A Beautiful October

old dogs, new chicks, dirty jobs

It was coop cleaning time this weekend. I swept out two of the three rooms, the third currently a nursery inhabited by Penny Lane and her baby, Jett Puft. I think Jett is a hen, I am making this assessment purely on behavior, but they do act different, little roos are pretty bold and mouthy, will walk right up to you and demand you put the food down. Henlets stick closer to mama, lingering behind her, which is what Jett is doing. I still pick her up, she needs to become accustomed to me, and now that I ignore Penny Lane’s pecks, she’s stopped doing it, and even accepts my stroking her back while she eats.

After scraping down the roosting bars, the steps of the ladder that acts as their chicken jungle gym and the window sills, I swept out all the chicken guano into bins which I carried to the fruit orchard, where it magically stops being gross chicken poop and becomes free fertilizer. Then I removed everything removable from the coops i.e. feed and water bins and a couple of stand alone nesting boxes, then the h power washed the area and disinfected it.

The chickens hated the noise of the power washer so migrated down to the pool where I served half of our first watermelon plucked from the horta on Saturday. Chickens looooove watermelon, it’s so funny to watch them fastidiously wipe their beaks after each bite.

That’s how I discovered Fuzzy Zoeller had gotten himself stuck in the pool, which is drained and cleaned and most of the tiles that need repairing are repaired. Now it awaits a modification we have planned, to build a sort of concrete platform on one side of the shallow end where you can park your lounge chair and be half in, half out of the water like a swanky resort I went to in Mexico. It will also be easier for Jake to exit the pool, acting as a giant step.

I think Fuzzy was stuck for a couple of hours, he was just standing down there flatfooted, looking defeated. I climbed down and he let me pick him up and set him at the side of the pool and he raced over to the watermelon making sounds of outrage. I check the pool twice each day ever since we had a hen go missing and after 36 hours I found her huddled forlornly in a corner of the echoing deep end. The entire flock had been trying to communicate her situation to me but I didn’t understand frangolin then as well as I do now. When I picked up the shivering little hen, I glanced up to see the entire flock lined up at the side of the pool, leaning their heads over to watch the rescue operation and I cursed myself for not having a camera. You’d be surprised how often chickens do something you want a picture or video of. Then later you’re somewhere showing people videos of your swimming pool rescue operation and realize oh my god I really have to get out more.

Jake’s leg has recovered from the mystery injury. I’m pretty sure he slipped on the cardboard the workers have laid down on the outdoor steps, to protect the tile of the porches from anything falling from the roof, where they are finishing the project of the summer - reroofing the garden house - by installing downspouts. He gimped around for two days and while it was very very pitiful, I knew he wasn’t in pain as 1) his appetite remained legendary and 2) even limping, he’d try to persuade me to take him for a walk. He guilted me so bad that I relented, but had to turn back fairly soon as I couldn’t take the judging expressions of people who saw me acting the drill sergeant with my pitifully hobbling, silver faced dog, insisting he walk when he so obviously could barely move and was so hongry too.

Jake added to the pathos, wagging and licking his tongue out at anyone who came near, as if starved for kindness. Now he’s back to normal and getting his way even more than usual as me and the h recover from this small little preview of that time that waits for us somewhere in our future. He fell asleep on the early side Saturday, after a kingly meal of steak and potatoes (no seasoning), and I was unable to rouse him for our usual late night walk, which generally commences between 10p and 11p, and lasts for about 30-40 minutes though if Jake had his way we’d go all the way to the creek for a swim before returning home, which is a 4 mile round trip. Jake has absolutely no sense of what he is capable of and will walk/run/swim until he drops, so it’s up to us to be the judge of what he can handle, while Jake stubbornly insists he can do more, the naughty darling.

I heard the click click of toenails around 2a and since I’d only just turned out the light and attempted to sleep a short time beforehand, I was up and ready to deal with whatever disaster Jake might be having - if you’re a dog owner you know how gross things can get. But Jake just had to do a wee, and since we were up he said, How about that walk? and I said why not, the night was so balmy and the moon bright and full or nearly so. So off we went, Jake trotting brisk as you please. We got home around 3a and Jake asked for a late night snack, which he got, then I gave him a boost up into the bed, corralled him into his “spot” which is basically at the foot of the bed where we’ve spread an incontinence pad under his special wool blanky. He was snoring in minutes.

I went to bed too, heroically resisting reading for a bit or walking around the property which I often do late at night because it practically invites you to, the way the big calcada courtyard in front of the palaceta is washed in moonlight, the palm trees uplit, the Secret Garden deep with nighttime shadows. Someone left a light on deep inside the palaceta, and the glow is visible through the second story window where the shutters have been left open. The mirrored medicine chest over the sink in the bathroom in the cottage has a light function, someone has left it flipped on and I can see it glowing all the way from the Avenida. These plus the solar powered lights over the garage, around the driveway and bordering the gardens, plus topping the walls that border lower olive tree lane give the property an occupied look, which is a tremendous change from 18 months ago when everything was covered in a choking sea of ivy and bramble, the roofs of the buildings tumbled in, the tiles and calcadas of the patios black with dirt and towering with the weeds taken root in the cracks, the walls cracked and falling down, the trees unkempt, the gardens overrun with vines, the entire property at night blanketed in an unlit darkness.

Before we arrived it looked derelict, maybe even haunted; now it looks cared for and even productive, with chickens and workers and neighbors bustling about constantly, and Jake making his rounds from the back porch of the garden house to the carport where a fresh bowl of water awaits, then over to the Secret Garden to see if the chickens have left behind any bits of bread from their last feeding (chickens are more particular about their food than Labs, in case you are wondering).

It occurs to me that the property now, with us here and the scattershot improvements we’ve made, may actually look MORE haunted, not less, with the dim lights in previously abandoned houses, my shadowy self mounting the cottage steps late at night and wandering the Secret Garden and Upper Olive Tree Lane.

I went to bed after Jake’s late night promenade and then woke a short time later to hear a strange musical ting! ting! sound. After a moment I realized our house hen I Dream of Jeannie had emerged from her curtained cat house (where she is sitting on two eggs, one her own and one from Penny Lane) for a late night snack, her beak making music against the little porcelain ramekin where I keep a fresh supply of diced cucumber, sunflower seeds and sliced blueberries for her highness.

She walks around the dark apartment talking to herself for a bit then takes herself back to bed, settling down with a little squawk to indicate she’s ready for the blackout curtain to be pulled please. Once she hatches her one or two babies we will move them to the brooder with the other fall hatchlings, who will live there for their first 8 weeks, then we’ll move to the incubator room in the coop, where the rest of the flock will grow accustomed to their presence before full integration.

Look at me with all my plans, ha ha I should know better. Cats, rats, foxes, owls and snakes, not to mention weather, have foiled me before. I don’t know nothin’ about nothin’. I just try to be of service.

It was a classic fall weekend, the sky high and blue and scattershot with clouds. I planted daffodil and orchid bulbs, baked two “black and blue” crumbles using store-bought blueberries and black berries from the wild bushes the h uncovered over in the p orchard. I cooked the last of the cherry tomatoes in my favorite white bean/feta/tomato stovetop stew. It’s so versatile - you can stir in spinach, or top with rounds of fried eggs or fried tomato slices. You can add in some smoked bacon or left over grilled chicken or even a can of tuna, then chopped salsa to finish.

In the horta the sweet potato vines have burst from their boxes and flow green and medusa-like across the garden. I cut some and put them in a blue glass jar for the apartment. The gooseberries are coming in and we harvested some cilantro and squash and red peppers. The Brussels sprout plants are already towering, they always seem faintly miraculous to me, the way the sprouts look like a bad case of cabbage mumps.

Today I will gather as many figs as possible to dehydrate, the idea is to have enough to snack on all winter but I keep eating them all. Some days I feed myself entirely from the garden - a potato-crusted onion and spinach tart, cabbage tossed with garlic on the side and olive-oil fried bread the baker gave us in exchange for eggs from our hens, wine-poached quinta apples and pears for dessert.

The flock of Italian green parakeets that haunts the skies of Belas has taken to roosting in one of our pear trees, chattering noisily. The chickens of Quinta dos Galos don’t like them and hustle under the fig tree and mutter to themselves about rude tourists.

This morning when I opened the coop I heard a high-pitched sound and there wobbling around on the floor was a tiny yellow chick, mama Pie proud and anxious with her wings widespread and her neck ruffled so she looks twice her normal size.

Congratulations, mama! I told her. I picked her up and gave her a hug - she and her sister Cake have the silkiest feathers you ever felt - and she shook herself all over as if to say Whew I’m glad that’s done.

The thing is she has two more eggs in the nesting box, and now she can’t sit on them because she has a hatchling on the coop floor that needs sitting on. So, the h and I quickly restored the old two-story rabbit hutch to the mud room in the palaceta, setting up each level with a chick brooder (heater) and fresh chips. Then I put Pie’s other two eggs under the heater on the top level, so now I can just open the mudroom door and peer in through the chicken wire to see the status of the eggs. We candled them and there is definitely a chick in each one, but whether or not they survive the hatching process remains to be seen. I will add a visit to the mudroom as part of Jake’s late night walking routine.

After getting Pie set up with fresh water and food (she sat serenely on the floor, her neck retracted and her wings splooshed out in her Melting Hen pose) I left the coop door open, it’s dark in there with the door closed, with the only light in the afternoon slanting through the barred door and making a little jail pattern on the stone floor. But now that I’m thinking about it I better run up there, if Pie hops down into the run, and baby follows suit, baby will not be able to climb back up into the coop for at least a couple of days. This pintainho is very important to me, very symbolic, because it is the grandchild of I Dream of Jeannie, our first domesticated hen, orphaned last spring, raised in the palaceta, and first hen to occupy the restored coop. She hatched Pie this past March and here is Pie, with her own little hatchling. It’s the littlest, yellowest thing, I’m dying.

When we first took possession of the quinta I envisioned we would feed the 30 or so wild chickens - about evenly split between roosters and hens - that had lived here since the last owners apparently abandoned them to their fate. With few predators and five hectares to wander, the flock has prospered in numbers though they were all on the slim side, everyone is noticeably fatter now.

But what we thought would happen - that we’d feed and eventually tame the wild flock - goes to show how little we knew. The wild chickens have stayed wild though a few of the bolder roosters allow themselves to be picked up. What happened is, we have acquired domesticated chickens through a series of unfortunate events and interventions that taught me way more than I ever thought I’d need to know about the lives of chickens. I’ve nursed roosters from the brink of death, I’ve brought baby chicks inside at night when they were too little to fly up and join mama on the roost, putting them in a soft sided cooler to sleep next to me in the tent where I slept the first year or so of my occupancy here. I’ve rescued one day old orphans and raised them to adulthood myself, but this is the first time I’ve presided over the actual hatching process, so wish these little ones luck.