Fresh straw at the ranch

Chickens, in case you didn't know it, used to be tree perching jungle birds. They are (or were) excellent foragers which explains how come all a hen needs feel completely fulfilled is to roam around looking for bugs. If only that were all I needed I could have stopped striving so long ago. (One great thing about being a hen is that because your life expectancy is even shorter than the average feline, you have no need for retirement plans. Your kids don't even have to worry about taking care of you because, frankly, they'll be lucky to out live you themselves.)

That's why, if you keep hens in a run, as we do, one of the most essential things you can give them to keep them happy is the sensation of constant foraging. Hens aren't rocket scientists, they don't necessarily notice or care that they are not perching in jungle trees. But they do start feeling listless if there's nothing new for them to scratch in.

We frequently fill our poultry run with fresh straw. The great thing about straw (in case you haven't discovered this for yourself) is that it makes a great deal of satisfying rustling noise when you scratch at it. (This explains why both children and chickens take such delight in romping around in it.) It gives you a feeling of progress as you kick it around and peck at it's golden spikes. It can really make you feel like a wild bird. There are other benefits too, such as providing more of a dry surface when all the dirt in your chicken run is wet with rain.

It's one of my favorite things to see: my hens tearing a new bale of straw apart looking for, presumably, (non-existent) grubs and bugs. They make contented little comments that sound like human babies when they're not crying. Little chirrups and low cooing noises.

Yesterday was gorgeous here. I almost just wrote some poetical trash about the smell of the soil warming in the sun, but then I realized that everyone would instantly lose respect for me if I suddenly turned all gentle and pastoral. So let's just cut to the chase: I got out in the garden and hang it all! if I don't wish I could spend a little bit of every day out there!! You may not want to know what I'm about to tell you, but I think you should know that if I could run around the world with a little bit of dirt on my skin at all times I would feel right at home. In fact, if it didn't dry out my skin so much, I would enjoy rolling in it.

You heard me: I would enjoy ROLLING in it. Dirt smells good. It's beautiful too. It's warm at the top and cool underneath. It reminds me of when humans were a little closer to the ground. It makes me feel slightly feral (but not dangerous). Inhaling, touching, digging, and scratching at the soil makes a lot of the world's troubles seem far away and even fixable.

Let me draw your attention to the fact that I have, for the first time EVER in my gardening life, caged my tomato plants right at the beginning. This is a minor miracle. No, wait, I will venture to say that it is a MAJOR miracle. Right next to PEACE ON EARTH.

My joy at having done something so conventional and exemplary in my garden is slightly mitigated by the fact that these tomato "supports" can barely support themselves. Like most tomato supports, they are about as useful as a car without gasoline.

In fact, I'd kind of like to administer a little Matrix-style kick-ass to the idiots who keep inventing these useless garden "aids" that just make you want to stab yourself in the foot with a shovel in frustration as you watch your tomatoes lean towards the ground in a kind of slow motion action shot bending the thin wire as they go down. Shit, I could cry just thinking about it. Because then you have to start the impossible task of supporting the supports with wooden stakes, or rebar, or use your children to hold up the plants all summer. It takes several wooden stakes to stabilize one of those ridiculous cone shaped tomato cages. So whatever you use, you better have a lot of them/it.

I keep meaning to make my own wooden tomato cages because I certainly have the skills now to do it, but I never have the time. UUUURRRRGGGHH! It is possible to buy tomato stakes that actually work well, but they are generally way too pricey for a person who plants at least fifteen tomato plants each year.

I'll bet you're noticing how closely I have planted my tomatoes. I'll bet you're dying to tell me that this is not a good idea. Go ahead. (I'm waiting right now, big pause in writing...) Now listen up: here's the sound of me pretending to listen...

See, in my family, we tend to buck trends. There is a trend I've noticed for gardeners to spread out all their plants, like, a mile apart. What we tend to do is to plant everything breath-takingly close together. Somehow both ways get good results for people. So I'm not going to tell you to close the gap between your tomatoes. No matter how much I'm aching to do so. My trap is shut on this matter.

Unless you ask me for some of my tomatoes at the end of the summer because you have too few of them. Then I'll probably say something.

Yesterday when I was mentioning my quest for more blogs with garden content in them, I failed to mention two very important ones. I would like to do so now. When I first started my blog and went looking around for people with similar interests I almost immediately found one called Her Able Hands which had such good writing on it about gardens and food that I was totally mesmerized. Not only that, but right away I knew I had to convince her that we were cut from the same cloth and needed to be friends.

She has sometimes written about parenting, juggling work outside the home with her desires to do work that matters to her even more like market gardening. But her main focus is growing food and eating it. Her blog made me excited to get back outside to grow my own food, then bring it inside to my kitchen to do something fresh and new with it. I've been reading her blog almost every day now for a year. I highly recommend that you visit her soon.

Much more recently my attention was turned to the blog of a commenter here called Zanthan Gardens. This is a wonderful garden site with beautiful photos of M. Sinclair Stevens' garden and the interesting plants in it. The writing is excellent, informative, and thoughtful. It was connecting with this blog that reminded me how much I love hearing people talk about plants and plant culture. I am a garden geek. If you are a garden geek too, this is a great spot to feed the muse. M. Sinclair Stevens knows all the Latin plant names. I know only enough Latin names for the plants in my garden to impress those who have never stepped foot in a yard.