Makariri...

(I tend to always write way too much in this blog, so this is a bit of a pictorial essay about the snow a couple of weeks ago...#shortandsweet)

On kaua'i island, Hawai'i... beautiful weather all around.

Just last month I was soaking it up in Hawaii, surfing (or trying to) and working on my tan in pretty balmy tropical temperatures.

So it was a bit of a shock to the system to come home to this a week after I returned.

The chookhouse is under that snow at the back there... as for the vege gardens, lucky we hadn't started planting yet!

 The chooks (I'm sure you'll all be pleased to know), were fine. Toasty and warm...

Nemo, on the other hand, went a bit primal on it...

Nemo gets back to his wolf roots...

No chance of hanging out the washing on this day...

Too cold even to trap the ratty that had been tunnelling under the chookhouse.

Morrison got a good coating in snow too...

Dead as a - chicken?...

I've been overseas in the United States for a month on a leadership program focusing on "Protecting Natural Resources". I traveled from DC to Maine, to Montana and on to Hawaii. I'm sure there'll be plenty to say about that later. But to catch up on the Ka Pai life...

The day before i left for the U.S. i looked out the window to see the bloke holding my favourite chicken upside down by the feet. She had just died, and was still warm.  I'm not sure why she died, she was in the best condition of all three chickens, but the bloke reckoned that for the few days leading up to her death, she'd gone down the pecking order a bit, and the other two old girls had been picking on her.

Now I know I've thrust myself into this 'good life' stuff with great enthusiasm, and the bloke and I had been very realistic and pragmatic about our little 'farm' in the backyard. We made cavalier references to 'nature' and joked that with all the fresh herbs the chooks had been eating, it might be good to put one in the pot.

Yet, when I saw my favourite chicken hanging upside down, and felt her still-warm skin beneath her feathers, I lost it. Choked, teared up and sobbed like a child. I even spluttered out something like "But she was (sniff) my favourite one."  Who knew? I have spent enough time on farms, and enough time killing pests for DOC to know that sometimes animals cark it. I guess it was just that getting the chooks really added a new dimension to our backyard, a new way of looking at food, and importantly, it gave us our first tiny step towards our dream - to own our own farm one day.  And to be honest, she was my favourite one. She laid consistently, she had the brightest of feathers, and she had this very endearing habit of jumping up on your lap if you sat down in the backyard. The other two old girls could care less if I was around or not - as long as they got fed. 

I guess the moral of the story is that it turns out I'm not as 'tough' as I thought I was when it comes to my 'livestock'. Although... the weirdest moment was when the bloke and I were inspecting said dead chook, we looked at each other and asked the question "Shall we eat her?". Decided since we didn't know why or how she died, it was best not to - but I'm certainly not against eating them if that's the best use for them... (just glad chickens can't read since we have one bird no longer laying that will certainly be of more value in the pot).

What's your experience? Does it make you sad when your domestic poultry/livestock dies? Perhaps it's something you just get used to over time? Is it a bad thing to be sad for an animal that has provided you with nourishment and certainly entertainment? Perhaps remembering their worth is noble after all?

Backyard chookies...

(NB:  I wrote this originally as a comment on an excellent post on Pundit, which was about the new proposed welfare standards for battery hens... but I've borrowed it here to introduce you to our girls... three ex-battery hens, brown shavers, good layers (mostly - more on that later...), and both our pride and the sometimes scourge of our garden.  I've had requests to write stories about the chooks - so this shall be your introduction to them, I have plenty more chooky tales to tell!)


As someone who  names all of her cars, I have yet to name my chickens... they are 'the chooks', and I am at once fascinated by them and exasperated by them.

We got the chickens days before the September 4th earthquake last year. The quake must have shaken the eggs out of them, because they began laying the very next day! 

The bloke has had to be very creative to come up with ways to keep these chooks out of our vege patch. This girl is standing on what was a pallet for fruit and veg, and various trips to the beach to collect driftwood have helped with the fence behind - they are super 'breakers and enterers' though... constant vigilance is required!

Once we got around fencing off various bits of the garden to keep them out (we have re-engineered the classic 'taranaki gate', to a series of 'taranaki fences' in our suburban backyard), I find the chooks to be a daily source of interest and amusement.

The bloke reckons they are like the chickens in a Gary Larson cartoon, somewhat sinister, and always appearing to be planning something. The dog takes this suspicion one step further and simply refuses to set foot in the backyard if they are out of the chookhouse.  Somewhat embarrassed by Nemo's sookiness over chookiness (perhaps not helped by his wussy name!), i once left him out there as an experiment. To my astonishment, I watched all three chooks work in formation, to appear one from each side of him, and one (the smallest and gutsiest) in th front, fluffing up her feathers and stomping towards his face while kicking her claws up in front of him. Needless to say, I don't subject Nemo to this kind of trauma anymore!

This is Nemo's usual stance when he has to have anything to do with the chickens... he's also afraid of sheep.

Despite their vegetable snatching, dog-terrorising tactics, I do love our chooks. I love the simple pleasure of watching them scratch and peck their way around the garden, and I too am amazed by the sight of a hen turning herself almost inside out in a dust bowl she has spent the morning meticulously creating. 

I have only purchased freerange eggs for some years now (even as a broke student), and moving to having your own home-grown eggs is something that you can't put a price on. The taste is incredible, the deep orange yolks are divine just to look at.  That said, I reckon they've saved us quite a bit of dosh.

Happy eggs indeed. The richness and quality of our chooks' eggs, makes all the 'eggsasperation' worth it...

To my chookies, you drive me crazy, and the bloke too, but we love the energy you bring to our place.