Mornings with Chickens, and a Nod to Simple Salads

It’s 6am and the June sunshine streams through my bedroom windows. Birds chatter from the holly tree and telephone wires. Next to me, Dave swings his legs out of bed, and in less than two minutes is dressed and heading downstairs for coffee.

Five minutes, I mumble after him, then slide deeply beneath the sheets. There is nothing more divine than having this bed all to myself where I can sprawl and doze in the perfection of a new day I haven’t yet had the opportunity to sully.

It’s gorgeous, this hazy reverie, these sounds of late spring and the satisfaction of a good night’s sleep. I’m almost back to dreaming when my subconscious conjures a flurry of feathers, the fragility of bones in wings, sharp green and amber eyes.

The chickens. They need to be moved from the coop to the chicken tractor, the contraption Dave built so the girls can spend their days on fresh grass without being bothered by critters who would just love to make a meal out of a pretty feathered bird.

Half-blind and wearing my pajamas, I stumble downstairs and don knee-high rubber barn boots. That I have reason to put on such footwear in the morning shoots glee through my belly; as a girl, I wanted nothing more than to live on a farm and care for a menagerie. (Does a husband, two daughters, a dog, cat, and nine chickens qualify as a menagerie?)

Outside, the grass is wet with dew. The peas blossom. A spiderweb stretches from one tomato cage to another.

I hear the chickens before I reach the coop; they scratch and flutter and peep like impatient busybodies. Once I open the door, the white chickens burst into flight. The red ones take a more stately approach: they strut to the doorway, survey the landscape, and finally hop down with avian grace. All the birds commence scratching and pecking at the dirt.

“C’mon girls, c’mon.” I start walking toward the tractor, assuming that today will be like other mornings when they’ve (mostly) followed me and hopped right into their fancy daytime home. I pride myself that they think I’m their momma.

They want no part of me today. I try to herd them toward the tractor, but they scatter like the beads E and Q spill on our dining room table. It’s clear the chickens have learned the tractor is nothing more than a movable coop, one that, while situated on fresh grass, restricts their movement and provides limited bug and worm-catching opportunity.

The pea-sized chicken brain wants freedom.

I want to give it to them, but my work schedule and the yellow school bus demand that I get back inside to make the kids’ lunches and take a shower.  

With no other option, I start to chase down chickens. They’re fast and wily, though, and I get an inkling of just how hard it will be to catch uncooperative chickens once they grow to full size – three times what they are now.  In the back of my brain, I’m also aware that I’m wearing a short nightdress, green rubber boots, and a mop of hair that would make any punk proud.  The neighbors must be chuckling.

Finally, I snag Peaches and Cornflake (two of the red chickens), carry them to the tractor, and pop them inside, hoping the others will follow.

Nope.

I hear the back door slam, and my dad, who has been visiting for a few days, walks toward me. “Need some help?” he grins.

For the next ten minutes, we commandeer the feathered darlings – around the coop, through the fence and into the neighbor’s yard, beneath the pine trees. True to our Polish roots, we grouse and mildly curse the birds despite the fact that we’re royally enjoying ourselves and hooting in triumph at each bird we scoop into our arms.

Finally, they’re all inside. Indignant at their captivity, they peck furiously at the rubber garden edging that lines the edge of the tractor. (Dave added this after, on the second day of tractor use, the chickens discovered a small gap between the base of the tractor and a dip in the yard. Houdinis, these chickens.)

When I transfer their food and water from the coop into the tractor, the chickens go wild for the feed.

“You know,” my dad says, watching their frenzy, “you gotta train these chickens, make them understand that you’re their sole source of food. Then they’ll follow you and go into the tractor no problem. Take the food out of the coop for the night, and see what happens. I bet that in the morning, you’ll be able to lead the chickens to the tractor with it.”

So this is what I try for the next few days. There is clearly a learning curve for the birds. Most of the time, they can’t decide between the glory of scratching in the dirt and the can of feed in my hands. At best, half of the birds follow me, while the other half eludes me as long as possible.

But on the third day, my dad’s plan works like a charm. Within a minute of opening the coop and dangling the full feeder in front of their beaks, I have all the chickens pecking away in the tractor. The chicken brain listens to its stomach before it listens to the call of the wild.

But if I’d figured that out earlier, I would have missed the early morning scurry with my dad. My only regret is that he left before I could perfect the chicken transfer. I wish he could have seen the nearly military line of white and red chickens strutting along behind my rubber boots this morning and heard the shout of triumph I let loose into the warm, spring air.

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In case you’re wondering about the definition and logistics of the chicken tractor, it’s just a movable, enclosed chicken yard. Some chicken tractors include the coop; ours doesn’t because I wanted the tractor to be light enough that I could move it on my own.  (Some tractors are made of PVC specifically for this purpose, but our little hamlet is a terribly windy place. The last thing we wanted was for a gust of wind to upset the tractor and release the chickens.)

The 4’x12’ tractor includes a covered area for shade, as well as two handles (much like a wheelbarrow) and two sets of wheels that make it easy to guide around the yard. The big benefit of this whole contraption, in addition to keeping the chickens safe, is that we move the tractor to a clean patch of ground every day. We won’t end up with a dusty, poopy chicken yard, and even though the chickens aren’t completely free-range, they’re still able to eat bugs, worms, and grass.

The tractor took Dave two days to build, and it only cost $29 thanks to his talent for scrounging free wood, chicken wire, wheels, and hardware; the money he did spend was $5 for bolts, $12 for the pressure-treated 2x4s that form the base of the tractor, and an unexpected $12 for that rubber garden edging, which is doing a marvelous job of keeping the chickens inside the tractor.

*

With the money we’ve been spending on the chickens (oh yes, there’s more chicken drama, but I’ll save it for another post), I’ve been trying to find even more summer recipes that are big on taste and easy on the bank account. These two use condiments that most people already have in their pantries, and the results are so good you’ll start using these simple summer salads for all of your al fresco dining opportunities.

Cucumber Salad with Dill and Red Onion. When I found local cucumbers at the Kennett Square Farmers Market a few weeks ago, I nearly wept with joy.  One of the vendors had started cukes in his greenhouse back in February, and this recipe let the crisp, sweet interior of those fresh cucumbers shine. I love the vibrancy of the color and texture in the salad, too – the hard pieces of red onion combined with feathery green dill made me smile.

2 medium cucumbers (preferably just out of the garden)

½ small red onion, diced small

 3 tablespoons cider vinegar

1 tablespoon sugar

Salt and pepper to taste

3 tablespoons finely chopped fresh dill (if you’re local and want some dill, let me know. I have volunteer plants all over my garden that need good homes)

Wash the cucumbers. Using a vegetable peeler, partially remove the skin of the cucumber in lengthwise strips, leaving  ¼ inch skin between strips. Slice cucumber widthwise; the width is up to your preference, but mine were about ¼ inch.

In a medium bowl, whisk vinegar, sugar, salt, and pepper until sugar is dissolved. Add the cucumber, onion, and dill. Toss well. Let marinate 10-15 minute before serving. Also delicious the next day.

Makes 4 side servings.

Roasted Potatoes with Aioli. I’ve adapted this from food52.com (the site that so generously reviewed this blog a few weeks ago). The original recipe won the site’s ‘Your Best Potato Salad’ recipe last year, and while it’s superb, I’ve changed a few things to ever so gently tame the garlic fire for an audience with a range of palates.

I also made two versions: one with the last of my 50lb bag of Katahdin potatoes – which I peeled –  and one with unpeeled red-skinned potatoes. The roasting time varied with the potato variety by 5-10 minutes, but the results were both spectacular. I’d say to use the potatoes you have on hand, but if you want to add a little more texture and get fancy about things, go for the skin-on red potatoes.

Finally, 3 pounds of potatoes sounds like a lot, but when you roast the potatoes, they tend to shrink. You will also need a few more potatoes than you expect because, once you start eating these, it will be very, very hard to stop.

3lbs potatoes, cut into one-inch chunks

5 tablespoons olive oil, divided

2 teaspoons Kosher salt

1 ½ teaspoons pepper

3 large cloves garlic, finely chopped or put through a garlic press

¼ cup mayonnaise

2 tablespoons lemon juice

2 teaspoons Dijon mustard

More salt and pepper to taste for the aioli (by the way – aioli is just a fancy term for garlic mayonnaise. I had to look it up. The word is all over the food blogs these days.)

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. In a large bowl, toss the potatoes, 3 tablespoons of the olive oil, and the measured salt and pepper. Pour the mixture onto a baking sheet, and take care not to overlap the potatoes.

Roast the potatoes for approximately 60 minutes, making sure to flip them twice (at each 20 minute mark.) Of course, if at your 40 minute mark you think you only need 10 more minutes of baking time, trust your instincts and your oven.  Over here, I’m working with a finicky Suburban Propane model from the 1970s.

Your goal is to achieve luscious, evenly golden brown potatoes with crispy edges here and there. Take the potatoes out of the oven at this point, and allow them to cool to room temperature. Then, in a small bowl combine garlic, 2 remaining tablespoons of olive oil, mayonnaise, lemon juice, mustard, and salt and pepper to taste.

Pour half of the mixture over the potatoes, reserving the other half. Toss the potatoes gently and taste. If you like the results, serve the potatoes with the reserved aioli on the table for those who like a saucier and garlic-licious experience.  Otherwise, pour more aioli onto the potatoes until you’re satisfied with the balance between starch and mayonnaise. Serve immediately. Refrigerate leftovers for a cold potato salad the next day.

Serves 6 hungry adults.