Menu

The Chicken Chronicles

by

The Chicken Chronicles sounds so much better than The Cancer Chronicles right?

I’ve been thinking lately about how strange it must be to be a baby chick. Like how each of my baby chicks woke up one day in a shelled cocoon and had to peck their way out…no idea what was waiting on the other side. How do they even know to start pecking their way out, that there is something else on the other side?

When my chicks hatched, they were thrown together into a little instant family. A bantam grab bag. A diverse little collective of baby chicks. Brett rolls his eyes whenever I wonder aloud if they think about their mothers.  Of course I tell them all the time that I’m their mother, just in case they are curious. They are curious little things…they sat and watched me all day as I worked in the yard and painted today:

The Chicken Chronicles - raising baby chicks

I finished moving a bunch of rock and wood that had been store behind the depot today, and planted some ground cover. Then I painted the last remaining wall of the depot:

Chicken Coop Potting Shed Progress - the old depot

After being outside for the whole day the chicks came back inside exhausted and just collapsed into a big heap.  It’s hard work being out in the big, scary, delightful world! You should have seen them when I dropped their first earthworm through the chicken wire! It was insanity. I love that they all sleep together like this. The little Barred Rocks mess up the sequence every time though. Seriously how hard is it to get front-back-front-back right?

Baby Chicks Sleeping

Baby chicks are great entertainment. They have this endearing little secret peeping language. If I sneak in on them when they are sleeping one is bound to notice and one tiny little “eep” alerts them all immediately that they are being watched.

I love throwing a new treat into their box each night..one chick usually makes a high pitched trilled “eep” and they all freeze. They just stand and stare at the foreign object for a few minutes (usually the top of a strawberry or a piece of lettuce). Then one of the chicks (always one of the Barred Rocks) gets the courage to go up and peck at it. When the others realize it’s something edible all hell breaks loose and soon they are all running around like crazy chickens with tiny pieces of treat in their mouths. And they “peep” while they run, like they can’t contain their excitement. They act like they think they have picked up the last piece of food on earth.

babychickenstomatoes

And they are always curious about my phone when I take a photo. Sunny, one of the Buff Brahmas, always walks around to the screen side and pecks at the image:

sunnyscreen

Sunny also lets me scratch her chest…in fact she walks up and practically says: please scratch my chest. I never thought I’d feel so flattered that a chicken would show interest in me.

Other breaking baby chick news:

-The chicks’ bedding was changed to pine shavings. I’d been using paper towels and it worked great for a while until they started shredding them. I think they like the pine shavings. They especially like watching me clean the pine shavings out from their water three times a day. A bunch of attention seekers they are:

hanging out

-Plump likes to sit on top of the waterer and the inevitable happened: Plump pooped on FoShizzle’s head as she took a drink. The other chicks kept pecking at Fo’s dirty head so I had to give her a bath. She hated every minute of it.

-FoShizzle stole M-LO’s tomato and M-LO didn’t even notice and ate a wood shaving instead:

-M-LO and I had a heart to heart. She’s my favorite of all the chicks. I am already heartbroken that I will most likely outlive her and have to go through the loss of her one day. It’s too painful to think about:

mlo

-I did try to move the chicks out to the garage the other day…but by nightfall they were back in our laundry room. They were outside in the little makeshift chicken tractor that I made them and two crows were stalking them. I think that spooked me a little. And then my friend Melissa (Bless this Mess) lost one of her little chicks to a falcon the same day, it somehow got in the pen with them, and it was so heartbreaking. Even though our chicks were in the garage I was afraid a snake or something else might make its way in somehow. For now they’ll stay in our laundry room, at least until the new chicken coop is 100% secure from every type of predator I can think of. We are getting close. We’ve been stretching hardware cloth for days:

How to attach hardware cloth to a chicken coop

-Max was interested in the chicks at first but his interest has dwindled. I’m not letting them get too close for right now. He’s been a good boy and just sits at a distance and watches them for a few moments before following me around the yard again. I paid him in treats to pose for this shot:

max

I hope they like living here. They seem content, but I can tell they are getting antsy to see the outside world. Brett walked in the laundry room the other morning and one of the chicks was sitting on top of the box edge, as if she was getting ready to fly the coop.  FoShizzle has flown up onto my phone a few times hoping for a ride:

I’d love to give them more freedom soon. While I wait for them to grow a little more I’ve been working on the coop….even decorating it with some hand painted signage. I’m sure it’s the first thing they’ll notice when they move in:

Inside the chicken coop and the new nesting boxes - chicken coop decor

The biggest milestone was that we cut the door to the depot the other day that will eventually be their entrance to the chicken run:

Door to the chicken coop

I can’t wait to make the little ramp for them. Every day I asks Brett when he gets home from work: Should we make the ramp today? He says: We will make it soon.  Yes, I am way too excited about seeing chickens walking up a ramp. I keep trying to think of a little sign to hang above the door…that has to do with a train depot. Arrivals? Departures? Ticketing? I need something cute. Because my baby chicks can read you know….

Funny, our anniversary is coming up…fifteen years.

Brett: Don’t get me anything for our anniversary. I don’t need a thing.

Me: Okay, please don’t get me anything for our anniversary either.

Brett: Deal.

Me: Unless it’s another baby chicken. I could use a few baby silkie chicks. They would be the perfect addition don’t you think?

 

 

The 400 Year Old Bonsai Tree

by

When we went to Washington, DC over spring break this year one of the things on my list to see was the nearly 400 year old bonsai tree that survived Hiroshima. It’s also known as the Yamaki White Pine:

400 Year old Bonsai tree that survived Hiroshima, Yamaki White Pine

Five generations of the Yamaki family trained this tree, starting in 1625, before it made its way across the ocean to the U.S. This bonsai tree survived the atomic blast in Hiroshima. The owner, bonsai master Masaru Yamaki, donated it to the U.S. in 1976. How long such a small tree can live, like this one, outliving multiple generations? I can’t imagine the pressure of taking care of such a tree. What if someone forgets to water it? Do you get a bonsai sitter when you go out of town?

*****

I’ve always had a thing for bonsai trees. When I was growing up, at my grandparents house, a weathered plank fence stood to one side of the yard dividing the property from their neighbors, the Nowlins.

If you followed the plank fence to where it opened up near the Nowlin’s carport, and followed the path of crunchy white pea gravel, you would find a few rows of tables.  That was Mr. Nowlin’s bonsai garden. It looked kind of like this:

The Bonsai exhibit at the U.S. National Aboretum

bonsai trees at the US national arboretum DC

He had tiny little junipers and shapely miniature boxwoods growing in flat little pots with tiny gravel to match. I loved touching the twisted and gnarled little tree trunks that had been shaped and stunted over time. I would run my fingers over the pearl and tea-colored pea gravel, sometimes secretly slipping a few stones into my pocket to keep. It was like a secret garden. Mr. Nowlin’s house was sold at some point, I think when they went to a nursing home.  The buyers knocked their old house down to build a bigger one. The same thing happened to my grandfather’s house next door. I’ve always wondered whatever happened to Mr. Nowlin’s bonsai trees. There hasn’t been any sign of bonsai for years.

Mrs. Nowlin looked exactly like Jessica Tandy from the front, at least that’s how I remember her. I tore the house apart today trying to find a photo of the Nowlins and maybe their backyard. All I could find was a photo of Mrs. Nowlin holding a handful of fall leaves, getting ready to throw them up so I could jump into them:

nowlin

*****

Somewhere in Japan there is a bonsai tree that is over 800 years old. That means that a tiny potted tree has been passed down through at least eight or nine family generations. How is that even possible? I can’t even keep a plant alive more than a year.

I bought some young junipers recently and planted them to try my hand at the bonsai art. Hey, I got them planted. Now check back in 15 years.

Starting bonsai trees

I imagine they’ll look kind of like this one day only this is a Chinese Elm, and it’s “training” dates all the way back to 1906:

Chinese Elm bonsai tree

A Japanese Maple dating back to 1946:

Japanese Maple dating back to 1946 bonsai tree

They don’t know how old this Trident Maple is but I love the shape of it:

Trident Maple bonsai tree

I checked all the tags at the U.S. National Arboretum….none were Mr. Nowlin’s. But maybe they are still out there somewhere.

You can read more about the bonsai collections at the National Bonsai & Penjing Museum’s site. There’s even a virtual tour you can take…but it’s not the same as seeing the trees in person.

You can read more about the Yamaki Pine here. It’s a really cool story.

And I can’t stop watching the DC Eagle Cam either.

When we were in DC the cherry trees were just beginning to bloom as well:

cherry trees

The history of the DC cherry trees is pretty interesting too. In 1910, Tokyo gave Washington, DC 2,000 cherry trees as a gift. All 2,000 trees had to be burned because it was discovered that they were infested with insects. In 1912, Tokyo gifted 2,000 more trees, in twelve cultivar varieties, and they were planted mostly in the Tidal Basin area. 3,000 more were gifted again in 1965. In 1982, Japanese horticulturists came to take clippings of the trees to replenish an area of Japan where flooding had killed their own trees. In 2002-2006, hundreds of cuttings were taken of the original 1912 trees to begin cloning replacements (cherry trees only live about 60 years on average). This was also done in 1976-1979 in a smaller number. Only about 4% of the original gifted trees are still around.

I like cherry trees too. I’ve got a few to plant this week around or property.

Tomatoes in Sawdust

by

I’ve never planted tomatoes in sawdust but my great-grandmother has. When my grandfather died I found this article in some of his papers. It’s my great-grandmother Tillie in the July 23, 1967 Salina Journal giving her tips for weedless tomatoes:

growing tomatoes in sawdust - vintage gardening article

I love the opening line:

Would you like to grow weedless tomatoes that never need hoeing?

In the article she says she learned the secret from my grandfather and:

“I dissolve a teaspoon of fertilizer each day in a gallon of water and pour half of it in each of two baskets,” Mrs. Swenson explained. 

Then all you have to do is wait for the harvest and you never have to hoe weeds,” she added.

The secret need not be limited to tomatoes. Mrs. Swenson recently panted some cucumbers in the same baskets and the plants are flourishing. 

Tillie lived to be 104. Maybe there’s something to the sawdust. She must have had a lot of sawdust around. I don’t have even an ounce of sawdust…and if I did it would probably be full of pressure treated chemicals.

I did a little research and apparently this only works well with container gardening, and the fertilizer is crucial. I’ve love to know how this made the paper. I’m sure that’s a story in itself! Tillie moved to the Ellsworth address when the family farm was sold. My great-grandfather Harry had been kicked in the head by one of his horses and was never the same. He spent most of his time in the state hospital after that and Tillie took in boarders. Container gardening must have been small potatoes after a life of farming.

Subscribe