How Does Your - Chickening out

Garden Grow?

It’s been a really long couple of weeks.

Between my home life and juggling work events, to say I’ve been on the struggle bus would be a vast understatement. I was exhausted and sick as my asthmatic lungs were protesting over the wildfires up north. My house was disgusting; my laundry pile was so big that I’m pretty sure it could have been classified as its own mountain range and I couldn’t tell if I was walking through my kitchen or a sandy beach based upon the texture of the floors under my toes. As an added bonus my pre-teen is doing pre-teen things, which is probably to be expected but still feels kind of like being held hostage.

I finally got things under control at home and it feels more like organized chaos rather than living inside a tornado, and my schedule at the office has cleared up a bit, so I think it’s safe to take a deep breath and regroup.

While I’ve gotten some of the day-to-day tasks under control at home, we have a few big projects to hit before it starts getting cold on us, which doesn’t seem so far away. Yet again we are in limbo with our chickens. My hubby found a lovely Amish family to take our roosters and it’s much more quiet and peaceful in the yard now that it’s just a sorority with our four guinea hens and three leghorn hens, except for leghorn Henrietta who now seems to think she’s the yard guard dog. I guess someone has to do it.

Henrietta aside, we have another conundrum. Our animals love being together. We tried keeping the guineas with the goats as those animals are allowed loose in the yard much more frequently than the chickens who put up too much of a protest when it’s time to go back in their own run. Shockingly, the guineas are way easier to wrangle than the chickens.

Still, the leghorns keep breaking into the yard where the goats and the guinea hens live and I’m starting to feel bad about keeping those three birds separate. The goats and the guinea hens have developed a really cute routine; the birds follow Ernie and Fergus back into their yard at night, and the guineas keep the goats closer to the house because they start screaming when the boys get too far away, and the goats then trot on home. It’s a weird routine, but one that’s working for us, so who am I to question it?

Now we’re tearing down the fence between the two pens that we spent so much time installing. We’re also taking down the netting that covers what is supposed to be the birds’ run. In theory, it was a great idea, but it’s really hard to walk underneath it as it keeps drooping and my hair and earrings get caught in it, leading to a lot of swearing and yelling in what is otherwise a quiet and peaceful neighborhood.

I’m still worried about predatory birds. We have a lot, including the young red-tailed hawk that has been cruising around our yard. We’ve all really enjoyed having him around, but I do worry for our ladies. So once we’ve taken down the fence and the netting, I’m going to string some fishing line across the top of the entire animal pen. From that I’ll hang reflective objects like shiny tape and CD’s/ DVD’s I can snatch up for free at yard sales. While it isn’t foolproof, it’s better than nothing. I’m still on the hunt for plastic decoys, but I refuse to buy one new. Not ‘round here, partner.

Problem number two: my goats are food vacuums. They eat the chickens’ feed like they have never before tasted grain in their lives, conveniently forgetting that they are given hay, fresh forage and sweet feed daily. They have their own condo, for crying out loud, but perish the thought that the birds should get their own food. This one is going to require a little more thought. While Fergus is docile, Ernie is a bulldozer. He will knock down, push over and use his horns to crack open anything that could contain one single grain of feed until he has consumed it. His greed sickens me.

Once we tear down the fence and the netting, we can always keep their feed in the Poultry Pantry which the birds can access through their automatic door. Thankfully, the door is much too small for Ernest to cram his giant head through. I’m not saying he won’t knock the entire pantry to the ground in the midst of his pillaging and plundering, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there. It’ll do for now.

And we’ve had some developments in our work garden. I harvested two lovely cucumbers this week with more on the vine, and I pulled four carrots and several pea pods. I was also able to salvage more radish seeds which I’m letting dry out in a dark cabinet. My goal is to get those into the dirt this week.

Unfortunately, the lettuce did not turn out well. It was bitter and I ended up tossing all of it into my compost bin. I can’t say that I’m surprised; I knew when it got burned so badly that it wasn’t likely it would be edible, but I still wanted to give it a shot and keep experimenting. I won’t lie, I wasn’t this okay with it when it happened. I was definitely sad and a little embarrassed, but I reminded myself that this is my first time and I did pretty well pivoting and troubleshooting, all things considered. Next year I’ll be more prepared, and if the outcome is a little bit better, we’ll take that as a win.

Mandee Ellis is a reporter at The Star News. Contact her at Mandee@centralwinews.com.