Chicken Report

Last years meatbirds in their plastic kiddy pool.

The chickens need my attention. Now that we are fully submerged in fall and it is wet and getting wetter out, I can lose interest in the chickens. They stop laying and go to bed early. I am still feeding them, at pretty good expense; organic, non-gmo, soy free, whatever, food. And I am buying eggs from the grocery store. There are 6 hens at the moment. 3 are young and viable as layers, 3 are older and molting. I am thinking about butchering the non-laying members over the next little while and then in the spring get some new chicks to reinvigorate the flock. These old gals only lay for a few years and then you feed them and listen to them squawk for 4 more years all the while attracting raccoons, sucking back the feed and making it uncomfortable for the younger hens to relax and produce eggs. I like the idea of raising birds that are reasonable to eat after they are done laying and with that in mind keeping to a strict 2 yr rotation of laying and then butchering for food. Some old timer told me once they would kill the birds before winter so they didn't have to feed and care for them during the cold months, I can see why. I did sit with them awhile yesterday, thanksgiving and gave thanks to the silly 6 of them as they pecked around doing their little chicken dance. I cleaned their house, their water tubs and gave them a mountain of fresh straw in the outside cage since they would be contained there for the weekend.

One of the things I do like about keeping the chickens is the creation of the system I employ to take care of them. I want the whole operation to be efficient and easy to use and so I have tried to work toward that. My goal is to offer the chickens maximum comfort for a minimum effort on my part. So far it's worked out pretty well and now I want to work on making the output aspect of the operation more efficient. More eggs and a little meat now and then without too much work or worry. The trouble with raising the big bunch of meatbirds is that they need near constant attention, they are so programmed to eat they have to be fed twice a day and their cage has to be cleaned at least once a day. I cannot stress this enough. Meatbirds are disgusting shitting machines and unless you are keeping them in a pasture setting the pen must be cleaned and it is disgusting and interacting with the birds is grim as they are not a smart group. I prefer the idea of a few free-range chickens that lived like real chickens, laid a few eggs and then got stewed up one at time. This is how a farm wife would do it. I will devise a system for this operation next. The tools required to butcher a chicken are fairly straightforward, the only pieces I need are a propane burner and an over-sized scalding pot. I imagine you need an extra basin with warm water to aid in plucking. The nasty bits can be buried and turned into rich fertilizer in the garden. This seems doable to me.

I had a lovely conversation with one of my neighbors the day before Thanksgiving. He keeps horses and I found him out near the road with a bucket of apples and the 4 head of horses and 1 mule all standing around him eating from his hands as he passed each one an apple holding it tightly while they bit down into it, and then passing the remaining half to next waiting muzzle. We talked about the expense and care that goes into owning the horses, he pack rides with them several times a year around the state. He towed 25,000lbs of truck trailer and beast over the Washington Lookout Pass to ride for 2 days in Mazama with his daughter and some friends. He admitted is was expensive hard work but he said he got a lot out of it too, the pleasure of horses is incalculable. Watching him as we talked, the horses waiting in line around him based on rank, the mule licked salt near his feet. His red and white paint gelding was closest nuzzling his arm and neck, it was touching how he just let the horse gently explore him. No matter the size of the creature you look after it's a mutually beneficial experience. His horses, my chickens, the activity of care-taking gives us much more than rides and eggs. It keeps us moving in the world and conscious of life around us.

Falling in

September 5th. I feel a bit contracted but I also feel kind of stoked. I'm worried about money but I also feel like there is endless potential work if I just flip the switch. My mood is up but I feel nervous about that too because it changes so quickly but mostly I have been trending up into that good place where I feel both happy and calm, if I can battle the anxiety I will have achieved a trifecta of sorts. The days are shortening at both ends but it's most noticeable in the morning when I awake in the darkness. My mid morning walks have been refreshing and warm once I get out to the road where there is more sun. There are spider's webs everywhere and yesterday I picked an albino woolley bear off my car tire in an effort not to squash it. The edges of the road are dry and crunchy and when I go to feed the hens there are more leaves down, they are mostly green but getting yellower by the day. Have finally begun to sleep better after a long stint of not being able to achieve that deep state of unconsciousness. It wears me down so and weakens my mind, I feel frayed and bare after a while. As you can see by the start date of this post I have been a bit slack. On the other hand I have been working and the kid is back at school and the routine has been good despite the first day when I felt like I was falling into a big pit of sameness. A week or so has passed and my happy state seems to be taking hold. I can honestly say I am looking forward to fall.

Wasteful

There is no picture for this post. If there were you wouldn't like it. The distended anus of a chicken as it propels itself forward shitting one final shit as its heart stops and its nerves fire one last time and it lands way off in the corner of the pen causing me to grab at it with the pitch fork. All I can think is what a waste, 3 months of feeding and it can't be eaten. The butchering takes preparation and will happen in two days on another farm near here. If I were a farm wife, I'd know what to do in this situation. I might even have an over-sized pot boiling on the wood cook-stove up in the farmhouse, sharpened knives at the ready. 15 or 20 minutes and it would be ready to cook for my hungry family. If I were a farm wife I wouldn't  have on a Pashmina scarf under my chartreuse green coat, I wouldn't be worried about feathers and blood and guts. I might even have pigs that I could throw the entrails to like little treats or god forbid the entire chicken if it were suspect enough. I am not a farm wife, I am a designer and I have no time to pluck a chicken today because I need to finish a rush job, butchering a suddenly dead chicken was not on my docket for the day. Even still, I feel the futility as the limp body heavy with meat gets tossed into the woods, hopefully some other animal will discover it and eat it. Happy early Thanksgiving.

Are you experienced?

Meat birds at 5 Weeks

It's Sunday here where I sit, somewhere it's Monday and I will be thrust into that reality soon enough but until then I will enjoy Sunday. As I sit and write this in my espresso induced sweat my head is full and strangely empty all at once. I feel calm mostly but occasionally have a flash of things that need my attention and I try to add them to the list for the coming week, things I must do, food I must cook, emails I must respond to. For now though we are listening to Neil Young and my husband is sitting across from me the way he does at his house and we have our laptops spread out on the kitchen table and the kid is recuperating down the hall with a semi nasty cough watching endless movies on cable-TV.

I have done nothing to document the chicks development as I had wanted to and time is leaving this idea in its dust. I imagined pages of quaint gestural drawings, spontaneous captivating paintings and daily photos. I even considered building a small lit cove in which I could drop a chicken or two for a couple of real money shots but I have not done any of it. In its place is growing disappointment and harsh words directed inward to the file of things I just never got to. They are six weeks old now, we are on the home stretch, in the next 3 weeks we will organize the butchering day and even though I never thought I had the stomach for this type of activity (and maybe I don't) I am willing myself to fall headlong into the experience. Why not. Why shouldn't I attempt to butcher 27 meat birds at home with borrowed chicken butchering equipment? This has been the work of farm women for millennia why should I be squeamish and spared.

In casual conversation regarding the butchering of various commonly farmed animals the question of what to do with the plethora of nasty bits that we refined North Americans deem un-consumable, it occurred to me that I would be in possession of a treasure trove of chicken feet, a delicacy in the Chinese community. One of the strange features of the Cornish Cross breed are their huge feet and thick legs. In an effort not to waste them I inquired about eating them to my Chinese friend who's old mother is visiting soon. I half expected her to be completely grossed out but instead she waxed poetic about the wonderful experience of eating them as a child, their fried exterior concealing a delicious gelatinous interior. She went on to tell how she had gone with her mother to Chinatown to the chicken butcher where you could choose a live bird and have it butchered on the spot, carrying home the recently live bird in a shopping bag.

So my new fantasy is that this old woman from China via Los Angeles, who has been described as looking like Nelsen Mandela will join us on butchering day perhaps wielding her own cleaver and be our guide. Women working together to shouts in Cantonese and English, and cries of the chickens as their throats are slit while the pile of beautiful yellow legs grows to be taken home and enjoyed for Thanksgiving.

Light and rain.

Wrote 1200 words this morning. It's raining again but I actually feel okay about it. The dread I felt yesterday going into the barn to clean the chicks pen dissipated quickly, somehow the thick mat of shit and straw did not strike me as that disgusting. This morning they were all hungry so I just fed them and cleaned their water, I will change their bedding later on. I checked in on my laying hens 3 and found them still roosting in the dark coop. Lazy wenches. I went and got a light for them and set the timer, it will come on at 5am when I get up to write and stay on until noon. I watched them as they adjusted to the light coming to life almost instantly and went outside to scratch around. I even gave them a few cock-a-doodle-dos to bring home the point. The dog shot me a weird look. I guess the new darkness has it's effect on all of us. I went to sleep at around 7:30pm last night, a trend I really don't want to fall into but something happens to me after dinner when the darkness comes early. I fall into a low level temporary depression. I have things I want to do but it's nearly impossible to motivate myself and I can only see the merits of lying down. Mondays are trouble for me anyway, I am blue after the weekend with Mark and not quite in full swing for a week of mothering. It passes, today is better. The rain has subsided so it's time to get out for walk, honestly I really like this life and the pace I have set for myself.

Not much.

This is all I can safely say. Tuesday I begin writing the novel in earnest and I can't talk about the story to anyone. I have to hold it close to my breast like a sacred object. In the meantime I will try and write about other stuff like the freakish chickens I am raising and our rising sadness about Eddy who is now living in care and knows it isn't right. We're all dying but his case is more acute. To tide you over here is a picture of me with my new love interest.

9 weeks to meat

The chicks arrived last Thursday just as we left for Oregon in the pouring rain. My partner in crime collected them and got them all cozy in the stock tank I had set up for them in my little barn. It's helpful having another person invested in this rather dodgey project. Chicks are fragile and the whole process of raising them feels precarious to me. I once drowned 25 birds by accident early on in the process when they were small and unable to stay warm. My waterer lost suction in the night and filled the metal stock tank with water, just enough to soak each little downy bird and they struggled to pile themselves up on top of each other to reach the light but it was all for naught and in the morning when I discovered the mishap they were just a wet mass of dead chicks. I was horrified. I stood in the barn and screamed for help, no one came. My daughter was 3ish at the time, I had to keep her from seeing them, the pile of transparent limp bodies, their eyes shut but visible through thin skin. I carry this horror with me and each time I go to check on them I feel a slight panic rise up in me as I step across the threshold of the barn. So far they are okay. I don't need to be caring for 30 chicks at the moment but I am, and in a way maybe it's good for me. In an effort to outrun the winter doldrums I have packed my fall beyond recognition so that everyday is filled with multiple activities. At night I write my list and in the morning I follow it like an automaton forcing myself to think less and do more. Surprisingly it seems to be working. I feel okay, less gray than usual and more energetic despite giving up my new found love, coffee. It would be nice not to have to work so hard at feeling reasonable but this is who I am so I have to try new things as my brain chemistry changes. I changed my diet recently too at the suggestion of my naturopath. My blood pressure is still high and at the moment my head is pounding but that is just today. This too shall pass. There is something purposeful about being needed by 30 tiny birds that you will one day butcher and slather in BBQ sauce. For today they need food and clean shavings and to be warm and I can handle that.

Brief Explanation from Inside

What the hell was she thinking? The goal was simple. To take a writing course. Only this schmuck, who is incapable of thought deeper than water collecting inside a contact lens can't do it. First of all she didn't consider that writing a novel in 90 days means you need to have a shred of an idea for a story. Second of all she is not doing the homework. She thinks about the story a lot but it's in such a superficial way that I am pretty sure nothing will ever come of it. Poor thing doesn't care enough about anything to make it work.What it comes down to is she doesn't care about what makes people tick enough to pay attention long enough to gather any clues about dilemma, conflict, transformation. And now the blog is suffering too, I'd cry if I had eyes. All she is excited about these days is going for little trips in the vintage trailer and being outside puttering around clipping the bushes and checking on the little chicks and walking, always wanting to walk. Occasionally she thinks about the bills she has to pay and what kind of paint to buy to paint the chuck-box she built. And now winter is coming and it has begun to rain and soon she is going to want to sit by the fire and knit constantly. She's not a writer. I know. I live inside her head.

Happy Maniac

Moving right along. The kid is back at school and I am looking forward to the fall and feeling hopeful and inspired. By Rosh Hashanah I'll have a new crown on the lower left side of my mouth and I am not missing the symbolism here. I have not been able to bite down on much lately due to my fragile state and like a true manic person on a long awaited upswing I am going to take on way more than I probably should in response to all the down time I took over the summer. So here goes. I am going to embark on a 90 day novel writing course, seemed like a good idea and now I have committed myself mentally to it. Work is picking back up just in time, the bills are piling up and the one scary thing I have been forcing myself to face most days is my checking account balance. Additionally I have just ordered 30 meat birds in chick form. It will take 9 weeks to raise them and I have no idea who will butcher them, god I hope it's not me. My tenant is going in with me and she is a brave and hardy soul so maybe I can follow her lead. Saw a dead deer at the side of the road which reminds me to finish the story I am working on, it's about a deer but also the dead deer is a reminder that time is not endless. I have decided not to worry about my elderly parents going to Europe for two weeks. Instead I will focus on my job of looking after their ill behaved Cocker-Spaniel. I finished my self portrait. Still not entirely sure how I feel about it but will list it on my Etsy site just to see if anyone bites. I hope you are all well and biting down hard on things that you desire.

Thursday Song

Thursday already. I had a vague notion I might blog everyday this week, oh well, best laid plans and all that. I also thought I wouldn't drink any wine, you know as an experiment and I was successful on Monday so I celebrated on Tuesday. Things have been sort of wild around here so best not to make any sudden lifestyle changes, we need predictability in these unpredictable times. Pearl described this to me the other day in regard to her father who seems to have decided to return to the area, once again readjusting our little apple cart. In addition to that some animal was eating all our chickens. There are two things you should never try with me, one is upsetting my revenue stream, the other is upsetting my home food production. I like eggs and my flock has been reduced in one week from 9 hens to 3. Without going into the gory details I treed a raccoon on Tuesday and had him disposed of in short order along with the leftover debris of 9 cedar trees sent to the mill in the winter. If only I could clear up all my problems this way. The sun is shining but it is still uncomfortably cool for the date on the calendar and earlier this week when the whole sky was gray and low I couldn't help but think about Cormac McCarthy's The Road as I walked my own road imagining the nuclear winter and thinking grim thoughts about the future of the world. But today, the sun is shining and there are strawberries to pick and freeze to make smoothies in the winter for my precious child who is so articulate about everything. The slash fire is finished burning now and the yard looks better, the hens are safe, things are moving along as they tend to no matter what. My work docket is full and varied and I am humbled and grateful. I have eggs in the fridge.

An egg in the hand

Friday today and here's the chicken report. Since building the coop-cage before Christmas I have not lost anymore hens since Gloria the Brahma was so violently eviscerated. I still see traces of his wing feathers near the coop but can't bring myself to pick them up. The hens seem fine without him in fact they are better than fine, they seem a bit kinder to each other, a more cohesive group, no one vying for attention from the fabulous rooster. They are more of a team, even the two little bantam hens are doing well. I set the light timer to come on around 4am about 2 months ago and at 5pm when I lock the hens in I give them some corn to eat before bedtime, to keep them warm during the night which aids in egg production. Since then I have been getting about 4 eggs per day which was my goal. We eat eggs everyday and there are plenty for baking and I can also share some with my tenant when I am away and she tends to the hens.

Today also marks a bit of a milestone as it is the beginning of the last weekend that Mark and I will spend as swinging singles. After this weekend Pearl will be with us more of the time as her dad is leaving the state for work. With all change there is a period of adjustment but I see this as a positive thing as time is such a gift with a growing child. We'll have twice as much weekend play time to see friends and family, go to the movies, hike, shop and chill out.

I had hoped to give up something for lent and I was having trouble defining it but I think I can sum it by saying for lent (and perhaps forever) I want to set free my complicated feelings about the past and go forward without contempt or judgment for the lives of others. It's really quite freeing, happy Spring.

Early riser

Slipping out to my office under cover of darkness while the house is asleep. I have one little letterpress job I need to print this morning for Christmas. I can hear the rain on the skylight in the vestibule which means when it gets light finally I will be installing the coop door in the rain. Oh well that's what rain gear is for. I hope the chickens enjoy their new security. I want a coffee but the sound the steamer makes would ruin this beautiful heavy silence.

Coop News

I strive to be ruthlessly efficient in all things and so recently I decided I needed to figure out who's laying and who's not laying down in coop-world. Obviously the two roosters getting eaten was a loss because I could have eaten them myself and that Brahma was huge. Put that in the regret column. The Bantam Rooster was just little and I feel sad about him but I never really saw where he went, just like the Peacock he just didn't show up for work and was never seen again. Now I have about 8/9 full size hens and 2 bantams. I get about 2 eggs most days, Chicken Betty White is the most prolific layer despite her scrawny size and erratic behavior, and she lays a white egg. I discovered yesterday during my work in the coop that one of the Barred Rocks is producing the only brown egg I have been getting. So that saves those two hens from eventual slaughter. My plan is to create a lean mean first-rate laying machine down there, if you don't lay you're soup and that's it. Grain is for layers, full stop.

Back to earth

So beyond all of my deep talk of transformation etc... I have work to do. My chicken flock is getting knocked off one by one so I am doing something about it. Off I go out to the coop to build a little aviary attachment so that the chickens can be left in while I am away here and there over the winter without fear of being devoured by raccoons and hawks.

I saw Food Inc, finally, grudgingly and so I am once again thinking about raising a few pigs and some chickens for my meat eating needs. So there, concrete news from the country that you don't have to roll your eyes about. Enlightenment is great and all but bring on the bacon.

Happy Solstice you pagan vixens.

Coop Life

Chicken Betty White has me concerned. She went broody a month ago and was behaving like a real git, she's past it now but still isn't laying and two days ago she stayed out all night. The ladies are on an honor system to put themselves in at dusk before I come and lock up the coop. We have an interloping Bantam rooster in the pen currently and I think he is trying to coerce Betty to join his flock of one. Why shouldn't she? She is an outsider here, plain looking to the point of scraggly and because she is a slightly hysterical hen she has a hard time just chilling and hanging with the other hen ladies. She refuses the Brahma roosters advances, running away shrieking into the underbrush anytime he gets near her. The compact Bantam rooster is different in his approach, he hangs back and has a plastic sounding crow. He's fancy but not too intimidating and he finds his way into the pen every morning so when the hens tumble out of the coop he is the first thing they see. Betty may be smitten but I am not sure what future she can have with him. His owners will eventually trap him and return him to his miniature flock saving him from a sure death if he continues to live outdoors. Betty is a wreck. Hopefully she will start laying again and her life will sort itself out with the return to the daily routine and comfort of egg laying. Perhaps in time she will begin to own her spot in the flock and get more comfortable in her own chicken skin and with the meager contribution she makes to coop society.

I am calling her Betty

I love a diversion. In the middle of all the fantastic busyness in my life I was gifted a hen by a neighbor who is moving to town. On Tuesday, between designing the second pass of the Northwest Washington Fair centennial book, making an allegedly wholesome meal before attending Pearl's final band concert (another event I attended on my own—this is really the only downside of not actually living with who you are married to) I picked up the chicken. We got home from the concert around 8:15. I knew the hen would be all tucked into her coop and would be easy pickings. I rode my bike next door, burlap sack in hand. After a small amount of confusion I got the hen into the bag and rode back home. The amazing thing about chickens is they will put up a huge amount of fight, squawking and flapping until they are in a bag and then they are perfectly relaxed, like nothing stressful was happening to them. It's hard to tell if they are in a state of paralytic fear or if they have just surrendered and accepted their fate.

In the morning she seemed fairly relaxed. I opened the coop door and all the hens fell out as they normally do. I tossed them some scratch and then hung arounf to see what the new hen would do. As advertised by her previous owner, she dropped down off the roost and went straight to the nesting box where she settled in. I returned to my office and adjusted the kerning on 10 headlines when I went back to check on her and she was gone, no trace of her anywhere except for a bright white egg in amongst the usual browns. I felt bad. I took her on and now she was lost. I questioned the other hens, were you nice to her? did you include her in your daily peckings? No one said anything except for the peacock who rattled his feathers. No wonder she was gone, how scary is a peacock to the uninitiated.

Despite feeling like I had failed this small slightly rough looking hen I decided to name her Betty after Betty White as she is the only white hen in the flock. This is saying a lot, I have had 2 dozen chickens over the years and only named a few of them prior to Betty. At dusk I went down to lock in the hens and I opened the coop door just to check on everyone and there she was, roosting next to the rooster like she had been there her whole life. Smart girl, I think I am going to like this chicken.

The Flock Lessens

I have a lot to do in a day and sometimes I don't get to everything. Take Sunday for example. We had a lovely day of skiing and arrived home just before dark. We unloaded everyone and everything from the car and I went out to collect the dog from the nearby kennel where she spends ski days. When I got home it was dark and all I wanted to do was to get into the house and take a bath to soothe my aching body. I neglected going down and closing the hens into the coop and this is what I found when I went down yesterday to feed them. In case it's hard to make out, this is how a chicken looks with its breast and head eaten off it. Yes it's disturbing. I have 9 birds left at the moment, so instead of doing graphic design today I will be mending fences and fortifying the coop against intruders. The trouble comes when I am not here for days and there is no one to open and close the coop. I really need a renter but that is another topic for another day. To sweeten deal for today it's snowing out and yes I am whining.

Opening Day

Gloria the transgendered Brahma Rooster and a Wyandotte Hen

Banner day today. I cleaned the henhouse (got 3 eggs) and moved 3 loads of straw and waste into the garden where my blueberries are. Everything in the garden looks like it is about to decompose except for the Helleborus, they are putting up juicy buds, egged on by the cold. I clipped a bunch of the blackberry vines inside the chicken pen. I am not sure how the hens felt about the vines but they were seriously encroaching in a few areas making the paths impassable. While I was doing all of this, I let the hens and Gloria out. They were all terribly cheerful, breaking into small groups combing the yard for whatever hens comb the yard for. Some of them rushed after me everytime I went near the henhouse. They are funny to be around, you have to move in a particular way so as not to startle them. All in all I ended up spending about an hour outside which I think I will declare as my first official day of working in the garden.

An egg, finally.

Finally, my wretched lazy hens have produced an egg. It's been about a month and half since one was laid, everyone was molting so egg laying was temporarily on hold. I had no idea there was any connection between these two events. A friendly 13yr old in my community filled me in on this and another egg-raiser friend of mine confirmed it. Who knew? I suppose in a perfect egg filled world not all the hens molt at the same time but this year mine did. As my egg supply dwindled I felt increasingly panicked, close to destitute egg-wise. I love the hope eggs embody, one little egg makes a nice healthy meal. I was finally reduced to buying a dozen commercial eggs and they were lame to say the least, pale yellow yolks and runny whites. These eggs are no competition to mine except that there is a constant supply of them. Anywho, I hope to rebuild my egg surplus over the next few weeks, my guests at Christmas will expect to eat a few farm fresh eggs and I will be proud to serve them.

A Good Day

The work schedule is a little light these days which gets me a bit nervous. I soldier on. It was gloriously sunny today, the leaves are turning, the air is crisp and fine. I worked outside, stacking some firewood I had cut and put into the trailer. Somehow got to thinking about decay as I guess it's normal to do in fall. Seeing nothing but decomposing and freshly dead animals at the side of the road as I go on my daily pilgrimage to the stop sign and back. We have a lot of decay in our lives right now. A passing comment from my sister makes me realize all the parents are getting on in years and I start to feel the rising panic of my own eventual demise. So much for uplifting thoughts while work is slow and the sun is shining. I moved on to clean the hen-house and even managed to tidy up the barn. I found a spot in a big wooden cabinet I have to store the chicken feed in, so the mice and rats won't be tempted to burrow into the brown paper sacs during the cold winter. My neighbor Jerry brought me two bales of straw yesterday, I was almost completely out, collecting handfuls off the barn floor to put in the chicken house. I drug the two bales of straw to the barn and stacked them in the chicken tractor. I am storing the straw in an enclosure so that the nasty little hens, who leap from their pen and spend their days marauding around the barn won't scratch it into loose piles. Thoughts of death aside it was a nice day.