When All Else Fails, Wait for Mom

Chicken tracks in the snow are adorable.

It looks like little dinosaurs have traveled around your house, which isn’t so far from the truth.  

The girls seriously dislike the snow.  I can open the door to the coop in the morning after a snowfall and they look out with an attitude of “Yeah, well, no.”  Only after I have cleared or packed the path a bit will they start to come out.

One of their favorite hangouts is underneath the porch of the house.  There the dirt is sandy, loose and begging to be dug into.  In the summer it’s a great spot because it’s cool.  In the winter its appeal is that it’s loose dirt amongst nothing but frozen ground and this annoying, cold white stuff.  

With the weather we’ve had this winter – some snow, lots of rain that becomes ice – the chickies have stayed around their coop.  Over the summer they kept me company as I convalesced on the porch, by hanging out in the front yard, working their way up the porch steps until I yelled at them, and roosting on the pioneer fence.  They endeared themselves to me on a whole new level.  Because they were only five of them, personalities became distinct. 

We still have Wheezy, the chicken I nursed back to health after a weasel attack several years ago.  There’s Broody, the only one out of the original flock who has shown any inclination to set on eggs.  She’s the smallest and Queen of the Coop.  There’s Spot, named only because she has a dark spot on her lower eyelid that’s noticeable. The other two are indistinct – sorry – and nameless.  They're all hale and hearty and coming through the winter in great condition.

A few weeks ago, the girls started coming down the path through the snow and going under the porch again.  When I came home for lunch, I’d hear them coo under the stairs and sometimes they'd stick their heads out looking for a treat.  The other day they got the motherlode of my failed attempt at King Cake, devouring it with great relish.  I know I'm supporting negative behavior with positive reinforcement (pestering me for treats and getting cake for their trouble), but I’m beginning to feel sorry for them given the winter we’ve been having.

One day last week, as dusk was approaching, I looked out the kitchen window and saw three chickens by the woodpile.  It was an odd place for them to be hanging out.  Usually by that time of the day, they have instinctively put themselves on their roosts in the coop for the night.  I threw on my coat and went outside.

It had snow lightly but constantly all day, and the ground was covered with about four inches of very light, fluffy snow.  I saw a set of chicken tracks come out from under the porch, pick up the path, and make the left turn between the trailer and woodsplitter to go down the path to their coop.  But these three birds somehow – maybe snowblindness, maybe the depth of the snow threw them off – missed the turn and continued straight just a few more feet, to the other side of the woodsplitter, and ended up in a dead end area by the woodpile.

Even they knew they were in the wrong spot.  They just couldn’t figure out how to get to the right spot.  

I was going to herd them around the corner and down the path.  But as I approached them, they didn’t move.  Two things had happened:  the magical chicken bewitching hour where it’s bed time and they stay wherever they happen to be for the night, and (I think) they had gotten very cold, up to their chicken thighs in the snow, as they all had one leg curled up underneath their bodies like little black and white flamingos.

So I had the opportunity to do something very rare.  I reached down and picked up Wheezy and tucked her under my arm.  She didn’t put up a fight.  I picked up Broody, who flapped for a second but then gave it up, and tucked her to my midsection, holding her against Wheezy and me with my arm.  Then I reached down and one-armed a No Name and brought her to nestle with the other two.  I officially had an armful of chickens.  For a second I thought they would do their usual chicken freak-out at being held, but then I realized they felt content.  They were warming up.  They relaxed.  They felt secure.

I carried my load of poultry to the coop and gently put them on the floor.  The other two chickens (who obviously had the smarts to find their way back earlier in the day) were on the roost and looked at them like “Where were you idiots?”  Wheezy fluffed up her feathers.  Broody got something to eat.  No Name gave me a blank, tilted-head look.

Lots of people laugh at chickens’ goofiness, and all animals have their amusing moments.  But when you have animals in your life, the moments that really have meaning are when you have those times of connection, of when you know they trust you.  I've had many with horses over the years.

Chickens aren’t particularly cuddly, at least mine aren’t.  But having that opportunity to “rescue” them (and there have been others) and hold them to me for a few minutes was a reminder of how the universe is a sum of its parts, and to appreciate those moments.

It's nice to help out when someone takes a wrong turn.

Let Go or Be Dragged

Hello 2014, you shiny faced little pixie you. You have no idea how happy I am to see you here. Your predecessor 2013 was a little harsh, and not just on me. Lots of folks had a rough year. On the 30 Acre Wood, she lulled me into a false sense of security for the first five months of the year, and then let loose with the big smackdown.

I’m won’t say it wasn’t necessary, but it was a little heavy handed. Yes, she got my attention. After the pain subsided and I was done being an angry bee and the pity party was over, I began to see the point she was trying to make.

Ignore your deepest feelings at your own peril.  I had been fighting the feeling that the horses weren't working out for us, but I refused to recognize it or acknowledge it. 

When you’re stuck on being identified with or as something, even if it’s just in your own mind, giving it up can be a mental impossibility, which turns into a physical impossibility. But the universe knows better.  And the universe always gets her way.  If you’re not paying attention, she drops the subtleties. And the next thing you know, you’re lying on the trail with a broken leg and your horse is gleefully galloping away from you.

Sometimes you need to let go, even if it’s wrenched from your hand. What once filled your soul may not be working for you anymore, for whatever reason. If you’re holding too tight to something, even if it’s no longer serving you, you can’t hold anything else. That can be self limiting at best and mentally crippling at worst.

Life After Horses has been a major adjustment, but it’s beginning to feel alright. Larry and I have had the opportunity to do more things and travel more freely, and that feels wonderful. The universe pried my hand open to make me let go, and now that my hand is beginning to uncramp, I’m able to hold other things.

This spring we may get some beef calves, to keep the pastures from going feral and to fill the freezer in the fall. A new batch of chicks may inhabit the coop. I’m looking forward to finally tackling some of the yard projects I’ve been trying to get to for several years now, without feeling guilty for taking that time away from the horses. And who knows – horses may very well indeed be in our future. Sometimes you need to take a breather to come back to something with renewed passion and joy.

What do you need to let go of, that’s no longer serving you? Join the Bona Fide Butterflies at their "Letting Go" retreat on January 24-26, 2014 at the beautiful Glen Lodge in Warrensburg, to explore what you may need to release in your life and how to move forward.  Best of all, it will be in a playful, friendly and relaxing weekend with kindred spirits. Trust me, it’ll be easier and a lot more fun than breaking your leg.

 

 

Baking Bad

Larry often says that cooking is interpretive and experimental, but baking is like chemistry – you have to have the ingredients just right, or it doesn’t work out.

I’ve never been much of a cook. I have a few culinary tricks up my sleeve, but for the most part my food preparation is utilitarian in nature. If I were a single woman, I’d probably live on bologna sandwiches and Captain Crunch. Fortunately for me, Larry enjoys cooking and usually takes the helm in the kitchen.

Once in a while, though, I get an urge to bake, especially in the fall. I found a recipe for Impossible Pumpkin Cookies that, despite their name, seemed pretty easy. After starting to mix the ingredients, however, I realized I had purchased a can of sweetened milk and not condensed milk. There was no conversion or swapping mentioned in my standby Better Homes and Gardens cookbook. So I called my friend and baking guru, Dianne Johnstone.

 

Dianne said no, you really can’t use one in place of the other, and there wasn’t any real workaround. She asked what I was making and I said Impossible Pumpkin Cookies, the impossible part apparently being the cook’s ability to pick up the right ingredients from the store.

In the end, the cookies proved impossible for me, as they had a weird timeframe of cooking 10 minutes, then sitting out for 10 minutes, then going in the refrigerator for 30 minutes. Behind the eight ball now because of having to run to the store again and having to be somewhere shortly, I fudged the time sitting to 5 minutes and time in the fridge to half a day. Let’s just say the chickens were the beneficiaries of that particular attempt.

 

This weekend I had a herd of bananas on my counter that were growing blacker by the day, slowly inching their way towards the compost pail. I decided to wash the dead bugs out of my bread pans and try some banana bread. I utilized the basics of a new recipe in my cookbook with some of my favorite components from a banana muffin recipe.
 

But when I started putting all the dry ingredients in the bowl I realized I was looking at the wrong recipe in the cookbook (I have GOT to get new glasses), so I pulled out a pinch of what looked like the baking powder here and some of what looked like the baking soda there. Instead of one monster loaf, I split it between two pans and hoped for the best. I warned Larry this was a compilation recipe, there were no guarantees.
 

To my surprise, they came out great – no small feat for me - cooked through perfectly, moist and delicious, as good banana bread should be. Welcome Fall! Sometimes mad science in the kitchen wields wonderfully tasty results.