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My Life with Chickens, or The Eggs & I

September 22nd, 2019

Keep Fucking Going

This life...

This life...

(Photos by Nancy Ellen Row Rawley)

I’m tagging this one “advice column,” even though after a year-plus with chickens, I know less than I did before I started keeping them.

It’s true, people.

Chickens will break your heart, but they do provide eggs. I read a blog post, advice from a chicken expert grandma, who said something along the lines of: If they can be eaten by it, drown in it, get trapped under or over it, get electrocuted by it… you get the idea… a chicken will. It’s like constant luck of the Irish, as far as fowl go.

We inherited our first flock of chickens about a year and a half ago, February or March of 2018, from a woman who lived in an apartment complex, kept eight big birds in a too-small coop, and was told by her landlord that they had to go. They were an older flock, with some health issues. Two weren’t laying anymore. They were a combination of Rhode Island Reds, Cuckoo Marans, and Buff Cochins.

We lost one right away to health problems — she had a bad foot and internal problems, as well. She was a Buff Cochin and so lovely.

We lost another two, within weeks, to our blonde Labrador, a female, who was hell-bent on destruction. It was horrible. I saw the whole thing happened, it happened so fast, and she was so much faster than I was. I still have nightmares about it. We secured the gate, which was flimsy, and she hasn’t been able to get in since. We lost one to the neighbor’s dog — she offered to buy us two to replace her (a beautiful Olive Egger who had a friendly, sweet personality) and never did.

We lost Mae, our big, gorgeous, black and gold Cuckoo Maran, to a raptor. And another one, Ackerman, who was a fierce and funny velociraptor of a bird, to a real raptor. Two more to natural causes — old age, peaceful deaths — and now, typing this, I’m getting depressed as fuck. We live in the country, it’s vicious out here — mountain lions, bobcats, skunks and raccoons.

Snakes. Mostly garters, but my son, his friend, and the dog (the lab, who wanted to fight it) saw a rattlesnake down the street a few weeks ago.

Yeah.

We live in the Willamette Valley, in Oregon, on the West Coast. #westcoastbestcoast I have been *told* that rattlers only live in the desert, and high desert, but apparently they like college towns as well.

Jerks.

I’ll go read Lisa’s blog for awhile, Fresh Eggs Daily, she always brightens my day. She’s the go-to girl for tons of stuff, not just chicken, geese and ducks. She has a real farm. I’m just faking it here, aight? Aight.

OK, let’s switch to bullet points:

* Fresh eggs, daily, as Lisa says.

* We don’t wash them — we keep in paper egg cartons in fridge, and let people we sell/gift them to know that they should wash them twice, lightly with soap and warm water, before using.

* They last a long, long, long time, this way. You don’t have to refrigerate them, but we do. Some of our customers don’t though, and that’s fine. (Farm fresh eggs are great for college students — especially if you keep them unrefrigerated in your dorm room, so they don’t get swiped from the communal fridge in the communal dorm kitchen).

* I love my damn chickens. I figured they’d be good company, that they would enjoy the roomy garden and chicken run we provided them with (we’ve repurposed our old garden shed to be a coop, by mounting nesting boxes and two perches, one low and one high). They are. They do. I was hoping that the kids and their friends would enjoy having them around, and they do, more than I ever could have hoped.

* My son has taken the lead on raising the chickens. I bought a small flock of Silkies for him, for Christmas, from a farmer in the country who needed to rehome them. Such a hit, and one of the best (and strangest) Christmas gifts ever. Silkies are fussy — they get broody to the point where they won’t eat, sleep, drink or stop nesting. We have two that we have to gently take out of the nesting boxes two or three times a day. They’re both named Peggy. We name most of our chickens Peggy, or Tiny and Dell, for my late, beloved great-aunts, Luella and Ludell. The rest? Who knows. Zini is the tiny caramel-colored Silkie; Henna is a huge Olive Egger, and along with Dell one of the two remaining birds from the original flock.

* “The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest.” — Henry David Thoreau

* They are sociable, funny and earnest, my birds. We have 16 now — 3 or 4 roosters, plus 12 or 13 hens. (We let the Silkies hatch some eggs, and ended up with mostly boys. Attitude. We need to rehome a few, but they’re getting along OK for now.)

* They help me stick to a routine. They enjoy the smallest things in life — fruit yogurt parfaits (in an egg carton, yogurt, sprinkled with a bit of raw oats and a handful of berries); they love watermelon. Not fond of green beans (unless they’re picking them themselves off the bush I planted?), broccoli, or honeydew melon. They like cantaloupe and leftover macaroni and cheese.

* I feel like a failure every time we lose a bird, but apparently that’s life with chickens.

* They start laying at about four months. If they get egg-bound, I pick them up, carry them around, and rub their tummies.

* Yeah, I know that sounds weird, but it works.

* No, we don’t eat ours, once they stop laying. They’re livestock, but they’re also pets. It’s a situation.

* Especially with these roosters.

All for now,

xo

Wacky Mommy

Benton Co. Fair 2019, Corvallis, Oregon, USA

September 7th, 2019

Benton Co. Fair 2019

Benton Co. Fair 2019

Benton Co. Fair 2019

Benton Co. Fair 2019

Benton Co. Fair 2019

Benton Co. Fair 2019

Benton Co. Fair 2019

Benton Co. Fair 2019

Benton Co. Fair 2019

(Photos by Nancy Ellen Row Rawley)

Summer Roses, Corvallis

July 13th, 2019

Avery Park, Corvallis

(Photos by Nancy Ellen Row)

Keep Fucking Going

Keep Fucking Going

Keep Fucking Going

Keep Fucking Going

Friday Night Book Review: “I Don’t Want to Go to Sleep,” by Dev Petty & Mike Boldt, also we have a cougar on my street and it’s in my neighbor’s yard

October 12th, 2018

Book reviews/sunshine

(Photo by me, Nancy Ellen Row Rawley.)

Cougars are big. Also a little scary. Don’t turn your back on one. (My advice.) I saw it last night, just loping down the street like it rented the place. This shit is bananas.

And now for a book review…

“I Don’t Want to Go to Sleep,” by Dev Petty, illustrated by Mike Boldt (Random House Children’s Books, 2018, ages 3-7, 32 pages, $16.99).

Frogs = funny and this series proves it. (“I Don’t Want to Be Big,” “I Don’t Want to Be a Frog,” “There’s Nothing to Do!”) Frog doesn’t want to go to sleep, because hello, winter is coming and there will be snow! Pig told him all about snow. And he’ll skate, and drink warm drinks, and what is hibernation and why should he do it?The illustrations are funny, the story is funny, and the littles will laugh.

anatomy of my marriage. plus pictures of roses.

May 16th, 2018

me and my first doggie

(Photo by my late father, James David Row, probably. Circa 1966.)

See how happy I am there, age 2, with my dog, Peaches? I’m wearing slippers that my granny knitted for me. Cuz she loved me. The dolly? The doll cradle that we will later sand and paint and turn into a doll cradle for our daughter, and oh, my Lord. The sweetness of our daughter, age 2, climbing into the cradle with her dolly and her blankie and smiling up at us. Best.

Date nite

(Photo by us.)

Steve + Nancy on a date, Los Lobos concert, 8/12/12, Tualatin Valley Parks & Rec summer show, Beaverton, Ore. How do I remember the date and the details? Because we blogged our whole lives. Then it blew up. Then next thing you know…

Yeah. I’ll spare you the gory details.

So what does this tell you, other than dog people should marry dog people and cat people should marry cat people? (“War of the Roses.” War of the Rawleys.)

Don’t marry someone who tells you what you can and cannot plant in your garden.

He doesn’t like roses; I do.

I’m a June baby, they’re my birth month flower, I’m from the City of Roses. But the way he whined about them — the black spot! The aphids! The thorns and the hassle and what is the point of roses, exactly? NO ROSES FOR YOU. (Except a bouquet if you demand them, for Valentine’s Day or your birthday or something.)

My new place? So many roses. (All of these photos by moi, Nancy Ellen Row Rawley.)

Spring garden — Corvallis

These are the first ones to bloom. They came out today. They’re hanging over a trellis in my garden. Note the black spot? I do not give care about the black spot. It’s only May, how can there already be black spot, aiiiiiii, etc. Come on. You can cut off those leaves and little branches, try not to water at night (it makes it worse), but end of the day? Who cares? The old lady who lived here before me, Boots, was Welsh, and her whole goal in life was to recreate the Welsh countryside. I’m Irish. I appreciate everything she did around here, it’s gorgeous.

Spring garden — Corvallis

(Rhodies galore, mostly light and dark pinks, very girly.)

Spring garden — Corvallis

Nice yellow.

Spring garden — Corvallis

I can’t tell yet what color these are going to be, but I’ll tell you one thing — they’re already covered with aphids and I do not care. I hosed them off, they’re beautiful. They’re big, and they’re climbing all over the place. Next to them is the big, overgrown forsythia, and I’m not pruning it back much, because the chickens need a place to hide and stay cool this summer.

Spring garden — Corvallis

Spring garden — Corvallis

Iris, more iris, and life, always sweeter over the other side of the septic tank. (That’s what you want to plant in your septic field, by the way. Something with low-growing roots, not deep roots, with lots of space to let the clean, run-off water evaporate. (My garden is uphill from the septic tank and field, thank you.)

Lots of big oaks around here. That’s actually a maple, sorry. There are oaks up and down the road, they’re majestic. I kinda love Corvallis, and all the trees. It’s good here.

Spring garden — Corvallis

Here’s all I have to say: I loved my old man. I did my best, we have these two great kids, and I finally have my roses. (I’ve counted nine or ten bushes so far, including some wild roses that are going nuts from having a little attention. The garden hadn’t received enough loving the past few years. It happens.)

xoxoxoxox and bon appetit!

WM