1. My Chickens Need to Get Vaccinated

It was a rainy morning in July. When it came to the fickle mountain weather, you couldn’t rely on the forecast at all.

I’m glad I got a lot done yesterday. I wish they’d give us the weather forecast for the mountains too. Preferably for mymountain. (Yeah, as if.)

There’re these stories about how swallows fly low and cats lick their faces when it’s about to rain, and there does seem to be some truth to them, but well...there aren’t any swallows flying up here, and I don’t have a cat. Though that might be nice, now that I think of it—sitting on the veranda basking in the sun with a cat, or watching them cozy up in the kotatsu... But I don’t think a regular house cat would make it up here in the mountains. They’d need the vitality of a wildcat, I think. A cat probably wouldn’t hunt my chickens. More likely, they would hunt it.

“This rain sucks...”

I prepared myself a quick breakfast and washed the inedible parts of the vegetables I’d received from Yumoto-san yesterday (or rather, the chickens had received them as a reward for their work). I planned to feed these scraps to the chickens.I’ll just throw out the leftovers near the fields anyway. Not that I make that much food. Usually the excess goes into the fridge.

“Vaccines...”

I remembered Yumoto-san had told me back in June that I should get them vaccinated if I wanted them to lay eggs. I’d had the vet who goes to the chicken farm regularly check up on them as well.Not Pochi, though—he ran away. The vet had given me a detailed explanation about chicken vaccines, and I’d said I would get in touch with him at a later date.

Today, Tama and Yuma were out somewhere patrolling the mountain. Poch