The Inside Coop #2

Second only the fact that I am now into the triple digits of blog posting, is what took place on Wednesday: ALL FIVE HENS laid eggs! And if that wasn't fantabulous enough, I made the startling discovery that one of the Araucanas is masquerading as a Buff Orpington by laying not green, but beige colored eggs. That's right, we have a South-American-Cracker-wannabe-Araucana-in-drag chicken in the hen house. While this may have skewed the daily egg count in terms of which delegates are assigned to which variety of chickens, I think the most important lesson that is to be learned in this week's edition of The Inside Coop, is that chickens are indeed very talented and crafty little beings. Yeah. There are many many layers that make up a chicken, especially in this Menlo Park backyard of Tucson, Arizona.


Please join me next week for the third installment of The Inside Coop (brought to you by Chicken Diction Inc. and created by our good friend and neighbor, Caryn).

Saturday in the backyard.

Today was amazingly beautiful outside here in Tucson and I was able to catch the last rays of the afternoon in the backyard with a book. It was fabulous after working most of the day inside. Today when I collected the eggs (three of them!) this Araucana egg had little balls of what seem to be calcium deposits. They felt very hard to the touch but when I washed it, they all came off individually. I have never seen anything like this. Have a look...

Beautiful flowers growing in the basins.

We have broccoli going crazy right now. It is some of the sweetest broccoli I have ever tasted straight off the stalk. The carrots have amazing flavor as well. Tomorrow we will seed as much as we can for the spring/summer gardens.

The Inside Coop #1

Let us begin a new chapter in the Chicken Diction library of knowledge so that we may further educate all the faithful readers of this holy book of fowlish lore...The Inside Coop. After hearing the cries of the local masses I am giving you what all of you want: a probably-weekly but definitely-regular update of the goings-on of life in the near famous backyard of Menlo Park.

1. The chickens have survived the freezes quite well, however Cracker decided to go on a very long sabbatical from egg laying. Fortunately she has come round as of today.

2. One of the Araucanas got loose on Sunday, which was not anywhere near as exciting as one would have expected or even hoped for as he was writing a blog about such an event. It appears that the chicken aviary has become quite a fulfilling home for the five feathered friends in the back, as she hustled right back in as soon as I could manage to open the door and chase her in.

3. Most exciting was what I found in the chicken house today...

...Granted, we hadn't checked for two and a half days.

A summer poem in December.

"The Summer Day," by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean –
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down –
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to all down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Sunday's bounty.

Just before the midnight hour.

In perfect Peruvian form, one of the Araucanas has delivered a last minute blue-green egg just before the big feast of dead birds that takes place tomorrow all across this confused land. It seems that all of my threats of beheading and baking were sufficient for the absolute bare minimum of return on their part. Not knowing which bird it was that laid the egg, I of course cannot risk the sacrifice and all three will therefore survive...

I know you were all dying to know when the first blue-green Araucana egg was laid. So here it is. Behold, the fabled egg of the South! Happy holidays to you all.

Winter gardening and chicken talk.

Pathways, river rocks, fire rings, and veggies.

Chiles!

Lettuce, spinach, swiss chard, and paths.

"Hey Hayduke, make sure no one's coming will ya?"

"Coast is allll clear Cracker."

"It's hard out there for a hen. Can hardly find time to lay an egg. Hey you Araucanas! Need some inspiration - check this out!"

"The left column."

I would like to draw your attention to the not-so-famous "left column" in this blog. There are three reasons really. The first is that my brother (among others) has told me that he has never clicked on a single link in the "left column." My own brother! It's hard out there for a blogger. The second reason is that I have recently re-worked some of the categories and added some interesting links. The last, and I am sure most crowd-pleasing-Chicken-Diction- enthusiast-exciting, is that I have finally gotten not only up to date with the egg laying exploits, but I have made a more standardized system for some of the naysayers and critics out there in the Tucson community...So damnit - take a look at the left column and learn yourselves a thing or two. Or just hear some random shit that I happen to chuckle at late at night when I am writing for this blog. Whatever, just look at the left column, it's worth it I promise.

A Guatemalan wooden chicken for your enjoyment.

One of these eggs is not like the other...

In case you were wondering how we know which chicken gives which egg, here you can see the obvious difference between the darker Rhode Island Red (Hayduke) eggs and the lighter egg from the Buff Orpington (Cracker). The Araucanas (Sally, Maria Algo, and Al Carbon) have yet to start laying, and once they do they should have blue-ish green colored eggs. In any case, pretty soon we will be swimming in eggs (mmm...nice thought huh?) of all colors. And if you have never had the experience of walking out of your house each morning and finding eggs just waiting for you in the chicken house, then you should come visit and you too will able to make an omelette with the freshest of eggs and basil from our garden. It will be one of the most satisfying meals you can ever eat - until you do it again.

A-huevo...

For all you nay-sayers and skeptics out there who thought my short-term love affair with chicken herding was as last year as the atkins diet and democracy, well here I am, and this time with huevos...

It has been a full summer with many technological challenges including a non-functioning camera that mysteriously healed itself like Benny Hinn himself touched it, a burned-out computer hard-drive that crashed after Tshilo touched it, and then the lack of appropriate technology to properly contain the small platoon of hens armed with their very own fertilizer IEDs. Finally, everything is back up and running, and the chickens are on indeterminate large group lock-down thanks the wonders of a petroleum based shade cloth that currently encapsulates the entirety of the fenced-in chicken area. Not only are the chickens eagerly rummaging through the compost as they were always meant to do, they have after only one week of confinement began producing eggs. That's right, all it took was some penal incarceration in order to properly exploit these hens reproductive powers for our nutritional enjoyment.

And though we already had the official "coming out" party (interpret that as you wish) for these illustrious hens of ours back in July, I would like to dedicate the following youtube video to the loss of their egg-laying virginity...

"Dyke chickens."

My menthol-cigarette-smokin'-vietnam-vet-bulldog-owning-gossipy- but-well-meaning-chatterbox-of-a-neighbor is worried I am going to end up with a bunch of dyke chickens if I don't get a rooster, and fast. According to him, that is the sole reason I don't have eggs from my nearly seven month old hens who are currently causing me more strife than seems to be worth any amount of fabled eggs that the future holds. Of course when he told Riley that my chickens were soon to have butch-lesbian tendencies and that the certain cure-all was some hardcore chicken testosterone, Riley rightly asked him if he really wanted a rooster waking him up at four in the morning. That seemed to end the stream of consciousness male chicken fix all advise that is not uncommon from the east side of my all too short and none too private chain link fence.

None-the-less, I have yet to figure out a solid solution for chicken quarentine that is badly needed should my neighborly advise turn into griping and complaining as he quickly discovers that my hens have taken a fancy to his clothes-line pole over the already too close fence line. In any case they definitely have NOT laid any eggs yet and my daily threat to eat one of them (Cracker being the most plump - are we surpised at all by this?) have failed to hold any water - perhaps they know just how long and laborious it is to pluck a dead chicken without the convenience of more advanced technology than my fingers. So my porch continues to be graced by chicken shit, my unprotected plants assaulted by soon-to-be dyke chicken beaks, and the beautiful chicken house and shelter that I built neglected like an unwanted rooster amongst five very content hens. Meanwhile the dipper gourd has gone crazy and the mission grape has recovered after too many close encounters with my feathered livestock. The various trees I have planted in the last year are suddenly exploding with the fresh dousing of rain water day after day, making me truly believe in all that I have sown into this flood plain ground of a backyard. And my chickens are in danger of falling in love with each other. I can think of nothing better for my once-desolate-now-blooming-and- fertile-backyard. I hope such opportunity flourishes near you.