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...

Leap forward into a familiar routine

Aren't you supposed to do something unusual on this unusual day in our calendar year? I heard on the radio (on my drive to the bakery) that some people put things in a time capsule on this day. To be read at a later February 29th. I suppose to a person who blogs daily, a time capsule seems very irrelevant. I have an ongoing time capsule. Most of which I will never reopen, but so what. I keep on stuffing it with details every day regardless.

Did you catch those words? "Driving to the bakery." I am back to that. First, though, there was the walk to the barn. A first one for me since I've been back. And a sad reminder that we only have two Bresse hens left. 

As I poured out less food than usual into their feeding dish, I thought about the three that we lost. Unie and two Bresse nameless ones. The trauma remains. Each evening, only one of them now goes into the coop. The second one hightails it to the garage and flies up to the rafters to rest there for the night. We have to climb a ladder to get her down (and into the coop, under lock). Last night, Ed was late coming back from his machining work so I did it for him and even standing on the top rung of the ladder I could hardly reach her. Ed has noted that that chicken is going to kill us in the end, in our attempt to keep her safe.

Well, there wont be "just two Bresse girls" for long. We're getting more chickens this weekend. More on that later.

And yes, I then did drive to the bakery. Madison Sourdough. I needed cookies for Sparrow. (He just loves their cookies and only their cookies! Him and Ed! Must be a guy thing.) The bakery itself felt heavenly! The smell, the presence of all those warm breads and croissants..

Here's a fact: those croissants are actually better than most that I have for breakfast in Europe. Why? Because nearly every hotel now serves mini croissants for breakfast, replacing the traditional full sized ones we get at bakeries. Mini croissants may be excellent, but they aren't the real thing. You dont have enough of that soft center to satisfy your croissant craving. So, good, but not great. Whereas Madison Sourdough croissants are the full blown wonderful heavenly breakfast treat. With a milky coffee -- nothing is better.

Notice the flowers on the table. I picked up several bunches at the grocery store yesterday. Spring is my favorite time to buy grocery store flowers. Daffodils, tulips, hyacinths. They're beautiful and fresh and of course, the markers of this next season.

And speaking of that next season, we are so close to it now! We have had a crummy snow-less winter (too warm, too dry), but we are to have a warm March and that forecast starts today! Yesterday's Arctic blast? A thing of the past. We're climbing the temperature charts once again. It's still windy and that brings a bit of a chill with it, but it's also sunny and just so very lovely. We seize the opportunity!

(I swear he wears shorts year round...)

(Lake Waubesa has a thin layer of ice in one small portion of it. Our bigger lakes have no ice at all. In February! Weird.)

 

And look who is back with their beautiful piercing cries!

In the afternoon, I'm once more in line to pick up the kids after school. This is what exuberance looks like!

 

 

(Sparrow, as always, wants his own closeup)

Nothing like a break from routine to get them so very excited to be back here again!

It's a bit out of the ordinary for me to also pick up their little brother later in the day. Ah, the trio of bandits!And a field of blooming snowdrops!

I take them home and return to a pack of deer on farmette lands.

Well, okay, but please stick with the old growth. Leave any new plants alone! (I don't think the deer are especially listening to me...)

And now it's time to reheat that soup and turn on a new show we discovered on my soon to expire Netflix account: Loudermilk. Maybe it's that we are so ready to laugh, maybe it just hit us at the right moment, but we both thought it was witty and therefore very funny. 

Ending February with a chuckle is always a good way to proceed.

with love...

International Day

This is why I changed my flights for an earlier return: to be back for International Day at the older two kids' school today.  

It happens only once every two years and we got notice just last month that they picked February 28th for it. Today. Snowdrop had begged for me to take part and Sparrow joined in the chorus: do Poland!

The school asks families to volunteer. You get a table (or two), and you display the country of your ancestry to the school community. Putting something interesting together is a huge commitment and it's no surprise that out of their school of several hundred students, only fourteen parents and two grandparents volunteered to do it. One of those grandparents was me. Poland will be presented, or else! -- I said this to myself even as I realized that the work for it would have to be done within that brief period of time when I found out the date (when I was in Chamonix) and when I left to meet up with my friends in Italy. If you were an Ocean reader then, you will have noticed that I spent days on this -- acquiring poster boards, books, thinking up fun facts, harassing my Polish friends to supply me with some postcards of the Warsaw mermaid, days upon days! 

I was, in fact, ready, though I did have to miss the set up window yesterday early evening. I was still flying home then. My set up at the school would have to be this morning, which is a chore only because it is darn freezing this morning (think: 13f or -11c), and the presentations will be starting promptly at 8 a.m. I had to get there before the school even opened for business, so that I could unload the car and put up all my Polish loot.

So, up by 5, waiting in the Starbucks line for a mighty strong brew at 6, and at the school doors, unloading at 6:55. Actually I was there earlier, but no one else was, so I sat in the car sipping coffee and thinking how nice and warm the bed had been this morning.

 

The kids came by grades, forty minutes for each grade. 2nd, 1st, K, 3rd, and finally 4th. They were divided into small groups of 4 or 5 and volunteer parents or teachers lead them from one table to the next, where they would spend a few minutes admiring your country and listening to you do your spiel. 

 

 

Effectively, that meant I had to do a presentation some ten times for each grade, or a total of 50 times. Enthusiastically. 

(Sparrow, coming to listen!)

The day passed for me in a blur. I was so hyped for this that I ran on triple overdrive (and triple strength Starbucks!). I put all my energies into this. All my energies. I did everything but dance and sing. By the time the (more sophisticated) 3rd and 4th graders came around, I added jokes and zingers. 

(Snowdrop, with her Polish gaga!)

In retrospect, I think I felt like I was on a voyage into my past. I was, prior to retirement, a teacher, of course, and teaching large classes was a bit of a performance. A more serious one, to be sure, than, say, drawing "talking pierogi" on a board and imitating different voices for the mushroom stuffed one and for the one with blueberries, but still, the goal is the same -- to get them to listen, to be engaged, and to walk away with a new perspective on the world.

Done! Packing it all up now, in a sleep-deprived daze!

From there, to the grocery store, where I spent a very relaxing hour grocery shopping. Only I must have put some foods into someone else's cart, because I came home without two packs of chicken and I swear I had carefully selected two such packs from the grocery shelf. 

Lunch? Or was it breakfast? Finally, at 3 p.m., once I unpacked. I had coffee and a leftover cookie from my last restaurant in Florence.

It was one heck of a day.

In the evening I made soup. I just need a big pot of soup for this week. And some evenings on the couch, dozing off, with Ed.

And so much love...