Saturday was busy, and so was Sunday. I made my way over to the Tilth Fair presumably to fob my chicken off on a set of willing victims, friends from grad school, and with the hopes of fobbing El Bandito off on some unsuspecting ones. The chicken expert/volunteer wrangler guy assumed I was there to show my chickens and helpfully told me there was cage space and kind of hustled me over to it. I thought, well, this is nicer than this box I’ve currently got them stowed in, why not.

The next thing I know I am answering questions for the next three hours and talking to really cool people all morning. An accidental volunteer, I am one. The other chicken lady left for a while so they grabbed me to go up on stage and answer a couple of questions about backyard birding. The good news is the chicken expert there was not 100% feeling my diagnosis that El Bandito is a boy and suggested I hold on to Glen or Glenda for a bit longer. Will do. All I have for comparison at home is Death Ray the partridge Silkie, who is certainly female.

Figure 1: It is important for you to know that a chicken is a living exclamation point.

Figure 2: Veronica Peep investigates with her assistants Cricket and Othercup.

Figure 3: El Bandito/La Bandita. What do you think?

The other part of the weekend involved mass plum processing, since the Italian plums are overflowing on the trees right now. Thank god something grew well here this summer. It’s hard to tell from this bowl, but this is my biggest one and our take was probably about 20 pounds. That takes care of snack week.