EGGS OF POSSIBILITY

WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN YOU WAKE UP TO DISASTER? Do you carefully set aside the last four eggs for hatching? Or do you decide to savor them one by one? Do you replay the night before in your head over and over, thinking how you could have changed one little thing, and that would have made the difference? Do you curse the world or yourself or another? Or do you vow to be more organized, stronger, smarter, kinder, from here on out? Do you mourn what you've lost? Or claim what remains to you?

IRIS PAST THEIR BLOOM.

 Yesterday morning I woke to a long streak of feathers blown across the yard, and a worrisome quietness. I opened the lid of the coop to a sad vista. Not the gruesome scene of a weasel attack, with headless bodies lying limp. No, this was, I think, the work of coyotes. The coop door hanging open, piles of down in the corners of nest boxes, on the floor. The smell of feathers hangs in the air. I walk around the yard, calling for survivors. Maybe some managed to run under the shelter of the cedar grove, where they hide when they see a hawk circling. Maybe someone made it to the machine shed. The yard remains quiet and I find brave Chaucer lying still in the bed of poppies. His lovely red comb and wattles are stark against the green, the heads of poppies keeping quiet watch. He has kept his feathers, but the back of his neck is bloodied, his feet stretched out behind him. I imagine the heavy spurs landed some blows before he was caught. He would have fought bravely to protect his flock.

IRIS BLOOM

 I look out into the cornfield, now softly striped with fuzzy rows of green, new life emerging. Another spray of feathers halfway to the grass waterway shows where the dogs had their picnic. I sigh and return to the house. Sadness sweeps over me, but I can't let it defeat me. I've been here before. I know that living in the country comes with joys, but the country can also extract a price. I can't really be angry with predators who are just expressing their nature. In fact, predators help us keep an equilibrium. Coyotes, possums, skunks, hawks, weasels all eat chickens, yes. But they also eat rats, mice, and even rabbits whose gentle persona belies their capacity for destruction if they are not kept in balance by predation.

In the kitchen I find four eggs from yesterday. Two are white, one tan, one a deep brown. I could set these in an incubator and in three weeks have some chicks. Or I could eat these, and buy some day old chicks already hatched. What to do? Either way, it will be a good, long time before I have fresh eggs in my kitchen to coddle again. Perhaps December. I look out into the yard to consider. I see the summer laid out in front of me, full of opportunity. The sweet rocket is at its peak; Daisies are just beginning to bloom. Peonies are tight round bulbs ready to burst into a full blossom. My new iris varieties are beginning to open. These are two-tone—one has lower petals of deep purple, upper petals a soft lavender—another is purple and brown. One opened with buttery yellow blossoms, another is just beginning to reveal petals of a deep, almost black, crepe.

 

PEONIES ARE TIGHT ROUND
BLOOMS READY TO BURST
IN FULL BLOSSOM.

Further out I see the brown and green corduroy fields of corn, lines going straight back to the fence row. Yes, my summer is all laid out, full of opportunity. These four eggs each contain a rich, yellow yolk. If I crack them open I will see a tiny circle with a small, bright dot in the center. If I crack the eggs open, they will be delicious. If I keep them warm and turn them three times a day for 21 days, I will have 4 chicks. Either way, these four eggs are full of possibility. What would you do?

Await Beauty; Balance Peace; Blessed Be.

TRIMMING AND CLIPPING IN BIRDLAND

MULTI-COLORED FEATHER TIPS, SWIRLING AROUND ME

IN BIRDLAND WE'VE BEEN SPOILED WITH THE MILD WEATHER. Yes, it's damp. Yesterday it rained the whole dang day. We went ahead and turned the furnace on, but it hasn't been cold enough yet, to warrant a fire in the wood stove. If we light a fire when it's above 30 degrees, we roast, and have to open windows to compensate. This is just as well, since we haven't yet replenished the wood pile for the winter. We have dipped a little into the frost zone, a couple of times, and the peonies, tomatoes, and most of the chrysanthemums are now brown and dried, waiting to be trimmed away to make room for next year's growth. The asparagus is a feathery bush of gold, and I need to cut that down too, and burn it, to keep the patch disease free. This year the wild asparagus that came up volunteer in the old pony pasture did much better than the tame asparagus by the grape arbor, so I want to make sure to tend to that patch, especially. 

CLOUDS AND JET TRAILS
PAINTED BY THE SUNSET

Earlier sundown means I drive home just before dusk, when the sky is still glowing but the earth is dark. I love the silhouettes of the farm-scape against the still bright sky, clouds and jet trails painted by the sunset. This is also chicken dark, and I have to hurry if I want to coop all the birds. About half the flock meekly follows the old rooster into the coop, clucking and scratching on the way. The others like to perch high in the apple tree, and look down over the aviary. They are getting picked off one by one. A few nights ago we lost another lovely Maran pullet. I counted one fewer in the morning, and found only her wing at the foot of the tree, spread like a beautiful fan with a deep brown pattern, a stump of bloody bone at the base. I used to hose the renegades out of the tree and shoo them into the safety of the coop, but now they perch higher up, out of my range, so yesterday before I let them out in the morning I clipped their wings, and not just figuratively. I grabbed my shears and went into the aviary, grabbing those who usually roost in the trees (mostly the bantams, which are lighter and can fly higher). Of course the old rooster didn't like me bothering his hens one bit, kicking me and stabbing at my legs with his sharp spur. I grabbed him and tossed him outside so I could attend to my chore.

He regained his dignity and began circling the aviary in concern, trying to get back in to rescue his fair ladies, as I grabbed them one at a time, and clipped their wings. You only need to clip the primary feathers on one wing; the resulting imbalance makes them incapable of effective flight (not that a chicken's flight is all that effective in the first place, but some of mine can clearly fly pretty well). They can still use their unbalanced wings to augment a jump of a few feet into the roosting tree in the aviary, but the tip top of the apple tree is now out of their range. A bird's wing is almost all feather. I wasn't worried about cutting flesh, but you do have to take care not to cut too low on the feather itself. First, check the underside of the wing to make sure the quill is white, not dark, almost black. A feather is living tissue and when it's growing, the quill is full of blood. The cutting, itself, is no problem if you can catch a chicken and stabilize the wing. I used my old hair cutting scissors. It was a windy day, and as I clipped a line of feathers from each bird, the wind swirled them around in the coop. It was like being inside a snow globe, multicolored feather tips swirling around me, then getting blown up against the chicken wire. It made a pretty picture against the brown, fall day. I finished my task and then opened the door to release them into the yard. The rooster checked them carefully and I watched them run toward their station under the lilac bush, to begin their job of scratching, picking, grooming, and carefully turning over mulch. 

I stood for a few minutes, enjoying the wind and the day and the now calm murmur of contented chickens scratching in the yard. Then I went inside to get ready for work.

Walk in Beauty, Work in Peace, Blessed Be.