Bad Vibes? And a Bear

Hen jungle gym

The hens had stopped laying.

Our five Buff Orpingtons were only 16 months old. And as far as what I’ve learned about laying hens, they should have a couple of years at least of steady egg production. But in this hot and dry July, each day when I checked the nest boxes, I would be disappointed.

We’d already experienced weeks of only 1 egg per day for the whole flock. Then two weeks went by with no eggs. Zilch.

When it comes to factors that might impact laying, John and I reviewed the usual suspects:

Was it the heat? Our girls definitely had not been acclimated to extremely hot weather when the big heat wave hit at the end of June. And since then, the weather has been very warm or even hot.

Was one hen, or several hens molting? Molting is a phase when nature gives laying hens a break for their reproductive systems and they don’t lay eggs for a while. Also, a hen will lose a lot of feathers—and there had been loads of feathers all around our girls’ pen.

Fright? I thought I’d heard the hens making their alarm squawking frequently the last few weeks, so maybe some wildlife was getting a little too close and fear was impacting their laying. In this busy summer, John hasn’t gotten to weed-whacking the underbrush next to the pen. Unfortunately, that means there’s plenty of good cover for a stalking coyote or bobcat.

Despite all these possibilities, I figured I knew the most likely cause: Broodiness.

This summer, we’d been dealing with one hen after another turning broody. When a hen is in egg-hatching instead of egg-laying mode, she doesn’t lay eggs. I had to wonder, if each broody hen was giving off some kind of pheromone/broody chemical that was affecting the other girls.

In other words, bad hen vibes.

Needless to say, I was getting discouraged. Days on end with all the labor of hen-caring, but without the reward of fresh eggs!

A little history: Before we got our first flock, John built the whole hen-pen complex around a huge, old, big leap maple stump. What can I say? It was on the site we’d selected for our hens, and we figured the craggy stump would make an entertaining climbing structure for hens. And I have to say, all our hens do like to hang out on it.

More importantly, though, the stump was way too huge to try and remove or dismantle in phases… Or even prune.

Plus…it’s maple! A super hard wood. And despite various parts of the stump that were decaying, lots of other parts of it were live wood. So that stump was here to stay.

The stump’s elderly age, though, hasn’t kept it from sending out shoots of new growth. And even the smallest branches are too hard to trim without a giant pair of loppers.

Anyway, recently—again, the busy summer—I’d let the new growth get a little out of control.

Then last week, I was doing a thorough tidying up of their pen. Worming my way behind the stump and the new branches, I checked for any droppings I’d better pick up. I looked down and Lo and Behold: a cache of eggs!

A wintertime view of all the stump shoots

Those darn hens had been laying this whole time, but not in their nest boxes. For some reason, their tiny bird brains told them to lay in this new, hidden spot!

So maybe there really was something to my bad vibes and broody hens theory…Because interestingly, this little egg-laying hideaway was the furthest spot away from the nesting boxes the broody hens were always sneaking into.

So there I was, finding 8 eggs that I had no choice but to throw away. As I understand it, the shells of farm eggs are covered with a kind of “bloom” or a layer of protection that’s washed away during egg processing. As a result, farm eggs are far less perishable than store eggs.

Still, by my calculations, some of these eggs had been out in the heat for weeks—I couldn’t imagine that they would be safe to eat.

So, 8 eggs wasted. Now it was up me to set the girls straight. I crammed a bunch of small wood debris in their laying spot, to direct them back to the nest boxes. I figured I had solved the problem.

Are you hearing a “but”?

Yes. Well, the hens did not return to their nests—all 3 of which stayed empty the next 2 days.

Instead, they shimmied their way past the wood debris and found an even more secluded hidey-hole to lay in. I know this because yesterday, I found 4 more eggs behind the stump!

At this point it was dawning on me that hens were a lot smarter than anyone gave them credit for.

I complained to John, our in-house keeper of common sense, and naturally he had an easy solution. “Why don’t you just put up a fence barrier?”

Feeling stupid, I said, “Why didn’t I think of that?” Wisely, John didn’t reply.

So yesterday, I got a bunch of poultry wire fencing and crammed it into the space, covering every inch of the hidey hole. 

And ta-da! Today I found 2 eggs. In the nest boxes.

Early this morning, I'd seen a hen from my kitchen window up on the stump, appearing to look forlornly down at the hidey hole--the she jumped off the stump. I’m not going to get too cocky, though. I’m sure the girls will come up with a way to make extra work for me!

PS…Bears. If you’ve followed this blog for awhile, you’ll know I’ve mentioned seeing black bears in the neighborhood. Our private lane has new bear scat on it nearly every day. But in our 16 years in the Foothills, I’ve seen probably 10 or so bears. Young bears, big bears, Mama bears with cubs.

But all from a comfortable distance. Like 50-100 yards distance.

Not today. A couple of hours ago, I was riding my bike out on the main road, about 1/3 mile from our private lane when to my right, I saw something black in my peripheral vision. I glanced over, and there was a large black bear up on its hind legs, no more than 20 feet away!

It was close enough for me to see its eyes, glittering dark in the midday sun.

I instantly recalled hearing that black bears can run 40 miles an hour. That meant it could have reached me in seconds, far faster than I could pedal away.

But before I could react, as soon as the bear saw me it dropped to all fours and lumbered further into the brush. I've also heard black bears are shy; still, one thing’s for sure: I’ll be sure to be extra attentive on that stretch of road!

 

Stress Reduction for the Busy Gardener

Marionberries and loganberries for the freezer

Gardening is supposed to be relaxing…

Then why does it often feel so stressful? Here at Berryridge Farm in mid-July, the blueberries, marionberries and other cane berries are going like gangbusters, and I’m picking and putting up fruit every day. 

Here's a pic of one day's harvest of marionberries and loganberries, including plenty for our breakfast!

Despite the pleasures of berry season, though, there's a lot of other pressures. In this drought summer, you can practically see the soil drying out before your very eyes, so I’ve been spending my gardening time watering everything. And trying to fit in mulching when I can.

As a result, I’m behind on weeding.

As in, WAY behind. A number of crops are looking pretty peaky, and I’m sure it’s because of all the nearby weeds I haven’t gotten to are sucking up the available water and nutrients. Some of these are perennial plants too (hello loganberries and rhubarb, I know the buttercup has you surrounded). And the problem is, I know the weeds are going to impact future yields if I don’t get them under control.

All my compost piles need turning (2 kitchen scrap piles, and 2 chicken manure piles), the beds could use a top dressing of compost but I haven’t gotten to that either. And I have yet to finish thinning the apple trees, which should have been done over a month ago.

Plus, life. Writing deadlines, housework, cooking. We just finished one round of family visits, and are getting ready for another. Plus the worry about our well going dry only piles on the stressors.

So what’s a busy food gardener to do?

I’ve found the best stress reducer is very simple. Extremely simple, in fact. It’s…drum roll…

Tai chi.

I discovered Tai chi after a cycling accident this past winter. I couldn’t work in the garden for nearly 3 months— which is why I’m so very behind this year on everything. I was unable to chop wood, or do housework; I certainly couldn’t ride my bike, and I couldn’t walk without a cane. But I could do some basic Tai chi moves without any pain whatsoever.

I found a lovely woman on YouTube, Leia Cohen, who does beginner’s videos billed as “Tai Chi 5 Minutes a Day.” Tai chi is considered one of the martial arts, but to me it feels like moving meditation—simple, flowing movements paired with slow, rhythmic breathing.

2nd book of a trilogy

I tried sitting meditation shortly after the holidays of this year—I’d gotten super stressed out trying to finish my recent novel, Becoming Emma--part of my Irish Fairy Cottage mini-series. But I’m not good at sitting; I would just get restless. I also felt like I was sort of wasting time, when I had so many other to-dos to take care of.

But Tai chi feels completely different to me.

The movements super easy—so simple, in fact, I can’t imagine any way a person could possibly injure themselves, unlike when doing, say, Yoga or Pilates. The moves are named after and reflect what we find in nature—water, animals, trees, and the universe we live in. A few examples: “Hand like clouds,” “Embracing the moon,” “Hug the tree,” “Flying like a bird.”

The movements require very little physical exertion, yet helps move energy in your body.

Since I’m a total amateur, this is not medical advice, and I hope you’ll take my experiences and comments with a grain of salt. With family, writing and taking care of our place being my top priorities, I don’t have plans to take any real-life classes at this time. (Which would involve trips to town, which stresses me out.)  I would like to learn more about how Tai chi actually works, but that’s for the future.

I’m just happy to have memorized several of the videos, and I do Tai chi about 15 minutes every morning before breakfast. It’s calming and relaxing, and gives me a positive start for the day. I haven’t missed a day since early March.

I credit Tai chi with helping me recover from the bike accident—I’m back to daily bikerides and full days of homesteady tasks. I find I have more stamina out in the garden, and when it comes time to stand for a few hours putting up our crops, my back and legs don’t get sore.

Best of all, though, is feeling like I have a calmer, quieter mind. I can look out at all those weeds, and instead of getting overwhelmed, or kinda depressed, I simply aim to do what I can, in the time I have. The website of the Tai chi I discovered is www.taiflow.com ... even if Tai chi doesn't interest you, the site has some interesting info about wellness. 

And you'll find all my gardening books at www.susancolleenbrowne.com !

Good Debt for the Homestead

I haven’t talked much about financial matters on this blog—although I have discussed our personal finances in my two homesteading memoirs, Little Farm in the Foothills and Little Farm Homegrown.

If you’ve read those books, you’ve probably figured out John and I are of fairly modest means. Back when we bought this acreage, we put more of our resources toward the land (10 acres) and less toward the house (we purchased a new, but definitely plain vanilla manufactured home). 

We don’t take vacations and rarely eat out, since any extra money we have generally goes toward maintaining our place.

The only debt we carry is a few hundred dollars on a credit card, and a 30-year mortgage—which, if my casual calculations are accurate, we will pay off in less than 20 years.

To me, good debt is your mortgage—an investment in your future. Not-so-good debt might be taking out a home equity line of credit so you can take a luxury vacation, or buy a bigger car. So you have probably guessed John and I would need a really good reason to go into hock.

Which we did recently. Big time.

When our wonderful neighbors Alan and Gretchen (also our hen gurus) were building their new home this past year, they included a solar array installed by a local outfit. John and I had long dreamed of having solar at Berryridge Farm, but we figured the cost would be so far out of the ball park for us it wasn’t worth thinking about.

But our neighbors mentioned how affordable solar could be, especially with all the various rebates, and there would be considerable savings on your power bill once the system was up and running. So John and I decided to look into getting solar at our place.

Yes, it was a LOT of money.

But we’d often discussed what we would do in the event of a major power outage—I’m talking about an outage that might last not just days, but weeks. In this kind of emergency, we could probably get along with our wood stove for heat and cooking, and with a few gallons of gas, run the generator just enough to keep our perishable food from spoiling. And if we ran out of gas, there would be canned goods and whatever’s in the garden.

But what about water?  Without power for our well pump, there’s no way to get that water out of the ground. And that really concerned John and me.

So we called the solar contractor that our neighbors hired and invited them to our place. They made some calculations like how many kilowatts of power we generally used each month for both the house and the well, then confirmed how many panels they thought we’d need.

Then we started to talk money.

As it turns out, we were eligible for both the power company’s and the manufacturer’s rebates. Even so, the cost was considerable.

Array for house power on shop

Rough numbers: $30,000 for an array that could produce more than enough power to run our house, and $12,000 for an array for the pump house (which contains a 119 gal. water tank) that would also include a battery system that would run the well pump almost indefinitely.

We definitely did not have that kind of money. But we did have good credit. And with a few adjustments to our budgeting, and reducing the little financial cushion we have each month, we could afford the loan terms: a 20-year loan, at a little over $300 dollars a month.

Additionally, the power company has an arrangement with an area credit union, and the loan process was seamless, done entirely online.

Pump house array, batteries are inside

We are super pleased with this decision. For us, $327 per month is a great trade-off for peace of mind
and helping the environment. And once our array was online in early 2021, our biggest power bill has been from February, $45 for both the house and the well.

Granted, that cost could conceivably go up in late fall and early winter. Here in this corner of the Cascade foothills, November and December are our darkest months, and I imagine the array will be at its least productive. Still, I predict our power bill will be at least 50% less than our previous cost.

What I especially like is the predictability: Since March of this year, our power bills have been limited to the service charge from the power company, $18/month for both the house and pumphouse. 

Living the homesteady life, as Rosanne Rosannadanna would say, "there's always somethin'." But not having to wonder how much you’re going to get socked for your power bills is one less thing to worry about!

Broody Hens and Little Britches

Double the trouble

I’m a slow learner.

Whenever one of our girls goes broody—that is, their mommy instinct kicks in and all they want is to sit on the nest and hatch chicks, even though sometimes there’s no egg(s) in the nest box—I keep thinking it’s just a fluke, the hen will soon work through it, then we’ll be DONE. But no.

I’ve mentioned before that our flock of 5 are all Buff Orpingtons, a breed that’s prone to broodiness. And since mid-spring, we've already had 3 hens going broody.  We’ve been calling all the broody girls “Little Miss Broody” because we can’t really tell them apart. 

Except for one: the most recent brooder. She's a hen John calls “Little Britches.”

An American history buff, John named her after one of his favorite personages from the Old West: the diminutive cattle rustler nicknamed “Little Britches,” a teenage girl who apparently was about 4 foot 8 inches, but was full of derring-do. (Fun fact: she was so (in)famous there's a film about her and her partner in crime, Cattle Annie!)

And this hen really is too big for her britches—although she’s smaller than the other 4, she's definitely the alpha girl, feisty and bossy. She apparently thinks she’s in charge of both the feeder and waterer, and will often peck at the other hens and drive them off.

Anyway, back to the broody girls--you might wonder, why not just let them sit? The problem is, a broody hen doesn’t lay eggs, and is pretty much uninterested in eating or drinking. My concern is especially in summertime, a chicken could get so dehydrated she might die.

See those ruffled feathers? Like I said, cranky!

Anyway, the drill for us is to remove the hen from the nest—and boy, are broody hens cranky! They hiss and snarl at you when you bother them. Next, we put them in a separate fenced orchard with feed and water. Because if you simply return the hen to their regular pen, she’ll just run into the coop and climb right back on the nest.

Anyway, when Little Britches went broody a few weeks ago, a process which turns hens kind of passive and lazy (except when they're sitting on the nest), I started to see the writing on the wall. Then this week brought not 1, but 2 hens going broody simultaneously.

So it definitely looks like a trend. And now I see my future: our 5 hens just may cycle through broodiness, one after the other, in more or less a continuing cycle.

And broody hens are a determined bunch. Yesterday evening, when I was busy watering and mulching beds, I noticed one of the separated hens had disappeared. I had the 2 broody girls in the orchard, then I looked over, and there was only one!

For a minute, I imagined the worst--a hawk swooped down and killed her! But I was outside the whole time; I would have seen if a raptor flew into the yard. And I would have definitely noticed if the other hens were freaking out at the attack. (Wouldn’t I?)

In any event, I quickly got my catastrophizing under control and checked the nest boxes. And what do you know: the hen had somehow found a gap in the fence and snuck back to the coop and onto a nest. So I had to pull her out and put her into the orchard again. I know it’s kind of funny, but I’m just not thrilled about extra chores this time of year, when the garden is so demanding.

And speaking of determined birds…

The local songbirds get very brash during berry season. Despite our best efforts to protect the berries with stretchy nylon netting from stem to stern, wild birds somehow get inside the nets almost every day and have to be chased out. Towhees are frequent trespassers. They’re what I think of as the “Little Britches” of our local songbirds, since they get into the most mischief, and are relentless crop thieves.

But the other night, a towhee wasn’t as smart as he thought he was, and got caught in the net.

John, our go-to guy for wildlife rescuing, was in town doing errands. And we’ve found too many dead birds in our nets—when we weren’t around to free them, they likely died from fright and exhaustion—to want to risk any more. So it was up to me.

I approached the bird, enmeshed in the netting upside down and cheeping for all it was worth—I imagine it was terrified. I tried to gently loosen the netting around it, but the bird seemed to only get more agitated, flailing and flapping away. And for a few minutes, I thought he was getting even more tangled in.

But finally Mr. Towhee shimmied free and instantly flew away—without so much as a thank you… And somehow, despite his close call, I’m pretty sure I’ll be chasing him or his relatives out of the patch for the next two months!

Food Gardening in a Heat Wave

Heat-damaged blueberries

Last week, we watched the weather forecast with dread.

Extreme heat was on the way. The forecast started out predicting highs in the low 90s—dauntingly warm for June here on west side of the Cascade Mountains. A day later the mid-90s were predicted, and the day after that, the high 90s—which was even more freakish for our area. 

The cause was an enormous “heat dome” over most of the West, extending into Canada. You'd have to travel long and far to escape it. But what if road pavement or airport tarmac melted?

Not that it would ever occur to me to leave our place, no matter how hot is got. But my anxiety was building. How would our food crops—accustomed to temps in the 60s and 70s this time of year—get through such heat?

By the time the real hot weather arrived, the forecast went from nerve-wracking to frightening: in two days, it would be a sweltering 107 degrees.

Now I understand that to lots of folks out there, in the American West and Southwest, and many other parts around the globe, 107 degrees is no big deal. You’re either accustomed to just enduring the heat, or you turn up the air conditioning. But here on the west side of the Cascade Mountains, temps like that are unheard of. Few people or businesses—and that’s VERY few—have A/C. And pretty much no one is used to extreme heat.

I had never experienced heat like that, and I'm from the Midwest. But I was more worried about our food crops—we’d had nice rainfall the first couple of weeks of June, so I hadn’t started watering the garden yet. And most of our veggies were seedlings, newly germinated or newly transplanted. Our berries had great fruit set, and were starting to ripen. I had no idea if they could survive temps over 100.

I had to get my head around the thought that we could lose everything—our entire food crop. Not just for the season—maybe we would even lose all our food plants.

And what about the hens? We could lose them too.

They’d never experienced heat like this. I had no idea if they could develop a chicken version of heat stroke. They did have lots of shade to range in, and John filled their waterer to the top.

I was concerned for all the farmers/fruit and vegetable growers in our area. I had no idea how raspberries and blueberries, two of the biggest crops in our county, would fare, or the dairy cattle either.

I was very worried about the wild songbirds too—they weren’t used to this heat either. We set out water for them, and all we could do was hope for the best, for plants and animals.

Feeling bleak, I knew I had to at least try to see what we could save in our garden. I hauled out the hoses and got started. We don’t have soaker hoses or any other kind of watering system, so I wouldn’t be able to get everything watered. So I worked on a priority basis.

Blueberries: They have surface roots so they got first crack at the water. I had already heavily mulched them with wood chips, so I hoped they could survive.

Strawberries: Even if the plants survived, I didn’t know if the berries would make it. 

Veggies: I’d removed the winter mulch off the beds for seeding, so the seedlings had no heat protection at all. I got the beds newly mulched with leaves and compost, then watered it in. Then I covered our most vulnerable root crops—tiny carrots, parsnips and beets—with row cover.

The newly germinated squash, I mulched with brackenfern from the woods, to add some moisture to the soil before the fern fronds dried out. 

I had some tree prunings from the maples right next to the house, and I set those on the potato beds.

Caneberries: Marionberries are our favorites so I keep them well mulched year round. I watered them first. The others would have to wait their turn.

The first day of the wave was around 98, and the humidity was off the charts. It was too hot to work outside, so John and I would stay in until 8 pm or so, then frantically start watering until dark, around 10. As we worked, the mosquitoes were savage—clouds of them, biting you through your clothes. That’s also very unusual, mosquitoes generally aren’t a problem around here. The air was completely still and felt so wet you could wring it out like a dishrag.

The next two days were awful: Day 2 it was around 103, and Day 3, 107. Our outdoor thermometer, getting the heat bounce off the house, read 116. Whatever the real temperature was, all we could do was water the crops and slap at mosquitoes until we were exhausted. Poor John had 22 bites (I counted) on his left elbow alone.

Day 4 arrived…and with it, a breeze. The high would be in the high 80s. Perfect weather to me is around 70 degrees, but I was never so grateful for 88 degrees in my life. Now I had to assess the damage.

The veggie seedlings, with daily watering, came through like champs under the row cover. Likewise the squash babies, with their mulch. The new tomato transplants got burned leaves, but lots of healthy green growth.

I didn’t get a chance to water couple of beds of bolted spinach. The plants mostly fried and won’t reseed. Some ornamentals like coral bells fried too.

Strawberries: lots of melted or partially burned berries, and some sunburned leaves, but they were otherwise okay.

The marionberries, which hadn’t started ripening yet, also champs of the heat wave.

Happy bee balm

And our favorite ornamentals/treats for pollinators, the bee balm, seemed to actually thrive.

The greatest damage was to my beloved blueberries: tons of berries just fried. The result was wilted or melted berries in a sickly shade of beigey-pink. (See above pic.) Lots of growing ends were terminally sunburned. But the shrubs themselves still seemed all right.

Interestingly, a shrub just kitty-corner from the one with the fried berries showed no sign of heat stress. Which tells me that some varieties are more heat-tolerant than others.

Healthy, undamaged blueberries

And the birds? The hens surprised us—and did absolutely great. Their appetites were down, but they laid every day through the heat.The songbirds continued to sing! (Though not in the afternoons.)

As the days go by, I may just be beginning to see the damage. I’ve noted lots of burned foliage on native plants—vine maple, red current, and alder trees. Our lovely grand fir, that we transplanted from the woods, has hundreds of burned ends.

However,  Nature, I’m discovering, is resilient. I just hope the local farmers didn’t lose too much of their crops.

One thing that I’m sure of, is that this heat wave isn’t a one-and-done hot spell. I heard from someone that our region had temps 35 degrees above normal. Temperatures like this could happen again.

The key to giving your food garden the best chance of survival, is to be prepared. Keep your food crops well weeded, so your crops don't have to compete for water. Then throughout the summer, mulch and water, water and mulch. 

You'll find lots of info about mulching in my free gardening guide, Little Farm in the Garden, available at Amazon, Apple, Kobo and all other online bookstores!