Thursday

The chickens are a mere cartoon version of our own daily trajectory. Honestly, you think they're not thinking it through to structure for themselves a good life? Well, neither are we! Take this morning. I head out to open the coop for them. The two older girls -- Blue 9 and Blue 11 (these are the foot bands we slapped on their claws) -- meander toward the courtyard. Eventually one flies up to the garage rafters where she now retires at dusk, and lays eggs during the morning hours. Stupid for her to scale the walls and position herself in a tight, uncomfortable corner up there? Oh yeah! Just as dumb as falling asleep on the uncomfortable couch and staying there with a cramped neck all night. The other chicken, her buddy, ambles over to the hydrangea bush where she looks rather forlorn. Since the loss of her three compatriots,  and the garage laying habits of the other Blue hen, she is often walking the farmette lands on her own. Girl, there are four new chickens just waiting to be integrated into your fold! Hang with them! They need your guidance and worldly wisdom.

(The Yellow Brave one -- meaning the new one year old with the yellow band on her foot -- is off and running. Also alone. The three babes are too chicken to head out!)

In other words, the small things that would obviously improve their day are so within reach and yet they look elsewhere, choosing the colorful path, the immediate temptation. Just like humans!

Ed and I come back to oatmeal this morning.

Immediately after, I worked (not very hard) on preparing birthday greetings to my two sons-in-law. Fate would have it that they have birthdays within ten days of each other, which is rather a gift for me as it allows me to think, reflect and admire the both of them at the same time. What matters, of course, is that my girls love them and that they make them happy. Luck would have it that I like the both of them as well, but of course, it would be hard to imagine otherwise, given how good they are to and for my daughters. 

From there, I move to the flower fields, clippers in hand. I am very aware of the fact that I can do so much less at one haul this year than last year and even less than the year before. That's okay! Given the lovely weather of the past few days, I got a head start on the season. And I'm mindful of what Ed said -- we do as much as we can and as much as we want to (that, for me, is not necessarily the same thing, but it's close enough!). And then we pause. 

 

 

 

My pause is actually a bit of a rush -- to pick up the kids at school.

From there -- to the nearby pie place to pick up a pie for their dad (it's his day!).

And back to the farmhouse. We read, yes, that's a given. But, too, I have to snitch little moments -- to deal with the laundry, to tidy up the playroom, to peel tomatoes for tonight's chili. And in doing that last task, I glance outside, and what I see warms my heart: all six chickens, momentarily together.

Way to go, girls! Strength in numbers! 

Indeed, at dusk, they all go into the coop, even the garage girl. Wow. We are in a moment of total chicken calm and unity! And here I thought they were like us, drifting and confused.

We all have so much to learn.

Chili, chocolate, couch. The three c's of a beautiful evening. 

with so much love...

Wednesday

If you follow the CDC recommendations and get all your Covid vaccinations when they are made available for you, oh senior person, then you should be in line to get your 9th Covid shot now. I kid you not, I'm on my 9th today (as is Ed). The first was in January 2021. It feels no less wonderful to get this one. Freedom. It buys me a dose of it. Travel with less worry. Kids, at my house, daily, with less worry. Keeping the virus away from Ed (who has never had it). All of it, thanks to that miracle that kept so many of us out of hospitals and off the obit pages of our local newspaper.

And speaking of freedom, today is the day I walk over to the coop to grant all six girls their freedom.And of course, only the two older ones, along with a hesitant one year old strut out of the coop, dusting off their feathers and embarking on their day long bug and seed search. 

 

 

The three teenagers, bold that they were the first day, are not so sure that the wide and unencumbered world is such a fine place after all. They stay in the coop for the better part of the morning. Mission accomplished! They feel safe there! They will remember the warmth of the coop at the end of the day!

Wont they?

Meanwhile, Ed and I have our breakfast feeling at peace with the world, with the hens, with the cats too. 

No one is fighting, no one is destroying the flower beds. Yet. 

It's sunny and beautiful outside. A tad on the cool side, but lovely nonetheless. I do a spot weed pull and Ed mows down my trimmings so that they'd decompose faster and more evenly. In other words, we do some slight garden work at a very relaxed pace, all the way until lunchtime. (Well, my lunch is the usual protein cookie and coffee. Most everyone has a meal that they can do without. For me it's lunch. Still, I have to keep that energy level going strong, given my afternoon kid commitment, so I reach for my newest friend -- a Go Macro bar.

And speaking of kids...

A good day was had by all. Oh, sure, there's always a report on some skirmish between the usual suspects in class, but happily, nothing terribly troublesome, and nothing that made either child sad.

And in the evening Ed and I rolled up our sleeves (figuratively! It's cold outside!) and faced the chicken-into-the-coop-for-the-night project. Equipped with resolve and a flashlight (in case the hunt would take us late into the night), we picked up the hen that routinely hides in the garage and set off for the barn to deal with the rest.

You wont believe it! We hardly believed it! The remaining five were all snuggled together in the coop.

Ed turns to me -- that was brilliant! I respond -- it only shows that the human brain is slightly bigger than the pea sized brain of a chicken. Evolutionary advantage! The fact is, though, that we are enormously relieved. Until the next trauma sends the hens into obscure hiding spots, we have the coop issue in hand. Suddenly, chicken care seems like the easiest job in the world.

with love...

Tuesday

The prison sentence continues. Four new hens, locked in the coop for the day. (I'm giving them 48 hours behind bars.) Two older girls -- free to roam.

Mean? No, realistic. Ed is out on his mega machine design project until evening. I have chores in the morning, kids in the afternoon. Neither of us can go on chicken hunts throughout the day and neither of us wants to search for them late into the night. We're hoping that they will feel enough familiarity with the coop that they wont stray far once we do release them. Tomorrow.

Our morning is disrupted by the demands of the day. I need refills on bread product for the kids and so long as I have to drive to the bakery (13 minutes each way), I surely want to get a fresh breakfast treat for myself out of the deal. But Ed can't wait for me to get back, so I settle for a breakfast in two parts: first, fruit, with him. Okay, and the cat.

Then I do my bakery errand...

... and I don't go home afterwards. Despite severe coffee deprivation, I drive on to the grocery store to do the weekly shopping. I have a voracious fruit eater here each day (in addition to my own fruit consumption, which is huge!) and I need to restock.

And only late in the morning do I sit down to breakfast number two. With a double shot of espresso in that milky cup.

Ah.... Now that feels good!

A quick check of the house plants follows: here's a real surprise! Last year's Amaryllis, the one I got in December 2022, bloomed again this week. That's not supposed to happen. Those bulbs are a one shot deal. You're supposed to compost them after they do their thing. Except the leaves were pretty, so I left it on the window sill. And guess what?

It popped open some new flowers for us. Amazing!

Also blooming? Crocuses outside!

Okay, great. What else do I have to report from the farmette? Well, the season of "agony" has begun. I fall into a trap today that is about as predictable as a baby wailing just when you want to get some rest. I walk out to the barn to check on the hens. All good there. On the way back, I plucked out a creeping charlie from the Big Bed. And that's when I noticed that there were maybe a million honey locust seed pots littering the flower bed. I have used every strategy in the book to get Ed to agree to take down that locust tree, but he absolutely wont hear of it. Realizing that the seed pods are a real nuisance, he had said that come spring, he would rake them up for me. But Ed is not here today. And good weather days are precious. I should at least start in on the raking job...

Two hours later, I'm done. The field is cleared. My hands have whopper blisters and my smart watch is sending ecstatic messages congratulating me on exceeding my "workout goals."

I tell you, it's always like this: I pull a weed and before I know it a huge gardening project sucks me in and I am lost to the world. You might think this to be a good thing. So much exercise, right? Maybe, but I am now officially exhausted, even as it is time to pick up two lively kids.

As we pull into the driveway, my young hawk spotters shout out -- hawks! there are three circling above!

Great. I was planning on releasing the four very visible (so white!) new chickens tomorrow. With spring hawks overhead, we are entering the period of Extreme Chicken Vulnerability. 

Life at the farmette is so full of drama...

 

Time to pull out the pan and make comfort food for supper. Farro with cauliflower in a tomato cheese sauce. With a Negroni sbagliato at the side. I earned that, for sure!

 

Monday

A breathe easy day. No rush, no worries, no chicken chasing. Here's how it all unfolded:

After reviewing our options, and with the understanding that we will have rain and possibly storms tonight, Ed and I decided to keep the 4 new hens in the coop for the day and pluck the two old ones out for their usual bout of free ranging freedom. 

Peace is restored.

Honestly, I'm not sure that one or two days of confinement will do the trick for the new ones. Chicken memories are weird. Ever since The Raid of a few days back, everything is a little off in our coop. One of the old girls (Ms. no. 9), the one that used to routinely end the day in the coop on her own, refuses to go back there and instead finds night shelter in the garage. (That's the one for which we have to climb a ladder.) Her memory of that awful morning has created a new safer (according to her pea brain) place to rest. So the question is -- will the new girls remember the coop now as a safe place, where nothing bad happens and food gets tossed in by loving wonderful humans, or will they remember it as a place of confinement, best avoided at all costs because awful humans may take out the ax if you go near the place?  I'm hoping that it's the first and that training them to love the cozy comfy coop snuggles will create an image that they will conjure up come dusk. But who knows. For now though, I'm sure we want to keep them locked up. Freedom has to be earned!

All is thus quiet on the farmette lands. Because it is a more typical March day -- above freezing, with that chance of rain, I walk the flower fields and pluck some old spent stalks and inspect what's there and budding. And lo! What do I see if not the first crocuses of the year! A big Wow and Yay for that!

I wash up some gardening gloves for all future walks outside. There are always weeds to pluck and I noticed that those gardening hands of mine have to be more protected than in the past. Skin breaks, infections form. So I get my gloves in order.

And we eat breakfast, alone (meaning without cats), because the wise felines have decided that this kind of weather deserves respect. Perfect for prowling. So far, thank God, no bird hunting has occurred. 

I spend the morning on trip planning. I have one coming up and it requires careful advance work. I cannot tell you how happy I am to have a calendar full of reservations and ideas once I am in a new place, so that I don't have to frantically scour around for what's available. I have been warned by the hotels of my forthcoming destinations that I am traveling in the Holy Week before Easter (so you can guess it's a country that has a significant commitment to religious holidays) and that things will be crowded and booked up. Well fine. I can handle that. With advance legwork!

And then it's time to pick up Snowdrop. 

I wondered if she would feel that emptiness of her missing friend (the one who moved away this weekend). If she did, she did not show it. Kids flash quickly between emotions and Snowdrop is especially chill when she comes to the farmhouse.

We spend a lovely afternoon reading together.

In the evening --- well, it's Monday, so it's time for leftovers for supper. And a return to Loudermilk, our current series of choice on Netflix. [Yesterday, we had watched the next episode of Pete, the framer's YouTube video -- "Just a Few Acres Farm" -- which he posts every few days. It was, in my view, an especially troubling episode, because he took some time to reflect on how much venom and uninformed commentary there was these days, so that fringe beliefs get center stage as people feel compelled to express their contrarian views. I imagine he'd gotten the usual bunch of crazy commentary on his videos. I was sorry to see Pete so sad over this and I asked Ed if he thought we'd all turned meaner these last few years -- in our thoughts as much as in our words. His answer? -- No, of course not. Remember, we had a Civil War not so long ago... I suppose it's somewhat reassuring to know we've always been a mean bunch. I can only hope that we're all working on it!]

Flashes of thunder and rain outside. That's a good thing. Plants need the soak.Yep, a good old fashioned cleansing rain.

With love...

Sunday

Freedom. A superb idea. Until it isn't. Because sometimes, you have to teach those who long for freedom how to use it wisely when it is theirs. You can't just open the gates and say -- you're free, you're free and give a nudge and expect all things to fall into place.

You know of course that I'm talking about chickens. And you may rightly suspect that the above is a thought that came to me not this morning, when I was opening the gates of their confinement, but rather this afternoon, when I was chasing chickens out of our one neighbor's yard.

You'll have read perhaps that yesterday we added four young hens to our flock (of the American Bresse variety, because if she isn't living in the Savoie region of France, she's not a full fledged Bresse girl, no matter what her genetic material may be). You remember maybe that one escaped in the transfer to the coop and we had to chase her up and down and all around, until darkness fell and she collapsed with exhaustion as we cornered her in the barn.

This morning (and it is a lovely morning and an even lovelier afternoon!), I went out to open up the coop. Our strategy always had been to let the newbies out with the older girls. Eventually they form a pack and in all instances, they see the coop and the barn as their home depot. The new ones never stray far from that base. Initially anyway.

That was the way it worked in the past. These four new girls are an entirely novel proposition.

I'm trying to think like a chicken here and I suppose belatedly, I'm not surprised that their initial instinct is to flee. Suddenly, these teenage chicks are without boundaries in a strange place with strange animals (cats) and people (us) threatening them (in their chicken heads, we are a threat). Of course they're going to get away as fast as they can. 

My hope is that they wont move far from the barn. That they eventually will join the two older ones. But today, all bets are off. The two old ones go as they usually do to the garage (who knows why -- it's their routine). The four younger ones? Once outside, they convene...

 

 

 

And then they part ways. Two of them go to the eastern edge and hide under the huge pine for the better part of the day. Well, at least they're not wandering away! (Do you see them?)

 

 

 

The two remaining ones, however, flee to the west. I chase them back (if you do a wide sweep, you can chase them, sort of). 

 

 

 

I go in, we eat breakfast...

I look outside -- the two wanderers are missing again. Into the neighbors yard they went. I chase them out once more.

And I think -- there's got to be a better way!

I know the literature will tell you to keep them under lock in the coop for a few days until they get used to the idea that this is now home. But we've never had to do that before! And this is such a lovely day! A crime to keep them confined!

Ed is unconcerned. He has a very que sera sera attitude about the whole thing. Eventually, according to him, it will all straighten itself out. Well yeah, if we can avoid the predators, and if we can get them into the coop at night, and if we keep them off the road, and away from the neighbor's yard!

Who knew chicken care would be so stressful!

(I'm not stressed -- says Ed.)

 

In the afternoon, we leave all this behind and go for a bike ride. It is the most gorgeous March day ever! Brutally windy, but we persevere! I mean, at 68f (20c) and sunny -- nothing seems impossible! Just splendid! 

(Indeed, I, too, have my first Snowdrop out in the yard!)

(Yes, shorts and short sleeves. On Ed, not on me yet!)

(choppy waters on Lake Waubesa)

And then I lose myself in the prep of dinner. With an occasional run outside to check on/chase after  chickens.

Evening sets in. The young family arrives. 

(I fix dinner in the kitchen, he fixes one in the playroom.)

Time to eat. And, time to move the chickens into the coop.

Ha!

Let me just give the upshot: I got dinner on the table on time...

 

The chickens? They all scattered. All over farmette lands. 

We took our flashlights and searched. And we did find them all: under trees, inside trees, in the garage, in the barn. It took two whole hours and much squawking followed, but we found them and locked them up.

One thing's for sure: no one is leaving the coop tomorrow! It'll be tight in there. We wont have happy chickens. But we're not playing that game again!

You have to earn your freedom, girls, you hear?!

 

with love...

 

Saturday

Ed asks -- what are you going to be doing this morning? I know he's busy. He has an interview at the university sailing club. He's thinking of teaching there this summer. In fact, we had practiced last night -- he gave, in my view, great answers to the expected questions! But then, I know nothing about sailing. It all sounds so complicated...

To his question this morning I say -- I'm going to be writing.

This is where so much of my loosey goosey time goes to. [Ha! Did you hear that yesterday, the Merriam Webster people proclaimed that it is now considered acceptable to end a sentence with a preposition? When asked why the change, an expert grammarian explained -- people are doing it anyway. And besides, many of the rules in proper English usage are simply made up by old fuddy duddies who wanted to distinguish themselves as some kind of authority. All those years of worrying for naught!] 

Ed will ask if I'm writing my next book. And I will always respond that I have so much non book writing to do that I dont have time for it right now.

Of course, first thing's first. I go out to feed the animals.

Our two hens are about to get some coop-mates. 

 

 

 

We're getting four adolescent Bresse hens (called pullets) from the breeder of Bresse chickens. (He happens to live just about an hour west of us.) 

I'm a little uneasy, because we haven't yet identified or dealt with the predator who keeps coming back each night, trying his damnest to get into the coop. That's not likely going to happen -- our coop is pretty secure. But if he gets bold and comes during the daylight hours when the hens are out and about, we're in trouble. And, too, the new pullets may be initially hard to coral into the coop at night. Spring time is when the predators are most active. So we're being cautious -- we're opening up the coop later than usual, but with free ranging, there's always a danger that someone will seize a hen.

Why is it that I even like raising chickens??

And so after breakfast...

 

... I give Ed a haircut and a beard trim and then he goes off for his interview and I fill the morning with writing. Emails, post drafts -- it all takes so much time! 

And in the afternoon, we set out for Mount Horeb -- a small town to the west where there is a restaurant, Brix Cider, that appears to have an interesting menu. Our chicken farmer works there and we are curious enough to try it.

 

 

But we don't stay. We buy take out mushroom sandwiches (locally sourced!) for later. We are on a mission!

Our next stop is the New Glarus Woods State Park, where we hike a gorgeous loop. Well, it's just a regular forested path really, but today any hike loop is going to be stunning. The weather just makes you want to sing! -- mostly sunny, warm, spring like! 

And from there it's a ten minute drive to our Bresse chicken guy. From this bunch he'll select for us our next generation Bresse hens.

We pick up three pullets and one freshly grown girl (she's a year younger than our two back home, and the others will be two years younger). And we bring them home. Along with a handful of tags that we will use to distinguish them all: the three year olds, the two year old and the babes that are just nearing one.

Here's where the excitement begins. Full swing. We pull into the farmette driveway. We take the pet carriers loaded with hens into the barn. It's dusk. Ed puts away our two old girls (they now have bandettes on their legs! The old girls are "Number 9" and "Number 11!"). But in reaching into the animal carrier to get one of the pullets, Ed missed her entirely (they are carzy wigglers!) and she manages to escape. Out onto the farmette lands. Totally unfamiliar terrain, without boundaries, barriers or fences. 

There is no way we are going to be able to catch her. Indeed, she flies in the direction of the road to the south, then, chased away from it, she flies in the direction of the wetlands to the north, then, under trees, into fields and each time I get closer, she flaps madly and scoots in the opposite direction.

We can't leave her out in the wild. She'd be a sitting duck for every animal that comes this way in search of chicken meat. 

Eventually, I decide that our brains are still that much larger than a chicken's brain. We'll outsmart her! Yes we can!

And we do. We coral her back toward the barn and in fright, she goes inside, where she settles along the wall, exhausted. It takes us several tries, but eventually Ed, with his enormous hands and long arms, is able to grab her from behind. 

We are jubilant!

The rest of the hens are transferred without issue. For tonight, they're all snuggled together in the coop. Six Bresse hens! Tomorrow, the fighting will start, and a new pecking order will be set, but hey, that's peanuts compared to tonight's chase!

At the farmhouse, we eat our take-out sandwiches and exhale. Four new chickens, safely bedded down with the two old ones. With beautiful weather all weekend long.  We're feeling mighty lucky here, in our small corner of south-central Wisconsin.

March

Each year it's the same: March comes, the excitement mounts. Projects line up like children in a cafeteria, waiting for their turn. Dig holes for soon to arrive persimmon trees. Put up a strawberry growing station (a new idea, spun just today!). Clear the flower fields of last year's growth. And take note of all that's breaking ground right about now.

Yes, early!

By the date of my birthday (third week of April), all has to be ready and the bulk of the planting for the year begins in earnest. Perennials and annuals. All of it. It takes about a month to get it in the ground or in the pots. By late May I'm on the finishing touches. 

Meanwhile, Ed will have started his tomatoes and melons and artichokes this year. I'll help with the seeding, but it's mainly his responsibility to get things going in those reused and half disintegrated Dixie cups. Deadline for this? Late March.

There is so much to do in early spring that I sometimes wonder why I love this season at all. It's all work and no play. With the exception of perhaps a quick trip to Chicago, when April rolls around, I am up to my neck in dirt. 

(I feel a little tired just thinking about all that I want to do this year!)

So, it's March. 

Typically the weather in March is... disappointing, to put it kindly. You're hungry for spring, you get more of winter. But this year is about as a-typical as they come, so we start off with reasonable temperatures (a high of 50f/10c) and plenty of sunshine.

The chickens are happy, if a little bit lonely (I'm guessing here).

Breakfast, with Ed. And the two cats. I ask him -- did you sit down at the table when I was gone, just because the cats like to "have breakfast with us?" His answer -- yes.

Because it's such a lovely day, we go out early for a hike. Today we return to the DNR lands that are maybe two miles south east of the farmette. There's a beautiful trail running through them and there is never anyone on it!

It's slightly hilly, so every once in a while, you pause and take in the view.

Such luck to live by so many walkable paths and trails, given that we are a country where access to the rural lands is in general greatly restricted. (We have no "right to roam" here. That's a European thing.)

 

And now it's time to pick up the kids. What? Pajama day again??

 

 

 

Oh, but what's this? Snowdrop's expression is just so unusual...

Very quickly she lets her sadness spill out. She'd just found out that her best classroom friend is leaving. For good. Out of town. This weekend.

Oh, does that feel close to home! People are always leaving, in this mobile society of ours. And of course, I left too, leaving behind friends who were once as close as family to me. How to maintain friendship at a distance? Surely I've had way too much experience here. Nearly all my best friends have moved away. And one, who is truly an ancient bestie, lives an ocean away. How do you handle such distance? 

I tell Snowdrop that you can go for a period of time with little contact... (Sparrow pipes up from the back seat here -- what's contact? -- he asks. Such a good question. I talk about contact.) And then, you can send a card, and your friend responds, and before you know it, you're zooming and writing and visiting and the distance, though posing challenges, does not stand in the way of perfect friendship.

Was she reassured? Maybe temporarily. Playing games with Ed distracts her.

But eventually she comes back to it. And I cannot deny that the next weeks in school will be hard for her.

 

Friday with the kids is crazy day of course.  Eat, read, play -- but not too long because there's violin for Sparrow and dance for Snowdrop. 

A big exhale for me when each kid is at his or her proper lesson on time.

And now comes evening. My head is still full of spring ideas. Now is the time to make a Negroni Sbagliato (prosecco instead of gin). And unwind. On the couch. With Ed.

with love...