12 surprising things about keeping chickens

My last post on chickens got so many visits that I think those feathered creatures must be of interest!

So here's another one. This is what surprised and mostly delights me about keeping our four 'townie' hens:

1.   Things we find disgusting are delicious to them – cockroaches, slugs, crushed snails and jellymeat the cat’s been turning his nose up at for two days. Somehow it makes finding a cockroach a little bit nicer when I think of the pleasure it will give them.

2.   They are actually in control of their bowels – while they’re awake, at least. If they are allowed to free range, they poo preferentially on the paths (nicely positioned for your barefoot child to trudge through on the way into the house). This makes sense when you consider that the grass and garden are actually their pantry – they don’t want to foul it. Also, they never poo in their nestbox (unless you position it higher than their perch, in which case they’ll sleep in their nestbox instead of on the perch, and their night time incontinence will let them down).

3.   How incredibly quick they are at spotting and catching food. You know how quickly cockroaches run away? They’re not even a hint of a match for a chicken.

4.   How fussy they can be. If you throw them some carrot peelings or red cabbage leaves, they don’t even sniff them. They just look the other way and wonder if you’re crazy.

5.   The extent of the sparrow problem if you leave their food uncovered. After a few weeks we spent a lot of money on a hopper that is totally sealed until they stand on a platform to open it (a Grandpa’s feeder). It is cheaper than feeding hundreds of sparrows. We have found the odd dead sparrow that has braved the open feeder and been suffocated when the lid closes on it.

6.   Their desire to free range is enormous. I speak only from the experience of a smallish suburban section, but if you free range them all the time you will have poo on your paths, no lettuce, spinach or silverbeet in your garden, and holes pecked in your tomatoes. If you free range them just some of the time – when you can herd them, for example – they spend their penned-in time longing to be out, screeching mournfully and pacing the walls of their pen.  It is almost kinder to never let them out, because then they don’t expect it. Do, however, throw them grass and other favourite greens whenever possible.

Mmmm, grass.

Our favourite greens, silverbeet and spinach.
Thanks kids!

7.   How divine it is to watch them free ranging, expertly scanning, racking and pecking at the ground. One day I'd love to have a place big enough to free range them comfortably (with a fenced-off vege garden - not sure what I'll do about the paths) and be able to watch them from my kitchen window.

8.   How they love being under trees. They don’t like aerial predators (like aeroplanes!) and the trees shelter them. Plus, they’re descended from jungle fowl, so please give them a bit of jungle!

9.   Their instincts can be almost overwhelming. When dusk comes, they become frantic to find a high place to roost for the night. If they can’t get to a perch they’ll go up a tree if they can. Ditto their need for a nestbox: they really, really like a private place to lay their eggs.

10. How social they are. “Oh, I see you’re preening, I’d better do it too. Oh, dustbathing time now, is it? Okay, me too.”

11. They don’t like change in the food department. One time I stopped giving them pellets and switched to grain. They mostly stopped laying immediately, apart from some soft-shelled eggs. I’ve heard others say the same thing when switching from one pellet type to the other.

12. Their ferocity. Once we put eggs under a broody hen, and one of them hatched. The other hens nearly slaughtered the chick. His mother joined in the assaults after a few weeks, I think in response to his understandably nervy behaviour and jerky movements. I was relieved to realise he was a boy, and gave him away. (Note: I think he would have been fine in a free range situation where he could get away from the others, the brutal beasts – I was disgusted with them.)

This post is being shared at Frugally Sustainable and Fresh Eggs Daily.

Tooth fairy

The milestone has happened - Anna lost her first tooth!

However her Mama managed to lose it after it flicked onto the floor, so she had to write the tooth fairy a note.

The tooth fairy understood and left $2. The pay was so good that the next evening, following half an hour of vigorous wiggling after lights-out, the second one came out. These things happen when you have a determined sort of girl! That second tooth was not really ready, I suspect.

Now her smile is kind of the opposite of what it was five and a half years ago....

She is still a crazy little character, and we love her for it!

Gardening Milly Molly Mandy style

Anna's favourite book at the moment is Milly Molly Mandy. I got it for her because I loved it when I was little. It was published in 1925! It's still adorable.

In one story MMM helps Billy Blunt to weed a garden, which has grass growing in it. MMM notices that there are holes in Billy's lawn, and Billy explains that his father's been digging out dandelions. So the pair of them transfer the weeded grass into the lawn and the holes disappear.

Tell me, why is it so easy to grow grass in the garden, when trying to establish a lawn can be so hard?

Here you observe me digging grass from a garden, which sprouted from obviously undercooked compost (or the grass seeds would have died):

And here I, in Milly Molly Mandy style, transfer it into a bare batch on our lawn (if you can call it that - it has mounds of builder's mix and goodness knows what else gathered for a seemingly forgotten landscaping project, although I live in hope):

It is so lovely having a little feline company, which I always have when I venture into the garden! In fact he pleads with me:

And I surrender.

A creative weekend afternoon

This afternoon it rained, but not as hard as I wanted it to. Although spring is gorgeous and uplifting, I wanted it to be freezing, raining and windy so we could fall even further in love with our fire! When the weather was really cold at the beginning of winter, we only had a heatpump, which didn't give us nearly the heat or ambience of this baby.

For a while after lunch, I curled up on the couch and gazed at the fire before falling asleep.But that can't last for long with two children in the house. So it was time for a bit of creativity.

Anna and I did a bit of flower arranging, and I was thrilled to be able to use for the first time a recent Salvation Army find, a heavy fluted glass vase. Made in France, it says on the bottom. But who's checking, right?

We bought the tulips, but the lilies are weeds from a nearby gully.

Jack and I built a lego castle. Check out those turrets! He added the flags for me, because he knows I like them as decoration. All he cared about was the turrets. This was a two hour operation.

We scored most of this lego at a garage sale a few years ago.
It has given him hundreds of hours of pleasure.

Anna, by herself, wrapped and decorated a gift for her friend's birthday party tomorrow.

Sadly, she might not be able to attend the party because there is a touch of redness about one of her eyes. Ian has had an eye like this all week, and is in quarantine because it's so contagious. It feels like there's a log in it, he says, and it oozed stuff that hurts his skin like acid. Ouch.

Viral conjunctivitis. Different from bacterial:
the ooze is clear rather than opaque, and it itches like mad.
And the only 'treatment' that works is time.

But back to the creativity: this morning the girls of the house had visited a daffodil show, where hundreds of single daffodils stood, arranged by category, to be judged. Everyone has their 'thing', I guess! We whizzed past those to the cake decorating competition at the back of the hall. Some were incredible, and if my camera batteries had not died, I'd show you more.

Cupcakes to die for. The creator had a Sri Lankan name
(or so the US Indian friend who I ran into there told me),
and I can see the ethnic influence in her design.

Wedding cake - all the frills are icing.

Gorgeous.

Surgery on our boy

This was Jack's nose this morning.

This was Jack's nose this evening.

I had expected something to be different, considering what went on in there today. But I can't see anything. He had huge adenoids removed and grommets put in his ears (which never drained because the adenoids were so big, so hopefully he'll be able to hear properly now). He also had his turbinates* cauterised and broken outwards to make his nasal passage wider. Because, you see, the poor chap hasn't been able to breathe out of his nose for a long time.

Check out those petite little nostrils. I have no 

idea who he inherited those from! Fortunately

the surgeon is used to working on tiny babies.

He thought it was horrible, but he was a trooper and a real star. I stayed with him while the anaesthetist put him under with gas through a mask, which took two to three long minutes. I could smell the foul, sour gas he was breathing, and he told me afterwards it felt awful. But do you know what he did part way through the mask phase? He gave me the thumbs up sign. What a guy.

Mostly I feel grateful for modern medical care. Without it he'd just have to live with no effective nose and poor hearing. Instead we have at our disposal anaesthetic, wonderful medical staff, great equipment and great medicines. From that perspective, the 21st century is a good time to be alive.







*Turbinates, as I understand it, are little bony things inside our nose covered with flesh. They serve to humidify and warm the air we breathe in so it doesn't go down to our lungs cold and dry. In people with allergies - in Jack's case it's dustmites - they engorge, and get in the way of breathing.

We love you dahl

Last night I came home from a yoga class and there was only one thing my body wanted for dinner: dahl. Even better, dahl from my yoga teacher's cookbook! Called 'Soup Tuesdays', it is a collection of recipes from one of her other jobs, which is creating delicious lunches for workers at a local 'green-accredited' office building. I know someone who works there and he raves about her food.

What a multi-talented person Katie Pervan is: she is also the most wonderful yoga teacher. Here's the website for her yoga studio, a place of peace and sore muscles (depending on what kind of class you do - the muscles, that is, because it's always peaceful).

Fortunately there was leftover dahl in our fridge from a couple of nights earlier, and like all curries, it gets even better with age.

I thoroughly recommend the recipe. My husband was skeptical when I said I was making it, expecting watery lentil mush. But it was thick and richly flavoured, and he enjoyed it. Of course there are the other great things about dahl besides its taste: super healthy, super cheap, filling, ingredients almost always on hand, and it's gluten, dairy and meat free. Oh, and easy and all done in one pot.

A dainty plate of dahl. I eat twice as much as that.
Or three times as much after a yoga class.

One day I'll post the recipe to my naan bread, pictured above, famous among friends who have tried it, and loved just as much by children.

Dahl
Taken with permission from Soup Tuesdays, by Katie Pervan.
Katie points out that it's not very traditional, but it works very well.

(Serves 4-6)
1 large onion
2-3 cloves garlic
1 thumb piece ginger
1 tsp each of ground spices: coriander, turmeric, cumin, chilli
2 1/2 cups split red lentils
1 can chopped tomatoes
water
sea salt
balsamic vinegar
brown sugar
lemon juice

Gently fry chopped onions in a saucepan until soft, using a good puddle of oil and a sprinkling of sea salt. Add the spices (at least 1-2 tsp of each, less of chilli) and fry them for a minute or two. Add some fresh chilli if you like, and the ginger.
Add the lentils (one cup per 2-3 people) and stir until well coated and integrated.
Add tomatoes and enough water to at least cover the lentils.
Cook gently on stovetop. Stir now and again to stop the lentils sticking. They will absorb the water and you may need to add more water to get the desired consistency. (I think this takes about 30 minutes as a very rough guide.)
Once ready (when the lentils are soft and mushy), 'correct' the dish with a slosh of balsamic, a pinch of brown sugar and the juice of one or two lemons. Add more salt and pepper as need be.

Katie also suggests adding finely chopped carrot or red pepper. You could fry some more spices and add them at the end, as is traditional.

Good served strewn with some chopped avocado and fresh tomato, squeeze of lemon, crack of pepper. Serve with crusty bread or rice and a green salad.

Throat singing: married to amazement

Like the Mary Oliver poem, I want to live life as a bride married to amazement. And I love to share that amazement with my children, stretching the boundaries of their reality this way and that. Plus they're easier to impress than my husband!

It was with him, though, that I first came across Mongolian throat singers. It was a summer evening in Amsterdam, that truly wonderful city. I was fresh from having fallen into the tourist trap of stepping out in front of one of the hundreds of cyclists that bike the narrow streets. (Later I was to live and cycle in Oxford, where a tourist nearly took me out in a similar fashion.)

We came across a group of unusually dressed Mongolians busking. they looked a bit like this, with instruments sporting horse heads:

Image from Wikipedia's page on throat singing. 

Their music was strange and exotic. There were whistling and low, vibrating sounds, and I believe the odd realistic horse whinny. Then I started wondering where the whistling was coming from... they all had their mouths open. NO! They were whistling with open mouths!

We bought their CD and promptly lost it, and I never heard that sound again until I searched for it on YouTube recently. I was amazed again. I hadn't realised that the same singer doing the open-mouth whistling was simultaneously making the very low sound! Furthermore, when women do it, it sounds exactly the same as when men do it!

The children were fascinated. There are many videos of traditional men doing it, but I particularly enjoyed hearing this normal western bloke who's mastered it (perhaps because he is unaccompanied and therefore it's completely clear that he's making all the sounds himself) and this Mongolian woman. It's very hard to believe such a low sound could come out of any woman's mouth, let alone an eerie whistle at the same time.

Be amazed, and enjoy.

Inspiration from the fabulous Hamilton Gardens

So, to continue from last night before we were so rudely interrupted by heavy rain, thunder, lightning and hail! First, the most inspiring garden at the Hamilton Gardens in terms of getting cracking at home. It's called ...

It's about the size of a normal backyard and intensively gardened in the permaculture style, cramming edible stuff all over the place, as well as flowers and places for people to sit, play and generally enjoy life. There is even a beehive on top of the grapevine-clad pergola for maximum pollination. It always makes me think how we imagine that children need vast expanses of lawn to play on, but that they really love nooks, crannies, secret paths and mounds. My children love this garden!

Of course there is a chicken tractor, a worm farm and a compost bin.

 A wildflower patch under a crabapple tree

Fruit trees are espaliered around the border fences (leafless, because it's barely springtime). Check out the clothesline to Jack's right. 

Now let's stroll to the Te Parapara garden, a recreation of a traditional Maori garden. This is not only a faithful replica of how pre-European Maori would have gardened, but it is packed full of ancestral and spiritual references. It's totally unique - being the ONLY replica of a pre-European Maori garden - and beautiful. I am always amazed by it.

These mounds are freshly planted kumera (sweet potato). Yum. One of the huts is just for storing kumera in.

One of many traditional carvings. These carvings were all done by hand and each is symbolic of something or someone.

And to the most beautiful (I think) garden: the Italian Renaissance garden. Is this really New Zealand - surely we are in Italy?

Now it's just a short walk to the Indian garden.

Remember we are barely out of winter. In summer the flowers are a complete riot of colour.

The fountain in the sheltered area (there must be a proper term for it, but it escapes me!). That's the Waikato river in the background.

The ceiling of the sheltered bit. Such detail.

For the first time yesterday we saw the new Tudor Garden with its magnificent mythical sculptures. Every few years a new garden is added, each more creative than the last, I think.

Faun

Griffin

Unicorn

There are several more wonderful gardens, each with distinct character: the Japanese and English gardens are also favourites of ours. But I think this post is already long enough. Hopefully it is encouragement to come and visit!

A garden visit like no other

The city we live in, Hamilton, doesn't have a great reputation as a place to live. When I tell people about the Hamilton Gardens, they think it sounds a bit ho-hum. However, the truth is so, so different. These gardens could hold their own anywhere in the world, in terms of beauty and creativity. We went for a trip there today - easy, as it's only 5 minutes from our house.

I'd love to show you all the photos, but a large electrical storm has come over our place so I have to shut down the computer! Here's just two photos to whet your appetite.

The palisades of the Te Parapara Garden

Tulips in the Italian Renaissance garden an hour or so after high winds and rain.

It's hard for me to believe I can take photos like these when there is in fact a white fungus growing in my camera lens! Soon I'll get a new one. Generally I select my photos depending on whether the hazy white splodge near the middle is visible or not.

Why I love keeping chickens

I was musing today about what would have to change if our normal food supplies - e.g. supermarkets - stopped. Maybe if the food became wildly unaffordable, or it just wasn't there. Jack pointed out that it would be just like District 12 in The Hunger Games.

The lawn would have to go, for a start, because we'd need the soil to grow food in. Driveways would be a luxury. Most ornamental trees would be taken out, and replaced with fruit trees. I'd have to learn smartly how to preserve fruit, vegetables and eggs. Yes! People used to preserve eggs because the hens of older chicken breeds don't lay in winter when the days are short.

And of course, we'd all have hens AND a rooster or two, and we'd be eating the ones we didn't need to keep for laying. Which got me thinking why I love keeping chickens.

A photo that Jack took of me holding my biggest and most beautiful hen, Cleverclogs.

10 reasons why I love having chickens
1. The magic of the fact that we feed them mostly grain and scraps, and their very clever bodies make elegant and delicious bundles of protein, fat, vitamins and minerals, and give them to us!
2. They are easy, and visiting them to tend to their food and water needs is almost always pleasant.
3. They keep themselves looking so healthy.
4. They connect us with the thousands of generations before us who have kept fowl.
5. They are beautiful - some more than others. Our three brown shaver hens look lovely, but it's the older breeds that really grab me. Our black Orpington is stunning, with iridescent feathers that gleam blue and bottle green in the sun.
6. They keep us company when we garden, much like cats. Only the chickens have their bellies in mind.
7. They absolutely love to eat things we hate: cockroaches, snails, slugs, and those stinky green vegetable bugs that plague tomatoes and beans in summer. And turn them into aforementioned eggs.
8. They make very endearing gentle little clucks to remind us they're there.
9. They operate strongly on their instincts. When the sun sets, our hens are desperate for the highest possible perch. When that egg-laying urge comes, they desperately want a private place to lay their egg. When I stand over them, they squat down and balance themselves ready for me, their rooster, to mount them!
10. They teach us a lot about ourselves. Hen-pecked, pecking order, feeling clucky, brooding, in a flap and being chicken (scared). A few years ago Jack asked me why it is that he feels his needs are more important that anyone else's. I explained that we all feel like that, and asked him if the chickens felt that way. Yes they do, he said. (Parents excepted, of course. Suddenly there are little creatures whose needs are more important than ours.)

The value of some roundness

Lately I've come to appreciate how a room that's otherwise full of angles benefits from some round shapes. It makes it more shapely and loving, somehow.

Our lounge room has a sloping ceiling, and the walls, ceiling and windows are very sharp-looking. As a balance, I've included lamps and a round table, which seem to work well.

This classic 70's style window looks way better since we got a curved curtain rail.  An interior designer recommended and organised it, and I can't believe how well it works. It's almost a sculpture in our lounge!

I found this old lamp base at a garage sale, and had the shade made through Mixt in Auckland. I took the base in and they used their good taste and experience to advise me on the dimensions. The fabric is from Hemptech; I think it's Karo Shingle.

I spotted this old table at someone's house and said how I liked it. I had been looking for a round table for a couple of years. "Do you want to buy it?" she said. I did. I like its curvy legs.

This lamp called to me from the window of my local Salvation Army shop. The shade was bought through Trade Me, and the fabric is just sacking (hessian). It goes well with the weave of the hemp.

And onto the dining room... we love our 'orbs'. 

Even a bit of curve on the dining chairs helps.

The dining table has shapely legs!

A birthday tradition: Lolly cake recipe

Every year for the past three years, lolly cake has been on the 'required' list for kiddie birthdays in this house. It's not to my taste, but the children love it and a few adults do, too! Plus it adds wonderful colour to a party table.

The recipe is below. It contains gluten, dairy, fat, sugar, artificial colours and flavours. It is almost devoid of anything healthful. But it only appears in our house once a year (because our children have birthdays only three days apart). Most of all, happy childhood memories and family traditions are, I think, very healthy.

My own childhood party food memories are cream-filled brandy snaps and mallowpuffs. They announce "Special, honoured, treat-time" to me.

What are your favourite party food memories?

Lolly cake. Cropped from a larger photo - I never thought I'd be blogging about lolly cake! Now I'll have to wait until next year to get a good lolly cake photo.

LOLLY CAKE
Recipe by Alison Holst, barely modified.

125g butter
1/2 can sweetened condensed milk (about 200g)
1 tsp vanilla
250g packet malt biscuits
180-250g lollies, either 'eskimos' or 'fruit puffs'
dessicated coconut to coat

Melt the butter in a bowl or pot big enough for all the ingredients.
Stir in the condensed milk and vanilla, and mix well.
Crumb the malt biscuits finely, either in a food processor or by putting them in a plastic bag and rolling them with a rolling pin.
Chop the eskimos into about 8 peices, or fruit puffs into 3 or 4 pieces.
Combine everything together well in the bowl or pot containing the butter mixture.
Form mixture into 3 or 4 cylinders. Roll these in coconut, then place in covered container and refrigerate several hours or overnight.
Cut cylinders into slices 10-15mm thick.

These are nice in goodie bags for the guests to take home, too.

A celebration

Anna's 6th birthday party. She'd been looking forward to it for months, and written out the invitations, menu, games and prizes for me.

I did a bit of digital spraypainting over the phone numbers just now, for privacy.

And the cake - she didn't forget to instruct me on which cake she wanted.

About two hours of decorating later...

We had a happy bunch of girls, full of creative ideas with gingerbread men.

A fitting celebration for our vibrant girl.