Trauma in the urban farmland

Or better said, the plight of Margueritte, AKA Maggie May the Polish chicken. When we embarked on chickens this spring, my daughter insisted that we include a Polish. Who was I to resist?

Maggie, Pat, Joan & Cindi

There were no Polish's to be had locally so we went into the chick business very briefly. We had to place a minimum order of 16 from a hatchery so I could get them here fast. This was necessary as we already had 3 chicks and it was important to keep all the 'girls' ages as close as possible to avoid social integration issues. 'Pecking order' has a real meaning, even in the home poultry flock. The 16 chicks arrived in mid-June. An ad was immediately placed on CraigsList. We sold 10 and lost 4 of them, heartbreaking, within three days. After our chick sell-a-thon, we sent one to a friend and kept Margueritte who quickly became known as Maggie May, after Rod Stewart's love interest. Our other girls are named after women rock stars: Joan Jett, Pat Benatar and Cindi Lauper. It works.


The chicks quickly outgrew their brooder (an old storage tub) and were found exploring the atrium. The spider population plummeted. The poop proliferated. We quickly got going on a coop and enclosure.

The Prolific Purple Pooper Palace under construction.

Polish chickens are known to be flighty, figuratively and literally. Their lovely feather poof, or top hat, hinders their sight, making them startle easily. Their long wings allow them to take flight at will. As the girls grew, Maggie was the odd gal out in terms of behavior. The other three were onto this. From time to time we'd see feathers from her top hat had been pulled out, sometimes causing a small amount of bleeding. Once it was bad enough that I rinsed her abused head and put Neosporin on it. Things went well until 10 days ago when half of her hairdo was gone and she was bleeding badly. We separated her, moving her back into the atrium. She started to heal. A week ago, as we were heading to bed, I checked on her and the atrium looked like a murder scene. Blood was everywhere and on everything. We didn't know such a small creature could lose so much blood and still live. Maggie seemed fine and it was late so we decided to handle the problem in the morning. In retrospect, we're uncertain whether she snagged herself on a piece of hardware cloth or scratched herself unceasingly. I set out to clean the atrium the next morning as we let all four girls free-range. Chicken blood, not to mention poop, is tenacious stuff. It took four hours to clean a 10x8 foot room. This is not a cushy chicky apartment but the old downstairs porch that had walls, windows and a roof slapped up around it. Unheated, concrete & decking for floors, you get the idea. Things were rearranged to minimize Maggie's poop spreading potential including a tarp that covered most of the floor. She moved back in.

Wounded Maggie May.

Yesterday, a week after the initial carnage, we let the girls out again and noticed at once that Maggie was bloody. My fearless husband, who it took many years to convince that chickens would be an asset to our lives, watched after Maggie May while I ran to the atrium to assess both the damage and what could have injured her. I thought I'd removed all potential threats. The bloodbath was just as far spread but not nearly so dense. When I returned, my husband reported seeing her scratching her wounds. After cleaning up the atrium again, this time with a hose hooked up to a hot water source, I turned to clean poor Maggie. She acquiesced and hung limply as I ran warm water over the back of her abused head. I placed her into the old brooding tub, complete with water, fir litter, a mesh top and a heat lamp. She lay there, inert. It turns out she was in shock. There was nothing to do other than keep her warm, quiet and hope for the best.

We went to the drug store to embellish our chicken medical supplies and then had dinner. Before going to bed, Maggie was a tad more responsive but we were unconvinced that she was would make it through the night.

This morning she was all chatter and personality. I added her food to the tub and gave her some prized meal worms and scratch (grain). I was even able to spray some disinfectant with lidocaine on the traumatized area. If it doesn't hurt her perhaps she won't scratch at it. She will remain in the tub as long as she tolerates it well and/or until she heals.

Sumi the Wonder Cat, Cindi, Pat & Joan.

This urban farm adventure is not completely what I envisioned. But what in life is? I learned I'll never buy from a hatchery again. That's not to say I believe there'd have been no social issues with the flock if we'd bought the girls at the same time, but the chances of good social integration would have been optimized.

The eggs are wonderful. The weeding and bug management are helpful. Having a group of hens follow you around the garden is delightful. Watching our cat guard his girls is the best of all. We're thinking about bees next. What could go wrong?

The New Normal

While this blog's main bent is an outlet for my pithy and entertaining (at least to me) observations of life from a landscape junkie's point of view, I do reserve the 'right' to wax from time to time about things that might not always be so sparkly and pretty.

The last year and half has been really difficult. We lost my former husband, my father and my former husband's step-dad, in an 11 month period. If we expand our time frame back to March of 2011, we also include my grandfather. Four men of our collective family. I know that the mid-century mark is when this stuff starts happening to one, but I wasn't prepared to be this strong for the people who rightfully need to crumple in the wake of such devastation, myself included. My resilience has, humanly, been imperfect. My friends, clients and family, in particular my husband who spent rather a lot of 2012 without me, have been an amazing support. Being able to write freely and frankly is cathartic.

Today feels like I've found a small piece of myself again. A design project has moved into the install phase, propelling me into a flurry of activity, which reminds me how good it feels to orchestrate, well, just about anything. Perhaps its being in charge or having control over processes after having no control whatsoever. In this, a bustle of organization is also in process. Not that organization is something that is ever very far from my orbit, but one lets things slide that aren't critical during times of crisis and times that follow. All the saved articles are sorted and reviewed. The pile, thankfully small, of Quicken entries is not overwhelming. E-mail is under control. S'ok.

And so now, feeling entirely virtuous about the state of affairs in the office, I am heading to the garden to enjoy the late afternoon light. And pursue what is considered the best, and least expensive, of all therapies: Weed, prune and stir the landscape. It's what my loved ones would want me to do. It's how I take care of myself. Y'all do the same.

A Plant Addict's Secrets

We all have them. Or maybe you're in denial or are hiding the fact from yourself or your loved ones. Perhaps you have them scattered around the garden so the full impact of the collection is disguised. We can't do what the fabri-holics do and hide them under the bed, behind the seldom worn evening gowns or in undisclosed self storage units. They do need light, fertilizer and water. I am, of course, talking about your Plant Penitentiary. You know, the collection of 4" to 5 gallon plants purchased with good intention. The objective being to return from the nursery (where you use the special credit card, the one whose statement gets sent to your sister) and plant the specimens immediately. But somehow your intentions are thwarted.

Signs of the disorder are varied but can go something like this:

1. You stop at the nursery for something legit, swearing to yourself that you WILL NOT BUY any plants. 
2. The plant specimen you encounter is a) unusual or, b) reminds you of your childhood or just about anything or c) is cheap and you must have it. It speaks to you and you speak back. You are in good company. No one thinks you are crazy...
3. You bring it home with intent to plant immediately.
4. You get distracted by slugs in the lettuce or cats in the planting beds. Or a phone call or your Blog.
5. It gets late. Your other half will be home any second!
6. You panic and place the newcomer with the others, because your other (better?) half won't notice a 19th black plastic nursery pot (this is a mild form of the addictive disorder) added to the collection. And your better half, as predicted, doesn't notice.

As time goes on you start playing games with yourself: If I plant two inmates from the Plant Penitentiary, I can bring home one more. If I plant five inmates I can buy some glazed pottery to disguise some of the others in!" This is perfectly logical. A small Abies koreana can live in a 3 gallon glazed pot for years!

Recovery from this disorder is highly dependent on the gardener's personality type. It can be tough. Having to choose between groceries and plants may not be a strong enough motivator. I can only speak for myself. Being an otherwise logical, neat and highly organized person, it came to me that actually planting the inmates somewhere, anywhere, was more pleasing & soothing than having the inmates scattered across our 4/10ths of an acre. I prefer my nursery pots scrubbed and stacked (yea, I know, excessive). My husband was not an external pressure in this, as he is happy if I am happy, and if having a Plant Penitentiary makes me happy, he'll never say a word! So I had to apply some strong internal pressure to reduce my inmate load.

Late this spring I planted out 15 or so gallon pots in a shady area. This, or course, allowed me to purchase a lovely selection of ferns (they fell into the cheap/unique category) to go with my newly released inmates. The space vacated by the gallon pots was quickly filled with seeding trays where all sorts of things were started. The internal pressure to deal with baby plants is huge as they will become leggy or worse if not dealt with in a timely fashion. My personal Plant Penitentiary is now down to about 10 pots of various sizes plus what's in the greenhouse. However, anything in the green house is considered to be part of the Horticultural Hilton. Does anyone need some oregano??