I’m in the local paper. I love my new title of  “Hen Mother.” Don’t you?

http://www.wickedlocal.com/concord/news/lifestyle/x1371493473/Concord-Carlisle-residents-find-their-way-to-local-food

I’ve been harvesting squash all summer. I like to cut it into thick slices, coat with olive oil, dust with salt and pepper, toss with herbs, and then grill it. I’ve also sauteed it, steamed it, and put it into stews. I’ve diced and frozen some for soup this winter. I check the plants almost every day, and yet, somehow, there’s always one squash that hides until it get ridiculously humungous.

The squash on the right is the tastiest size. The big one on the left is about two feet long. Sure, I could cut it in half, scoop it out, make a filling and bake it, but, honestly, who wants to bother with all of that work in this heat? So, on the way into the house with my basket of vegetables from the garden, that big lunk of a zucchini got tossed into the chicken run. Without the hens, I’d have brought that squash into the kitchen, where it would have sat on the counter for a day, challenging my cooking skills and making me feel like a slacker of a cook. Then, it’d be hidden away in the refrigerator, where it would take up valuable space, go soft and eventually get thrown out. But, because I have a flock of chickens I don’t have to go through all of that. Instead, I get the immediate gratification of seeing the hens eat it. As they peck away, they cluck their thanks and make me feel like the best gardener, ever.

Some things in the garden are too beautiful pick. I’m leaving these sunflowers for the wild birds to harvest.

It’s my youngest son’s birthday today. He’s officially hit teenagerhood. I offered to make him a birthday dinner. Anything he wants. “No thanks.” We eat together as a family at least five nights a week. Most of those meals are made by me, from scratch. So, a family dinner isn’t special for him. “What about a cake?” He shrugged. “Nah.” I love baking. Right now there are brownies on the counter. Last week there was a pile of molasses-spice cookies in the jar.

What he wants is a store-bought ice cream cake. So, that’s exactly what he’s getting. With sprinkles.

Picking up a chicken is a basic part of hen care, and yet it’s often avoided. I know a woman who’s had chickens for a year and has never picked them up! Even if you don’t want to cuddle with your hens, there comes a time when you need to handle them, for instance, when the hen is wounded, or if you want to check for lice.

There’s plenty of urbanites who are not only new to chicken keeping, but new to livestock. Chickens flap, they squawk and they run away from you. Their feet look prehistoric (chickens are dinosaurs, but that’s for another post.) It can all be off-putting.

Sometimes, what seems like the most obvious task is the one that need to be explained. To that end, I’ve got a new YouTube video on thehencam channel. Take a look at How To Pick Up A Chicken. Even if you know how, you might want to take a peek. The hens used on this video live in the big barn, so you don’t get to see them on the HenCam. Twinkydink stars. For an old girl, I think she looks great!

The girls are going into molt. It’s early for them to lose their summer feathers and get ready for cold weather, but everything about this year, weather-wise, has been topsy-turvy.

How a hen molts is as varied as their personalities. Sometimes, it seems as if the hen huffs up and shakes and all of her feathers come off at once. Other hens lose their feathers in patches. like Agnes and Philomena, who are looking scraggly. It might take a month for those two to shed all of the old feathers.

I know that Twinkydink is molting, her black feathers are everywhere, and yet she looks as sleek and glossy as ever. Some girls are like that. Never a bad hair day for her.

Some hens don’t molt until the cold weather settles in. They’ll look partly naked, their skin will show, and you’ll worry about them. Don’t. They always seem to do fine. New feathers will appear. The feathers will look like porcupine quills, and the hen will be all prickly with them. It looks uncomfortable, way worse then stubble after shaving, but the chickens don’t seem to mind.

Hen keepers never look forward to the molt. The coop is a mess of feathers and the hens stop laying. Factory farms try to control it. They’ll withhold food to try to get all of the hens to molt at once. Chemical companies are developing additives to start the molt. Yet another reason to keep your own hens. I’d rather do without eggs than have them come from those conditions.

Chickens aren’t the only ones that grow a new coat for winter. Candy sheds out her old fur and will have a much warmer wrapper for the winter. Like the hens, the process is already starting. Just look at those tufts of fur coming off. What a bad hare day (ouch, sorry for that terrible joke – this heat is affecting my sense of humor!)