The chicks and I stayed up all night reading the entries. Look how tired they are.

Actually, I read each and every one of them as soon as they hit my computer. I wasn’t fishing for compliments when I posted this contest, but I sure got a creel full! Thanks for all of your enthusiasm for what I do.

I used a random number generator to pick the winner and it’s Sean!

Growing asparagus means that you have literally put down roots. Asparagus is a perennial. During the winter the asparagus patch looks barren. Then, in the spring, stalks emerge. The season is brief and for the rest of the summer the bed is filled with frilly greens (loved by butterfly caterpillars.) An asparagus bed takes years to mature. Even varieties like Jersey Knight, which can be harvested the first year after planting, don’t really get going for a few more growing seasons. People who rent, or have a community garden that is tilled under every season, or who have pots on porches, don’t grow asparagus.

When I had my raised bed vegetable garden built, the center space was reserved for asparagus. It was a sign of commitment to this place. Besides, I love asparagus, which, like corn, tastes best if there are only minutes between harvesting and cooking. (This is true. If you only buy asparagus from Peru at the supermarket, you’ll be blown away by the difference of fresh and local, and even more so if it’s been picked steps from your back door.)

After a few years I was harvesting enough asparagus to serve it with spring dinners. I was eating the spears for mid-afternoon snacks. Then, one October, I made the mistake of letting Candy into the vegetable patch. I let her in the garden to have an outing with the hens, while they did the autumn bad bug clean-up. I thought she’d like a hop-around. I wasn’t paying attention. She dug a tunnel under the asparagus and ate the roots. All of them. My asparagus patch was felled by one bunny.

I’ve started another asparagus bed. Rabbits are banned. For now, though, I have to buy local asparagus. It’s just coming into the market.

This is my favorite way to cook it:

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Wash the asparagus and snap off the ends. It should break where the tough stalk meets the stem. If the asparagus are fat, peel the stems at the bottom.

Place on a baking sheet and coat with olive oil. Dust with salt and pepper. Grate on Parmesan Reggiano cheese. It does cost over $15 a pound, but you don’t need much.

Place in the oven for 8 minutes. (Only 5 if the asparagus are thin like pencils.) Turn over, and bake for about 5 to 10 minutes more until the stalks are limp. Eat hot, or it’s also delicious as leftovers straight out of the fridge, with a squeeze of lemon at the last moment.

This week marks the fifth anniversary of the HenBlog! This is the 626th post. From the start I made a decision to focus my writing on a small window into life with my animals. As a scientist who studies pond flora and fauna will tell you, a tiny drop of water seen under a microscope holds a lot of life. It’s the same for my backyard.

I subscribe to the animal training philosophy that if you look for the good moments and reward them, they will multiply. What you focus on is what you get. When I write this blog, I also look for the good moments, the sweet, touching, silly things that happen in my flock and between me and my animals. Because I’m looking for the good to tell you about, I find it. Being a writer, I take what I see and mull it over and turn it into words. I’m constantly crafting stories in my head and thinking about how to share them with you. My life has become happier in the process of writing the HenBlog.

In thanks for being such a great audience, I have another giveaway from my collection of vintage chicken things. You can win this wind-up chicken that lays jelly bean eggs and this colorfully embroidered rooster. All you have to do leave a comment to let me know how long you’ve been reading HenBlog and where you found me. Even my newest readers can enter! Just once, please. And do let others know about this contest. Writers love an audience.

The contest closes Thursday, May 5 at 10 pm EDT. The contest is closed. Thanks for entering!

… don’t worry! The animals aren’t always in view of the cams. There’s any number of places that they might be. Candy might be under Blackie’s retirement home, while the other hens visit the frail hen.

If you see Candy closed into her hutch during the day, then I’ve probably let the hens out to free-range. Sometimes the goats join them.

But, the goats and the chickens rarely stay together. Pip and Caper have discovered the delicious water celery in the water feature. I’m happy that they’re keeping it down. Otherwise I’d have to yank it out because the celery overwhelms all of the other plants in the pond.

Or sometimes the boys check out the lawn furniture.

You’ll rarely see Scooter on the cams. These sunny days he stays on the back step, baking in the sun.

I think I’ll go join him!

I just got back from a most wonderful two days and I have several people to thank.

On Friday I visited my BFF, Emily. Really forever, as we met when we were thirteen in 1973 (you do the math, I just count decades.) We were both horse-crazy girls at a riding camp in Vermont. The entire camp was filled with horse-crazy girls and I didn’t connect with all of them. But Emily was funny and brilliant. We both like words and writing and so were able to maintain a friendship when that was done with paper and pen, and it has continued with email. I haven’t seen Emily much. She lives several states away, and has a crazy-busy life of a college professor and mother. She’s also been battling cancer. “Going to war” against cancer is a cliche, but in Em’s case, she and her entire family donned virtual suits of armor and fought through chemo, radiation and a bone marrow transplant. She won against a rare cancer that is usually the victor.

So, there I was on Friday, on a gloriously sunny day, with the wind blowing the blossoms off of trees, at a farm in Connecticut, visiting with Emily and her good horse, Perry. Yes, we both remain horse-crazy girls. It would have been enough to stand in the indoor ring, smelling that smell of horse sweat and dust and manure, and watching Emily ride, but Emily asked, “will you coach me?” I haven’t taught for years. Emily and I went to that Vermont camp another year, and then to riding school in England, where we learned to be riding instructors, and then she studied Greek classics in college. But, I continued to study horses and got my BS in animal science. I rode and taught, mucked and cleaned tack into my mid-twenties, when I switched from riding breeches to chef whites. I continued to ride, off and on, and take dressage lessons (with some Grand Prix level instructors, I never do things half-way) until my back gave out and I had to stop.

Emily is a lovely rider but she’s always been a tad tense (Emily would say that “tad” is too generous a qualifier.) Perry is a nice horse, but he doesn’t know what to do to make Emily happy, so he moves reluctantly. They ride indoors because Em can’t risk a fall outside. They’re crooked and ring sour. I didn’t have to tell Emily how to ride, what buttons to push to ask for a canter, or where to put her hands. She knows all of that. I had to tell her where to put her heart. I pointed out each good stride. I made her imagine a window in the ring and had her ride through it. I had her recite nursery rhymes. You can’t be tense when saying something silly. I pointed out when to ask Perry for more and where to hold him together. I congratulated each good stride. Soon enough, Perry was carrying Emily with relaxed, confident energy, with, as we horse-people say, a beautiful rounded frame, and Emily was smiling and looking ahead.

So, I need to thank Emily for the chance to teach a lesson again. I’m loathe to put the jeans I wore into the wash. I do so love that smell of horses.

The next day, I headed further south to Westport, CT. Elizabeth Beller, a HenBlog reader from that area, had acted as matchmaker and connected me to Earthplace, which hired me to do a Tillie Lays an Egg story time and spend a few hours at their Green Fair talking about backyard chickens. Elizabeth and her daughter, Brie, brought three of their chickens. Brie is an animal-lover after my own heart, and spends hours with her hens. It shows. Her friendly and relaxed birds were the ideal chicken ambassadors. I talked about poultry for four hours, and then was treated to an early dinner by Elizabeth and talked about animals some more, which is just about my favorite way to spend a day. Thank you Elizabeth and Brie! (Click on their names and read their blogs.)

Here are Elizabeth, Lady Gaga and me.

Finally, did you notice that I spent much of my time in conversation? When I visited Emily a year ago, I had a hard time following her words. The visit was only a few hours and I was exhausted afterwards. This time, the visit lasted a day. We talked in the car, at the barn, and at the dinner table. I heard almost every word. At Earthplace, I heard the voices of little children and the voices of their parents. I heard. Thank you to Dr. Toh, my surgeon, and Nancy Cohen, my audiologist, for the incredible, life-expanding gift of the cochlear implant. And thank you to the scientists, everywhere, working on the devices and drugs that allow Emily and I to continue to be friends.