Northern Farmer

A rainy day here in central Minnesota. Didn’t get to chop silage as planned, but around here it doesn’t pay to plan very seriously. One has to live with what we’re dealt day by day in this lifestyle. The rain has a more important purpose than just changing our silage plans, it’ll be toughening up the plants to overwinter better. And gives precious sub soil moister for next spring in case we have a dry one. I’m content with it. So being that I couldn’t be outside all the time I decided to bother my wife for a few hours. She’s canning salsa today, and I decided to start drying apples, and we have plenty. As of this moment I’m well into my second batch, and it should be ready by bedtime. Going to peel and core some more for a batch starting around five AM. I’ll have to get outside and pick a few more after this.

Yesterday we had a minor happening here. There’s a little chicken coop behind our house that we raise our “survival” chickens in. They’re our mixed banties. Sometimes I believe I could watch them for hours on end. Talk about some go getters, there’s very little work involved with them. And colorful beyond description. Anyway I was outside of our house just putzing around a little and in the back yard our little red hen all of a sudden exploded into a panic. I ran back there as quick as possible and was just in time to see a hawk attack. The hawk came down and that little red hen hit it with all she had. I know them banties are about the best chicken mothers on earth, but this was beyond anything I could imagine. The hawk was so absorbed in the fight it didn’t even see me standing on top of it and when it did it just went into the trees above, fairly mangled. That hen’s fifteen three week old chicks were nowhere to be seen, they were buried under the grass, hiding. I stood guard for about fifteen minutes until the chicks gathered with momma and walked them over to the coop and shut the door. Going back to the scene of the crime, it was amazing all the chicken feathers and hawk feathers that were laying there. The hawk took a beating, even at twice the hen’s size.That little red hen didn’t run for her life and abandon her chicks, she took on that terror from above with everything she had. Today she’s in perfect shape, just a clucking away. I don’t think that old chicken hawk expected what he got from her. Maybe there’s a lesson in this.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 12th, 2005 at 6:53 pm and is filed under Northern Farmer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.