Our Sister Chickens

PJ and I were in our local paper this week, talking about our solar panels. This is the photo they included, of me holding our chicken Bridezilla in one hand and a shovel in the other; photovoltaic panels above, a pile of mulch below.

Z calls my sister Kate's three daughters his sister cousins, and the hens they gave us from their brood, the sister chickens.

Hanging out in the garden with our chickens today, it suddenly dawned on me that by golly, our chickens really are our sisters. They are alive at the same time on Earth as us, they are living within the same environment as us, but much more significantly, didn't we all evolve from the same primordial soup?

A Pile of Shit

There's a horse riding ranch two minutes away, where I used to go riding as a kid, and where Z had his birthday party a few years back. PJ and I drove out there first thing this morning.

'Is it OK if we collect some of your poo?' I asked one of the owners when we arrived.

'You can't collect mine, but you can collect the horses',' he told me, straight-faced.

And so we got to shovellin'. It was cold out and the shit was hot and steaming, and filled with worms our chickens dined on each of the three times we returned home with a car-load.

I've never been a red roses kinda gal and I've never been one for posed photos in a nice frame up on the mantle from holidays gone by. But I would never have described shovelling shit as a romantic pastime until today either.

But boy was it! The cool air, the steaming dung, no-one in the field except my beloved and I, working hard side-by-side to move the fecund waste so it can turn our clay earth into rich soil to grow good food for our family.

Dinner and movie? Chocolates in the shape of a heart? Give me a shovel, my man and a pile of shit any day.

Down and Dirty

I have an article in the current issue of Bicycle Victoria's Ride On magazine. It's for a section called Women's Spin, aimed at raising the profile of cycling among women.

This is the photo of our chook Louie that accompanies my words:

The gist of the article is that when I lived in Melbourne, I considered feminine to mean unruffled, neat and delicate. "If I could have sat side-saddle on my bike I would have."

But now that I live in the country where I grow vegies and keep chooks, you will often see me pedalling around in my dirty gardening clothes. "In the city I would check myself in the mirror before going out in public, but now I wear my soil-covered clothes and straw-filled hair like a flag I wave proudly to proclaim who I am."

I hadn't thought twice about it, until yesterday afternoon when Z and I were talking about the men and machines that have been working opposite our house for the last week. It has rained every day that they've been there and I commented to Z that I would much rather be warm and dry and working from home than drenched and cold and slipping around in the mud.

'But don't you like getting dirty?' Z asked me, stunned. And that’s when I realised that although I love the dirt and may even define myself by that love, I can't actually say that I like getting dirty. Not in the same way that a seven year-old boy can, anyway.

Garden Bed

PJ's parents are staying with us this weekend, so we used their visit and the onset of sunny weather to have a pre-spring spring clean. We had three mattresses that were rather old and smelly so we cut them up. We used the wool from the futons as mulch along our east boundary

and when we've decided where to put this bed skeleton, we'll grow some kind of vine or cane up through it. Mmmm raspberries, maybe. Breakfast in bed??

Terra Firma

We would like to plant fruit trees along the east end of our social warming fence, so today I spent several hours digging at the hard clay ground that's littered with shale. It took me ages and my hands are now so sore, but it was so invigorating, I can't wait to get stuck into it again tomorrow. Usually this kind of physical work is PJ's domain, but today it was mine. Helped along by some friends.

The ground is so hard, I don't know how our potatoes grew in it last year. While I was digging, I found some leftover from that crop that we are going to replant elsewhere for their hardiness and taste.

I had such a great day. The most difficult part of it was deciding what to do with all the worms I found: feed them to the chooks (I like to watch them suck them up like spaghetti) or put them back in the earth where they'll work to turn the hard ground into gold.

I Dream of G Knees

OK I admit it, I am partly posting this picture because I like the colours and layers and partly because I came up with the title and thought it was pretty damn funny.

The excellent G is a kid who goes to school with Z. His mum told us that when he first started going to school he used to ask to stay home because he wanted to hang out with his chickens all day. If I wasn't able to and I had a genie, I would be asking for exactly the same thing.

Feather Weather

Rednesday

This year marks a decade since I first became attracted to the colour red. 

In 1999 I returned home to Melbourne from travelling through Asia to settle down for a while; find a job and a home. Regular life seemed so colourless compared to the cities and villages I had travelled in.

I don't remember if I sought out these clogs or if I saw them in a store window and just knew I had to have them. All I remember is that I was home from travelling through countries where red is the colour of prosperity, and I bought these shoes.

In those days I wore them wherever I went, though these days they sit by the front door – easy to slip on when I go outside to empty the compost bucket, check on the chooks or pull the flying fox rope back up for Z.

The Embers of Two Fires

After a solid night's sleep in our own bed last night, I woke and went for my morning walk. We had a great time away but coming home is a sweet privilege.

Highlights from Two Fires:

Joining the Canberra Bushwalking Club on their walk through the lush Monga Forest,

being away with PJ and O, getting some great feedback on my paper, buying a handheld blender at a garage sale, going to hear some great panels, being a tourist, learning some more about ecofeminists Judith Wright and Val Plumwood, buying some fresh produce at the local market, sharing food at some great cafés, spending time with Ingeborg and Phil, proprietors of The Braidwood Book and Print Room, feeling entirely relaxed and entirely thankful for sponsored holidays, coming home last night to our lovely village and our sleeping feathered friends.

Environmental Refugees

Because of the forecast of high winds combined with the threat of fire, we decided not to take any chances. When Z got home from school, we packed the car and are staying the night with our dear friend Nick in Melbourne.

(For those fowl friends amongst you: Our new birds are locked in their coop with plenty of food and water.)

On our way through town we stopped by the town hall to register our departure with the Red Cross. In the main hall they were still set up from the fires last week with mattresses and blankets and hours worth of offline entertainment.

Introducing

In Melbourne the other night, my grandfather went to the ballet with one of his sisters. It made me feel uncomfortable to imagine that strangers might think they were husband and wife. The next day I heard that a woman had said to my great aunt how lovely it was for my grandfather that he was dating already, so soon after my grandmother passed away.

I would be shocked if my grandfather did meet somebody else so soon, but if he did, I would of course be happy for his happiness.

I am happy for our happiness today, though we are all still rather hesitant and detached. We need eggs and it makes no sense to buy them, so we went out to a guy named Neil's place and picked out three new hens. Z's is the small black 12-week old Australorp and mine and PJ's are the 16-week old Light Sussexes. As yet unnamed. As yet unknown to us. 

In an attempt to recognise our chickens' place in the local ecosystem, tonight we read to Z the first half of Dahl's Fantastic Mr Fox.

Empty Nest

For work and because of the threat of fire where we live I spent the last couple of days in Melbourne, while PJ worked in Sydney. We picked up Z and now the three of us are home and happy.

Earlier in the week the worst sound in the world was the incessant sirens of the fire engines on their way to the nearby blaze. 

Today the worst sound in the world is my own voice, unanswered by our five chicks and two beautiful hens. When I left for the train station early on Thursday morning I made the executive decision not to lock the chooks up. In case there was a fire, I liked the idea that they would smell the smoke or feel the radiant heat and escape to some place safe.

I am sorry to say that my decision killed them. Not by fire, but by fox.

This morning before I met PJ at the airport shuttle bus, I went to see The Water Hole exhibition at ACCA, which I loved. I'm not sure you can see from this photo but the discarded plastic water bottles form a giant nest on which sit dozens of abandoned eggs. 

To these birds that were born into the leftovers of our consumerables, and to our seven birds that were consumed, I say I'm sorry.

Waste Not

We had leftover pancake mixture this morning so I thought I'd cook a few up for the chooks. I got sidetracked and left this one on the pan too long. It didn't burn but it was a bit stiff. I soaked it in water and fed it to them along with some others I made.

They ate them all.

What we don't use or feed the chooks, we compost.

Growing up my mum used to say that the meaning of life is compost. Oh how wise you are Mamman.

What we don't use goes to enriching our land and what I don't use, goes to informing this Land.

PJ calls this lack of waste a closed-cycle ecology, I call it Blogging 101.

Chook Book

Because I'm an enthusiastic reader, I'm always eager to see what books strangers are engrossed in when I see people reading on public transport.

On the way down to Melbourne today I read this book on the train and then on all the trams I took. I held it out in front of me like a proud shield.

Keeping chooks is one of the greatest joys in my life and I want people to know that I am not some random redhead on public transport, but that I have chooks!

I learnt a lot whilst reading the Chook Book. Of course you can never read too much about something you love, but I have learnt more than a book can ever teach just from hanging out in our yard and quietly watching our birds in all their feathered glory.

So many people have commented to me how dumb chooks are – what pea brains. And maybe they are compared to dogs or cats, but what nobler job is there than sitting on eggs of new life. I was in awe of Cuba when she was broody and I am in awe of those little pea brains who can create something as complete and contained as an egg. 

After all these millions of years of evolution and with all my years of education, if only I could create something so wonderful each day.

Hatched!

It's been three weeks since we received 8 fertilised eggs and I am thrilled to announce the arrival of 5 chicks to our brood.

I am home just now from my mum's birthday party, where she provided all the delicious food for her family to lunch on.

In this photo, mama Cuba is doing her version of that too – grounding up the feed into small enough pieces for her babies to eat.

Happy birth day!

Photographs of

holiday trophies:

and the riches of the Homecoming Queen:

Mother

Cuba's gone broody. She's pretty much gone off her food, she's stopped laying and she spends all day sitting on her empty nest. We spoke to our chook-loving friend J, who put us onto her chook-loving friend T, who came over this morning with 8 fertilised eggs.

We put them in Cuba's nest and she slowly fluffed up her feathers and with her beak, rolled them under her body. She didn't stop to think about whose eggs they were, she knows what she has to do, and she's doing it.

Just like me, I thought, and the way I fluff my feathers for a child who is not mine.

Private Domestications

PJ serves breakfast on the deck.

A chicken at the door.

Toenails too long.

Droplets like stars on a clear night.

Kill Bill

Billy, left, was getting worse. She had stopped laying, had gone off her food and was becoming increasingly antisocial. Unfortunately PJ had to kill her yesterday. I asked him how he did it, thinking I wanted to know, but when he said he wasn't going to tell me I was pleased.

Instead of letting Cuba and Dirt eat her, in case they too became sick, PJ put her in the compost. If she couldn't provide us with eggs, then let her decomposed little body turn to soil and help make our vegetables grow.

All day I have been thinking of these Monbiot words:

Darwinian evolution tells us that we are incipient compost... I like the idea of literal reincarnation: that the molecules of which I am composed will, once I have rotted, be incorporated into other organisms. Bits of me will be pushing through the growing tips of trees, will creep over them as caterpillars, will hunt those caterpillars as birds. When I die, I would like to be buried in a fashion which ensures that no part of me is wasted. Then I can claim to have been of some use after all.

A Toast

The other morning PJ and I came into the living room to see Z drawing a treasure map with permanent markers. The paper was too thin and his islands and palm trees are now inscribed on our floor.

This morning when we woke and heard Z making noise outside our door, we were quick to call out to see what he was doing. He asked us to close our eyes and the next moment he burst in with breakfast in bed for us. It was the first time he had done this. We applauded while we ate.

It has been a week of competent firsts for Z. Yesterday he yelled to me, "Look what the bunny rabbits did!" I thought he meant the chooks and had his words muddled up. I went over to see what he was talking about. A few days ago I had taught him to tie his shoelaces the way I first learnt: you make two looped bunny rabbit ears then cross them. He'd been practicing and had tied them by himself.

I once read that kids grow faster in springtime and I visualised it in stop motion animation. I never for one minute imagined that you could see it right before your eyes.