refreshing the chicken flock

This past week the chicken flock received two new chickens. Two of the older chickens moved on to a new home with a friend in Ocean Beach, and two new poulets joined the flock. It's common for farmers to refresh their flock of chickens every few years--usually the older chickens end up in the soup pot!

Our girls retired in style. Here are some images of them, in the crate, feeling a little nervous, and then getting over their fears at the sight of their lush new home. The salad bar was apparently tasty.






Later, Lucia and Lucy came to check out the coop which will be their new home. They've got some growing to do, to catch up to the size of their big sisters. We'll be keeping them in the coop probably the first few weeks until they know where they are. Welcome, little ones!

Sarah and I talked about planting an imaginary garden when i saw her last week in a dreamed up place..I have the vegetables and she grows the flowers.

So, I begin with Milpa,the Three Sisters…In this garden,the soil is deep and rich and brown and loamy from years of attentive gardeners who have enriched it adding layers of nutrients…I sit and dig my hands in it, its warmth, its life, its smell. it’s good enough to eat. It’s like holding life in your hands. It’s what we all become. I think about Sarah years ago at an ecology camp in the southern California desert singing a song about about how dirt made her lunch, her dinner and her brunch. I think about her planting a garden in the front yard of her West Oakland apt with friends helping doing the double digging method.

So, we begin. I want the corn to grow in a half moon shape, pointing down, no straight rows, with 12 stalks in the back arc, then 10, then 8. It will be Zapatista corn from Chiapas. I will build up mounds and flatten the tops like mesas with a kind of scooped up place on the top. Then 2 or 3 corn kernels go there pushed in with a finger. I use my hands so i can feel the dirt and see the seeds disappear into the earth. On the sides of the mounds, I plant beans, some scarlett runners for their beauty and some snappy greens and french greens, 4 seed around each corn and these will grow and twirl around the stalks and the stalks will hold them up perfectly. On the ground around the stalks I plant squash, different kinds; zucchini, summer, blossom to cover the ground around the corn and beans, keep in the moisture and keep out the weeds. In a matter of weeks, the Three Sisters grow together, all caretaking one another, like Sarah, Shane and Josh are, a food jungle yielding and yielding. And we will look forward to zucchini bread and fritters and bean salad and corn, corn, corn. The sun warms my back and I scoop water from a barrel of rainwater and give each seed its first drink. They start to grow—free.

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i have embarked on the next step of planning and planting in our imaginary garden. the lettuces! so, i see the lettuces sprouting up practically overnight,new and soft green and red hues. they love the water we give them and push their roots down to soak it up and begin their complex communication with the soil and its inhabitants,the mycelium,the microorganisms,the minerals,the higher forms of bugs. i love to touch their leaves,their edible,colorful and nutrient packed beauty. i have chosen different levels to plant them according to the ability and desire of those who would garden. some grown direct from the ground for those who love to get down and dirty,feeling the ground supportive and energetic beneath. some i plant in sit-down beds for those whose desire to mix it up with the soil may be inhibited by their limitations to crouch or kneel or squat. some i plant even higher up,like a stand-up counter bed for those who want to stand and stare and dance and move around their greenness..to each their own.i plant the old stand-by's and pore over the newly shipped packages of exotica:baby oakleaf;australian yellowleaf;bronze arrowhead;flame;gold rush;grandpa admire's; lolla rossa; mascara;red coral;red leprechaun;red velvet;rouge d'hiver; tango;webb'wonderful and tenderly drop the seeds side by side in shallow grooves etched out with my hands. i think of ruth stout and her lazy woman methods and feel my efforts need not be too strict or regimented but labors of love and hope and joy in the process. i am aware as the sun sinks lower of the robins lining up on the wires; the hummingbirds last dip at dusk; the chickens murmuring content and sleepy on their roosts;the light changing to a perfect hue and the breathe of the world slowing as the seeds settle down in the soil and begin the incredible process of growing,opening,yearning as we all do