Chickens and Herbs

Ever heard the saying about country folk who sit around watching chickens peck the dirt? Well I admit I sometimes like to sit and watch my chickens. Henny Penny always follows me when I carry the grain to the sheep and when I come out of the pasture I sit down on a bench under the tree to watch the sheep for a few minutes. This lets me see that everyone is accounted for and healthy. Henny Penny clucks at me and I give her a little grain from the bucket. She then hangs around for a while, sometimes she hops up on the bench next to me, other times she just scratches around at my feet. Yesterday the rooster came with her and they were fascinating me because they were eating dandelion fluff. You know, the white fluffy material the dandelion produces to let it’s seed float off into the air. They would inspect the dandelions, pick one where the fluff was showing but not loose yet, and eat it. There are tiny seeds in that fluff, but still it just amazed me that they found them and ate them. Henny Penny's favorite food, though, is chicken bones. Yes, she is a little cannibal. They say birds can't smell but when I arrive in the barn with a bowl of chicken bones to give the barn cats, Henny comes running from wherever she is and elbows the cats out of the way to get first dibs.

Speaking of white fluff, the white barn cat I call Fluffy, about the only tame one we have, had her kittens in Henny Penny’s nest box, the place she lays her eggs. This is an improvement in Fluffy’s choice of places to have kittens. She usually has them under a bush somewhere close to the house and they invariably get soaked and sick. Every time I tried to move them somewhere better she would return them to her chosen spot. I don’t think she has ever raised a kitten beyond the time that they start to walk around. This time a nest box in the barn is a big improvement. One of the black cats has decided that she would like to help raise these, and the two of them have squeezed into the box with the five kittens. Since it has been quite cold here at night the last few days this is probably a good thing for those babies. I don’t know if the other cat has milk, she didn’t look pg to me before this, maybe she had one kitten or something. Anyway Henny Penny laid an egg in there the first day- how I don’t know, but since then she has not and I have to find where she has been laying them.
I have turned my husbands old van into a greenhouse temporarily. I got in 8 plug flats of herbs for an herb class I am teaching this Saturday and since we have had frost or freezing weather every night since I brought them home I have left them in the van with the hatch door up in the daytime. I have a few tomato plants in there too, waiting for warmer weather. That old van has never smelled so good.
If you would like to read what I have written about herbs so far, you can go to these pages on my website- Garden and Hearth Plant Guides.
parsley http://www.gardenandhearth.com/Plant-Guides/Parsley.htm
Cilantro- http://www.gardenandhearth.com/Plant-Guides/Cilantro-and-Coriander.htm
Basil- http://www.gardenandhearth.com/Plant-Guides/Basil.htm
Rosemary- http://www.gardenandhearth.com/Plant-Guides/Rosemary.htm

There will be more articles about herbs posted there soon. There are some wonderful articles by other people on the Garden and Hearth site also.
Well writing and planting are keeping me busy so I’ll catch up with everyone another time.