wild and windy weather

It doesn't take Davey Weathercock or Moby Bone Bird to tell you which
way the wind blows, that the cherry plum is blooming, or the sky is
falling. Go home, chickens

Domestic Invasive Beaver

Adolescent beavers are sent away from the colony when they get to
plentiful and raunchy, like the young boy owls, skunks, racoons, and
most everything else. The beavers will make a pond by impounding a
water flow, or they will settle in your pond, if they like the trees in
your lawn. I have had most every natural critter show up in my ponds
here, including painted and snapping turtles, muskrats, and mink, but
never a beaver, although I have a lot of poplar and boxwood they might
like. The problem is that the ponds here are dug ponds without clay to
seal them, so they get too low in summer and during droughts. The
beaver you see here recently appeared in the pond of a family member of
ours which is a good steady well lined pond, but maybe without so much
natural food and lodge building materials. I have plenty and am
offering to send a supply, to keep the beaver from dragging away the
family lawn furniture.

snakes for chickens

We raise frogs for snakes that chickens eat so that we can have eggs until something eats our chickens.

Hello Oriel

Hot Damn ! The Oriels are back and singing spring !

Who are the chickens here anyway?

Do I have to tell them the sky is falling? Yes. Do they give a damn?
No. They just keep hustling around and eating grass. Do the fruit trees
listen to me and hold back the bloom? No. Did I heed what my mother
said? Well no, but now I'm pretty much a chicken, and these hens are
heedless, ungovernable, and doomed. Am I the only real chicken here or
what?

Spring Coon

Coon showed up in the day time, violating the age old daylight coon
quaranteen, which really outraged our roosters, who alarmed the hens,
except for the ginger on the well head.

Copernicu eats Sumach

I sat in a tree and told the orchard not to burst its buds yet because
April is a cruel sonofabitch, but only some trees complied. You can't
tell chickens what to do either, and at this time of year a roosters
fancy, or that of our fancy rooster Copernicus, is to eat some bitter
red things, Just watch as he seems to be savaging the bloody heart of a
large mammal. During our invasion of Iraq I remember Sadam Husane
saying that he would capture our soldiers and see to it that Iraqi
roosters tore their entrails out.

But on this day here at Dog's Plot our rooster is attacking the
fruit cluster of a Staghorn Sumach tree. Sumach berries can be used to
curdle milk in cheese making, balance flavors when making cider, and as a
tea. It is common as a spice in the Middle East. Most everywhere ,
since about always, Sumach has been used medicinally for (like many
traditional medicines) most everything: as an antifungal
anti-inflammatory
antimalarial
antimicrobial
antimutagenic
blood thinning
prevents tumors
antiviral

prevents hardening of arteries
Copernicus knows what is good for him and, Good Lord, he';is going to be
one healthy rooster
Maybe we should sit back on a day like this and have some sumach tea.