Swarming Time

It’s bee-swarming time.
And we have been on the lookout:
Ann thinks that one of the hives of bees
might be crowded in their current digs
and decide to swarm.

In the meantime,
she was called earlier in the week
to capture a colony of bees
that had swarmed to a tree
in a backyard in Enid
where the children swing.

First Swarm

Ann captured the swarm,
and drove the 40 miles home
chauffering approximately 20,000 bees
in the car with her.
She introduced them to their new home
and a couple of days later
noticed bees everywhere on the patio;
evidently that swarm didn’t like their new home
and swarmed again—
location, unknown.
Today, Ann received another call from Enid
about another swarm
in someone’s backyard.

Second Swarm

After consulting with her beekeeping mentor,
she made some additions to the hive
to help them like their new home.

Second Swarm in New Home

We hope they stay.
We like the bees,
their honey,
their pollinating.

 

Rippling

What I saw—
and heard—
this morning:

Mist.
The sound of a drop of water
hitting a pool of water. It came from
the throat of a Red-Winged Black Bird.
Light shining on water droplets
lining a fence.
Raindrops
on a purple Iris’ nose.

Whirring: two Hummingbirds
chasing each other.
The throat of a Hummingbird
rippling
as it drank.

The soft flutter of a dove’s gray wings.
Then, from afar,
its haunting coo-call.

On the back screen door,
a small stick
with legs.

A Mockingbird—in full rip—
singing its repertoire.
I wonder
if it’s the same Mockingbird
that sang last night
way past midnight.

Let me repeat:
I saw
a Hummingbird’s tiny throat
rippling
as it drank.

 

An Agricultural Act

Roosters, before they became aggressive

 

We agree with Michael Pollan,who wrote, in Omnivore’s Dilemma:

Eating puts us in touch with all that we share with the other animals, and all that sets us apart. It defines us.

What is perhaps most troubling, and sad, about industrial eating is how thoroughly it obscures all these relationships and connections. To go from chicken to the Chicken McNugget is to leave this world in a journey of forgetting that could hardly be more costly, not only in terms of the animal’s pain but in our pleasure, too. But forgetting, or not knowing in the first place, is what the industrial food chain is all about, the principal reason it is so opaque, for if we could see what lies on the far side of the increasingly high walls of our industrial agriculture, we would surely change the way we eat.

‘Eating is an agricultural act,’ as Wendell Berry famously said. It is also an ecological act, and a political act, too. Though much has been done to obscure this simple fact, how and what we eat determines to a great extent the use we make of the world—and what is to become of it. To eat with a fuller consciousness of all that is at stake might sound like a burden, but in practice few things in life can afford quite as much satisfaction.

We were raised on this farm
and know much of what goes in to making food.
But even growing up on a farm,
we were shielded from killing
of livestock.
We never saw a chicken
or a ewe
or a turkey
or a steer killed.
All the livestock was sent away
for sale,
or slaughter.

While we are able to harvest plants,
we get attached to the animals we raise
and have been squeamish
about slaughtering them.
Since we read Pollan’s book
we have been preparing ourselves
for the day
when we could slaughter our food.
Hatching and raising five roosters
from a batch of chicken eggs
has brought us to the brink.
The roosters are menacing.
We have one other rooster
that isn’t so aggressive
and can fertilize the hen eggs.
We will keep him.
But on Saturday afternoon,
we will learn how to slaughter and dress
the other roosters.
Friends
from Transition Town OKC
have formed “resilience teams“
to teach people
how to do some of the things
we in our current culture
don’t know how to do;
skills that could help us
live more sustainably,
be more resilient.
Killing and dressing chickens
is one of those skills.
So on Saturday,
Vicki and Don Rose
and Doug Hill
are coming to our farm
to teach us.
If you want to learn alongside,
give us a call.
It’s easier in community.

 

Chicken Graduation Day

Teenaged chickens moved from nursery
to barn yesterday.
Two escapees—
from secure new pen—
found,
returned to safety
(before the cats found them!)
They’re living in a former “rabbit condo,”
once placed outside the barn
so the rabbits could have a little time
in the sun—
until they learned how to burrow out
into the goat pen.
The condo is now inside the barn,
where the rabbits have been coming and going
through an open door.
It was a nice get-away
(from the chickens and guineas)
for them.
Eventually, the chickens will mature
and rabbits can have their condo again.
Creativity,
flexibility,
sharing,
taking turns—
all necessary for the sustainable life.

 

A Sabbath Trip to A Sacred Land

Sunday afternoon,
as Hannah,
who has been living with us
and helping us the last two weeks,
prepares to leave
on the next leg of her journey,
we drove from our home on the prairie
to visit the Tall Grass Prairie Preserve.
We are so fortunate to be able to visit
the Tall Grass Prairie,
owned and manged by the Nature Conservancy.
At the southern,
Oklahoma end,
of the Flint Hills,
the tall grass prairie ecosystem,
managed by the protected indigenous species
and humans’ controlled burns,
is beautiful,
sublime.
This early May day,
trees and grasses are greening,
earliest prairie flowers blooming;
birds are in their most colorful feathers,
singing their sweetest songs—
we saw brilliant, yellow male Goldfinches
decked out for breeding—
and bison are calving.
We watched a couple of bison herds
before coming upon seven patriarchs
in a herd to themselves.
We watched (from the car)
for a long time
and were beside ourselves with excitement
and wonder
when these massive, magnificent creatures
sauntered silently across the road
just in front
and just behind the car.

The broad sky
and changing cloud formations,
the roll of the prairie
in a drizzle—when we arrived—
and in the golden light—
as we departed—
left us bright-eyed,
smiling,
speechless,
filled
like nothing
but beauty
can.

Thank you Earth.

 

Resilience

 

Living in harmony
with the natural world
requires constant observation,
readiness for change.
Our farm community
includes—among many others—
honeybees,
Guinea Fowl,
Chickens,
domestic rabbits,
Pygmy Goats,
Alpaca,
cats,
dogs,
gardens,
orchards,
(last summer, borrowed pigs.)
Also,
coyotes,
racoons,
possums,
snakes,
skunks,
turtles,
Cottontail rabbits,
many birds.
There is food to be found;
territory to be protected.
And so,
we interfere with one another.
This week,
as the weather is warming
and growing season seems to be off to a start,
we are faced with two
related
new dilemmas.
Until this year, we have always let the chickens out of the barn
through a door at ground level
into the alpaca pen.
But now that the four rabbits run freely in the barn,
we can’t let the chickens out that door.
So, we let the chickens out the upper portion
of a Dutch door
on the south side of the barn,
giving them free access to the whole farm,
including
the garden plot that I have been preparing
for the last 18 months.
The first plants I planted in that organic-laden soil,
full of promise,
were unceremoniously nipped to death
by pecking chickens.
After some study,
we faced the reality that free-ranging chickens
and a vegetable garden
are incompatible.
A fence, perhaps?
Maybe.
But there are big gardens at the pond house too,
and chickens there.
Perhaps a better idea:
all gardens at the pond house,
all fowl at the farm house.
This will require some transitioning—
finding places for all ages of chickens and guinea fowl;
planting bigger plants in the new garden plot,
which will now become wildlife habitat instead.
A new plan.
Good.
Then, suddenly,
without warning,
Joe, one of the dogs at the farm house,
takes out on a chase toward a chicken
and captures it.
When we rescue that chicken,
he goes for another!
While he and his mom Maizey
used to chase young chickens,
they have been living side-by-side
with free-ranging mature chickens
for the last couple of years
without showing the slightest interest
in them.
Suddenly,
the allure of the excitement of chasing a chicken
came upon him,
evidently.
We put a collar around his neck,
tied him to a fence,
something he has never experienced.
We told him how upset we were with him;
we kept him tied,
watching him,
and when he broke free
(the chickens were safely in the barn by then)
we watched him hide in another barn.
Next morning,
we kept the chickens in.
The morning after that,
we put a collar on Joe
before we let the chickens out.
Collar around his neck,
he looked defeated—
like his spirit had been crushed.
We didn’t tie him up
(our plan was to catch him and pen him
if he went after a bird.)
He spent most of the day
lying on the back porch,
seemingly deflated.
The chickens
ventured out of the barn,
but,
seemingly wary,
didn’t go far,
and returned to the barn often.
Third day out,
Joe still wears a collar;
the chickens come and go,
but stay close to home base.
We know—
though we do forget—
that nothing,
nothing,
works forever.
We must pay attention
to what’s happening
with everyone in the community
all the time.
Change is constant,
unexpected.
Problems are solutions
and the creative process
is eternal.
Life is rich.
Resilience is exciting.

 

Morning After a Spring Storm

Eastern Sky after Last Night’s Storm

Morning Sky in the West

It’s quieter
this morning after last night’s storm.
Air is still,
not the slightest stirring.
Birdsong rings out.
There’s a softness,
a resting,
in the dampness,
cloudiness
as I take a morning walk
to look at the clouds,
check the rain gauge.
More than an inch of rain fell.
I fetch a shovel
to dig into the softened soil
and under the roots of a patch of
Milk Thistle.

A Little Rain Water, on the Porch

On the porch for breakfast,
I sit in the soft, cloudy, quiet.
Two green and, well, ruby,
Ruby-Throated Hummingbirds
whir past,
chasing,
hiding in the tree,
sneaking over to the feeder.
A third, a gray one,
whirs up to another feeder,
squeaking as she drinks.
A shy Baltimore Oriole
flies close to the feeder,
sits on a branch instead.
Bluejays and Sparrows
chirp; Woodpecker “churrs.”
Our friend Gail,
whose been keeping up
with the stories
of a Woodpecker couple’s nesting,
sat on the porch earlier in the week
and watched the hole in the Hackberry
where we think the Mamma Woodpecker
is sitting on eggs.
Sure enough, she saw a Woodpecker
fly up and
peek in the hole.
This morning,
Woodpecker churrs from somewhere above,
but I dare not move to look at the nest,
or I will disturb the birds
who’ve come close.

Ruby-Throated Hummingbird
Baltimore Oriole
Red-Bellied Woodpecker

Sun shines through clouds,
casting shadows on the Hackberry
and brightening the yellow
of the Canola field half a mile away.
But it’s only for a moment,
and I’m glad.
The softness
of the quiet, cloudy, damp morning
remains.