Our Maker's Acres Police Blotter

A crime has occurred on our homestead farm.  We've got to get to the bottom of it.  Earlier this week I planted a 40 foot section of the garden in the side yard with Irish Potatoes.  I had them cut up and they scabbed over and 1/4 growth from the eyes of each section began growing.  The soil was just right, and I got them all planted in one afternoon.  It was one of those times where you put your hands on your hips and look over your handiwork with satisfaction, thinking about seeing the fresh green growth of potatoes peering out of the soil and leaf mulch I had covered it in.

The next day, I noticed one of our white chickens outside the pasture fence in the side yard.  Upon seeing me, she ran and found a gap in the wire that separates the pasture from the yard and wriggled through, scurrying back to the barn.  As I walked back by the potato patch, I saw that this hen had scratched up where I had planted the potatoes.  Several of the seed potatoes were exposed and this one in the photo below, in particular, had a peck mark in the bottom from her wicked little beak.

It made me angry.  It seems every time that you try to do something, there is an equal and opposite reaction of something trying to destroy what you attempted to do.  Such is the state of our fallen world.  But you don't give up.  You keep trying.  I went looking for the perpetrator and encountered a gaggle of hens by the barn sitting on a rail.  It was almost as if this was a police line up where, from behind one-way glass, you pick out the perp.  I notice that 3 of the 4 hens face me in the line up and look innocent.  But there's this one hen, who has a guilty look about her.  She won't even face forward for identification.

As I looked her over closely, my stare provoked her to hop down.  She looked down in shame for the devastation that she had wrought over our potato patch.

What should I do?  I'm not going to lie and say that capital punishment wasn't thought of.  She would make a mighty fine chicken gumbo and our profligate poultry potato perpetrator would have her career of mischief nipped in the bud.  It would satiate my need for vengeance.  However, she lays eggs.  I had to take a long view of the situation.  I did a quick cost-benefit analysis and determined that she is more valuable to me alive than dead.  The hen was brought before the courtroom for sentencing and received a pardon.  She is on probation, however, and if other misdeeds are found, we'll deal with her swiftly. 

So how do we keep her honest?  The hog wire on the perimeter fence of the pasture is approaching 18 years old.  It's rusty in places and will eventually have to be replaced.  That is a costly job and just too big of a job for me to tackle right now.  So I did the next best thing.  I got some electrified poultry netting down from the rafters of the barn and strung it around the potato (and garlic and lettuce) patch.

Will it work?  We shall see.  Can the hen be rehabilitated?  Or will she be a recidivist and lapse into her former criminal deeds, resulting in re-arrest, conviction and incarceration?

Our electric netting will attempt to keep her honest, but it's up to her.  If she falls off the wagon, the big pot is waiting near the stove, and the weather is still cool enough to make a roux and get some sausage and green onions and make a big chicken and sausage and okra gumbo!