• Fed goats; checked on their kelp, mineral, and baking soda levels
• Trellised hops by screwing a whole bunch of eye-bolts into the porch railing, and running jute twine from the upstairs window down through the eye-bolts to the garden staples on the ground; cleared the grass out of the hops beds
• Mowed most of the lawn
• Cleaned out all the dead bees from last year’s hives; laid down black plastic mulch in an attempt to solve the issue of needing to mow around future hives of angry bees; replaced and re-leveled the hive stands, and put the hive boxes back together in preparation for the new bees to come next weekend;
• Cleaned out the greenhouse, and moved the super-late tomato-, pepper-, and herb starts out there to the greenhouse under lights on a timer
• Checked in on all the things in the raised beds — overwintered chard, kale, carrots, and leeks, plus newly-transplanted lettuces, green onions, and brassicas, and the direct-seeded peas and radishes — and weeded and watered and otherwise generally babied the tiny veggies
• Moved the turkeys from their separate house into the coop, so we don’t have to keep feeding and watering birds in two places at opposite ends of the yard
• Made some chèvre and some yogurt.

My fingernails are dirty. It’s awesome.

We cleaned up the dead birds, found the raccoon in a tree and took care of it, and then went in search of the rooster and the other couple of hens who had scrammed. I found the rooster, face all bloody, near the front porch of the house, all bedraggled in the pouring rain. I scooped him up easily and carried him back to the perch.

In the morning we were pleased to find that the blood all over his face, though it had been (mostly? entirely?) his, was just from his comb; there were no other wounds that we could find, and his eyes were fine. He hung around in the coop for a day or two and then started venturing out a bit. We figured he was just taking a well-earned sick day … though it was strange that he didn’t crow anymore.

Well, he still hasn’t crowed. And then just over a week ago we noticed him limping a little, and then more. I felt like this was unrelated to the raccoon, but couldn’t really be sure. We captured him after dark, when they’re blinded and easy to grab, and looked at and felt up his leg and foot for any injury, but found none. A couple days after that he wouldn’t walk at all. But his eyes were still bright and he was alert and talkative and could get himself around the coop to get to feed and water and a cozy spot to sleep.

A few days later he got himself sorted out and started hopping out of the coop and around the yard on one foot, which was great to see. He could go to the place where the hens take their dust bath, and he could go sit in the sun or get out of the rain.

Garth took the dog to the vet for his regular checkup the other day, and asked the vet about the rooster; she said if we couldn’t feel anything broken, there wasn’t really anything she could add to our general knowledge unless she did an x-ray.

After a few days I decided I wasn’t at all confident in my own ability to feel if anything was broken or not, so today I called and asked if I could just grab one of the two chicken-trained vets for five minutes to assess him and either tell me “yes, treat this minor infection” or “it’s broken, splint it” or “it’s a loss, put him down.”

(Apparently it turns heads in the vet waiting room full of dogs when you walk in with a rooster in a Rubbermaid tub.)

Anyway, the wonderful Dr. Barfield felt the leg, and poked and prodded the rooster in general. She said the leg isn’t broken, and it is all healthy vascularly (i.e. the flesh is still alive), and that the hock (ankle-ish; the place where the leg scales end and the feathers start) is a bit swollen, but there’s no fluid in the joint, which there usually is when there’s an infection.

She seemed to think, however, that it might be a neurological thing — his foot didn’t have the grab reflex that it should. But all the same, we decided to treat a possible infection, in case that is the answer, and I sprung for the $23 bottle of antibiotics pills so that I could give them just to the rooster and didn’t have to worry about putting it in the water in the correct dosage AND then not eating the hens’ eggs for 10 days + withdrawal period. (They are at 10-12 eggs a day right now, so it would be quite a loss to have to throw a hundred eggs out!) So we are feeding him a pill a day for the next ten days. He doesn’t like it, but Dr. B. showed me how to shove a pill into a chicken’s beak and all the way down into the crop.

So the question of whether he’s sticking around is still open — if it gets better with antibiotics, he’s fine; if it doesn’t, and it is neurological or something else, it comes down to a quality of life decision: he can’t really be a rooster very well when he can’t scratch the ground or — let’s be honest about his priorities — mount his ladies. It’s easy enough to get another rooster for free or cheap on Craigslist or the bulletin board at the feed store, but we feel like we owe this guy a good chance at life due to his excellent raccoon-fighting skills and general hen caretaking. So we’ll just have to see. And if he pulls through, he might finally get a name.

We like their products because they trial all their seed in a climate similar to ours, with similar pests as well. We have continued to buy from them, focusing on Open Pollinated varieties, but not because of the possible Monsanto connection — just because I’ve been trying to move to OP whenever possible anyway.

Still, the connection to Monsanto was disappointing, even if only as another sign of Monsanto’s inexorable acquisition of the entire planet, apparently.

So we were very happy to hear in a comment from Tom Johns, owner of Territorial, that as of the 2012 catalog, they are no longer carrying anything supplied by Seminis. (We verified this by contacting Territorial’s customer service before posting.)

Great work, Territorial. We’re glad to hear the news.

Solstice was two days ago. That day we got one chicken egg. Yesterday two.

Today five.

(The blue one and the white one are duck eggs.)

So anyway, I didn’t get them any honey supers, and then one day I noticed that one of the hives was totally covered in dead bees, and I don’t know why. The other one was humming along, then suddenly wasn’t: there were basically no bees around it. I figure they swarmed because I didn’t get them enough space. It’s super common for them to swarm. I observed a swarm at someone else’s hive this summer. It was really cool. She was able to get them down from the tree and use it to start a new hive.

So then I had two dead hives, and I felt sad and guilty.

Then either the bees that were left after the swarm rebuilt, or a new colony moved in to the empty house, because there were bees on that one again! Very exciting. But I still didn’t get them a honey super, because I just didn’t have time. So I was left with an already-dead hive, and one that I was figuring wouldn’t last the winter.

Today I went out to the greenhouse to see if my pepper plants were still kicking (they were, and there is tons of fruit still ripening, which is pretty exciting), and as I was examining them I heard the unmistakable buzzing of a whole lot of pissed-off honeybees. I went to see, and found the hive knocked over and frames all over the ground, but quite a lot of bees still living. I have no idea how long they had been there; it can’t have been long, because we’ve had several days in a row where the daytime high temp didn’t get above 40, and I think that would kill them if they were that exposed. Fortunately today is significantly milder, and not raining. I should’ve taken a picture, but I was too busy frantically trying to get the smoker going, find some gloves, and try to get them put back together before dark.

I was pleasantly surprised by how much honey there was. No idea if it’s enough to get them through the winter, though. But given this latest drama, I don’t know if they’ll survive, anyway. There are a lot of ways for a beehive to die! The exposure might’ve killed all the larvae and eggs, even though it didn’t kill the adults. The queen might’ve been crushed or otherwise killed. I don’t know if they’ll be able to get the hive up to temp for tonight. Probably 1/3 of the still-living bees were all over the ground when I left them; I don’t know if they’ll get back home even though they’re very close to it. (They don’t move much when it’s below 55°.) When I put it back together I didn’t get the frames in the right order, which is important because they cluster together at the center of the box and eat what’s there. (In bee class they told me that if there are frames with honey just one frame over, they’ll still starve to death rather than go get it. I suppose it is related to temperature.) I tried to keep the honey ones in the center, but who knows if I did it right?

I’m simultaneously thrilled that they have survived this long, and totally discouraged by all the ways that they still might die because of this latest mishap. I am interested to notice, however, that I am gaining confidence in handling them, and also that I am still totally fascinated by them and a little bit in love with them. Go, little bees, go!

You should read the whole article so you learn the reasoning, but the takeaways that affect your shopping habits are:

• When you buy seedlings, look at the bottom of the container. If roots are poking out, it’s a no-go. This pertains particularly to annual vegetables. Perennials don’t like being root bound either, but the outcomes are not as extreme.
• In addition to long roots, also look for tell-tale signs of maturity in a vegetable, like flowers or fruits. Tomato plants already bearing tiny tomatoes are not a good thing. Cukes that are flowering are not a good thing.
• Look for the smallest, youngest seedlings you can find. Teeny tiny is good. The more leafed out they are, the longer their roots will be.
• If you’re raising plants from seeds, don’t let the seedlings sit around too long. Get them into the ground when they open their first true leaves. If you can’t plant for some reason, transplant them to deeper containers.

I am extra bad at the last point. I often don’t get stuff into the ground even close to on time. It’s a thing I’m working on …

So, some critter or another figured out this is a great place to get a meal at night, apparently.

Saddest, though, is the fact that no one comes in to eat cat food anymore. There is a cat door into the laundry room, and a dish of cat food in there, and it hasn’t been touched in weeks now. Little H.P. Lovecat has had a tumultuous relationship with us: she started out pretty wild, then got used to us, then got used to the dogs, then became almost a housecat, then decided she belonged to Ruby dog. Then a dog we were sitting chased her up a tree. The next morning she came in her kitty door and tried to come into the house (from the laundry room) to rub about my ankles as usual, and I closed the door and showed her through the glass that the visiting dog was inside. H.P. looked at me, and looked at the visiting dog (who had chased her up a tree), and went out the cat door, and I never saw her in the house again. (I still feel guilty about that.) She was around for a while, and would come hang out with me while I milked, but eventually she stopped speaking to me completely. I think it was when Fry, the new kid, moved in; he barked at her. I am afraid that Ruby forgot that she loved H.P., and that she also barked at her. In any case, she was still coming in to eat, even though she wasn’t speaking to us or really letting herself be seen much.

H.P. and Ruby, before they were BFFs.

But now she’s not. I’m leaving the kibble just in case. My brain is simultaneously containing two true stories: one, she’s obviously dead, because that’s what happens to cats on Bainbridge Island, and what we always expected to happen to her; two, she’s obviously given up on us and moved in with another kind family down the street, and is living it up. They are both true. (Not originally intended as a Schrödinger’s cat reference, but hey, it works, I guess.)

More details are here.

This batch is nice-looking birds! You will not be sad …

This is the last batch of chickens this year, but if you want to be notified of our turkey orders for this November, and chickens for the future, please sign up on our mailing list for poultry notification and other news. The mailing list always gets first dibs.