So in an ordinary year, we and our cistern and weak well struggle to keep up with the water demands of even the modest garden patch we've developed so far. I've come to realize that many times our plants have probably been water-stressed by the first day of summer.
Not this year.
Every leaf of every green plant on our property that is in anything like reasonable good health is just as broad and green and moisture-plush as they get. New sprouts are appearing in odd places along bare woody trunks or vines as the plants take advantage of the moisture bonanza and in some cases the light-snatching opportunity we've given them with our various clearing projects. This is likely to be one of the years that loggers of the future will be able to identify as a nice fat growth ring in the stumps of the trees they fell.
Resultingly, it's kind of getting dark and gloomy in our woods as the trees detect each available shaft of light filtering through the canopy and unfold a leaf into it, silently squeezing more and more light out of the understory.
This was all fine and good and mentally stimulating (the fascinating shapes of the vine/tree amalgams, the dark forms slipping furtively through all levels of vegetation, the birdsong ringing through the wet woods) until the jungle started trying to include my chickens in its food chain.
Maybe it was my fault for casually throwing rotten eggs and sadly dead chicks into the woods; I may have unthinkingly baited the coon myself and given it a taste for all things chicken. Or it may have happened anyway. After three failed nests I was so pleased to have broody hens succeed at hatching out 12 fine chicks, and I thought I had accounted for the possibility that coons could reach through wire to tear chickens apart in their cages by installing 1/2 x 1 inch wire mesh for the floor of the brooder coop. Alas. We lost three or four chicks that way and one hen is now in seclusion recovering from the mutilation of her feet. Lesson learned. I gave the hens and chicks in those coops shallow pans with wood shaving to brood on at night so they can be protected from that particular danger, and they seem to be using them faithfully with no further problems.
Soon after that incident, however, I began free-ranging my half-grown cockerels and pullets. Actually, I only free-ranged half of the flock (the half I was less attached to for breeding purposes) of 26. I think the first night I lost one or two, and many nights thereafter that was more or less the pattern, so that in the course of a week or so I was down 5 birds. Now, I had expected to lose a few, and truth be known I was counting on our little temperate jungle to help me in my selection process, since one of the goals of this breeding project (the "Alleghenies") is to develop a chicken that can free-range successfully in the moist, rich woodlands and forests typical of the mountains found in the east of the continent. I just didn't expect the assistance to come so swiftly and emphatically! My little jaunts into the woods to close the chickens in in the evening took on a more sensitized quality as I strained to see where errant chickens might by roosting in the trees and watched and listened for signs of predators. They were all totally invisible to my eyes; I had no choice but to wait and see what news the morning would bring. The urge to pray for my chickens caught me off guard!
When the morning had brought bad news often enough and when I felt the experiment had returned meaningful results, I re-integrated the remaining 8 free-rangers with the penned 13 and went back to confinement management for their own safety. One quite interesting result: It hit me with a jolt when I realized that I had no more chickens with yellow feet. Three of the original 26 had been yellow-footed, a trait I am selecting against because a) I don't fancy it aesthetically for this project and b) it strikes me as bad woodland camouflage. Hmm. Maybe I was right. Three out of the five that disappeared were thusly adorned. Dark colored and/or mottled chickens form the bulk of the remaining eight and all have dark feet. Despite what we were taught in school, natural selection is not always slow or gradual, especially when it's coming in the form of an ecologically-based correction to human fancy.
So then when a bear began visiting our neighbors' bird feeders and a great big scat showed up within 30 feet of my young birds' coop...My evening forays into the woods have again taken on a whole different quality! I regard the likelihood of a dangerous encounter with a bear to be extremely low, even when they are skulking around regularly. Even the likelihood of a bear destroying one of my coops and eating the living contents seems low to me since I know lots of people keeping chickens in bear country and have heard of only one incident. Still, something about knowing that an omnivorous animal bigger than I--and far stronger--uses this land, too, substantially changes the experience of walking around after dark. I can't help thinking about my own self being warmly welcomed (bear hug?) into the food chain! All those dark patches of understory look a whole lot darker...
But this is what I wanted, right? Isn't this what I was after: meaningful and close contact with the ecosystem that sustains me? Didn't I want to be "just one of the animals"? Is not the whole project here one of integration, of shaping and sustaining the forest garden that shapes and sustains our family? Doesn't that involve taking some risks, learning some hard lessons as we allow that process to play out? Gulp. Yes, I guess it does. Hoo, boy! Am I ready for this?
I've always admired those people whose reaction to a cold swimming pool or hole is to find the highest ledge around, jump right in and get the shock over with. That is not me. I inch my way in until I'm up to my armpits, then close my eyes and let myself slip under. When I come up, I'm adjusted. One of the ways we can adjust and adapt to a given natural community is by recognizing patterns found in our environs and imitating them. This is one meaning of the term "biomimicry." With regard to chicken keeping, it's helpful to realize that in the chickens' ancestral, wild context (the jungles of southeast Asia), they were the common prey species known in English as the Red Jungle fowl. Common prey species usually employ the strategy of prolific procreation to counterbalance the heavy predation they experience. When you think about it, chickens are adapted to raising a brood of 8 or 10 young once or twice per year. That means that to maintain a steady population the Jungle Fowl only expected 10 to 30 percent or so of its offspring to survive long enough to reproduce. If I have the goal of installing my chicken flock in the ecology of my own jungle, then I'm going to need to be able to raise a lot more chickens! Hence the composting coop, built this spring and stocked two days ago with the remaining members of the half-grown flock.When the chickens are fully oriented to their new home, we'll try another round of free-ranging (gotta get those ticks!) Stay tuned to find out how that goes! It may be that in practical and prudent terms the near future will find us living in the Tangly Woods jungle...to a point. We'll probably still rely on our garden fences, our deer repellents, and our anti-Lyme disease antibiotics just as long as we need to to confer reasonable assurance of our safety and sustenance. But little by little we will keep tinkering with our style of living so that more and more we can become adjusted to making our life here as full participating members of the ecological community. Through the years we will find out just what that means, and what it costs us.
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