Grand opening

We had the grand opening of Chateau des Poulets on Sunday. Dad made signs and put a ribbon across the door to the coop. Pat and Nancy came out for the festivities.

The coop in readiness for the Grand Opening

Festive sign that Dad made

Dad, Mom, Me, Terry at the ribbon cutting ceremony. Too bad my SpongeBob socks don't
show up as well as my pasty white legs.

Back row (left to right): Pat, Nancy
Front row (left to right) Ellie, Sara

The chickens celebrated with watermelon rinds, a favorite treat. The humans celebrated with steaks and a bottle of Prosecco.

Hilda gives watermelon rinds to the girls

Sara pecks at the rind while Jennifer looks on.

I figured out how to use the timer on my new camera so we could all be in the shot!

The sky got dark during the grand opening, as it often does. We hoped for rain even if it would spoil the outdoor festivities. Dad, Hilda, and I each felt one drop, bringing the total precipitation for the day to three drops.  

What if it never rains again? It is hard to remember rain. I tromp in and out of the house without ever giving a thought to tracking in mud. The creek has dried up. Deer are eating the cucumbers. We assume it’s for the moisture because they have never bothered the cucumbers in past years. I can’t tell where the septic field is anymore because all of the grass is the same crispy light tan. Terry worked so hard to get the lawn started. Is the grass merely dormant or really most sincerely dead?

While Terry and I were gone last week, Mom and Dad figured out a way to haul water to my wildflowers in the wetland and near the creek by hooking my gardening wagon to the lawnmower. We are continuing to haul water this way even though I’m back. Because the creek is dry, and I can’t get water out of there anymore, and it is too far to walk with full watering cans. My dad likes the ride out. Hilda and I walk for the exercise.

Dad hauls water to the remote areas.

The girls are getting bigger all the time. They are slowly developing combs and wattles. Ingrid and Ina have pronounced black cheek feathers. We have wondered from early on if Bridget was truly an Aracana because she is pure white. She is getting the typically cheek feathers, so we’re sure. We now wonder if her eggs will be white or the typical pastel blue or green.

Ellie is getting her comb and wattle. She is also developing more pigment on her beak,
which is making it harder to tell her from Giada and Sara. Giada and Sara are
nearly indistinguishable even up close.

Ingrid with her black beard.

Bridget's white cheek feathers

Despite the deer damage, the cucumber harvest is gearing up. We had enough to take 13 pounds to the food pantry on Tuesday. The zucchini are starting too. I cooked bacon in the oven last night for BLTs (store bought tomatoes). As I looked at the baking pan full of bacon fat, I was inspired to try something new. After pouring off most of the fat, I threw in some baby zucchini and fresh garlic, stirred them around to coat, and popped the tray back in the oven at 400° for 30 minutes. It was really good. I had the leftovers for lunch today.

The peas are all done for the year. As I was cutting off the vines to make room for the cantaloupe, I found a moth that looks just like bird poop. We call this cryptic coloration in the business—protecting yourself from predators by looking like something one wouldn’t want to eat. I had hoped it would be sleepy enough for me to get a picture of it on my hand, but it flew off when I disturbed it. You can tell it’s a bug by looking for two hairy legs sticking out at the top. I think is is a pearly wood nymph moth. My guidebook says they are widely distributed, but I had never seen one before.

Pearly wood nymph moth

Fourth of July in Mandan, ND

We spent last week on our second trip of the summer. We left Saturday morning and went as far as Shoreview, MN, where our friends Diane and Tom live. We toured Diane’s raised beds and native flowers with their golden retriever, Chloe. We had shrimp on the barby for supper. The day had been hot, but the deck was on the east side of the house and was a pleasant setting for our meal. Diane and Tom live on a shallow lake populated with ducks and egrets. Thus, the bird watching was quite entertaining while we ate. We had ice cream and red raspberries that Terry and Tom had picked while Diane and I were cleaning the shrimp before dinner.

The next day, we all piled in the car (except for the dog) and went to the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum.

A wire and rock sculpture welcomed us in front of the visitor center. We had seen sculptures like this for the first time on our trip out west at one of the reservation gas stations in the middle of nowhere. Must be a new thing.

Sculpture of an ant on top of an anthill

For an arboretum, there were lots and lots of floral gardens. It was beautiful! We walked through the hostas, lilies and daylilies, annuals, perennials, roses, home demo gardens, and Japanese gardens.

Japanese garden



Lily garden

We retreated to the air conditioned visitor center for lunch at a high-end cafeteria. It was nice to cool off and get rehydrated.

After lunch we braved the heat again to do a longer walk called the Green Heron Trail. It wound around a boggy lake and was partly a board walk. I took quite a lot of pictures for my classes. Our most notable finding was the lesser purple fringed orchid, which we were surprised to see so late in the season. Diane said the trail has many different kinds of orchids in the spring.

Lesser purple fringed orchid

We took a driving tour of the rest of the arboretum in air conditioned comfort. I was spent by the hot weather and had a little nap on the way home.

Diane grilled again for supper, this time Cornish game hens split in half and marinated in wine, vinegar, and herbs. She made a salad of cherries, quinoa, goat cheese, and wild rice. It was an unusual and delicious combination of tastes and textures.

Monday morning we left for Bismarck, arriving about 2:30. On our way, Terry’s sister Kathy called (really, what did we do before cell phones?) to invite us to dinner that night. I was most grateful, since any home-cooked meal is better than going out when on the road.

Kathy served grilled pork tenderloin (Jim did the grilling), wild rice pilaf, carrots, and cucumbers in sour cream (a Schmidt family favorite).

The next morning, we met Kathy, Jim, Elaine, and Dewayne in downtown Mandan at Art in the Park. I didn't take my camera on these busy days because I didn't want to lug it around. We spent the morning looking at the vendors. Terry got a wind sock with apples on it for possible use when he had apples to sell. I didn’t buy anything. Because of our recent move, I was well aware of how little I needed any more stuff.

We spent the afternoon with Terry’s friends. The evening found us at the Moose Lodge catching up with more of Terry’s friends.

Wednesday, being the holiday, was busy. It was also cloudy and almost chilly! We had breakfast at the hotel, then headed to Mandan, parked at Elaine and Dewayne’s house, and walked to Main Street for the parade. The parade was a disappointment. There were only two or three floats that showed any effort at all. Most were just flatbeds with our without straw bales for people to sit on. There were troops and hummers and giant tractors and lots of politicians. There was also, as Terry put it, “more candy then Halloween.” Nearly everyone in the parade tossed candy to the kids. Elaine and Dewayne’s grandchildren filled bags of the stuff. Kathy and I talked them out of their Tootsie Rolls, which we love but none of the kids liked anyway.

We hung out at Elaine’s for the remainder of the afternoon. Dewayne cooked up his homemade bratwurst for supper. Iris made baked beans with jalapenos. Elaine made German potato salad (why don’t I ever make that?); Kathy furnished the cole slaw. Everything was excellent.

We went to the rodeo that evening. The Mandan Fourth of July Rodeo is one of the oldest in the nation, celebrating 133 years. It is a sport in decline, however. There were only six to ten contestants in each event. As a consequence, it clipped right along. We weren’t on any one thing long enough to get bored. They added two carriage races around the track to stretch things out. Still, everything was done at 10:30, and it was still too light out to start the fireworks. The fireworks started at 11:00 and went on for about 30 minutes. We had to wait quite awhile to get out of the rodeo grounds, getting back to the hotel at 12:45.

Thursday was our day to relax. I wanted some prairie pictures, so Terry took me to a couple of spots. I didn’t get the unbroken vista of grasslands that I most wanted, but we did see some native plants.

Prairie rose

We drove along the river in the afternoon, visiting the full-size replica of Lewis and Clark’s boat. It’s amazing to me that they went on an expedition with 33 people and that tiny boat. Of course, most of them walked, hauling the boat upstream behind them. The boat was more for carrying their supplies, gifts for Native American nations, and specimens of plants and animals than for transporting people.

Terry in the replica of the Lewis and Clark boat

 We had dinner with four of Terry’s sisters, and that was the end of the trip except for the long drive back on Friday. We started in heavy rain, which was a pleasant change from the hot dry weather. I tried to pull the clouds along behind the car but was not successful.

Still no rain

Hilda has been in the habit of letting the chickens out in the morning when she gets up. I have been in the habit of making a cup of tea and checking my email before I get dressed. Today, however, I was up early and, hearing no sounds from upstairs to indicate that Hilda was awake, I put on my gardening clothes and went up to open the coop.  It was so hot last night when we put the chickens to bed that I feared someone might expire by morning.  All ten of them charged out like kids on the last day of school. I realized I’ve been missing quite a show with my slothful habits. The girls run around flapping their wings as if relieved to finally have some space. They seem to re-establish the social order as well. One challenges another. They face off, rear their heads back with neck feathers ruffled, and fly smack into each other—the original game of chicken. It is not clear to me who the winner is, but it is obvious to the chickens. The one brief encounter settles something. One or both run off and soon resume pecking at the grass as if nothing happened. Ina, who has been a pistol from the get-go, fights the most. I wonder if she is the leader of the pack.

After a few minutes, everyone settles down. They scratch in the dust bath, graze, and hang out on the perches in the cage.

Hanging out in the cage

After doing the chicken chores and having my tea and breakfast, I went to the garden. I uncovered the summer squash, cantaloupe, and beans today. I am a big fan of row cover for pest management. If the bugs can’t see the crops, they can’t eat them. I can keep the cabbages and beets covered forever, but the beans, melons, and squash need to be pollinated. Once the flower buds start to develop, I take off the row cover. The plants look beautiful. It won’t last, but having a good start, they don’t normally get so many bugs that it interferes much with the harvest.

Zucchini (right) and cantaloupe (left)

Beans

About 9:30, the sky to the south got dark. Very dark. The clouds moved toward us, and we began to hope that it might storm. I saw lightening and heard distant thunder. The clouds took on a peculiar appearance. “Have you ever seen clouds like that?” Terry asked.

“Not often,” I said. “Maybe never.”

Bizarre clouds preceding NO rain

The sky didn’t turn that dark gray-green that happens right before a tornado, and I didn’t see any funnel clouds dipping down. At 11:00, I put all my tools away. The chickens had retreated to the coop, and I shut the door in case we did get a terrible wind. Terry was watering his trees. I persuaded him to come inside by quoting the lame tag line from the Weather Channel: “When thunder roars, move indoors.” 

For the next two hours, we watched radar map on the Weather Channel.  Light green, dark green, yellow, and even red moved west to east along the Illinois-Wisconsin border, headed straight for us. And then it went around. All around. There was one tiny hole in the storm front over northwest McHenry County. We got nothing. It is getting hard not to take it personally.

I expect the orioles will be leaving soon. Early in the week, I saw a juvenile beg a male to feed him, and the male gave an unmistakable “get your own jelly” lecture. It wasn’t a subtle, “Son, it’s time for you to make your own way in the world.” It was more like, “This is MY jelly. Go away!” The juveniles have responded by feeding themselves. When they are strong enough, they’ll all go to wherever they go.  Usually they disappear right after we take one spoonful of jelly out of a new jar, and then we’re stuck with the jar in the refrigerator until next May. The hummingbirds stay all summer, though.

Dust bath

Conventional wisdom suggests that chickens with access to a dust bath suffer less from ectoparasites. My expectation was that the chickens would tear the lawn to shreds quite readily and make their own dust baths. But after four days, the lawn looks essentially the same. Monday morning, Clarissa was hanging around by the gate. Hilda noticed that her motivation was not escape, but the dirt around the base of the post where we’d dug in the PVC pipes. So I got the shovel and shaved off a bit of sod. I made the dust bath about the size of one chicken because what? I thought they would take turns? Please. I should have known my girls better than that. It was just another excuse to have a fight.

At first they just pecked at it, either because they found something good to eat, or they wanted gravel for their gizzards, or they simply wanted to check it out, and their beaks are their best sensory organs. What if they didn’t know how to bathe in the dust? If this was something they needed to learn from their mom, they were out of luck. Even if I were willing to roll around in the dirt (which I wasn’t), it seemed unlikely that chickens would be able to learn anything from my demonstration. Luckily, Julia came to the rescue. Just as she took the lead in eating caterpillars (another thing I wasn’t willing to do myself), she pushed her way through the crowd, gave the dirt a couple of good scratches, flopped down, and started fluffing her feathers in the dust. Innate behavior wins the day again! Others followed, and it got quite competitive. And 15 minutes later, it was all over. The girls retreated to the coop to hang out in the shade.

Checking out the hole in the sod

 

Ellie, Ingrid, and Sara compete for the dust bath while
Clarissa wonders what I'm looking at.

Monday night, our friend Diane came to dinner. We hadn’t seen her in a long time, and what with eating and visiting, it got to be 8:30 before we knew it. The sun was going down. Hilda excused herself to put the chickens to bed. To our surprise and delight, they were already in the coop. Victory! They know where they belong at night. It was a cool evening. Eight of the chickens were jammed together on the east side of the roost. Two were in the west corner. We have decided to put the girls to bed a little later, when all we have to do is shut the door.

Eight chickens all in a row

Two outcasts on the other end of the perch

Today we harvested the garlic. At our previous house, we had an old hog shelter that had a roof but no walls. It was a great place to dry onions and garlic. After some discussion, we decided to hang the garlic under the deck. Hilda was concerned that it would get wet when it rained. I know that it is never going to rain again, so I am not worried. If it does rain ever again, I expect that the garlic will dry out quickly afterward. We tied the bundles of garlic to the netting Terry put up to keep the robin from flying at our living room window. We got a nice crop of garlic this year. But what are we going to do with 200+ bulbs of garlic?

Digging the garlic


Hilda hangs the garlic under the deck

Some of our better garlic bulbs

Tonight all 10 chickens were on the east side of the perch. Ellie was on the west end of the line and tried to walk over the others. I’m not sure where she thought she was going to fit in. There was not a millimeter of space between the roosting chickens. Whatever her intent, Ellie only accomplished a disturbance of the peace after which she landed on the floor. We filled the food, changed the water, and left them to sort it out.

Free at last!

We had a couple of nice, cool evenings when we could keep the windows open and sleep under the blanket. I’m happy to see an abundant population of fireflies out in the field. Even with the colder weather, I was amazed to wake up to fog on Thursday morning. I couldn’t believe there was that much moisture in the air. It was beautiful. Made me want to burst into a song from Oklahoma!


The fifth oak and apple trees in the morning fog.



The south garden on the same morning

The orioles have fledged. I see a father oriole feeding juveniles every day. On Friday, there were two juveniles competing for one dad’s attention, from which I inferred that that nest must have fledged two offspring. I haven’t seen a female feeding fledglings yet. Maybe her job is over when the babies start flying.

Father and fledgling at the feeder

Dad eating grape jelly

The hummingbirds are frequent visitors to the feeder. I got a rare picture of two hummingbirds feeding at the same time. It is more common to see one chase another one away or one waiting while another drinks.

Two hummingbirds at the feeder at once. This hardly ever happens.

More often than not, once chases the other away (cool action shot, no?)

Standing room only: one hummingbird drinks while another waits at the top of the crook.

Late Thursday the backordered electric netting finally arrived. Hilda and I put it up Friday morning. I spent a lot of time in the middle of the night this week worrying about how to fix it so we could get in and out and about how difficult it was likely to be to get the posts into the rock-hard ground. Neither worry proved to have foundation. We put eyelets on the side of the coop and tied the end posts to them with string that came in the package. Hilda had the idea of putting in two short pieces of PVP pipe into the ground so the end post would slide easily in and out.  And that was that. Each post went into the ground with two metal rods connected by a horizontal bar. Had the ground been soft, we could have pushed them in by foot, but the cross piece lent itself nicely to the hammer. We put the net off to the south side. When the chickens ruin the grass there, we will reposition it to the north side. We got the solar power unit out and read the directions. The black clamp was supposed to go to a ground rod at least 1.5’ long. Shoot. We didn’t have one. I consulted Terry, who produced a piece of copper pipe. I drove it as far as I could into the ground. When I started bending the end of the pipe, Terry took over, but he didn’t get it much farther in. Then I had to learn about the voltmeter. I thought the power wasn’t working, but it turned out that the light is dim and the current is pulsed. Once I figured that out, I verified that the wires were charged with 3000 volts just like they were supposed to be.

The electric netting (wires run through the plastic strands) and our shade shelters

The end post is held by PVC pipes in the ground and tied to eyelets
in the side of the coop (there's a second eyelet at the top).
The ground rod for the power supply is at the right of the fence post.

We set up two shade shelters for the chickens because it gets so hot in the sun. We also left the cage inside the fence so they would have the outside perches and a familiar place.

With the fencing up, we pulled the cage back from the door. And nothing happened. Nigella looked through the door, but wouldn’t move. Hilda finally went into the coop to shoo the girls out. Ina went first, followed by Jennifer and Clarissa.  And then they all ran back in. After running in and out a couple of times, they discovered clover on either side of where the cage had been. They ate for a little while, but something spooked them, and they retreated inside. They don’t seem to like the direct sun too much.

Nigella: I'm not going out there.

Ina: Fine. I'll go.

And back in again

Hey! There's fresh clover out here!

One of my fond childhood memories is of feeding watermelon rinds to my grandmother’s chickens. Hilda had cleaned some watermelon Friday afternoon, and we put the rinds out for the chickens. That caused some excitement! They came out to eat, but showed a preference for the rinds in the shade. Hilda moved the rinds so they were all in the shade of the plywood we put on top of the cage.

Hilda moves the watermelon rinds to the shade.

Ina has to be above the others, always.

They hung out pretty close to the coop for the first day. They were all in the coop at bedtime, so all we had to do was shut the door.

They all charged out in a hurry when I opened the door Saturday morning. They explored their new freedom by flapping and chasing each other in circles. I suppose they are establishing the social order in the new space. Saturday was cloudy (but no rain), and the girls spent a lot of their time outside. We all went out Saturday afternoon, and just to be safe, we put the girls in the coop with the cage at the door for ventilation. They were not excited about going in.

They came right out when we got home. By the time Hilda and Dad were eating supper on the deck, the chickens were all the way down to the end of the run. My parents had some good laughs as they watched the chickens. As my mother described it, “They’d come out a little way and then realize how far they had gotten from the coop and rush back in.” They were totally not ready for bed at 8:00. I tried to get them in by myself, but two ran out for every one that went in. Hilda and I had to work together to get them into the coop. I kept a hand in front of the coop door while Hilda herded the delinquents.

Hilda was up early this morning to let the chickens out. When she checked on them a little while later, one of the Dominques was outside the fence! Ellie was very distressed to be separated from the flock and ran back and forth outside the fence line. Worst of all was that when Hilda tried to pick her up to return her to the enclosure, she went right through the fence even though the electricity was on. Her feathers apparently protect her from the charge. It has only happened once so far, but it convinced us that we can’t leave them out when we’re gone. We are hoping that they will get big enough that they won’t be able to fit through the holes in the netting when full grown.

We replaced all the bedding in the coop this morning. We probably don’t need to do that every week, but I wanted to install the final (I hope) convenience in the coop: bedpans. Two black plastic trays under the perch will make it easy to get the poopiest wood chips out of the coop. So far, the chickens roost (judging from the accumulation of droppings) on the east side of the perch by the window. I assume that as they get larger, they will take up more of the space.

Installation of the bedpans under the perch

One more nature picture before I sign off. Hilda spotted a great spangled fritillary on the grass this morning. It didn’t seem very active. I picked it up and saw from its extended proboscis that it had been drinking. I put it on the butterfly weed, where it happily drank nectar even though butterfly weed is supposed to be a monarch host plant. I guess the fritillary didn’t read the book.

Great spangled fritillary on butterfly weed. The thin, black proboscis is visible if you look carefully.

Drought, cont.

How dry is it? It is so dry there are stripes above the septic field. Once again, a very promising looking front out in Iowa dissipated before it got to us. We had two drops of rain this morning. Not enough.

Dry, dry, dry. So dry there are stripes of dead grass above the septic field

Tuesday morning, I realized that the south garden was in the shade of two of the big oak trees until about 8:00 a.m. Consequently, I got up at 5:00 Wednesday morning and went directly to the gardening before even having a cup of tea. Desperate times require desperate measures. Hilda and I got the south garden all weeded before the sun came around to bake us. Good news: the wind wasn’t as strong. Bad news: the gnats and flies were terrible.

Hilda had things to do in town, but I kept at the weeds until 11:30. I had a tremendous sense of accomplishment. I weeded the peppers, potatoes, and herbs. Finally, I did the flower bed in front of the house. The Napa cabbage needed to be thinned, so I cut out several plants to have for lunch. I noticed insect damage on one of them as well as fresh frass (the correct ecological term for insect poop, and no, I am not making that up). I sorted through the leaves and found a large, brown caterpillar. Last year, I would have been repulsed. This year, I was excited. What a lovely chicken treat!

None of the girls were in the cage, although Nigella was sitting backwards in the door so the wind (which had picked up considerably since early morning) ruffled her feathers (blowing up her skirts, so to speak—just like Marilyn Monroe). Would the caterpillar crawl away before anyone saw it?  Should I try to get someone’s attention before putting it in the cage? My worries were unfounded. I flicked it in, and Julia was on it instantly. Ellie was right behind and stole it as soon as Julia dropped it. In a matter of seconds, everyone was in the cage. Julia gobbled it down in the corner while the others milled around wondering where the caterpillar had gone and/or what the excitement was all about.

I have had to reexamine the conventional wisdom that chickens are stupid. If I had a student who was as observant and exquisitely alert to changes in his/her surroundings as my chickens are, I would consider that student to be exceptionally bright.

The Araucana are getting their cheek feathers. I have to admit, while the idea of having the pastel blue and green eggs that Araucana lay always appealed to me, I didn’t like the look of the breed in the pictures I saw. Those cheek feathers were peculiar. But it’s different when they are your chickens. Nigella’s cheek feathers are the most developed at this point, and I have to say I think she’s beautiful.

Nigella looking resplendant with her cheek feathers. Isn't she adorable? She looks like Santa Claus.

Julia’s grey head is also striking. The feathers are light grey with a dark grey border. She looks very distinguished.

Julia's grey head

The Light Brahmas are getting black collars and tails.

Jennifer shows off her black collar and feathery feet

I just love the first part of summer when I can eat from the garden but am not yet overwhelmed by the harvest. Along with the Napa cabbage, I pulled a head of fresh garlic and two green onions. I stir fried Vidalia onion wedges with celery and the new garlic until cooked but still crunchy. I added soy sauce and the Napa cabbage and steamed briefly until the huge mound of cabbage was reduced to almost nothing. Amazing how that happens. I put my stir fry over rice and garnished with the green onion.

After lunch I showered and worked inside until 4:00, when I went out to pick peas for supper. The wind was hot and fierce. I worked as quickly as I could, but still I was dripping with sweat and covered with wind-blown grit by the time I got done. The dust in my eyes was particularly annoying. Having fresh peas, however, was totally worth it.

It was 100° in the coop, and the girls were panting. I gave them fresh water and went so far as to put some ice cubes in it. Nothing else I could do. Everyone made it through the night, and even though it didn’t rain, it is much cooler today. Praise be.