chickens
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about the dustmop
Update on yesterday’s post, wherein I yearned for a dust mop to swipe up the furballs: I don’t currently have a mopless handle, as it turns out, but a nice person on Freecycle is going to give me one, and my nice friend LisaPie says I can crochet a mop top out of cotton yarn, of which I have aplenty. So I will not be buying one. It was just a momentary flicker of lust and desire…a new dust mop…(swoons). Lovely reader Heather was telling me about her indoor laundry-drying system, and how she also uses wool balls in the dryer. I’m like, wool balls – huh? She sent me…
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keeping track
This is a year of keeping records on what we’re growing, how much we’ve produced, where we’re saving and how we’re getting out of debt. I’ve been doing all these things for a while but now I’m actually tracking them. And you, Dear Reader, will get to follow along as I pinch pennies, pick up grains of rice and glean fallen apples. Doesn’t that sound enticing? Well — trust me. I’m excited about it. I hate to call them resolutions, although I’ve resolved to live this way. These are more like over-all goals and ways of being. Being rather than doing. A context rather than a rule. So here are…
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still life with yarn, harvest and sneezes
We added another hen to our flock, a cull from another flock across town. This one is also a golden-laced Wyandott but she is altogether darker than Violet; we’ve named her Dahlia (which we liked better then Waffle, her previous name). All of our “flowers” are prospering, still enjoying daily run of the backyard, grass, worms, bugs, seeds, and household leftovers. In return, a clutch of eggs for the house, and companionship. There’s nothing like a chicken looking in the door at you and asking for food to make you feel wanted. I had been making crafty gifts to sell at Sunday’s craft fair at Temple Israel, and so looking…
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November already?
I’ve been on the road in the past month, and trying to catch up after travel is like trying to stop the salt from flying everywhere when you refill the shaker. Even if you use a funnel, it still spills, and you have to throw pinches over your shoulder just to keep the luck flowing. At least, this is what happens when I do the job. And here I am in November, with another only-in-California warm spell that makes me want to go work in the garden. Our weather is so weird anymore — climate change is real, chickadees. Really, really real. Speaking of chickadees, we had a brief interlude of joy…
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of mice and moles
Hidee-ho, fellow inmates! Today we have an urgent task ahead of us, which is raising the fence between the garden and rest of the yard. My hens have learned how to fly over and have torn up several vegetable beds in the past week or so. Really annoying, as I watched my English peas, baby collards, sprouting turnips and carrots get scratched into oblivion. I could trim the feathers on one wing of each hen, if I could catch them, but I can usually catch just two of the four (Poppy and Rosie like to be petted). The other ones (Violet, Bluebell) seem to loathe the touch of human hands and…
