Emerge and Merge

The experiment yesterday was to combine the baby flock with one of the grown ones. The chicks and their foster mom were a little dubious about going through the door between the coops.

But after a while they took the plunge. The big chickens mostly ignored them. They were far more interested in exploring the coop they had not been in in 4 months. And eating the chick's food. Chicks ought to eat their starter food for another couple of months, but since the flocks are merged, will certainly be eating regular layer pellets.

Layer pellets have too much calcium in them for chicks, and chick food not enough for grown hens. However, even though the flocks are merged, they still go into their respective coops at night and I can shut the adjoining door and refill the chick's feeder with starter pellets. That way they can at least have a good breakfast of their appropriate food.

I spent a couple of hours out with them, sitting on the bench we have in the run, listening to podcasts from Slate (I particularly like the Political Gabfest and Culture Gabfest and Spoiler Specials [info on how to listen/subscribe under the Slate link above]) and knitting a hat for Ellen.  I'm working on Mod Cables and it is my new favorite cable pattern. I can't wait to try the pattern in bi-color. 

This is knit in a worsted weight cotton, for summer, but it really wants an alpaca/silk/merino Andean Silk blend from Knit Picks (in cinnamon and chocolate.) 

Yesterday we had a fabulous and interesting meal of local scallops (recipe coming soon.) Local scallops are very very good but these were better than usual. It turns out that most scallps are caught by boats that go out for a week or ten days and it is a toss-up about whether a scallop wa caught on day one or dayseven or ten.  However there are day boats that go scalloping off Nantucket. And if for some reason they don't want to take their catch to New Bedford, they bring it to our friend Louie at Net Result . He then trucks them to New Bedford, but first he keeps the best for his store, and that is what we had last night. And they were the best scallops ever. Tom invented a grand summer recipe for them which I'll post as soon as he writes it down!