Prodigal Chicken

     Imagine my surprise when I pulled up to the little country store in McDowell and discovered one of our red hens preparing to make a purchase. She was perched on the edge of the concrete step, perhaps considering what type of butter to buy for her bread, but when she saw me hop out of the car, she skedaddled. Zigging and zagging, that sassy clucker dodged under a truck and when I went left, she went right. We continued this game of tag for ten minutes while the two old farmers loafing on the edge of the porch watched and laughed. Finally, they sauntered over and all of us flapped our arms and feinted left and right until we had her headed in the general direction of the farm.
     The farmers turned the chicken herding job back over to me and I followed the little red hen back down the road to the driveway that leads to our barnyard. But instead of turning left and joining her flock mates, that little feathered fiend continued straight across the pedestrian bridge and into the construction zone on the main road. I chased her until she ducked under a trailer and then gave up.
     A hard-hatted worker strolled up and asked why I was chasing their pet chicken around. It turns out they’ve been feeding her breakfast, lunch and supper. Biscuits, sandwich crusts and small treats three times daily are far better fare than she gets in the henhouse. My chicken on the lam is living high on the hog. The worst part is that, apparently, she brought a friend to dinner yesterday. At this rate, In three more weeks, my barnyard will be bereft of cluckers and the men on the construction crew will be tripping over chickens. It would serve them right for harboring fugitives.
    

Selling Chickens

     Yesterday morning, Joe and I went to the chicken house early and separated out twenty hens to take to market. It’s a task neither of us relished but culling a herd or flock is part of living on a farm. These twenty girls had simply aged out of our egg production program. Young hens lay an average of an egg every 26 hours, but at two or three years of age, their ovaries slow down. Our customers expect eggs every week, so we bought some younger chickens. Feeding the non-productive hens was too expensive, so with heavy hearts we gathered up the old girls and placed them in crates. We lined the van with a tarp and then placed the crates in the back.
     Joe had heard about a once-a-month chicken sale held in a parking lot on the edge of the city five mountains away. On this gravelly acre, chicken farmers gather with crates of birds to sell to any takers. In our area, those takers are usually Mexican or Russian families who buy the birds to butcher, or back yard farmers who buy the birds to take home. When we pulled up, the lot was full of vans and trucks. Their hatches were open and cages of birds were stacked up behind them. We parked beside a Ford Explorer. The owners, like us, had elected to transport their birds in their family vehicle, but unlike us, they had no tarp under their cages. The back was covered in chicken crap.
     We pulled out our old-fashioned wooden crates and waited for customers. We soon discovered that most of the buyers had come and gone. Apparently, immigrant families rise at the crack of dawn to shop. The day was chilly and we blew on our fingers and stomped and then wandered around to inspect the other birds. On our left, a man was selling roosters. One was a big old New Hampshire doodler who surely could have taken on an eagle and won. The other was a banty, no bigger than a dove. They commenced to crowing when they saw our hens, and what the banty lacked in volume he made up for in shrillness and enthusiasm. I almost bought him just for his cocky attitude and good looks, but then remembered my chicken chasing cat. A bird that small wouldn’t have a chance.
     Finally, a doting father bought one of our hens for his daughter. Then, another man, a backyard farmer, bought nine to take home and release in the woods behind his house. Just when we were ready to pack up the remaining ten girls and take them home, a young boy with his mother and aunt showed up. None of them spoke fluent English and the women wore head scarves. They might have been Indian, but we weren’t sure. We bargained for a while and they agreed to buy the remaining hens. One of the women asked in broken English if she could butcher them on the spot. I nodded squeamishly and watched as the boy opened the trunk of their small passenger car and pulled out a sharp knife and a large plastic pan. Then, unsure that on-the-spot butchering was allowed, they changed their minds. Instead, we found some string and tied the legs of the hens together before tucking them into the trunk of the car. I suspect that the family, who said they lived over thirty minutes away, stopped at the nearest picnic table and completed the job.
     When the last customers drove off, we packed the crates back into our van. Because we had sold all of our birds, we decided to drive on to an orchard where we picked up a bushel of apples. My van now has a distinct bouquet characterized by the earthy odor of chickens overlaid by the acidic notes of ripe apples. Perhaps we can bottle and sell it to those who long to return to a simpler way of life.

Bug Busters

    No bug is safe within a hundred yard radius of my home. There are 50 red hens patrolling the grounds and not even the rooster can get their attention. I sat on the rock by the creek today and watched my bug busters ridding the world of red ants, unlucky flies and anything else that was shiny and moved. The hens walked with their eyes on the ground, stopped to stare cross-eyed for a moment then, SNAP, they clicked their beaks down and swallowed. I believe the lack of bugs in my garden this year was partly due to their appetite.
     There are other critters helping out, as well. Yesterday, I caught a praying mantis climbing up the wall of the outbuilding. I usually see at least one or two each fall. This one was a female. The girls are much bigger than the males, which makes romance truly dangerous for the guy. Generally, he is eaten by his wife as soon as the marriage is consumated. Then, still hungry, she starts stalking crickets, spiders, grasshoppers and the occasional moth or butterfly. I have kept mantids as pets in my classroom and it is fun to watch them chow down on grasshoppers. They eat the hoppers the same way that we eat an ear of corn, but they eat their husbands by pulling them over their backs and eating them from stem to stern.
     At night, just when the sky is pale pewter, the bats start to flap and flutter above my yard. If I throw a small gravel up in the air, they will dive at it. I guess for a moment their bat sonar is fooled into thinking each pebble is a big bug feast. Bats catch bugs by scooping them up with their wings and popping them into their mouths. I’ve never seen a bat do this to a rock. The bats always swerve away at the last minute to continue their pursuit of mosquitos and mayflies. I didn’t see as many bats this summer and worry that White Nose Disease has been at work. A single brown nose bat can catch and eat over 600 mosquitos an hour. I hate to think how itchy our world would be without them.
     Three years ago, I walked out into my yard and was surprised to find a network of tunnels zigzagging around from pine tree to porch. Moles or voles, I'm not sure which, had taken up residence. They lived in the yard for two years and then this summer they were gone. So were all the Japanese beetles. I know Japanese beetles pupate underground, because one amazing moonlit night, Scott and I witnessed a whole fleet of them popping out of the ground and taking to the air. I’m fairly certain that when the voles had eaten every last grub, they left for better pickings.
     Several years ago, I read that a big clear plastic Ziploc bag full of water would repel flies. The theory was that the bags of water looked like wasps’ nests to the flies and since wasps eat flies, the buzzy black pests stay away. I went one better. I have a string of round lanterns that really do look like wasps’ nests. I hung them on my front porch and it does seem that the flies have moved away. At least for the last two summers we haven’t spent each evening on the porch waving like beauty queens on parade.
     In spite of all these miraculous, organic bug control methods, my house is still the target of one bug pilgrimage. Ladybugs, the imported nuisance kind, love to winter in every corner of every room of my house and studio. I tried sticky traps on the tops of my windows, but there were so many little ladies crowding the strips that they ended up falling to the sills covered in sticky goop, making it that much harder to remove them. I was going through two traps per window, per day and still ladybugs were doing low level flybys from my reading lamp to my hair and back. I tried vacuuming them up with a hand vac, but the smell of a thousand lady bugs wafting out the back end of the machine was nauseating. In spite of their name, ladybugs, stink. So, the bug guy is coming to spray next week. Since he started dousing my house with poison, the ladybugs have resorted to dying by the bushel on the front porch. The first big wind of winter sweeps them away. I believe in taking care of the earth and I have been known to carefully juggle a wasp or spider on paper until I could toss it outside. But, sometimes that's not enough.  Sometimes the hens, the bats, the preying mantises , the decoys and relocations don't work. Sometimes, you have to defend your home against invaders.
    
  

Mending Fences

    

    After enjoying a leisurely lunch with a couple of old friends, I came home and visited my backyard gym, which is what I call the mountain behind the house.



view from the backyard gym

 I took the long path home, pausing at the top of my driveway to watch for Joe who had gone for a load of water. The garden threatens to blow away in the dry weather so he’s been trucking three hundred gallons a night to it. I heard the old truck before I saw it, so I scrambled down the hill to meet him. When I climbed in the truck, Joe told me the cows were in the meadow tearing apart the freshly rolled bales. When the grass is short the cows bully their way through weak spots in the fence and Joe was headed over to put them back in the pasture. I agreed to go along and help. Being Joe’s extra hands is one of my favorite things to do.
     The sun had just slipped behind the mountains when he pulled the four-wheeler out of the barn. I hopped on behind, hugging him tightly, and we rumbled across the pasture to the offending cows. They watched us ride up and open the gate and then, when Joe dropped me off and zoomed around them, galloped through the opening, kicking their heels up as they went by. It didn’t take us long to discover the cows’ entrance. A section of fence had popped loose and was sagging enough for the cows to jump it. It would have to be re-stapled. Joe said the only way to keep the cows out of the hay meadow while we worked was to feed them a bale of hay, so he fired up the John Deere while I drove the 4-wheeler back up to the house for fence staples and a hammer.
     When the bale was unfurled and all the cows were lined up for supper, we went back to the fence to stretch and staple the wire back to the posts. After 24 years on the farm, you’d think I would remember to dress for the job, but I was in shorts and clogs so naturally I snagged my leg on some barbed wire in the process. I don’t think I’ve ever gone through a summer without some farm-related scar to mar my legs or arms. I even got married in August in a long sleeve dress because I’d been in the hay field and my forearms were covered with hay pricks.
     When the fence was stretched tight and the electric wire reattached, we called it a job well done. Joe sat on the four-wheeler first and I swung my legs over and around him. The sky was dimming and the air was cool as I leaned against him for the ride. The fireflies blinking in the meadow lit our way home.

Turtle in the Hole

You can't see him, but he's in there!

    
     I haven’t been swimming in the hole under the bridge since a plate-sized snapping turtle took up residence in the snag. He sits on top of it surveying his kingdom with his beady black eyes. I have enjoyed swimming in the hole with goggles and snorkle, but I believe in giving snapping turtles their space. My grandfather used to make soup from them. He would catch them, I’m not sure how, and then hold them in a barrel feeding them grain until all the fishy taste was cleansed. Then he stewed them with corn and tomatoes and lima beans. I remember liking the soup as a child, even though I had to spit out the occasional clavicle or toe bone.
     I will let this turtle continue his reign over the swimming hole. He’s been joined by two golden trout. Perhaps he will scare away the blue herons who might snack on them. If he grabs their toes or beak, I’ve heard it said that he won’t let go until it thunders. As dry as this summer has been that could be a long time. And I will swim instead at the pool. There’s not near as much excitement there, but the water is clear and I can see the bottom. Nothing scary lurks there.

A very dim view of the gold trout.  He won't let me close enough for a better picture.

A Stitch in Time

     When I was thirteen my mom offered me the chance to take a sewing class. I made a lopsided sun-dress, and I was so proud of it that I even wore it when we had a family portrait made. My father, not to be outdone, declared that anyone could sew a dress if they had a pattern, so mom gave him a pattern for a simple A-line dress, some material and access to her Singer. Dad did sew a beautiful tent. We still laugh about it at family dinners.
     Learning to sew has been a most valuable skill. It’s not my favorite activity, but I always love the fact that I can create something I need, and I’m comforted to think that when the next depression rolls around, I have enough skills and scraps to avoid complete nakedness. I’m still way too impatient to attempt anything very complicated like sleeves, but I have made my share of skirts, curtains, tablecloths and slipcovers. Yes, you read that right. I can’t construct sleeves but I can create slipcovers from scratch. Women in third world countries provide all the inexpensive tops I might ever need, but every time I price a new couch I end up buying some bargain fabric and stitching together another slipcover. Like my first sundress they’re a little crooked, but they cover all the necessary places.
     My first slipcover came about as a result of nesting instinct and an extremely hot July. I was eight months pregnant and craving a comfortable loveseat. I found one at a junk shop.  It was cheap but ugly, so I borrowed my mother-in-law’s sewing book and found some vague directions for constructing slipcovers. I spent the next month of sleepless, hot nights measuring, cutting, cursing, tearing out stitches, re-measuring, re-sewing and finally successfully re-covering the second-hand loveseat I’d found at a junk shop. That loveseat has been through two additional slipcovers in the nineteen years since Scott was born and recently I’ve begun pricing sofas again. Sigh…. I think I see another slipcover in my future.
     My grandmother was a whiz with a sewing machine. Many of my favorite dresses were handmade by Nana. When I attended cotillion and needed a special velvet dress for the Christmas ball, Nana and I picked out the pattern and the material and two weeks later I was a princess. She was old, but she was hip. One time, when I was drooling over a black watch plaid, knife-pleated wool skirt in an upscale department store (I believe we had gone there to buy bras), Nana whipped it off the hangar. I thought she was going to ask me to try it on and then offer to buy it for me. Instead, she flipped it upside down and held the hem up to her nose with one hand. She straightened her other arm, sliding the material through her fingers and counting. I watched the hemline moving from Nana’s nose to her outstretched hand like an inchworm. “Three yards,” she said. “Remember that.” Then we drove to the fabric store. She led me to the fine wool section. “See anything you like?” she asked. When I had picked out a plaid, Nana bought it, some buttons and thread and two weeks later the skirt I coveted was hanging from my waist. Nana even made a matching vest.

Easter dresses a la Nana

     I will never have Nana’s prowess with a needle, but recently I’ve stitched some gifts for three dearly beloved graduates. Each of them gave me a stack of at least twenty tee shirts that were won, bought or earned throughout their high school careers. These were cut into forty squares with the logos intact. I stitched them together, plus a square cut from a tee shirt of the graduate’s future college. The resulting quilt top was then sewed to a backing and hand tied so it wouldn’t disintegrate in the wash. Both my son and my nephew take their quilts everywhere they go, and my most recent creation will soon be headed to Virginia Tech with my lovely “first daughter” Hayley.

     Sometimes I worry that kids raised in the Walmart age won’t have the advantages I had growing up. I’m thankful to have had a Nana who taught me that a sense of accomplishment can often be found with a needle, thread and a little inspiration.

Do Bears Sit in the Woods?

     Caroline and Lori and I are hiking our way across Highland. Our first hike was last week and started at the summit of Shenandoah Mountain in the George Washington National Forest. The morning was cool and foggy and we had two choices for hiking. There was a faint trail running north, marked by the occasional yellow diamond and there was a forest service road heading south. Since it was foggy, we decided to hike the road.
     The first half mile was a gentle incline. Within three minutes I was sweating enough to fog my glasses. I peered helplessly through the condensation wishing for windshield wipers as Lori and Caroline pointed out deer sign and salamanders. The trail followed the ridge top, climbing and descending several times, but the fog was too thick to see the views. Before our walk, we had had a serious discussion about what to do if we met up with a bear, so we were a bit jumpy. The heavy fog made it worse. It closed around us like a heavy, wet blanket and we couldn’t see very far into the woods.  About two miles up the trail, we almost stepped in a large pile of very fresh poop. We circled it suspiciously.  What does bear poop look like anyway?  The gray woods began to look even more ominous. We continued downhill, jumping at every drip and crackle. Surely a hungry bear was lurking behind that tree or that rock waiting to pounce. We made it another quarter mile before we gave into our fears and turned around.
     We were moving at a fair trot when we passed the poop and crested the ridge. No bear in sight. The sun popped out and we realized how foolish we’d been, but we decided to call it a day and head back to the car. On our way out, we planted a letterbox in a small camping area.

     This week, we hiked trail number two in the Wildlife Management Area just south of McDowell . This trail is also a gravel road maintained by the Game Commission. It is gated in several places but open to hikers year round. We planted our letterbox near a campsite about a mile in and then climbed steadily for two miles. We turned around when we reached the ridge top. In contrast to our first hike, the morning was sunny and bright. Streamers of light dappled the forest floor and birds sang from the trees. The trail followed a pristine stream which we forded twice by hopping across rocks. Deer lifted their tails and scudded across the path in several places and we must have seen thirty orange salamanders on the road. We didn’t even worry about bear. Next week we’ll take hike number three. Hopefully it will be sunny and bright. Fog makes us fearful. I think there’s a metaphor for life in there somewhere.