Who is smarter, humans or chickens?

I'm thrilled to report that the ladies have put themselves to bed TWO nights in a row! Such a relief that they are behaving like proper chickens!

I don't know who deserves the credit though...

• Me, for ditching the ramp in favor of a perch and platform along the front of the henhouse (and the husband for building it), thereby successfully suckering the chickens into toeing the line, or 
• The chickens for refusing the to use the ramp, thereby successfully suckering us into providing them with something more fun (since they do love to perch).

Sunday night, I could hardly believe my eyes when I peeked out the window around 9:30 and saw the telltale shadows that meant four feathery ladies were up on the high perch in the henhouse (the shadows are from the heat lamp, which we've been turning on at night since the temps dropped back down into the upper 40s...barely OK for tomatoes, possibly not OK for smallish, adolescent chickens).

In other bedtime news, I've noticed that the ladies are at their noisiest for about 10-15 minutes before they finally settle down for the night. I mean REALLY noisy. Just a flurry of peeping, pseudo-clucking and trilling. They only time they are noisier is when you are foolish enough to walk past the coop with a LARGE, SCARY OBJECT!!! [Sigh.] I need to find out if this is a common phenomena...

The Chicken Report

The ladies have been adjusting nicely to being in their coop 24-7. Their primary activity, besides eating, is digging their way through the Earth's crust. At the rate they are going, we are hopeful that they will reach the Earth's molten core by mid-June. From there, they continue on to China.

All that digging, along with constant rearranging of the straw in their coop, has necessitated an increased regimen of daily naps. The ladies have come a long way from their early daytime coop visits, when they were four feathery bundles of nonstop activity that came to a crashing end as soon as we brought them back into their basement brooder for the night.

If the mornings are cool, they'll snuggle together under the henhouse after they eat breakfast, and I've caught them resting thusly off and on throughout the day, when I'm home to peek at them frequently.

Our primary obstacle right now is to get the ladies to put themselves to bed like chickens are allegedly supposed to do. They will peacefully let me put them into the henhouse one-by-one, if the conditions are right,* but otherwise they would spend all night crammed together on one end of their outside roost, I'm certain.

*Two things I've learned in the past few days. First, do NOT try to put the ladies to bed early before it is suitably dark and they are suitably sleepy on their perch. This results in much frantic squawking on their part, and much frustration on my part as Babette (or Little Bob as we usually refer to her) decides to run under the henhouse, only to start freaking out when she realizes she is the only chicken left alone in the coop!! 

Second, do NOT try to put the chickens to bed when the heat lamp in the henhouse is not on, even if they were quite content to have it turned off right after retiring the night before. This only leads to each chicken trying to escape the henhouse as you are trying to put another one in. This is not fun. Especially when pine shavings are preventing you from closing the door, and you are being beaten on by small beaks.

I've decided that they don't like their ramp, because they slide around on it too much. This weekend, the husband has kindly consented to build them a sloped ladder that they can perch on and use as an intermediate landing point before henhouse entry. I want them to use the henhouse during the day, and so far they have not. I think if they get used to going in their as they go about their daily business, they may be inclined to put themselves in there at bedtime. Fingers crossed!

P.S. We've seen at least one raccoon almost every day, even in the afternoons. No hint of trouble yet, knock wood.

Woman on the verge of tomatoes

A week ago I booted the chickens out of the basement for good (gently, naturally) after a week or so of hardening off. Yesterday I booted my tomato starts out of the basement (gently, naturally) after a week or so of hardening off. Not so different, really.

Planting out my tomatoes always feels like an endurance event, never more so than yesterday after an anatomy exam, lab, and studying.

My tomato planting process goes thusly:

1. Have husband dig wide deep hole. Dig a spade full of organic vegetable fertilizer into bottom of hole. Fill with water and let settle.
2. Plant leggy tomato start deep, up to the first true leaves. Fill in hole gently, then water well to allow the filled in dirt to settle.
3. Repeat with remaining 9 plants.
4. Mulch area around each plant with composted steer manure.
5. Have husband hammer a rebar stake (preferable for sheer durability) or bamboo stake (preferable for looks) into the ground within a few inches of the plant after warning him several times to not hurt the plants!!!
6. Place tomato cage around plant, not to actually hold the plant up (that's what the sturdy stakes are for), but to support the lynchpin of this whole setup...
7. The Wall-O-Waters! Place Wall-O-Water around each plant and spend what feels like one million years filling each little channel in with water, while stooped over in the most NON-ergonomic of positions. Stand upright every so often to rub lower back and complain a bit. When hose nozzle breaks not even halfway through the job, declare yourself to be a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown and whine that you want a beer.

I think this is the year where I have officially come to hate Wall-O-Waters. But I love what they do, which is to remove much of the uncertainty about whether tomato plants will do well in our sometimes too-mild-for-their-liking Pacific Northwest summers. I've successfully grown hurking huge long-season heirloom tomatoes with the support of these turquoise beasts, so who am I to quibble. I even had a tomato-growing tip published in a recent issue of Mother Earth News, so I can't back down now.

Well, lower back pain and mental anguish nonwithstanding, the tomato planting is done for 2010, I had my cold beer (my only one for the week since I don't study Saturday nights...usually), and now I just have to vow to actually keep the tomato plants in line instead of letting them take over, as they usually do. And probably will again this year. (Sigh.)