Chickens and the Origins of Flight

Observing all the different uses our free-range chickens put their wings and feathers to has led this week to some speculation about how flight evolved. Chickens are particularly instructive in that they are not capable of full-fledged flight. They are, however, capable of wing-assisted hops--to reach the top of a fence, or to flutter upwards from branch to branch as they climb to their favorite roosting spot. And in the morning, when they descend, they use their wings to break their fall to the ground. Back when we were picking the chickens up and holding them, it was a delight, and convenient, to just toss them into the air and let them flutter softly down.

Their wings provide adjustable warmth, fluffed to varying degrees to match the cold of a particular night. That capacity to manipulate their feathers for warmth translates well to any micro-adjustments feathers make to optimize flight. As mentioned in a post describing a hawk attack, the strong quills of a chicken's wings also provide an incredibly light-weight, multi-layered armor, any portion of which can be shed so that a predator, thinking it has a firm grasp on the chicken, finds itself instead holding only a feather or two while the chicken escapes. That multilayered defense serves as well to shed the rain. Feathers also are mobilized for a powerful display, spreadable to make the chicken look bigger to potential predators, or more attractive to a potential mate.

After observing a chicken, flight can seem like an afterthought--a bit of serendipity that came to pass after wings and feathers gradually developed for a host of other purposes, each adaptive use enabling another in a positive feedback loop that ultimately led to the purity of flight.

Charismatic Chickens Explore Their Wild Side

For a long time, our chickens stuck to the straight and narrow. They lived as everyone expected them to, spending their days scratching and pecking at bugs and worms in the yard, nibbling seeds off the grass, turning all that foraging into eggs, then dutifully returning to the coop each night to sleep, or whatever trance-like state chickens attain while roosting.

We in turn would dutifully feed them, open and close the coop door each day and night, and gratefully, somewhat guiltily, make off with the eggs. My respect grew for these gentle Araucanas, going about their days, so purposeful, so competent, so giving in their convenient repackaging of nature's abundance. When arctic air swept through, they would roost in the unheated coop as always, then step spryly out of the coop the next morning, impervious, as if antifreeze coursed through their veins.

The relationship started to change, though, a year or so ago. Perhaps the four chickens had depleted our yard's supply of wild food. They discovered they could cross over the back fence, and find fresh gleanings in the town park. I began getting reports of the great delight they were bringing to kids and parents. Then they ranged farther afield, three doors up to our neighbors' backyard, where they could gorge on birdseed spilled onto the ground from the birdfeeder. They still dabbled in our tray of standard issue chickenfeed from the farm supply store now and then, but you could tell their standards had changed. They were developing new tastes, new friendships.

They continued returning each night to sleep in the coop, and continued supplying eggs. We thought ourselves so lucky, to be reaping the harvest of eggs and pleasant anecdotes these beneficent creatures produced. They were like salmon, feeding broadly, then returning with an uncanny homing instinct to feed us generously. But then one of the chickens stopped showing up at the coop at dusk. We worried that a hawk might have gotten it, but our neighbors would report seeing it during the day. Another chicken disappeared altogether, considered gone for sure until a neighbor on the other side of the park sent word that it had adopted her yard. She loved how it would come running to her when she brought it food and water. I tried to retrieve it, but the chicken clearly did not want to be caught.

The freedom of coopless living ultimately seduced them all. Our coop lay abandoned by the birds it was meant to protect. We'd spot them sporadically, in front yard or back, or up at the neighbors' as they made their daily rounds. No one knew where they were roosting, nor where the eggs, if any, were getting laid. We thought of catching them and closing them in the coop for a few days to get them back into old habits, but in a way they've outgrown that old domestic servitude, the grind of laying egg after egg to serve the master. They've discovered an old forgotten resourcefulness, awakened dormant capacities deep in their genes. It seems a dangerous life, unprotected at night, and yet they survive. It helps that the foxes don't get up this way, and raccoon sightings are rare.

Last week, I had been up very early and was just heading back to bed at 7am for a brief doze when I heard a blood curdling screech just outside our bedroom window. I ran outside with a coat over my pajamas and peered into the bushes. A coopers hawk burst out, flying right past me and up to a tree nearby. Such magnificent creatures they are. I peered more closely at the ground next to the house and saw the brown chicken, motionless in the window well. Surely it couldn't have survived such an attack, but then its head suddenly popped up. It jumped up out of the window well, gave me a quick look, then disappeared under the shrub. It had lost a few feathers, but otherwise looked fine. The feathers of a chicken, I'm realizing, provide not only magnificent insulation and some modest flying power, but also serve as a shield that confounds predators' attempts to penetrate it. The predator ends up with a feather in its mouth while the bird scurries away, and the rachis--that stiff central stem of the feather--serves collectively as body armor.

Of course, if I hadn't shown up, the coopers hawk would have ultimately had its breakfast, lunch and dinner, and we would have grieved. The chickens' choice of freedom comes with risks.

Just a few days ago, my daughter reported that the chickens were now roosting at night in an evergreen shrub at the corner of our house, eight feet up from the ground. It's comforting to know they are near. Each evening, I stop by to say hello,

and leave food nearby, under a recycling bin that got broken being used as a target for backyard lacrosse practice, then got partly consumed making trail signs for a local preserve, and now has a new life keeping rain and snow out of the chicken feed. There's collected rainwater to drink in the fillable-spillable tub in the backyard.

If a big snowstorm comes, we may pluck the sleepy chickens from their roost and put them in the coop for the night. We're letting them make up their own life as they go along, which may include a return to the coop. Yesterday, I saw the brown chicken walk over and disappear into the coop. Later on, I stopped in to find two fresh eggs, the first laid there in months. Maybe that's how a chicken says thank you if you save its life.

UPDATE: After six inches of snow fell, the chickens looked like they were going to stay up in the bushes all day, to keep their feet warm. We plucked them down and closed them in the coop for a couple days until the snow melted (this winter's like North Carolina, not New Jersey).

Any hopes that two days in the coop would rehabituate them to returning there each night were dashed, however. A few pecks at the cracked corn in morning light and they were back to their accustomed rounds,

then roosting again in the bushes next to our house for the night. It's interesting to see how they keep their feet warm while roosting, by squatting down so their feet disappear under the puffed up feathers.

Eggs from our "Easter egg chickens". In a new twist, the egg on the right has two shades of green.

The Giving Plant--Christmas Cactus

A christmas cactus is like a chicken: it has beautiful plummage, gives and gives and asks for little in return. The world's artesian wells may have long since dried up, but nature still supplies fountains of generosity. Somehow this plant survives our minimal attention, then blooms in abundance each fall. Unlike storebought orchids, which clearly require more disciplined care and understanding than we have to give, a christmas cactus seems to accept that we are imperfect, highly distracted human beings with lives to lead and places to be. "Don't worry," it seems to say, year after year. "Water me when you think of it, and in the summer you can put me out on the patio and pretty much forget about me until the fall. No worries. All good, though not too much sun, if you think of it. Thanks. And if a squirrel or the wind knocks me over and some of my stems break? No problem, just

stick them in a pot and make a new plant."

Ours is a secular christmas cactus, blooming as it does during Thanksgiving. Like a volunteer hardwired to serve the community, it needs no coaxing or pampering, but seems intent on making the world a better place, thriving on little more than inner drive and our gratitude.

An Unexpected Halloween Visitor

When my daughters came in the house yesterday evening to report that a raccoon had scared them en route to closing up the chicken coop, it didn't even occur to me that it happened to be Halloween night.

True, there had been a curious masked visitor in the backyard earlier in the day, someone wearing a wig and his favorite CD. That two minute selfie session with a cellphone had been the full extent of our observance of Halloween, other than the white plastic pumpkin decorating the "Wishing the Earth Well" leaf corral out front next to the sidewalk. Our street is not popular with trick or treaters to begin with, and we did nothing to lure them.

The lack of lights and decoration did not deter the night's one trick or treater from showing up, however, not at the front door but behind the house. Though raccoons are considered ubiquitous urban denizens, we had not seen one in the neighborhood since 2004, when a confused specimen passed through our backyard, looking lost.

My daughter's sighting didn't come as a complete surprise, though.

First, it explained what, or who, had been bending the wire fencing of one of my backyard leaf corrals, in a recurrent and unsuccessful attempt to get at its inner core of kitchen scraps. The rotting lettuce and old dogfood, out of reach behind hardware cloth, was the treat, and it was surprising the raccoon hadn't figure out a trick to get at it.

Second, there was the question of whether the raccoon's interest went beyond kitchen scraps to include our four chickens, two of which had taken to roosting in nearby evergreens and bushes rather than taking shelter in the coop. The assumption is that, come winter, if winter comes, the chickens would drop their summer dalliance with self-sufficiency and take refuge in the coop at night.

The girls gave me the flashlight, to lead the daring expedition back to where the raccoon had been spotted.

"Do you think it has rabies?", one of my daughters asked from behind me, not understanding why I wasn't more fearful. When I see a raccoon, I'm cautious of course, but inside, my heart begins to melt. My thoughts return to when they would visit my childhood home, surrounded by woods at the end of a road on the outskirts of a small Wisconsin town. They had been getting into our garbage cans, and all attempts to keep them out had failed.

One day, in broad daylight, a raccoon showed up in our side yard, sad looking, weak, clearly a reject from raccoon society. We named it Rangy, for its bedraggled appearance, took pity on it and gave it some food.

It may have been about this time that my father realized that, if we put our food scraps in a pan next to the woods, the raccoons would leave our garbage cans alone. This proved to be the beginning of a wonderful friendship. As the raccoons began to visit the pan, we decided to install a light to illuminate the edge of the woods, the better to see them. Soon we were tossing them peanuts in the shell from an open window. Closer they came, caution slowly yielding on both sides, until we reached the point where we could step out onto the back patio, hold a peanut out, and they would approach. They'd stand up gracefully and reach for it with those wonderful, delicate paws, take the peanut gently and scoot a short distance away to feast upon it. More and more came. The grownups would bring their young the next year. One night we counted 16. Rangy the Reject had spawned a coming together of human and raccoon society.

This was the era of books like Rascal, and Raccoons are the Smartest People. We knew what rabies was, had seen it occasionally in the odd behavior of an animal--like the groundhog that confronted me on a town street while biking home from school--and we respected the wildness of raccoons too much to consider having one as a pet. But that didn't deter us from appreciating all that is wonderful about them. One evening, we opened the kitchen door to see four raccoon cubs climbing on the screen door, their mother on the porch behind them. The mother was Whitey, the tamest and most gentle of them all, named for the beautiful white fur on her underside. She had brought her new family to meet us. By then, we were actually letting her come in the kitchen door a few feet to get peanuts. Somewhere, there's a photo of her reaching up to touch the knob on our little black and white TV. Of course, we always made sure she had an escape route, so as not to feel trapped. No one ever dared get between her and the open door.

The raccoon that visited us last night, like Rangy long ago, also seemed like a reject. It didn't run away at our approach, but instead remained perched on the fence, looking at us. Though large, it seemed weak and slow. Finally, it climbed awkwardly down the fence and disappeared into the dark.

To be on the safe side, we decided to pluck Buffy, the last of our first batch of chickens from five years ago, from her perch in a nearby lilac bush, and put her in the coop with two others. We closed the coop and headed back in.

To some extent, our free range chickens offer a similar experience to what I had as a child. We feed them, but mostly they forage for themselves, tame and yet living their own lives. Where once I delighted as the wild became more tame, with the chickens we watch as the tame explore aspects of the wild. Last night, those two worlds intersected next to the chicken coop. I thought of leaving some food out for the raccoon in nights to come, but then thought again. How to handle this convergence, for the good of all involved, is not at all clear. I don't expect any reprise of a childhood in small town Wisconsin. Whether the answer is trick or treat, our backyard Halloween is just beginning.

Chickens Star at Littlebrook Science Day

Our four chickens emerged from the box yesterday morning with the realization that they weren't in the backyard anymore. This was new territory, the courtyard of Littlebrook Elementary, and they were about to bring the joys of their charismatic chickenhood to a steady stream of 5-12 year olds as part of Science Day. Each year, Littlebrook has parents and others in the community come on Science Day to share their scientific knowledge with the students in 20 minute bursts at stations located all over the school.

On a day graced by gorgeous weather, the kids came to the courtyard to hear the story of how my daughter, a Littlebrook grad years back, had come home one day from middle school wanting to get chickens. Her parents were not exactly thrilled with the idea. My one experience with caring for birds had been an ill-fated attempt, as a kid, to save an injured robin. I had concluded that birds were mysterious creatures whose needs I could never understand nor provide for other than through restoring habitat. My daughter persisted, however, and we finally made a springtime trip out to Rosedale Mills to buy two-week old Araucana chicks.

After graduating from bathtub to backyard and quickly growing to adulthood, they started laying eggs in the fall. Over the ensuing four years, the chickens have proven to be wonderful, healthy, resourceful, even soulful "pets-with-benefits", requiring little more than food, water, and a homemade coop to provide shelter at night. This year, they and the resident duck have been discovered by neighborhood kids, who peer at them through the fence from little Potts Park on Tee-Ar Street just behind our house. The trip to Littlebrook was their first road gig.

After the kids had spent some time following the chickens around the courtyard, we regathered at the table to look at the unusual colors of the Araucana's "Easter Eggs", and see how one can roughly tell the age of an egg. If it drops to the bottom of a pan of water and lays flat, it's fresh. If it stand upright, with one end lighter than the other, then it's been around for awhile. Liquid slowly escapes through the shell over time, to be replaced by air that makes the egg more buoyant. The older eggs are good for hard-boiling, since the air inside makes them easier to peel.

Occasional breaks offered some time to botanize in the well-kept courtyard, which is used for art classes and growing food and native plants. One special native is the native strawberry bush (Euonymus americana), which is so loved by deer it can only grow large and full like this in protected yards in town.

Like the nonnative winged Euonymus, which the deer don't much like and so out-competes the natives in our preserves, the native has barely noticeable flowers. The "strawberries" come later, in the form of bright red, ornamental seeds that give the native shrub the name "hearts a' bustin'". At some point, when nature's checks and balances are restored and our forests come back into more ecological balance, the native Euonymus will thrive once again in our woodlands. Until then, backyards and school courtyards make a fine refuge.

There was considerable uncertainty as to how we'd get the chickens back into the box at the end of the day. When the last class departed, some chicken chasing ensued. One proved very hard to catch, as it would dart away and flap its wings at the very instant we tried to wrap our hands around it. Students watched from their classrooms, highly amused as three of us chased the chicken around the courtyard, clearly outmatched by this speedy descendant of dinosaurs. Good thing that I had planted this patch of raspberries years back as a Littlebrook parent volunteer. We managed to corral the chicken in the raspberry patch, where the foliage was dense enough that the chicken could not see my hands descending from above.

Have to say how good it felt to be back at Littlebrook, where principal Annie Kosek has cultivated over the years a wonderful staff and spirit of learning. Martha Friend, whose depth of caring extends beyond the school and into the community, teaches science, and Jenny Ludmer and all the other Science Day organizers had everything running smoothly. Thanks to Jenny's son, who has chickens at home, for providing critical assistance with the end of the day roundup.

Native Plant Event at Whole Earth Center

On Sunday, May 1, 11-2pm, the Whole Earth Center in Princeton will have a native plant shindig. That's what Alex Levine, Whole Earth's master artisan of deli cuisine calls it. The official title is "Landscaping With Native Plants", and will feature native plants for sale and free advice from some of us landscaper, native plant seller, naturalist types. There's more info and a pretty photo of Alex's wildflower garden at this link.

Unrelated to the sale, some flowers to be enjoyed this time of year, native species occurring in gardens but not in the wilds of Princeton, is this Fothergilla I planted in the raingarden in front of the Whole Earth Center,

and, if I can get the chicken out of the way,

some celandine poppy. Unrelated to the lesser celandine that's radically spreading through gardens, parks and natural areas of Princeton, the celandine poppy is in the poppy family, makes small mounds that look good even when they aren't blooming. New ones pop up nearby, but not in a way that threatens to take over or spread unwanted into the neighbor's.

Kids and Chickens

There's a special transaction happening across this chain link fence that separates Potts Park from our backyard. The kids in the park have discovered our chickens. Maybe they heard the plaintive call of our duck, and came over to take a look. Though the park has some nice play equipment, a sandbox, ballcourt and a couple picnic tables, one parent told me the main attraction is now our four chickens.

I like to think that the chickens are teaching the kids to regard their surroundings with a keen eye, because a chicken is constantly scrutinizing the ground and plants around it, scratching the earth to see what's there. Are farms, gardens and chickens a gateway into the natural world? Follow an environmentalist's genealogy back a generation or two and you'll often find a farm.

Our chickens and duck have the run of the place all day, returning dutifully to the coop at dusk. I put some feed out, but mostly they forage for themselves, and so in a sense occupy a spot along the continuum between tame and wild. Such animals can serve as intermediaries, ambassadors, allowing a connection to that living world beyond neat yards and indoor pets, a bridge to the wild that the heart can traverse.

Teaching an Old Chicken Old Tricks

After a few years, chickens and ducks stop laying eggs. Our peking duck laid one egg per day like clockwork for several years, but stopped suddenly this past fall, even though she still waddles about the yard as robustly as ever. Our one hen remaining from the first batch, bought about four years ago, also stopped laying around the same time.

There followed then a lull of about a month, when we finally gave in and bought a dozen eggs at the grocery. Strange feeling after several years of home grown. Then, just as days were narrowing down to winter solstice, the three chickens we bought this past May came online, began their tour of beneficence, or however you'd like to describe the remarkable generosity that is a hen's nature. Though all are araucanas, one lays brown eggs, while the others lay variations on green and blue.

Then one day in late December a tiny egg appeared, as if a quail had happened by for a brief visit. Sometimes that can mean a chicken has just started laying. I wanted to believe the older white hen had found new inspiration. Hard to say, but if one looks closely enough at the greenish eggs, one can see three different shades, with one grayer, one bluer, and one just possibly from an old hen made newer.

Araucanas are sometimes called "easter egg" chickens, because of the varied colors of their eggs, and sometimes when the eggs aren't showing up in the usual spot in or near the coop, we do a good imitation of an Easter egg hunt searching for their new nest. I hear that Araucanas are also particularly resilient in cold weather. That will be tested this weekend, when temperatures are predicted to dip nearly to 0.

The Big Bird That Got Away

This is one of those old fish crow stories, about hearing a fish crow in the backyard this morning, going "uh uh"..."uh uh", again and again, with that call that sounds like it's contradicting everything you happen to be thinking. "Uh uh. That's a lousy idea," it seems to be saying. "Uh uh. You don't want to do that." And so I go out on the back patio to see what all the "uh uhs" are about, and locate the fish crow, seemingly alone in the top of the silver maple tree, and while I'm looking up, out of the corner of my eye I see a great blue heron lifting itself up out of the shrubbery screening the chicken coop and fly off in its heavy, gangly way, swooping around an evergreen tree to drop back down to the ground a couple doors away. We have no fish, nor any pond this time of year to even offer hope of fish. Was it remembering ponds and goldfish past? Or was it hanging out with the chickens, who also were clustered under the shrubs? Maybe some kind of big bird affinity happening there. And why was the fish crow making that steady, repetitive call, as if monitoring the situation and letting fellow crows know what gives? I went over to my neighbor's. He has a pond with a pump-driven waterfall. The great blue heron was gone.

That was a good photo that got away, and if the neighbor had any fish in his pond, a couple long-necked gulps may have left his pond as empty as the tree in this photo.

A Chicken's First Egg!

We've been without egg production in our backyard for awhile. Daisy the duck, who had laid one egg daily like clockwork for several years, suddenly stopped some months ago. And Buffy, the white Aracana on the left, also decided her egg laying days were done. The three new Aracanas, bought as chicks from Rosedale Mills in the spring, were keeping us in suspense as to whether they'd start laying before winter comes. For the first time in years, I found myself in the grocery store facing shelves stacked high with eggs, trying to make sense of all the cagefree, natural, hormone-free, organic, brown or white, plastic or paper possibilities.

But over the weekend I did a full cleaning and rearrangement of their coop, and changed up the yard a bit, installing my own design of a leaf-corral/food-scrap-composter in a few spots. (More on these nifty devices in a future post.)

Maybe one of the birds took the changes as a cue. Or maybe there's some magic in the date, 11/11--that being the number I see on digital clocks far more often than chance would suggest likely--because the first egg in months appeared in a back corner of the coop this morning.

Now the question is which chicken laid the egg, and will the other two follow suit, ushering in a new era of fresh eggs from the backyard.

Nature in Baby Doll at McCarter Theater

Nature makes its way into Emily Mann's adaptation and direction of Tennessee Williams' Baby Doll at McCarter Theater (the synopsis, here, comes with a spoiler alert). There are the two cameos of a live chicken wandering into the kitchen of the dilapidated southern manor that serves as metaphoric backdrop for this drama. There's the seedhead of a dandelion that Silva picks up and blows, in an early expression of his poetic side, its seeds scattering like all the people who come and go in the world. The endearing, somewhat batty housekeeper calls roses "poems of nature" as she cuts one and clutches it as if trying to hold onto a life that is slipping away. And there's the refreshing well water that only Silva, a brown-skinned Sicilian Catholic looked down upon by a decadent white protestant society, can summon from the cool depths of earth, a salve for the oppressive Mississippi heat.

Inner and outer nature correspond in the two male characters. Silva's power comes as much from his inner nature as his physical stature, not from a rigged system of social status that props up the likes of Archie Lee--as rotting and haunted a hulk as the house he bought for cheap. Only in the character of Baby Doll are inner and outer natures at odds, a physically mature woman emotionally starved and stunted by circumstance.

The most riveting tension is between two aspects of Silva's personality, which travels from volcanic anger to poignant affection. He merges menace and charm, his anger mixing and dissolving into a gentle caress. He carries a whip, or more accurately a crop, which is a short whip to be used while riding a horse. There's a soft leather tip that allows the rider to influence the horse without leaving a mark. It makes an effective prop that serves not as a weapon but like a baton to channel the orchestration of his anger and influence upon the other characters.

Not far beyond the stage, the cotton crops are stripping the soil of its original fertility, while Archie Lee seeks to strip the female characters of their last shreds of self respect. Cotton drifts invisibly across the stage as dust from the mill, irritating Baby Doll's sinuses. Exploitation of nature mixes with the oppression and infantilization of women, but the play offers hints of a better world where a woman's nature finds appreciation and respect.

As a botanist who magically got a last minute seat in the front row, I can say that though the plumes of Maiden Grass (Miscanthus sinensis) look great in one corner of the stage set, the bluestem grasses mixed in are a lot more authentic. May I recommend Andropogon glomeratus as a visually similar native substitute for the Japanese Miscanthus for the next production? This is the sort of in-depth botanical theater analysis you can't find anywhere else.

I was encouraged, through my involvement with the McCarter Onstage community theater group, to audition for the part of the Sheriff, who is non-union and has a few lines near the end. The audition involved preparing a one minute monologue. What I came up with, delivered in my best and only southern accent, was a testimonial about the reading of the play I had seen the year before, in words that though genuine could have been construed as totally fawning:

"I haven’t read too many plays in my time, but I could read every play ever written and never find a better ending than you got here in Baby Doll," (in which the characters remaining on the stage--don't want to give it away) "speak not only for themselves, and maybe for the play as well, but also for every writer, every actor, every human being who’s ever lived."

That would be some sheriff, to talk like that. I didn't get the part, but at least said my piece.

Baby Doll.......Susannah Hoffman (her upscale clothes are explained late in the play)
Archie Lee Meighan.......Robert Joy (can there be joy in Archie Lee?)
Aunt Rose Comfort.........Patricia Conolly (powerfully self-effacing)
Silva Vacarro........Dylan McDermott (riveting)
Sheriff......Brian McCann (not me)
Chicken.......chicken (no curtain call at the end!)

Continues through October 11, followed by the hugely funny "A Comedy of Tenors".

Roosters in Princeton

To all the voices that hold forth in Princeton, add some cockadoodledoos. I had heard that there were some roosters among us--a painter who grew up in South Africa told me a few years ago the sound made him feel at home--but had not heard any until this past month. One was east of Harrison Street a few blocks, which I took the liberty of photgraphing. The other is within crowing distance of town hall.

The legality of having poultry in Princeton comes up now and then. There are some ordinances left over from the borough/township days that were contradictory. The straightest answer I got when I looked into it was from the town's former animal control officer, who said they are legal, or at least tolerated, as long as the neighbors are happy. It was my impression that roosters were not permitted, but it may be that the happy neighbor rule determines whether any ordinance, written or improvised, is enforced.

Though a rooster would never tell you this, they aren't needed for egg production. We'd have to ask the owners if they intentionally bought roosters. Chickens are sold when just a couple weeks old, when sex identification can be tricky. Famed Princeton resident Joyce Carol Oats said, in response to a question I asked after she read from her memoir at the Princeton Public Library, that chickens in general and roosters in particular were an important part of her childhood.

We currently have one Pekin duck and four Aracana chickens. The chickens are quiet sorts, but the duck can speak out at various points during the day, calling for more food, or announcing to the world that it is now waddling across the lawn. Neighbors tell me they like the sounds, as a rural salve for the traffic noise on Harrison Street. The droppings disappear into the grass, and any scratching the chickens do leaves our flower gardens undisturbed.

As pets, they are low maintenance. Clean the coop now and then, make sure there's food and water in the backyard, open the coop in the morning, close it at night. We free-range them, meaning they have the run of the fenced-in backyard. We have lost a few to hawks over the years, usually in late fall and winter when wild prey are less available and the birds have less cover. It can be traumatic, but it brings us up against important issues of life and death, pet vs. livestock, quality of life vs. longevity, risks and rewards, and our relationship to the wild animal community that also calls Princeton home. Interestingly, it's the white birds that the hawks have left alone, as if hawks, too, associate whiteness with some otherworldly nature.

The chickens have shown no desire to fly away, and the duck is so heavy that she has even less chance of clearing a fence than the contraption the claymation chickens built in the movie Chicken Run. The chickens lay eggs most days, and the duck produces one egg per day like clockwork. An Italian neighbor, who barely speaks english, knocks on our door periodically, seeking a dozen duck eggs for her Chinese daughter in law. Perhaps the greatest pleasure, in a town where yards go unused and can tend towards sterile display, is seeing how much the birds appreciate and take full advantage of what the yard has to give.

Though a rooster might help protect the hens, our "guard duck" performs a similar role while producing copious amounts of eggs. In addition to her big, boisterous voice during the day, at dusk she assumes her post just inside the coop door, her beak a formidable weapon ready to unleash against any would-be intruders.

A previous post gives more details, and local sources of chicks. Rosedale Mills told me they were selling chickens beyond the optimal April/May season, though it helps if they are fully grown by the time winter comes. 

Terhune Orchards' "Turning 40" Tour

As I hurried to catch the start of a 40th anniversary tour of Terhune Orchards, surprised that I was actually on time, I passed a major showoff in the chicken coop. The white peacock was trying to impress the chickens, who were clearly more interested in the food.

As with the chickens, it's the food that's always impressed me about Terhune Orchards. No big show, just consistently great when it comes to taste and quality. No fancy facade, just keepin' it real. Cider, donuts, apples that just keep coming, and some 35 other crops to make the short drive out of town worthwhile. There's also the integration of business and community spirit, of which the chickens may not have paid much notice.

On this farm, utility is mixed with charm. History sits comfortably mingled with the modern in a multi-generational assemblage of "stuff".

Speaking of connections with the past, it turns out that the Terhunes, from whom the Mounts bought the farm 40 years ago, shared some common ancestors with Gary Mount, who had grown up on a farm in West Windsor next to Route 1. The Mounts learned of this only many years after the purchase.

I made it to the big barn in time for introductory remarks by three generations of Mounts. Two daughters and their families have returned to continue the tradition.

Solar panels on the big red barn, constructed by Amish woodworkers using the traditional oak pins instead of nails, supply 40% of the energy required to run the barn's climate control machinery.

Apples are stored in two different chambers. One is kept cold and humid, and keeps the apples fresh for several months. The other is for longterm storage. There, behind lock and key, the process of ripening and decay is stymied by dropping the oxygen level from 20% down to 2%. The oxygen is pushed out by injecting additional nitrogen into the room. Each month in the winter and spring, the door is opened, oxygen is allowed in so that workers can breathe, and a month's worth of apples are moved to the other chamber.

Outside, honey bees were pollinating the cherry blossoms. During the two weeks just before harvest, plastic is drawn over the hoops to protect the cherries from rain (and supposedly from the birds as well). Otherwise, the cherries will absorb the moisture and crack.

Apple trees are now planted much closer together than in the tradition configuration seen in the parking lot. Their trunks are so weak that they need to be staked, lest they fall over with a heavy load of apples, but the harvest is double what it used to be.

Pick your own asparagus. Ruth Stout, in her book from the 1940s called "How To Have a Green Thumb Without An Aching Back", described how gardeners used to dig a two foot deep trench to plant their asparagus in, then backfilled slowly as the asparagus grew. All that work, Stout contended, was unnecessary. Simply plant the asparagus at ground level. I didn't ask Gary Mount what his planting method is, but they make farming look so easy, I'm sure they don't seek out unnecessary work.

Some years back, one of their employees took an interest in greenhouse gardening, and the Mounts went with it. There are now three greenhouses, with one separated from the other tow, devoted to organic methods. Cloth is pulled over the space in winter, to provide at least a little insulation for this fuel-intensive space.

We got a tour of the bakery. It's surprisingly small, considering the output, not much larger than some expansive kitchens I've seen in private homes around town. The cider operation, too, is surprisingly compact. Apples that have slight blemishes or are too small for sale as apples are used to make cider. There's some thought put into blending different kinds. I asked why Terhune Orchard cider is so much richer in taste than other brands, and learned that most cider makers don't grow their own apples, but are supplied with small apples without much flavor. Stayman apples, not often used elsewhere, are also a particularly rich component of Terhune cider.

That accordion-like structure in the background, reminiscent of an Argentine bandoneon, is the cider press. I didn't ask whether the press plays tangoes while squeezing. The cider's then flash pasteurized, stored in big stainless steel containers designed for dairy operations, then jugged. The pulp is spread on fields using a manure spreader.

That was the tour. Gary headed out on a tractor to plant some corn. I headed back to town with donuts and asparagus, to catch some of Communiversity. Happy anniversary, Terhune Orchards! May there be 40 more.

A Duck Gets a Taste of Spring

Our Pekin duck has been finding more reason to venture out of the coop this week. There's mud to probe with its beak, and the luxury of a bath in one of our backyard ponds swelled by snowmelt from neighbors' yards. She had no problem breaking through the thin layer of ice left by last night's freeze.

Earlier in the month, finding water in its liquid state was more of a challenge, as she took sips from the fillable-spillable minipond catching water from the roof.

She keeps a sharp eye out for hawks, turning her head to get a better look at the sky. Usually, that turn of the head means something's flying over, be it a vulture, crow, hawk, or a jet headed into Newark Airport.

Meanwhile, the duck's companion, a chicken of similar feather, was laying another robin's-egg-blue egg. We often get two a day now, as warmer temperatures and longer days have broken the winter drought.

Ducks and chickens made multiple appearances in movies this weekend at the Princeton Environmental Film Festival, particularly in the excellent documentary on permaculture, "Inhabit". The ducks were said to be excellent at keeping the slug population down on an outdoor shitake mushroom farm, and the chickens happily batted cleanup in one of the crop rotations, eating any seeds that eluded harvest.