Sunday

Now that the holidays and two winter grandkid birthdays are behind us, our attention has to turn to farmette living and the one harsh reality we are facing here: there is a problem with the way we raise chickens.

(a Bresse girl, Henny, and Unie)

Yes, we free range. Cage-free, all day long. But, in the evening Ed must put them away in the coop. We have expanded the original structure and it was possible to fit 9 chickens in there (they all crowd together upstairs at night and keep each other warm), though 7 -- what we have now -- is a far more comfortable number. Still, out of those 7, two are old. Peach is very old, Henny is pretty old. We expect not to get any more eggs out of them. 

Some chickens will only lay reliably for a couple of years. That means that within a year or two we may wind up with a retirement home for hens. Seven hens, no more eggs. 

A Bresse rooster is now available for purchase -- both an adult one (though at a distance from us) and a newly hatched one. Should we add him to the group and start hatching chickens, raising them for consumption? If you answer "no" to that, then there needs to be another plan for getting back on track with egg production. Add more young ones? We cant keep adding little chicks without making room for them in the coop. The old girls would have to go. Somewhere.

And of course it is not cheap to feed and house nonproductive hens. But, even if you write this off as the cost of raising "pets," you have to wonder -- do old chickens really make good pets? The four Bresse girls -- we can't even distinguish one from the other (except the one who keeps on hiccuping). We gave them names and we promptly forgot what they were. Even the kids don't pay much attention to them. I used to get some level of excitement when I'd say -- I'm going out to give them some bread treats! Now, no one even looks up at me. Yawn... Okay, come back soon!

You don't think of these things as you buy your first day-old chicks from a hatchery (or pick them up at some reliable chicken farm). And you could say we have been lucky. The reason we are not already overcrowding the coop with seniors is because predators have kept the numbers at a reasonable level for us. Each loss to an invader is an opportunity to add a fresh chick come spring. A new layer as it were.

But assuming we keep them all safe, shouldn't we start thinking about butchering the old hens so that we can make room for new ones, with or without a rooster?

This was our breakfast discussion today.

And predictably, we came to no conclusion. When there is no easy way out of a farmette problem, we often ignore it for a very long time. 

The clouds came back today and neither of us felt like walking. We are slated to have a rather warm January (temperatures will climb above freezing during each day for the next couple of weeks) so we'll wait until a more interesting weather pattern comes along. I know, I know -- buying croissants and skipping walks isn't the "do better" that I put forth as a challenge to the New Year, but in fact, we are moving more and I only had one run to the bakery so far this year! Last December I was bringing home vienoiserie pastries all the time! We are doing better!

In the evening the young family is here for dinner. One noticeable change is that Snowdrop has gone from years of never wearing a jacket from car to house, even on the coldest of cold days, to now always wearing a jacket, and if she had her way, she'd keep it on even in the house. Instead, she makes do with a hoodie inside. Preferably with the hood up. If you coax her into pulling it down, her very long hair will have managed to turn itself into a good sized tangle. 

(here, mommy is helping with brushing it out)

(Done? Up goes the hood.)

This really reminded me of Judy Blume books that I read to the kids: in her novels, for every new behavior that a young protagonist would take up, the parent would always say -- it's just a phase. 

(Hey Sandpiper, you're too young for Judy Blume!)

It makes you go back to your own childhood habits and thank the stars how many of those habits were indeed just a phase.

(Sandpiper is content to move away from Fudge-a-Mania to sitting on his daddy's lap and saying cheese, both because he loves and wants some cheese and because he sees me with my camera.)

Dinner.

A few minutes of play time...

And they are off.

Evening calm. A bookend to a fine day! Wonderful to the end.

Saturday

In the tradition of our family's milestone celebrations, we are continuing today with Snowdrop's 8th birthday party. The girl indeed has a full weekend -- her first sleepover at a friend's house, followed immediately by a party with her closest chums. I am not urgently needed for that event, but I promised I'd stop by for some photos and with good wishes.

But that comes later. First, the usual morning at the farmette...

And because it is Saturday, I then drive out to pick up produce from our Farmer's Unite drop off point (spinach, beauty heart radishes, winter sweet carrots), and hey! As long as I am pointing the car in that direction, isn't this a fine time to also drive over to the bakery??

For croissants and cinnamon viennoiseries for breakfast!

The sun is out and Ed and I push ourselves for a walk in the local park. Yay us!

And we are rewarded! Winters in Wisconsin usually have exactly these kinds of stretches of sunshine. It is what makes them sweeter than winters in, say, Warsaw, where weeks can roll by and the sun remains hidden. And there's that other difference to take note of as well: the sun here sets a whole hour later than in Warsaw today: 4:39 here, 3:41 Warsaw. But of course, ultimately they will catch up with us and exceed our midsummer daylight hours. The magic day for Warsaw is April 27th, when their sunset is at 7:54 and ours doesn't quite get there, staying at 7:53. Thereafter, we slog to the highpoint of June 25th when the sun will set at 8:41, while Warsaw speeds along and has a sunset on June 21st at 9:01. Don't get too cocky, Warsaw people, or I'll start throwing around times for Helsinki or Oslo. Okay, fine -- Helsinki sunset on June 22nd: 10:50! Gotta love that day up north!

And now I'm off to the Nail Place where the Snowdrop party begins. 

(It's for her friends, but it includes Sparrow who is at first apprehensive, but within a few secs, he is very on board with the whole nail painting project!)

She is too, of course.

After everyone's hands look plenty colorful, we go back to my daughter's house for gifts, for pizza, for a movie. I stay for just a moment. I admire their hands...

I say hi to a bewildered Sandpiper...

And I take a group photo, part of which you can see here, in this fragment:

Yes, a happy day for the little girl. Excuse me -- for the big girl. At her age I very much considered myself to be a self sufficient big kid! 

I return home, cook up some fish for supper and exhale. A birthday week well spent. Always a relief, always a feeling of grandparental contentment when it's over.  The kids are just fine, we are all so lucky...

with love...

hatching

To me, January is for hatching new plans. It's what you do! You look at your funds. You plan trips and summer vacations. You start thinking about your spring planting and you envision new gardens. You decide on how your winter will end and importantly, how the rest of your life will proceed. Ambitious? Well yeah! In the best of ways.

If I had to pick themes from this day I'd say it had a great deal of hatching and then also a bit of the usual lovely space in between. Hatching what, you ask? Well, I investigated my eating options for a forthcoming trip. That took a long time! Ed was amused. Then, secondly, I met up with my older girl and we reviewed December and looked ahead to the possibilities of the New Year. Might she be able to get away with her husband and leave me with the kids? Might the two of us get away to Chicago? How will the summer work out for the kids this year? Exciting stuff, hatched in the early evening at a new place for me -- Leopold's Cafe and Bookstore. And just so you know, this place is so popular and so packed, that they have to borrow tables for the spillover from the neighboring Rocky Rococo's Pizza. That is not exactly an atmospheric place, but when you're desperate for a seat, you don't care. Luckily we were not desperate for a seat. (here's my faux-furred girl...)

The quiet moments in-between the hatching were spent with chickens...

And doing my weekly watering of plants that we winter over on the sheep shed windowsills (with hens looking in and cats looking out...).

(Well, not on all windowsills. Some are otherwise in use. Here's our beautiful feral Tuxie girl.)

And they're spent with Ed, both at breakfast and on a walk by Lake Waubesa...

(Looking out, you assume the lake is completely frozen over. The ice fishing huts certainly make you think it's rock solid out there.)

(It's not.)

(What is iced over is the trail.)

And of course, in the evening, we luxuriate, with leftovers for dinner, and with a return to our tagged shows and movies. While the three barn/farmhouse cats sleep. Luxuriously as well.

(Dance and Unfriendly Snowflake)

A beautiful January day! I tell you, this month has lots of redeeming qualities! And perhaps you'll recall -- starting this morning, we begin to lengthen our morning daylight minutes. Slowly. But surely.

May the full moon, the Wolf Moon,  a micro moon shine brightly on all of us tonight.

she is eight

My oldest grandchild turns eight today. Do you remember being eight? I do: I was in Miss Angellini's class at the UN school. Miss Angellini was not a an especially good teacher (young, flustered, a bit spacey), but I liked school anyway. Friends mattered more than teachers in third grade. 

Snowdrop is still in second grade (as was I in the month I turned eight) and she likes her teacher at school, but friends matter more to her as well. It's the kids, not the teacher that she talks about when I pick her up at the end of her day.

Since the little girl will have her family celebration on this day, our whole schedule is readjusted to allow for this event. The plan is that she comes here as usual after school, but then, after 5, her brothers and parents join up for a birthday dinner and a cake of her choice (she wants chocolate, with lemon frosting).

This means that immediately after my morning chores...

... and breakfast (cannot forget about breakfast!)...

I get to work on her imagined cake. I use the FBI batter from Maida Heatter's treasure trove of cake recipes. Reliable. Everyone likes it. And then I use Juniper's lemon frosting (no, she did not invent the recipe, but I associate it with her birthday since her mom used it on a birthday cake then). 

Now, many would say that chocolate and lemon should not be uttered in the same breath. Good for them. Snowdrop likes the combination (and often asks for it when getting a double scoop ice cream cone) and we shall have it today! [And the verdict, written after the tasting: it works!]

So I bake the cake and wait for it to cool and I prepare the basics for the dinner and then I frost the cake and adorn it with candied violets from Toulouse and uff! Have to hurry...

... it's nearing school pick up time!

I was curious what her teacher did for kid birthdays. Turns out that she has them reach into a big basket of stuffies and they get to choose one for keeps. Well now, that's an easy pleaser! Snowdrop comes home with a ...cat. She is, these days, very much attached to cats.

At the farmhouse, now. She takes in the decorations...

Plays some boisterous hand game with Ed...

Books. She asks me to take up the one she currently favors. I tell her I need my reading glasses. She tries them on as well. I want to see myself! Okay....

I read. A lot. It's just that kind of cozy day. And we do one more thing: she needs a new passport and I offered to take the photo for it. I wont post the one we actually will use, but in the multitude of pics of an 8 year old against a white background, I really liked this one:

And in the evening, her brothers and parents come over and it is joyous and wonderful to have them all here on a weekday, a not insignificant weekday!

Dinner...

Presents... (No, Sandpiper, do not open her presents!)

Cake.

And so much love! Happy birthday Snowdrop!!

popcorn

A long time ago, I vowed I would never, ever grouse about small irritants. I'm of the belief that big problems deserve consideration and a search for a solution, and small stuff is best ignored, or checked off with a shrug. Because really, there's a war going on -- homes, schools and hospitals are being destroyed, and floods are ripping structures apart elsewhere, and we're losing animal species to climate change each day, while I munch on popcorn and slide under a warm quilt at night. Honestly!

Take this day:

This morning, the clouds are dense. Peach, our old hen is stuck under the tractor. Who knows how she got there and why she can't get out. Pancake, the roaming feral 7th cat can't find food. I leave some under the writer's shed -- the only place where the chickens wont find it, but she doesn't go there. The other cats are all growling at her presence. Yes, cats make growling noises. I notice that the tree that fell during the storm is covering my seeded meadow. Outside, the dominant color is a dull brown. Inside, a cat has thrown up. I text with my daughter. Kids were crabby this morning and one was late for school. Their dishwasher is still broken. My mom writes her usual email of stuff. Ed comes for one second to breakfast and leaves immediately to attend to a Zoom call. So much for a leisurely start. I run out of cat food for the cat that will only eat at the farmhouse. After breakfast, I read an article that tells me I am not getting enough Vitamin D at the same time that is reminds us that all supplements are suspect. Other daughter texted me that her kid has hives and they suspect an allergy. The cat threw up again. Twice in one day. Assume something's bugging her. And don't get me started on my knee! Ha! Probably acting up because of Vitamin D deficiency! 

I wish I had gone out for morning croissants. I miss morning croissants. 

So, just the usual! Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing that warrants anything more than a smile at the ridiculousness of it all.

And here's the more interesting and beautiful side, the stuff that usually does make it into Ocean:

I rescue the muddled in her old age Peach. (I can almost see the wrinkles in her face!)

Dance enjoys breakfast with me.

The kids are all finally at school. Well, except for one Chicago girl who still has a day's wait for the start of the new semester. 

One of the Bresse chickens keeps laying, despite the fact that it's January. 

The air is fragrant with wet leaves and soaking pine needles. 

I do not take a walk, but instead, I turn toward baking: a lemon honey cake out of my new gifted cookbook. The aromas out of that project are fabulous! 

And in the afternoon, I pick up Snowdrop at school. We have a much needed exhale at the farmhouse. The girl was sick for a week before winter break and then plunged right into a whirlwind of activities. It's an adjustment just to get back to normal!

Her smile is buoyant, her appetite -- ravenous, her routines at the farmhouse -- predictable and lovely. 

A sprinkling of snow in the evening. Snowdrop says it feels more like rain, but then we note the gentle white dusting on the ground and she agrees: like powdered sugar sprinkled from a sieve. Delicate and pretty. 

So much to love about this day, about each day! So lucky to live in peace, in a warm house, with Ed asking each evening -- you want popcorn, gorgeous?

cherries, once again

 Did you know that January 3rd is National Chocolate Covered Cherry Day? As my granddaughter would say -- for real! I called Gail Ambrosias -- a renowned local chocolatier and a friend from the days when she and I used to bake at L'Etoile together. No one in her chocolate shop had ever heard of this, but they're bookmarking it for next year! In the meantime, they reminded me that they do make chocolate covered cherries for Valentine's Day, but that's just not the same. 

I called a few other chocolate shops -- nothing. Now, it so happens that we were gifted this winter a small sack of dried chocolate covered cherries (Harry and David sells them) so all is not lost. We will feast. But I'm getting to be suspicious about National Days, where the parties closest to the celebrated item themselves don't know about the special status of said item. For example, does anyone in the pasta making business even know that tomorrow is National Spaghetti Day?

So much to learn, so little time to do it!

Why bother with these odd invented celebrations? If you think about it, somewhere, sometime, for someone it really mattered. I can't locate the source of this tribute (I admit, I did not try hard), but I have to think that some people with a lot of cherries on their hands and a batch of chocolate melted and on the ready, were jubilant that their never ending work of pouring delicious chocolate over possibly spiked with alcohol cherries was being recognized with this designation. It's rather sad that we tend to take note only of things that matter to us. Sometimes it's good to step back and give a grateful nod to something so seemingly trivial as pouring chocolate over cherries.  

Here, at the farmette, January 3rd is turning out to be a very drippy day. It's the kind of weather that the chickens like more than us humans. Indeed, when I go out to feed them (a little late, because drippy weather makes you really drag yourself up and out in the morning), the six active girls are already foraging, happy to be able to claw at the unfrozen soil. (The seventh, Peach, who is granny-aged in chicken years, never ventures out beyond the barn anymore. Every morning I look to see if she has kicked the bucket, but no, she keeps on going in her very limited orbit.)

We feast on a breakfast of oatmeal (not tempted by croissants at our local bakery! no way! oatmeal all the way!).

I tell Ed that if we are to walk it should be in the morning, because the showers will only intensify by midday. But the guy doesn't push himself in the new year and I can tell that he is too immersed in some late stage of his machine design, so I leave him to his Zoom calls and head out alone. To the New Development, which is perhaps a tad boring, but if you skirt the edge of it, at least you get a good view of the farmette in all its glory looking in from the north. (This is the way we appear to all those multitudes living in the new houses that have cropped up. Between us and them -- a field of prairie flowers.)

It's the last of my quiet days. The kids are back in town tomorrow and there will be a host of events, appointments, trips and celebrations to attend to. Which, of course, is as it should be. Still, I did like the gentle start to the New Year. A slow ease rather than a raucous plunge. Shoring up the energy for what's ahead.

Ocean 19

It is my habit to recognize Ocean's birthday on January 2nd. I've been writing daily posts here for 19 years today.

It makes me wonder: like, how long would I have to live in order to say that I have spent half my life on daily blogging? (Since I am 69 and I started 19 years ago then the answer has to be 100.) And this: what if a day comes along when absolutely nothing deserves an Ocean writeup, even given the relatively low bar of posting about trivial stuff? And what if I'm struck with acute memory loss (it happens to people my age!) -- should I keep on writing? Like -- Dear Ocean readers, Who are you and what is Ocean anyway?

Well, I'll worry about it if and when the time comes to worry about it. Nonetheless, I can say for sure that Ocean has evolved and it continues to adapt to changing circumstances. Just look at these 19 years! I mean, at the outset,  I did not even own a digital camera. So, no photos. And, I was married, but did not want to, nor did I have permission to talk about my married life. I teamed up with friends who also blogged and we developed our own styles of writing. One person was very funny, another was political. I was not going to be either!  So then where did I take this? I just kept writing.

Once I got my digital camera, there followed another period of experimentation. At first, the photos were small. Then they had tags attached -- Ed thought I should try to monetize Ocean, perhaps by selling photos. I was working still, and building my retirement fund, so I was game for any idea that would help. But of course, those trivial sums were never going to move me even one inch closer to financial security, so I dropped that idea. Still, if you go back to earlier posts, you'll find sale tags on each photo. Yuk.

And, too, Blogger -- my hosting platform, changed. I had to shift in the design because they canceled my initial layout. And they stopped supporting Flickr -- my storage place for photos. I moved Ocean photos to Google storage. Eventually, too, I changed the name. The Other Side of the Ocean, sounded to me like a romance novel you'd find at the grocery store checkout. So I cut it down to simply Ocean. Never mind that it makes no sense to call it just Ocean. There is no mention of aquatic life here, not ocean currents, not even sailing - except when Ed ventures out on the Atlantic. A rare event. Still, the blog is and will remain Ocean.

Have there been low points? Oh sure. There are the technicalities: in the first years, the internet was not an ever present thing. Coverage was interrupted at home and not available in places I traveled to. I'd knock on doors begging for a quick Internet fix. Too, finishing a post the same day is hard! I. Get. Sleepy. Forcing myself to get to the end of it, to articulate a final thought -- that's my most common challenge. And, I've had to fight the opposition! I had a troll. Probably more than one, but one was persistent and insistent. I nearly reported her to the authorities. And, I've not always had support from all my friends. But, I've made more friends than I lost over Ocean (and the detractors have come around, tolerating this side of me). My daughters have been fabulous, never complaining about stuff that appears here. But in the end, I am certain that I would have given up if it weren't for Ed. He never reads Ocean these days. He claims that he lives with all my ideas and therefore doesn't have to read about them. Still, he knows that this is what I do and he helps in numerous ways to make that possible. Computers crash. Photos get lost. Dinner and movie watching gets delayed. He's there, by my side, or just a Zoom call away if I am traveling, and he will offer help. Calm, reassuring help. 

I think it's clear that this is a never ending work in progress. Because life is that way too! Nineteen years ago my daughters were not married and I had no idea if and when I would be a grandparent. Now, my life is filled with grandkids and thus Ocean is filled with grandkid antics. For how long? Who knows. I do think the best senior years are to be had if you don't tie yourself down to one idea of what constitutes a good life. You work on staying hopeful, healthy and happy. (Of course, those three are absolutely interconnected!) And so, I eat my veggies and my kids give me plenty of hope and through Ocean, I am in a never ending search for all that is beautiful, joyous and delightful. Kids, chicks, trips. Ed, flowers, forests. Cats. Cherries on the tree, cherries on a special plate, eaten on the porch in dappled sunlight. Sometimes just a quiet walk to the barn and back. It all makes my life wondrous and wonderful and you'll find something of it here, in my posts, I hope.

Today, however, the walk to the barn was uninspiring. Cloudy, at the freezing point, with antsy chickens and cats. 

The color is all inside the farmhouse. Candles, a few flowers, Wisconsin raw honey. Oatmeal with steam rising. Milky coffee and a sleepy Ed. All that sensory pleasure! Enough to last me for a long stretch, as I catch up on chores and Ed washes the floor boards, because yesterday he muddied them with his soaking muddy sock. 

He proposes a walk in Owen Woods for the afternoon. I'm for it. It's not a long hike (the park is right in the middle of the city and the longest trail takes about 50 minutes to complete), but it's got all the essential components. See for yourself! Look hard! 

And in the evening we eat chili. January and chili are like blueberries and Maine (did you know that Maine produced 99% of this country's blueberries?). 

A second day of trying to do better. Remember, you only have to try! 

With love...