By December, pumpkins purchased in October to decorate the front porch have been through several cycles of freezing

and thawing. They’re sagging and dripping.

I almost left them too long. One more day and they would have fallen apart at my touch. So, yesterday afternoon I gently, gingerly, set them into the wheelbarrow to dispose of them.

A few years ago there were too many pumpkins to put into the compost bin, and I thought that they were too close to rotten for the hens, so I decided that it was best to dump them into the woods, which is where Lily found and ate them. Then she came inside and threw up all over the house. It cost several hundred dollars to have a professional carpet cleaner remove the damage.

I no longer worry about feeding the flock softened pumpkins. They happily eat them. The hens don’t care if the squash are squishy. In fact, the Girls think that  age improves the flavor.

They rather like it when the stem falls off, leaving a gaping hole.

It’s winter and the hens rarely lay, but still, they are good for something. In a roundabout way I rather like to think of the chickens as inexpensive carpet cleaners.

Yesterday afternoon and into the evening, forty people were here for my new-traditional Pie Party. Almost eighteen pies were eaten. There was laughter and conversation, and one happy little dog had his butt scratched by four young girls all at the same time. I’ll have photos and tell more later this week, but today I’m busy. My friend, Cindy, is taking me up to Maine in her truck and trailer to pick up Tonka. Hopefully, we’ll arrive back here in Carlisle, and settle him into his new home, a stable two miles from my house, before dark.

The Pie Party was a good excuse to celebrate turning onto this path of horse ownership, and so I decorated the Butternut Squash, Apple and Brie Galette like this:

I know you’ll understand if I’m not at my computer for the next few days!

Every day, multiple times a day, I give thanks. I am thankful for where I live. There is beauty all around me, in the small details, like the moss underfoot, and there in the larger landscape, like the pink sky at night. I share my days with intelligent and loving people. My animals keep me in the present, and remind me to enjoy the journey.

The last two years have been filled with the miracle of hearing. My two cochlear implants have returned to me not just the ease of conversation, but also the minute details of life, only apparent through this sense – a dog’s pant, a twig snap, the tick of my wristwatch. The sounds of birds in the trees have become birdsong. A running stream is musical. Every day I give thanks to the long line of researchers and scientists and doctors who have made this possible.

I know that on this planet, I am one of the lucky ones, here, today, with my wealth and my freedom, my ability to make choices, and the wherewithal to make them reality, I do not take any of it for granted.

The underlying tenet of the type of animal training that I do is that although you keep in mind a large goal, you get there by breaking it down into small steps, each one carefully built on the one before. Do you want your dog to come? Before you ask your dog to move to you, what do you need? Think about it. She needs to look at you. Reward the glance, and then the focus, and then, finally, the movement to you. First it will be a slow trot, and at last there will be that all-out, pell-mell joy of the fast recall. Although this sounds like a tedious and lengthy way of doing things, it actually progresses amazingly fast. Be aware of, and reward, the seemingly minor moments. Ignore what isn’t right. Soon you will have achieved your objective. This is how I try to go about my days. I have my large goals, but I celebrate the very small steps needed to get there. And so I am most grateful to you, my readers. I could be writing about matters of political and societal importance. Certainly I think about those things. But, you give me an excuse to take the time to focus on seemingly inconsequential events – a hen’s molt, the last carrots from the garden, the baking of a pie. My daily blog is a place in which I can pay attention to those moments of grace, Like the animal training that I do, when the focus is on the small positive steps, the better the whole becomes.

Have a most wonderful day.

There are three Speckled Sussex hens in the Big Barn flock. Florence is the smallest and most uniformly speckled. Agatha is easy to spot from a distance – she’s the heavier hen that is gallumping around. In the barn, Agatha is the one up close and inquisitive. Etheldred is Agatha’s size, but her coloring is distinctive. It’s not up to breed standard. There’s too much white.

At a few month’s of age, Etheldred’s chest sported a white bib.

As she matured, more spots turned up on her brown feathers and the reverse happened on her chest, with more brown mingling in. Her head became white. I joked that she was a bald eagle.

I thought that after the first molt in 2012, that this would be Etheldred’s permanent look. She wouldn’t win any ribbons at a poultry show. She was more white and blotchy than what the “standard of perfection” calls for, but I thought her beautiful.

Etheldred has just finished her second molt, and to my surprise, she has grown in even more white feathers, especially on her neck. I can sympathize. This year I’ve gone mostly grey.

I wonder if, each year when Etheldred molts, that she will grow in more white feathers, until she has totally changed her plumage.

Have you ever had a hen that sported a different look after a molt?

Two weeks ago, I was at the Equine Affaire (a horse trade show/extravaganza) where I came across the Lucerne booth. They sell hay from their farm in Maine. I’ve been looking for a source of chopped alfalfa to feed to my flock, and they sell it in bags (although it’s coated in molasses, it’ll do in a pinch.) When I told Rich, the company president, what I wanted alfalfa for, he showed me a new product that they’ve just developed specifically for backyard flocks called Koop Clean.

Before the advent of bagged shavings, chicken keepers used all sorts of bedding in their coops. Hay and straw is not absorbent, tends to mold, and can cause crop impactions, but it was inexpensive and widely available. To make it usable as bedding, farmers chopped it into bits. Farms were equipped with simple machines to do this work. Koop Clean takes that old idea – chopped stalks of hay and straw – but adds a new component. Mixed in is ground zeolite, which is a naturally occurring mineral that absorbs moisture and odor.

Rich gave me a bag to try.

I shoveled out (and put into the compost) all of the wood shavings in the Little Barn and replaced them with Koop Clean. The Ladies were ecstatic. They went right to work, scratching and pecking. I spied on them via the HenCam. The Koop Clean kept them busy all day, except for Buffy, who happily settled down onto the soft bedding.

This is what you want to see – active, foraging hens. In the winter it is hard to achieve in a small space. Scratch grains tossed into the bedding don’t last long. Even hanging a cabbage has them rooted to one spot. (Some people use deep litter, and In another post I’ll go into detail about why I don’t like that option for backyard flocks.)

I really liked how the flock behaved with the Koop Clean.  The only problem was that the girls were kicking it up with such enthusiasm that I had to raise the waterer to keep it clear of flying bedding.

When first spread out in the coop, it smelled wonderful – a true barn smell, of sweet dried grasses, like late summer in a field. As the week wore on, that aroma dissipated, but the odor of chicken manure didn’t take over, despite the fact that it accumulated as usual, especially under the roosts. I muck out weekly, and the manure was as dry and as easy to pick up as it is in shavings. The task would, however, have taken a tad less time without the rabbit’s help.

I was impressed enough with the trial that I bought four bags. The product is not yet widely available, so I used the dealer search page on the Lucerne website to find a store that carried it.  I had to drive a ways to purchase it, but I always love an excuse to go to a new feed store, and Orde Farm in Hollis, NH was worth the trip.

I spread out a bag in the Gem’s coop. To contain costs, I didn’t remove their clean old shavings. The Gems didn’t care – they set right to foraging and happily clucking over the change in their bedding.

Koop Clean is more expensive than what I’ve been using. It is $13 a bag, rather than $7 for pine shavings. Still, I think it will be worth it, at least for the winter. The hens will eat bits of the hay, and will stay healthier because they’ll be active. I get the benefit of the barn smelling like what I think that a barn should. I don’t know yet how frequently the bedding will need to be replaced, or how dusty it will be compared to shavings. When I find out, in a month or so, I’ll let you know.

Koop Clean is a good product. Almost good enough for me to excuse the spelling of Koop.

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