You get jittery after a chicken coop raid. You count the chickens repeatedly and when one is missing, you're sure another predator was in on the attack, lurking now, waiting for a moment to strike again. "I shouldn't have let them out this morning!" -- is the recurrent theme of the day.
It's time to take a step back and make yourself a cup of (Rishi's) Patagonia Super Berry tea. It's not an everyday tea -- just for when you need to sit back and take a deep breath to recharge your happy cells. [It's a combination of blueberries, maui berries, raspberries, red wine grape skins and hawthorn leaves. You'd think that it would be excessively fruity. It's not. Mellow, gentle, calming. I sip it slowly. With a candle at the side.]
It had been a good morning otherwise.
Breakfast: I bought a raspberry cream cheese coffee cake yesterday at Clasen's and it's fine, if a tad too sweet for us. Still, it's a throwback to an era when such pastries were breakfast staples.
And now the Bresse girls decide to venture out, all the way up to the farmhouse, and one gets stuck in the snow, so that I have to do a rescue (she would have eventually stepped out, but since it's their first winter, I give her a little boost and place her in a box with straw in the garage. There, she happily contemplates life without feeling the sting of a frozen, snow-covered surface).
Then I drag Ed out to search for that missing girl that I was sure was gone for good, but he found her, hiding in the barn behind the tank that holds the water for heating the shed's floor. I wouldn't say it's exactly a warm spot, but it's snug and at least not cold.
All girls accounted for.
Celebrate!
In the late afternoon Ed and I watch Just a Few Acres -- the YouTube posting of an architect-turned-farmer (Pete) and his wife (Hillarie) and their toils and tribulations as they raise cattle, pigs and chickens for the local farmers market. Pete is a good natured, calm guy and I don't think I've ever seen him approach a farming problem without a healthy dose of humor. Ed is addicted to these videos (Pete posts several times each week). I once asked what he likes best about them and he explained that he learns almost as much as if he had a farmer in his family. Since we don't raise animals for slaughter (note here our failure to ever do anything with the Bresse hens), you'd think that Pete's work would be irrelevant to our farmette enterprise. But I see his point: Ed grew up in New York City. Nothing about clearing land and growing cover crops let alone raising chickens feels intuitive to him. Pete's efforts are just a nudge to keep learning.
In the very late afternoon I meet up at a coffee (and other stuff) shop with my daughter for our almost but not quite weekly catchup time.
It's dark by the time I get back home. Ed reports that all the chickens are in, though he had to chase some to get them into the coop. We breathe a sigh of relief. The trap is out to make sure no other predator is lurking on the sidelines. I tell him it will be super cold tonight (significantly below freezing and very windy). He throws an old quilt over the roosting box where the cheepers typically huddle.
We watch a couple of episodes of Seinfeld, just to make sure our laughter cells are still working properly.
They are.
Thank goodness.
With love...
