I don’t use sand inside of the chicken house. There are better options for coop bedding. So, why was I at the lumber yard, filling my car with bags of all-purpose sand?

It wasn’t just an excuse to admire the resident dog (but don’t you just love seeing dogs at places like this?)

I bought the sand for the chicken run. There are eleven hens in the Big Barn. That means that there are 22 dinosaur feet digging and kicking. Although I do my best to keep their yard raked, that’s eleven hens producing manure and grinding and pounding it into the ground. Eleven hens actively making dust wallows. Twenty-two clawed feet tunneling along the fence line, weakening the defensive boundary we’d installed around their coop to make it safe.

Clearly, it was time to do something. The solution was easy. A few bags of sand would help to loosen things up, improve drainage, and bring the surface of the run up to ground level.

Each bag weighs 70 pounds. I can get them out of the car and into a wheelbarrow, but not out of the wheelbarrow and set down where I need them. This is why I’m grateful that I still have a teenage boy at home. Three hundred and fifty pounds of sand seems like a lot, but it doesn’t go far when you’re filling up pot-holes created by a flock of hens.

The Gems free-ranged while I worked.

Pearl, the fluffy cochin, spied what was going on. Sand, she says, provides for a true spa experience.

Phoebe is very grateful for all of the carrots that were generously sent to her.

Vegetables aren’t supposed to be fattening.

Maybe she looks so round because of the angle of the photo.

Nope.

This past winter, what with the snow and the day-after-day freezing temperatures, I fielded numerous queries about feather pecking, hen-on-hen aggression and red butts. My flock was not immune. The girls were inside for longer stretches than usual, and although my coops are generous in size, the hens saw too much of each other.  The usable space in the outside run shrunk to standing room only between towering piles of snow. Communal social activities, like dust  bathing in the sun, were limited to a tub, which was not as inviting, and certainly not the relief that a thorough group dust bath in the summer can be. You know how it is. Imagine a class of kindergartners who all get along well enough. They’re active and busy and supervised. At recess, they run outside and distance themselves from each other with individual, energetic activities. Now, take those same children and confine them in the classroom. Close the windows and shrink the room by half. How will those tots behave? That’s what happened to our flocks.

Over the long winter, Nancy Drew and Beulah pecked each other’s neck feathers out. Veronica offered up her neck for picking, so that it was plucked bare. Owly encouraged the other hens to eat the feathers at the base of her tail, so that they became shredded. I did what I could. The girls got greens to eat, extra roosts out of the muck and snow, and hard winter squashes to peck at. Still, by the end of the winter they were a motley crew. (Of course, there are always exceptions. Twiggy took no part in this mayhem, and remained as sleekly feathered as always.)

Now that the snow has melted, the hens once again have plenty of space in their yard. They get out a few times a week to free-range, and so their diet has become varied with bugs and dirt and growing things. As I expected, the feather pecking has subsided.

The two Red Stars, Nancy Drew and Beulah, have stopped plucking feathers off of their flock mates.

Veronica’s neck is barely visible through her feathers.

Owly will continue to look moth-eaten until she molts and grows new feathers. But there are no bare red patches of skin, so  we all ignore it. We have better things to do.

I begin planting my vegetable garden early in the spring. This year, what with the frozen ground, and then the cold rain, I started the “plant after the last chance of frost” seeds late. They were slow to germinate. I planted more. I sow in succession, so that the harvest is spread out. Every year, I hope to have tender lettuce over the course of the summer, and every year, I find that I’ve been too eager in March. I have salad for lunch and dinner. I will be handing over romaine to friends. The chickens will get some.

Each salad is different. I add herbs, nasturtiums,

and young kale. Is there anything prettier that kale after it rains?

Every now and then, over the last two months, I’ve added a plant, and tucked in more seeds. An eggplant, A pepper. Sunflowers. Patty pan squash. Yellow squash. Zucchini. Peas. Black turtle beans. Carrots. Cucumbers. Chard. Tomatoes, of course. The kitchen garden is full.

But my pumpkin patch remained a mess. Filling the fenced area were weeds, turf, compost and matted, dead plants from last fall. It would have been backbreaking work to dig it all under and prepare the ground. Fortunately, I have a neighbor that was willing to let me borrow his rototiller. I gave him a dozen eggs in exchange. Rototillers are essential for this sort of work, but it is still difficult. Luckily, I have a strong teenage son who was willing to push this noisy, stinky and temperamental machine around and around until the soil became fluffy.

He got paid. He deserved it. Scooter anointed the garden, and then I planted.

In went the hard squashes, one hill of each: acorn, butternut, buttercup, pumpkin and delicata. I also put in a hill of watermelon. You never know, the summer might be warm enough to get a crop. It’s worth trying.

This is the water, weed and wait phase of vegetable gardening. It seems like a lull, but there’s still plenty to do. I’ve got at least an hour of work out there today. Weeds grow as fast as the vegetables. Carrots need thinning. Etcetera, etcetera. The rest of the property calls for attention, too. There are weeds to pull up around the pond. I’ve made a jug of iced tea. It’s chilling in the fridge. I’ll pull up a chair this afternoon.