Sometimes the most perfect things have imperfections.

LIke these two sunflowers.

I didn’t plant them. Seeds from last year’s sunflowers must have somehow survived chipmunks and free-ranging hens, a bitter winter and a cold spring. They’re perfect simply because not only did they grow and blossom, but they are exactly where I was going to plant sunflowers again this year. Because these sunflowers had such an early start, I have sunflowers blooming a month earlier than I usually do.

No matter that they are not symmetrical.

The birds think them perfect, too, and have been eating the petals.

I’m happy to share.

* New Chicken Workshops Scheduled!* On Saturday, August 23, I’ll be teaching my Chicken Keeping Workshop which covers all of the basics (and more!) On Sunday, August 24, I’ll teach the Advanced Chicken Keeping Workshop. Both will be here in my backyard. There should be more sunflowers to see at the end of the summer. For details, see the Upcoming Events Page.

In the early spring of 2013 I planted grapes. I ordered three varieties, all seedless, all of which were supposed to thrive in my growing zone. They have.

They came bare root. They looked like supple twigs. Optimistically, I had Steve build an arbor over half of the Gem’s run. (You can see in this photo from last year how the hens crowded into their small bit of shade.)

The idea was that the grapes would protect the hens from hawks*, as well as provide a shady and cooler spot to hang out. The grapes do all of that.

This year the vines have grown with exuberance. They twine and drop down into the pen. So far, the grapes are just out of reach. So far, the fruits are just small green promises of good things to come.

The hens are keeping an eye on them.

Don’t worry, girls. There are plenty to share with you.

*The run is narrow, the fence is high, and the large Red Tailed hawks that we have here might be able to swoop in, but they know that they can’t fly out. At least that’s my theory. The Little Barn’s pen, which is wider, and with a lower fence, is covered with hawk netting.

Good animal husbandry (which is what care of farm stock is called) is all about paying attention and noticing when something is off. If chickens played poker, they’d be very, very good at bluffing. What, me? Nothing wrong here, a hen says, even when she hasn’t been able to eat and swallow food for two days. I’m laying eggs, daily, like I always have, says the hen in the nesting box, who goes in as if she’s going to leave an egg, and yet hasn’t produced one for weeks.

Mid-July always brings changes to the flock. Heat and humidity stresses birds. Some go broody. I listen. I watch. Are they breathing normally? Are they roosting as always or has there been a rearrangement of hierarchy?

The Gems turned three years of age this past April. That’s old for laying hens. Despite a good diet, shells thin. Animals get diseased. So far, all is well.

Except.

Someone has been losing feathers. It’s a Speckled Sussex.

It’s Florence. She’s starting to molt. Look at how loose her coat is.

Ruby notices. She sees feathers dangling and moving, and so she pecks at them. Florence doesn’t mind. The feathers are falling out anyway.

All chickens molt, usually late in the summer. Molting marks the cessation of the laying season. Hens that are poor layers are the first to molt; I’ve known that a few of the Gems were slacking off of the laying, and now I know who at least one of them is. It might be age, and Florence is otherwise fine, or it might be an underlying condition. I’ll pay attention.

The Chicken Garden Party on Saturday was an excuse for me to pull out some of the vintage items from my collection. What I have is charming and quirky, but not particularly valuable, so I have no qualms about using it even when there are children and dogs about.

I’ll likely never find more of these 1970s napkins, but I was happy to see people wipe their fingers with them.

I purchased the napkins off eBay along with a matching plastic tray, which you can just see here under the Rosemary Molasses Cookies.

I have a set of these tin canisters. This one was just right for holding a bouquet of just-picked flowers from the meadow.

Yes, all we did was talk about chickens!

Guests showed off photos of their own flocks. Liz brought show-and-tell. One of her hens laid this huge egg. We hypothesized whether there was a second egg inside of the there. We weighed it (4.5 ounces!) I pulled out my Blas-Fix egg blower and emptied it out. There wasn’t an extra shell, but there were three yolks. Liz took the blown-out egg home as a souvenir. She’ll be keeping an eye on that hen.

Scooter got some loving and butt-scratching. He was a happy little dog.

Everyone payed homage to The Beast.

It was a very nice afternoon.

It takes about 26 hours for the hen to form one egg. In a perfectly operating reproductive tract, a yolk is released from the ovary (this, by the way, is the full-sized yolk that you see when you crack the egg). It proceeds down the tube, where the whites, the membrane and the shell are laid on, successively, and in that order. At the end of the process, if the egg is to be brown, dye is spritzed onto the shell. The egg is then coated with bloom (sort of like a protective shellac) and then the egg is ready to be laid. This is a complicated process. Much can go wrong. Amazingly, though, it usually goes smoothly. Depending on your hen, she will lay an egg every day or so. What she can’t do is lay two eggs a day, because only one at a time proceeds down that conveyor belt of the reproductive tract.

That is, she can’t lay two eggs a day unless she is Twiggy.

Twiggy is my over-achiever. The other hens lay an egg a day for maybe two or three days, and then take a break. Twiggy lays daily, sometimes six days a week. She recently outdid herself and laid both of these eggs on the same day!

Granted, one is small. However, unlike wind eggs•, this one has all of the requisite components – yolk and white – and is perfect, albeit petite.

I’ve told Twiggy that she has my permission to slow down and take a summer vacation. She says that she’d rather not.

*Wind eggs are tiny eggs that don’t have yolks. They are usually laid by pullets whose reproductive tracts haven’t quite gotten into sync yet.