I’ll be out of town for a couple of days. I’ve left Candy in charge. I think she can handle it, don’t you?

Note: Candy was born March, 2004, so she is eight years old!

Chickens poop. A lot. On average, a mature laying hen will produce about a quarter pound of manure per day. Another way of looking at it is that in one year you’ll have 2 cubic feet of manure for each bird. So, for a small backyard flock of six hens, that will be 12 cubic feet.  That’s not including bedding that it might be mixed in with.

Chicken poo is filled with nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium – essential garden nutrients. But, in it’s raw form, it will burn plants, not feed them. It also might contain pathogens, including salmonella. It might contain bits of internal parasites, and it might harbor the intermediary hosts of those parasites. It also smells. Bad.

That pile of poo is about 75 % water. It will eventually shrink, but it while it is dehydrating and breaking down it has to go somewhere. I keep compost piles in my chicken runs. It keeps them busy with things to shred, scratch and eat. Much of my kitchen and garden scraps go there. But, that’s not where I put the manure. I don’t want the hens mucking about in their own waste and possibly ingesting parasites. I want to move pathogens out of the coop area.

I could put a couple of large compost bins in the back meadow. But I have two dogs that love getting into manure. So, I have another solution. It requires no work and no money. It just needs time.

I take a discarded plastic garbage bin with a cracked bottom. I cut off the broken end, so it’s basically a tube, with handles, and set it in my vegetable garden.

I fill it with manure, shavings, dead leaves and garden waste. As it decomposes I add more, until it’s filled to the top.

And then I let it sit. I don’t turn it, or fuss with it, for a year.

Then, it’s ready to use. I put the whole thing in a wheelbarrow (easy to lift with those handles) and take it where it’s needed. This what it looks like when upended. Look at that black dirt!

I dumped this pile of compost onto the bald spot at the top of the meadow where nothing but weeds and moss grows. I didn’t even bother spreading it. The girls do that task.

I have three of these bins transforming chicken manure into garden loam. Now that I have the Gems, I need to scrounge up another broken garbage can. Twelve hens make a lot of manure – which is a good thing, because that bare spot can use it all.

Hens have scaly, tough, clawed feet and they use them to scratch and dig. But they don’t particularly like to shred up turf. So, if you have a dense, lush lawn with no bare spots, then you can let your hens wander about with no worries at all. The hens will trot here and there, picking at bugs and seeds and grazing a bit on the grass.

I don’t have one of those lawns. There are bare spots. There are areas that are mostly crab grass, which means that in the winter there are dead tufts with dirt showing. Still, it doesn’t look too bad, does it?

It’s a large expanse. What harm can a few hens do?

Take another look at the photo. Do you see a red hen checking out the side of the barn? There’s a bit of loose soil there where the rain, coming off the roof, has pounded the ground.

A little scratching, a little rearranging, and it becomes this:

a dust wallow for a dozen hens.

It’s a good thing that nowhere on my list of gardening wishes is a pristine lawn.

I think that hard-cooked eggs are pretty just as they are. The ones from my hens have bright white whites and deep-yellow yolks. I like polka dots, so a sliced egg’s sunny circles make me happy. It should be enough. It usually is. But, once in awhile I want to push that cute-factor, and that’s when I turn to a trick from Japan – I mold eggs into shapes. The Japanese have been doing this for ages, making adorable hard-cooked eggs for their children’s bento box lunches.

You’ll need molds.

The directions are in Japanese, and the illustration appears to be missing some  steps.

Fortunately, I bought these at a local store and was able to ask the Japanese shopkeeper for a translation. It’s easy! Here’s what you do:

If the eggs are from your own hens, wait until they are at least 10 days old. That way they’ll peel easily.

Put the eggs in a pot, add water so that they are covered by an inch. Bring the water to a boil. As soon as the water is rolling, turn off the heat and cover. Let sit for 16 minutes.

Here’s the hard part – you have to peel these when they are still hot. After years of working in kitchens, I have asbestos fingers and can handle hot eggs. But, you might want to run the egg briefly under cold water. Peel immediately and place in the molds.

Snap shut and put in the refrigerator until chilled.

You can also make a homemade heart mold. Cut a piece of cereal box cardboard and fold into a vee. Line with parchment paper. Place the egg in the vee, set a chopstick on top and hold down with rubber bands. The stick has to be pressing down hard enough to cause a clear depression. Do a few extra because you’ll probably have one or two that crack (I think homegrown eggs are firmer and not as pliable.) Chill in the mold.

The heart eggs can be sliced, or you can cut a bit off the bottom so you have fat, upright hearts. So sweet. And just look at this cute bear.

Isn’t it nice that such simple little things can make you smile?

I might have to get the Hello Kitty egg mold next.

About a month ago, out of the blue, I got an email from a reader in Texas. Jennifer loves animals. In fact, she loves all animals, and is proving that in a concrete way. Jennifer is an artist and she is painting every single one of the 5,000 or so mammalian species known to science. But that’s another story. This story is about how much she loves chickens. She doesn’t have a flock or her own, not yet, and so gets enjoyment from watching my girls. Jennifer is particularly enamored with Agatha (aren’t we all?) She offered to paint Agatha’s portrait. Of course I said yes!

This week, Agatha’s painting arrived, and I immediately hung it in a cheerful spot in my house.

Jennifer has an Etsy shop where you can order portraits of your own chickens. If you don’t have hens, she can paint another one of Agatha for you. Or Buffy. In fact, any of my girls would be happy to model for Jennifer. Candy says that Jennifer can paint her, too, but only if there are no chickens in the painting. And only if Jennifer captures her regal bearing. And she’ll only pose if there are banana chips involved.