Olleh ho, (Hawaiian for Oh hello) , Big Huzzah huzzaaaah, woohooo and whatnot to the Keekster who rounded the corner on a quarter century this week, soon to be seen gobbling up large portions of Germany and Ze Verld with her beauty and intelligence. We put the little chickolecent darlings out the other day. No longer living the life of penned up beasties awaiting debeaking, forced laying and increasingly tighter quarters, the Leghorns, with some 2500 square feet of glycine covered Brigadoon have commenced a display of battery chickens gone wild. Its like a marauding horde of spring breakers. Everything in their frankenchicken rearing is telling them that this is too good to be true. From the bamboo training roosts to two squares a day to bugs everywhere and room to roam. The very thought of pecking a sister to death has vanished into the Scottish mist, hopefully forevah. You can already see the cliques forming. There's the prancer/preener clique, the hide and seek clique, the beak dancers clique and there's always an escape artist clique. I'm convinced that the escape artists are the smartest, in spite of the fact that once they've found a way to break out they spend the rest of the day trying to break back in and for some reason can't puzzle that one through. They go running up and down the fence line poking their little heads through the wire mesh until I catch em' and toss em' back to the mobette at which time they socialize for a few and then try to break out again. They'll all stay put until they start laying (late summer) at which time we'll start to range them freely around the hillside below the house to clear it out and add a touch of fertz. So I got this old pressure cooker and mounted some thick felt on a few wood frames that fit in the cooker. I innoculated the felt with methanogenic bacteria that I got from the same source that sends me mushroom spores, ammo, hemp oil and porn, and put a slurry of duck goo-doo and green manure in the cooker. Well apparently whats supposed to happen is that the bacteria colonize the felt and turn into an army of tiny fart machines, gobbling down the slurry and turning it into things like hydrogen sulfide and methane. I'm picturing their microscopic selves being propelled along the surface of their habitat by way of gaseous effluvium. You know, like passing each other and doing the bacterial version of waving, high fives, a few shakas from the well traveled, all the while, going nowhere in particular but having fun just tooling around. Then proceeded to snap the top shut and clamped a hose onto the pressure relief thingy and ran it into one end of a metal box stuffed with steel wool (primative scrubber for hydrogen sulfide). Ran another hose out the other end of the box to a bunsen burner I found laying around (don't ask). Waited a few days and turned the valve for the burner on and torched a bic. The jet of blue flame that blew the burner off the hose was about three feet long and stopped only when I shut the backup valve off. Didn't tighten the hose clamp on the burner enough. Thats what I call gassin' the cook. Still haven't found the bunsen burner. I think its lodged in a gps satellite. The mother unit arrived yesterday. We strapped down the eighteen foot long tibetan fog horns encased in petrified yak butter, affixed a skull and crossbones flag on the ends sticking out the bed and hit it for the highlands. Quite a sight. Moms been practicing her circular breathing all day and scaring the crap out of the chickens, but then the crap falls on piles of chewed up glycine which acts as fertile mulch for the fruit trees, so we're cool with that. She can play them both at once....... Food, yes. Greens, fruits, House of Yumm treats and maybe a few eggs from the asylum for birds with amnesia (or A.F.B.W.A.), whose purpose in life has been superceded by the need to be snooty little beeeeeotches. I know, I need an aptitude adjustment. Masters weekend has past (and a roller coaster ride it was), so don't be shy, come on by. Just cut a nice stalk of nanners and although mom gets the prime cuts on everything, there's enough for we plebes to nibble. We'd like it if you shopped early in the day as the greens are very dewey fresh. Jennifers got the nursery trees looking great and we still have the best prices on the island, so c'mon, I dare ya to plant some food. You can reach her @5731040 or 2050430. Shameless self promotion brought to you by i.me.my.com. Barring rain, the parties on, and the forecast calls for a sunny day. Lets celebrate the coming paradigm shift, wherin cannabis and raw cacao become the new monetary standards, bartered endlessly for goods and services that we've either forgotten why we needed or are too high on phenethylamines and theobromine to give a shit about. Therein lies the end of consumerism and the beginning of the Endless Age of Tranquility and Goofiness. And yes, you're right, i've crossed the border. {:-] The more you come, the more we'll grow. Peace out, Jp