Getting Ready for the Season

I've been cleaning up the garage storage area. This weekend I set two shelves for mason jars. One for pint jars and one for quart jars. I also discovered that I have for different kinds of jars. I have an Atlas, some Ball, a couple of Golden Harvest, and a few Kerr jars.

Chicken Wars: Jere Versus the Opossum

It was a terrible night in the chicken yard, but Jere is a hero. He leaped out of bed at about 1:30 saying that the hens were upset and making a lot of noise. He jumped into his clothes and ran downstairs, and after he didn't come back right away, I followed him. I opened the gate and found him locked in mortal combat with a 20-pound opossum. I am confirmed in my view that they are vile creatures. The opossum had killed my sweet TED, The Empress Dowager, Jere said, and he was not in a catch-and-release mood with the opossum. We are very sad to lose TED and are now convinced that an opossum must have also killed Tina. It was dark, I couldn't see, and Jere didn't want to make me suffer through a graphic description of the carnage, but I gather that the evil creature went up into the roosting area of the coop and cornered all of the chickens, grabbing TED in a kind of coop invasion. Jere says Craig Maxwell's hockey stick came in handy, as Jere's usual animal control tool, the lacrosse stick, is a better implement for live flinging than for exacting justice for The Empress Dowager.

Della Wager Wells

November 16, 2012 Buckhead, GA

A Little Winter Clean Up

Ok, I was playing with my power tools. I had a little help to begin with.

Chicken Wars: Evita and the Hawk...

or HD's Vengeance.

Chickens Are Way Smarter Than People Think, Says Heroic Anonymous Daughter*

*(Who doesn't want her friends to know she's a fearsome combatant and defender of the home front).

So Heroic Daughter ("HD") heard an awful commotion in the chicken yard today and flew out the back door to confront our fourth type of urban predator in this season of fowl loss. Evita, our Aracauna chicken, one of our blue ...egg layers, was in the talons of a hawk, struggling in her last moments of life. My doughty daughter seized Craig Maxwell's hockey stick, our weapon of choice for the protection of the farm. "Maybe you should have something a little more effective than sports sticks," my mother commented after Jere's fierce battle with the possum. "He finished him off with a shovel," I said grimly, to close the topic of weapons escalation. So Aubs-- whoops, HD-- gave a guttural battle cry, grabbed the hockey stick and slashed at the hawk in the air as it dove and menaced her, trying to get back to Evita as HD stood over her to protect her. If she'd been close enough when the attack began, I know that she would have prevented the hawk from making contact. Even though she doesn't want people to think she's mean and tough, my money's on HD if I'm in trouble. She's watching us all now, at our flanks, alert and poised for action like she'd be ready in a second to save all of our lives. Chickens are way smarter than people think they are, she says. She had a moment of horror in the silent chicken yard as she stood over Evita after the hawk finally fled, frustrated if not terrified. She thought that she had interrupted the final kill, and all of the others were already gone. The rest of the chickens, silent while awake for the first time we know about, slowly crept out from behind the dog house and recognized Aubrey as their leader.

When I first started on this adventure two years ago, after wanting a flock of chickens for ten years or more, I told Jere that keeping chickens was a meditation on the food chain. What I meant was that we would be more intentional about kitchen and garden waste, giving the chickens leftover or wilted salad, rice or pasta, compost all their waste for our garden, and that we would appreciate the wholesomeness of the eggs, and thereby be more aware of our food sources generally. I had not, in thinking about the food chain, imagined our chickens being one link up from garden waste and compost, food for predators we wouldn't dream of consuming. RIP Evita. The chickens are locked in tight. Aubrey is on watch.

Della Wager Wells

December 26, 2012 near Elloree, SC via mobile

Thinking of the New Year

Well, I've decided that I will not do raised beds this coming year. The cost of building the raised beds is pretty high. Borrowing or renting a tiller is very much cheaper. I'm also not sure of how successful we'll be in growing and maintaining all those vegetables. Also, I don't know what we're going grow either.

Thinking of the New Year

Well, I've decided that I will not do raised beds this coming year. The cost of building the raised beds is pretty high. Borrowing or renting a tiller is very much cheaper. I'm also not sure of how successful we'll be in growing and maintaining all those vegetables. Also, I don't know what we're going grow either.

Fellas Talking Butter

Pearce had to show Papaz how to make butter in the stand mixer. I just hope he keeps liking to make stuff this much as he gets older. I think he's explaining how the butter gets in there to Papaz in this picture.