For a few weeks I’ve been monitoring the beak on one of my guinea hens. It was way overgrown, no doubt from spending a pampered life indoors and not naturally wearing it down on rocks while eating outside.

After three weekends in a row of free ranging failed to knock her beak back a bit, I knew it was time to take action. I had to steel myself for a fight, because nothing is easy with these wild birds.

I put on my gloves and thought about putting on a long-sleeve shirt, but didn’t feel like going into the house to change. I also briefly considered trying to grab the hen in my hands, like I do with the chickens. But at the last minute, I picked up my net. I entered the coop. A beak and claw explosion occurred, and each time the birds freaked into a whirlwind of flying dinosaurs in a small, confined space I huddled in the corner with my head protected in my arms. When they momentarily settled I took swipes with my net.  After about five minutes of this gauntlet, I got my girl.

One swift squish with the dog’s toenail clippers and her Frankenbeak was history. While I had her confined I also gave her a pedicure, getting rid of a very strangely spiked back toenail that was more than an inch long and stuck straight out like a thorn.

I hit the quick on one nail and had a bleeder. Don’t fear. It wasn’t terminal.

I untangled the guinea from the net and set her loose. Doesn’t she already look more comfortable now that she’s lost a half an inch of extraneous beak? I have to imagine eating with that thing was no picnic.

I definitely took one for the team, though, Team Idiot Who Doesn’t Wear Long Sleeves While Guinea Wrangling. In the feather flurry I got hit by somebody’s claws, and within ten minutes had this nice lump rising on my forearm. It shows you how powerful these birds are that they can raise an instant bruise the size of a silver dollar just by trying to escape a perceived threat. Though it maybe could have been avoided with long sleeves, the idea of a freaking guinea getting caught in my clothing sounds bad enough to make me thankful that I got away with just this quick hit. And thankful also that I didn’t get hit on my face!

I’ve coached a young dog up and down his first slippery cliff scramble, and in and out of a joyful storm-swollen river. I’ve held a black hen so tight to my chest that our heartbeats blended, and I clipped her winter-overgrown toenails until drops of red blood ran down my fingers. I’ve packed cold clay against quick and detonated a bomb of blackgreen flapping as I released her to her sister, safe.

Even after showering, my hands smell like animal, earth and wild water.

It was a good Saturday.

Last week’s rest cure in the garden worked: Iris was no longer broody when I returned her to the coop last Friday. And today she laid an egg! Which is entirely unexpected given the length of her broodiness. According to the eminently wise Gail Damerow and her “Storey’s Guide to Raising Chickens,” a hen that’s not broken up until her fourth day of broodiness “may not start laying for about 18 days.”

Iris started going broody the day I left on vacation, and brooded for a week and two days before I came home and moved her to the garden. Which made me expect to wait almost a month for her to return to laying.

But I guess she got right back up on the horse, though her output is paltry compared with her sister Lilac’s characteristically purple offering:

Funny how sisters from the same clutch lay such different eggs!

Last week Iris, one of my hens, decided she wanted to be a mother and went broody. Which means she quit laying eggs and wouldn’t leave her nest box, as if she were incubating a clutch of fertile eggs. Which, because I don’t have a rooster, is impossible. Unless, she was knocked up by a guinea, in which case she would have had the world’s ugliest babies. If you don’t believe me, check it.

Of course this would happen the week I am out of the country on vacation…

My house sitter did a good job of lifting Iris out of her nest and trying to change her mind about making freak show babies. But when I returned Iris was still set in her ways, and on her nest. Stronger interventions were needed.

Apparently broody hens experience elevated body temperature, and cooling them off can sometimes snap them out of their maternal inclinations. Some people advocate dunking the hens in cold water, but it being winter and all I feared that my hen would catch a cold. But Sunday evening, when we got a nice little snowstorm that quickly obliterated my recent memories of lying in an oceanside hammock in my bikini drinking pina coladas, I brought Iris outside to chill out.

When I set her down in the snow, Iris acted as though I’d dropped her on the moon. It took her a long time to take a few steps, and when she did they were in my direction. A first for this chicken that I’ve chased in circles around my garage with a Wal-mart fish net trying to get her into the coop at night. I feared her feet would freeze, so I set her up on one of my row cover hoops and walked away.

But it was snowing pretty hard, and I didn’t have the heart to leave Iris out in the cold for much more than ten minutes. So I returned her to her flock and waited.

The next day Iris was still in her nest box, as cozy as if her Arctic adventure had been but a thumbnail-sized brain’s dream. Time for Plan B.

Iris has been spending the daylight hours in the setup above, a wire animal crate suspended over a garden bed. Might as well harvest that manure, right? And she’s inside the garden which protects her from marauding animals. At night I put her back in the coop after I’ve removed the nest box, which I reinstall during the days for Lilac to use to lay her egg.

Iris seems to be okay, and I hope these little day trips from the cozy coop will help snap her brain back to her purpose in life, which is providing eggs for my dog’s breakfast. Heck, she got to enjoy a beautiful 70-degree day outside in the sun, which is more than I can say for myself. I ask, who has a better quality of life, broodiness and all?

A few weeks ago the hens, Lilac and Iris, started laying eggs again. I’d expected them to take a much longer winter break, but they had other plans. I am surprised by how short they rested, but I am pleased—not only because of their eggs but also because it means the light is returning and spring is on its way.

And Lilac is back in a big way—laying huge dark brown eggs that span all four fingers when I hold them in my palm. Though her eggs aren’t supersized, Iris is no slouch with her contribution, which are definitely graded large.

Just out of curiosity I compared my hens’ eggs, on the right, to eggs from the famous Polyface chickens (the two light eggs on the left), which I bought to tide me through the dark days when Lilac and Iris were resting. Though they don’t live in fancy chicken tractors or have a famous farmer for their owner, I think my girls stack up pretty well.

Where these guineas are happy they’re not on the menu.

Yet.

From the dog bowl:

In other chicken news, last Sunday I had the coop torn apart for cleaning, all open and aired out and all dishes and nest boxes freshly scrubbed and drying in the sun.

I was eating lunch on the back porch, Tuck lying at my feet. Lilac, one of the young hens, grew very interested in my tuna and crackers. I tossed her a few crumbs and she hopped up on the porch right in front of Tuck and ate crackers out of my hand. It was a peaceable kingdom if I’d ever seen one. The rest of the day she stuck very close as I worked on the coop, even as her sister Iris ventured further away. Normally the two hens stay close together. I figured Lilac was just looking for more handout and enjoyed the attention.

But when I put fresh bedding in the coop and hung up the nesting box, Lilac jumped right in the nest box. Within two minutes she hopped out and ran to join Iris. I checked the nest box and sure enough, a beautiful still-warm egg. I am excited to have finally solved the mystery of which hen is laying which colored egg. Fittingly, Lilac’s, on the left, is the more purple of the two:

In the past few weeks I’ve gotten a few major projects mostly crossed off my list. First up was the back porch ceiling, my personal bete noir thanks to an invasion of starlings (see here, and here). My dad and a couple of carpenters put it in, and it looks great. Now I just need to caulk and paint it, purchase and hang a ceiling fan, install the rope lights that will run in a tray around the ceiling, and reconnect my outdoor speakers.

Next the guys moved on to fixing the garage, which entailed cutting out and replacing some rotten trim. I used MiraTec again for the trim, to match the house.

Now I need to either pay a couple of thousand bucks to have the building power washed, scraped, sanded, windows reglazed, nail holes filled and joints caulked, and repainted, or I need to do it myself. The jury’s still out on this one. I also need to order new garage doors.

Last weekend my dad and a friend finally took care of the huge pile of black walnut that had been in my field for more than a year. My brother had milled some wood from a couple of storm-fallen trees, and this farm proved a good place to store the limb wood until it could be cut for firewood. So a day of fun with a neat little skid steer and a couple of chainsaws and I have a shed full of ready-to-burn limb wood, as well as a double-thick row of logs outside waiting for the wood splitter.

Finally, I took a day of work last week to knock out a project that’s been more than a year overdue: trimming out the chicken coop. Again my chainsawing friend helped as we drove over the mountain to pick up lumber and metal roofing, which we strapped to the top of the station wagon. Farm use tags, here I come!

Once home, we had the coop trimmed in no time, even with an intervening rainstorm. We also added a bit more metal roofing to create better overhangs on each end. Today I cleaned the interior of the coop, and filled nail holes. I ran out of steam while sanding them, but when I get geared up again I will finish sanding, and caulk and paint the building. The coop looks a lot better, and I am thrilled with the progress.

I am so happy to have these projects underway. They were all hanging over my head, bothering me in their various stages of incompleteness. I know I have a long way to go still, what with all the finish work and painting, but to have made this much progress is worth celebrating.

My goal for the rest of the fall, or at least until cold weather hits and outdoor work ceases, is to have the back porch ceiling painted and complete, have the garage fixed and repainted and sporting new doors, and to have the coop trimmed and repainted. If I can get these major projects accomplished, I will happily rest in front of the wood stove for the winter. All the while, of course, plotting next year’s improvements…

Saturday morning I went to collect the eggs and found these:

Notice anything unusual about that third egg from the left? It’s ginormous! To its left are two guinea eggs, and to its right are three typical-sized chicken eggs. Who says that pullets start out with tiny eggs? One of my girls is a rock star. Poor thing!

I accidentally cracked this giant egg on the counter, so I went ahead and investigated. As I suspected, it was a double yolker!

Way to go, little hen!

I don’t eat eggs, so I scrambled it up in some leftover bacon grease and used it as a high-value training treat for some down-stay practice with Tucker. He thought it was delicious!

I spent three hours in the garden this afternoon, sweating it out in 100-degree heat indices. I’d neglected the garden for too long, and with our two-week stretch of 90+ temps and no rain, things were looking bad.

With the hose running all the while, I cut my losses and pulled out the squash-bug infested pumpkin vines. It makes me sad as I find pumpkins to be one of the most rewarding plants to grow, and I’ve had success with them in other gardens. But these vines were so infested that I knew it was better to get rid of them. There would be no Prince Charming this fall.

With the vines removed, I faced the challenge of how to dispose of them. Burning is the recommended option for infected crops, but I didn’t want to clear out the fire pit and sacrifice all the firewood it would take to get things good and hot. Then I had a flash of inspiration: my flame thrower. It targets blistering heat that no bug could survive.

I dumped my refuse in the driveway and went to work. Squash bug eggs went from this:

To this:

I wish I could take the flame thrower to the infested beds to get the rest of the buggers left hiding in the straw, but I fear the heat would damage beneficial worms and microbes. My next inspiration involves turning Mr. King Guinea, who has taken it upon himself to harass his ladies and the hens, out into the garden to free range and pick up the remaining pests. There may be more damage to crops than critters, but I may just give it a shot.