Sunburst; Sunset

So the day started off peacful enough. Last night we had a bit of a hail storm, but only one kale plant was damaged badly. We spent the morning visiting our nearest neighbors, Dean and Mike, and Shevy aquired an old double boiler for making chocolate candies for farmers market this summer. We needed something new to sell, besides Shevy's jewelry, that's low cost and eatible and the market for most other baked goods is already cornered by others. We just ordered some chocolate molds in various shapes including, but not limited to, vegetables, farm animals, unicorns, and dragons. I'm just thrilled that we'll have soy free chocolate that i can have since all things soy are now my nemisis.

Anyway, last fall Mike had made a nice carved wooden sign for our road. Since our little Sunburst lane is only inhabited by 3 families, it has no sign, until now. We scrounged up a post and installed it on our corner this afternoon. We're going to get more rocks to go around it as well as a carved dwarf holding an axe that Mike also made last year. After that i hippie bleached out our water tanks and we went to fetch water ahead of a looming storm that ended up blowing over with no rain. When the water was put away, i strolled down the hill to chickenland to check eggs as i do most every day. To my shock and confusion, i saw a chicken blob that was not the shape it should have been for a sleeping or nesting chicken. No, actually if i were not blind i would've seen one of our Delawares hanging by the waddle, dead in front of the nesting boxes. This was later confirmed by Shevs. We suspect, after checking her all out, that she must have had that thing where their egg gets stuck somehow and kills them. I don't remember what its called, but it has a name. We took her out into the woods behind our property and lightly burried her, knowing the cayoties won't waste much time in finding her. We offered her up for whoever took her in this way. I think the most brutal part is that it seems like one of the other hens must have shoved her dead body out of the nest box because when i found her, both of the nest boxes were occupied. So they were sitting there watching their dead friend hanging off of a branch nub on the roost all day, since i haden't checked it since last evening. I thik chickens are much closer to dinosaurs than we think. So, we decided today to save some eggs to hatch some new baby chicks, since now only two of our hens are young ones. Five of our now nine are six years plus. We'll need to add an expansion onto chickenland for the new babies, but it shouldn't be hard.

The sun has now set for the life of one lone chicken, and literally in the land of Wyrmwood, our home. The darkening sky is still splotched with gray and white, and the evening chill brings the hope for a bit more rain before the hot, dry, bug infested hell of June decendes upon us.