March showers

When you still have patches of snow on your flower bed, you're glad when the rain comes down. May it wash away all traces of winter!

When you have chickens in a coop and rain outside, your gladness is going to be tempered by the reality of tending to the birds in the rain.

That's okay. Hardy peasant stock. Out I go. And it's not even raining hard now. And while I don't fully love the thermometer reading (35F), I appreciate the fact that it's above freezing.

Oreo if crowing. Does this mean he's come to terms with his polygamous leanings? Are they all friends now?

Not so fast. Two hens upstairs, Oreo and Lexie downstairs. Well okay. Let me free them for a bit while I clean out the coop.



(lexie seems to be asking -- love me still?)


Here's another reality check: four chickens leave twice as much in droppings as two chickens. And so if you are a fastidious coop maintainer (I am that), you're going to spend twice as long tiding their rooms.



(the foursome)


For a minute, I feel like the maid in a small country bed and breakfast. The gang's out and about having a good time and I'm neatening up their quarters. But the feeling passes. I try not to think about doing this in the dead of winter. And I try to block Ed's words that cats are easier. After all, the chickens didn't wake me ten times in the middle of the night. You listening, Isis?


Chores done. Let me spend some time with the brood. Get the two newbies used to me.

They are indeed on better terms with each other. No one is fighting, biting, scratching. They stick close to the coop. I'm thinking -- nice! It's good to see them enjoying this wet spring day.

Okay, I'm hungry for my breakfast. Let's get them inside so that I can put them out of my mind for a while. Keep them safely ensconced in their shelter. Butter is already snuggled in her tidied bed. That girl appreciates good maid service. I can tell.

Oreo and Lexie aren't hard to shoo inside. They know me, I know their ways, in they go.

Then there's Whitey. I was told -- shake that bag of mealy worms and she'll come running! I shake the bag. She runs up. I lean down toward her, she runs away. I scatter worms all the way to the coop door. But I can't keep it open. the others will come out. And again, she runs away by the time I get near her.

Ed watches from the farmhouse as I chase Whitey around the yard. I admit it -- I'm having that second day remorse that comes whenever you introduce something new into your life. First day's exciting, second day, you wonder what craziness possessed you to do this. Third day things settle down. Right?

I chase her to the back of the silo. Round and round we go until she finds an old truck topper and scurries under it. That's it. She won. I can't get under that thing. Even though I remind her that a predator will have no problem crawling in after her. She ignores me.

I have no choice but to leave the coop door open and wait for her to come back to her home on her own terms.

Of course, in the meantime, the other three decide to stroll out again. I turn my back on the whole lot of them and go in to fix breakfast.





Ed tells me that I need to let go a little. That I should be able to let them roam, if that's their inclination. That I cannot spend all my free time fretting about chickens.

We watch them from the kitchen window. At least they're staying by the coop. So far, our neighbor hasn't come back with a squawking chicken under his arm.

The rain comes down. Isis retires for his day-long nap upstairs, Ed goes down to the sheep shed to work on whatever project grabs his attention there at the moment. And I see that Oreo, Lexie and Whitey are following him there. (Butter is roosting in the coop. What can I say.) Oreo peers inside the sheep shed window, as if to tell Ed -- well now, that's an interesting place. Want to invite me in?











I smile from the warmth of the kitchen table at the farmhouse.

And when I do go outside, I see that the chickens are getting quite wet. They're not thrilled with this and are easier to pick up and thrust back into the coop. Door latched. Exhale. I go back to my work at the farmhouse.


LATER:

In the afternoon, I let them out again. Easy. Let them be. They are used to each other...





...and they know their coop. They're laying eggs, too!

I leave them alone and go inside to drink a good, warm cup of tea. As I throw a casual glance at them, I see that the rooster is standing on alert. What? Does he miss me? I smile.

And then I quit smiling. I see up in the sky three large hawks, circling, coming closer and closer to the ground and I know as sure as anything that they are after my birds (how quickly we become possessive!). And the rooster knows it too and he sends a distress call to the hens who stand frozen in the rose bushes. 

I'm out of the house in a flash. The hawk sees me, makes a final swoop and goes away. So do his buddies. That was today. Will they be back tomorrow? Almost certainly. Will Oreo and Ocean author defend the brood?

Sigh... this foster chick care is stressful.


STILL LATER:

I store the three eggs from the coop and reheat chili for supper. 

And in the evening, the rains stop and Ed and I stroll outdoors again. We open the coop to let the chickens out. We watch them forage and scratch and it is just such a good evening to be out with your brood and I'm thinking -- I'm lucky to have these guys here. Lexie looks up at me expectantly, always curious to see if I have some tricks up my sleeve. I rub her back and then step away. She rejoins her buds and they peck and scratch until we herd them into the coop for the night.

hen and rooster

Yes, the rooster does crow. Not in the morning (so far as I can tell), but at midday. With closed windows, you can barely hear it, but he does like to vocalize for a few minutes at a time. Ed reaches into the fridge and takes a carton of eggs out to gift to our one and only one (thank goodness) neighbor. By way of introducing him to our new hobby. As if he needs an introduction! Yes, Oreo does occasionally like to sing.

But it's not Oreo who wakes us in the morning. It's Isis. Farm animals! You'd think they'd learn to sleep in.

After an early breakfast, a sunny, lovely breakfast of freshly baked granola...





... we go outside to check on "our" birds.

It's still cool now (after a low of 12F overnight) and so we really do not want to linger outdoors, but we get drawn in by their antics. Ed picks up Oreo so that I can inspect the rooster's bent-out-of-shape foot. And this prompts Ed to remark -- Hey, I've never held a chicken before. It is a singular moment.

After yesterday's excessive worry over every chick movement, today is more relaxing. For the most part, the whole project turns out to be not hard at all (once you are certain you have created a space for them that cannot be torn apart by predators -- which is a bigger headache than you might think).

Our two (so far) chickens are curious about their surroundings.


 


Very quickly they learn that there is a farmhouse and that I can let myself into it and leave them stranded. They want to understand how I do it.






May they never find out.

Though still a bit skittish, they are, over all friendly. When a friend stops by and stretches out in the sunshine, Lexie is right there to check him out.






Still, there are the question marks. A big one for me -- what will Isis say? He ignores them when they're in the coop, but he stares with his intense gaze when Ed parades him on his shoulder to the sheep shed. I want to tell Isis that "coexist" is a nice word to incorporate into a feline vocabulary, but I know that he has his own way of viewing the world. We'll see if they will, in fact, become part of the background for him, no more threatening than the robins that are pecking away at the dirt all around us. Let's hope.

As for eggs -- well, Lexie finally gave us one and it was a wee egg. Like a test: do you love me only for the size of my eggs? We did eat it within 24 hours, because they say a fresh egg is like heaven on earth. I proclaim it to be fine indeed. Ed says it tastes like... an egg.


LATER:

Toward evening, Whitney and Butter arrive and all hell breaks loose.

With three hens in the coop, Oreo turns feisty with his beak (so many women! get me out of here!). The two new girls, heretofore friendly and coddled, felt forsaken. Thrown down a dungeon. Lexie, adored girlfriend of gentle Oreo, feels betrayed.

We open the coop doors to let the whole lot of them out so they'd regain their composure.



(the two new girls)


This is when Isis decides to come out for a stroll.

You could see it in his eyes -- the "what the hell is going on here?" look. Then the circling, trying to decide: should I pounce? Am I outnumbered?

I steer him away, into the farmhouse. Ed works on getting the chickens back in the coop. A diplomatic solution to a tricky realignment of powers.





Chicken Girl and her mom help us rearrange the coop. Oreo downstairs, hens up above. (Everyone is happy that Oreo cannot navigate the ramp.) We throw in grain, feed, pebbles, mealy worms -- you name it, they got it. Ed wraps the sides of the coop in sleeping bags to keep Oreo warm. Lexie refuses to leave his side. The new girls are enjoying the upstairs sleeping quarters while the two miserable oldtimers are huddled downstairs, on the rough floor.

What will tomorrow bring?


For supper, we have eggs.

foster chicks

Late last night I say to Ed -- I hear the wind gusting. Outside, snow is beginning a swirly dance. I put on my warmest jacket and go out. Lexie, the white hen, is huddled in the corner of the coop. Oreo is upstairs in the hut. Oh my, they need help. I crawl in and pick up the old girl and throw her in with the rooster. Keep warm, you guys, keep warm tonight!

[For the uninitiated, chickens can take this kind of cold. It's only when it drops below zero that you have to bring out the heating lamps. Still, even now you have to plug in the water dish to keep the water from freezing. We find that out the next morning as Lexie skates on top of a frozen water dish.]

The next morning I wake up not to the crowing of a rooster, but to a silent, cold, cold morning.






I look out the window. I see Lexie! She made her way down to the coop's feeding stations. That old girl has got the smarts alright!

Oreo hasn't budged. It's not entirely trauma or laziness. We find out a few details about our foster chicks: they're not as young or trouble free as we thought. They're almost two years old. That's chicken middle age as far as egg production goes. And Oreo comes with a damaged foot. A toddler stepped on it when he was a wee rooster and it is now a bit twisted. Rather than strutting, he limps. He may have trouble going up and down the coop ramp.







Chicken Girl's mama comes over to see how we fared last night. The wind is raw right now but we let the two birds out for their first run of the farmette.





They're not trained yet... she mumbles.
What does that mean? -- Ed asks.
They don't know how to return to the coop. The others -- shake the mealy worms at them and they'll come running!
We spend the next ten minutes in the bitter cold chasing Lexie and Oreo to get them back inside.

Only then do Ed and I sit down to breakfast. No, not to eggs. Even though the Chicken Girl has gifted us with yet another dozen eggs. In gratitude for having us take on her somewhat older, injured, untrained chickens. At the moment we have some 30 free range eggs in the fridge and we haven't even begun picking our own. Should there be any.

Yes, note the other signs of chicken love. Wooden chicks, roosters on cups -- I mean, this was meant to be.






And still, I'm glad we're just fostering. Learning.

We have already picked up this bit of wisdom: raising free range birds is way more expensive than buying a dozen of the most organic, most free range, most gold plated eggs you could imagine. The coop came with the birds. But in order to preserve control over what they eat, I offered to pay for their feed.

We drive to the Chicken House in Paoli to talk to the chicken lecturer who lead us down this path to begin with. It doesn't take long to convince me that good feed is a must. As for mealy worms?
She winces: I wouldn't give my hens those worms packaged, well, in places where they may be contaminated. I would raise my own. $8 later I have my box of 150 live mealy worms.





What do I feed the worms? I ask.
Apple, she tells me with a sweet smile.
So now I am in the business of feeding four chickens and 150 mealy worms.

Then, too, there is the issue of letting the chickens out. I am confident I can hustle them back into the coop. But I am not confident that I can just let them be while I go about my business. Lexie likes to roam. So does this mean that I have to watch her constantly? Wait a minute here, that's about the same as having a toddler at the farmette, only these guys don't use diapers and they seem not to nap.






Still, as I wait for the Chicken Girl and her mom to stop by in the evening to bring the remaining two hens -- Whitney and Butter (I abbreviate names when they exceed two syllables), I think -- it's good to have some hens at the farmette. This place is too big and too beautiful to hog all to yourself.






Chickens under the great willow -- they look like they belong here.

...but us chickens

The fact that I picked this painting as my favorite at the Marmottan Museum last time I was there...






...and that just this year I picked up this card from Monsieur Louis in Roskoff, Brittany for myself...





-- this should tell you something.

There are aspects of farmette life that are just so appealing to me!

But, the above images notwithstanding, having chickens wasn't always part of the game plan. In part, I had a huge disrespect for chickens when I was younger. My grandparents' village home in Poland was next to a neighbor who raised chickens. The birds destroyed the meadow in front of both our houses. They dug holes in dirt. They were noisy and messy and when we ran barefoot in the meadow, inevitably we'd land in their droppings. Ugh.

Still, our neighbor had dozens of chickens. A small, controlled chicken raising project wouldn't pose those problems.

But as we learned from the chicken expert during a lecture we attended last month, raising chickens brings forth other issues. Predator issues, for example. We have racoons the size of walruses here. We have opossums. We have foxes, we have owls, in other words -- we live among wildlife that would regard a chicken hunt as a very nice way to pass the night. Waking up to dead chickens seems pretty depressing.

And, Ed has been adamant: if I am to keep on traveling, the burden of tending chickens would fall on him. He doesn't want the responsibility.

On the other hand, when an add appeared in Craigslist, one in which a delightful high schooler (call her Chicken Girl) was searching for a place to keep her chickens (because they lived in a community that allowed only four and no roosters and here she was, with seven hens and a rooster, so something had to give), we thought we'd step up, becoming, in effect, foster parents to her chickens.

So on this cold but bright day...






...after breakfast...






...we welcome Chicken Girl and her mom and they begin to build a coop to house the chickens in need of a home. That's the deal: they supply the coop and the chickens and the feed. They clean the place every now and then. We coddle the chickens and let them out to roam when we're around and we collect the eggs.



(chicken coop builders)




(the coop)


We still are a bit anxious about predators. Is the coop sturdy enough? Shouldn't we build additional protections? We're foster chicken parents, worrying about our four new (each less than a year old) chicks.

Chicken Girl's mom comes back late in the evening and with Ed's help, rigs a temporary solution -- a board and straps so that no raccoon can dig from underneath.






She also brings the first pair for us: Oreo the rooster and Lexie the white hen. (Whitney and Butterscotch will arrive tomorrow. Foster chicks, of course, come with names.)





It's nippy outside. She dumps sawdust for them to nest in and she fills their dish with food, oyster shells and she sprinkles mealy worms to entice them inside. Oreo, big man that he is, appears traumatized. Lexie feels more at home and goes right for the mealy worms.
She'll eat them all before he comes down!  -- Chicken Girl's mom tells us.

It's late. The night is cold. We've got chickens in the backyard.

teamwork

Nine years ago, Ed and I worked on our first project together: we built a table for the apartment I had just moved into. It wasn't complicated, but he fretted about whether we would be able to work well together. Not everyone can do it -- he told me.

That still makes me smile. Because it turns out that we do work well together. Toiling over farmette projects gives us some of our best hours. Indoors, he typically takes the lead. When the job gets too technical, I back off. Outside, it's the reverse. There are a few projects that he claims as his babies (planting tomato seeds comes to mind), but for the most part, he merely asks -- what's next?

There is no doubt that spring brings us the greatest number of projects and working outside is a glorious way to enjoy the outdoors again. So I truly could not wait for the snows to melt and for the sunshine to take hold.

Well, the snow isn't entirely gone, but it's gettin' there! And we're having plenty of sunshine right now.

And so right after a thorough farmhouse cleaning, we eat a sunny breakfast...






...and here I want to give a nod to my pots of summer annuals that I brought inside and that are now wildly in bloom -- take a look, for example, at the simple pack of alyssum: it's a riot of white flowers...





...okay, so we finish our breakfast and go outside? No, not so fast. It's a cold day again. It may reach 30 F (not quite freezing, for all you European types who constantly remind me that my Fahrenheit numbers mean nothing to you). In the afternoon. Maybe.

But I can't wait. I bundle up, take out the rake and start the process of moving away some of the debris that I never bother to clear out in the Fall.

We had talked about various ways of dealing with the enormous piles of spent timber, shrubs and brambles that we take out. Burn it? Seems unnecessary. Watch it decompose? There's too much of it. Shred it? Rent a shredder? Maybe. For now, Ed follows me with his ancient hand mower and shreds the little stuff. Teamwork!






And despite the temperatures, exertion makes me feel warmer. Here, I'll set the camera to take a photo of Ocean's author raking away:





It was, as always, a wonderful set of hours.

In the evening, my older girl comes over for dinner.






It's been such a long time since I've seen either of my girls! Not to worry, in April, I'll see the other one! In the meantime, I make chicken thigh rolls for tonight. Kind of an unusual dish for me, but I'm on a Polish food spin and meat rolls are very much a Polish thing (indeed, I had chicken thigh rolls at the Bottega BTW on my next to last night in Warsaw).






For once, it's still light when we eat. How good is that!

And did I tell you? Underneath all that yard waste, I saw something: the first sign of daffodils poking through:






I tell you, a Sunday like this cannot be improved upon. The promise of the good months before us. Of plenty of outdoor work to make that garden grow. Of farmhouse projects. Of daughters, of sunshine, of meals together. Of flowers, inside for now, but soon in all corners of the farmette. And that's exciting!

Saturday

I came back to a fuller, loftier arc of the sun. I can tell. That and the lighter evenings thanks to the added Daylight Savings hour, truly make me feel I'd been away far longer -- at least half a season!

So when the predicted high today was to be only 35, I wondered -- why am I so resistant to going outdoors? A month ago, 35 would have seemed like a godsend!

Maybe it's because we got off to a cloudy start. (So breakfast was in the front-room).






And after, when Ed and I went outside to survey the front entrance to the farmhouse (we never use it: the frame has rotted and the steps crumbled many many years ago), we didn't linger. It felt nippy. [We're considering different ways to rebuild the front: leading ideas all center around the concepts of easy and cheap, while not straying too far from the integrity of the house.]

But, my perspective changed when the sun broke through and the birds came out.






We are seeing a lot of birds outside now.





A lot.

It was easy to interrupt indoor activities then and reach for the clippers to work on trimming the hugely overgrown hydrangea. And to carry fallen maple limbs away from the front yard. "Thirties" means not a whole lot when there is sunshine.

Inside, too, I've come to appreciate the higher arc of the sun's passage. The kitchen, where lately I do my writing, is ablaze with light now with the glass porch roof. Northern exposure notwithstanding, we're getting a delicious amount of blue skies and streaming sunshine.






And yet, I'm waiting for the really great days: when the last of the ice melts and the first crocuses come out. We're not there yet.

*****

P.S. In response to a commenter, here's my two zlotys (Polish currency) on the subject of beet soup: what I made pretty much tracks the recipe of someone who comes from the south of Poland. I mention this because recipes for beet soup are very personal and always change across the regions of the country. What I especially like about this one is that 1. it's easy, 2. it has the unexpected surprise of chicken, which is great when you're trying to make a meal of just soup.
So, Ocean author's tweak on a highlander's classic borstch:

- Take a big pot, fill it half way with water, add peeled beets. I used 6 medium beets and I chopped them into half inch slices before cooking. Hands turn pink, but so what.
- Also add chicken drumsticks. I added three.
- Boil for about 45 minutes (covered).
- Remove drumsticks, take meat off the bone, chop up and reserve.
(- at this point my friend purees the beets and water; I do not because Ed likes chunky soup)
- to beets and broth add chopped up potatoes (I used 3) and carrots (I used three and that was too much) and celery. Add more water.
- cook until done -- maybe another 20 minutes.
- return meat to broth and season (dill, salt, pepper).
(- she also adds Polish sausage, fried up a bit and chopped in at the end, and she serves the soup with sour cream. I skip the sausage and just throw on top a dollop of yogurt).

Friday

Again I am grateful for all your Ocean comments during my time away these past three weeks. As you can tell, I'm only a half-hearted hermit. The other half loves the back and forth and I surely profited from all your thoughts and reactions to various posts. Thank you so, so much.

Back home, the farmette is slowly emerging from hibernation. True, it's hard to love the last weeks of March: everything is so dismally brown, muddy, uninviting. When we walk the land, we see animal dropping everywhere. Deer have yet again attempted a complete destruction of our new orchard (only partly successful -- predictably, in places where we didn't provide enough cover for the young trees). The old barn has lost a few more boards and animals have dug trenches inside.

Truly, the whole place looks terrible.


So let me roll back to the prettiest part of the day: the morning. I catch the sunrise (more or less), behind the old orchard. It's warm enough that I can go outside without dressing for it.











And inside, at breakfast time, the sun is pouring in. The pots of annuals that I brought in for the winter have revived: they're flowering again. So much so that I snipped some of the blooms for our breakfast table.











A good part of the day is spent on restocking the refrigerator. And after, Ed and I take baby steps toward the pre-spring outdoor cleanup. Sweeping, righting felled tree protectors -- little things. But significant: they usher in spring.






Isis joins us. Somewhat reluctantly. He is less happy with the amount of wet ground at every turn.






Evening. It's time to resume cooking duties at the farmhouse. So what to make on my first night back in the kitchen? Beet soup. From a recipe handed to me by someone from Poland. Is there ever a time when you come back from a trip without changing your habits somewhat upon your return? No, I don't think so.

back home

Call it what you want: first day of spring, the UN International Happiness Day (it's true!), me, I'll call it the day of being home again.

Such a long but easy trip! Think of all the things that can go wrong here: a cab taking you at 4:30 a.m. to the airport, a flight taking off on a misty cold morning in Warsaw, connecting to a 9 hour flight to Chicago where, too, it's misty cold, though not as cold as when I left. Finally, a bus ride to Madison.

Nothing went wrong. Each flight came in ahead of schedule. The transatlantic Delta flight was half empty and the three men in the cockpit came on to reassure any jittery passenger that, between them, they had 80,000 miles of experience (unspoken subtext: we can handle emergencies!). I watched three movies in succession and slept through half of another. And the plane came in not at 3:30 as scheduled, but at 3:05. I walked through immigration and customs fast enough that I could take the airport train and still be on the 3:30 bus to Madison.

How is that for a trouble free journey!

Back home. It was an especially poignant return. Ed was out fetching dinner and Isis was out at the sheep shed and still, I felt so completely welcomed. May as well have had horns blowing and confetti flying -- home.

It's always interesting to survey things afresh the next morning -- what plants complained, what snow has remained.

So after breakfast -- yes, gloriously in the sunroom, with a cooperative Ed (imagine: three weeks of no one bugging him with a camera!) --






...I went out to look at the yard. And it became obvious that the snow we'd been pushing off the porch roof found a happy home just below. Meaning we'd created a mountain of snow in the northern shadows of the farmhouse and if I wanted the plants to awaken anytime soon, I would do well to move some of the snow out of there.

So my first task on this first day of spring/UN Happy Day is to shovel.






In the evening I have my monthly meeting with retired or nearly retired UW friends and even though I am feeling quiet tonight, it still feels nice to be embroiled in the pattern of regularity again.