Wednesday

Sometimes sunshine can perk up the most prickly set of hours. Then there is a day like this one:

The old hens laid their eggs in the barn. We hadn't noticed. The eggs froze.

The new cheepers are up in the roost without interruption for what is now the second day. I brought up food for them, feeling like I have two aging grannies rather than spry new hens.

The morning reading on my walk to open the coop was 5F (-15C).

At breakfast (in the sun room), Ed thought it was funny to hide behind the blender container.





At Snowdrop's home, the little girl wanted to pound on my laptop even more than she wanted to play with penguin, hat and jacket. When I refused, she was crestfallen. And no, distraction didn't work. At least not for significant parts of the morning.

She didn't finish her breakfast and was therefore hungry.

The banana I ate was so rotten that for a moment I wondered if even a pig would reject it.

And so on.

None of these are great menacing events in the scheme of things, but they show that the day was just a little off center. As if someone forgot to give us instructions on how to keep things on an even keel.


And yet, there is that golden warmth of the sun...






... and the snow and the sky took on beautiful shades of blue...






And Snowdrop never goes for long without showing her radiance.






After all, happiness can be as little or as much as a crumb of cookie after a cold, long walk to a cafe...











... or a page full of penguins.







Later, at the farmette, there is the usual negotiating with the girls: which chicken gets what treat in whose corner. Ed had intervened, picking up the new girls and placing them outside. I throw each pair of hens food, making sure that no one is expropriating the riches of another.



(not afraid to touch snow)




(still afraid of nearly everything)


Finally. Everyone is set for the night. Safely inside the coop. At the farmhouse, I heat up leftover soup for supper. Outside, a herd of some dozen deer pass through.






The start of the day was rocky. Now, at the end of it, I can hardly recall why. Looking back, it seems so very lovely.

March

Everyone's recalling the old saying -- March roars in like a lion. Maybe it does. But looking outside, I'm grateful that the overnight big snow was not so big after all. I've missed a plentiful snow cover all winter long, but come March, I'm done with winter dreams. My foot is firmly into Spring.

But it is below freezing, and there is a wind, and there is some snow on the ground. I wonder about the cheepers. The young girls seem completely baffled by the manners and foibles of nature. We chalk it up to a lifetime of barn-living, but who knows -- perhaps they are still adjusting to the newness of their environment, coping, as it were, by taking on a watchful stance.

I am up very early. I don't want warfare behind closed doors, where Java and Henny are trapped and have to endure the pecks and squawks of their "superiors." But as I approach the coop, all is quiet. Ed had thrown some old sleeping bags to keep the winds and snow out and honestly, it looked peaceful and snug in the newly winter-pretty landscape.

I open the coop door and dust off snow that has blown in and covered their feeding tray. Butter and Scotch hear me and they come down readily enough. I had shoveled a path to the barn for them and they step out tentatively, testing the gravity of the situation.






Good enough! They're off!






Good bye, top hens! Enjoy your barn romp! (I throw them some treats there to keep them happy. It is, after all, not their fault that nature programmed them to establish order and hegemony in a brood of hens.)

Back in the coop, I raise the roost flap. Java and Henny are snuggled inside.






They do get up when I poke my hand in to clean the place up for the day, but one look at the snow-dusted gangplank and they turn back. Suit yourselves, girls. Some day you'll understand (if not appreciate) the beauty of the seasons.

I walk back to the farmhouse, taking in perhaps for the last time, the snow, the stillness of the land...






It's not still for long. We get a call from a local several tree service. They have a truck heaped with wood chips that they're looking to offload. Yes, of course! We'll take them! (We never pass on a free load of chips and indeed, we throw down several dozen truck loads in the course of a season. We use them for weed suppression and soil enrichment and path maintenance and for aesthetic reasons too. We think that the beauty of the farmette depends on a steady supply of (preferably free) chips.)

The tree service company dumps the load underneath the big willow. From there, we'll distribute the chips as needed. The tree guy is anxious to unload and get it all out before the entire lot heats up to dangerous levels.

I tell Ed that even though I spent the first years of life and nearly every childhood summer in the deep Polish countryside, I never learned this truth about a heap of damp organic matter: it can turn into smoldering fire that will burn down your barn if you let it be.
Every farmer knows this about storing silage, Ed tells me shaking his physical science-inclined head in that "what kind of a country woman are you anyway?" manner.
I'm not a farmer. And by the way, how hot does it get when we leave the chips alone for a longer spell? (We take our time in spreading them.)
I've checked them in the past -- not really more than 100F, but give them the right environment and boom! Combustion.

Nature has so many surprises for the planet's uneducated inhabitants.

Finally, breakfast. Warm oatmeal in our warm kitchen. Heaven on a morning like this one.






The roads are icy, but I'm used to it. Everyone here, in Wisconsin is used to it. You take the turns slowly. You concentrate. You watch for the mistakes of others.

I arrive at Snowdrop's home only one minute late.

And now it's time for her breakfast. Hey little one, you must stop expressing sheer joy at seeing penguin. It's hard to feed you mush with blueberries when your mouth is all over that guy.






After, she runs to the kitchen and finds that I have set out her jacket and cap for a later excursion. 
And excursion? Can we go now? 






I'll put on my cap! Run, run run...






Not so fast, little one. Bath time, play time -- we have lots to do here.






Snowdrop is flexible. And so happy with whatever game she invents for herself. Today, Snowdrop is at her most creative: she plays all day long with these three items: jacket, cap and penguin, arranging them, carrying them, placing them in interesting setups, all the while keeping a lively patter going, as if telling a story.






(She shares her story here with the family queen, who, for once, listens.)






... until tiredness overtakes the little girl.






Nothing that a nap and a meal can't fix. The afternoon -- well, I suppose you'd call it adventuring on a small scale. All morning, the snow continued to gently fall and now, things are looking rather pretty outside. What if we venture out to a store? Time to restock on peanuts and daffodils from Trader Joe's no?






...followed by a visit to a cafe. You can see her sense of comfort now, as if she were thinking -- I can get into this coffee culture.






She remains perfectly satisified with a few crumbs of a gingersnap cookie.






Outside, I let her manage just a little on her own. Okay grandma, if penguins can walk through snow, so can I!






I feel like the girl grew in leaps and bounds these past few days.


And at the end of the day, I drive home to that treasured place, the farmette, that humbly stands beneath our great Midwestern sky.






Home, where the cheepers greet us (the old girls had spent the day in the barn, the new girls -- in the coop... so predictable!), and trees are just waiting until the moment when their buds burst with signs of life again.






I make a pizza for dinner. Did you ever wonder which topping is placed first -- the mushrooms or the cheese? I've been making pizza for a while now and only today have I come to a satisfactory resolution to this great dilemma. Can you guess?





(Answer: in my opinion, do the sauce first, then the mushrooms, then the cheese, then a few more mushrooms and garlic. There! Ocean has placed itself in the thick of great controversy!)

March came in like a lion, but only weather-wise. All other ways: a lamb. A total lamb.

leap day

I have a squabble with whoever thought to tag on an extra day to February. Who wants any more of February? Why not do it to May? You can't get enough of May! That's one beautiful month! I think even people in Australia are okay with May because it's not quite winter yet. But February? When it could have been March today?

I'm up early. Last night was horrible for the new hens. Henny in particular was mercilessly pecked at anytime she tried to go up to the preferred upstairs portion of the coop (less exposed, comfy wood shavings). Butter would not let her do it. Finally a miserable Henny huddled in the bottom corner of the coop, giving up the comfort for the sake of peace.

As I walk toward the cheepers now at sunrise, I gaze at the sky for a clue as to how the day will proceed. We have a couple of tricky days ahead: some say tomorrow will bring merely a temporary dip into the temperatures, others predict a half a foot of snow. And today -- well, it's transitional. Yes, the sky looks undecided as well.






I open the coop, the older girls fly out. Java is upstairs. Henny is a ball of feathers in the downstairs corner.

Is she dead?

I reach in and gently touch her back.

Nothing.

I give another light pet.

Nothing.

Okay, I guess the girl's in shock. I reach for her, but this noise and movement takes her right out of whatever stupor had taken over and she thrashes and runs (insofar as you can run in a small space) and I know that, whatever her psychological state, at least she is not physically hurt.

All hens are out of the coop now and I notice that Butter's foot is quite fine again. So why the curled toes, the limp, the inability to use the foot yesterday?

There is much that I do not understand about chickens.

As I stand there throwing corn and seed on the ground, both Scotch and Butter made sure that neither of the two newbies would come near the treat.



(the new girls, eyeing seeds they cannot eat)


Still, I have to smile. I remember when Scotch was added to the flock and the white hens attacked her. She seemed so sweet and vulnerable then. Now she's part of the ruling elite. How quickly fates and fortunes shift in life!


It's sunny enough for us to eat breakfast in the sun room.



(Ed eats an egg we found hidden in the barn: Butter's protest yesterday at the coop invasion)


And then I shift gears again, putting the matter of chickens aside, as this is the day Snowdrop comes to the farmhouse.

Hey little one, your new shoes arrived today! Let's see if they put you in a better mood when we go outside.

A trial run indoor first...






Good, good. Now let's go meet the new cheepers.

Ed joins us and he sits her down on the fence to watch. She clutches the bread, thinking perhaps that big Java doesn't look especially food deprived.






On the ground now, liking the feeling of being in control -- it's Snowdrop, the fearless flyer!






I remind her she still has some bread for the older girls. Oh, those two come running! They know what comes from that little hand.






Snowdrop knows Scotch and Butter and she likes them just fine (I haven't told her about the chicken brutality that took place in the coop last night).

But there's something equally interesting out here that she hasn't yet had a chance to play with:





The pinwheels survived the winter just fine (which I think is telling: a heavy snow would have crushed them). And she is delighted that they are at her level. Scotch, you're just going to have to wait.

The new girls? Well, they spent most of the day inside.



(java closeup)


But that's okay. We did as well.

Sunday

As dusk moved to darkness last night, Ed and I realized that our old hens, Scotch and Butter, were not going to happily trot back to the coop, as has been their norm. The new chickens, Java and Henny, were easier to prod. But their dutiful march up to the roost incensed the older Scotch. She turned up the volume on her squawking and, as if in an act of civil disobedience, stomped back and forth in protest. We spent many minutes cornering the two old girls. Eventually, we ushered them into the safety of the coop.

In the morning, with hope but with not a small amount of trepidation, I make my way to the coop. Peering inside, I see some feathered forms stomping back and forth. And this is when it becomes clear that our two new girls are, well, different. For one thing, Java, not yet a year old, is nonetheless huge! Here she is as she steps out with Henny.


 



Butter is willing to take on big Java, but Scotch is plain mad and she stalks away displeased with the new set up. Butter knows whose her loyal subservient buddy and so she follows. I can almost hear them gossiping.






As for Java - she is in fact a docile girl who is trying to understand her new position in life in a calm and sensible way. She protects Henny (who is skittish and afraid, but oh so very pretty)...





... but she is also bold enough to venture out for a crumb of food. When Butter pecks at her, she retreats to give her space, in the way that you do when a bully walks by and then she resumes whatever task is before her. An easy going girl.

Such are chicken personalities. Not bad! We pat ourselves on the backs. Not bad! This may be an easy adjustment. Big calm Java may move things in a good direction.

We clean the farmhouse and settle in for a late and relaxed breakfast.





But when we go out again, we see that things are not that simple. First of all, our new girls are not adept foragers. We think back to the place where they lived the first nine months of life. There was a barn, there were chickens in it. But there were no chickens outside the barn. Likely they were not free rangers. Will they learn? We're counting on them to decrease our tick population. Get going, girls!

Nope. All day, they stay in and around the coop. Despite the fantastic weather, they have little interest in scratching the soil.

Worse. Sometime in the course of the morning, while she is foraging with Scotch, Butter damages two of her toes. Oh, it's easy to mess up a chicken foot: get it tangled in fencing or any number of things and boom! Trouble.

Ed looks up "damaged chicken toes" on the Internet.
We could either leave it alone or try taping toothpicks to the toes.
We can't even catch her. How would we do that?
In the evening she is more docile...
I just don't see this as a workable solution...
It is true that the person who suggested it has only done it for a couple of days.
Let's let her be. Maybe they'll heal. Or, she'll be like Oreo -- a chicken with a useless foot!

Did I really just marvel at how smoothly our chicken life was proceeding?

We went from having two reliably laying cheepers, to four, where no one is laying at the moment, two refuse to forage, one squawks and the fourth has what appears to be a damaged foot. Lord.


Alright: let's change focus.

There's an old Polish proverb that goes something like this: she who fails to rake in the Fall will spend Spring evenings rubbing salve on her blisters.

I don't know why, come Fall, I conclude that the chore of clearing a flower bed will be more satisfying in Spring. It is always hard work, made harder if you have as many trees as we do and especially ones with the gross seed pods. Spent stalks, fallen leaves, gross pods -- it's clutter that has to be removed.

I break a rake working outdoors today and even gloves do not prevent my hands from being rubbed raw from the effort.

Never mind. The day is warm and the work will reward us with productive flower beds. Ed is still trying to track down the knock in my car's engine and so he keeps me company outside, as do the two older cheepers. The new ones? Well, as I said: home-bound.


In the evening the young family comes to dinner.






Oh, I know. You just want to see my granddaughter. Well you might -- she is at her finest. She runs to find penguin, but penguin is upstairs in her crib. That's okay. Bunny rabbit will do.






Reaching then for the crazy toy that beeps and moves and makes horrible noises when you press an awkwardly positioned button, she fumbles, then manages to push that button. She is proud!






At dinner -- she loves it all: chicken, brussels sprouts (her favorite!) and potato.






We smile. She smiles. Life is good again. Tomorrow, we'll face the chicken squabbles, but tonight -- life is good.

Adventuring

From before sunrise, the ideas come flying.
How about a creamery in Monroe or a winery in Mt Horeb?
We need time outside. Maybe we can visit our spinach farm (we belong to a winter CSA which supplies us with spinach through the coldest months of the year)? Or is that sort of dull -- just to look at spinach?
It may not be dull but it isn't that close. Here's a creamery that gives tours if you call ahead.
No, not on a day like this. Maybe we should just hike the Ice Age Trail. 

It continues like this through breakfast (a beautiful meal in the sun room).





... and beyond. Very quickly, as the temperatures climb to the 50sF (beyond 10C), our discussion turns from ridiculously undecided to the devilishly funny.
Let's visit the goat farm!
That's dangerous for us...
We could borrow a goat...
A solitary goat, standing alone in a field of weeds? We don't know a thing about goats.
I wasn't entirely serious.
We could just spend a morning looking at goats.
Or we could pick up a couple more chickens.

I'm not sure which one of us first put that one on the table, but once there, it wasn't comin' off.

But isn't that just a terrible idea? We lost two beautiful young girls late last summer by not shutting the coop early enough. Predators. I swore we would not get new hens again. Besides, the introduction of chickens to an existing flock is painful.

We have a good amount of eggs, a happy duo, why rock the boat?

Because we sometimes like to rock the boat.

And one thing leads to another and shortly after ten, we find ourselves on the road, heading a few miles south to Evansville, where a young boy and his dad are serious about raising beautiful chickens for the boy's 4H competition. And they have a few too many and they are looking to offload some. The hens are not quite a year old -- big enough, we think, to not be so tempting to whatever lurking animal may be about. At least during the daylight hours. In the evening -- well, we've been meticulous about shutting the coop door in a timely way.

Here's the lovely barn where the chickens live:






We pick up two: a Black Java and an Easter Egger. You'll meet them soon enough. For the time being, we stick them in an animal cage and drive a few more miles south to take a hike in a new to us county park -- Magnolia Park, which boasts the second highest elevation in Rock County. (Don't hold your breath. Rock County is pastoral, bucolic, with rolling in fields of corn and soy -- not a place where you're going to get out of breath on a climb.)






Our hike, even without touching the heavens is heavenly indeed! The air feels more spring-like than spring itself. Here's the view from the bluff, or the "summit:"






The trails are muddy and our slips and falls are clumsy and dirty and this makes us laugh even harder. Or maybe it's that we laugh at the fact that we have two chickens sitting in the back seat of the car.






We don't hike too long. The smell of cooped up chickens can get intense.

A few more stops on the way home: first, at the Chicken Shop in Paoli, where we splurge on organic scratch food for the girls (it's 50 cents more!). It's a fun store to poke into even if you're just looking for something that will bring to mind how important farming is to our state. 






Ed then proposes a beer at the bar across the street. Every few months it strikes him that this would be a fun thing to do and we nurse our glasses for a long time, leafing through gardening magazines that are strewn about and watching the people come and go.






No adventuring is complete without a stop at the chocolate shop of choice for us. We pick up a box of 16 favorites that will last us exactly 16 days as we split one each night, savoring the taste of elderflower ganache, or their new one -- apple brandy.






A quick stop at the library and now finally we are home. And because we do not expect any great snow for the remainder of the season, we move the coop to its summer place outside the barn. Let the new girls get used to a space that is more open.

Oh, you haven't met them yet! Here they are -- meet the big girl, Black Java:






And speckled brown Henny:






Scotch and Butter are by the farmhouse and so at first they do not notice the commotion, nor the introduction of the new girls to the coop. When they do finally appear, well, Butter tries to take it in stride, but Scotch is incensed! Butter, do you see what the big people have done? Again?!






She goes into a vocal clamor and complaint session that would make a grownup hide. Eventually she quiets down and stomps off to the garage and poor Butter follows.

The two new girls watch. It's a strange world they have entered.






We'll see what tonight will bring.

It's just another beautiful day at the farmette, with Ed, me, and the four cheepers.