“Dancing Chickens” photo by Nancy Ellen Row Rawley

I started this draft a few weeks ago, then got busy getting back to teaching (reading groups, recess and cafeteria duty, and assisting students with special needs. I miss my library and computer lab work, I’ve only been doing a little of that). The kids and I spent the fall and winter doing our usual stuff — being stressed, fighting various viruses, dealing with homework and school and work, pets and livestock, taking care of errands and trying to figure out plans for spring and summer break.

Then the entire world fell apart.

Here are my notes for the draft:

• planter box/trellis for grapes
• blackberry cobbler — yes, if you rip out all the blackberries, you’ll have your backyard back, but what will you do for cobblers and crisps? (she says, then rips out all the blackberries and mows down the roots)
• chickens
• plants
• the deer leave these plants alone: herbs, hellebores, daffodils, snowdrops, violets, rhodies and azaleas

I would give anything to go back and remember what it was, exactly, I was doing with that draft. To see where I would have gone with it. To be living in the world that was week before last and not in this fresh hell we’re in right now.

I miss my husband. He’s there for me, for us, for the kids. But I miss being married. But we both have support, and good, kind people in our lives. Our friends and extended families, the grandparents, our neighbors — everyone is okay. So that is good enough for today. For now. We’re still partners, we’re still there for each other. It’s just really different than what it was.

It’s 59 degrees here in the Willamette Valley, sunny and perfect. It’s spring break. And in our state, and others, the governors are telling us we’re in lockdown, please stay at home, please don’t go out unless you have to go to the doctor’s office, or the hospital, or to the store, or to get some exercise, but keep your distance from the other walkers/hikers/skiers/players.

Social distancing. 

And wash your hands. Don’t cough and sneeze on people. Look in on your neighbors. 

I am worried. We’re all scared. There have been so many deaths already from the corona virus, and more to come. But there are also so many people who are having mild cases and getting through it, or even terrible cases of it and getting through it.

People are stepping up like crazy. Except for the President and his crew, they’re just all crazy. We’ll survive them, and the virus.

My friend Elaine has me hooked on the Hallmark Channel — we’re watching nonstop “Golden Girls” re-runs and Christmas movies over here, even though it’s March. I picked up a bunch of four-dollar sale books from Winco; I’ve started them and they’re all good. 

Adriana Trigiani’s “Kiss Carlo”

Wally Lamb’s “I’ll Take You There”

Phillip Lewis’s “The Barrowfields”

Sara Blaedel’s “The Undertaker’s Daughter”

Prayers, peace, and good thoughts. Be well and be safe.

xo

Wacky Mommy

(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

(Photos by Nancy Ellen Row Rawley)

“The Healthy Hens Handbook,” by Terry Beebe (Bell & Bain Ltd., 2013, 224 pages, $29.99). The pictures in this handbook kinda freak me out, but chickens, let’s face it, can be a little gruesome at times. There is also lots of down-to-earth information, and some beautiful photos.

Useful, especially all the medical stuff that I don’t want to think about.

“Are You Ready to Hatch an Unusual Chicken?” by Kelly Jones (Alfred A. Knopf, 2018, ages 8-12, 310 pages, $16.99). Another fun work of young adult fiction from the author of “Unusual Chickens for the Exceptional Poultry Farmer.”

“How to Speak Chicken: Why Your Chickens Do What They Do and Say What They Say,” by Melissa Caughey (Storey Publishing, 2017). I’m putting this one on order, it looks great.

“The Complete Chicken: An Entertaining History of Chickens,” by Pam Percy (Voyageur Press, 2002, 144 pages, $19.95). This one is just pure fun, and was a sweet Christmas gift from my friend Lisa. Thank you! Kisses, kisses.

“A Chicken in Every Yard: The Urban Farm Store’s Guide to Chicken Keeping,” by Robert and Hannah Litt (Ten Speed Press, 2011, 196 pages, $19.99). This one, written by a Portland couple (#goRoseCity!), was a Christmas gift from my daughter. Thank you, love you!

And a recipe, for the Tuesday Recipe Club, a la Wacky Mommy:

Best Chicken Scratch Mix

Combine one 21-pound bag of Pullet Together (Chicken Crack and Here, Chicken Chicken are also good) with one big bag of Purina Premium Poultry Feed, Layena Crumbles or Pellets, plus one big bag of Durvet Fancy Flock Mealworm and Cricket Medley.

Yum.

Our chicks also like bananas, oh, they love bananas; bags of spinach; soft apples; yogurt that we spoon into egg cartons and leave in the garden; but best of all? On a hot summer day, we take an overripe watermelon and break it open on the ground for them. Watermelon bomb! Happy girls.

Bon appetit, babies.

WM

(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.

(“Boots’s Alberta Spruce & friends” — Photo by Nancy Ellen Row Rawley)

Here’s a partial list of everything I’ve planted in the past year (all successes, except for the clematis, and the cuke). I’m putting tomato cages around everything, and the chickens are mostly leaving stuff alone.

Vegetables
* tomato “Bush Early Girl” — surviving in spite of the deer
* tomato — Roma, ditto
* “Golden Cross Bantam Hybrid” corn — not so much. V. popular with deers.
* squash, yellow summer
* “Kentucky Wonder” pole beans
* a big, healthy artichoke — “Green Globe”
* sweet bell pepper “California Wonder”
* “Lunchbox Orange” sweet snacking pepper — the chickens keep digging it up; I keep replanting. We’ll see…
* Ferry-Morse Pumpkin “Jack O’Lantern”
* “Slicemaster Select” cuke (a goner)
* Bush Blue Lake Beans (yum. They’re good.)

Flowers
* Lupine “Russell’s Mixture”
* Laurentia Fluviatilis “Blue Star Creeper”
* Nasturtium (Mahogany)
* Baby’s Breath “Covent Garden”
* Lobelia “Color Cascade/Trailing Mixed Colors”
* Delphinium “Pacific Giants Mixture”
* Mexican Sunflower “Tithonia” — these took awhile to get going, but eventually got 10 feet tall and were just glorious
* Clematis “Jackmannii” (short-lived, due to chickens picking)

Boots’s Plants
* Alberta Spruce — several of these babies. They appreciate water.
* Begonia “Elatior”
* One sweet little lone fuchsia
* Raspberries! Marionberries! One of the chickens, Ludell, jumps straight up, snatches a berry, lands, gobbles it, and jumps straight up again. Rinse & repeat. I get that song stuck in my head when I see her doing this — “jump around! jump around! jump up jump up and get down!” Yeah, that’s her song.

All for now, loves.

WM

We have skunks. They stink, but so do a lot of things, lol.

Photos by me, Nancy E. Row Rawley, gardener at large.

“Mae”

“Henna and McNugget”

“Leggy Peggy”

All for now, back to it.

XOXOXO

WM

(“Historia, Historia,” pic by Nancy Ellen Row Rawley)

When Gardenburgers ™ were first invented, by a Portland guy who owned a really superfine supercool house in Southeast Portland, btw, one of the other tasty tidbits they invented was a Gardentaco.

They did a funny ad, black & white as I recall, and it had a line drawing of the Gardentaco in a shell.

“Looks funny, but fits!”

But the best line? “The average person, in their lifetime, eats 700 chickens! Let your 700 live!” I thought that was cute.

Did you know you can toast Gardenburgers in the toaster? You can. So when my vegetarian sis and I were in college, and broke, we toasted a *lot* of Gardenburgers.

My cousin, visiting and heading straight to the kitchen, used to say, “Something about walking into your house makes me want to toast a Gardenburger.” lol.

Oh, Historia, Historia… She was our chicken. She was egg-bound (the eggs couldn’t come out. She was a big girl who laid big, gorgeous eggs.) There were two stuck in there. So I took her to the vet and they told me that for a grown chicken to be egg-bound like that was generally a “secondary symptom,” or something, meaning she had another problem and the eggs not coming out was just a sign that something else was wrong. Tumors. She hadn’t been grooming herself, was listless and in pain. She had a lame foot and it hurt her to walk.

So I had her euthanized and now I’m just sad because, dammit, chickens. And also? I don’t really want to eat chicken anymore, it depresses me. Do you know how much chicken is always on the menu? A lot. My friend Gigi says, kindly, “Chickens are disposable.”

(huge sigh.)

Let your 700 live.

Sorry this post is sad but life in the country is sometimes sad. PS the gardener said next time he’ll take care of it, if one of the chickens gets old and sick (which they will. That’s life). Also? Can I deal with the poison oak out back cuz he’s hugely allergic to it?

I’m hoping I’m not.

I miss Steve all the time, not just some of the time. That sucks. Twenty years is a long time to be married, and then have your partner go missing on you.

xo

WM