Kitchen Sink Collective

It’s been a good week here. The dood decided fuck it, he was going to plant everything he could, veggie-wise, and revamp all the raised beds. He was downed by the flu last week, so this was a good thing all around. Pancho took to bringing his most excellent un-tutored friends to the yard, each afternoon. I caught him mounting the fluffy little black cat a couple times in a very determined, “Buddy, we don’t chase chickens here” tone. His little orangey friend only needed one swat at his ass to learn that.

So why all the Pancho as Disciplinarian stuff? Well we’ve been letting the meat birds out for wild and crazy recess. These ladies are not at all afraid of cats but are easily pissed off when they realize they’re being watched closely. Our laying group lives to chase cats away, by contrast.

So here I am blathering about hens… Turns out the meat birds are all learning to lay eggs now. And they’re in a mighty competition with the cat chasers across the yard. Yesterday morning was a session of chorus try-outs from one coop to the other. Very fired up and excited cluckers. “Wait till you see what I have to push out!!!” Pancho sat out in the patio and just listened to it all.

On the super positive side, I don’t have to go out there in a mask now. I just have to keep my sinuses clear and all is fine. On the really good side, I was able to give away 2 dozen eggs to our neighbors who are dealing with unemployment right now. We’ve never had a dozen laying hens at once, so this is wild new territory. Luckily the ladies graze most of their grub in the afternoons, from dandelion and mallow to oxalis and clover, and back again.

Another lucky thing: I can finally offer up black hen’s eggs for Hekate, at long last. Haven’t been able to do that since we dispatched Norm(a) and Mildred. Does it make such a difference? Yes indeedy.

It really upsets me that we lost sweet Georgina on Wednesday day. We found the lady was egg-bound earlier this week, and did the warm water spa bath treatment twice and it definitely relaxed her parts and whenever she went back into the coop, she had a spring returned to her step and was willing to eat and drink. The dood carefully palpated her posterior and found that she had a small solid boulder of an egg in her oviduct that just wasn’t coming out. I think that was Sunday? The problem is she had two more eggs up beyond the boulder. If it had just been the one egg there, we were going to snap on a sterile lubed glove and help her expel it if possible. Anyway, he went out to let the ladies out Wednesday morning, and she didn’t come out. She was tucked into a corner of the coop with her head tucked. So, he reached in and lifted her out, she was not very responsive, and merely settled to sleep on the floor of the run in a sunny spot. When he looked back into the coop he saw that at least one egg had broken in her oviduct. There was a read-streaked puddle of yellow where she’d been sleeping. When you read about dealing with cluckers being egg-bound, it is often a 50/50 scenario. Either the hen will expel the egg with a little assistance and be fine going forward, or the egg will break and she’s done because the shell will lacerate her insides. My guess is she attempted to jump up to the roost, and fell down and went boom, and that broke one of the eggs. And this is assuming that the boulder was even an egg with a shell. It is not uncommon to lose a hen because she didn’t form an egg with shell but that her yolks all sort of back up and just build into a large mass. Poor little featherbutt lady.

Georgina was the “sane” rhode island red in our flock, whereas Geraldine is still the nutjob in the coop who has never stopped laying. Geraldine’s not real pleased that her perpetually calm sis is no longer in the run. Come to think of it, Hazel is looking perturbed as well.

Everyone’s getting recess today. Including the meat birds. We are going to see if they all avoid each other, or if anyone immediately buddies up to Geraldine and she tolerates them without flipping her wig and commencing with a peckfest. Same with Hazel, since she’s the only odd one out and tends to take a lot of pecking order flack for it. If any of the meat hens get along with the layers, we’ll add them to the coop and run and watch carefully for a week.

On the one hand, we made out real well for 3+ yrs with these girls. No disease, just occasional shell-free eggs once a year, no tangles with cats, and no unwelcome visitors in their run and coop. And aside from personality conflicts between specific birds (like Norm(a), Mildred, Edwina and Godzilla), it has been a very cohesive little family. Sure there is pecking order BS, but they’re hens, and I’ve never seen anyone get hurt. Adopting Pancho was a good thing, two Decembers ago. He’s a great diversion for them when he’s outside acting like he owns the place, or when he’s flopped on his back practically inviting the troop to run across his belly during recess. The only place he went too far was in flopping down next to Lupita when she was dust-bathing, and he attempted to groom her ass.

But let’s face it. I miss the bossy little lady. Geraldine scolds me when I go out there to let ‘em out for the day, when she’s not supervising Hazel to make sure Hazel doesn’t get pecked by the delawares umpteen bazillion times. I decided we’re always going to have a couple rhode island reds, because these two have been such good teachers for the younger squirts. All breeds have definite personalities, and these ladies have been so stable and patient.

More later, I hope. It’s been a busier week than usual.

I am not generally one to comment that someone’s an idiot if they want to subsist on food-like substances sold by the golden arches fuckersons, or to eat sugar-coated sugar. And let’s face it, I haven’t had cable for 6 yrs now which makes me slightly more immune than many to the glut of fetishized food viewing on the likes of the Food Twitwork.

We went hungry when I was a wee sprout, a number of times. But you know, we came out of it fine, and I don’t hoard edibles in the house as a result of that. Maybe I should, but it has never seemed a good idea given how shifty the food supply is in terms of safety and nutritional content. The only things I hoard are dry beans, organic rices, winter squashes, and then chicken parts from our meat flock. Oh, and eggs. We always have around a dozen in the fridge. Not because we’re saving them either. Just slowness in consumption, which is a golden mean in many ways. It ensures I can scramble Lucy an egg this morning, which Pancho will “help” her eat when he comes inside to refill his weewee tank, and his poopoo tank (he’s outside emptying both of those right now, as well as casing the yard to check on his chickens, and chasing off strange cats we don’t know.)

Food issues….

I like to stock this up to having been raised and fed by survival cooks, for the most part. But I’ve never been one to walk into a grocery store, and do a happy dance that I can get donuts on sale. Or that I can get a vat of ice cream as opposed to a 2 quart freezer container. My rationale is mostly of expense on these things, be that expense right now, or expense years later due to insulin shots. Just because those donuts are on sale doesn’t make them viable food. Or Food with a capitalized “F”. Diabetes runs in the dood’s family, so he watches his sugar intake. It doesn’t run in mine, but weight certainly does, which I chalk up to us being solid farm stock on both sides of the family, which thrives on hard physical work as well as basic nutrition. The dood’s got a certain amount of this in his ancestry, too.

Then one sees the culinary output of the likes of Paula Deen, observes that she has a show on Food Twitwork, and even a magazine at the grocery store checkout stand. It’s not culinary output, let’s be honest. The burger stuffed into a sliced Krispy Kreme donut is not rational. I see it on a par with that Double Down food-like dreck from KFC. Just because someone produced this doesn’t deem it fit to eat; never mind the bad juju of consuming animals raised in deplorable conditions (I wrote letters to the assholians at Carl’s Jr over their turkey burgers, for example.)

Anyway, since I’ve been sick and coughing at the drop of a hat, I caught Al Roker’s interview w/ Deen last week. And have been trying to sanitize my synapses ever since. He was so direct with her. And she was so evasive. There’s no simpler question than, “How are you eating since you’ve been diagnosed with diabetes?” and she kept trying to totally dodge the question, having recently adopted the word “moderation” like it was some lexicon holy grail for epicurean practice. And lest any of us could be fooled, in her words she is not our doctor, but our cook. Oh please. This woman should be no one’s cook, much less their dietary adviser, e.g. “This is all about moderation! Don’t overdo this food!” Okay, lady.

What angers me at the end of all this, is that she waited to profit from her partnership with a diabetes drug company, before being honest with the country about her diagnosis, her gross inadequacy as a ‘cook’, and her unwillingness to cease enabling her fans to eating themselves into illness.

(And I am ending this tirade for now.)