The Chick Has Landed

Shortly after breakfast, Phil and the boys shoveled out the woodchips in the truck bed, preparing a brood house for the chicks soon to arrive.

While they were doing that, I got the call from the Post Office: today was the day! So I picked up the cheeping box and headed home.

What a joy to unload the near hundred chicks and three ducklings (a duckling and chick died in transit). I had forgotten how incredibly light the fluff balls are, but I hadn't forgotten how quickly they run when first released. Phil, Isaiah, and I sat and got to know the little Holland chicks.

I had wanted to try a new breed, and since we have critically endangered cows, I figured critically endangered chickens might be good. White chickens open themselves up to predation, so a barred chicken (speckled) seemed like a good option.

The Holland chicken, called the most rare breed in the United States, sounded like the perfect chicken for us. They fell out of favor because they grow well on pasture, although slowly. The longer growing time is supposed to be offset by their ability to rustle up their own food from bugs and forage. A good multi-purpose bird, they dress out to a nicely colored carcass (which is important: black-feathered birds can have black dots where the feathers were. Taste-wise, that's not a big deal, but the appearance can be a bit too strange for most Americans.

So we'll try them. Harvey Ussery pointed out that because most people want only pullets (females), the cocks are killed in mass quantity at the hatchery. I had never thought of that, but it felt good to order straight run chickens: a mix of boys and girls. The boys will go in the freezer, and the girls will hopefully become part of the laying flock.

I think last year we were so overwhelmed with our tasks, the magic of chicks grew passe. Today, though, the magic was back in force.

These chicks are so funny. I remember chicks running about, but not acting too inquisitive of people. These chicks, though, jump up on our legs, peck at shoelaces, wedding ring, fingernails. Jadon laughed and laughed when first one, then two, three, four, five, and a bunch suddenly jumped up on him, like a collection of penguins.

They mobbed Isaiah, too. I think Isaiah enjoyed it more.

Joe liked that he could simply reach down and pick a little one up.

With their mottled backs in light and dark grey, with a bit of white, and their lighter stomachs with a bit of yellow, I think they are handsome.

I noticed, too, that their little beaks were dual colored, with a little light tip. "That's the egg tooth," said Isaiah. "It will come off soon." I bet he's right. How did he know that?

The excitement of the chicks carried through the day. The three Mallard ducklings are Isaiah's joy. There is one with a unique, grey tuft on the back of the head that looks much like a dandelion puff. Clearly, Dandelion is a good name for that duckling. The others are Daisy and Daffodil. (When I asked him if it bothered him that I had a beehive named Daffodil, he said, incredulously, "But that is the name for BEES. This is a DUCK.")

I had received a small shipment of about 20 stinging nettle plants. After trying 1000 seeds and getting no sprouts, over a period of several years, I finally bought some cuttings. I potted them on into almost the last of the 360 pots I bought. Those have been so incredibly useful!

Why plant stinging nettles? Plants with little spines that inject passersby with painful venom: plant it on purpose? It is supposed to be incredible for building humus, for one thing. If I soak it in water for some time, the compost tea that results is very beneficial for plants. And we can even eat it: after cooking, the stings lose power, and it has more vitamins than spinach.

And Phil helped me carry the extremely heavy crates of pots into their spot in the greenhouse. I have less than five empty pots; I hope a few more pawpaw seeds will sprout, and then they will all be filled and in use.

The greenhouse has blooming blackberries on one edge, with the pots in between. Then a few transplanted tomatoes and lettuces. The back 40 feet or so is the large comfrey patch. I hope that the front will have transplanted shrubs soon.

I checked the beehives: all appears well. Baby brood in all three, so all three queens are producing properly.

I also regrafted all the trees that needed it. There were 21 total grafts that had failed. Three of them were dead from the roots up: note the difference between the living green cambium and the brown dead.

Several of the grafts had strange dead sections most of the way around the cambium layer, and since seven of these failures was from the 15 Melrose trees, I suspect I should have been more diligent in cleaning my knife and pruning shears: perhaps some disease killed parts of the cambium.

Phil chipped most of the day. I helped in the afternoon. The boys shoveled out the extremely huge load. So we all worked hard today, and enjoyed the chicks, the fertility, and the pleasure of being in this place.