Is this chicken, what I have, or is this fish? I know it’s tuna, but it says ‘Chicken of the Sea.’ -Jessica Simpson
With that bit of celebrity insanity out of the way, some good chicken news: Virgil has 9 chicks! Check them out, if you can see them—they spend most of their time under mom staying warm, but when they come out, they are little black puffs of cuteness (and the noise they make—outrageous!).
Luckily, Brody is there to watch over them. He is so sweet…
My dog can beat up Paris Hilton’s dog. -Tori Spelling
Tori, you may be right. But what about your CHICKEN!!!!!
Tori Spelling has purchased a chicken names Coco who she sleeps with, eats with, carries around like a tiny dog….. And now, she has hit the red carpet with Coco. There are no words.
To my 2 faithful blog readers, you may remember “pee-oop”. Chickens and other poultry do not pee and poop separately, They pee-oop. And you can’t potty train a chicken—its brain is the size of a pea, or something. So Tori PUTS A DIAPER ON HER CHICKEN and takes it out and about. There is a video somewhere of her diapering her chicken, but I can’t get it to play—here are some screen shots.
And if you are interested, you can get chicken diapers on ebay, mypetchicken.com and the appropriately title http://chickendiapers.com/. TIME magazine has covered this y’all. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1914991-1,00.html
And thanks my petchicken.com: Free shipping on the TWENTY EIGHT DOLLAR diapers! AWESOME! Now we don’t need to raise the debt ceiling. We can just diaper our poultry and let them sleep inside.
The Mayan may be right. 2012. The end of the world may come when chicken diapering goes mainstream and the rest of the world loses all respect for us. What a world! PEEOOP!!! Almost as bad as GOOP!!!!
From MyPetchicken.com:
Our totally revamped diaper comes with everything you need to keep your chicken indoors. It’s easy to position and secure, durable and user-friendly. The pouch is lined for extra security against spills. Included with each order are simple instructions as well as one, easily removable, heavy-duty vinyl liner that velcroes into place. Adjustable design, plus five sizes to choose from, means it’ll perfectly fit the size of your bird. Shipping is included!
Great For:
*Each order is custom made, so please allow up to two weeks for delivery. Typically, diapers ship via USPS within 3 business days.
Extra Small – For the smallest bantams **VERY SMALL BANTAMS**
Small – For bantams 2 to 3.5 pounds
Medium – For birds 3.5 to 5.5 pounds. Examples: Ameraucana, Andalusian, Campine, Dominique, Hamburg, Leghorn, Old English Game, Phoenix, Polish, Sultan.
Large – For birds 5.5 to 7.5 pounds. Examples: Australorp, Barnevelder, Buckeye, Chantecler, Delaware, Favorelle, Marans, Naked Neck, New Hampshire, Plymouth Rock, Rhode Island Red, Sussex, Welsummer.
Extra Large – For birds over 7.5 pounds. Examples: Brahma, Cochin, Cornish, Jersey Giant, Orpington, Wyandotte.
Black/White Floral and Pink Chicks fabric has changed. Diapers that have been made with the new similar fabrics may be substituted.
Spring is springing and it’s the perfect time to start planting herbs and veggies for the summer. I got a great how-to lesson from my friend José who is an expert in the garden. Below you will find tons of fun ideas on how to plant a spring garden of your own, even in a New York City apartment!
Love,
gp
As you may k
now, Gwyneth Paltrow has a blog called GOOP (GOOP??~!?!?!?!???). She just came out with her gardening newsletter–you can find it here. And you can find what I only assume is a fake email from her gardener “friend” Jose here. It may be fake, but it is funny.
I want 19 Sunset to be the anti-GOOP (GOOP?!?!?!?!?). I want to counter any feeling out there, proliferated by GOOP (GOOP???!?!?) and gardening magazines and Hollywood and perhaps even your lovely grandma that gardening is anything less than a contact sport.
If you are a real gardener, you are not wearing a cute tank top, and jeans (or capris! or a skirt!), and dainty gloves, and carrying around a jaunty little basket full of your harvest, and wearing a wide brimmed hat, and bright red lipstick, and trust me, your hair does NOT look good. You look kind of like this (and this was at the BEGINNING of the day):
You are dirty, And you are tired. And you are wet. And a little itchy. Your back hurts. Your feet hurt. You have dirt under your nails that will not come out for days. And you are very, very happy. But you don’t look good, and your husbands asks you to take a shower. Please.
I just googled “Gwyneth gardening”. Not one picture. It came up with a photo of Jose! Oh dear! Google has pictures of everything and anything that can exist, in earth or in our imagination–I googled “unctious rutebega begs forgiveness” and got a picture (granted not of what I was looking for but…)
But not one pic of Gwyneth in the garden. That says something.
I’ll give a pass to one lady–our First Lady. She looks good gardening. Go Michelle!
I’d rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck.
- Emma Goldman
When all is ready, assemble your guests on the porch or in the garden where the aroma of the juleps will rise heavenward and make the birds sing. Propose a worthy toast, raise the goblets to your lips, bury your nose in the mint, inhale a deep breath of it’s fragrance and sip the nectar of the gods.
- Lt. Gen. S.B. Buckner Jr, in a letter to a fellow General on his preparation of the Mint Julep, 1937
To have a good summer, you must grow mint. Not just for mint juleps and mojitos, but also for lemonades and teas (which can be mixed with your favorite liquor to make a proper drink).
Mint is very invasive, and will take over whatever vessel you put it in, so I recommend container gardening for mint (mine, above, sit on the front porch for easy access all summer).
I repeat: mint is essentially a weed–contain, contain, contain. And then enjoy. As the old general said: Being overcome with thirst, I can write no further.
But I can cut and past: Enjoy 60+ cocktail recipes that require mint!
The nation that destroys its soil destroys itself. -FDR
Doug spent the last couple weeks prepping the gardens with his brand new rototiller. He took all the compost out of one of our bins for the upper garden, leaving the bin empty and ready for a fun blog experiment. I’m going to take pictures (almost) every time I put something new in the bin, so we can all see the magic of composting and track the progress of turning kitchen scraps into something else altogether.
We’ve got some good stuff in there so far:
First Contribution: Lobsta and some kitchen scraps
Then, some chicken poop mixed with pine shavings from the coop. I did not take picture of this. Use your imagination.
Then, Grass clippings–hot stuff
Then, more kitchen scraps:
The bin is about 20% full. I still need to get more heat. and I probably need a recipe for broccoli stems, but don’t judge a woman’s compost. As Ani DiFranco said, “I am the queen of my own compost heap, and I am getting used to the smell”.
(Note to Annie–compost bins properly cared for should never smell. But I digress…and I judge! Dear me.)
“You don’t have to thank me, Liz Lemon. We’re a team now. Like Batman and Robin. Like chicken, and a chicken container.” -Tracy Jordan
When Doug and I bought 19 Sunset, we were looking forward to finding different ways to live off the land. I would garden. Doug would hunt and fish.
And we would raise chickens. (RIP Goofy-on right)
We bought out first chickens back in the spring on 2009, from Green Meadows Farm in Hamilton. Doug made a coop for them, and they immediately started laying the best eggs we’d ever tasted.
We’ve had a lot of challenges since that first batch of 6 hens–of whom only one survives today. We wanted to go the free range route, but there are other things that range freely in our yard–including racoons, fisher cats, coyotes, neighborhood dogs, and hawks, all of who have killed a chicken or two. Our neighbors have chickens too, so we pooled resources and now have the girls in a poultry Guantanamo, as one of my friends called it.
It keeps all animals out–including Brody, who definitely wants chicken blood along with his grain free bison-venison dry food mix (Yes, our dog eats bison. Yes, he is better than your dog. Yes, we are THAT kid of dog people.)
We now have 3 Rhode Island Reds (the big red/brown ones), 1 Plymouth Rock Barred (black and white), 1 Cornish (big, brown and black feathers), 1 Sussex (we call her Speckles (big, brown with white speckles), 2 bantam buff orpingtons (small yellow orange girls), 2 bantam old english game hens (tiny girls with gold on their necks into brown feathers), and one bantam cochin (not pictured–more on that in a second).
Work it, own it.
We have one more chicken to discuss. This spring, we got a very unwelcome surprise. It ends up a silkie I bought at the Topsfield Fair Chicken Auction last fall was not a girl…but a boy. He started out cute and nice and is now hideous and loud. If anyone is interested in a tiny, frustrated cock, let me know. I’ve got two one.
He, eh hem, fertilized a bunch of eggs (I kept wondering why the silkie was jumping on top on the other chickens and pulling on their combs and screaming. I evidently have a lot to learn about biology).
Our neighbors decided to have the sweet little cochin (named Virgil) sit on a few and see if they would hatch, which is why I don’t have a picture of her right now. She has been very broody since we got her, so this is her dream–she just wanted to be a Mom, and the eggs started to hatch around Mother’s Day–awwww. They are up to 9 chicks. Pictures soon!
