Just Enough, Just in Time

"Just in Time Eggs" Lori exclaimed.  And, as it turned out, just enough.

The girls have been rather parsimonious these past couple of weeks.  Where once a daily take of eggs was 8-10, the common harvest more recently has dropped to one or two.  It's a daylight thing -- and though the books and blogs I read don't acknowledge it, I have to believe the single-digit temperatures intrude their own disincentive.  All that, plus their snowbound inactivity.  No snowmen are getting assembled out in the chicken yard.  They don't much like wet feet, and so keep themselves to the enclosed run and the little area on which I have scattered straw.

But Thanksgiving week was upon us and we had serious plans for cooking.  Fortunately we had hoarded back what we trusted would be an adequate supply for the menus.  Half a dozen went into the breakfast cups we served to guests on Thanksgiving morning.  And there was the sweet potato pie Lori baked for the evening's dessert.  The fried rice for Friday's Asian-themed celebration required a couple more.  And so it was that when it came time to work on the special pear cake intended to cap the special evening only two remained in the basket, while the recipe called for three.  "I think we are actually going to have to buy some," we acknowledged to one another.   

"Let me go check, just in case," I said without much enthusiasm.  Contrary to all the lore that has encircled me since childhood, my hens seem to prefer afternoons for laying.  They might rise early in the morning, but it seems to take them the better part of the day to work up -- and out -- an egg.  This mid-morning expedition, in other words, stood little chance of success.  But there they were -- three of them, the little over-achievers, as if recognizing the special occasion and rising to it.  Enough, with two to spare -- just in the nick of time.

And then came evening and the eggroll preparations.  The fillings were prepared, the wrappers were arranged for the grand assembly.  With a forgetful panic we realized that eggs were needed to seal the rolls.  Two eggs to complete the job.

Which we suddenly remembered we had.

Exactly two.

Just in time.

Just the right number.

As if the girls had been reading our recipes.

But that's a foolish thought.  They are just stupid chickens, right? 
Chickens can't read, can they?

I am not prepared to say.  What I CAN say is that the breakfast cups were memorable, the pie was delectable, the eggrolls admirably held together, and the Double Pear Pudding Cake with Warm Caramel-Cognac sauce was, indeed, a mountaintop experience. 

Just enough, just in time. 

The sky is forecast to be clear and sunny, with moderating temperatures through the weekend.  The snow will melt giving the chickens free range to play and stretch their legs.  And who knows, maybe they will even lay an egg or two along the way.  But as far as I'm concerned they have earned a rest.  An egg sabbath, if you will.  We'll need more eventually, and there are customers after all.  But we have leftovers in the meantime.

And gratitude.

Happy Thanksgiving, girls.  Thanks for all the help.

Home

It was my omniscience that determined yesterday to be the day the twins moved into the big coop after six weeks in the annex.  Or maybe it was the winter-chilled lethargy that had been shaving down my interest in outside tasks these last few days.  Whichever, I thought I would give it a try and see what happened.  I'll admit that its not that much extra effort to open two coops in the mornings and close them again each evening.  It doesn't really take that much time to check both sets of nesting boxes for eggs each afternoon, but after a month's worth of enforced segregation and two weeks of daytime inter-play, it seemed reasonable to think that the girls would all be well enough acquainted to share a common roost.  That, and the onset of winter, plus forecasted nighttime temperatures plunging below the teens of recent darknesses into the single-digits starting tonight, made me suspicion that the girls might welcome every extra degree of body heat they could capture in their space. 

So, yesterday afternoon I closed up the annex while everyone in the yard was otherwise occupied.  As dusk began to tuck the beaks and droop the eyelids, eleven sets of feet trooped up the ramp and settled in for the night.  The twins padded across the straw I had scattered over the snow toward their familiar slumbers. 

And pulled up short.  Somethings was amiss. 

Access thwarted via their usual entrance, they bobbed around to the far side. 

Nothing.

In tandem they reapproached the door, and stared at it, as if force of will could raise it.

Nothing.

Again they circled to the far side, around the back, and again approached the front -- sneaking up on it, perhaps, as though it might be playing a trick. 

Still closed.

After yet another circuit around, both jumped atop the hay bale positioned as a windbreak nearby, and then up upon the roost as if a different angle of vision might reveal some access they had missed. 

Alas.

Having run out of options, and after one final circle around, the two adolescent Light Brahmas began the long march across the straw toward the Big House. 

The Trail of Tears.

Slowly they moved, as if every step was a labor, until reaching the half-way point they stopped.  It was as if something deep inside of them suddenly and simultaneously comprehended that they simply couldn't do it.  Without so much as a cluck or a sideward glance, they turned together and reversed course; retreating back toward the annex -- the only space they knew or remembered to be home. 

I have no idea what inward plan they had silently hatched.  Would they have continued to circle the structure, praying like Joshua that the walls would come down?  Failing that, would they really have huddled up together against the closed door of familiarity, resolving to keep each other as warm as they could, and try their best in a cuddled embrace to ride out the night?  Would they eventually give in to despair, resign themselves to community, trek back up to the main coop and silently, chastened, slip in amongst the others?

I have no way of knowing.  That mid-course reversal and dejected retreat broke my heart and, armed again with boots, coats and gloves, I trudged back out into the yard and opened the door to their home.  I'll never know, I suppose, if their muted clucks were gratitude or scolding as they toddled past me through the opened space and settled into the familiar bedding within.  And we'll have this drama to play out again in the coming evenings.

But last night all of us slept a little more peacefully.  And if this morning's exit is any attestation, everyone stayed warm enough.

All Will Be Well

Winter has pounded on the door, announcing its arrival with shredding winds, teasing dusts of snow, and temperatures in the teens. We had ample warning, and so in the few days preceding we hustled to complete what preparations we could. Drip tapes and feeder lines for the garden's irrigation are stowed until summer. The remaining Swiss Chard and Kale from the first of the season's planting are harvested, blanched, bagged and frozen, and a low tunnel now covers three garden rows teaming with adolescent collards and kale, valiantly stretching the growing season to its extreme. Winds that first night took destructive advantage of the structure's weaknesses, but nothing was ultimately lost apart from our earlier pride of accomplishment. We scrounged supplies for the fix and the resulting version is indeed "new and improved." Meanwhile, I had prepared two long trenches using the broad fork and manure, and together we nestled garlic into the ready soil. Eventually I will want to cover the beds with stray, but with any luck this arctic blast is but an opening salvo that will moderate a bit and take a deep breath before settling in for the duration and I can take advantage of the reprieve to tie up outdoor loose ends. If not...well, I suppose that's why they make thermal overalls and coats.

I had conceived of a plastic jacket for the chicken coop to help winterized their space. The idea wasn't to seal it from the elements, but simply expand space out of the wind and prevent snow from drifting into the run. I had applied industrial strength Velcro strips around the dome, and together Lori and I draped the plastic sheeting and applied the facing strips. Subsequent days have taught me that adhesives aren't made for freezing temperatures, but bungee cords have succeeded where Velcro had failed. The heated waterer is plugged in and operational, and the girls seem happily at home. Though to my way of thinking it would be warmer to overnight snuggled in with the rest of the flock, Nan and Flossie, the two newest arrivals -- named for the Bobbsey Twins they faithfully emulate -- still return to the annex for bedtime, but otherwise seem fully at home with their neighbors.

I suppose converting the lawn mower to a snowblower is next, but the weekend will likely be soon enough.

Inside, the fireplace has been repaired, the furnace has been serviced, and the windows are tight. The snowshoes are hanging ready in the garage and the freezers and pantry shelves are stocked with the goodness of summer.

And we have the luxury of time together to which to look forward in these shivering days of diminishing light.

Which is to say "welcome back dear winter. We were expecting you, and all is made ready."

Well, almost ready. But all will be well.

A Garden of Dirty Dishes

I feel rather like I do staring at a kitchen overtaken by dirty dishes and pots and pans after the meal has been consumed and the guests have left for home.  Every flat surface is stacked with the detritus of culinary hospitality -- the carnaged infrastructure of appetizer, entree, dessert -- and all-in-all I'm tired and would rather go to bed.  It is the wisp of smoke drifting out of the barrel of a fired gun.

 Except the garden is the workplace I now observe with numbed aspiration, and it's the garden that needs to go to bed.

I have confronted this reality each of the preceding years.  It's more fun to imagine the garden and plant it in the spring than it is to clear it and prepare it for winter.  There are hoses to coil and hang in the shed; there are irrigation drip tapes and feeder lines to detach and roll and store.  There are crop remnants to pull and compost, and the remaining greens and tomatoes to harvest and freeze.  There is manure to spread and dry beans to gather and shell.  There are fence lines to clear of grass and weed and breaches in the fortifications to discover and repair.  Clean up and closure, nothing tantalizes me toward the duties; they are merely the grunting labors of sweeping up spent fireworks.

But I smile as I remember.  We have, indeed, enjoyed the fireworks.  It has been a good summer in the garden.  It is far more satisfying to detail the abundance as we have this year than to stammeringly admit and account for the disappointments as in previous seasons.  Not everything flourished -- I still don't have a brussel sprout to my credit or an eggplant to call my own -- but I can hardly complain about the otherwise bounty.  We have eaten from our own hands, and eaten quite well -- and will, well through the winter.  Every time one of us pops open one of those jars or thaws one of those freezer bags we will smile all over again.

And anticipate yet another crop.

Already there is its foretaste.  In recent days small boxes have arrived, packed with seed garlic to be planted in the next couple of weeks, over-wintering in the ground preceding next summer's harvest -- a glimmering nod to the magic of expectation,

But before giving too much thought to next year's cooking there is more immediate work to do.  The garden's sink is full of dirty dishes, and magic elves are no more likely to slip in by night to clean up out there than they are inside
the kitchen.  The cleanup duties are all mine.

And with winter on the way, I'd better get to work.

Autumn's Slower Pace

The season is waning and there is some clean up due in the garden.  To be sure, there is still plenty growing.  The chard and the kale from the primary season are still flourishing in a stately, mature fashion.  And the collards, spinach and kale from the late planting are coming along nicely.  There are dozens of ripening tomatoes still on the vines, though those vines themselves are looking a little weary.  The okra is slowing down, as are the peppers and, finally, the cucumbers.  Hallelujah!  The corn, such as it is, is ready to pull, though I'm waiting a bit longer for the beans to dry.  I finally gave over the various squashes to the bug invasion; the constant rains have made it futile to apply the deterrents.  They were delightful while they lasted.  I've started hoeing up the withered vines and tidying up the tangle.

This morning, however, I recalled the carrots and potatoes.  I filled the crisper with carrots a few weeks ago, but sacrificing them to the winter's stock of marinara in the freezer I thought we could use some more.  And of the two long rows of potatoes planted I had only applied the digging trowel to one.  With all the moisture through the season that first digging had its ups and downs.  I gathered up a bucket full of various kinds, but I likewise got well acquainted along the way with the smell of rotten potatoes.  Let me just say that it leaves a lasting impression.  Perhaps it was that lingering odiferous memory that had dampened my enthusiasm for the second row.  But, what the heck.

The carrots weren't impressive, but enough to creatively use.  Pulling the larger of the litter I moved over to the potatoes.  These were the fingerlings, and much to my surprise almost all of them were intact.  Beautiful, buttery looking and firm, I excavated my way through a third of the row before deciding I had plenty for the moment.

It is a satisfying time among these rows.  Quieter, calmer.  Cooler.  More forgiving, there is no great price to pay for giving into distractions for a day or two before returning.  Everything is slower after the white hot aggressiveness of mid-to-late summer.  It occurs to me that at this stage of life I am more of a tuber than a tomato -- a little less acidic, but smoother somehow and fleshier; less gelatinous and more dense; less colorful but more substantial; less precocious and little more difficult to find; less interested in the splash of sunlight while thriving more in the darker loam.  My guess is that I was more fun to be around in those summery seasons of my personal growing, but I rather suspect that in these more autumnal days of life I'm a bit more interesting.

Lugging my basket back to the kitchen I smile with just a bit of self-satisfaction.  Some of the garden rows have, indeed, gone dormant, but there are yet more carrots, beets, and who knows what else quietly growing beneath the surface?  These are days to savor.

Days and, of course, potatoes.

An Intrepid New Arrival

Snowflake arrived a little over a week ago under difficult circumstances -- "Snowflake" being the newest hen on the block.  No one could be more surprised than me to experience the infectious fascination accompanying the tending of chickens that virtually cries out for expansion.  We started out with 8 -- a number almost immediately reduced by the death of one of the Wyandottes.  It made sense to us -- in a nonsensical sort of way -- to replace that one with four, which brought our number up to 11.  For the next several months we felt completely content, despite the odd number.

But there are so many interesting breeds, so many intriguing colors and feathery patterns; it wasn't too long before the hatchery ads attracted more of my attention.  After all, since the Red Stars finally deigned to join the others in the main coop we have this annex across the yard sitting empty.  Narrowing down the breeds of interest and determining availability, we eventually placed an order:  two pure white "White Rocks" through a vendor I hadn't before used.  This time shipping from California instead of Texas, I watched my emails for shipping confirmation, attentively tracked their progress, and awaited that magical call from the Norwalk Post Office notifying me that "live birds" had arrived.

Except one of them hadn't.  Hadn't arrived "live" that is.  I'll spare you the details.  Suffice it to say that the survivor hadn't had to put up with a noisy travelling companion.  Just a dead one.  In close quarters.  Underfoot.  Little wonder that she was a little rattled when she was liberated into the segregation yard and introduced to her new locale.  Disoriented, nervous and frightened, she panicked every time I came near, eventually fluttering that first night over the electric fence when I tried to coax her into her coop, out and into a brush pile nearby.  Her nerves couldn't have been soothed by my determined pursuit.  I eventually prevailed, but it wasn't pretty.  When I returned to the house after this dubious victory I confessed to Lori that it would be a miracle if she survived the night.  I hadn't harmed her, but her nerves had to be fried.

In subsequent days she huddled away from her curious neighbors and, once introduced to her private quarters, preferred to stay there in self-imposed isolation.  I worried that she wasn't eating or drinking.  We enticed her with sweet apple slices, fat cucumbers from the garden and leafy greens.  She showed only moderate interest.

I worried about her seclusion.  Everyday I expected to open her door and find her finished.

But she has soldiered on these past 10 days, increasingly at home in her new environs and two days ago laid her first egg.  Yesterday, her second.  She seems to be on a roll.  And last evening I even arrived to find the neighbors on both sides of the fence getting better acquainted.  Our even dozen may finally be settling in together.  And after all she has been through, this new "Rock" seems to be living up to the name.   If "Snowflake" describes her beautiful appearance, "Rock" quite adequately describes her constitution.

You go, girl!  You have been through a lot and lived to crow about it.

Or, if not crow, at least cluck about it.  Welcome home!

Oh, to speak a word and it be so!

I'm making progress.  Anyone who has known me through the years knows that I am a word guy.  I'm not a math guy; numbers make my head go numb.  I'm not an art guy; my stick figures don't even look like stick figures.  And I am definitely not an equipment guy.  True, I like my gadgets as well as the next guy, but most sensible people start reaching for hardhats and storm cellars whenever I pick up a power tool.  And that's just with me trying to use them.  The world clock ticks one minute closer to midnight anytime I give a thought to actually trying to repair one.

But here we are out in the country -- homesteading after a fashion -- where it rapidly became evident that equipment was a prerequisite.  That, or perhaps it was my gadget fascination let off its leash. Power equipment.
Horsepower.
Gasoline.
Diesel.
Gas/oil mix.
Even more than a few things that plug in.

Mowers, blowers, tillers, haulers, trimmers, chippers, chainsaws, compressors.

And here is something I have noticed:  all of them can malfunction, go flat, get dull, get clogged, or simply break.  What's a "word guy" to do -- other than mutter a few blue ones?

When we first moved out here I called people when the unexpected happened -- friends, neighbors, repair shops, etc.  Sometimes these interventions involved people coming here; sometimes it involved me taking something there.  Friends were generous, but eventually began to screen my calls.  And repair people, once they finished laughing, usually had this frustrating expectation of being paid for their services.  So, what's a "word guy" with a diminishing pool of friends and a diminishing savings account to do?

Even at the risk of global annihilation, I have taken several deep breaths and begun trying to fix things.  When the chain saw chain slipped off one Friday evening not long ago I set it in the back end of the pickup until Monday when I could take it in to the shop.  And then thought about all I needed to get sawed and took a closer look.  Unfathomably I got it back together.  One of the wheelbarrow tires went flat and, firing up the air compressor, I actually restored its roll without blowing myself up. This past winter I managed to attach the snowblower to the tractor without the coddling assistance of friends, and this spring I managed to detach it again and replace it with the mowing deck, again all by myself.

But a few days ago I found myself against a wall.  More literally, I found myself almost against a tree.  Over the past few weeks we have been experiencing Noah-like rains making it difficult to mow.  Either the sky is pouring or the ground is too muddy.  Finally a barely acceptable weather window opened and I powered up the tractor and set to work.  After spending some time out front, I headed around the north end of the prairie.  Making the turn back toward the house on the eastern trail, I noticed a conspicuous slippage.  Steering became increasingly difficult until finally, on a slightly sloping portion of the trail, I ceased to find any traction at all and slipped closer to the tree line.  Frustrated, I looked behind me and discovered the problem.  One of the tires had disappeared.  All I could see was metal rim, cutting a trench in the saturated ground.  Somehow the tire had not only managed to go flat, it had slipped off.  Closer inspection revealed that it had slid off to the inside and was loosely circumscribing the inner lip.  Fetching a jack, I discovered that there was no leverage point against which to use it.  That, and the back wheels kept rolling every time I tried.  Cinder blocks, then, to chock the rearward progress, and then 2 X 12's to raise and platform the jack, but without success, I eventually ran out of ideas.  Hoping that another set of eyes could see a different solution I went next door and knocked, but my neighbor had the good sense to be away from home.  Daylight was dwindling, albeit not as fast as my patience, dinner guests were on their way, and there I stood in the brokenness and mud and wondered where I might find some dynamite at that time of day.  Eventually, I detached the mowing deck, which revealed a purchase point for the jack, and the wheel/tire was eventually in my hand.  But the ground was still muddy with the prospect of nighttime rain, the tractor was still precariously jacked, and I had no idea how any of it was going to go back together -- that, assuming it all survived the night.

There is, as it turns out, a happy ending.  The tractor remained high on the jack, the tire got fixed (although the shop found no puncture), returned to the hub and lug-nutted back in place; and despite the muddy ground, the slope, and my general incompetence, the mowing deck was successfully reattached.  All that, and much to my relief, the balance of the yard got mowed.

And now, the tractor is safely and securely back in the barn -- hopefully, at least momentarily, out of harm's way.  At least until next time.

But in the meantime, I'm making progress.  Though God, according to Genesis, could simply speak a work and things were so, I am reconciled to the fact that despite my verbal preference I have to use my hands.

This place just might make a farm hand out of me yet.