Bess's Big Adventure and Easter dinner

I suggested that we have Easter dinner on Saturday so I could 1) enjoy a glass of wine and 2) not feel rushed on Sunday when I had all my other beginning-of-the-week chores. I was up reasonably early Saturday morning. It was my morning for the chickens. I cleaned the Home of the Chicken and Coop 2 and made sure everyone had food and water. I changed out of my chicken clothes and was just getting ready to start a pie crust when I looked out the window and saw Bess strolling around outside the apple orchard.

“Bess is out!” I announced. I put my chicken pants back on. Terry grabbed his pants too, and we went out to get her back where she belonged. We tried in vain to catch her. Finally, I walked behind her all the way around the orchard. I opened the gate while Terry spread his arm and shooed her in. No idea how she escaped.

Bess, the happy wanderer

With the crust resting in the refrigerator, the next task was to move the Home of the Chicken down to the garden. Hilda helped me catch Nadia and Gracie and put them in the cat carrier. Terry took the coop and the run to the garden on the Gator in separate trips. We put the coop as far from the fence as we could while still having it on the grass. We were concerned that the other hens might hop over the fence from the coop roof.

Nothing is ever easy. The garden was lower than the grass that surrounds it. The run didn’t line up with the coop. There was a gap of several inches under it. Terry got some boards to prop up the corners and piled dirt around the sides.

Nadia scratches at the dirt piled under the run. Note the feeder bungee-corded to the screen. This will be important later.

I went up to the permanent run to scatter grass seeds where the Home of the Chicken had been. I got my camera and went back down to the garden. Let’s see, that was what? 20 minutes? And in that short time, the hens had scratched through the dirt Terry had piled under the screen. Loose soil is irresistible to a chicken.

All the dirt scratched out from under the screen

Back up to the tractor shed to tell Terry to get more boards. He got it all fixed up with some plywood.

Gap sealed with plywood

I got back to my pie. My inspiration was a quart of cherries I’d found in the freezer from last June. Jane was coming to dinner, and cherry pie is her favorite. Not that anyone objects….

Easter cherry pie

While the pie baked, I made deviled eggs (or dressed eggs, as my grandmother’s Bible belt relatives used to say because they didn’t like to speak the name of Satan). I also put a ham in the slow cooker.

Dressed eggs on the Easter Bunny platter

After lunch, I mowed for the first time of the season. I love to mow. I know it’s not sustainable and it uses fossil fuel and all that, but by golly, I love to do something that I can look at later and say, “I did that.” Not like teaching, as I say every year.

We had the dressed eggs for hors d’oeurvres. The ham was moist and deliciously salty and smoky. Hilda made Potatoes Savoyard (sliced potatoes braised in beef stock with onions and Swiss cheese) and sweet corn that we froze last summer. It was a lovely meal. Plus I get ham salad sandwiches for lunch this week!

Hilda finally agreed to let me put the chickens to bed when Coop 2 moved to the garden. She took care of the Home of the Chicken while it was “upstairs.” My first night putting everyone to bed seemed easy enough. I went down at dusk and shut both coop doors. I then went to bed and read for an hour. At 9:00, all hell started breaking loose with the weather, terrible lightning and thunder. I was just drifting off the sleep when I had a vision of the Polish girls’ food and water outside their coop in the run. Crapsticks. I was fully awake in an instant and took another instant to debate the plusses and minuses. There were no plusses to leaving it other than that I got to stay in my warm bed. The minuses were significant. If the food got wet it would be a right mess. The girls wouldn’t have any food or, more critically, water, all night. It wasn’t raining hard. Yet.

I put my pants and rain coat on, grabbed a flashlight and made a run for it. The rain was just starting to spit. I got the food and water in and as a bonus retrieved an egg. I sprinted back to the house as the rain began in earnest. It was a terrible storm. Hilda told me this morning that the rain was beating so hard against the windows in the middle of the night that she thought the glass would break. We got an inch and a quarter, by Terry’s measurement. I made the right decision to go out when I did.

Today was even more eventful. Watch for another post very soon!