March 9: Neighors

Little red hen

clucking on my doorstep--

is she here to borrow eggs?

 

 

 

Posted with Blogsy

April 29: Why did the chicken cross the road?

Stopping for a hen in the road--

it's not just the old joke

that makes me smile.

Posted with Blogsy

December 14: Sunday in a small town

While we watch the game

neighbor knocks to ask

whose chickens in her yard.

Posted with Blogsy

September 18: Harvest

At a friend's farm: tomato vines laden with reddening globes, tight corn cobs sprouting tassles, peppers painted red and green by ripening, pumpkins swelling on the vines, here and there bodies of butternut squashes tan mounds upon the ground, young chickens pecking Japanese beetles in the sunlit yard, a woodpecker spiraling the trunk of the dying pine struck by lightning, and a broad-winged hawk silently passing over the chickadee on the branch...

Garden pregnant
with rounded bodies of squash.
Ripening: sun passing overhead.

June 16: Chick

My friend Janet recently incubated some fertile eggs from her own chickens. Two of the chicks--Barred Rock and Brahma crosses--are big enough now to have their own room out in the coop, but one just hatched a few days ago and still resides in a box in the house, under a heat lamp. Janet has become quite attached to this little chick and hopes that it's female so that it can eventually join her flock (which cannot sustain two roosters). Her affection for it is understandable--it's just a warm little ball of fluff with feathery feet (inherited from her Brahma father).

I was at Janet's house today working on a project in the room next to the one where the chick was being kept. Along with food and water, Janet had hung a bunch of dandelion greens in the box to pique the chick's interest in natural food (as opposed to its tiny tray of chick feed). As we worked away nearby, we could hear the chick's occasional quiet peeps.

At one point Janet checked on it and removed the wilting greens. She also put the cover over the chick's box. Shortly thereafter, we could hear the chick peeping loudly in apparent distress. Thinking that the chick didn't like the cover, she rushed in to remove it. But it continued to chirp anxiously. Then Janet thought to dig the wilted bunch of greens out of the trash and hang them back in the box. The chick immediately settled down. It had missed the dandelion greens! Apparently, it had imprinted on the greenery in its box, even if it didn't yet consider it food.

Chick in a box, gazing adoringly at its dandelion greens

All-natural chick--
box-coddled, yet already
comforted by greens.

A woman and her chick

April 17: What I saw on my run

Megunticook River running low, baring lots of rocks; my first yellow-bellied sapsucker of the spring pecking on a pine tree; small pink magnolia bush in full bloom; a lawn full of daffodils; flock of waxwings in an apple tree; several brush piles waiting to be burned; one other runner, moving much more easily than I; a very nicely renovated back porch; fat robins hopping on the green grass; hikers climbing on the exposed rocks on Mount Battie; black cat hanging out on a log above a stream in the woods; crow flying with something large and orange in its bill; a rhododendron just starting to bud; alder wetland full of singing peepers; flock of maybe a dozen free-range chickens scattered all over a front yard; a guy smashing something on his ATV really loudly; truck for sale: 1998 but only 62K miles, runs great; a bank of forsythia bushes in full neon-yellow bloom; and this, on the pocket-sized lawn of our neighbor's trailer, nestled between two bushy pine trees:

Four white plastic chairs,
hibachi in the middle,
two tiki torches.

Some people have the gift of being able to make a party anywhere.

February 6: Hark, the cardinal sings

I stopped by a friend's house this afternoon to drop something off. He happened to be pulling into his driveway just as I was, so we had a conversation right there in the afternoon sun. At one point he hushed me. "You can hear the chickens in the backyard, responding to our voices," he said. I stopped talking, and sure enough, the loud clucking of hens could be heard from the back of his house, where he has a very fancy chicken coop. They obviously just wanted to be included in the conversation.

But as I was listening, I also heard another bird. From a few houses away, the loud whistle of a male cardinal rang out like a car alarm. A sound of spring! Sure, it's supposed to get down to single digit temperatures this weekend, but today this crazy bird thinks spring is here. "Come and get me, ladies," he shouts.

The cardinal's not the only one a little ahead of himself, either. My parents reported seeing a couple of turkey vultures flying over I-95 this morning in southern Maine. Vultures, more than robins, are my favorite predictor of vernality (I think I just made up that word). If they make it this far up the coast soon, I'm going to start packing up my insulated Sorels.

Hens' conversation
and one insistent cardinal--
birds make themselves heard.

December 21: Chickens

There's something so wonderful about chickens, how they just do their own thing unencumbered by human anxieties and neuroses. They have their own set of issues, I know. But looking out and seeing chickens from a friend's flock peck away at the ground and chase each other around just like they always do, while icy rain falls and cars slide off the road all over and school release on this last day before Christmas vacation is actually delayed until the buses can safely drive kids home, is somehow a comfort. Some places, with some creatures, life just goes on regardless.

Chickens peck cold ground,
cluck softly, like usual,
no thoughts of weather.

December 12: Pretty Eggs

I received a dozen fresh eggs this morning from my friend Janet's laying hens. She's got a mixed flock, so the eggs are all different colors and shades: warm brown, porcelain white, pale blues. (Araucanas account for the blue ones, I'm told.) In the basket, they truly shine like the natural gems that they are. And the gold inside--well, you know you've got good eggs when you see those rich, gold yolks from free-range, happy, well-fed, organically raised chickens. This is truly prime bounty from a friend's farm, for which I am very grateful.

Happy, still-laying
hens translate sunshine to yolks,
which we admire, eat.

October 10: Hypnotizing a Chicken

My friend Janet called to see if I wanted to come over and help her hypnotize a chicken. Someone had mentioned it to her, so she'd looked it up online and thought it sounded relatively easy. How could I resist?

It was such a warm day the chickens were huddled under an overturned garden cart for shade. We lured them out by feeding them soybeans fresh from the vine and admired their plumage in the fall sunshine. Janet has several varieties of laying hen: Araucanas with exquisite black-tipped gold feathers, some other gold type with mottled plumage like an exotic partridge, black-and-white checkered Barred Rocks, and a beautiful Brahma rooster with iridescent hackles just getting his crowing voice. The "girls" are only 4-1/2 months old, so have just begun laying, their little red combs an indication that they've just reached maturity. A chicken flock is fascinating to observe: the rooster struts around keeping an eye on his harem, the hens seem to focus solely on any potential source of food, tilting their heads to look up at you as if to ask where their soybeans are. There's a definite pecking order, too, with some hens not getting a bean even if we dropped it right in front of them. 

Then there's the bevy of pretty Barred Rocks being grown for meat. These girls are a little older and bigger than the laying set. Janet decided to catch one of them for our hypnotism attempt, rather than disturb one of her layers and potentially miss out on a precious egg.  

Step One: Catch a hen.

 Step Two: Hold the hen firmly but gently on the ground, and with a stick repeatedly draw a line in the dirt with the chicken's bill as the starting point.

Step Three: Let go of the hen to see if it worked.

This is one relaxed hen.

Janet did all the work, while I documented the process in photographs. I don't think either of us anticipated that she'd actually succeed, but as you can see, we ended up with one very calm hen for about 30 seconds. She just sat there sprawled on the ground in a sort of trance, until she suddenly came to, jumped up, and ran off. Unfortunately I couldn't photograph the ensuing chaos, as I was too busy helping to catch her again. She soon rejoined her flock seemingly unaffected by the experiment, more concerned about snagging more soybeans. Perhaps her moment of focused meditation gave her some brief (h)enlightenment, but we'll never know.

Mindfully focused,
the hen falls into a trance.
Chicken mind, calm mind.

June 20: Dove

It's Father's Day, but my dad's away today and I haven't come across any inspiring paternal images to write about in his honor--except for the pileated woodpecker (a bird my dad always enjoys seeing), which has been insistently calling up and down the river today for some unknown masculine purpose. If he were home, my dad would probably be hearing it too, as my parents and I live about a mile apart on the same river.

The report called for rain this afternoon, so I spent this sunny morning working in my garden, trying to create a bit of order in the chaos of the flourishing beds. While I clipped and deadheaded and weeded, I could hear a neighbor's chicken clucking and cackling, apparently having just laid her morning egg. I love that we voted to allow people in town to have up to nine chickens--it just makes so much sense in this age of sustainability and trying to eat locally. And I love that several of my neighbors have chickens, even though we don't directly benefit. When I was growing up, my grandparents kept chickens, so I have fond memories of caring for Henrietta, Betty, Harcourt et al. and collecting their eggs. The clucks and cackles of chickens are soothing noises. I'm currently reading Sy Montgomery's new book Birdology, which begins with an excellent chapter on chicken culture. You'll never look at a chicken the same way again.

All my co-workers except one (who's building a coop next summer) have chickens now, but I have no desire to own any myself, so enjoying the clucking of the neighbors' birds a block away will have to do. But then I noticed a pert brown mourning dove pecking away in the gravel of our driveway. There's my chicken, I thought. Doves are like miniature chickens, soft and gentle, always hanging around the yard or on the driveway. This one even flew to the sidewalk behind me for a while as I was puttering in the garden just a few yards away. Granted, we aren't eating any dove's eggs for breakfast, but their presence, like that of a flock of smooth little chickens, is a small comfort.

Not tame, but the dove
on my lawn brings as much joy
as a flock of hens.