Water Lily, Quiapo and Azolla

I got a call yesterday asking if what he has in his pond, that looks like small flowers, are Azolla?

Promised I will post a photo here soon so he can distinguish.  Fate had it that when we parked at our farm in Santiago, Isabela this morning, they were all there....

Water Lily, Quiapo and Azolla :)

Water Lily

During the El Nino, when the ponds in the farm dried up, the Water Lily was still abundant and we saw that the chickens went down to play....or so we thought.  After a closer look (I have posted a thread on this previously), the Sunshines eat the Water Lily! 

We searched in it and read that it is edible and had medicinal properties.  We had tons of Water Lily and cleaning up the ponds had been a problem!

So to make it easier for the free ranging chickens, the farm help brings up some for the white Sunshines, since they thought that they were "special" and might not know what they are to do.  We all took it that they didn't know how to eat.  We forgot about "instinct" to get what is good for oneself :)

Convinced that it was indeed good for the chickens, we tried using it for FPJ.  This will be a great answer to our clean up of the ponds all around the farm, at the same time giving good nutrients to the pastured chickens.

Too much to clean up and it thickens faster than we can manually chop chop.

To ease up work, a shredder/chopper will be the answer.  A great farm tool.  More on that on another posting.

Cooling Effect

What do you do to cool yourself these days? I have my wet tissues inside the chiller section of my ref. There are several packs that are chilled and I take one (1) with me when I leave in the morning and return at the end of the day. Bottles of body sprays are in the ref too. During long trips, I have them inside a cooler where we keep our drinks too inside the van.

How about my chickens? How do they cool themselves? Sure there are shade trees around, but they want to wander.

Some of our ponds have dried up because of this El Nino we have. The Sunshines have thought that their ranging areas have been widened for them. They now leisurely take a walk down there. It should have a very cooling effect....the wet grounds, the large leaves of the Water Lilies that act as umbrellas in our story books.

I decided to see what they were up to...walking down to go up close and personal.....Wasn't sure to what they were up to down there...

They had been munching on the Water Lilies! No, no, those are not Parsley leaves that seem to border the pond...they are chewed Water Lilies.

Searched on what they may be enjoying and typed Water Lilies on my search button. Water Lilies are edible and medicinal :) Besides, Sunshines know what is good or bad. They were taught well as chicks hahahhahahaha.