Happy Halloween

from the poultry-geist.

Poultry-geist (ink)

It is the last day of October and the last day of #inktober! Everyday this month I have made an ink drawing using the official Inktober prompts (of course my theme was chickens.) The daily practice definitely helped improve my ink drawings (especially when I decided to use pencil first!). I experimented with different pens, lines, shading, even filling in the background with ink using paintbrushes and paper towels. The practice was good, but ink is still not my preferred media.

Here is my best and the worst, and if you want to see more, hop over to Instagram and search #inktober. There are many amazing artists posting some eye popping work (figuratively and literally). And if you want to see mine, they are at @carynjhall.

My favorite drawing from this month
Worst and first

Happy Halloween!

Wet hens

Wet hen (Navi)

What the heck? I went out to put the chickens to bed (really to make sure they were headed to roost and lock up), and three of the hens were soaked. It had been raining all day, so I imagine they were out in the rain, but I didn’t think they liked to be wet!? After trying to take pictures of cold wet chickens all excited because the light was on at bedtime (obviously that didn’t work out well), I dried them off as best I could since it was forecast to be cold that night and hoped for the best.

They all survived the night, even Navi with her pendulous crop. There must have been a seriously tasty tidbit to tempt them into the downpour. Crazy chickens.

Confused Daffodil

Daffodils growing in October

More anachronisms. My daffodil bulbs have decided to sprout… in October. (The tall leaves coming up through the ground cover in the picture.) I wonder how that is going to work out for them? Between the June bug earlier this week, and the daffodils, it also makes me wonder what winter will bring this year.

Hard boiled eggs

Yay! We have enough eggs to run a batch through the pressure cooker to make hard boiled eggs.

Freshly washed eggs in the pressure cooker

The eggs are on the small side and slip through the circles on the egg holder, so I had to set them in sideways. It worked fine, though. The eggs came out beautifully. The shells peeled away easily, and the yolk is perfect.

Hardboiled egg

I put a cup of water in the bottom of the pressure cooker pot, load the eggs in the egg holder (I can do 14 at a time), run my pressure cooker for 5 minutes on high, and manually release the pressure. I use tongs to put the eggs directly into a large bowl of ice water.

Green June Beetle

I found this pretty beetle when I was walking through the back woods. It was cold and wet, but readily grabbed onto the offered stick. I took pictures then put him in a dry sunny spot. iNaturalist says it is a Green June Beetle.

Green June Beetle