THE WEEKLY NEWS
In this week’s chicken news, Slick Junior escaped the tyranny of Slick Senior’s reign, and went to live with his own private hen harem on our friends’ rural property, and Grey Ghost the hen, having set up a broody base in our secure secondary coop, successfully hatched out 7 new chicks. So our annual “what will we do with the chickens this winter!?” conundrum has been appropriately complexified with a larger flock.
Complexity this cute just has to be worth it, though.
The weeds continued their assault on our sanity, growing nearly tall enough to block all light from Planet Earth.
But we made headway as well, carving out open channels with weed whackers and lawn mowers, and burying the fallen evildoers under thick blankets of hay mulch.
The potato beetles rallied impressively, defoliating our spud plants’ leaves mercilessly – I took an unplanned break from today’s harvest to squish every dang one I could find in the 600 row feet of infestation. I wanted to get a picture of my gore covered hands to show the woman at the farmer’s market last week who refused to believe that we really grew things without chemical pesticides and herbicides since we weren’t certified by The Man’s inadequate and unnecessary stamp of approval – but my fingertips were too slimy to work my phone, so you’re spared the horror.
Let’s see, what else … the mosquitoes are still pretty dang bad, especially when cloudy and windless like this morning. And the rodents continue to wage war on us – rats in the chicken yard, gophers gobbling up our broccoli, voles destroying pepper plants, munching random veggies, and expanding their tunnel network of terror.
Fortunately, their abundance seems to have summoned the bull snakes – and what they don’t devour, Neighbor Dave has been helping us slay, with his array of traps.
And through it all, Otis continues to grow, unhampered by weeds, aphids, rodents, or the state of the nation. If you look into his eyes and speak to him, he will almost always respond with his huge open-mouth toothless grin (which some refined languages likely have a single word for). He learned how to purse his lips and make raspberries back at us, he loves the people and live music at the farmer’s market, and is learning how to pet dogs and other babies.
BOX 5 –
