I’m starting this post with a photo of the chickens happily munching on our peach cuttings from our peach tree. They’re happy here, and I need to focus on that. It’s taken me a few days to write another post after the last one, where my nine chickens looked so happy running around our yard. A couple days after I posted that, someone broke into our fenced back yard, tore apart our chicken run, and terrorized our girls with a hack saw that the criminal(s) brought with, and a sledgehammer we’d left out from some construction. When my husband found them, our girls were still loose in the yard, two were out of the yard, and one had been either chased or beaten to death (it was during the 100+ temps heat spell, so chasing a chicken to exhaustion wouldn’t have been impossible). I can only call this devastating to all of us, humans and chickens alike. As our nine year old daughter put it “This is awful two ways, one because they look so lonely, just the six of them, and now they’re going to be harder to mother.” (Yes, I could not love that child and her animal loving heart any more).
We reported it to the police. In our city, animal cruelty is an aggravated misdemeanor on the first offense, and a felony on the second, but that only helps if we catch these people. We have our neighbors keeping an eye out and an ear to the ground, but so far, we’ve had no word on who might have done this.
The chickens are recovering slowly. They aren’t as outgoing as they once were. In my last post, you can see that they’d walk right up to me without any treats offered. They’re not as afraid of humans as they were right after the massacre, but I don’t know if they’ll ever be as loving as they once were. I’d love to add more chickens, but we’re trying to regroup and let the coop emotions settle before adding more chaos…..chicken shiva, if you will. We’ll get there, eventually.
Here’s the thing: I hate being sad. Sad sucks, and I was really sad about our chickens. It’s been a rough summer generally with my Dad and Sis both in the hospital for a while, and I had just about had it with sadness. So, we adopted a kitten from the 
We are in the middle of an unbearable heat wave, and the kids are bugging me for anything cold about once an hour. (The Hatton House has window AC units, which are more than adequate….until the temp gets over the mid-90s. After that, it’s just hot). I really can’t stand loading them up on high fructose corn syrup and artificial colors to cool them down, since my kids tend to get hyper when they eat fake food…and no one wants hyped up kids in a heat wave!
Peach season has arrived at the Hatton House! From our single peach tree, we harvested almost 10 gallons of peaches before we ran out of buckets. We’ve already frozen some, given some to neighbors, and made a peach cobbler. Still not at all sick of them. Peaches grown organically and eaten 100 degree hot right off the tree is an intensely delicious experience!
We know, when this house was finished 125 years ago, the flag only had 38 stars. Please forgive out inaccuracy. This is the 20×30′ “Midwest Mama” flag that covers American Outlaws supporters in soccer stadiums around the USA.
If you look down the right side of the Hatton House, you can still see the dirt path of where we moved the fence from. It’s now set to the back of the house, and no longer leaning over the sidewalk. We decided to move it back mainly because that narrow strip of backyard was my least favorite part, but it turns out that moving the fence back so that you can see the entire house has been a huge hit with not just us, but many of our neighbors! Anyone who has shade plants to donate to the landscaping of the north side of the house that we’ve now exposed, I want to talk to you! Give us your poor overgrown hosta, waiting to be divided!
River Bend is full of people who are super smart about home renovation done properly. No one better exemplifies that than David Sweet of Bygone Era Consulting. I found out about him because he’s one of very few people who work on steam heat in Des Moines, and he’s about the only one with expertise in our single pipe system. He also restores antique gas and electric lighting, old plumbing, and does pre-purchase evaluations of older homes. But we became friends over woodwork.
Hatton House Diaries 