Washed away

Rain, rain, and more rain. We’ve had nearly 8” of rain since the hay was cut. After yet another night sleep disrupted by thunder and lightning, I was glad to see that even though the hay field was flooded (and the hay ruined), the south garden was dry when I got up at 6:30. The radar showed that we were due for a break in the rain, so I ran out to do the broiler chores. At 7:30, the weather map looked like the front was splitting and would miss us.

But no. The front shifted north, and we were hit with another downpour. And another. And another. How much more rain could there be in the world? The water kept rising. The cut hay floated downstream and piled up in the southeast corner of our property. Terry worried that it would create a dam and hold the water on the field. By 8:40, water was standing in the south garden. By 10:37, the south garden was covered by a foot of water.  

Coop 2 at 8:40--the fifth oak is surrounded by water

The tops of the plants in the south garden are still visible at 8:40. Rows of hay are still visible in the back.

By 10:37, the posts at the end of the rows are almost covered. Only the pablo peppers (far left) are higher than the water. All the hay is piled up in the back.

And there was nothing we could do but watch and wonder how long plants can hold their breath. The south garden had ALL of the corn; ALL of the squash, pumpkins, and cucumbers; ALL of the peppers, and ALL 16 varieties of beans. What if they drowned? What if the water got up to Coop 2? On the plus side, if Coop 2 started floating, at least it would be easier to move.

To our immense relief, by lunchtime the water was receding, even though it was still raining. Coop 2 and the broilers’ run stayed out of the flood. As the afternoon went on, more and more of the land was exposed. If only we can have a few dry days…

The south garden at 1:50

And at 5:00 we can see the ground again.

Also at 5:00, the flood has receded far beyond the fifth oak and the broilers.

Hay!

Well, Jackie is just getting to be the cutest thing. I suspect she/he is a crested Polish chicken. Her/his head feathers are really starting to stick up.

Jackie on the roost

The broilers are still growing quickly, eating a lot, and pooping more that you can probably imagine (certainly more than you would want to.) We may be seeing the first sex differences. Some of the chickens have larger, redder combs than others. I think those might be the roosters. I caught a picture of two of the chickens having a fight. Our hens had chicken fights every morning when they were young, so I don’t think fighting is necessarily connected to maleness. Anyway, watching meat chickens fight is a bit like sumo wrestling.

Hanging out in Coop 2. The one in the back has a few black feather on its back . In violation of the don't-name-what-you-eat rule, I call this one "Spot."

Chicken fight--there are two chickens in the picture. The one with its back to the camera has its wings down.

A neighboring farmer cut the hay on Thursday. It was beautiful. While we were having a lovely beverage on the deck at the end of the day, he came to rake it. It hasn't stopped raining since. Alas. Turns out that cutting hay is even more effective for bringing precipitation than getting your car washed.

Raking hay

I took the row cover off the cabbages yesterday. Cabbages are so beautiful when they have been covered. They are all so perfect. They were too big for the row cover, though, so it had to go. The leaves were getting deformed. Within moments of the removal of the light fabric, a cabbage moth was checking out the cabbages for egg-laying sites. The worms will not be far behind. It’s more fun picking them off since we have chickens to feed them to.

My lovely, uninfested cabbages

Napa cabbage ready for harvest. 

We got cherries this year! We had just a handful of the White Gold cherries (like Rainier or Queen Anne), about three apiece. Hilda and I picked 13.5 ounces of Kristin sweet cherries, plus what we ate while we were picking. I had cherries with my lunch today. It is very exciting to be getting fruit from the orchard this year!

Our cherry harvest. Delicious!

Perfect weather!

I am thoroughly enjoying these glorious days of June. Cool at night while sleeping with the windows open; comfortably warm in the afternoon; rain on a regular schedule. Lovely. My very favorite time of year.

Jackie and the broilers are settling into their new space. I put the feeder 10 feet or so away from Coop 2 to force the chicks to get some exercise. I went down to see Jane Friday afternoon to do my shopping and have Girls’ Night Out with my old friends from the Girl Scout Office. When I returned, Hilda reported that the chicks didn’t like to be out in the sun. She watched them dash out to get food and dash into the coop. So she put the food in the coop. “They were starving!” she said. “They acted just like they do first thing in the morning.”

One look at those fat chicks should be enough to assure her that they are NOT starving, but she’s gone all soft. I’m personally very pleased that all of our chicks are still able to walk. That’s the danger, you may recall. If fed too much, they outgrow their legs. Watching them run is hilarious. They can hardly be called athletic. But the point is they do run and flap their wings besides. It develops flavor.

Saturday I set about building a shade for them. I got a piece of fence from the “boneyard,” as Terry calls his collection of odds and ends, a piece of landscape cloth, and two posts. I whip-stitched the cut ends of the landscape cloth to keep it from raveling and attached it to the fence with cable ties. Done. And the chicks liked it. They did hang out in the shady side of the feeder more than in the sun.

Hanging out in the shade

There’s no dust on the perch in the coop anymore. Someone has been up there. I haven’t seen who. I’ve got some pictures showing the odd physiology of the broilers—heavy breast meat; fat, red, featherless buttzles, and enormous feet. Jackie’s head feathers are standing straight up.

Fat, pink, naked buttzle

Look at those huge feet!

Jackie next to a buxom coop-mate

Our June cooking project was Ragu alla Bolognese from America’s Test Kitchen. The recipe called for six meats. We skipped the chicken livers. I defrosted ground beef and bought pancetta, mortadella, ground veal, and ground pork when I was shopping with Jane on Friday.

Other than the shopping, the recipe was pretty easy. After we cooked the meats and chopped vegetables, we put in the chicken and beef stock and red wine, and left it to cook for an hour and a half. 

Pancetta, mortadella, beef, veal, and pork

Plus chicken stock, beef stock, and red wine

I made pasta to serve with it. And it was good. I made a salad with lettuce and radishes from the garden. The harvest begins.

Ragu alla Bolognese with tagliatelle and fresh garden lettuce and radishes 

This morning for Fathers’ Day I made pecan caramel rolls. Need I say more?

Pecan caramel rolls for Dad

Moving day

I took some pictures last Friday, June 7 to show how the chicks are growing. They are getting feathers now. Jackie, with black-edged white feathers, will be beautiful. The broilers, not so much. They are getting quite homely. They are nearly naked under their wings and on their backside. The breast meat is disproportionately large (through selective breeding) and looks kind of like a tumor. Their rear ends (the buttzles, as Terry calls them) protrude nearly to the point of dragging on the ground. Also, they stink. Frankly, I’m looking forward to having them in the freezer.

Jackie with grown-up feathers coming in

Jackie's fuzzy head

A homely broiler

Hanging around the water cooler in the brooder box. Isn't Jackie's tail cute?

Gardening. First, you put the plants you want in. Then you take the plants you don’t want out. I got the potatoes weeded and put on as much straw as we had. Hilda finished the mulching after Terry got two more straw bales. It looks very nice now.

Straw mulch on the potatoes in front of the tomatoes in their cages

On June 7, the four robins under the deck barely fit in the nest. The next day they were gone.

Four robins (count the beaks) the day before fledging

I had big plans for my birthday yesterday. The last major task in the garden set up was the drip irrigation on the south garden. It’s a pain in the buttzle, but it saves tons of time and water later on. Even though it was something I loathed, I knew I would feel better if I just did it, and my birthday happened to be the day on which it fell. Terry and I put the drippers on the pumpkins and corn as soon as the dew dried.

And then it was time to move the mobile chicken coop down to its position by the orchard where we will pasture the broilers until that fateful day when they go to the butcher. According to the literature, most mobile coops, a.k.a. chicken tractors, are rather flimsy affairs that are easily carted from place to place as the chickens eat the available grass and have to be moved, as it were, to greener pastures. They have a screen on the bottom so the poop goes right into the grass and clean up is not an issue. I was not able to effectively communicate this to Terry, who was excessively worried about the coop blowing over. He grew up in North Dakota. He has a penchant for solid construction. He wants to use the coop for winter storage. Our chicken tractor is built on a solid platform and weighs, by Terry’s estimation, 350 pounds. Lord.

It has wheels on one side and towing eyelets on the other. His plan was to pull it around to the backyard with the John Deere tractor. We putzed around with various combinations of straps, chains, and giant carabiners for quite some time and got it from where he painted it to the edge of the driveway, where we were stymied. How could we get the coop up onto the cement without knocking off a corner? Terry walked around the John Deere, scratched his head, and mumbled, “What am I doing wrong?”

The coop is too heavy, I thought to myself, rather bitterly. But I didn’t say anything. It wasn’t like we could make it lighter now.  I finally suggested that we tie a rope to the eyelets and pull it across the driveway ourselves. We were having much more success with the John Deere when we were on the grass. The driveway was smooth and pulling the coop by hand wasn’t too bad. That done, we hooked the John Deere to the rope with a chain.

We were pretty okay to move in a straight line. The trouble with the whole process was the turns. When Terry drove the tractor to the right, I would have to push with all my might on the right side of the coop to get it to pivot on the right wheel and change direction. To go the other way, I had to run around the back of the coop to throw all my weight in front of the left side. It was exhausting.

And it was a hot and humid day. When the coop was finally in position, I went into the house with my clothes soaking wet to have lunch and two glasses of water. And the drip irrigation still wasn’t done.

After lunch, I weeded the corn and started on the bean drip lines. Normally, I would have set up the irrigation before putting up the row cover, but this year I had put up the row cover while I waited for more drip lines to be shipped. So I had to take off the row cover before putting down the lines, which was even more irritating. As long as the beans were uncovered, Hilda weeded the rows and thinned the beans, making those agonizing life and death decisions. Who shall live and who shall die? Which bean seems likely to grow up to be big and strong? Which will never amount to a hill of beans (ha!).

When we were done in the garden, Hilda and I set up the electric fence around the mobile coop. Terry declared that it would be called “Coop 2” and posted a number on the outside. We set a smaller fence inside the electric fence because Hilda fears that Jackie will be able to go right through the electric fence. We’ll test that hypothesis in a few days. If it comes to that, we’ll have to put up chicken wire. I can’t imagine what Murray McMurray was thinking when they included a bonus rare breed chick with a batch of broilers. The size difference is a real problem.

We were ready to move the chicks at 5:00. Like last year, we’d put the cat kennel up in the garage to act as the annex when the chicks outgrew their brooder box. Jackie escaped once, so I put cardboard around the bottom to be sure he/she stayed in. It helped with the wood chip containment also. We shooed the chicks into the cage, shut the door, and lifted it into the back of the Gator.  When we arrived at Coop 2, no one wanted to get out of the cage. I had to get on my knees, lean into the cage, grab the chicks one by one, and toss them into the coop. And they were not excited about this process. There was a lot of flapping and clawing. I was covered with poop dust and wood chips by the time it was over.

Leaving the garage in the back of the Gator

Where are we? Arriving at Coop 2

We put the food outside to encourage the chicks to explore their new space. Initially, they just huddled on the floor of the coop. Meanwhile, Terry and I went up to the deck to have a much deserved beer. From there we could watch the chicks’ progress. By 5:38 the first brave souls had ventured out. By 8:12, most of them had come out at least once. At sunset, they didn't want to go in. I once again had to grab and toss. They don’t seem to have as many instinctive behaviors as the laying hens.

Coop 2 (see number, upper left) with chicks, fence with small openings inside of  electric netting.

Getting settled in Coop 2. Jackie's tail is still cute!

5:38 The first brave chickens leave the coop

8:12 Lots of chicks outside

I was tired. My whole body hurt. I was, admittedly, pretty cranky last night. Next year I am going to do something fun on my birthday. 

Stromboli

Oh my goodness, those broilers are growing fast. They eat a lot, and the poops are increasing accordingly. We’ve had both heat lamps on due to cool weather, and the baking poop adds a certain je ne sais quoi to the atmosphere in the garage. We hope to have them out on the range in about a week. You can see their feathers are coming in.

Broiler with wing feathers

Jackie’s top knot is starting to stand up straighter and his/her flight feathers are coming is as well.

Jackie on June 1: Note how much smaller he/she is

Our cooking project for May was Stromboli. Hilda found a recipe on FoodNetwork, courtesy of Emeril Lagassi. Here’s a photo montage:

Hilda rolls out the yeast dough

Hilda puts salami on top of the sausage, peppers, onions, capers, and kalamata olives

I layer ham on top of the salami

Mozzarella and provolone

Rolling, rolling, rolling

Rolled up and ready for seam-sealing

Finished!

It was really good!

The shooting stars that I transplanted from the old house are doing very well, although I will have to move them at the end of the season because the penstemon plants that are next to them are doing even better.

Shooting stars in front of the penstemon

We have started wild geranium in the shade garden north of the garage. We ordered starts from a catalog. I couldn’t believe that they would get so big and start blooming so quickly.

Geraniums

I finally ordered a replacement temperature sensor for our remote weather stations. Terry put the bracket up two days ago. I went out this afternoon to put the sensor in place and was surprised to see heads poking out of the robin nest under the deck. The chicks were in an odd place for a picture. While I putzed around with my camera, Mama paced back and forth nearby giving alarm calls. 

Baby robins under the deck