getting used to the young ones

It's five in the morning. Dark and quiet.
I'm going to go check on the cheepers. He means the little girls, now waking up to their second day at the farmhouse.
I was just thinking of doing that, but I'm afraid they're not alright!
They're fine -- he shouts up from the sun room.

Ten minutes later I shout down: what are you doing?
Sitting and watching them.

And so we have two chairs pulled close to the little blue box where they now reside. We're too old to plop down willingly on the floor, but we think it's perfectly fine to sit in chairs for a long long while staring at baby chickens.




I suppose it's that early brush with new life. You tend to stare at babies too when they first pop out. Count fingers, admire the crease in the little fist... Though in this case, we're more likely to laugh at a funny stretch of a chicken leg or comment on who is getting bigger faster (it appears to be the aptly named Cupcake who eats like there's no tomorrow).






Breakfast, set in the sunny sun room.






And then Ed rushes off to the Social Security Office. It is the month of Social Security drama for us. Yesterday he learned that someone had used hacked information (think Equifax breach) to try to apply for retirement and disability benefits as Ed. All straightened out now, but uff, what a pain!

In the afternoon, I interrupt my spotty writing and my constant chicken watching... (not you, girls! your little sisters!)






... to pick up Snowdrop...






... who then does her own happy baby chicken watching.






I do lure her away for our time with Brambly Hedge on the orange couch...






... and of course, necessarily, an animated story follows.












Snowdrop, it's time for us to go to your house.
Can I take my babies?
Sure...






(Ed hovers, showing off his newly purchased jacket from Farm and Fleet. Yes, it is exactly the same as his previous one, minus the tears.)






Snowdrop's mommy has a little free time and so we schedule a brisk walk -- if only to take in these early moments of spring.






We go to a lovely playground in their neighborhood. After many many minutes on the swing, Snowdrop heads for the sand play area. She tries to make the diggers work, but of course, the sand is still frozen.






The fire engine, on the other hand, bounces along in any season.






We walk along the nearby pond...






... watching the ducks, the geese, noting the incredible blue of water and sky...






At her house now, she settles in for a volume of Brambly Hedge. I admire the new sitting position: works well when mommy's growing tummy covers the lap area!






And then I drive back to the farmette. Not dark yet, but surely beautiful now in the evening light. Almost there now... Here's the silo, a sandhill crane,  here's home.






... with the three new babies. So very adorable, even when asleep.

hello, little ones

It's still dark outside. Sunrise today is at 7:11 a.m. but both Ed and I, late sleepers on any other day, are awake long before even a hint of dawn.

We should be on the road by 6:35, he reminds me, even though I need no reminders.
Breakfast afterwards, okay?
Of course.

Still, as we get ready to head out, I grab Snowdrop's leftover croissant and make myself a nice frothy cappuccino, to be devoured on the road. Years have passed since I've had coffee on the run! It brings back memories of cluttered days.

We arrive at Farm and Fleet at 6:58. Perfect!

We wait in the car, noting that we're the only ones in the parking lot.
I thought the chicken guy the other day said there would be people here to pick their favorites at 7!
Well, he was new, he was just speculating.

We walk in at 7. First customers! We head straight for the big tubs of two-day old chickens.





You've never seen anything so incredibly cute!

Buying chickens is not a one two three thing. You have to register. Name, address, phone number. And you have to select your breed. We've done our homework (and then some!). Barred Rock, Light Brahma (the most unusual of the bunch), Speckled Sussex...

These chickens are from the Cackle Hatchery in Missouri. If you have time, you may want to watch this video clip -- it describes the (3rd generation family run) business of hatching chickens. It's one of only three hatcheries in the country that will allow you to pick a breed (from a very long list) and get them delivered (and this is crucial) within two days of birth.

As I point to the cheeps of choice (that one! she's already eating! she'll do well! and that one! she looks bold but not aggressive! and this one!), I notice that other customers are indeed arriving. Mostly families. Kids, here before school starts, to pick their chicks (or ducks -- they have those too).





But like the first time chick people that we are, we're in a hurry. We've got our three in a box that sort of looks like a McDonald's Happy Meal. They mustn't get cold! (Never mind that they've already traveled in trucks on a not too warm March night and seem to have survived just fine.)

Home at last. We put them in.


 


They are sort of in shock. For a few minutes. And then they're sort of asleep -- a great antidote to stress. And then they're just plain cute! Tomato (brown), Pepper (black) and Cupcake (yellow). Names selected by Snowdrop, with some exercise of veto power and a light steer from me.





Predictably, I sit, staring at them in fascination and I worry. Ed! The thermometer says 102F (39C)! It keeps going up!
Raise the light (Ed has attached the heating light to a tripod).
But why does it keep going up?
Because the room is warmer. -- he says in that tone that implies "I can't believe I have to explain that to you."
But now it's too warm! And Pepper keeps falling asleep next to the water. Her head may roll in and she'll drown. They warn you about that. I'm going to switch the dish.

They don't like the switched dish.

I switch back.

Ed, are they sleeping too much?
I don't know, gorgeous...

Ah, but when they cheep their delicate little cheeper cheeps, it's like Mozart playing in there! (And indeed, when I hum a Mozart tune, they perk up and look at me with expectation... I write this in the evening, during the live broadcast of the Wisconsin Young Artists Competition and Pepper must surely be hearing it because she is soloing like crazy in the sun room!)





And so begins our baby chick adventure. Can we keep them going for a whole two months inside? We're surely going to try.


Breakfast at last!






And in the afternoon, I go to pick up a very excited Snowdrop! Her friend asks -- can she play in the park? Not today, pal. Not today.






We have only a scant half hour at the farmhouse before dance class. Snowdrop is mesmerized by the little cheeper antics!
Oh, they are babies!






I had warned her that for the first couple of days we cannot play with them. They need to adjust. Snowdrop doesn't mind. She is content just watching.






We take a break for a snack and a read. This is our unwind time. A day cannot proceed without that moment on the orange couch.






And now it's time to go to dance. One last minute with Tomato, Pepper and Cupcake!






We're at the studio. Ready!


















As I watch the little one from behind the one way window, I really have to admire her for fitting in so well in this world of bigger girls. She doesn't pick up on all the little pieces of the big girl puzzle, but she does pick up on a lot. She is a wonderful observer of the human condition!






And is a beautiful dancer in her own rendition of the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Whatever version of the story was presented to the little ballerinas, I'm glad it included a lot of happy dances.











Evening. Ed is playing volley ball, I'm babysitting the chicks. That means I get up every two minutes to make sure they haven't drowned or (inadvertently) destroyed each other. My reward? A happy trio and a string of lovely notes. Especially from Pepper. The loud one.

the day before March 14th

No doubt about it. Our attention is on tomorrow. Is the new thermometer working? Are you sure? We need to have the bigger box ready for when they grow a little. It says here one square foot per chick. But do they mean for a bigger chicken too? Why are these instructions so vague??


It's cold again. No crocuses in our yard, no real signs of the next season.

Too, Ed has an early work meeting and so we have to eat what for us is a super early breakfast.





We look out and watch the groundhog make his way to his summer home right by my day lilies.
He's taking stock. Moving in his tchotchkes.
Welcome spring!


And then I write. I would have made stupendous progress were it not for another long phone protest call with my insurance company. Toward the end, I did ask -- all this is going to go away in two weeks when I step into my Medicare shoes, right? Right?? There was a lot of hemming and hawing on the agent's part. Poor thing: she didn't write the rules on the way we do health care in this land. Uff!

In the afternoon I pick up Snowdrop. Sweet little one is ready to go, but I notice a mitten is missing. I suggest a search of the playground.






We never find it, but we have a wonderful few minutes (despite the cold) outside. The school playground is at least sheltered from the wind and for the short while we were there, it feels almost acceptable.






At the farmhouse, Snowdrop is just that much calmer than in the past high excitement days. She moves from storytelling...






(Always the storytelling...)






... to games, letters, and even a little bit of building -- a rare pick for her.






(Ahah joins in for a bit...)






Snowdrop, too, has chicks on her mind. When, grandma, when are they coming?
Hmmm. Maybe tomorrow.

Ed says -- I can't remember being this excited! I glance at him sharply. I mean, except about you of course!

They're just chicks and I have such mixed feelings about adding more claws to my garden and yet, we are planning to be up before dawn tomorrow to drive out and.... take a look. Yeah, just take a look at what the chicks are like.

the world of brambly hedge

Unless you're someone who grew up in the 1980s or 1990s in England, you've likely never heard of the Brambly Hedge. It's a place. Well, it's actually any place in the rural landscape, but if you want to get specific, it's embedded in the English countryside, where daintily clad mice families live and prosper right before our noses -- in the hollows of trees and tree trunks in the forests and fields, river valleys and meadow lands.

The idea to write about such a place came to (writer/illustrator) Jill Barklem just as my older daughter was born and since we spent some time in England as she was turning three, I came across these books -- at first just four: Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter, all part of the Brambly Hedge series and fell deeply in love with the imagery they gave us. Lucky for me, both my girls grew to love them just as hard. We spent many many hours tracing the details of the lives of Mr. and Mrs. Toadflax, the indomitable Wilfred, Mr. and Mrs. Apple and their happily married Daisy (or Lady Woodmouse if you prefer) and don't forget about Mrs. Crustybread the cook, whose birthday cake for Wilfred has always been my idea of the most beautiful celebratory cake ever! (Poppy Eyebright will always supply the cheeses  for any celebration from his well-stocked dairy.)

The stories are subtle and sweet. There isn't great drama. It's all in the beautiful detail of daily life. And as I spend my days now at the farmette, I think I a little bit inhabit this painting -- of life where even a mouse can lead the most simple yet splendid life of family and feasts.

And so it was with enormous joy that I took out a thick tome of tales from the Brambly Hedge today for Snowdrop. Her mom had beat me to it -- she'd been reading her these stories all weekend. They are long, detailed, with many words that Snowdrop cannot possibly understand (but enough that she can indeed lose herself in the magic of that world). And now I can see that Snowdrop is as in love with Brambly Hedge as any of us were or continue to be. And that just makes my day.


But of course, the day starts elsewhere -- in the barn...


 



... and in the farmhouse, over breakfast in the sun room.






I have silly details of life to attend to all morning -- you do not want to hear them. Who could possibly want to give airtime to my exasperation with my primary insurer who claims I owe $1600 for a doctor's visit? Nah... (I told them to write me an apology letter when they sorted out their paper mess, but I doubt they will.)


And then it's time to pick up Snowdrop.

Look, grandma, my new pink sunglasses!






Outside her school: the purple flowers match my boots!






And now we are at the farmhouse and I hand her this treasured volume of dreamy wistful stories.






I hand over the afternoon to Brambly Hedge. I have to! Snowdrop's own story is a compilation of events and celebrations and names --  of her babies and imagined people and Brambly mice -- they all make their way in.






She wants a picnic feast just like in the book and of course, ours isn't in the meadow and we have to make do with her play cakes and tea cups, and still, it feels extraordinary: as if Wilfred the devilish boy mouse will run out and blow his whistle and make us all run for cover!







Evening. Since Daylight Savings Time started this weekend, light is with us even after Snowdrop leaves. I suggest to Ed that we take a brief walk. Maybe I just want to be among the tall grasses now, as the mice retreat to their pantries and examine what might be had for the supper this evening.






We hear the call of geeese and sandhills and countless other birds doing their final circle in the sky before settling for the night. Bring out the crusty loaves, the blackberry jam, the elderflower tea and biscuits with cream. It's time to breathe in the country air, eat up a feast of foods and... exhale.

new life

Is there anyone who does not love spring? The very idea of new growth, new buds, new lambs, birds, cheeps. New babies, new life. It's so hard to protect it -- to care for those babies, puppies, chicks, tender flowers, vegetable seedlings -- but we sign onto it and indeed, we look forward to the day the challenge begins. We know it is grueling stuff and yet we choose it and we can't wait to get started.

This, to some extent, describes our stance in the matter of chickens. (Babies and gardens too, but I'll just stay with chickens.) We know that bringing in new cheeps will be a headache. It will double our work. There may be issues -- of health, of integration, of predator temptation. (Java is no temptation for anything less than a mountain lion, but a young chicken? Yum!)

And still, we wake up this morning wanting to move forward with the project (or at least not resign yet).

But first, there is breakfast. It's so late that it makes no sense to eat it in the sun room. The sun has moved on. To the front room.






We spend the rest of the morning cleaning -- the robot sweeps, I clean the remaining surfaces, Ed scrubs old containers for use in the cheep box. Occasionally, one of us will have picked up additional bits of information about chick care. We share it and puzzle over how to proceed. (For example: "The guy in the store said to add electrolytes to the water, but here it says you can use apple cider vinegar instead..." "Oh, but here it says that's totally an old wives tale! They say to stick with plain water" "And what about grits? Do we add them to the food day one? There are twenty different opinions on this!" And so on.)

The coming of new life hangs in the air.

In the afternoon, we take a break from everything and go out to the nearby disc golf course. It's a beautiful day once more. There is only a thin band of snow left on the ground...






It surprises us no end that the course does not open until May 1st. But, we've learned to set up our own goal posts (a wicker basket) and the fields are open and inviting and the sound of sandhill cranes occasionally causes us to pause and look up...






It is a beautiful day to be outdoors!






In the evening, the young family comes for dinner, which happens to include a hefty chicken component but oh well! That's grocery chickens, not the beautiful quirky funny annoying birds that we pander to here at the farmette!

We  show Snowdrop the set up.
A pooper scooper! She is tickled by that!






Isn't it grand to eat dinner by the light of the day?!







Stories flow...












Hearts soar.

Smiles linger for a long long time.

how to invent a problem without really trying

We are close to spring. We have had an abundance of sunshine. There have been no significant glitches in our days. Only small stuff, easily solved. We've been lucky.






Time to invent a problem, don't you think??

After breakfast, of course. (And it's a sunny, flower-filled breakfast. The best kind!)





It actually began last week when we spent our entire weekend (or so it seemed) at the Farm and Fleet store. Perhaps you've never had the pleasure of shopping there? It's like a big box for farm-type people. It's the kind of place where you're asked at checkout whether you have the card for an agricultural tax break. New York City Ed (born and raised) truly loves that! Mistaken for a local boy... He's come so far! He'll give a small shake of the head, as if to say -- no, not this time. The jacket he wears year round (and which acts as sweater, rain coat, and Arctic blast protection)? Farm and Fleet. Inner tubes for tractor? Same. Chicken feed? Of course.

Well, we got roped into a chat with one of the employees -- the guy in charge of livestock feed that day -- and there must have been something especially sweet and compelling about his descriptions of his own chicken brood, because when we returned home, Ed turned to me and asked -- should we add a few young chicks to our three?

We have never purchased young chicks. All our cheepers come from Craigslist sales, where people were probably offloading under-producing or in other ways bothersome chickens. We always thought that raising chickens from day one is too much trouble. You need indoor enclosures. You need special lamps. You need to teach them to eat, drink, and enjoy each others company. Forget it.

And yet... We are always tempted to bring animals here. We have the space, the grasses, the trees. We even have a wreck of a structure once called a barn. It seems only right to populate it.

We investigated the dozen breeds of cheeps scheduled to arrive at Farm and Fleet next week and picked ones we thought were perfect, I mean perfect for us! (Never mind that the site that reviews chicken breeds hasn't an unkind word to say about any kind of chicken anywhere on the planet! They're all friendly, good, producing perfect eggs all the time, asking nothing more of you than to give them some cheap food and water and a place to escape from the world's nasty predators.)

We pick our preferred chickens: A Plymouth Barred Rock, a Speckled Sussex and maybe a Partridge Cochin. So beautiful!

And here's our first mistake: we tell Snowdrop. She immediately has names for them! She is excited! And now we are super excited! We are all just a bunch of kids pretending to be grownups.

But now come the particulars: how do we set up the chick home for the months before they can go outside?

There is my approach: we buy the necessary equipment, do as the books say, cross our fingers. We make sure Snowdrop washes her hands before and after touching the chicks. We consider building a bigger coop to house our growing flock. We don't think about the digging up of plants. We think, instead about the joy of watching our cheepers do their silly chicken antics.

Then there is Ed's approach: we buy absolutely nothing except for food and the chicks themselves. We cut up milk cartons for dishes and use old lightbulbs for heat. We more or less follow the stuff some people on the internet might suggest, but it's not like baking a cake: you don't have to be exact! The coop is big enough, so don't even think about getting a bigger one. Besides, they've all taken to falling asleep all over the barn walls, so where they get shoved in for the night hardly matters.


Time to take a pause, to clear the head and lungs, time to walk on this still cool but sunny day.

Ed picks out yet another trail that is close by yet unfamiliar to us -- in and around the Lake Kegonsa State Park.

And it's very pretty. Not exciting perhaps, but a good place to roam for about two hours.






Pine plantation.






Melting ice cover over Lake Waubesa...






Bluejay blue...






And from there, we drive to Farm and Fleet. We need chick food. We need a lamp clip.

The day of the arrival of the new chicks is awfully near.

Still, he and I just do not approach the new additions in the same way.

Aw heck. It doesn't matter. For the most part, he is the one who cares for the cheepers. Let him construct whatever he wants.

We come home. Ed works endlessly on regulating the heat over the soon to be baby chick home.

Then he goes out to put away the three big girls. And it's the usual these days: reaching for them perched somewhere high in the barn, grabbing them as they squawk, hoping that they stay put as he reaches for the next one.

He returns to the farmhouse and says -- we have it fairly easy now. Should we really rock the boat? Chase after five or six cheepers each night? Let them all scratch your garden?

Wait, you're having second thoughts??
No, not exactly...

To be continued.