Books

How to Raise Chickens, Voyageur Press, third edition 2019

I wrote the book I needed when I first got chickens in 1988. The story is, my daughter asked for baby chicks, and we went to the feed store and got some. Thank goodness the feed store staff understood how little I knew, and sold me some chick starter. I hadn't given chick care a thought.

But there we were, raising chicks in a plastic laundry basket.

As they grew, I wanted to learn more. But in the 1980s, backyard chickens hadn't achieved their status as icons of the local food movement. The only books available were about industrial poultry raising. 

It's said that if you are looking for a book and can't find it, you need to write it yourself. This book is the book I was looking for when I was getting started and becoming a chicken fancier. 

I wrote what I learned about chickens, Standard and heritage breeds, and the joys of keeping a small flock. One friend shared, as if a secret longing, "I've always wanted to raise chickens." 

The first edition was published in 2007, followed by two more, more than 100,000 copies sold. 

Books
How to Raise Poultry, Voyageur Press 2014

How to Raise Chickens was a success, and I followed with How to Raise Poultry. It never found the market HTR Chickens did, but it remains a favorite of mine. I am grateful to the publisher for producing another beautiful book, filled with wonderful photos. The pictures alone are worth the book. 

Poultry, in this book, includes all the fowl, and some birds beyond fowl, that people raise as livestock. Fowl encompasses chickens, ducks, geese, swans, guineafowl and some game birds, such as quail, pheasant and peafowl. It’s not a scientific term. 

Because people are also interested in raising, at the small end, pigeons and, at the large end, ostriches, emus and rheas, those birds are included. This book will gives the reader the basics to get started. 

I had the opportunity to revise it for a second edition -- although the editor loved the illustration on the first, which she assured me was "the world's cutest duckling."

Books

The Backyard Field Guide to Chickens, Voyageur Press, 2016

The Backyard Field Guide followed, what I think of as a Wish Book of Chicken Breeds. I can never have them all, but I can enjoy writing about them, showing beautiful pictures of them, and recounting their proud and fascinating history. 

I think of it as a resource for chicken lovers, and a wondrful gift book for current chicken keepers, and for those who keep it at the bedside table for dreaming of the chicken breeds they will some day enjoy. 

Breeds have been around ever since humans stated keeping chickens domestically, back 8,000 years ago is India and Southeast Asia. The origins of the domestic chicken remain misty, but the wild Junglefowl was too tempting of a bird not to attract intense human attention. In a world without clocks, the rooster’s crow started the day. As with all livestock, they worked for a living as well as providing eggs and meat. 

Books

History of the American Poultry Association, 1873-2023

American Poultry Association, 2023

Another rewarding experience, immersing myself in the history of the American Poultry Association, America's oldest agricultural organization.

The APA wanted to document the 150 years of its history, as part of its 150th anniversary celebration. 

Immersing myself in the records of the APA, which has archived its meetings over more than a century, and relating the APA to its times was a delight. 

Before World War II, poultry raising relied on Standard breeds and the APA set the Standards. 

I also hold a collecdtion of antique poultry books and magazines. They are not only a historical tresure, but document important details of how breeds have changed over the years.

The APA is the exhibition organization for poultry. They hold certified shows around the country. Their breeders and judges keep these beautiful and precious breeds alive and vigorous. 

Commercial poultry raising is now done by corporations raising millions of birds at a time. One corporate executive, asked which breeds are most important to conserve, responded, "All of them."

These birds carry the irreplaceable genetic stock carried down through millenia, such as the Fayoumi of Egypt. 

Books

I enrolled in the University of California’s Environmental Steward Certified Naturalist program in 2016 with my required Capstone Project in mind: compiling information on Cambria’s worst invasive weeds. It became Cambria's Invasive Weed Guide, published by Cambria’s Forest Committee, available for a donation. The hard copy is in English, but an online version is in both English and Spanish.

I hate weeds! I’d been pulling thistle and radish from sites around Cambria, and had become familiar with other major problem weeds. They not only crowd out local vegetation and change wildlife habitat, many are flammable and add to the risks of wildfire in our dry California landscape.

Thistles are among the worst, nasty to pull, but that’s the best way to eliminate them. Since the courts often assign roadside trash projects to low-level offenders, people sometimes thought I must have been convicted of some offense that put me in this unpleasant task. “What did you do?” they occasionally asked as I filled trash bags with these noxious weeds. 

My commitment to local native plants continues. I’m presently working with Cambria’s fire chief to raise awareness of Pride of Madeira, a flammable plant with attractive purple flowers that many residents now foster as a landscaping plant. 

Books

This book, Capturing Cambria: One Artist, One Town, A Partnership in Paradise, fell into my hands when the artist, Arthur Van Rhyn, handed me a cardboard box. It was filled with more than a thousand cartoons, the original drawings, each one on a piece of paper. 

He was prepared to discard them as useless, been published, done, moved on.

I loved his weekly local political cartoons in the local weekly, The Cambrian. I was excited to have the originals in my hands.

I wasn't sure exactly what to do with them. I spent time going through them, putting each one into a plastic sleeve so that they would be safe as I shuffled them, placing them in categories, and reshuffling them to organize them in different ways. 

Eventually, this collection emerged, Arthur's local focus on Cambria, its residents, visitors, wildlife and local politics. His discerning eye translated local foibles into hilarious drawings. 

The collection of about 150 is only a small slice of the full collection. The rest are in binders at the Cambria Historical Society, available to the public. I'd like to do more volumes, get more of his cartoons into print and available, or work with another archivist to get them published. 

The project was fun for me and allowed me to get toknow Arthur better. He died New Year's Eve 2024, and is greatly missed. 

Books

Thomas the Cat is a collection of poems written by Roy Cumming, a delightful Shetlander who introduced me to Tommy's story. Tommy makes regular rounds in Lerwick, the main city on Shetland. His fans post photos of his exploits to his Facebook page, The Adventures of Tommy. 

Tommy has his own bed on the bar at the Thule Bar, often visits Boots pharmacy, and has browses the books at the library. 

Independent publishing provided a path to creating this book to honor Tommy and Roy.

• Experts confirmed that seven young northern elephant seals on the beach at California’s Año Nuevo State Park carried a deadly form of avian influenza, H5N1, the first recorded infection in these seals.
• This highly contagious virus has circulated the globe since 2020. The U.N. estimates that as of December 2025, H5N1 had infected some 598 bird species and 102 mammal species. In 2022-23, the virus devastated seal colonies off South American coastlines, sparking increased surveillance of North American marine mammals.

Zombie urchins & the Blob: California sea otters face new threats & ecosystem shifts 

 Southern sea otters living along California’s coast are struggling in warmer seas, with new threats and changing food sources. They, like the other two sea otter subspecies, are classified as endangered.

Human disturbance, especially in Monterey Bay, is limiting the otters’ ability to forage, impacting mother and pup survival. Meanwhile, sharks are expanding their range as waters warm, with increasing attacks on otters.

(Photo credit: Sea Otter Savvy)

Elephant Seals at Piedras Blancas

I've been writing a regular column about the elephant seals for the San Luis Obispo Tribune since 2014. Back then, the columns were published in The Cambrian, a local weekly. 

I'd been a docent at the bluff viewpoint since 2007, and had covered the story of three seals shot on the beach in 2008. I wrote about it in 2011, when I was able to get legal permission for NOAA sources to talk to me about it. The story won a Ten Spurs award from the Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference.

The columns, over 400 of them, are archived on a blog at https://www.blogger.com/blog/posts/660035304553039348?hl=en.

In 2024, the column was recognized with first place in the National Society oif Newspaper Columnists, in the General Print category.

Writing this column is one of the best things I do. I love the seals and learn something about them every day. One researcher told me that she decided to study elephant seals because she knew she would make discoveries.  As a writer about them, I get to learn those new things and share them with readers. 

Here are some recent ones. They are behind a paywall, but the full text and photos are posted on the blog.

Weaned Pups Face the World

This season’s Piedras Blancas elephant seal pups are now independent seals. Their mothers weaned them, abruptly, and left on their short spring migration. It’s on the pups now to develop the swimming and diving skills to make it on their own.

A complication this year is the threat of H5N1, Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza, that hangs over them. The outbreak has been confined to San Mateo County, but on Thursday March 26, test results confirmed that a young sea lion in San Luis Obispo County had died from it earlier in March. A network of marine observers continues to monitor for other cases. 

 Trial of HPAI vaccine on elephant seals in Sausalito hospital 

The Marine Mammal Center is testing Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza vaccine on elephant seals at its Sausalito hospital. If it is effective in producing antibodies, TMMC plans to vaccinate Hawaiian monk seals. TMMC’s Ke Kai Ola monk seal hospital is on the island of Hawaii.

 Seal freed from plastic strap at Piedras Blancas beach 

At 8 am the morning of May 8, 2025, with the sun lighting the sky but not yet over the hills, a team of marine mammal rescuers climbed down on to the beach among the Piedras Blancas elephant seals. Within the hour, the seal, a plastic packing strap tight around its neck, was freed from his entanglement.

He turned to argue with a neighboring seal, and they sparred. 

“Our entangled seal – we called him Rabble -- ended up squabbling with another male as we left the beach,” said team leader Aliah Meza, operations manager of The Marine Mammal Center’s San Luis Obispo Operations site in Morro Bay.

Elephant Seal class of 2025 is arriving on the beach. The young seals, not yet in the breeding population, take over the beach. Adult females are out at sea, foraging, growing the pup that will be born in winter. Bossy bulls are away north, eating, putting on weight to dominate the breeding season. The young seals have the beach to themselves. It’s Juvenile Haul-Out. 

The air crackled with excitement all week. Docents messaged each other, watching over a pregnant seal squirming on the beach. Soon, soon, the first pup would arrive. 

Tis the season! After a long day on Thursday, December 12, Gingerbread was born overnight. Sex undetermined, but mother and pup are resting well.

Shetland Wool Week

Countryside magazine published my account of learning about Wool Week and participating in 2024. I knit, and have an interest in heritage livestock beyond poultry. I've written about heritage sheep and wool for them, and about The Livestock Conservancy's Shave 'em to Save 'em program.

On our second trip to Wool Week in 2025, I was better equipped to understand the system. I was able to reserve two farm tours and one hat class when the booking opened in July for the more than 300 workshops, tours, classes and cultural events across the isles, from knitting and weaving, to spinning and fleece preparation, learning to dye with lichens, weaving your first cloth, joining a sheepdog tour, finding out how to knit without a pattern, finessing skills in a knitting class, or attending a cultural talk or concert. 

I knitted several versions of the official hat pattern, in Shetland wool and other fibers. My skills are improving.