Power outage and Daddy's school

It's our Thursday date night, which clearly begs the question, "Why are you on the computer?"  I'll get to that momentarily.  The girls are likely having the time of their lives at the waterpark, thanks to the library for the free passes connected to the summer reading program and Aunt Emily and Uncle Jonas for sparing us a trip there!  We happily came home to a quiet house and enjoyed a leisurely dinner, the highlight of which was sauteed garlic scapes, snow peas and mustard greens.  We are rolling in green stuff these days.  The ones that come to mind immediately include: garlic scapes, onions, cilantro, parsley, snow peas, hull peas, sugar snap peas, apple mint, peppermint, lemonbalm, amaranth, lambsquarter, stinging nettle, lettuce, spinach, mustard greens, and kale.

This last week we have not had much time at home and so we have had a few small windows of time (at least once with a thunderstorm brewing) where we were out with bowls and baskets harvesting as quickly as we could.  Last evening was one of those times.  We got all the peas picked - hull, sugarsnap and snowpeas - and then Jason had just enough time to get the eggs collected and the chickens shut in before the storm hit. Thankfully the friends joining us for the evening and overnight arrived moments before the rain started pouring down.  I was glad to have all "my people" safely tucked inside.  As the wind picked up, I suggested that we start to think through our power outage plan.  Jason headed off to the back kitchen to draw water right as the power flickered and then went off.

Before too long we sat down to a kerosene-lamplit dinner of rice, lentils, sugarsnap peas, strawberries and goat meat in peanut sauce.  We had not planned for our first try of the goat we butchered to be so memorable, but it sure was - not just in that it was delicious but the atmosphere was delightful and we enjoyed our meal at a leisurely pace (since there is a limited number of things that we can easily accomplish with no electricity - a sobering realization).  It may have been harder for me to eat the goat dish if I was not feeling some days like the two goats we still have are going to make me completely lose my mind.  I know that sounds extreme but both Jason and I are at our wits' end some days.  They have learned to cry the most pathetic, pitiful cries for attention.  And we have sometimes confirmed that they have ample food to eat and clean water and what they clearly want is someone to be with them.  I just don't have it in me - I have enough emotional needs to attend to among the humans that I love and to be completely frank am not interested in dividing that more to have a share for the goats.  I often feel these days that we are not the best home for them - they want to be pets or they want to be with a large herd of goats where they have lots of company and freedom to roam farther.  But clearly more than just Jason and I are invested in this decision.  We can laugh about it when we talk about it with others but I could write a long blog post just about this dilemma as it has definitely been coloring my enjoyment of home and compromising the comfort that I so depend on in my home space.  But lest I never get to the point of this post, I'll move on!

By the end of the meal the huge bowl of sugar snaps were history. I had already snipped the ends to the snow peas in preparation for blanching and freezing them but that clearly was not going to happen. So Alida and I got busy shelling hull peas while Kali and her friend C were playing in the living room.  All of a sudden, Kali piped up, "Mommy, there's a bear cub on our porch."  Honestly, my mind took a few seconds to process the information, but I knew from her voice that this was no joke.  Alida almost freaked out as we all bolted towards the door. Jason ran back to get her and assure her that we were all going to be fine, we just didn't want to miss it.

Sure enough, there on our porch with its little nose up at our window was a bear cub.  It looked in at us, came over to the door, and walked to the edge of the porch.  It was still raining out and it clearly looked like it wanted nothing more than a dry place out of the rain. I pushed the window open further to see if I could get a better picture and this startled the little fellow enough that he made his exit.  We watched as the cub took off through the yard and out of sight.

While we were definitely surprised by the sighting, we were slightly less shocked than we might have been had we not heard from several neighbors about recent bear sightings.  Jason had also seen it out in the cornfield a few days prior and wondered if maybe it was motherless, since it was behaving in ways atypical to a bear with good training.  Our neighbors called us the other day to say it was in a tree on their driveway if we wanted to come see it.  We also learned from the same neighbors that others along our road had used their four wheeler to deliver a bucket of dog food to the bear. Bad idea!

So once the bear drama had subsided we got to work on the other dilemma - Kali's duck eggs (set to hatch in a matter of days).  The eggs can cool down for a bit of time (like when the mama duck would leave to get food or water) but we didn't want to risk having too much time pass so we called some friends until we figured out who was the closest to us but still with electrical service.  So Kali, her friend and Jason took a little field trip down the road to make the emergency delivery.  Have we mentioned liking using broody hens better than incubators?  Yay for things you don't have to plug in!

Just before they arrived home the power flipped back on.  By this time it was after 10 p.m. and there were dishes strewn everywhere and we had not even started prepping for the following day.  It wasn't until a few moments into dishwashing that I formulated words to go with my strange feelings about what had just transpired.   It was more striking to me than ever before.  When the power went off we all visibly slowed down.  What else could you do? I lingered at the table after dinner and at a relaxed pace shelled peas and when they were done just chatted.  The second the lights came on, I was in high gear again getting dishes done, packing lunch, getting our things together for the morning.  It was all things that needed to be done and of course I was hurrying because it was already late and we were all tired.  But I found myself yearning for that lamplit table filled with beautiful faces to look at and wonderful people to converse with and the internal slowing down that accompanied that time.  So some Lent ideas are brewing in this household!  Maybe we'll have to turn off the main breaker to our house at a certain time each day or for a few days or...  It is definitely in the times when we lose power where it is so blatantly apparent how dependent we are on having electricity at our fingertips.  I don't like it, but it is good to be reminded of it and I would like to practice being more prepared to do without.  At a minimum I think we each need a good working headlamp!

...well the almost full moon is only getting higher up in the sky. The girls are now home and Alida is sacked out beside me and I don't think Kali lasted long after her head hit the pillow.  I need to engage in another little flurry of activity as supper dishes still await my attention and I need to pack things up for one final day in town.  It's been quite a week for all four of us, but most changed from normal routines for Jason.  After me working with the Summer Peacebuilding Institute for about 14 years, Jason is taking a class!  It was on a recent trip to PA that I mentioned to him that there is a class being held this year that seems like if there was ever going to be a perfect fit this was it. It's called Peace by Design and I'm happy to report that my hunch was correct. He's loving it, and I imagine you will get in on some of the musings once he is able to catch his breath and we get caught up on things around the farm. His absence has been felt!  It's 7 full days of class and it comes to a close tomorrow.  

The girls have done superbly with our crazy schedule this week.  Alida is so adjusted that the other day she talked about going to "Daddy's school."  We literally chose to "go for it" days before the start of the class, we had to scramble to figure out where Kali and Alida would be on his class days when I was working and we had not proactively made our schedules lighter in that time.  So we still had things most evenings, as well as long days in town for all of us.  But the girls have enjoyed playdates almost every day (the artwork was from a playdate here at our home earlier this week) and the last two days they have joined me in my office for a few hours (thankfully Alida slept most of the time she was there). Speaking of sleep, I'm going to have to end this abruptly because I'm not wanting to see in the new day and I'm headed that way if I don't get moving!

June 4 has come and gone again...

Yesterday marked 6 years since Nora's death. After working on one of the most recent anniversaries, I determined that whenever possible I'll spend those days (the days marking her birth and death) with my family.  It's just where I want to be on October 30 and June 4.

I was grateful for some moments on June 3 during Alida's nap to look at the slide show her aunt Anna had made about her life for the memorial service.  I was grateful for tears.  And I was glad for the few moments I have spent in her garden in recent days.  It's growing so beautifully and as I sat on the large rock (our only seating...thus far), some of the words of a poem Jason wrote about creating her garden came to mind, and have a number of times since: "...we scrape the weeds aside and mark a place where, when it needs to huddle with the memories, a heart may hide..."

Jason and I had talked about how we wanted to spend the anniversary day, other than together for as much of it as possible.  We had decided on some more "rock hauling grief work."  The summer Nora died, we (Kali, Jason and I) spent hours and hours hauling rocks from the old rock pile in the woods to our main parking space.  We built it by hand, together, sometimes talking, often silent and grateful for physical labor that required very little thought and was predictable and we could see notable progress and it just felt good to hurl rocks!  So Alida joined us this time around and we got started on another parking space that we have been slowing working at with bucketfuls of rocks from the garden as we extract them.  Two trailer rides and loads of rocks later, we determined that it would no longer be fun family work if we didn't transition to brunch (which became lunch) and a nap for the littlest!  And as Jason spread out the rocks that we had collected, we were not all that far from our final goal. Thankfully (since our gardens are a lot bigger than 6 years ago), this parking space will not be nearly as involved as the last.

In the evening we hosted another blood drive at Virginia Blood Services, a tradition that has become quite meaningful for us and also a pretty fun time!  While our percentage of donors able to give wasn't quite as good as sometimes (I had thought we were 9 for 15 but upon a closer look at my pictures we were actually 11 for 17), it didn't seem like many of the workers there were sitting around.  Or maybe I would not have noticed if they were since it was quite the party. I think there were about as many kids there as adults so we had quite the cheerleading squad, or probably more accurately stated the snack eating crumb spilling crew.

I'm so impressed with the staff there who seem wonderfully accommodating to us taking over the snack area and with kids going from play area to checking on a parent donating and back again.  I remember fondly being treated kindly and getting treats when I went with my dad years ago, so I can only imagine how much more memorable these blood drives must be with a handful of friends to hang with and a whole table filled with snacks and people laughing and talking and enjoying being together (and getting stuck and maybe helping someone in dire need of blood while we're at it!). 

I have had quite the run of disappointing attempts to give and so was really hoping for a good experience.  It didn't start out great when we got there and realized that I had remembered the book about Nora, her memory box, all the snacks I had made, both kids, and the camera but not my wallet with my ID cards.  Thankfully we found some satisfactory ID with our car registration information and so I passed that hurdle.  And my iron was 12.8 with the cutoff of 12.5 so I made it past the second hurdle.  Now if only they could find a good vein - where have they all gone?  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I was pretty nervous on our way into town.  I don't exactly have a warm and fuzzy feeling when I think about needles. I've been stuck a number of times lately for blood work as I'm trying to figure out if some of my odd physical symptoms have any cause that should be reason for concern.  And the last number of attempts at giving blood were frustrating in that my iron was too low or they missed my veins (in both arms on one recent try).  So I needed a good experience to "get me back on track."  I normally like to go first at the blood drives to "get it out of the way" but it got busy fast and there was such a buzz of people that before I knew it I was the only one that hadn't checked in. I had been so occupied talking with friends, getting hugs, holding the youngest little one present for the evening, eating snacks and taking pictures that I had lost track of the time.  I had also gotten less nervous.  I felt uplifted by the energy in the room and the wonderful people creating it.

I checked out fine, got the most experienced staff person who said she was going to "pull out all the stops" for me, knowing the last few times had been rough. She got things rolling, for just a moment, and then lost the vein and after a number of minutes (they were long minutes) of digging around decided it was not worth continuing.  I was near tears but could tell how very disappointed she also felt that it had gone this way.  i didn't want to make it harder on her by bursting into tears so held it in...A number of them encouraged me to not give up trying just yet, and I don't plan to.  But I definitely felt discouraged and sad and was experiencing a greater flood of emotions to contend with than I had faced up until that point in the day.

It just felt kind of pointless.  They wasted all kinds of things on me - all the disposable medical supplies - and I gave enough blood to make me ineligible for another 8 weeks but not enough to help anyone and left with a bruised up hurting arm making it uncomfortable to have Alida anywhere near where she might bump it. Clearly the intended goal of the evening, for me personally, had not been met.  But the event was much bigger than just me.  At least a few folks would not have been there at all giving blood had it not been for us hosting the event in memory of Nora (one friend hadn't given since about 1999).  I got to reconnect with a friend that I hardly ever get to see.  Hopefully lots of future blood donors were being inspired and seeds planted through watching their parent or friends donate blood and have a good time while doing so.  

I realized when we got home that while there were many ways I could spin the evening positively, I was having a strong desire (could it even have been a need?) to wallow just for a bit in my sadness.  I was feeling some of the emotions that became so familiar at various points in Nora's life.  It was hard to not feel like a failure while mothering her.  It sometimes felt like no depth of desire or no outpouring of effort was good enough to help her to thrive - nursing her hourly around the clock did not compute into the weight gain she needed so desperately.  Tough, tough stuff!  It's much easier to focus on the positive memories, the ways Nora contributed to our family in such beautiful ways, the community of people that surrounded us and supported us during those months and to turn all of that into energy that leads us to want to extend ourselves and give of ourselves to others in need.  I like to see the flowers blooming in Nora's garden and most of the time I want that to be what gets my attention - the beauty and new life springing forth.  Yet I also want to allow myself space to continue to experience the hard emotions too, as it seems to me that that process is also part of my ongoing healing journey. 

When we got back home, our Tangly Woods crew, along with a few other close friends, watched Rivers and Tides about Andy Goldsworthy's art.  The first time we saw it, the documentary reminded Jason about a number of lessons that Nora's life made more real to him.  The one that stood out to me last evening and since is the whole notion of not holding onto things too tightly.  He invests himself fully into various artistic expressions only to have them washed away when the tide comes in or a wind blows. It seems to me that once again it offers a call to me to be fully present to my surroundings, to deeply engage in the place where I find myself, to allow the process to be more important than the end product, and to be open to the unexpected.  

On the eve of the anniversary I looked at pictures in and read the book to Alida that my mom created about Nora's life.  And we talked some about it together.  The next day I was reading her some library books and she was very intent on not reading one.  I didn't know why not and wanted to see what it was about.  Well, I wasn't past the first page when I understood her hesitation.  The mother had just recently died and the children were grappling with Christmas approaching without her physically with them.  This prompted another conversation with Alida about death and I talked about how the mother was very sick but that in most cases mommies live for a very, very long time.  Alida replied without a moment's hesitation, "that's what you are gonna do."  I hope so!  Because sometimes I'm not a very quick study.  These important life lessons seem to take a long time to sink in, but I'll keep working at it!

P.s. When we got to the blood drive I realized that we did in fact have a family member sporting Nora's favorite color - thanks to Alida's sparkly shoes!

First (and last?) strawberry jam!

It was probably a week ago when I set out to write about our first strawberry jam making fun.  And I was in a state of shock that I had hardly picked a berry yet but we had been enjoyed bowls of berries almost daily thanks to the girls!  Kali has been our main strawberry picker this year and it has been great!  It's not that I don't like picking strawberries, but I've felt more or less completely occupied keeping up with other things so her help has been invaluable.

Early in the season, I was uncertain as to why Jason was less than confident in us having an abundance of berries.  We've said we want to have enough strawberries to get tired of them.  Not there yet!  I should know better than to doubt his intuition on things garden related...  And I should never underestimate the wonderfulness (and necessity) of compost!  We did not get around to applying compost to the plants this year and it seems they are missing it.

I'm by no means complaining about the delicious little red fruits that are all around us and that we can pluck off and savor pretty much anytime we want.  It just looks like the season has probably already peaked and is going to be winding down.  I haven't frozen nearly as many as last year, nor made as much jam and haven't experimented more with drying as I was hoping I might be able to do this year.  It looks like that will have to be another year.  Now one difference this year is that both of our girls have grown and along with it their appetites.  Often the bowl of strawberries is empty by the time lunch is through.  So we are enjoying more fresh, as it should be.  And we have made strawberry shortcake and pudding (twice) and had them over ice cream.  So no one is suffering for lack of strawberries right now, but we won't be eating our strawberry jam by the spoonful as we were inclined to do leading up to this season... But Kali and Alida announced that the mulberries are getting ripe, and the gooseberries are so cute and plump on their stems and raspberries are starting to form and there are clusters of red currants on the bush!  And we just had our first snow peas tonight sauteed with as many garlic scapes as I thought I could get away with.  Yum!!

Garden planting (and eating) weekend!

Due to our anniversary weekend getaway (which by the way was luxurious and well worth anticipating for an entire year!) and to last year's late frost, we bumped our main garden planting to this weekend.  And to be honest it is doubtful we would have gotten to it any sooner anyway.  Spring has a way of keeping us on our toes, that's for sure!  This weekend couldn't be more different than last weekend, except for the fact that both have been wonderful.  Last weekend included long naps, lazing in bed reading, playing games, hikes, sleeping in and waking without an alarm, and spending very little time doing anything that might normally be deemed "work."  This weekend has been one of waking early and moving all day long - weeding, mulching, sifting compost, spreading compost, planting, watering, harvesting, washing produce, and keeping lots of hungry mouths fed.  I decided it was worth taking a few moments during Alida's nap to put a short post up since these days and weeks fly by so fast that I often don't take time to step back and reflect at all on them. The thing about the past few days that has been so fulfilling is how much fun it has been to all be outside together - working and playing.  Friday and Saturday we didn't see a whole lot of Kali since she had a sleepover Friday evening with 3 friends and a long playdate last night with another good friend.  So she is out in her garden now trying to prep the ground for her eggplant to be planted.  Alida had a grand time with the big kids the last few days too but she also was my sidekick for a good portion of the garden work I got to take part in.

By far the most fun and rewarding work of this season has been getting compost for the first time out of our composting chicken coop.  I can't remember if I mentioned this before but if I did bear with me as it feels worth repeating.  Jason is a genius at designing systems!  The longer we live here, and the more things get established, the more in awe I am!  As one small example, he built the composting coop with a ramp for the chickens to get out that also serves as a sifter when you put a wheelbarrow under the ramp.  It works great!  So Alida and I have been sifting load after load of compost and spreading it on beds and around plants.  A smattering of what is going in the ground this weekend includes tomatoes, peppers, basil, cucumbers, watermelon, cantaloupe, beans, trombone squash and other squashes.  We also put compost on the rhubarb, raspberries, blackberries, perennial onions, gooseberries and the list could go on but I can't remember it all. While we are still not pleased with the amount of grain our chickens consume and want to keep working at developing a system by which we get help them get more of their nutrition from wild foods, on days like today it certainly feels to me like they are earning their keep.  We have never had this much compost before and the plants just appear so very happy when I ring them with a nice later of the dark fine organic matter.  The only task I think I like more is watering in new plants.  Jason has left a good bit of that for me to do so that is probably where Alida and I will head once she wakes.

Regarding Alida's afternoon nap, it seems like gone are the days of argument-free-nappy-walks.  Jason has been dealing with this for weeks now and I was always able to say, "Hmm, that's odd.  Alida never complains about going on nap walks with me."  I'm no longer special.  As early as when she hears that it is about lunch time she starts noting that she does not want to go on a nappy walk.  Thus far I've been able to make a game out of it, sort of. But I can see that not being a good strategy for much longer.  And maybe that is just as well. I'm not sure I'll be eager to go on runs between 1 and 2 p.m. (also being right after lunch) when the temperatures climb much higher.  So we might soon be wrapping up this phase and it will be a good year later than it was with Kali, as she hardly napped from 2 years old on. But when Alida is not in the jogger for 5 minutes before sacking out, it is hard to take from that that she wasn't tired.

The girls have been our main strawberry pickers so far this year and I have been very grateful for their enthusiasm (and assistance)!  We are not clear yet what the season will be like (as far as having enough to put up for the winter), but we definitely have plenty to enjoy for fresh eating.  They have seemed highly motivated the last two times I asked them to pick - the first time offering to make a strawberry shortcake if they found enough berries and today there was vanilla pudding waiting to be topped with fresh berries.  But even without those offers, they seem happy to head out with their bowls.  I love that they are growing up surrounded by the planting, growing, weeding, watering and harvesting of the food they eat.  While it will be important to me that they understand that the abundance we experience is not shared by all, I hope that savoring the gifts of our land and the food we work hard to produce (and some we don't work at all for) will make them eager to share what we have with others and make it possible for more to enjoy bountiful harvests.  Alida certainly is not yet familiar with strawberry shortages:



I used my solar food dryer for the first time the other day drying a large batch of oregano and trying out drying stinging nettles for the first time.  I don't know yet what I'll use the latter for and I did learn that drying them reduced significantly, but did not eliminate, their sting.  I also dried a large batch of apple mint tea.  It's a good thing all our tea patches look amazing as we are plowing through the stuff. I'm currently making two gallons of tea daily and we are easily keeping up with it!  We continue to enjoy spinach in all its forms - salads, steamed, baked in quiche, in soups, etc...  We are using stinging nettles in bread and lambsquarter in pasta.  And the fridge is loaded with lettuce, spinach, kale, and mustard greens for the coming week.   These things will start to fade here soon but the flowering peas have our mouths watering for what is coming next.

As I'm outside working, what feels so good is how connected the pieces feel.  Sometimes I kind of chuckle because it feels like what we are mostly doing on our little 5 acres is moving stuff around.  We cut autumn olive berry branches for the goats and put them in their pen as part of clearing out the frost pocket below the garden.  Once they have eaten off all the leaves and we have moved their pen on to the next location we pick up the remaining brush and take it up behind the shed.  There we chip and sift it.  The larger twigs are for kindling for our fires this winter.  The smaller stuff is then taken wheelbarrow load at a time to mulch garden paths.  Similar things happen with leaves and soil and rocks.  All of those things feel like precious resources, especially when they are in the right location serving an intended purpose.  They can seem like a nuisance in the wrong spots - like the many rocks we are finding in our garden and slowing dumping bucketful by bucketful on a future parking spot.  The way it all fits together suits me - it feels integrated and interconnected and that has always made my heart sing.  It also serves very well in keeping us in shape without leaving the property - all that moving stuff around!

It's been fun to see the girls enjoying springtime and being outside.  They found this little turtle the other day while I was at work.  By the number of pictures that were on the camera just now when I downloaded them, they were enjoying watching it for quite some time.

 Alida is taking after her Grandma Myers in being our flower bouquet collector (though she could use some lessons!).  She will come in with a handful of "flowers" and ask for a vase, into which she will delicately put a few grasses and then stuff the rest in with her little fist!  There are flowers of all colors in abundance right now.  Jason and I are both taken by the sage in bloom right outside our side door, and the various colors of columbine are a close second for me. To date, I hardly ever feel inclined to bring flowers inside (I do not take after my mother on this one!) since it feels like I could never do justice to their beauty in their natural environment with my flower arranging skills.  It feels like Nora's garden has kind of come into its own this year, hardly requiring any weeding and is just overflowing with color.  Every year it is such a special reminder of the gathering we had on the first anniversary of her death where many friends brought divisions of plants to contribute to a garden in her memory.  We have been so grateful for it, so often!

Well, I better get a few inside tasks done so I can be ready to head out once Alida has fully recharged!  It's hard to feel motivated to do things like laundry and dishes when there is so much fun to be had outside. While I still feel most comfortable and "in my element" in the "inside arena" of our home, I'm enjoying stretching myself in new areas and getting to participate in some of the process of things pre-harvest.  I've got a long ways to go, but I learn so much every time I work outside with Jason and little by little I gain some confidence too.  I even planted parsley all by myself (well, not exactly - Alida helped me) while Jason was at a birthday party recently. Let's hope it does well!

Flowers, food and family times!

One more quick post before Jason and I unplug for two days!  We both took a little time this past week taking pictures of the many things blooming around our property.  The beauty of the little plot of land on which we live is almost too much to take in right now, but we'll deal with the challenge!  I'm loving getting out to help with harvesting, weeding and mulching.  I'm finding that one of things that is helping me get a lot of garden work done is water - Alida loves to play in it!  So I can turn the hydrant on a slow trickle and she stays occupied watering things.  The other day, the 3+ inches of rain meant that she didn't need any cistern water for her play, she had a mini swimming pool in the fire ring to entertain her.

This past week I got to be involved in another first that I forgot to mention in the last post - we are shoveling out compost from our composting chicken coop for the first time. So amazing - thanks to our chickens we have an abundance of compost for the first time ever.  And thanks to my ingenious husband the process of getting the compost out and sifted was very simple. Of course he designed the composting coop with a ramp for the chickens that was made with wire that could also serve as a sifter for compost and that fits nicely over a wheelbarrow.  So we just open the ramp onto a wheelbarrow, let the chickens out to run, scoop shovels full of compost onto the ramp and sift it, leaving the sticks, stones and large pieces fall off the edge, making a mulch area in front of the compost coop.  Jason's design abilities are incredible!

One of the gifts of this past week was a number of really special times together as a family.  On Mother's Day we hiked to the lake with my parents, sister and sister-in-law.  It was a gorgeous day, perfect picnic weather!  Later the same day, my family gave me the best gift possible - we enjoyed a full three hours or so outside together as a family working in our gardens (with everyone happy the whole time).  And it must not have been a Mother's Day fluke as we have enjoyed a few additional such times in the days following.  It's been really fun, especially to see Kali's growing interest and ability to maintain focus on her garden plot.  The ducks and her chicken enjoyed her work as she shared the rye with the ducks and grubs with Buttercup.

Okay, here's a smattering of pictures in no particular order.  My screen time is just about up!

Makes my mouth water!

One of the many beautiful flowers blooming in Nora's garden!

Spinach, lettuce, mustard greens and peas in the background.

Newly planted three sisters field - flour corn planted under each crate.

Onion field

Comfrey and poppies blooming in Nora's garden - being enjoyed by a carpenter bee.

Columbine blooming in Nora's garden

Black oak with garlic field in the background.

We are counting on not running out of garlic in May next year!  I'm eager for garlic scapes within the month!

Popcorn field - I must admit that it took me a few minutes to get my bearings on this one as I have yet to make it to that corner of our property to see this particular planting!

Kali in her garden.

Magenta lambsquarter

One morning's picking of spinach, asparagus and a minuscule fraction of the tea available.

 Bearded Iris

 wild poppy

 Unknown wild iris (probably the dispersive exotic "Yellow Flag")

 Spiderwort

 Columbine

These beds will soon be the spot of much activity - tomatoes, peppers, sweet potatoes, etc... will find their homes there soon!

All's well that ends well?

In the last brood of chicks to come out of the incubator, there were a fair number that failed to hatch.  Two of these started hatching, and then the chicks died before emerging.  They seemed to have rotated in their shells (a motion required for successful natural hatching) without having adequately chiseled through the shell as they turned, thereby suffocating against the wet shell membrane.  Hatching, like birth for mammals, is a perilous passage governed by good egg-crafting genes on the hen's part and by a finely-tuned series of instincts on the chick's part.  As tragic as these near-successes always seem to those of us eagerly peering in the top of an incubator to monitor progress, there is no getting around it:  any bird that can't successfully hatch from its egg cannot be considered a successful bird.

Most of the rest contained what appeared to be fully formed chicks without any clues as to why they failed to complete their journey.  It is not unusual to have a few chicks per hatch in this situation, but this was a higher fraction--around a third--than is typical.

The only clue as to what may have gone wrong came from one that successfully hatched.  There was one among the group that managed to emerge from the egg in an entirely unconventional pattern, probably aided by a thinner-than-typical shell thickness.  The wet hatchling struggled to gain its feet, as do all chicks.  But its struggles were accentuated by a peculiar posture.  We were bustling around tidying up for the wedding on that gorgeous, cool and sunny spring day but every time I passed the incubator I looked in on it; I never saw it with its head raised.  It found comfortable positions among the warm unhatched eggs, as new chicks do, but usually ended up with its head positioned downward, often comically out of sight.  When it attempted walking, it would usually topple, stepping on its beak or tripping over its neck.  In general it seemed to have little to envy, but it was preternaturally good at somersaults!

It soon became clear that this was not a problem that was going to go away.  As the chick dried off and joined its broodmates, it never did gain the ability to lift its head, and it seemed unable to open its left eye.  It spent nearly all its time sleeping.  I never saw it eat or drink or join in the group cuddle.  It still couldn't seem to walk where it wanted to go.  This was not going to end well; we all could tell that.

For wild birds, this kind of story finishes simply:  the hen and the rest of the brood must leave the nest and find food.  Chicks like this one can't keep up, or perhaps don't even try, if the impairment is severe.  They soon chill and die, if they aren't found by a lucky predator first.

For this particular chick, I judged that there were two possibilities:  death by deprivation or an intervention for mercy's sake.  So the question became, for me, one of timing.  We had been planning to give it one more night to see if the condition would show signs of clearing up, but when no improvement was evident after a day of waiting, and after we decided to head out last evening for our weekend away rather than this afternoon, the writing was on the wall.

***

It was raining when I carried the warm, soft chick out into the darkness.  I kept it wrapped in my hand and tucked into my side against the damp chill as I switched on the head lamp and made my way through the night to my garden shed to retrieve a pruner.  There could be a thousand ways to do this, but I prefer to use a tool with which I have long experience:  I need all the confidence I can get.  I have by now killed probably hundreds of chickens; It's not the same to kill a day-old chick.

Maybe it's the inner tension of this kind of thing that pushes me toward making a ceremony of it.  In any case I instinctively wanted to find "the right place" to do it.  I settled on the brush pile up behind the wood shed.  Was it because of brush piles being places where death (in the form of discarded tree parts) breeds life (in the form of fungi, woodchucks, and Carolina wrens)?  With raindrops flashing in and out of the headlamp's beam, still cradling the chick in my hand against the rainy night, I ended its short, unfortunate life.  I laid it on the decaying sticks and waited for the last impulses to fade.  I considered picking up the lifeless chick and tossing it out into the dark woods (no sense spoiling the wedding for some hapless, wandering guest), but found I couldn't.  Instead I discovered that I wanted to cover it.  I found the nearest green vegetation--some garlic mustard, maybe some honeysuckle shoots--and laid a layer of it over the fluffy, still-warm form.  Then I turned and left it to its cooling and its decay, and made my way back into the warm, bright house, and the warm arms of my family.