I thought that the chickens should pick the winner, so I wrote entrants’ names on bright orange pieces of paper and put them in the Hencam.com hat. The girls were very interested, and Marge, of course, was very loud in her questions of “what is this?” and “is it safe to approach?” and, most importantly, “can I eat it?” The girls stretched their necks out to peer at the paper and Eleanor pecked at the brass buckle. But, surprisingly, these hens who don’t hesitate to peck my earrings, my shoelaces, my pants legs, refused to peck at the orange paper! I put corn in the hat and they ate that (the hat wasn’t scary, after all), but they didn’t touch the paper. You never know with chickens…

So, my husband picked a name out of the hat, and the winner is Lynn W, who lives southeast of Seattle, Washington, and keeps 25 hens and two roosters!

If you’ve ever picked up a gardening book or magazine, you’re sure to have read an article about how beneficial making compost is. Everything you read is true – compost is good for the environment, good for the soil, etc. etc. True, but, honestly, at this point, a tad boring.

But what is exciting about compost happens every year in my garden right about now – a surprise grows and ripens. One year I had huge pumpkin vines twined on the chicken fence and a ten pound pumpkin hanging two feet off of the ground. This year these tomatoes appeared. The best part of this surprise, this gift, is that I don’t remember ever buying tomatoes that look like this. But somehow, the seeds found their way into my compost, then into my asparagus bed (!) and then, ignored for the entire summer, the plants yielded these stunningly beautiful golden-striped, absolutely delicious, best tomatoes I’ve ever grown.

Anyone know what they are?

This is the very hat that the HenCam delegation will be wearing to the IgNobel Awards on Thursday! You can win this hat (chicken not included) – all you have to do is email me and tell me where you live (no address necessary – just give the general area, like, “outside Chicago” – and also tell me if you have chickens, and how many in your flock. There’s no right answer – even if you don’t have chickens, you can win! Your email address will be entered in a random drawing.

Contest closes on Sunday, Oct. 7, 5 pm EDT. Good luck!

The Associated Press reported today that a girl in Easthampton, MA, was granted a variance for her four hens. It seems that neighbors complained about the chickens to a zoning enforcement officer. The girl lives in a zoning district that prohibits poultry and farm animals.

The ten-year old girl went before the zoning board and convinced them that her hens were pets, not livestock. The 5 members of the zoning board agreed. One was quoted as saying, “What’s a farm animal? Dogs live on farms. Are they farm animals, too? I disagree that a chicken is always a farm animal. I think that it can be a pet.”

So, the chickens stay, with the restriction that only four hens can be on the property. Sounds like a sensible ruling to me.

On the corner post of the chicken run fence, just out of HenCam view, is a water spigot. It’s where I fill the waterer in the morning. I often leave the water running as I scrub the red plastic bottom of the waterer. The water streams into a narrow channel that the hens have scratched out along the fence line.

Chickens love moving water. They’ll even leave corn and crackers when they see it rolling along, like a tiny flash flood. They’ll drink as if they haven’t seen water in days. I’m not sure why this is – they certainly aren’t thirsty. And I don’t think that they care about the difference in taste between water in a plastic tub and water flowing through dirt.

I think that it’s the sparkles. Chickens love shiny things. They peck at raindrops hanging on a fence after a storm, they love my pants with buttons sewn on the hem, and when I pick up a hen, she’ll look astonished and delighted at my diamond ring. Good thing diamonds are hard.

I’ve never kept hens in a field with a stream, but my guess is that the chickens wouldn’t be as enamored with that as they are with the suddenly shiny, moving, drinkable corner of their yard.