"Buy eggs" update

The Buy eggs section of this blog has just been updated.

It is not a sweeping update. You wouldn't probably notice any change if you checked it now. But I thought that it might contain at least one piece of relevant information (the "Part 2: New information" in this article) so I decided to mention it here.

The "Buy eggs" update has two parts:

Part 1: New picture 
(This is the unimportant part. If you don't have time, scroll down for Part 2, please.)

Chickens' playground's POP display in the Sakura store has changed (so I updated the picture in the Buy eggs section.)

This is the old display - the one you will not find there anymore.

This is the new display - the one that you will find there now:

What's the difference between the two? 

• New display is bigger. (Seriously. This is a noteworthy difference.) 
• New display has more recent picture of the farm (which is less green than the previous picture, therefore less attractive, but let's be honest and stop pretending that the farm is now as green as it was in September.  It's not green. It will be green again in 3 months.)
• Most importantly, new display has finally a text explanation of the farm. Which is super important because now the customers finally know why it's a good idea to buy our hens' eggs.  (As a natural consequence more eggs get sold.)

What's the same about the two?

• Both new and old display are only in Japanese. :(

You may have noticed that the POP display is disproportionately huge compared to the size and number of the products it is trying to sell.

This disproportion is not accidental. It leads us to the important part: Part 2.


Part 2: New information

The new information is: You will find fewer of our hens' eggs in the Sakura store.  

Recently we got many new customers who buy eggs directly at the farm. We are infinitely grateful for these customers because the farm could not exist without them.
It means, however, that there are fewer eggs to sell in the Sakura store, and they are delivered quite irregularly.
Personally, I'm happier to have direct customers who come to the farm and say hello to the hens, so I'm not too troubled about fewer eggs in the Sakura store.
I'm worried though that some people might go there trying to buy our eggs, only to find empty basket with huge POP display over it.
So my advice is (and this is the important thing that I wanted to say in this post):

If you plan to go to the Sakura store to buy our chickens' eggs, you might want to call to Sakura store 029 ( 857 ) 8290 first and ask if Chickens' playground eggs are there that day, so you're not disappointed. 
Or you can still order eggs directly via chickens' sales manager (=me. See Buy eggs page or Contact page).

So after so much writing, I finally got to the point. (↑This was the point.)

As a closing picture, here are today morning chickens:

"I'm tanning my tail!"
"And I'm tanning my face!"

Chickin' in the rain

It seems that everyone in Tokyo enjoyed snow yesterday, but here in Tsukuba we had something better! An impressive rain- and windstorm.

As always, the farm turned into a huge pool of water.

Row row row your boat
gently down the puddle ...

.... merrily merrily merrily merrily
chicken will give you a cuddle.

Chickens didn't mind the rain and their bad looks due to a ruined hairstyle. 

Chickin' in the rain.

But at some point, even chickens got tired of the endless, cold rain.

"Can you hand me a towel please?!"

So after a while, their playground looked a bit empty.

"Life sucks."

The run was empty because chickens gathered under the quasi-roof of the old coop, now used as a barn, to endure the rain. (They could have gone back to their coop, sit on a perch and have a nap, but for some mysterious reason they didn't.)

The Boss with his harem on the right side, The-Not-The-Boss alone on the left side.

That was yesterday. By today morning, the situation was much better - a huge water pool shrank into a small puddle.

Look, my feathers are fluffy again!

That was a glimpse into the less glorious moments on the farm. You would hardly find this kind of pictures in promotional pamphlets (or websites or blogs). So these pictures in fact have some documentary value. But chickens would kill me if they knew I published photos of their rain-ruined looks.

Tiny news

Last week was rich in tiny news. On its own, each piece is too small to count as "news", but all together they make for a pretty exciting week (from the chickens' perspective). (For those who don't know, chickens love to spend their day just in the same way as every other day - as long as it involves foraging, dust bathing and general pecking around, it's a happy day. No need for big adventures. But any occasion that promises more of their favorite food or more fun things to peck is a welcome diversion from the routine! Hence Tiny news 1.)

Tiny news 1: Special treat!

Chickens got a special treat. It was a big hakusai (Chinese cabbage).

Special treat being devoured.

There is nothing unique about hakusai at this time of the year in Japan. There is plenty of Chinese cabbage everywhere. The special thing for the chickens was that this time it was not a leftover, but a proper, huge, fresh head of Chinese cabbage intended for human consumption. They enjoyed it enormously.

Chinese cabbage: The center of chickens' universe.

Natchan the Goat watching the chickens with envy.
Usually it's the chickens begging for Natchan's grass, this time the situation reversed.
(It could have been sweet revenge, had the chickens noticed Natchan's look. But they didn't.)

Chickens also showed us how to eat the cabbage in the most efficient way possible. Their method requires no cooking/cutting and there are no dishes to wash. Useful information for all the anti-cooks of the world. Dear anti-cooks, this is the anti-recipe for you.
All you need is one strong beak.
※　In case you don't have a beak, teeth will do.

Tiny news 2: Frost

Proper winter finally arrived. Below-zero temperatures at night are more frequent. My fingertips freeze more often. Chickens seem that they don't really care (neither the cold nor my fingers).

The coldest night so far was four days ago when the farm thermometer read -5 °C early in the morning. Here in Tsukuba at a latitude 36°North - about the same as southern Spain - this is The Winter.

From grass to the panels - everything is coated with frost.

So how does the frost-coated clover taste?

Water in the buckets (chickens' drinking water) was frozen in the morning,
and so were the water faucets.  Below-zero temperatures do bring some inconveinences to the farm life.

Tiny news 3: Chickens camping out.

Some chickens frequently fly to Natchan's area.

Trespassers are red-circled.

Trespassers' identity has been confirmed: Christine, Beckie, Aoko, Vashka (hens) and The-Not-The-Boss (rooster). Luckily for them, they stop there, not going further out of the farm.

But occasionally some of the trespassers forget to go home in the evening and decide to camp in Natchan's shed. Without Natchan's permission and without paying for their accomodation.

Vashka trying to camp in the goat's shed which is vacant at night.
(Natchan the Goat uses this shed only during the day.)

The-Not-The-Boss trying to camp in the goat's shed.

This activity is not only illegal (under our farm legal system), it is also dangerous for the chickens. Many chicken enemies are lurking around in the night's shadows.
Any chicken found camping in the goat's shed is returned home immediately.

The-Not-The-Boss was navigated home after a failed camping attempt.

That's it. Your understanding of the current world affairs has improved substantially after reading this report. Congratulations!

2016 start

2016 started slowly and quietly.

Actually it started at the same speed as any other year on Earth (we comply with the laws of physics), but it felt slower and quieter than other years.

Just in case you are curious, this is how our chickens celebrated first moments of the New Year. (I do not recommend watching this video if you are not really curious. You will be disappointed.)

Our chickens proved what we already knew - that the New Year is a man-made celebration.


The first week of 2016 was similar to the first day - calm, slow and orderly.

One of the small happenings was planting three kaki (persimmon) trees in chickens' old playground.

Persimmon trees waiting to be planted. Chickens volunteered to take care of them until then.

Edibility check.
Result: The pot soil is somewhat edible but not exactly delicious. 

The purpose of planting persimmon trees is to create more shade for the chickens in the summer and the surrounding seasons. Our chickens really, really don't like to be hot and always avoid direct sun, even in winter. The message is clear: There can never be too much shade.

So why persimmons and not apples or oranges? Because 1) persimmon trees don't grow too big (they must fit under the panels, which are only 3 m above the ground), 2) persimmons are supposedly easy to grow, 3) we were advised to plant persimmon trees by our chicken adviser, 4)  I like persimmons.

During planting, we were assisted  by a rooster and a hen who sneaked in to the old run with us.

Three persimmons and a rooster. (Rooster identity: The-Not-The-Boss)

Nobuo digging a hole, assisted by a hen.

Still digging, still assisted.

Under the pretense of helping us, the rooster and the hen took advantage of our labor and got all the goodies from the soil that we arduously dug out. When asked to lend a hand (a wing, a leg), they refused.
That is yet another proof that chickens are not that different from humans. If they can get easy access to food by exploiting someone else's hard work, they will jump at the chance.

And finally, an hour later, three persimmons are planted!

Just Planted! (Can you see all three of them?)

Nobuo trying to convince the rooster that it's time to go back to the nextdoor run. 

Now let's hope that the persimmon trees will survive our care, and that they will bring as much fruit for the humans as they will bring shade for the chickens. (The peels from the fruit will go to the chickens too.)

*****

To finish this post in an inconsistent manner, here is a tiny happening from yesterday. Natchan The Goat, who is now expecting baby goats, got a Special Grass Box. It's a box full of grass. For Natchan to eat.
As she was eating the grass, a few grass blades would end up scattered around. Chickens waited patiently for Natchan's spills:

Peaceful. That's how you call it. It was a peaceful start of the year.