The Serpent in the Hen House

14 And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:

15 And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.  Genesis 3:14-15

That, of course, is the Biblical story of the fall.  Adam and Eve were beguiled by the serpent and ate of the fruit that they were forbidden to eat.  It all started from questioning the Creator when He knows best.  Good wisdom for us today.  Life has a way of humbling most folks and we come to realize that God knows what he's doing.  He's put safeguards, commandments, and standards in place to protect us.

The woman on Our Maker's Acres Family Farm had a run-in with a serpent in the hen house this week, and yes, there was enmity between the serpent and the woman.  Tricia opened the nesting boxes so that the hens could begin laying their (precious and expensive) eggs.  When she opened one of the boxes, there was a chicken snake in the box.  We call them chicken snakes, but I think the official name is the Texas Rat Snake.  Snakes, apparently, are no respecter of borders, as he's about 70 miles over the border.

The snake was almost as frightened of the woman as the woman was of it.  The serpent tried heroically to make an escape, but alas, it was not to be.  For the snake had swallowed a ceramic egg that we keep in the hen house, and when he tried to slither through the fencing that lines the bottom of the boxes, his girth was now too wide to get through the fencing.  His greed had trapped him.  Ordinarily, if it was a real egg, it would have burst.  Ceramic eggs don't burst.  Tricia picked up a shovel and then a steel pipe and killed the snake.  

The Battle of the Bulge

That bulge is the ceramic egg.  Ordinarily, the ceramic egg will give the snake a really bad case of constipation and he would die.  Sad, but our land borders some woods.  If you don't somewhat control the snakes, you won't get eggs.  I've got to get my ceramic egg back.  Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle, right?  I cut the snake in two right above the bulge.

I used my foot to coax the fake egg out of the snake.

And here we are.  I got our egg back.  I tossed it right back in the box.  You'll notice it has an "X" marked on it with a Sharpie.  They look so real that we were picking them up when we picked up eggs each afternoon.  The X lets us know that it's a fake egg and to leave it alone.  Apparently, snakes haven't cracked that code, yet.

We welcome the snakes to come eat the rats.  We have plenty of those in the barn and hen house.  Rats move, however.  An egg is a stationary target and is easier for the snakes to get a quick meal.  This one paid a high price for his egg breakfast in the drive thru line.

But Have You Read the Label on That?

Our youngest son, Benjamin is in the Electrical Engineering program at McNeese State University in Lake Charles.  Between Covid restrictions and the dormitory where he was living being extensively damaged by Hurricanes Laura and Delta, the college experience has been sub-par.  When Benjamin's dorm did not re-open, Benjamin and a friend moved into an apartment.  Tricia has been very concerned about his eating.

She does not want him subsisting on fast food.  "Have you read the label on that?" is a common refrain.  "Just look at all that sugar!"  "I can't even pronounce this word.  What in the world is in this?  Chemicals?"  Tricia decided this afternoon that Benjamin needed some homemade breakfasts rather that the "heart attack in a sack" you get from local drive-thrus.  Homemade Breakfast Burritos!  Portable.  Delicious.  Healthy.

With the hens' egg production on an upward trajectory, Tricia has all the ingredients at her disposal.  She cracked 18 eggs, seasoned them up and began scrambling them.

Of course you need tortillas to make breakfast burritos, but have you read the label on that?  Filled with all sorts of crazy stuff.  For her boy? - only the best.  Momma won't have him eating enriched white flour tortillas made in New York City.  She whipped together some tortilla dough and began rolling them out.

She heated up the griddle and began making delicious tortillas, flipping them to cook on both sides and pulling them off by hand when they start to brown.

When it comes to filling the burritos, Tricia isn't stingy.  The tortilla is filled with seasoned scrambled eggs.  On most other occasions, she'd add chorizo and cheese, but today they were just egg burritos.

The burritos are rolled tight and packed into a container for safekeeping and storage.  By Tricia's calculation, this will keep Benjamin stocked up with healthy breakfasts until this weekend so that he can re-load his container with fresh supplies.

A quote ascribed to both Napoleon and Frederick the Great says that "an army marches on its belly."  Well, Tricia made darn well sure that Benjamin starts each day with his belly full of healthy food.  Mommas look out after their boys, don't they?

A Hopeful Beginning - A Tragic End

On April 22nd we discovered a nest in our blueberry bush.  Almost every year we find a song bird's nest in a bush right around the house and we follow it from the time the eggs are laid until the babies leave the nest.

The nest -2020

The nest was constructed with care.  It had a strong outer nest made with live oak twigs and an inner lining fashioned with hay and grasses woven to make soft bedding for the baby birds that would be coming.  Three blue eggs that were speckled with brown spots were laid in the nest.  Momma bird flew off to eat and I peeked in.

A few days later, things started to happen.  The first baby chick hatched out of the egg.  So tiny and so newly hatched, the chick was still curved into the shape of the egg.

After a few days, three ugly chicks were out of the egg, clamoring for momma bird to bring some worms or bugs or something to eat!

Every time I checked in on them, they seemed to be all peach fuzz and mouths wide open...

I'm not sure what type of bird this is, but here is a photo of the momma bird sitting on her nest.  She would squawk at me when I got near, so I backed up and zoomed in and got a picture of her.  Know what kind of bird this is?

A few days later, I looked in to find only two birds in the nest.  I don't know what happened to the third baby.  The two remaining looked to be growing.  The peach fuzz was almost gone and you can just see the tiny pin feathers on their small bodies.

Over the course of the next week, we weathered a few rough storms with lots of rain and wind.  From a distance I could see that the momma was sitting on the nest, keeping her two babies warm and dry.

The next time the weather cleared, I checked in on our little bird family.  With dismay, I found the nest was empty, and it was laying on its side.  The parts of the nest that were once so impeccably built and cared for were now askew .  There was no trace of the baby birds.  There was no warning squawk from the momma.  Just silence.

I was sad.  The momma bird had worked so hard, done all the right things, shown care and compassion, nurtured here offspring, and yet...  The promising start was full of hope and potential.  The results were discouraging and tragic.  I still am not sure what happened.  If I was a betting man, I would put my money right here.

Ginger would be the primary suspect.  I can't prove beyond a reasonable doubt that she did it, so at this point charges will not be brought against her.

I looked it up on the Internet and found that most song birds only nest one time per year, so this just makes it even more tragic for the momma bird.  A whole year lost!  But I bet she'll try again next spring!  Just in a better spot!  There is a parable there, I think, for humans.  Even in the midst of trouble, trial, and tragedy, we should keep going and not give up.  Persevere.  Persist.  Push on!

Let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary.
Galatians 6:9

Our Experiment with the Broody Hen

I posted about the Broody Hen a while back.  She is a determined old bird.  She wants to set.  She desires to raise a family of chicks.  Day after day, we lift her up and snatch the eggs from beneath her.  Warm eggs. Eggs holding promise of a new life within.  Instead, we turn them into scrambled eggs, fried eggs, or fried rice or the makings of a chocolate cake.  The broody hen makes noises letting us know she is very displeased with our theft of her progeny.  She fluffs up her feathers as a signal of angst and ire.

At some point we relent.  I have an idea.  I say to Tricia, "We've lost a lot of hens this year to old age, predators, and injury."  Many birds get crushed underfoot by cows who have no sense of compassion or brotherhood for their barnyard companions.  "Let's allow the broody hen to set and raise a clutch of chicks."

Tricia agrees and a plan is hatched.  (Pardon the pun.)  I put hay, a water container and feed into an old dog kennel we have.  We plan to put the broody hen in this cage, so she'll be isolated away from the other chickens to raise her brood.

I moved a number of eggs into the homemade nest and I went and got the hen, set her in her new 'nursery' and... problems ensued.  First, the broody hen was very nervous, clucking and pacing, uncomfortable with her new abode.  Then, Belle, our new puppy, came and paced in front of the cage, making the hen anxious and jittery.  She clucked and paced back and forth.  We decided to leave her for about six hours to get acclimated to her new surroundings.

The hen never warmed up to her new residence.  She never tried to set on the eggs.  What to do?  Well, we decided to put her back into her nesting box.  We put a dozen eggs underneath her and she was all over them like white on rice.  She fluffed out her feathers and gently pulled her wings over the eggs and sat.  Happy, once again.

The broody hen, determined as ever, gets the opportunity to raise a family.  We'll check in on her from time to time.  We marked our calendars that come April 26th, we should have baby chicks hatching out.

A Mother's Love

In addition to having fresh food and enjoying a pastoral life, having farm animals allows you the opportunity to constantly see up close, the circle of life.  From birth to death, cradle to grave.  Every day is a parable, a teachable moment.  You see the joy (and pain) of birth.  You see the sadness and sometimes brutality of death.  You see the gentleness of a mother to her offspring.  Even in a first-time mother, instincts take over.  This occurs not only in farm animals, but others as well.

Yesterday afternoon I witnessed an event that was a day too late, but despite their motherly instincts, wild, uncivilized animals don't celebrate Mother's Day.  I've recently set up the portable electric fencing in our 3 acre pasture.  Each day I rotate the cows and goats into another paddock for grazing.  I'll probably post about it more once the grass really comes in strong.

Anyway, as I was walking toward the western perimeter fencing, I became aware of a bird on the ground trying to catch my attention.  Was it hurt?  Then I heard its cry and saw that it was a Killdeer.  A killdeer has long legs, a shrill cry, and runs around on the ground.  They bird was trying to lead me toward the east. 

You can see the killdeer in the center right of the photo running away from me (pardon the poor quality of the photo)

The bird began to drag its wing like it was injured.  It stopped and looked back at me to be sure I was following and then resumed its frantic display.  As much as I tried to keep up with her, she kept running.

Of course I knew the game she was playing.  She was leading me AWAY from something - her nest.  It became a challenge for me to find it.  I simply walked the opposite way that she was leading me and walked around looking on the ground.  Killdeer build their "nests" directly on the ground.  Despite being camouflaged, I was able to find it after a bit of time.  The four eggs were hidden in plain sight!

I looked at the eggs for a moment as the killdeer emphatically tried to get me to leave.  I'm sure she thought I was going to harm her eggs, but of course, I did not.  I quickly walked away, leaving the mother to protect her young.  This little bird will lay her eggs and raise her young, risking her life to save them until they are ready to leave the nest and raise families of their own.  This killdeer's instinct invokes her to run, cry, employ an act of dragging a wing so that a predator would think it was an easy meal - all the while leading away the one would would harm her unborn bird (a clump of yolk and albumin at this point).  Amazing!

If God instilled this self-sacrificing, protective, motherly instinct into a small, dumb bird, how does a highly developed, civilized and functioning human abandon the instinct to nurture, protect, and care for her own flesh and blood?  As I walked back across the pasture in the coolness of the evening, I realized that although we're at the top of the food chain, we can still learn some things from animals.  (I say some things, because some animals EAT their young.)  Only one day after Mother's Day, in the incident I witnessed in the pasture, the killdeer showed me a beautiful illustration of a mother's love.

The Story That the Rhode Island Red Hen Had to Tell

Nestled comfortably in the hay, one of our Rhode Island Red hens was sitting.  She had tucked herself away from all the activity of the cows bellowing for green grass in the yard, the goat kids jumping around, and all the other chickens scratching and competing for tasty bugs and worms.  I think if you look at her eyes below, you can see that she is unhappy that I found her.

But if you listen closely, she has a story to tell.  Even though she can't speak in any language that I can discern, her actions tell a story, if you have ears to hear and eyes to see...

The question that has been around for a long, long time is: "What came first?  The chicken or the egg?"  I think even Aristotle deemed it a real dilemma as it was an infinite loop.  Chicken or Egg?

What a silly question!  At least for Christians who believe the Bible. 

According to The Bible, the chicken came first.

"And God blessed them, saying "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the water in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth." - Genesis 1:22

So there you have it!  Just as it happened in the hay on Our Maker's Acres Family Farm, it happened back in creation.  The chicken came first and then the egg.

Making Chorizo

Chorizo is a spanish sausage described in more detail Here.  It is normally made with pork, but since we have some grass fed beef, we decided to make it with beef. Tricia is from South Texas and is of Spanish descent and introduced me to chorizo. I really like the taste and fragrance of the wonderful spices used to make it.

We tried to make it once and it turned out so good and was so easy that we've been making it all the time.  Some recipes for chorizo are a little simpler, but this one turned out good for us so we used it.

The ingredients needed are as follows:

• 1 Tablespoon Cumin Seed
• 5 whole cloves
• 1 bay leaf, crumbled
• 1 teaspoon ground coriander
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon oregano
• 1/2 teaspoon thyme
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper
• 2 Tablespoons paprika
• 1 teaspoon red chile powder
• 1 lb. ground meat
• 3 Tablespoons apple cider vinegar
• 3 cloves garlic, minced

Ingredients for making chorizo

Grind the cumin, cloves, and bay leaf in a mortar/pestle or molcajete.

Grinding spices

Here are the spices all ground up.

                                       

Add coriander, cinnamon, oregano, thyme, salt and pepper to the molcajete and mix together.

Adding spices

Add the apple cider vinegar to the meat.

Adding apple cider vinegar

Then mince the garlic and add to the ground meat:

Minced garlic

Chorizo uses Ancho peppers, but we didn't have them.  An alternative for ancho peppers according to the recipe is 2 Tablespoons paprika and 1 teaspoon red chile powder.  Add to the meat in the bowl.

Add all the spices in the mortar to the meat.  The spices smell so good!

Incorporate the spices into the meat with your hands.  Work it all in so that the spices are distributed evenly.

Refrigerate overnight.

We cook the chorizo in a skillet and then it can be added to eggs or other dishes. Tricia's favorite thing to do is to add chorizo and cheese in a corn tortilla - Benjamin's too.  I like to cut up some potato and cook it in a skillet and then add chorizo and eggs and scramble it all together.  This can be spooned into a tortilla for a great breakfast taco.

Chorizo con huevos y papas

Once the chorizo is cooked we freeze it in freezer bags and then pull it out and use as needed.  We like to always have some frozen that we can add to the skillet as we need it!