A day to celebrate

Today would have been my father's sixty first birthday. The boys and I celebrated by making a cake, looking at pictures and talking about the wonderful man their grandfather was.

A week before I was born my mother and father bought the house that Shelby and I are raising our boys in now. It is here that my parents instilled a love for rural life in my brother and sister and me and where the five of us had more good times than I could ever begin to recount. When Shelby and I were given the opportunity to buy this house from my mother three years ago we knew it was where we wanted to be and where we wanted to raise our family. There hasn't been a day since that I have regretted the decision.

I was a young girl when we got our first flock of chickens. Both of my parents encouraged my love for the birds. My mother took me to the library where I checked out every chicken book I could find and for weeks afterwards my father patiently and attentively listened while I proudly recited all that I had learned.

He was a brilliant wood worker who made beautiful furniture, and custom doors from his shop just down the hill from our home. I walk by it several times a day when I feed my chickens and when I have occasion to go inside the smell of wood brings me back to the untold amount of time I spent there as a child. He worked tirelessly in that shop. He was the hardest worker I've ever known and would often push himself beyond the point of exhaustion to put food on the table but the unconditional love and unwavering support that he gave us seemed to be completely effortless. 
Along with my mother he made us feel like there was nothing we couldn't accomplish and nothing we were lacking.

Even though he struggled his whole life with the loss, grief and abandonment he experienced as a child, he was an amazingly positive and optimistic man. He taught us to be better than he was, to know our principles and to live by them. He taught us that each day could be our last, often reminding us, "I could get hit by a bus tomorrow" it may sound a little gloomy and morbid but coming from him it always seemed more inspirational and invigorating than anything.

Cancer killed him more than eight years ago but I feel like I'm still learning from him and about him. He has made me a better mother to the grandsons he never got to meet and a better wife to the man he didn't live to see me marry.

He was a really good man whose flaws were as clear to him as they were to anyone else but he never tried to pretend he was anything that he wasn't. He lived a kind and honest life worth celebrating.


        

The prodigal hen returns. Well, kind of.

Yesterday evening, on my way back to the house after feeding the chickens I came across a visitor. It was my runaway hen! I called to her, "chick, chick, chick" and even though the can of feed I was carrying was empty the promise of a meal must have been enough to hook her.

She followed me all the way to the back door where I left her for just a moment so I could run inside to grab my camera and a strawberry. The few other hens who accompanied her up the hill headed back to the barn for the night but (much to my delight) she lingered. I called her again and tossed the strawberry in her direction. She hurried to it and feasted while I sat captivated beside her.

Our picnic didn't last too long, only three or four minutes passed before she finished, I was thrilled none the less. It was quite possibly the only such visit I will get from her, but then again, who knows. She's a strange bird.

Healing hands of time

A little more than two months ago I found my only Cuckoo Maran huddled and wounded under some brush in the chicken yard. The immediate relief I felt to find her alive was quickly replaced by concern when her condition worsened over night.

She had a deep wound on her back and after a short amount of observation it was clear that keeping her in with the rest of the birds (particularly the roosters) was seriously hampering her ability to heal. I treated her wound and brought her up to the house where I keep a pen for just such situations.

Within the first twenty four hours of isolation she showed marked improvement and within a few days she regained full mobility and seemed to be back to her usual clucky self. I kept her in her private pen for two weeks, checking on her several times a day until I was sure that she was fully healed and strong enough to rejoin the flock. Her return was a seemingly smooth one. I slipped her in with the others one evening after dusk and though she didn't reclaim her original spot in the pecking order she wasn't at the bottom.

For more than a month she has appeared to be a perfectly happy and healthy hen, with one notable difference.

Prior to her injury she was a strong layer of the dark brown eggs that are unique to her breed. After her injury she completely stopped laying for two months. Certainly one would expect her to focus her energy on healing at first but more than a month after all signs of injury were gone and she returned to her role in the flock she still hadn't laid an egg.  Did she spend any time stressing over her lack of production, worrying about what the other chickens would think? Or, did she perhaps just keep on about her chicken business until she was truly healed without any thought of it one way or the other?

I have no way of knowing what her thoughts were on the matter but my gut tells me that it was the latter and if such is the case that makes this another instance where I could learn a lot from a chicken.

Birds of different feathers flock together too

A greener cleaner

Over the weekend I made some laundry detergent for the first time.  The relationship between laundry and chickens may seem like a strange one but knowing what goes into our eggs makes me want to know what goes into more and more of the things in our life. Making as many things as I can, from bread to yogurt to laundry detergent helps me to be more aware of the world we share with chickens.  

The original method I read for homemade laundry detergent recommended using washing soda (sodium carbonate) but after a little more research I found that oxiclean (sodium percarbonate and sodium carbonate) was an acceptable substitute, which was fortunate since I was unable to find washing soda in any local stores but did have an unimaginably large amount of  oxiclean that I bought ages ago.
 
This is what I did. 

Using a cheese grater I grated one bar of Ivory soap and allowed it to dissolve in a quart of simmering water. Meanwhile, in a large storage tub (I think a five gallon bucket would have worked better but I didn't have one) I combined three gallons hot tap water, one cup oxiclean and one half cup borax and stirred until it was fully dissolved before adding the hot soapy water. Once everything was combined I put the whole container in the garage for twenty-four hours before using. It was so easy!

Eighteen hours and five loads of laundry later I feel very confident saying that it works. I washed a range of clothing, from dirty diapers, whites, toddler clothes, barn clothes, and dress clothes.  They all came out looking and smelling clean. Not like a spring meadow, but definitely clean. 

After some experimenting I have found that about three quarters of a cup (six ounces) works well for one of our average loads of laundry. We are pretty dirty people and you may find that less would work for you, it just depends on how large the load is and how soiled the clothes are.

I will not claim to have made any significant steps towards self sustainability, after all I still had to purchase the ingredients. I will claim a financial savings, a reduction of packaging, and perhaps most importantly, it made me excited about laundry.