Standoff in the Orchard

Vince is out working on the fruit trees. Every spring, using his little cultivator, he tills up a shallow area around each tree, adds fertilizer, waters it and in the past, he’s mulched the trees. This year, he isn’t even mulching because it takes the chickens about 2.75 minutes to scratch the mulch from about 40 trees all over the entire orchard. They love digging in the freshly tilled dirt. I worry about them eating the fertilizer but have been told they will eat it once and not like it and not eat it. They’re looking for bugs.

I was sitting in my chair knitting and I looked up to see Vince chasing a chicken. He had a rake in his hand waving it at her. Most of the chickens wait til he’s moved on to the next tree and then they converge on the tree he’s just finished . . except our one nosy chicken. She will get in his way to where he can’t even work. He’s trying to pour the fertilizer around the tree and she’s trying to see what’s in his cup.

I was laughing watching him chase her . . then the next time I looked up, he was after her with the water hose, trying to spray her. Vince thinks he’s scaring her but I think the chicken thinks he’s playing with her. Whatever she thinks (or probably doesn’t think anything because she’s a chicken!), he definitely isn’t scaring her.

Here he is daring her to come back! She came back!

I walked out to intervene and she came running up to tell me all about it. He was aggravating her as much as she was aggravating him and I got a good laugh out of it all.

It’s days like this I know we’ll probably never leave this place. It’s so nice living out where we can be out doing what we want to do without having close neighbors watching or hearing Vince yelling at a chicken and a chicken squawking back at him.