In the last week, we have gone from getting 10 chicken eggs per day to 7 eggs per day. They have done pretty well this fall in terms of giving us some eggs, and I am thankful. It won’t be long before they are all resting for the most part. It’s always the worst between Thanksgiving and the Winter Solstice. Thankfully, they will be laying again within weeks of the Solstice. That light is like magic for the hens.
The ducks, however, are all getting older, and though we would normally get between 1 and 3 eggs per day from them in October, this year, we are lucky to get a single egg. They are all over five years old now, so this is to be expected. Still, I’m always sad when the ducks take a break for the winter because they take a long break. That’s probably what helps them live to be like 15 years old though, so I am thankful the ducks get to rest.
The night before last, Ron made his famous-to-us challah bread and potato soup with potatoes and onions from the garden. It’s one of my favorite meals of all time. This was our first soup and bread of the season, and it felt extra special. When Ron was making the challah bread, he held up a duck egg before he cracked it and said “the first challah and the last duck eggs of the season.”
Petty’s babies are, perhaps, the most beautiful mix we have ever had on our little farm. I think the only other batch we had that was so beautiful was Broody Hen’s babies, but she ended up having four boys out of her seven. I am still not sure, but we may have four girls, maybe five girls, maybe, if we are really lucky on this one beautiful bird, six girls. I have seen almost zero chest bumping amongst the babies, but it’s still very hard to tell.
But I am pretty sure that one of the little black chicks, who I thought might be a boy because of a little bit of comb showing early, is actually a girl. The comb just never took off, though this baby is part Easter Egger, a breed with very little comb, so this can make it tough to tell the sex of the bird if you are going by the comb. So we will see, but based on everything in total, including bone structure, I think this one is a girl. She’s the one on the far left in the picture. If you look closely, you can see her little puffy cheeks!
Look at Petty on the left! Her babies are nearly as big as she is now, but she just keeps mothering them. Petty is magnificent as a mother. You can see she’s starting to molt and lose her tail feathers. She’s done well, but she must be getting at least a little bit tired.
I am super excited this baby is a girl because she hatched from a Cora egg. Cora is Poe’s grand baby. This means this baby is Poe’s great grand baby. And she’s black! Cora is a white Easter Egger, and the daddy is Rooster, who is red and green. This means this little baby got her black feathers from Poe’s line, and that makes me so happy and melancholy at the same time.
My son said we should name her Poe Jr. Jr. Jr. We already have a Poe Jr. Jr, who I need to write about this coming week, so I said we needed something better. Since it’s almost Halloween and this baby is from Poe’s line, I thought she should be Lenore. How lovely is that?
In the years that I have been working with and learning from chickens, I have learned a lot about how powerful a will to live really is. I have had a few chickens clearly let me know they were ready to die after struggling with health problems, but mostly, I have observed that chickens really want to live–just like most of us.
Today, I gave Vanilla a spa day. I have been working too much this week, and I haven’t kept a super close eye on the flock. Vanilla is molting and was looking a little rough. I did do a mite check on the flock this week, but I didn’t check everyone–just my usual suspects (all of my older chickens with weaker little bodies) and then a random sampling from the young, healthy girls. I don’t always have time to check everyone, but I have to do pretty regular mite checks on the chickens because ours are not protected from wildlife.
They are fenced, but birds, squirrels, and chipmunks have interactions with our chickens. I have seen chipmunks playing with the baby chicks. It was fantastic, and it happens quite a bit. This is not good biosecurity. If bird flu came to our area, we would have to figure out a way to cover our run and keep the chickens in the run. They would be devastated. They live very good lives, and part of that goodness is getting to watch a chipmunk. Truly, some of them will show interest in the chipmunks, and I don’t think to eat, though I could be wrong. But I have definitely seen the chickens hanging out with the crows in the fall when they are all eating from underneath the leaves. It’s a joyous time to be a bird of any kind during that season.
This is Vanilla. You can see how smart she looks, right? She has a very intelligent look about her. She’s one of my more curious birds.
This leads me back to Vanilla because, much like Mary Jane, Vanilla has an amazing will to live. Vanilla is a meat bird. She was pardoned in 2018, along with Millie, because Millie-Vanilla, because girl you know it’s true.
I loved having both Millie and Vanilla. They were the best birds. Very sweet, very smart. But they grew apart as friends. Vanilla made friends with Mary Jane, as well as Emily and Charlotte, our Buff Orpingtons. Millie never made friends. Neither one of them had genetics on their side, but I noticed Millie deteriorated when she quit hanging out with Vanilla and was alone more. It could be a coincidence, but she died at two years of age. Of course, it’s also important to note that’s about right for a meat chicken, specially a Freedom Ranger chicken. Vanilla, however, thrived.
Over the years, Vanilla has been a great layer and a great member of the flock. She is now five years old and is one of the top chickens, though she’s very chill. She’s curious about me, will run for treats, but in her older age, she has developed struggles with her hips and with vent gleet (maybe). I keep trying to treat it, so I am not sure. But I just give her a bath fairly regularly (she will also stand in the rain to give herself a bath on her own), and she lives a happy life.
Today, however, I am worried. I just can’t imagine that she will make it more than a few months more. Still, today, after her spa day, which consisted of a warm bath, a good dry, lots of hugs because she’s so chill and lets me, and lots of the best treats, she perked up. I can see that really good care can extend the life of a chicken, and I can see why house chickens can sometimes live so long. Life is harder with the flock, even though we try to keep a chill flock. Anyway, she did perk up, so we will see. I do think we’re getting close though.
Of course, I remember writing these very words about Mary Jane last fall. Now, there’s a will to live. Mary Jane is six and a half years old now.
Working with our chickens has taught me an important lesson that I try to apply to my life. I can see that feeling a sense of purpose, even if it’s just knowing how to enjoy the day and watch the chipmunks, can help with longevity. As I have been struggling of late feeling without purpose and a little disillusioned about the world, this lesson has helped me. I am just having to learn to be patient as I figure out my purpose. I think I want to work with animals more.
I am putting it down in writing that I am never getting another duck. Our ducks will be 6 years old in the spring. They can live to be 13 to 15 years old with good genetics and good living conditions. I love those little ducks, but I will not get more ducks after these ducks pass away. They can be so mean.
Poor Anna Maria is getting picked on again. It’s happening in the duck house at night, so I have been making sure I get up very early and run down stairs to let the ducks out every morning. This morning, however, Anna Maria still had a little spot on her head. Thankfully, it’s nowhere near the damage a male duck can do, but still. In the absence of a male to lead the flock, the largest female has stepped up and is pretty fierce.
Just yesterday, I heard a loud commotion with the ducks. I looked out the window to see two ducks ganged up on another duck, just driving her head into the ground with those bills (thankfully, it was not Anna Maria getting picked on this time). I ran outside to stop the nonsense, but the largest duck went right back to it when I walked away. I chased her down and scooped her up and just made her walk around with me for a bit. She submitted quickly. She’s not a mean duck really, but my goodness, ducks can be pretty mean to each other. I know some people will think I am silly for writing this. It’s just ducks being ducks, after all, but I am opposed to any behavior that causes injury to another–in all aspects of my life–even ducks, it seems. So I’ll just keep trying to be vigilant, but no more ducks after this batch.
I have heard chickens can be like this too, but outside of a crazy rooster we had a long time ago, I’ve never seen such terrible behavior. We have a pretty nice flock.
And, speaking of our nice flock, we have too many boys right now. I mentioned before that I lucked into the best home ever for one of Ruby’s babies, and I meant to look for a home for her other little boy. But every single day that little boy gets more and more beautiful. It’s hard to capture his beautiful colors in a picture, but he just shimmers green and black in the sun. He looks just like his mama, Hector, who is a Black Copper Maran, and Black Copper Maran roosters are gorgeous. Ron said, “let’s just keep him” because Rooster is pretty old. I thought we would surely lose Rooster last winter though, and he’s still getting around, even making babies this summer. So I don’t know what to do yet, but I know that our flock makes some beautiful babies. This little boy is magnificent.
One night, Ruby even slept with Petty and her babies in the crate. Petty is so chill and sweet that she was just like, okay.
Our son spends a lot of time outside. He thinks better when he walks, so he walks a lot. He’s always out there where Petty and her babies hang out. He is not a chicken person like I am, but I have recently found out that he has been observing Petty and her crew. This makes me happy.
He said that Ruby hangs out with them quite a bit. I have seen this a lot myself, but I guess it’s happening even more than I thought. He said the babies watch Ruby all of the time, and I have seen that she never pecks them on the head when they come around, as other chickens likely would. I was telling him about how these baby chicks are such a sassy crew, and he said it’s because Ruby is such a strong influence on them.
I can see this. Ruby is a strong personality. I wish everyone could come meet her and see what I see, but she’s shy. Even when our neighbor comes over, she hides. The other chickens love our neighbor and run to her just like they run to me, but Ruby runs and hides. Ruby is an absolute character of a chicken, and I wish a scientist would come study her.
Anyway, she’s difficult though, and I am kind of bummed she seems to be having such an influence on the this new crew of babies. Hopefully, their genetics will win the day; only, of course, we do have one Ruby baby. It’s a girl, I am pretty sure.
And I am not even kidding. This morning, that tiny little girl charged my feet for a snack! Just like Ruby.
I read a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson that said, “There are only ten minutes in the life of a pear when it is perfect to eat.”
This is pretty much the truth. I love pears so much, but they are not nearly so sturdy as the apple. Still, there is something so beautiful about them to me. When we first planted fruit trees on our property, I have no idea why we chose pear trees over apple trees, but I am glad we chose pears. Even though I love apples more, apples are readily available from small farms in our area. I don’t know anyone else who has pears.
We have just two trees, but our asian pear tree generally does well and just went above and beyond this year with all of the rain. With Emerson’s quote in mind, I set out this year to can and freeze our pears to make sure we could enjoy them for longer than ten minutes.
This year, thanks to a very generous tree, I was able to freeze three gallons of pears and can 15 jars. That’s amazing for just two trees. If you are in Maine and want to preserve some pears before the season is over, this is the recipe I used for canning asian pears. It works very well. Our whole family approved of the light syrup recipe, though Ron thought even the light syrup was a little too heavy. Because asian pears are crunchier than other pears, if you are not working with asian pears, you might want to consider this recipe.
And if you are in Maine reading this and know of a farm that sells pears in the fall, please leave a comment. I don’t know if we will be so lucky with an abundance of pears next year, but I can never again be without pears in the fall. I am now officially spoiled by plentiful pears.
I am slowing learning which of our baby chicks are boys and which are girls. I used to be so much better at determining sex of the baby chicks, but now that we have Lavender Orpington in the mix, all of the rules I used to know have gone out the window. I still think I can tell fairly well by behavior though. And based on behavior, I think we have a lot of girls in this batch babies. Time will tell if I’m right.
But I do know a few for sure. One is Ruby’s baby. It’s definitely a girl. And then there’s this one, Silver’s baby. She looks just like her dad; in fact, she’s pretty much identical to Piatigorsky. She’s so beautiful to me, and I have decided to name her Clara because I recently read a biography of Clara Schumann, and I thought her name was so lovely.
So, world, meet Clara! I’m still thinking deeply on names for everyone else. It’s going to take me awhile, I think.
So Petty and her babies have become a little bit internet famous. I have been sharing a couple of short videos each week using Facebook’s reels. I have noticed that my Facebook has been full of notifications all week, but I didn’t have time to look into them. It turns out that one of the videos I posted of Petty showing off her babies to the flock has had over 350,000 views. The short little video, just a random video of Petty scratching around with her babies, is getting comments from all over the world–and that’s the best part.
The comments are lovely. Some of them are in languages I don’t know, but some in English said things like “I could watch these babies all day” and “I am mesmerized by the little white one.” People love these babies. They are a particularly beautiful hatch, but it’s fascinating to me that this video and a few others have been so interesting to people.
I told Ron about this and about how happy I am that Petty and her babies are making people smile all over the world. That makes my heart so happy. Ron was happy about this too.
“It’s funny how we just take it for granted,” he said. “We have this magnificent mama hen and these beautiful babies right there every time we go outside.”
It’s true. I try to make time to take in their beauty at least a couple of times a week, but I take then for granted too. I take Petty for granted. She is the best mama I have ever seen–and we have had some good ones. She trusts us and seems to know where are there to help. She know how to tell us what she wants or needs, and that helps so much. Petty is the daughter of Mary Jane and Rooster, so, of course, she’s the smartest mama hen ever.
Because I wanted you to be able to see this video, even if you are not on Facebook, I found it and uploaded it to YouTube. It’s only about a minute, but it’s pretty fantastic. I hope it makes your heart happy.
The baby chicks are doing well and are the sassiest group of babies I have ever seen. They worry Petty so much, and I feel so badly for her. Today, the little yellow chick who is getting cream and brown feathers, snuck into the chicken coop and was just sitting there on the bottom roost all by herself while her poor mama fretted outside worry because she couldn’t get in.
“Quit worrying your mama,” I said, as I chased her out of the coop.
Of course, we all know that she is going to continue to worry her mama because that seems to be what children do. There’s really no avoiding it, is there?
Rooster is molting and very run down. Two days ago, I thought he had died. Today, Ron thought he had died. Thankfully, he is not dead, but oh my gosh, I know we are on borrowed time. I like Dvorak as a rooster. He does a pretty good job, but there will never be another Rooster. I hope he can recover after he finished molting. I gave him extra treats today. He looks fine. I suppose he’s just tired. He’s worked very hard and worried an awful lot for a long time.
There is a old sign I got at a thrift store many years ago when he was young. I put it on the coop door because it read, “Rooster’s Coop.” It’s all faded and really should be removed, but I can’t do it. I’m worried it might jinx me. I have to keep it Rooster’s Coop for a while longer.
On the bright side of molting, Poe Jr. Jr. is molting! This is great news because she is three years old and has NEVER molted. I have no idea why, but she finally molted in a big way. I keep telling her how beautiful she is because she looks terrible right now, but to get fresh feathers is going to make a huge difference in her life. I was worried I was going to have crochet a sweater for her to survive the winter.
Finally, today, I got the best picture of Ruby! Isn’t she just gorgeous? Her little baby chick Petty is raising is a beautiful bird. I am trying to get a picture of her, but she’s the most shy. Anyway, this is Ruby in all of her glory in the beautiful sunlight on a beautiful September day. I’m going to treasure this picture of this little hen with a giant personality for a very long time.
I wrote earlier this year about planing my first Three Sisters garden this year. I have been reading about the Three Sisters method for years, but I first learned about it when my daughter was in high school. She learned about the native peoples here in Maine and taught me then about the Three Sisters method, and I was intrigued. In my reading I learned that many Native American cultures practiced this method of farming, even Cherokee, which meant a lot to me because my great grandmother on my dad’s side was Cherokee, and so much of what I do from keeping chickens to making jam is inspired by her.
The idea behind the Three Sisters method is that you plant corn, beans, and squash together, as they will help each other out, creating a symbiotic relationship allowing for more food growth. The corn grows tall and straight and gives the beans something to grow on. The corn, of course, also has shallow roots, which means it will not compete the with squash. The beans use the corn stalks to wrap and grow upward toward the sun. Beans fix nitrogen from the air and put it into the soil. Corn needs a lot of nitrogen. The squash grows wide on the ground and provides ground cover. It blocks out the sun on the ground to help prevent weeds. I also found that the shade means the soil retains water better.
There was a part of me that thought this whole system was just too good to be true. I talked to my husband, Ron, about it for years, and he seemed skeptical. He has he ways of doing things and isn’t always open to change, but the more I read, the more I was convinced this was a method to try.
This year, I told Ron I was just going to try myself. I asked if he could leave some space in the garden for me to have my own space. He agreed and gave me a great space. I was late to plant because of the epic rain in June, but I decided to go ahead and plant because the corn would at least make it before the first frost, and I could hope for a late frost.
I read to plant the corn first, about a week ahead of the other two. I had a hybrid corn seed Ron had leftover, an heirloom pole bean seed, and a beautiful long pie pumpkin seed–all fromFedco Seeds here in Maine. I couldn’t find much information about how close to plant things, so I just guessed. I had some anxiety about this because I am such a novice in the garden, but after a week, I thinned the corn and then just planted a bean seed on one side and a pumpkin seed on the other. When I finished planting, I just so happened to run into my neighbor and her grandson working in their garden. I told them I was trying a Three Sisters garden.
My neighbor’s grandson is involved in water rights here in Maine and has worked a lot with Maine tribes, so he knew about the Three Sisters. I told them I hoped it would work. “It’s been working for thousands of years,” he said. I doubt myself so much that I wasn’t convinced but was thankful to finally get to try.
My measure of success was going to be getting corn to grow. And grow it did! The corn grew and thrived. The beans grew and thrived as they reached up and wrapped around the corn. The pumpkins flourished at the bottom of the jungle of corn stalks and bean leaves.
And the best part was that did nothing but watch and admire. At first, Ron told me I was surely going to have to fertilize the corn, but I told him I read that you don’t need to. It was a rainy season, but there were a few dry spells when Ron had to water his corn in the main garden. I never had to water my corn after the initial planting. I did not fertilize further, and the corn and beans and pumpkin plants flourished. I also only pulled weeds twice early on. Once the pumpkins were going, weeds just couldn’t grow very much. My garden literally took care of itself.
Ron, who had been so skeptical, was convinced. He kept saying, “look at how green everything is.” He kept asking me if I had added any fertilizer beyond the little bit of organic coop poop I had used when I planted the corn. I never did. I didn’t even add fertilizer when I planted the beans and pumpkins. I was in a big hurry and just put in the seeds and hoped for the best. Ron was impressed, and I am telling you it takes a lot to impress this man. He even went and got our neighbor, a certified master gardener, to show her and explain the process.
Sadly, the hurricane that visited Maine this weekend destroyed my Three Sisters garden, but most of the corn was ripe enough to eat, and some beans were ready. I am planning to try to raise the corn stalks back up or pull them, just to give the pumpkins a chance since it looks like we might have a late frost this year. The corn has been delicious, and I have to tell you I felt so proud of myself that my first time in my life to try growing corn led to such a success. And the whole garden just took care of itself. Even though the hurricane was a disappointment, the learning from this experience is a game changer for us.
As my husband and I get older, we are finding it more challenging to keep up the pace of summers growing food. I have been trying to convince Ron to maybe reduce the garden size, so we can see him more in the summer months. I think he’s listened, but most importantly, he plans to grow his corn and cranberry beans and squash and pumpkins using this method. The Three Sisters method of planting is a quality of life enhancer for us. We get more delicious organic food with half of the work.
I guess there’s a reason this method has been working for thousands of years.
