Postcards from the Coop

Several years ago--before we had our own flock in the backyard--I started collecting postcards illustrated with chickens. Most date from about 1908-1913. They are tucked in with Easter decorations, and I pull them out every spring and stack them in a basket on our dining room sideboard. I've not yet figured out a creative way to display them, so they sit there by the door as if they just arrived in today's mail. They're of the same era as our house, and I like both the nostalgic images and the sentiments expressed on them.

This was a time when hens in a backyard were probably more common than not, and definitely not the novelty our little urban flock is. I always wonder why the sender chose a postcard depicting chickens, over the rabbits and eggs and flowers that decorated other Easter postcards of the time. I like to think it was an affection for chickens.

I feel some guilty pleasure in reading the messages on back.

Usually the messages are simply "How are you?" or "Happy Easter". They are like split-second time travel, quick scrawled messages that remind me of pre-electronic text messages. Not much room to write, just a quick reminder or message:

"Maurice -- Can't tell yet what time I will be home. Not before the 9 o'clock train anyway -- but sometime to-morrow night. Bertha"

Dear Effie -- Say, I am waiting for a letter saying when you are coming to stay with us. I am going to stay at home now for Stanton hired Elmert Ruch. Grandma R is awful bad don't think she will last long. Bobby Kerry is getting better. Ota. 

Dear Augusta -- How are you all. We are all quite well. Only a bad cold. Am sorry I did not write sooner. I tho't sure it was your turn to write or else I would of wrote. Etta 

To Mildred in New York: Wishing you a happy Easter. --Mother. Don't forget my pocketbook.

Dear Brother Emil -- I thought I would drop you a note to let you know the price of that house. They want $2,000 cash because they have got to sell it cash because the people want their money and it has to be divided between them. Miss Sutter and I got in Fort Wayne all OK. We had some trip. Ha. Ha. - Clarence

Hello Joe-- I received your card last week and am anxious to know what "smart remark" you will make about this card. Doubtless you are very hard to please, but I will try to send some cards to please you. Write soon. E

Hello Gertrude -- Guess who? Look under the stamp. O you kid I'll get you yet. PDQ.  And beneath the still barely affixed stamp, the sender wrote, "String Rubber."

They make me nostalgic for a time when correspondence was deliberate and conscious and chickens roamed a backyard or a small farm as part of the fabric of everyday life.

The Foundling

I came home last week to find a small box on a table on the front porch, right next to the door. It was about 45 degrees out, and I'd been gone an hour or two.

I opened it to find this baby chick:

She was cold, and so little. I quickly took her inside, to where the Jaerhons are in the bathtub, and put her under the heat light.

She started peeping really loudly. Lotte and Olga stopped and cocked their heads at exactly the same angle and the same expression.

I have no idea how long she'd been on the porch. It couldn't have been too long, I don't think. And I have no idea who put her there. Our coop is pretty noticeable, and the chickens are, too, when they are out and about, so I can only assume that someone had taken home a cute baby chick not realizing the work involved in caring for them, and saw that we had chickens.

She's doing well so far. She tries to keep up with the two big girls in the tub, poor thing. They pretty much run her over (they are about four times as big as her). But they do settle down to sleep together, and she seems relieved to be part of their group. Not sure what kind she is. The girls think she's an Easter Egger (she'll lay blueish eggs) or she could be a Welsummer.

Names have been flying, but so far, nothing seems to fit her small self. I wanted to name her Annie (as in Little Orphan Annie) but that was nixed. M suggested Princess Layer (she has little tufts on her cheeks that M seemed to think were reminiscent of Princess Leia's cinnamon-bun hairdo.) K thought maybe Amelia (like Amelia Earhart, for her goggles). We'll see. For now, she's just "sweetie".

Lessons from Henny Penny

Lotte, one of the Jaerhons, takes her worry cues from me.

There are some days where I can take my time with the chickens in the morning. I let them out into the yard, toss them some scratch (because they are standing around expectantly), tidy up their coop, change their water and check their food, then visit with them. I'll pick up random windblown debris from the yard, look to see if the lilacs are budding yet, and chat with Mabel while she follows me around with her inquiring clucks. It gives me a pause to gather my thoughts and my plans for the day, to ground myself after the rush of getting the girls off to school.

But yesterday morning, I was waiting for a phone call for a project I'm working on, and that meant a hurried and very business-like trip to the coop. First, I made a hurried check on the young chicks in the bathroom breeder. Then I ran out to the coop: Chickens out, fed, watered, then back to the house.

They scattered to get out of my way, squawked a bit more, and went from being a happy flock to being a bit on edge--my edginess translated to "be afraid, be very afraid" to them. In their hen minds, they assumed I was acting like Henny Penny because the sky was falling.

That crazy morning turned into a hectic afternoon. Instead of visiting with the girls when they got home from school, I rushed L over to a friend's house, took M to a physical therapy appointment, then rushed home and picked up something at my mother-in-law's house, before throwing on exercise clothes and rushing out the door to strength ball class. By 7 pm, I was on my way back to the house, picked up the girls, stopped at the grocery store, then headed to a 7:30 4H meeting.

I felt boxed in and edgy, and they bickered and sniped in the car on the way home. When we got home at 8:30, I hadn't eaten dinner, hadn't tucked in the hens, hadn't said hello to K, and hadn't had time to hear the girls--to really listen to what their day was like.

I grouchily told them to hurry upstairs and get ready for bed, then grabbed a quick bite to eat while venting the day's frustrations on K.

But once things slowed down and I was able to take a deep breath, I saw that I'd been flying around as mad as a wet hen. It reminded me of the hens' reactions that morning--how my hurried worries caused them to worry. Likewise, my busy chaos had bubbled over and become the girls' busy chaos, and they became as grouchy and flustered as me.

The sky was not falling, and I needed to quit acting like it.

I knew I needed to stop, take a deep breath, ignore the messy house and the emails and the next plotted point on the schedule, and go catch up with M&L... to just be with them in an unpressured, unscheduled way.

I realize that some days will be like that. There will be quiet, relaxing days, and there will be crazy-making scattered days. But I tend to forget that if I meet scattered with flustered and frustrated exasperation, it will only escalate and rub off on the girls.

I thanked K for listening and for putting the hens in the coop, then went upstairs to tuck the girls in and reclaim some calm. I shooed Henny Penny away, took a deep breath, and entered the upstairs friction with as much calm as I could muster. "The sky," I said to them, "is not falling."

Their blank looks made me laugh. And my laugh made them relax. It's funny how something as untouchable as a mood can create a visible reaction--in hens and in humans.

Sowing Spring

Early Jersey Wakefield cabbage sprouts sown two weeks ago.

Yesterday it was 71F out, and the hens were happily sunning and dusting themselves. Today, it's gray and gloomy and the mercury has topped out at 28F. It's a good day to stay inside and invoke the first whispers of spring with a bit of soil and seeds.

I have two different varieties of cabbage to try this year. One of them--Early Jersey Wakefield--is a pointy heirloom variety of cabbage. I planted a couple of rows in a flat two weeks ago. Today I'm adding Copenhagen Market, an early-1900s heirloom cabbage variety from Denmark. Hopefully that will spread out my cabbage harvest just a bit. I'll set aside seeds to plant outside in late summer, as well, for a fall harvest.

I also received a free packet of Red Romaine lettuce seeds from Baker Creek Heirlooms, so I'm adding a few rows of lettuce to the flat in my kitchen. I don't usually start lettuce indoors--those easy-to-wilt leaves seems sensitive to transplanting--but I want to set some out early this year and am hoping for early home-grown salads.

I mixed together organic potting soil with vermiculite, a combination I've not tried before. It's light and loamy, and carries an earthy scent that is a prelude to crisp lettuce and fragrant tomato seedlings. This peaty scent comes ahead of true spring, and I relish it for its promise. (L likes the earthy scent too. She kept going over to the newly planted flat, breathing deeply and saying, "Oh that smells so good!") That rich soil scent takes me back to my grandfather's garden, in the back corner of his yard, just behind a huge spruce that sheltered skittering rabbits.

There in my kitchen, I pull the flat out from under the light, where the first couple of rows of cabbage have sprouted. I slip in plant markers, then wiggle the point of a knitting needle just enough to make about 12 divots in the mix. Then I carefully tip the seed packet toward my palm and use tweezers to pick out seeds one at a time and drop them into their prepared dark cradles.

It is amazing to me that a tiny sphere as miniscule and unassuming as a grain of sand contains the blueprints and material to provide a nice jaunty cabbage for coleslaw or pigs-in-blankets.

I tuck the seeds in gently and set the flat on the shelf back under the lights. Because it's a cool-weather crop, I'm opting not to use my heat mats beneath the flat. I want to see if the germination rate is better without it, and will use this flat only for my cooler weather crops and for seeds that don't need heat to germinate.

Next up after cabbages: Aswad eggplant and three varieties of peppers on the 15th. I normally start most of my tomatoes on March 15 each year along with the peppers and eggplants, but last year they were way too big, too fast, and I ended up having to place them in the garden a little early simply because of space issues. Even with Wall-o-Waters they seemed to struggle, and this year I'm planning to set tomatoes out a week after the average last day of frost (May 15). I'll put black plastic down on the soil to make sure it's toasty warm before I set my heat loving plants out.

No worries for my cabbages, though. They'll go outside in about a month to enjoy some cool weather. But that means we'll need to do some chicken-proofing on the garden beds within the next few weeks.

My flats planted and under lights, I sort through my seeds to feed my yearning for spring, then I head outside to let the hens out of the coop for the day. To them, it will seem winter has returned, but I know spring has started in my kitchen, and it won't be too much longer before it will be starting in the garden, too.

Norwegian Jaerhons and Chicken Math

Norwegian chicks? Ya, you betcha.

As I write this, there are two little Norwegian Jaerhon chicks peeping and hopping around in my downstairs bathtub. We weren't planning to get more chickens, but between L's persistence and my own hen-hoarding tendencies, it just happened.

My husband's family is Norwegian, and L has always loved all things Norwegian. She's read Norse Mythology, loved the stories of her Norwegian ancestors, and (when she was very little with white-blond hair) told people she had "Viking Princess hair."

So it wasn't surprising that she kept asking when we could get Norwegian Jaerhon chickens. Never having heard of this particular breed (and pretty sure we weren't going to find Jaerhon chicks in the big galvanized tubs at the local feed store) I did a little reading about them.

Pronounced "yarehahn," the word Jaerhon means "yard hen," or "yard bird." They are the only true Norwegian breed of chicken (don'tcha know), having originated there around 1920 or a little earlier. They aren't an American Poultry Association recognized breed, and have only been in the US since about 1998. They are small hens--a little bigger than Bantams--but are said to lay regular sized, white eggs. According to Wikipedia's scant info about the breed, they "can wear themselves out by laying lots of large white eggs." They are cold-hardy and good foragers, but can be flighty.

There are so many interesting, beautiful breeds of chicken. I've been wanting a Lavender Orpington, and would love a true Ameraucana (layers of blue-green eggs). But Jaerhons were intriguing, and they looked like pretty little hens.

They are small, I reasoned. 

Knowing that we already have seven hens, I began to use what's called "Chicken Math." This is my kind of math--one based on flexibility and subjective criteria rather than cold, unyielding numbers.

Here's how Chicken Math works: We have Violet, Mable, and Thelma and Louise. Those are the four big girls. But Pearl, Oreo, and Clover are small Bantam-sized girls. You count each of them as a half-chicken. Then again, Oreo and Clover are getting older and may not be laying much, as far as egg production. They're more in the pet category, right? So they are actually one-quarter chicken. So really, we have five chickens, if you add up our fractional chickens. And since Jaerhons are small, they are like Bantams, and would just count as half-chickens.

You can't just introduce one new chicken, because it would get picked on, but a pair of newcomers tend to blend into the flock better. Since two Jaerhons = one big hen, that works out beautifully, doesn't it? So we'd really just have the equivalent of six big hens. That's pretty manageable.

I did a little search on Craigslist. It just so happened that someone who keeps Jaerhons up in the mountains, on the Western Slope of Colorado (six or more hours away) was living in Denver with her mother for the winter, and she'd brought her chickens with her. And she had chicks available. How lucky is that!?

Oddly, K did not really understand the luck part of it, or the chicken math, for that matter. In fact, he seemed to imply that this was not really a good thing, and that I might have some sort of addiction. I knew his sister, who has a flock of her own, would be interested in hearing about Jaerhons. "Did you tell her you found a dealer?" K asked. Again, an addict reference. I sensed that he was less than enthusiastic.

In the end, he made the girls (and me) promise that this would be it. The flock would grow to a population of no more than nine. Or, well, six, if you do the math correctly. And that is how, at 8:00 last night, K found himself inventing a contraption for the tub that would hold the chick waterer, and rigging up a more secure cover for the little fliers. I don't know where his hesitation comes in.

Postscript: As I blogged in a later post, the Jaerhons ended up being GREAT fliers, and went to live in the country with my sister-in-law, where their aeronautical feats wouldn't land them in the neighbor's yards. She reports that they are, as promised, great egg layers, and that in spite of being small hens, their eggs are the same size as (sometimes larger than) the eggs produced by her large fowl.

Best Buds

Sister, sisters...

You never see one of them without the other one. I can't help laughing at the two Australorp pullets -- the youngest in the coop. We got them from someone nearby when they were just about 8 weeks old. They have always been pretty skittish, and justifiably so as they weren't handled as much as our other chicks. They aren't laying yet, but they should be getting close.

They are highly suspicious of me because I have, on occasion, actually picked them up. This, they think, is beyond the pale and really not done. They protest loudly, and it sounds as if they think I've selected one of them as a soup ingredient. When I put the offended biddy down, she runs for her BFF, and they both glare at me.

They do not go anywhere separately. If you look for one Australorp, the other is always there. One runs across the yard, and the other is close on her scaly heels. They roost together at night, and siesta together during the day.

Their names have not settled on them yet. Poppy, Prudence, Betty, Minnie, Onyx, and Henrietta have all been floated out there, and none seem to really fit. It may sound strange, but some names really fit chicken personalities, and you just can't give a hen a name that doesn't ring true.

I think they need names that go together, since they are such bosom buddies. Ava and Zsa Zsa, Mary Kate and Ashley, or maybe Laverne and Shirley.

Yesterday, M had an appointment, and I had to herd them all into the run since I was going to be gone awhile, and I wanted them to be safely contained. They'd been outside most of the morning enjoying the spring-like temps, and were not really inclined to be cooped up. I tossed some curly lettuce into the run, and all of them except Clover and Australorp #1 went charging in. I cornered Clover and scooped her up, putting her in with her sisters. But Australorp #1 suddenly realized she was Outside By Herself.

If she'd had a cartoon bubble over her head that told me what she was thinking, it would have looked like this:

O.M.G.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

She turned and ran, wings akimbo, black feathers waving, legs moving as fast as they could go. I tried to follow her calmly, in a non-threatening fashion, thinking I'd corner her and then pick her up. She ran like a fugitive. Zigged, zagged, squawked, flapped, hopped, and panicked. I cornered her more than once, and she dodged just out of reach.

Meanwhile, Australorp #2 and the rest of the hens were watching from the run. I could not tell if they were entertained, unconcerned, or rooting for one or the other of us, because I was running around my yard like a pinball. From a distance, no one would have seen Australorp #1, just me running in halting zig-zags around my backyard. I do recall aiming a colorful invective at her at one point.

Finally, I was able to grab her. She squawked indignantly, and I opened the run door and scooted her inside. She ran to Australorp #2 to tell her all about it. They both looked at me with disdain.

Since then Australorp #1 has steered clear of me, as I am obviously a Predator and must be avoided at all costs. This morning I brought her some of last night's leftover cornbread as a peace offering. Can chickens scowl? Because that was the look she gave me. She did take the cornbread, but only after I moved a fair and safe distance away. I tried to make nice with her, but she'll take more time to win over. And once she starts laying, she should calm down just a little. But in the meantime, she's my little fugitive pullet.

Maybe I should call them Thelma and Louise...

Homemade Yogurt

I have never been a big fan of yogurt. I'll eat it, knowing that those live cultures are good for me, but it's not my treat of choice. Then I started making yogurt myself, and I find that homemade yogurt is so much better--it's milder, lighter, and somehow more satisfying than store-bought yogurt.

I started making yogurt because my husband and the girls eat so much of it (and the chickens love it, too), and I'd heard it was really easy to make at home. My friend Jenna makes it often, and she inspired me to try it myself.

When you consider that a half-gallon of organic milk is around $2, and makes a little more than four pints of yogurt, that's a pretty good savings. Not only that, I know exactly what's in it, and where it came from.

To sweeten, we stir in some homemade jam, or honey with a splash of vanilla. It's a great way to use up jelly or preserves that didn't gel completely. K likes to put it over his cereal or oatmeal, and the girls love it over fresh, sweetened strawberries.

The process is pretty simple--just make sure you start it when you won't need your oven for eight or more hours. I make it in the evening around 8 pm and leave it in the oven overnight. I've seen several different methods (some make it in a slowcooker, or you can buy a yogurt maker), but here's how I make it:

You'll need:

• 1/2 gallon of milk (I use 2 percent or nonfat; I've used whole milk as a treat from time to time).
• About 2 T. of plain, nonfat yogurt to use as starter (I use an organic Greek yogurt --just make sure there's nothing in it besides milk and active cultures). You can use homemade yogurt for starter, but I've found that I can only do that one or two times, before going back to a small store-bought container to build it back up. I have made it with as little as 2 tsp., and find that the more starter I used doesn't mean thicker yogurt. In fact, a heavy dose of starter seems to make the resulting yogurt thinner and a little grainier.
• Candy thermometer or other cooking thermometer.

Pour 1/2 gallon of milk  into a large saucepan or soup pot.

Heat slowly to about 170F, or 180F.

While it's warming, I fill five pint jars with hot water to warm them, set out lids/bands (I reuse them each week), turn on the light in the oven, and pull out a roaster. I fill the roaster with about 2 inches of hot water, and set it in the oven with the lid on it. You don't have to use pint jars -- you can use a large glass bowl if you prefer. I like having them in jars so that I can fit things in the refrigerator more easily.

Once the milk has hit about 170F, let it cool until it's about 110F.

Take out about 1/2 c. of warm milk, and whisk it in a small bowl with the plain yogurt. Then pour that mixture back into the pot with the rest of the milk. Stir to mix. Pour water out of waiting jars. Divide milk among five warm jars, tighten lids, then place each in the roaster/water bath in the oven. Replace the lid, close the oven door, and leave the oven light on. This will keep it to just about the right temperature while the yogurt starts to form.

Leave overnight, or about 8 hours, resisting the temptation to check on it.

It will firm up more in the refrigerator. If you want it to be really thick and creamy, like Greek yogurt, strain it through cheesecloth for several hours. The liquid whey will sink to the bottom, leaving a really thick, wonderful yogurt behind.

Homemade yogurt will keep for several weeks in the refrigerator, but we haven't really tested that timeline--ours gets gobbled up in less than a week.