Miss Broody Sets a Record, Part 1

I thought our hen had gone permanently broody.

In fact, she had spent so much of her life sitting on a nest without anything to show for it that John and I named her “Miss Broody.”

For those of you new to my chicken tales, Miss Broody is our one remaining laying hen here at Berryridge Farm. I’ve written about her rather colorful young life (and those of her gone-but-not-forgotten “sisters”) numerous times on my Little Farm in the Foothills blog.

To fill you in, broodiness is a state in which a laying hen’s chick-raising instincts kick in. But instead of producing eggs, all she wants to do is hatch them. If there are no eggs in the nest, she sits there anyway—day and night, 24/7.

Now, laying hens are pretty much all about eating, snacking, and scratching the soil, searching for bugs to munch on. It takes a lot of protein and nutrients, vitamins and minerals to produce eggs!

Unfortunately, broody hens aren’t really interested in food, or even water. So as the days or weeks pass without proper nutrition, their health and wellbeing can really dwindle.

I’m no expert, but it seems to me with that kind of dedication, the hen’s hormones have sort of tricked them into thinking they are hatching eggs. 

In any event, a broody hen doesn't actually just sit on the nest—she settles her whole self into the bedding, fluffs out her feathers, and sinks her head into her chest. Eyes half closed, she'll generally act like she’s in a stupor. But woe betide the person who disturbs her: she'll rouse instantly, and squawk or even hiss at you! 

 And since a broody hen completely stops laying, she’s just not earning her keep.

Miss Broody is a Buff Orpington—a breed known for a tendency for broodiness. Research tells me that a hen’s broody period is supposed to last about 21 days. The problem is, the broody hens at our place had really gotten into it—often staying broody for weeks and weeks on end.

 And this summer, Miss Broody was on a hen-brooding marathon: she would just not snap out of it.

 As August wound down, despite my coaxing to come off the nest and enjoy some weeds, and putting feed and water right under her nose, she was eating barely enough to stay alive. 

I had grown resigned to her fate: this poor little chicken was going to live out her days alone in the coop, silent, pale and sickly, until she simply gave up the ghost.

 But at the end of August, there was a new development in the coop... 

Next week: Part 2--Or you can read the full story at Little Farm Writer!

Miss Broody's Latest + a New Newsletter!

Yes, that's Miss Broody behind the white text!

My hen story "Miss Broody Sets a Record" is featured on my new Substack newsletter... Little Farm Writer is where I'll be sharing news and updates each month!

While I love posting here at my Little Farm in the Foothills blog, Substack makes it lots easier for readers to share a post or leave a comment. 

You can also sign up to have my news and stories delivered directly to your email inbox! 

My first (November 2022) newsletter includes the “Miss Broody” tale, and a second story is a "look behind the book" about my new Irish novel, The Fairy Cottage of Ballydara.

I’ll continue to post here, sharing my usual gardening tips, recipes, and stories about homesteading in the Foothills. 

In fact, you’ll find the first installment of the Miss Broody story here on the Little Farm blog this Sunday!

But Little Farm Writer will focus a bit more on in-depth stories--and in the future, some exclusive content. 

I hope you'll take a look...and if you celebrate Thanksgiving, here's wishing you a lovely day!

Protecting Your Food Garden from Sudden Cold

Harvest before the soil freezes solid!

When winter hits all of a sudden, like it did here in the Foothills this month, how do you keep your food garden safe and productive for next season?

Here are a few strategies that worked for my homestead staple crops:

As November approached, I was way behind on my winter garden care—I was so busy watering from mid-summer well into our hot and dry October, that I couldn’t get to my other garden chores. And during our extended stretch of smoky days, I was forced to keep my outdoor time pretty minimal.

Still, the real winter weather wouldn’t arrive for several weeks—plenty of time, I figured, to do my usual harvesting, trimming, and mulching.  

But those plans suddenly fell apart: the summery heat and smoke came to an abrupt end with days of chilly rain—it was almost cold enough to snow. While I don’t mind working in cold weather, the rain would make it impossible to keep my hands warm.

So I had to postpone my chores even longer.

Then a new forecast came along: a blustery northeaster was headed our way, with temps down to 14 degrees.

Holy Smoke. This kind of cold could be dire for an unprepared garden.

In any event, it was very abnormal for this early in November. And on the way was a dry system; the food crops wouldn’t get a cozy little layer of snow to help insulate everything.  

All of a sudden, my delayed winter prep needed to happen ASAP. The weather website said we’d have a one-day break in the rain before the blustery winds hit.

 I had to figure out how to pack several days’ work into a few hours—and what my most vulnerable and valuable crops would need to weather the cold.

Blueberries:

On our place, the berries are our most treasured crop—and blueberries are at the top of the list. Luckily, blueberry shrubs are very cold tolerant; in fact, they actually need a good long spell of below freezing temperatures to encourage next spring’s growth.

My 17 shrubs were still well-mulched from this summer. They would make it through the cold okay.

Strawberries:

After blueberries, our second most valuable crop is strawberries. And right now, my little crop of strawberry crowns, still sitting in their wee pots, were my top priority.

Since last summer’s strawberry crop had been almost non-existent, I was really invested in getting good production for next summer, enough for both fresh eating and freezing.

Being in pots, there was a good chance the cold could damage the roots. But to transplant the crowns right before a northeaster, I was risking the plants suffering transplant shock.

Next best option: I could bring the pots into the shop, where they’d be spared the worst of the cold.

So I pulled up a pot and lo and behold: the roots had developed so well they’d grown all the way through the holes in the bottom of the pots and into the soil of the beds.

Well, there would be no transplanting these babies—the pots would have to stay where they were.

But how to keep the roots from freezing?

I raked up in a wheelbarrow-full of maple leaves that had just fallen from our October Glory tree, and piled the leaves around the pots. Then since the Northeaster would surely blow the leaves to either the other side of the yard or to proverbial kingdom come, I weighed down the leaves with short pieces of lumber.

I also had crowns in 1 gallon pots that had been planted much later, so I figured their root systems were still pretty vulnerable. I dug a shallow depression in an empty bed just south of the shop, where there would be good protection from the wind. Then set the pots close together in the shallow hole in a group, and heeled up the soil around the pots.

After adding more leaves all around this group of pots, I weighed this arrangement down with lumber too.

Okay, I had done all I could for the strawberries. Next, another berry: 

Marionberries:

Our largest marionberry is the most productive plant in the garden.

My concern was that the plant hadn’t had a chance to adjust to the cold—but that was out of my hands.

But good maintenance would help—clipping all the spent canes, and tying up the new ones. But that was a fall chore I’d left half-done. And I needed to finish it today: the high wind will whip around the spent canes with the razor sharp thorns, thus abrading the new canes.

It’s not a quick process, to measure out some string or cord, tie up the canes and not get a zillion lethal thorns stuck in the skin of your hands. But luckily I’d left pieces of cord (from tying the bearing canes up this summer) on the wire supports, and that sped up the process.

Late Apples:

Many of our Florina apples weren’t ripe until the last of October/early November. And after a bear got our last three harvests, I was determined to save this year’s for us. Florinas are excellent storage apples, so we’d be set for weeks.

Besides, the price of organic apples at the store will break the bank!

When I heard temps would drop to the teens, I knew the fruit still on the tree would turn to mush. You can bet I picked those puppies immediately! 

Spinach seedlings:

Next was my fall-sowed spinach—wintered over spinach, which is so sweet by the time the leaves start growing in April, is my favorite Berryridge Farm vegetable. But as hardy as spinach is, these tiny spinach seedlings wouldn’t have had time to adjust to temps in the teens.

This fall’s crop had almost been a bust—critters had been eating the tiny seedlings as soon as the first true leaves sprouted. But I had a couple of dozen that had survived. I surrounded each tiny plant with chopped leaves for mulch, and sprinkled compost on top to weigh down the leaves.

Parsnips:

Now, onto the parsnip bed. Parsnips are another one of those crops I treasure because I can’t bring myself to pay $4 a pound for the brown-tinged roots you find at the store.

My crop was small this year—the same critters who had nibbled my spinach had also snacked on the parsnip sprouts—so I wanted to ensure it was John and me who got to eat them!

Happily, parsnips are incredibly cold hardy, but once the soil freezes solid, you can’t get those roots out for love or money. And I wanted to have a few on hand for some vegetable soup I was planning--and not wait for another three weeks to harvest any. 

As the light waned, I pulled out about a dozen. I chopped off the tops, and used them as mulch: set them on the soil I’d just disturbed with the harvesting process. Finally, I could wind things up.

By the time I was putting away my tools, the pink streaks of sunset had already faded to gray. Then I remembered the one crop I’d forgotten.

Potatoes:

Now, spuds are easy enough to find at the store year round. But the price of organic potatoes had been going nowhere but up this year, and homegrown taters are amazingly good.

We’d had another complication with this year’s crop: with our super warm fall, the foliage of half the crop kept growing into October, instead of dying back weeks before—as it should have. 

Since its recommended that you wait until the tops have withered before harvesting, most of my crop was still in the ground.

Retrieving my hand fork, I harvested one hill and managed  to unearth three nice sized specimens without spearing any.

However, the darkness fell so fast I couldn’t see what I was doing. So I had to leave the rest of the crop in the ground. I gathered the brackenfern I'd used as mulch covering the bed and spread it on those last unharvested hills. 

Hopefully, this mulch and the several inches of soil covering the potatoes would keep them from freezing.

It was dark by the time I finished. But as I went inside and started shedding all the layers of shirts/sweatshirt/jacket/hat and so on, I felt pretty positive that I could sleep easy that night: the most important plants had an excellent chance of making it through the cold just fine.

As you can probably tell, mulch is a big plus when it comes to winter garden prep! If you’d like more information, I have a chapter about mulching in my gardening guide, Little Farm in the Garden. Just click the book cover on the right for a free copy!  

New Ballydara Novel is 30% Off!

Book 7 of the Ballydara series

Four of my books, including my latest Irish novel The Fairy Cottage of Ballydara, have been selected for a special ebook promotion! 

My Village of Ballydara romantic novels The Galway Girls and Becoming Emma, plus my second homesteading memoir Little Farm Homegrown, are also part of Kobo Book’s November 30% Off Sale.

I'm especially delighted about this promo because it features the Special Edition of Becoming Emma: this edition includes two connected, novelette-length short stories, The Secret Well and The Christmas Visitor--both prequels to The Fairy Cottage of Ballydara! 

To see the promotion, visit Kobo Books, and scroll down to Fiction for the novels, and Non-Fiction for Little Farm Homegrown. 

The 30% off Promo Code is 30NOV. 

The promotion lasts until next Tuesday, November 22, 2022. In the midst of all the holiday hustle and bustle, I hope you get a chance to check it out!

Book 4 of the series

 

Included in the Special Edition of Becoming Emma

Book 6.5 of the Ballydara series

Book 2 of the Little Farm gardening books

Smoked Out, Part 2

Photo by Pixabay

Here in the Foothills of the Cascade Mountains, this fall had not been fun. Smoke nearly every day, and dry as a bone. 

Then came a fresh twist: The Smell.

In our neighborhood, a new smell drifted in, one that was actually worse than smoke—if that’s possible.

Rotting manure.

Now I don’t mind the smell of fresh livestock manure. We live in an agricultural county, and driving along the country roads, the smell often tinges the air. It may not smell great, but it means farmers are raising food!

Our neighbor, who has a small herd of cattle, occasionally spreads manure on his pasture just down the hill from us. For John and me, it’s not at all bothersome.

As I understand things, even a large amount of manure, properly managed, i.e., regularly turned and aerated, shouldn’t smell that bad.

But this smell was absolutely foul. As if a ginormous amount of animal waste had been stored in a covered pile, with no way to properly decompose, then suddenly bulldozed into the open air.

Since we’d never, ever smelled this before, I had to wonder: where in the heck was this stench coming from? The wind was from the east-northeast, so the source had to be located in the same direction.

Then it came to me. There’s a chicken operation about ¾ of a mile from our house as the crow flies, located to our northeast: a long, low, windowless animal enclosure. On my daily bikerides, the building is only a couple hundred yards from the road.

I’d never caught any unpleasant odors from the place before.

Yet, now, it made sense that this operation was the culprit. I’m guessing the chicken farmer finally shifted months of stored chicken manure out of the shed and piled it outside. Now it wasn’t the smoke that had me keeping the windows closed—it was that horrible smell.

As October wore on, John and I would search the skies for anything resembling a raincloud. Even a little shower would help: moisture that would rinse some of the smoke or stench from the air. We’d get a few clouds here or there, but nature remained stubborn.

With our area’s unusual heat, and not even a drop of rain, the wildfires a hundred miles away were still going strong.

October 15 dawned. The smell of smoke was more pervasive. You could feel the bite of it in your nose, a slight rawness in your throat. The manure smell was stronger than ever, so we knew the dreaded east wind had arrived.

The next morning, thick, gray smoke hung in the air.

John and I checked the forecast, and there was the ominous link in red: Hazardous Weather Conditions.

It wasn’t just in our county. It was up and down the entire western side of the state. Everyone, not just children or elderly, or those with respiratory conditions, but all residents, were advised to stay indoors. An keep windows and doors tightly shut.

Well, I didn’t. We’d been busy with family for a number of days, so with my usual “no guts no glory” attitude, I tended to our hen, then went out on my bike.

The mature woods on both sides of the road looked just like in the photo above: the light shone through the trees in “Buddha rays,” but instead the lovely effect created by sunshine, it was smoke.

As soon as I returned, since I’d been away from my watering routine, my baby strawberries and spinach needed a good drink.

So out I went. Thinking I was being smart, I wore an N-95 mask, and figured all would be well.

It wasn’t.

I started feeling ill. Queasy. And my chest hurt.

I’d really pushed my luck. I went inside and drank lots of water. The queasiness began to ease. But I still had an ache in my chest.

I Googled my symptoms… and it looked like I had mild carbon monoxide poisoning. I realized how stupid I’d been. I’m no spring chicken, and going out in smoke like this, I’d put my health at risk.

The next day the smoke was worse. The foothills surrounding our place had disappeared; visibility was minimal, maybe a few hundred feet at most.

And my chest still ached. So you can believe my windows were shut tighter than a high-security prison.

All the same, I feel I shouldn’t complain, or make a big deal out of it. I truly cannot imagine how bad the smoke must be to the locals who experience wildfires practically in their backyards. Or people in other states, who live in wildfire-prone areas and live in constant fear of fire.

Or worst of all, folks who have lost their loved ones and homes, their pets or livestock to wildfire.

But I was starting to get an inkling. And with this lengthy drought, and the vast amount of growth that creates fire fuel, I knew that wildfires, very rare for our side of the state, could come far closer than they ever had before.

After two days, the ache in my chest eased. The smoky days were still unseasonably warm, but nights were chilly now. The clouds of smoke obscuring the sun meant there was sunshine to warm the house.

John and I couldn’t run the heat—to operate, our heat pump system pulls in outdoor air, and we couldn’t risk bringing more smoke inside. As for running the woodstove, there was not only an outdoor burn ban on, but an indoor one.

Not that John and I wanted to fire up the stove—the last thing we wanted was to allow one more molecule of smoke into the atmosphere. So our place was freezing.

The water heater, with the same general kind of system, was already bringing traces of smoke inside the house. I couldn’t do the laundry either—the dryer vent would expose any items inside the dryer to smoke.

Days passed, and this outdoor/nature girl was feeling like a prisoner inside my own house. Hoping for a breakthrough, I would read the smoke reports online. I discovered our state’s Air Quality Index (AQI), which has a scale from 0-400, generally sits between 0-50.

This week, in our area, the AQI was over 300. Even with all the summertime smoky episodes John and I had seen since 2017, I’d never experienced smoke like this. Or had been shut up indoors this long.

I certainly couldn’t water the garden. I’d learned my lesson; not even my precious strawberry crowns were worth lung damage.

And the smoke just sat there: the air was perfectly still. No trace of life outside; the birds and bees had gone into hiding. No sign of a rabbit or chipmunk, not even the sound of a barking dog. I felt caught in a bad, post-apocalyptic dream.

Would this horrible smoke and stillness never ease?

The fifth day of extreme smoke, three weeks into October, rain was forecast. It was cloudy, but the clouds actually resembled real ones. First a little shower arrived. Slowly, the landscape began to emerge from the pall of smoke. You could start making out the outline of the foothills, then real trees.

We’d gone 11 weeks and two days without any real rain. The forecast for that day had been spot on—the long overdue fall rains had finally arrived.

The blessed rain, washing the smoke away.

Since the rain returned, we’ve had cold days with several inches of precipitation. When the rain clouds dispersed, nighttime temperatures dipped into the 20s.

It’s like we went from summer straight to winter. From wearing shorts to long johns.

As I write this, it’s pouring rain, but I’m loving it. John’s building a fire in the stove. In a few minutes, I'm going to bundle up, get the umbrella, and go for a bracing walk. And just like I do every time I go outside now, I’ll take deep lungfuls of the clean, moist air.

I’ll never again take it for granted.

Socked In and Smoked Out

Photo by Pixabay

The lack of rain wasn’t all that worrisome…

As this past summer moved toward fall, things were pretty dry. We’d had a good rainstorm in mid-July, and another one in early August.  By the second week of September, though, we had gone 5 ½ weeks without more than a brief shower.

I hesitate to use the word “drought,” when I know there are many parts of the U.S. that haven’t had a good rain in years. But around here, our 10 months of abundant rain each year and resulting lush growth guarantees an enormous amount of wildfire fuel.

Although all these dry weeks was a concern, it was September, after all. The fall rains were due any day now.

And not a moment too soon. On the eastern side of our state, the wildfires were already out of control. Yet in our county, with the westerly summertime breezes, you never smelled a puff of smoke.

Then came the first big summer northeaster, September 10. Dry hot winds blew, and brought heavy clouds of smoke into our county from the fires east and northeast.

The smoky air in our neighborhood looked a lot like what’s in the photo above.

Around here, the smoke was bad enough that residents were advised to stay indoors. But that afternoon, there came a reprieve—the wind changed direction and the smoke drifted eastward again.

Still, traces of smoke lingered. For weeks, you could see s light blue haze around the foothills. A slightly acrid smell was everywhere. And it was warm and sunny day after day after day.

I generally keep the windows open day and night during the warm months—I want to enjoy all the fresh air I can before the cold months. This fall, however, there was very little fresh air to be had.

Now and then, a breeze from the west would pretty much clear the air, and I’d joyfully open the windows again. When I was outside, I’d take deep breaths of the clear air. But those spells would last only a day or two.

Then the smoke would drift back. Sometimes by nightfall, the fallen dew would clear the air enough so I could crack the windows. Still, after an hour or two, you could smell the smoke again. John and I would have to close the windows before we turned in, so we wouldn’t wake up to a smok-filled house. 

By the time September gave way to October, our region had gone over two months without rain. The grass and weeds were burnt yellow. There was no real October color: the vine maples that always wore a reddish-orange glow went straight from green to dark brown; the same goes for the usual golden clouds of big leaf maple foliage. The leaves had simply turned dark and fallen.

The woodlands’ understory just looked crispy.

The lack of rainfall was starting to seem like a real drought. (For west of the Cascade mountains.) As the light, hazy smoke made the dry landscape seem even drier, my anxiety about running out of water began in earnest.

Our well had gone dry our first year here, on October 6^th. The date, you can imagine, is burned in my memory.

This year, each day, I did my garden watering rotation, but only the most vulnerable crops got a drink: root crops, the late summer spinach seedlings, the tomatoes, and without fail, the blueberries and caneberries. And my baby strawberry crowns, set into little pots, needed daily water.

If I’d known how dry it would be, I sure would have planted them in much larger containers!

The asparagus have very deep roots, so I could water every two weeks instead of weekly. I could see the orchard trees were getting stressed, but I just had to let them tough it out.

Spending all my outdoor time watering, I didn’t have time to weed. Or prep any beds. No opportunities to enjoy the usual early fall pleasures of crisp sunny days or autumn showers, of chilly nights and cozy sweaters, of foggy mornings, watching the wispy fog fingers drift around the foothills.

In the garden, I would have loved a break from watering, but was hot for October: in the 70s and 80s. And still dry as a bone.

Then came a fresh twist. The Smell...

There's more to the story...so Part  2 of "Smoked Out" will appear next week!