This year Larry decided we should be pumpkin ranchers.
In search of a garden goodie that would not take a ton of maintenance yet yield an easily
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salable product, he planted all pumpkins in the front garden. Their leaves have now exploded, literally filling the garden, and blossoms are visible.
The blueberries out back, after doing squat the last few years and being afflicted by some sort of creeping crud last season, are bearing beautiful fruit. Larry also planted a few beets, cabbage for his sauerkraut (oh, the humanity) and basil because what’s summer without fresh basil and mozzarella salad?
This past winter’s long, icy grip is a not very distant memory. When the sweat is running down my back, I remind myself of how I couldn’t get close enough to the woodstove last winter. I will not complain about the heat this year. Not once. It’s become a personal challenge. Anyone who hears me do so has my permission to slap me.
Our big news is that we’ve put the house on the market in anticipation of Larry getting a job transfer and moving to warmer climes. In an effort to look more mainstream, we mowed our yard this year. I admit, it does look nice. I left a few pockets of wildflowers, where they were actually in greater population than grass or weeds. They provide pretty bursts of color. I wouldn’t exactly call what we have a lawn, more like evenly cut green stuff, which, from a distance, could pass for a lawn. To my dismay, it all grows pretty fast. I’ve gotten back into the lawnmower groove, which is good exercise.
The front of the house has been power washed, scraped and repainted, and the porch has been reroofed to match the rest of the house (kudos to Larry for working like a dog on all this). Rehab projects take forever when you’re chipping away at them on weekends. The painting of the porch seemed like the never ending story and I wouldn’t wish painting lattice on my worst enemy.
When it was done, though, Larry couldn’t stop admiring how much better it all looked. “We should have done this years ago,” he said, and it was hard to disagree. We didn’t because we were always too busy working out back on pastures, which have gone by the wayside this year.
And we still have our Final Five chickens. Tough old broads, they are. They’ve become fixtures, following us around and gracing us with one to three eggs a day.
I’m enjoying the yard more this year – futzing with my perennials and doing small yard projects I haven’t had the time to do before. I don’t have the niggling guilt in the back of my mind that I’m not doing enough with the horses, because they’re out of my equation. I’m getting the itch to ride again, but it’s not a burning desire. At least, not yet, not here. I’m not sure where I’m at with that right now.
Meantime, we’re enjoying our summer immensely – watching the gardens grow, giving the house some long overdue sprucing up, enjoying our time together right here, right now. And oh yeah, we need to cracking on firewood. So I can huddle up to the woodstove next winter.
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.
This past weekend Schroon Lake hosted its annual Ice Fishing Derby. The lake surface becomes a shanty town of optimistic fishermen in little huts dangling a hook in a hole in the ice. It’s also Party Central, as lots of alcohol is consumed, on and off the ice. Witherbees Restaurant holds its Annual Bayou Bob Crawfish Boil, in honor of Bobby Machutas, formerly of Louisiana and Charley Hill Road fame.
March is a month of patience. Great, strained, threadbare patience. It’s overtly illustrated by ice fishermen bundled against the elements (that’s where alcohol antifreeze comes into play), hoping to land that prize winning fish. But it’s also in the faces of animals. Our cat lies on the back of the chair, staring dully out the window, yearning for warm weather and active rodents. The horses are starting to shed a little and are teased by the occasional day in the 40's, only to be smacked back into temps in the teens, weary of frost on their whiskers and icy water buckets. My old man Cass used to get such a puss on his face come March, when the temperatures would take a dip. The chickens, who stopped laying altogether in November, started sporadically laying in mid-January. Getting 1-3 eggs a day out of 5 almost 4-year old hens isn’t bad.
I personally have been struggling with the winter blues this year, much worse than years past. I don’t know if it was the mid-January trip to balmy New Orleans, that made coming back to -20 such a kick in the head. This time of year, though, I start to worry if we’ll have enough firewood to get us through. I tire of my hands always being cold. By the end of March, I’ll be sick to death of putting wood in the woodstove. I’m ready to go play in the dirt and plant things and watch things grow.
I know that, in good time, I’ll be outside and I’ll feel that first warmish breeze on my face, and it will stop me in my tracks as I recognize and savor it. The snow pack will slowly go down; rivulets of water will begin to run down the driveway. The sun will pack a little more punch, putting some warm weight on my shoulders. It’s coming. It always does. I can almost feel it today. It’s a patience game. The trick is to make it through to the other side. Wait for it... wait for it...
