What a week. The weather here in central Ohio has been off the charts. It’s currently 56 degrees and raining. That’s downright nasty for this time of year. But in the grand scheme of things, we’re lucky.
Large scale farmers in the region have been struggling with too much rain, combined with unseasonably cool temperatures that have prevented evaporation, and have abandoned the idea of planting their fields this year. Too bad those folks are so big into corn and soy that they can’t imagine how to shift gears to something else. There’s still SO much time left in the season.
Here’s a few shots from the field I took earlier in the week.
Welcome to the jungle.
There’s a lot growing out back at this point. The spring crops are just about gone and the summer stuff is taking over, slowly. Will be interesting to see if there are long term implications of tonight’s 50 degree dip.
The hens are driving me nuts. They refuse to stay on their side of the fence. In good moments I imagine they are eating the squash bug larve. But most of the time, when they’re scratching indiscriminately (uprooting seedlings) and eating the kale, I just want them out!
Cora’s poppies are doing great! She and I harvested seed for these from a neighbor’s yard last year and she set them in soil in the basement over the winter one day (on her own!). We sold a bunch at our plant sale in April and I’m hearing good reports from friends who took them home. I’m a proud (human and plant) momma.
We’re thrilled to be hosting the Clintonville Farmers’ Market Kids Garden Club for a third season! (Seriously, about the exclamation point.)
A few kids came around in late April for a garden cleanup as part of Earth Day Columbus’s week of service. We got started with our regular weekly meetings the third week in May.
There are lots of new participants which is exciting. The veterans are moving up into mentorship roles – leading weeding and seeding jobs, reading to the younger kids, and setting a great example as they model appreciation and respect for the work we do together.
The first session we planted tomatoes and strawberries gifted to us by our friends at Mother’s Peace Urban Farm and Animal’s Garden collective. When they weren’t planting in their space, the kids went on a scavenger hunt for different flowers around the farm. Our last five-ten minutes are always reserved for visiting with the hens.
Our second session the older kids read Peter Brown’s Curious Garden to the younger kids. And everyone worked hard to get the herb, eggplant, pepper, and sunflower plants Swainway Urban Farm donated to us in the ground. We’re so thankful for all the support we get for this program from our local urban farming community.
The kids tasted a range of things we’re harvesting on the farm now. The snow peas were an obvious favorite. That so many of them ate the celery shocked and amazed me.
Our new flock of chickens are nearly five months old and finally have names. We (Read Cora who was 4 at the time) named most of our first flock the day we got them. When one died after just five weeks, a friend cautioned us not to name them so early again, it was bad luck or something like that. (Reminds me of the Jewish superstition against naming babies before they are born.)
At any rate, if we weren’t going to name them right away, at least we could talk about names. For me, it started with “Professor McGonagall.” When we got these chicks in September, I decided I wanted to name one after her. It’s just fun to say, and the thought of a chicken professor made the human professor in me laugh.
When a friend pointed out that McGonagall’s first name was Minerva, I got even more excited. Hens and vintage lady names go together like peanut butter and jelly. If you aren’t familiar with this habit, search the interwebs for “old lady chicken names” and read on.
The Professor was reluctant to have her photo taken, she kept coming after the camera and pecking at me, so this is the best I can offer of her at this time. She’s the Golden Laced Wyandotte pecking at the ground.
Hermione Granger, a Rhode Island Red, was more accommodating.
Ginny Weasley proudly posed for her glamor shot. Ginny is a Golden Buffington.
Luna Lovegood, a White Plymouth Rock is a favorite of Cora’s.
Madame Maxime is one of my favorite’s and the most gentle of the bunch. She is, appropriate to her namesake, a Black Jersey Giant.
Finally, Nymphadora (another amazingly fun name to say!) Tonks is a Dominque. Her comb is coming in the slowest. She’ll look a lot fancier once she’s got her crown.
Here’s looking to your six month birthday which we will celebrate by feasting on quiche, egg salad with fresh mayonnaise, and fried eggs on EVERYTHING!
This month has been really, really busy with life in general, off-farm work obligations, Jewish holidays, an art exhibition, and a special farmgirl’s eighth birthday. On top of all that, we got new chicks!
Here’s the backstory…
Animals all over our neighborhood relocated this summer as a result of extensive and ongoing road and sewer work. After spending the second half of the season watching seedlings get trampled to the ground, giant half eaten tomatoes left to rot, and corn eaten off the cob while it was still on the stalks 5 and 6 six above the ground, we bought a trail cam. The Spurgeon General caught a series of images that shed light on the nightly garden parties happening out back.
Three raccoons torment a rat in a trap.
In addition to the raccoons, skunks, and opossums that were eating our crops, we had rats. Rats?! They nibbled on tomatoes on the vine and they dug tunnels under our chicken coop and shed. The tunnels were so prolific they shifted the flow of water around the chicken run causing rain to seep in, creating the first foul smells we had related to chickens in the three years since we started keeping them. It was time to (temporarily) clear the coop so we could rid the rats by taking away any food source and shelter the hens were providing.
We spent a lot of last winter talking about the next step for our hens. They were approaching three years old (the average age heritage birds’ egg production seriously slows down – from November 2017-March 2018 we got ZERO eggs) and we always said we wouldn’t keep chickens that weren’t laying. But what then?
We had a few choices – kill them and bury them, butcher and eat them, send them someplace to retire, or give them to a friend to do… whatever she pleased. I personally had no interest in eating them. On the small scale we farm, the hens were our pets as much as our farm animals. They ran to the back door for treats when I opened it and followed me around when I called them.
I’ve learned a bit about chickens these past years. Meat chickens are slaughtered anywhere between 21 and 170 days old (that’s 3 to 14 weeks). This is surprising for folks who regularly who eat a lot of poultry. Noone wants to think they are eating such young creatures, but we are… Our hens were over 3 years old. You do the math. They were old by meat eating standards so even if I wanted to cook our girls, they would only be good for stock or stew and I don’t care nearly enough about either to do the work it would take to clean them for that. And, again, I couldn’t imagine consuming them myself.
In the end, we felt fortunate that Stratford Ecological Center agreed to take them. They would retire on a “real” farm with a bunch of new chicken friends. Maybe…
When flocks of chickens mix, the pecking order is disrupted and has to be renegotiated. The one time I tried to add girls to our mix so difficult to watch – like mean girls in a school cafeteria, but with blood – that I vowed never to do it again.
Also, Stratford has roosters and I couldn’t help thinking in putting our girls in with them was like putting 50 year old women in a brothel. As expected, they were spotted and stalked from the moment they were introduced to their new home.
Check out the beautiful white breasted cockerel – far side of the fence – scoping out our girls, near side, moments after they made their debut on the scene.
I was also reminded at drop off that they could be culled anytime, as early as this week. And still I left them there.
I have spoken with many friends and family about this scenario. Many of these folks are poultry eaters, few chicken keepers. I like to think they learned something through our conversations – about the chickens they eat and the hens that lay their eggs. Most thought I did the right thing taking them to the farm to retire. You gave them a chance to live a little longer, they contended. You didn’t kill them, they applauded. But at what cost? And at what quality of life?
I have long loved Stratford as a place children and families in Central Ohio can go to learn how food gets to their plates, and how a small group of people can preserve a piece of land in the midst of a real estate development boom. But the current space they have setup for their chickens pales in comparison to our backyard full of trees and flowerbeds to forage and take dust baths.
I’m grateful for the time I had with R2D2, Dot, and Golden Honey. I appreciate every egg they laid for us. And I’m sorry I didn’t have the strength to kill them quickly and peacefully, to be the cause of their “one bad day.”
[Warning: This, like my posts about rabbits and voles, includes discussion and images of dead animals. Vegans beware.]
Our first flock of hens are nearing the end of their productive egg laying years. As such, we’ve been having lots of conversations around the farm about what comes next, and seeking advice and options for how to make room for a new group of ladies. In the meantime, and after a long cold winter with many days when they didn’t want to leave their sheltered run, I’ve been letting our girls roam around the yard from dusk ’til dawn.
Leaving them out on their own while I’m not in the yard with them has always been risky. We’ve had our share of predatory visitors over the years – hawks, fox, feral cats… But those risks don’t seem worth worrying about much anymore. I figure if their time earth-side is limited one way or another, they should enjoy their days as much as possible.
Still, it was with a heavy heart that I found this old biddy Thursday afternoon. All signs point to death by opossum. The only thing I’m having trouble understanding is the time of day it happened. Right around 3:30 in the afternoon. And so, for the time being, the other ladies are on fairly strict lockdown.
As usual Thompson, our farm dog, found her first. He nudged her with his nose and I joined him to investigate. We have lost chickens before, but all to what seemed like heart attacks or some other internal failure. This was the first time I saw evidence of attack. The first time I saw bloody entrails and flesh resembling what you’d find at the butcher shop. I took a moment to examine the wound, to look at her insides now that they were on the outside. This brought me one step closer in understanding the creatures that have been sharing our yard. Somehow, in death, I felt closer to her and more responsible for her than ever before.
I picked her up without any hesitation and pet her one last time. Then, in keeping with Jewish tradition of burying the dead as soon as possible, I said my own silent blessings of thanks for the time we had with her as Dan, a neighbor, and I buried her.
Five years ago, I started seriously exploring the possibility of getting a backyard chieckn flock. I was also pregnant and told by my very wise husband that I couldn’t get chickens and a baby in the same year. (I’m sure someone reading this has proved it’s possible, but I think he was right where we were concerned.) Tonight, I’m typing to the mostly sweet sound of our two-week old ladies cheep-cheeping away in the basement.
We got 6 chicks – 2 Buckeyes, 2 Dominiques, and 2 Golden Wyandottes. We chose these breeds for their hardiness, productivity, and variety of feather patterns – I wanted a flock with some visual diversity…
It’s been an amazing two weeks watching them transform from sweet little puff-balls with feet and beaks to the gawky teenagers they are now.
Day one. Undeniably cute and fluffy.
Feathers coming in…
Thigh muscles developing…
And necks stretching.
It’s been a lot of fun watching them explore the great outdoors,
And make new friends.
Looking forward to reporting on their progress another two weeks from now. By then, they might just be living outside!
Over the Fence Urban Farm 