big birds, little birds

It's hard to believe that practically the entire morning went to the birds, but it's the truth! 

No, not the littlest guys. These kept on chirping and diving for berries and asserting their territory in the high branches of the crab apple. Lovely to watch (especially from behind very clean kitchen windows!).

But we did spend a good chunk of time trying to deal with the hiccuping Bresse chicken. We picked up her sister, just to compare.

Then we went after the girl that's in trouble. That was tough. She'd run from one end of the coop to the next and we could not reach her. 

Finally, cornered, she gave up the flight.

Ed held her, we both studied her throat with a flashlight. Nothing obvious.

We felt her front. I was sure I felt the impacted crop. A big bulge in her lower throat. Ed was less convinced. Seems like that's just the neck...

Nevertheless, we rubbed and mushed and massaged and honestly, I'm not sure we helped her at all, but we are without other ideas. Take your chicken to a vet -- you'll say. This is not an easy task. Most vets don't treat single chickens and ones that do aren't exactly standing by, waiting for you to pop in the day before Thanksgiving with a hiccuping bird.

For now, we let her go. She's processing food and so she can't be fully backed up. And hey, the lice situation seems under control on the birds we randomly checked. (Where do they get lice? From other birds. These are avian lice, not interested in your scalp or mine. Thank goodness.)

Breakfast: back to oatmeal. Feeling a tad guilty for abandoning it for more tasty stuff the last few weeks.

And now is the time to get started on the big bird. He is still a little icy under the wings and thighs, but good enough! And very pretty.

In these local farm raised birds, you need to tidy up bits of feathers and anything else that may be less than tasty. Once that's done, it's time for me to spatchcock the guy. This, I think, is the toughest part of the Thanksgiving prep: you take out your good knife (and we dont't really have, nor want a good knife, because we've grown fond of working with our bad ones -- Ed sharpens them regularly and they serve our needs well) and you work through the bones to carve out the back bone (which will be used to make stock tomorrow, only because I don't have time today). Once that's out, you flip the bird and flatten it with your fist. In the end, it looks sort of like this:

(Thank you, Mark Bittman of the NYTimes, for teaching me this method of roasting a bird. It's the one surefire way of getting the breast and the dark meat to come out done at the same time.)

I salt it well to dry brine it overnight in the fridge. I still have the roasting mayo to prepare. That's J. Kenji Lopez-Alt's secret to preparing a Thanksgiving bird. Kenji is an American chef, cookbook author, and food writer (and winner of prestigious awards for incorporating science into his cooking methods) and I trust him to know more about preparing a Thanksgiving meal than I will ever know, even though in my life, I have probably prepared upwards of forty complete Thanksgiving dinners.

For now though, I take a break. Yes, with cookies and coffee..

...but, too, Ed and I drive out to take a hike in a place he's wanted to explore for a long while now, even as I never seem to have the time for it. It's the Hauge Historic District Park (near the town of Perry, Wisconsin). The park surrounds The Hauge Log Church (which is a historic site), but perhaps more importantly, it is on the second highest ridge in our county, giving you remarkable views over the Driftless Area. You possibly know that a good portion of western Wisconsin (and bits of southern Minnesota, eastern Iowa and northern Illinois) was not covered by the last glacier. Blame our highlands to the north and the Great Lakes for stopping the ice flow! Thus this pocket of the Upper Midwest does not have the "drift" that a receding glacier leaves behind. There's lots more to be said about what is in fact here instead, but this goes beyond the scope of a post titled "big birds, little birds." 

The drive here is lovely, and the view? Well, it is said to offer the best sunset in all of Dane County. We're a bit too early for that and we cant really linger for it because of our chicken worries (dusk brings out the predators), nevertheless, everything about this area is deeply peaceful. It's where you really want to be on the day before a Thanksgiving holiday, when the world is cracking up around you and you're feeling like the human race is a bit out of control in so many pockets of this beautiful planet.

(the Hauge Log Church, standing at the center of the park, was built in 1852 by Norwegian immigrants)

(we looked inside...)

(the cemetery stones reflect the presence of Norwegians here in the 19th century)

(the park views? awesome...)

(looking back at the church...)

(to the west -- the nearly setting sun...)

(selfie!)

We return by way of our favorite Thai eatery. Take out food at last! 

You could say I am already behind the cooking schedule for tomorrow's meal. But, the bird is nearly ready for the oven, the other stuff is in my head, ready to be prepped. Tomorrow. Plenty of time in one day to do a big meal. Right?? 

Meanwhile, if you are celebrating the day of Thanksgiving, I hope with all my heart that you have a beautiful one.

With lots of love...

Tuesday's chicken woes

It was to be a house cleaning day. I look around this morning. Is the farmhouse really in great need of a major scrubbing? Maybe a little dusting and vacuuming. Okay. In a little while. First, I need to look in on the cheepers and the cats.

(some of them, enjoying the sunshine...)

(cat, enjoying the sunshine...)

And this sets us into a day-long chicken spiral of issues. It starts with me noting that one of the Bresse girls has the hiccups. She's had them for a couple of days. This morning, she doesn't want to come down for breakfast. That's not good!

Initially, Ed is not worried. We search the internet for clues. She may have a cold or a parasite or she may have eaten a toxic something or other. In other words, it could be anything! Still, she's looking robust and otherwise healthy. Ed, did you say raising chickens is easy? Really? There are so many things that can disturb the peace in the coop! For now, we're just keeping an eye on her. I mean, maybe she just has some hiccup analogue (chickens cannot have real hiccups because they do not have diaphragms and hiccups are spasms of the diaphragm). She sounds weird, but maybe it's innocuous.

Still, why is she breathing through an open beak?

I go inside to fix breakfast. I bake blueberry muffins. Every day Snowdrop asks for them. Time to indulge the little girl. And us.

And, too, I start in on a balsam fir candle. Here's my thinking: the one in this jar has a burn life of 76 hours. After Thanksgiving, nothing is better than a faint whisper of pine and balsam in your house. This one surely will carry us through the week. Time to start it now. 

Now, did someone say house cleaning? I start in on the dusting. Ed will vacuum floors tomorrow. I'm hitting the walls and ceiling today. I'd done that once when Ed was away sailing, so it shouldn't be too big a job.

That's when I notice the windows. We didn't wash them this spring. It shows. Now, on the one hand -- I can bet that no one stopping by this Thanksgiving weekend will notice. Thanksgiving brings with it its own preoccupations and they do not include staring at smudged up windows. Still, we have a half a dozen large glass panes in the kitchen, plus the patio door, and none of these are looking good. Once you notice the splatter and the smudges, you can't stop looking at them. 

Ed, my darling, I have an idea...

You want to wash the windows, don't you.... 

He washes on the outside, I work on the inside. And it does take a while, but in my eyes, the result is worth it. 

Kitchen windows -- done. 

[While working on the windows I notice that the oven could use a major wipe down as well, but honestly, doing that before roasting a turkey is like sweeping the porch floor before the kids come in from the beach, sandy feet and all. Of course, perhaps vacuuming the house before the kids come to play here Thursday is equally pointless, but there is something deeply satisfying about having a house that's clean and ready for a big celebration!]

And now it is time to pick up the little girl and bring her to the farmette. 

(Snowdrop, enjoying the sunshine...)

A very quick moment outside. Snowdrop is anxious to hit the blueberry muffins. And spice cookies. And chips and fruits and all those other staples of her afternoon here.

In the evening, Ed is just coming in from the barn as I pull in. Not good, he tells me. They have lice.

In trying to figure out what's wrong with the hiccuping Bresse girl, he poked around everywhere -- looking down her throat, feeling her abdomen, checking her out carefully with his magnifying speckles. Lice. It's what you would call an incidental finding, nothing to do with the hiccup or the shallow breathing.

More research follows. We actually have the powder you need to dust them with to clear the lice (living on the farmette, you have such stuff!). So, my chicken healer returns to the barn and takes out one hen at a time to douse each with the powder that will be the first treatment out of several.

But this isn't the end of it. In looking down her throat and feeling her body, Ed was able to give a best guess as to what's troubling the hiccuping Bresse girl. Impacted crop -- he tells me with some degree of conviction. We need to massage that buildup in her crop and have her spit it out. Otherwise, she will choke or die from malnourishment.

So that's the project for tomorrow morning. For now, we wash up super thoroughly and sit down to supper.

We're still working through Sunday's leftovers. Amazing how you can wilt spinach, toss in a few mushrooms, fix up a salad, dice up thin slivers of beauty heart radishes and add it all to a leftover crunchy chicken breast and have yourself a credible meal. 

House looks pretty good.Cutting, brining, cooking start tomorrow. Right after we massage the gut of the Bresse girl. It will be such an interesting day-before-Thanksgiving!

 

Monday of Thanksgiving week

Were I baking for the big Thursday meal, I'd be at it today. But I have long given up on that effort, limiting myself to cranberry cornmeal muffins, which I bake fresh on Thursday.

Let's talk about Thanksgiving foods: did you know that Wisconsin produces more cranberries than any other state, by far? Last year we harvested more than 4 million barrels. Many people think Massachusetts is number one in this. Ha! They didn't even bring in half that amount! And here's another fact to remember this Thanksgiving: Indigenous Americans picked wild cranberries for food (and for dyes and medicines). Insofar as Thanksgiving is a holiday that celebrates early eating traditions in this country, cranberries, and corn, and turkeys (well, wild turkeys) -- these should most certainly grace your table. Sweet potatoes and green beans are native to Central and South America. They were brought up north by Native Indians, so these, too, are a truly American food. Apple pie on the other hand -- you know, as American as apple pie? -- not so much. It originated in England. But you're good with pecan pie! Pecans are of the Americas.

Our own Thanksgiving meal has many of the traditional core ingredients, though I give them modern adaptations. So, turkey, but spatchcoked and brined, green beans but with ginger and garlic, corn -- with chilies for the grownups, potatoes -- a mix of sweet and russet, roasted in a cheese sauce, cranberries, but with oranges, more roasted veggies that actually originate in Central Asia and the Mediterranean regions, and lastly -- those cranberry corn muffins, ones that rely on the availability of buttermilk. And hold on to your hat Hannah -- for dessert? Not apple, not pecan, but chocolate cream pie, which, I'm sorry, but is soooo French in origin that you have to wonder how it ever made its way to our Thanksgiving meal. 

One has to remember that Thanksgiving is many things to many people, though we all, I hope, share in the belief that it is of gratitude and humility and kindness, over foods that traditionally have brought us together on this day.

Okay, but I am running ahead of myself. Today, is also memorable because we crossed over the freezing point. Arctic blast -- over and done with for now.

Chickens -- happy.

Breakfast -- lovely.

We talk about chickens once again. Our Bresse farmer will have roosters to sell in February. We will wait. I have some trepidation about our girls being without a hefty, protective guy all winter long, but on the other hand, Happy never seemed too devoted to his job of keeping the flock in tact. He just seemed happy to be around some of them some of the time. Perhaps gentle roosters aren't well suited to the task of keeping a stern grip on the hens and keeping intruders away from them. And we definitely want a gentle rooster. 

Walk -- accomplished.

We go to our park. The pond is nearly frozen, but all this will change: the snow will melt, the pond will unfreeze this week. We're in for some decently Novermberish weather for the next few days.

And Snowdrop -- picked up at school as usual, brought to the farmhouse as usual.

Though today she passed on outdoor play. Hungry for gingerbread cookies maybe?

In the evening Ed and I eat leftovers. Thanksgiving week is one with lots of leftovers -- before, because you don't feel like cooking much, and after, because turkeys are big. Even when they're small, they're big! 

Do I start cooking tomorrow? Nope. Tomorrow is clean the house day. After that -- I wont leave the kitchen until dawn breaks over a Friday horizon! (Okay, I exaggerate.)

with love...

Sunday

We all have weird passions and hobbies, right? Right?? I mean, there are ones we readily admit to: reading, listening to music, doing art, looking at art, fly fishing, sports -- all kinds of sports, you name it, we're proud to do them, watch them, follow them. These are all what you would regard as normal leisure time activities.

Then there are ones that are just off the wall nuts and still, we love them! Ed, wanting to learn farming comes close to this. But I'm thinking of one that I have had, ever since I was old enough to grab an AAA book (and later Frommers, and Lonely Planet, and still later internet sites too numerous to mention): I love to search out places to stay for forthcoming trips. 

I just love doing it and frankly, I don't know why. I used to be the wee one in the back seat during family roadtrips thumbing through AAA guides until I would get so car sick that my head would spin and my stomach would churn and still, I kept at it. There's a good motel within our price range in about forty miles and they say it has a pool! It's supposed to be "charming! And "attractively furnished!"

Of course, I learned early on that such searches are often futile and result in crashes and disappointments. I used to put in requests in the mail for brochures ahead of a big trip. Well now, glossy brochures can be... misleading. I refined my search skills and learned how to be discriminating in what I read. Words like "nearby" became red flags. Give it to me in kilometers, buddy! "With a view" was laughable. If it has a window, it has a view. And if one room has a lovely view, it doesn't mean that you're going to get it. Unless you begged. I begged.

When the Internet become the common source of information, I juggled descriptions, readers comments, blog accounts, tourist platforms -- all of it. And still, sometimes the place didn't feel exactly right. [One reason why I always stay in the same hotel in Paris is because if I started searching again, I'd go through all the incumbent angst that comes with these searches. Am I missing something? With my sweet Parisian place, I know everything about it first hand. Search no longer needed.]

Ed says I just like reading about hotels, which I know sounds really weird. But he is only partly right. I dont especially like doing searches for other travelers, in much the same way that I didn't really love cooking at a restaurant. Too big a responsibility to figure out the preferences and peccadillos of others. I once remember picking an especially nice room in a hotel for my mom and she complained that the AC blew air right onto her bed all night. You just cant tell when you'll fail to please. You may want the view, another may not give a hoot about the view but will die if the room has inadequate circulation. 

All this to say that we had a very very cold night, but that was then, because today the sun came out and we are slowly starting to warm up, which means I should go for a walk with Ed, but no! I don't do that. I stay inside most of the day looking for a hotel for a trip I will be taking sometime next year.

Bizarre.

Yes, yes, I took care of animals in the morning.

So, I got ten minutes worth of fresh air and for the rest of the day my watch kept pinging to remind me to stand up and I ignored it all. I sat and clicked through countless pages and read endless comments and in the end narrowed things down, but I'm not done yet! 

There, I've admitted to my looney hobby. What's yours?

In the evening the young family is here for dinner. That is one welcome break from my screen time!

We're all in great pre-holiday moods. No one is sick at the moment (except for Ed who is still sounding like he has double pneumonia, but he assures me he is feeling almost great). The stress level, when compared to last year or the year before at this time, is significantly lower. We're all good!

(she finds my bags of hearts moons and stars....)

(he loves ice cream!)

Yep, we're all good.

things I didn't know

The weekend before Thanksgiving is always one of making lists, sorting through recipes, taking the time to muse about past holidays, thinking ahead to how this one might play out.

I'm in a food-ish mood this year. Ina Garten may be posting up and down that this is the year for "easy," but that's not my thinking. I don't want hard, but I want intensely fresh and honest. So I read a lot on what to add, what to repeat. I have a really ancient book on Thanksgiving from Williams Sonoma and it is stuffed with papers and clippings from recipes that I have deemed worthy over the decades. 

All this is rather nostalgic. Lovely, really. Favorites will be repeated. Traditions preserved. 

One more glance at a Thanksgiving Q and A in the Washington Post. Ha! Here's the question that stumped me for many years: when to defrost a frozen bird. Of course I started in too late my first years of turkey roasting. Of course! I was one of those that called the turkey hotline. Help me out here, guys! My bird is hard as a rock! And I would run water baths and do all the tricks and I panicked that in the end, the turkey only appeared unfrozen -- that bits of ice still nestled inside, only to be discovered by a Thanksgiving guest who would then get sick from eating undercooked meat. All that worry for nothing! Today I read that you can actually roast a frozen bird and it will come out just fine: you only need to double the roasting time. Who knew!!!!

My bird this year will be plenty unfrozen though. 

What is frozen right now is the land all around us. And the chickens are miffed: no-one likes a cold stomping space. Too, the Bresse hens are incredible foragers. This is a difficult task when nothing looks tasty out there.

Over breakfast, Ed and I talk about roosters. Should we buy one?

My guy has this (crazy) idea that we should get a Bresse rooster and hatch our own Bresse chickens and yes, maybe try to eat the meat that is purported to be so delicious. I think he's been watching too many Just a Few Acres videos. I do not see us smacking our lips over our own hens. Hypocritical? Sure, but also realistic. I know us too well.

And lo, there is a Bresse rooster for sale. But the owner will only part with him if we take the two Bresse girls along with the cockerel. That would give us a total of ten chickens.

Ten chickens? Do we really want to have ten chickens roaming the farmette lands, crowding the coop, digging up my spring flowers?

We spend a good while on this and we come to no resolution.

Meanwhile, I pick up my veggie bag from the Farmers Unite drop off point. We alternate between partly cloudy skies and snow squalls all day long. I'm in the thick of a cloudburst now and it is beautiful! (I pull up the car by the lake, just to soak in the prettiness of it all...)

Less "beautiful" is the biting wind that's also with us this weekend. Ed and I volley the ball of going for a walk: we should go, he'll say. He hasn't been out walking since he fell ill last weekend. Okay, a little later, I'll respond. And then -- we should go soon, this time from me. Back and forth like this, all the way until the sun is about to set.

And we do go out and it is cold but it is also invigorating and very lovely, in the way that only a winter walk at sunset can be.

I do mumble something about the unfairness of this Arctic air, coming as it does a full month before the official beginning of winter, but, on the other hand, it does get us in the mindset of a cold season. You remember to pack good mittens and a warm cap into your jacket pocket. And to wear warm shoes. And you so appreciate returning home to a warm farmhouse. 

Bresse eggs for supper. The new girls are laying regularly, despite the cold. Big girls, big eggs. We are grateful.

Patagonia Super Berry

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...

happiest

In the wee hours of the morning, once we got over the usual "are you awake's" and "now I am's," Ed read to me an article from Madison.com in which they listed the twenty five lists on which the city of Madison showed up recently. Most were not surprises: we score high in being a place that's livable, bike friendly, nature focused, kind to seniors, good life-work balance, etc. But one was a tiny bit of a surprise (only because all places listed were a surprise): it was a ranking of cities in the US on some platform of happiness. Madison, it turns out, is number 2 in the country in terms of happiness. [I know that all you want now is to know the other happy places, to see if your own home town made the cut. I'm here to please my readers, so here it is, starting with the happiest of happy places: Lincoln NE, Madison WI, Raleigh NC, Portland ME, Billings MT, Sioux Falls SD, Burlington VT, Minneapolis MN, Anchorage AK, and Denver CO. Find the full list of top 100 here.]

It's true that this list was compiled over a year ago and by Men's Health, so perhaps there's a bias to it, but let's not get too caught up on technicalities. Their sources sounded quite legit. We're happy, okay?!?

Immediately I wanted to bring up the equally recent list (this one from 2022, found here) of happy countries. Perhaps you've seen this one?  It goes like this, again starting with the happiest: Finland, Denmark, Switzerland, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Luxembourg, New Zealand, and Austria. [As you can see if you read the full report -- the US is number 19, so not too bad, but given its wealth -- well, not too good either.]

You can't take this stuff too seriously. Or... can you? What strikes you about these happy places? They are northern for the most part. They are not of one political yoke. Lincoln NE leans Republican (slightly), Madison WI leans Democrat (heavily). Finland is believed to be the most socially progressive country in the world  (here's one source for this claim) with a woman as Prime Minister, while in Switzerland the far right party still holds a considerable amount of political sway (though the Greens are closing in). Women gained the right to vote only in 1971. 

So now that we have removed political leanings from the discussion, we can freely speculate where this pull toward a good life comes from. How is it that these places have fostered resilience (because during a long and dark Finnish winter, you have to be resilient, no?) and community and patient perseverance, at the same time that equality and access to nature and to good health care and education have remained priorities?

Of course, at the individual level, happiness is an entirely separate matter. A city or a nation can be ranked as happy, but are you yourself in that boat of happy sailing? Is yours a good life? Granted that during the pandemic we all slumped into a stressed, perhaps even panicked, worry-filled and isolated daily existence. But assuming that you and your loved ones survived, are you now recovering those precious days of joyful living? I hope that, like my good friend in Michigan who, despite huge obstacles, nonetheless finds moments of joy every single day of her life, you too are able to list many things that in the course of a day make you happy. Who knows, maybe your city can kick Madison off its pedestal someday. Or join us on the happiness platform. Well, on the second to highest platform, unless we topple that darn Lincoln NE and rise to the top! Or, better yet -- share space up there! There's room for very many in the happiness club of our beautiful planet.

I make my way to feed the animals. We wont get above freezing today and there's a good side to this: the ground is crunchy rather than muddy. The air is crisp, bracing and energizing. Us happy northerners know how to bundle up and head out!

Breakfast? Back to oatmeal. I mean, we can't abandon the healthy stuff completely in this fast approaching holiday season.

The morning hours are spent on trying out the new recovery plug for my weird camera card. And it works!  Accidentally erased photos -- recovered! (Here are two chucklers that you missed in Sunday's post: cheepers on the run and Ed, not quite up for breakfast.)

Eventually, I leave, heading first toward Clasen's Bakery. This place rolls in the Christmas season for us. The German Bakery has been a Madison staple for many decades. I took my kids there when they were little -- for the Christmas cookies and especially for the chocolate covered gingerbread hearts, moons, and stars.

It's too early to go there with the kids. But not too early for me to stock up on the cookies! That little gingerbread treat with a cup of milky coffee has to be the best afternoon snack on a cold winter's day. The cookies are only sold now, through mid December. No reason not to eat them even before Thanksgiving, right??

Oh, but at Clasen's, temptation strikes hard. How about the gingerbread with a dollop of raspberry jam? Or the printer - with honey, orange peel and hazelnuts, all covered with chocolate? Or the almond windmills? Or how about these spicy cookies?

My cart is filling up. And bread! Let's try their baguette! (Verdict later: it's very good! a little chubby, but the taste is very nice!)

And then I pick up Snowdrop at school and bring her to the farmette.

Play outside, fence with Ed (whose weapon is a baguette)...

... read and eat, play inside. That's a routine that is so engrained (well, maybe not the baguette duel), so loved by her, that we both fall into it without hesitation.

And then I drop her at an evening class, do some late errands and I smile as I turn toward the farmhouse road. I'm ready to go inside where all is blissfully warm and happy. 

My mind is on that word today and I think -- yeah, no matter what, despite it all, we are so very happy. And then that superstitious quiver sounds within me: if you admit to happiness, might you lose it?

I pull into the driveway. Ed is coming up the path. Help me out here -- I call, as I carry a carton of holiday bottles to the farmhouse. As he pulls open the door for me, he says: there's an opossum in the coop. The chickens are scattered up and down the barn wall. But he got Happy.

He got Happy. Our rooster that we bought a handful of years ago to protect the girls from predators. Did he fight the opossum while they fled? Or, was it that his old limp kept him from escaping in time? 

We both loved that chicken because he was so, well, happy! Unusual disposition for a rooster. Never a threat to the hens, to humans. Just, well, happy with his girls. He did have some kind of disability and try as we did to figure out where it came from and how to fix it, we got nowhere. He limped and stumbled and keeping up with the girls was getting to be hard for him. This morning I found him snuggled next to Peach in the barn -- she was his favorite old girl -- and I thought how sweet they looked. Two oldies, finding comfort in each others presence. 

Ed buried Happy and carried out the opossum and we managed to pick up all the seven girls and put them in the coop. At home, we talked about getting a new rooster. Maybe. Sigh...

With so much love...