Old Wood

This wood tells a story. If Things I get to do today included being a tree,  I know I would be quiet.  Trees don't get hysterical, run about and lose their senses. And they don't talk, at least outloud.

Wild storms come, and the wood might bend, twist and sway.  The roots could even fail and let go with the trunk crashing to the ground.  But the essence of the tree remains--solid and quiet.

Trees submitted to the saw and ax and became a split-rail fence after years of growing up, growing branches, swaying in the wind. Now they provide a safety guard along a steep cliff by Smith Rocks. 

The old timbers remain, still solid, still quiet with tiny words of its life inscribed in the wood.

The Don't-Fence-Me Inn

Proposed location of the new "inn"

My girls feel free though they now live in a double-gated community.  They are happy as can be about that new development.  You see, before, their hen pen was about half its new size. It's been expanded with a new fence to a larger gated community called the Don't-Fence-Me-Inn.

When Gwyneth was coyoted over the short fence and out of existence last fall,  the hen pen shrank in size and grew a higher fence.  During the winter and spring, the girls have had several afternoons a week to roam the whole yard while I keep an eye.  But now the peas are up.  The lettuces are up. Spinach is up.  Arugula (the chickens don't eat this!) is up.  From now on into summer is simply not a good time for eager, scratching-to-China, pecking hens to be loose in the yard.

So my heart and brain were eager to come up with an expanded area they could be turned out to that would feel like freedom without endangering the plant babies.  The new area includes a compost pile that needs their vigilant turning capabilities.  These chickie-babes have to earn their keep.

Lowering stepping stones for gate clearance

It's been pushing on the list of Things I get to do today for several weeks now, this chicken fence idea.  Thought of using some of the cedar fence boards left from the woodshed.  Thought of several not-so-clever plans for corralling the farm gals.  All the recycle-reuse ideas seemed to create an unattractive visual and had marginal success predictions on keeping the hens in. Today was the day to make fence. Simple solution: poultry netting--in plain terms--chicken wire.

Removing layer of old landscape fabric.
Post can't go through it.

Prep work:  1) Check stepping stones   2) Locate and sink posts

Unrolling this stuff is a two-person, large-
vocabulary task.  I wired the roll to this post
 (my second person) to help me out.

3) Talk sweetly to the squirrelly, chicken wire fence material  4) Get tough with the chicken wire 5) Secure the gate

Placed the gate hinges on the 1x3 and
zip-tied it to the T-post.

"FREE" at last and up to their elbows in
rich, bug-filled duff.

By now the hens are literally standing with their beaks pressed against their first gate wanting to expand their territory with a great rush of wings and churning legs.  Happier hens I have not seen in some time.*

The all-new Don't-Fence-Me Inn

*A commercial chicken-farmer once said there was no way to tell if a hen was happy.  Totally clueless he was since his hens had never, never had the delight of this experience.


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Besides the Fence

When my Uncle Bill was still alive, Tuesday mornings at 10:30 was our prearranged time to chat on the phone.  He had a bit of an old Western funny bone and frequently would say hello with, “What have you been up to, besides the fence?”  He would chuckle.

I might reply, “Well, not much at all but standing here by it telling you stories.”  We’d both chuckle.  And today as I’m checking off farm chores on my urban plot of land, I’m working on the fence.  My girls have pecked their little green lawn nearly into the ground, giving it a haircut that would make the scalp raw. Just outside their space there’s an area of grass that is hard to mow and full of clover plus a scattering of lush dandelions.  Since that’s their favorite combination of greens, it’s only fair that I share.

I’m always “rotating crops” by moving the fence to allow or disallow chicken access to various parts of the yard.  Raw, scalped sod moves this to the top of Things I get to do today.  I think of most farmers/ranchers “making fence” miles from the barn with only the fence line connecting them.  Solitary work.  But I’m a city farmer, and besides, Gwyneth Poultry keeps me very good company.  She comes right up to peck my gloves (safety check, I think), scratches around in the loosened soil to round up all the bugs and then looks adoringly into my face as I kneel to untwist the prickly ends where one length of chicken wire meets another.  I imagine that she loves me dearly, but my rational mind tells me she’s probably just checking out my nose hairs to see if they are edible.  It is bliss plarking with her along side.  Her soft musings and chicken chatter pluck at the strings of my heart. The task goes quickly.

I gather up my work implements, nearly as pleased with the new space as the hens are. I can almost see Uncle Bill leaning against the wire mesh, with one elbow on the post, watching the hens.  Don’t really need anything besides the fence.