now reduced to a hollow shell, the deconstructed garland has gone down the hill to the chicken yard, there to be transmuted by fowl means into eggs for our table and rich black dirt for my garden.

It's a lazy woman's compost pile, that chicken yard -- when I clean up the garden, I take the old plants -- lettuce that's gone to seed, worm-eaten broccoli or collards -- to the chickens who gobble up every leaf and worm and bug. Almost all of our food scraps are put into the bucket that waits behind the wood cook stove and every day, when I make the trek down the hill to feed Gregory Peck and his eight ladies, the girls run clucking to meet me, anxious to see what I've brought. One old biddy pecks at my ankles to encourage me to dump the bucket NOW, while the others circle around, jockeying for position. Some of their favorite treats are rice or noodles or bread, the seeds from green peppers, and squishy tomatoes or strawberries. But what they really like is meat.

Chickens are omnivores: grain can be the staple of their diet; they appreciate green stuff and fruits and veggies; but a turkey carcass with lots of meat clinging to the bones can inspire an avian feeding frenzy.

Scientists have hypothesized a close link between dinosaurs and modern birds -- when I see the carnivorous gleams in my girls' bright orange eyes, I can believe it.