About two weeks ago, something white sprung up in my lawn.

It wasn’t large. Yet. But I knew what to expect. I got out the ruler.

August 20.

August 22.

This is a puff ball mushroom. It’s edible, but it won’t be appearing on my plate. Eleven years ago I went to a special dinner put on by a mycological society. Eight courses, each prepared with a different, professionally foraged wild mushroom. I was the only person out of the forty in attendance to have a reaction. I ended up in the hospital with severe pain and a migraine that didn’t go away for three days. Fortunately, I didn’t suffer any permanent damage.

So, the puff balls that appear on my lawn get to do what they do naturally. After getting humungous, they change color.

August 25.

I might not want to eat it, but someone did, and drilled a hole to get inside.

August 26.

August 28.

It was an exceptionally dry and hot week, so the skin on the puff ball crackled and flaked.

August 30.

Finally, it rained, and the puff ball let loose its spores and disintegrated back into the earth.

September 1.

Drama happens all around.

Note: Spaces remain in the Chicken Keeping Workshop and the Advanced Chicken Keeping Workshop on September 28. Sign up now!

The meadow across the street used to be a farm. At one time, strawberries were grown there. Some years, hay. The property passed into the hands of a church, and then to two conservation organizations, and half was developed as senior condos. When I moved here eleven years ago, the field was open. It was mowed, but not during bobolink season.

And then it wasn’t mowed. Invasive plants moved it. The wheelchair path got overgrown.

Budgets were blamed. The property was a low priority. Now the town and the conservation organizations want to control the weeds with round-up and other chemicals. Which is futile, really. Kill a buckthorn and another will pop up.

There was a meeting last night with the conservation commission and a (well-meaning) representative from the conservation organization. A number of neighbors showed up. We have offered an alternative. A friend with more goats than my two, will be intensively grazing the property. We’ll have a work party to clear old stone walls. We have a reprieve from the chemicals until next spring.

Meanwhile, there are brambles and grapevines, buckthorn, black-eyed Susan and bittersweet.  I know two boys who appreciate such things.

Free food for the goats.

It’s been well over a month since three of my hens went broody. Some hens are persistent broodies. They stay in the nesting box well beyond the three weeks that it would take to hatch eggs – that is if they actually were to hatch fertile eggs, which mine are not. Most of the time, they sit in their boxes without any eggs under them at all.

Betsy is a bantam White Leghorn. She is seven (yes, seven!) years old, hasn’t laid an egg in a couple of years, but, true to her bantie nature she still goes broody. Her preferred spot is in the rabbit hutch that has been claimed by the Ladies as their favorite nesting box.

Sometimes the big girls kick her out while they lay. Betsy lets them know how displeased she is, and then goes right back in to claim the egg after it is laid.

The hutch is not a safe place to spend the night because a predator could get in, so Betsy is put inside of the secure coop with the others after dark. She’s always in a bad mood, and she stays apart from the flock. Which isn’t much different than when she’s not broody!

There have been two persistent broodies in the Big Barn, Onyx (a Barnevelder) and Pearl (the splash Cochin.) They’ve been in the nesting boxes since mid-July.

Cochins are notorious for going broody, Pearl is very sensible about it. Daily, she leisurely gets up to take a dust bath. She hops out of the nesting box if I’ve tossed something particularly delicious into the compost pile. Although while inside of  the nesting box she’s huge pile of soft feathers, she doesn’t make a fuss when I reach under her to look for eggs.

Lately, she’s been out with the flock more and more. She might be over her summer brood. Maybe.

People worry about their broody hens. They think that they’ll starve. Never fear, the hens do get up and eat and drink, but it’s often when you’re not watching. You can tell by Betsy’s full crop that she’s eating just fine.

You can stop broodiness by putting the offender in an anti-broody coop. But, none of my three broodies were productive layers, anyway. They’re perfectly healthy. I just leave them be.

I expect that they’ll start molting any day now.

Chickens poop. A lot. A standard-sized laying hen produces as much as 4 ounces of manure a day. Chickens can’t control when they defecate. They go all of the time. They poop when they’re sleeping. It accumulates under the roosts.

Chicken manure is 75% water. It’s high in nitrogen. As it decomposes, it gives off ammonia fumes. (Which is a good reason to have your roosts well off of the floor of the coop – so your hens don’t breathe in the damp, caustic air while they sleep.)

Flies breed in rich, soft, moist manure.

I hate flies. They’re bothersome. They carry disease. In a rare case, they cause the worst thing ever – fly strike. I do everything that I can to limit the population of flies in my coops.

The first line of defense is the most obvious – remove the manure! I’ve written about manure management here. But, since chickens poop all day long, and you can’t follow them around with a scoop and bucket, you’ll have to take other steps.

Use bedding that is dry and absorbent. Pine shavings work well. A product like Koop Clean, which is chopped chaff mixed with a desiccant, is especially drying. There’s manure right in the center of this photo – dried out and so not a place that flies can breed.

If you have dropping boards (or, in the case of my Big Barn, a beam,) scrape the manure off daily. Despite the maintenance, during fly season, I see tiny immature flies on the damp wood.

I kill them with a spritz of citrus vinegar.

This summer, I saw those immature flies on my windows. But, someone else also saw them – these insect-eating insects! This is why I don’t use pesticides. Over the course of three days, these bugs (can anyone identify them for me?) scarfed up the tiny flies, decimating the fly population, and then were gone.

I’m a big fan of fly strips. Before those brilliant insect-killing insects appeared, the ones hanging over the goat stall looked like this:

Fly strips are very effective! (Just make sure that you don’t hang them where a flighty hen can tangle in them. Read about Florence’s adventure here.)

With all of my management techniques – a clean, dry coop, citrus vinegar, fly strips, and working with beneficial insects, I’ve kept the flies in check. Even late in August when the pests should be at their worst, look at this. It’s been hanging for 24 hours, and it had almost no flies to trap.

My hens thank me.

It’s been a very good summer for sunflowers. I decided to take photos of the ones that are currently blooming in my garden.

Goldfinches have been dining on the flowers, but I don’t mind. I like how sunflowers are both beautiful and useful. I thought that a full-face image of one that had been pecked at would be interesting.

After I downloaded it on my computer I noticed something. The birds aren’t the only ones feasting. I zoomed in.

Photography can separate you from the world. Holding a camera in front of your face becomes an excuse not to interact with those around you. Looking through the view finder can reduce your vision to a small rectangle. I’ve never understood parents who watch their children’s every move from behind a camera because the act of recording sets you apart. But, there’s a flip side to photography. It can help you to see the details. The very act of looking for something to photograph makes you more aware  – of pattern, color, beauty – and sometimes of that tiny camouflaged insect dining away on a sunflower.