Théo and the chickens des Sauches

[Perris]

did the snow come late, melt quick, or fall rather haphazardly?

 

[ManueB]

I can't get the pictures to upload in chronological orders! They just come out completely randomly. I would have to include them one by one to make them follow the day. Maybe there's something I don't get .
The snow fell during the night. The sky was clearing up when we woke up and it was a beautiful day. Now it's cloudy again and supposed to snow toward midnight.

 

[Solanacae]

Hooray for snow! Your description of shaking your jacket bring to mind the Spanish bull fighters, only trying to break up two bulls from fighting.

 

[ManueB]

Hooray for snow! Your description of shaking your jacket bring to mind the Spanish bull fighters, only trying to break up two bulls from fighting.

Yes, exactly..but we must all have looked totally ridiculous!
*******
We woke up to the same tiny layer of snow but colder than yesterday, -5/ 23 with a chilly wind that turned very strong during the morning. Théo's team only came out of the run to taste the snow and stayed inside all morning. Gaston tried to shelter from the wind- we had put some transparent plastic sheets in one place to stop the wind and also made them a space in the wood shed. Merle doesn't handle the cold well, she just lies down anywhere, I don't know why. We can now pick her up and hold her (our only chicken that will let us do this!) so I moved her to the wood shed.
I ended up locking them up for an hour in the old barn as there was really too much wind. When it called down I let them out and both Merle and Léa managed to get in the coop to lay, which made the ex-batts very upset.
The weather was better in the afternoon. I tried to hoe a small patch in the garden, we are planting the garlic tomorrow and I want to also plant some peas , but it was impossible. Piou-piou and Léa kept running under the trident everytime I tried , it was too dangerous . I'll have to use another tool.

The eagles flew by at the end of the afternoon but didn't scare the chickens. They went to bed early because of the cold, I think.

Merle was cold in the morning.

Piou-piou doesn't mind the snow.

The ex-batts like the snow as a delicacy but they don't want to put their feet in their food.

The afternoon was warmer and much more agreeable.

My helpers were too enthusiast for their safety.

 

[ManueB]

It was colder this morning, -8/17, but no wind and the chickens seemed to cope better.
There was a problem with the laying. Blanche and Cannelle were both coming in and out of "Chipie's nest". After they stopped I found three eggs (one was weird) and the remains of a no-shell egg. All that for two hens (Brune and Nougat can't reach that nest). And Blanche is molting like crazy .
Nougat wasn't doing too good herself, after she laid a huge white egg, she came out for a while then got back in to sit on the nest for an hour or so.
Merle and Léa went to lay in the coop in the afternoon which caused another series of fight between the roosters.
I think Théo got a bit scared this time but it didn't stop him from challenging Gaston again. I separated them quickly so he only had a peck on his comb.

It turned out that my partner's father doesn't agree with lowering the linden tree, so we will now start directly working on extending the woodshed.

Moving the soil and sowing the peas and fav beans with Gaston's team around turned out to be nearly impossible. They kept digging very close to the machine and then after I finished sowing they wanted to go back and dig up. We put some netting but they can cross it. It's going to be a problem, but I guess one lesson learned is not working the soil and sowing on the same day.

Merle was dangerously close to my partner's boots.

 

[MaryJanet]

not working the soil and sowing on the same day

I'll have to remember that for when I plant veggies one day.

 

[BDutch]

Clever solution against scratching and spreading!

 

[ManueB]

-8 again this morning and a very cold day. We had zero eggs today a first since the pullets lay, after yesterday's first seven !
The chickens were cold in the morning and Theo's team stayed mostly inside. Théo hurt his comb again, I'm not sure if he got in a squabble with Gaston and I somehow missed it, or if he did that on his own.
We planted the garlic in the afternoon and it was epic keeping the chickens away! The way we do it is that my partner digs a line and I put the garlic in, but the chickens were literally glued to him digging around the place. This is not going to work! We tried all kind of things to scare them off with no success. In the end, my partner ended up howling somewhere between a ghost and a wolf and opening and shaking an umbrella at them and this scared them enough that we could finish. We were hesitant between dying laughing or getting really angry.

My partner is really opposed to fencing the whole gardens off, as we were so happy to have finally moved the fences to the border of the property where we don't see them.

I finally succeeded in giving Chipie some special treat. It's hard as all the other chickens bully her and she is terrified of us. She loves banana enough to overcome her fear.

Blanche's molting is beginning to show. She's loosing huge amounts of feathers. Her comb is turning pale so hopefully she will go off laying now.

 

[RoyalChick]

When I sow seeds or plant seedlings where the chickens can reach I protect them with a length of chicken wire until they are established. I stake it down in a couple of places and it is good if it has a bit of an arch to it - but even if it is flat it stops the chickens from scratching it all up.
I don't have a solution for their need to 'help' such horticultural activities other than doing what your partner did - I wave my arms and shout shoo (it doesn't really work!).

 

[ManueB]

Random ramblings

This (very long) post has nothing to do with chickens. I figure I can do that once in a while. It's been quite some time since I wanted to do something on local recipes, but this is not it yet. I will just be rambling because sometimes, like right now, it feels like I spend my days staring at my chickens in a microscope while the world is crumbling around. I want to talk indirectly about the earthquake in Kahramanmaras but more directly pay a tribute to my late uncle.

It has always struck me how Murphy's law apply to some people. A person's life can completely turn around because of a series of unfortunate events : a separation, loosing a job, illness..is it because fate or bad luck stacks against some people, or that one event will cause another ? Or, some would say that maybe the person has some responsibility for not being strong enough to cope ?
I believe this also applies to countries. Some really seem to have drawn the worse cards. Poverty, war, corruption, political oppression, natural disasters, epidemic outbreaks, ineffective or harmful foreign intervention... everything adding up. Haiti has made me, a hardcore atheist, wonder if the word curse could hold some truth. For other countries it has been the downward spiral from a situation that seemed not that bad to a very dark place, I'm thinking of countries with widely different situations, like Lebanon, Afghanistan, DRC, Syria now.

When the state of the world and a particular event hits me in the gut I instinctively think of my uncle, who passed in 2014. First it used to be with a mixture of anger, sadness, and relief that he didn't get to see it because it would have made him so mad. Now it's turning more into a kind of loving memory. We've always been rather close on my mother's family side and two of her siblings died too soon. My uncle was in many ways an insufferable man. He knew everything about everything, he was stubborn and always did things his ways whatever you or anyone that old him. But he was also a man who could not abide injustice, poverty and oppression. When he retired from his career as a civil engineer he went on doing the same job for humanitarian organizations. He travelled to various places in the world but the two countries he stayed the longest, and was the most implicated with, were Palestine and Afghanistan. He was not naïve about humanitarian help, he was a pessimistic man and knew exactly the flaws of the system. But he said it was better to do something than nothing, and the truth was he couldn't stand doing nothing.
As he grew older, he stayed more and more with his wife in France, he became a grand father and that made him much more sufferable and not so impatient. He was 71 when he left for his last to be humanitarian mission to build an irrigation system in Tchad, and he died of heat and dehydration during the travel to get there.
So I think a lot about him with what is going on now. I'm sure he would be moving heaven and earth to go help with the rebuilding even though he would be too old. I'm very reconciled with his death, but not at all with the state of the world. I wish there were more people like him. I'm not one of those, I very rarely take actions against all the things that repel me. I donate money but I doubt it changes anything. One thing my uncle did was to work with local organizations, even if they were more messy and chaotic, on the principle that it's better to teach someone to fish than to give him a fish, so when there is a local organization that seems serious enough like the white helmets I will give to them instead, or simultaneously , to french or international organizations.

This is my uncle Bernard on the day he married my aunt, one of the most wonderful woman I know, but that is another story.