We woke up with a bit of bad news.  When Jessica woke up to let the chickens out, she found one of the hens lying on the floor of the coop.  She had died the night before.  This particular hen had gone broody a few weeks ago.  That means that she kicks into mamma-mode.  She stops egg production and all she wants to do is sit on her eggs, to prepare them to hatch.  The thing is, there aren't any fertilized eggs, so she's essentially just sitting, waiting for nothing in particular. 

 Sometimes hens just become broody; there's nothing anyone can do about it; and very little will change her mind. She only gets up for a quick drink of water, a snack, and a bathroom break, and then she's back on task. Unfortunately, the hen that went broody here forgot about the first two things on this list of activities.  She wasn't eating or drinking very much water. It ultimately led to her demise. Now we're down to five, but this means we might be able to get more chicks from a friend. These would be chicks in their teenage-years. I hope they aren't as angsty and hormonal as human teens!

Although the day started out pretty grim, it picked up quickly.  We headed to the garden to knock out some beds.  We double-dig the beds, which allows us to shape the raised beds and loosen up the soil so the next crop will be able to get its little roots started.  Basically, double-digging involves lifting the existing soil with a digging fork, which looks like this:

and then whacking the soil to break up all of the big chunks. It is a good exercise if you need to get out some aggression. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), I really don't have much aggression to be taking out. So it was only good, old-fashioned elbow grease that I had to offer. Double-digging by hand is a lot more work, but it allows us to get a lot further down than if we used a machine or a different technique. The roots of some veggies can go pretty far down. Carrots, for example, have roots that can reach up to seven feet below the ground:

 So the further down we can loosen in the bed, the better. Today, we got to work right away on the beds to try and beat the rain. Jessica and I were tilthing the soil, composting, and skimming the pathways until about 2pm.  I gotta say, those forks aren't the lightest. I was not sad to say goodbye to tilthing for a few days.  

Once we got home from the garden, I had my mind set on the next task: it was my night to cook dinner. I've cooked myself plenty of meals over the course of my life.  Some were terrible, some were absolutely delicious, some were complete experiments. All of this was well and good, but I hadn't really cooked an entire meal for four people before, keeping in mind a vast array of eating styles (vegan, paleo, and omnivore).  I think I managed to pull it off.  I cooked some pork sausage with apples, onions, and rosemary, turnip greens with garlic and onion, green beans with cranberries and pecans, and some sweet potatoes.  I also made a mushroom, apple, and onion dish for Jessica, who doesn't eat meat. The only thing that didn't come out on time was the sweet potatoes. Overall, I think I did pretty darn well. I had never had turnip greens before. they grow on top of the turnip, and have leaves like this:

The leaves have little prickleys on them, so handle with care! They have a much stronger taste than I thought, but a little salt, pepper, and garlic, and they were tastin' good!

And now, after all of that food has settled in my belly, and all that hard work has settled in my bones, I am off to sleep. Good night!