Weather

In the last 48 hours we have had a sunny 75 degree afternoon, a windy, pounding rainstorm, thunder, lightning, hail and now a frosty 28 degree morning. Spring is a capricious sprite.

Mother Nature's creatures are not easy to predict either. We recently expanded and improved the chicken coop after His Majesty Prince Eagle found his way in. (Picture and story on Patrick's blog) Now that their housing seems secure from forced entry, I have lost two chickens to a predator who seems to be reaching through the wire walls and (sorry, yuck) eating the carcasses right through the wire. I imagine it is a bobcat, based on a lack of tracks. The only other animal I think capable of such dexterity is a raccoon, but they generally leave easily-read footprints.

In all my years growing up here, I saw only one bobcat, and that was when I was far from everything, horseback riding by myself. Last month I spotted my second cat, inside the fence of the yard, only 20 feet from my parents' front door. My mouth actually fell open. She had just killed one of the geese in broad daylight. Amazing.

The weather, animal behavior, the success or failure of my vegetable plants- the unpredictable pattern of these things reminds me never to assume I know what Mother Nature has up her sleeve.

The Chicken or the Egg?

I have written before about how amazing and practical Aliana is. Check the archives for March 2008. I have further proof to offer today. She has solved the ancient question: which came first, the chicken or the egg?

She tells me that there was first a chicken, then an egg. She has a logical argument to back it up. I love classical homeschooling.

Her reasoning is based evolutionary theory. She imagines that there were birds pecking around in the jungles of Asia that were very chicken-like, the ancestors of today's domestic poultry. One day one of these extremely chickenish jungle hens mated with an all white-meat rooster. An egg was laid. It hatched. Out came chicken numero uno. This chick had enough of the features of what we call chickens to be so called. Since then we have had chickens. Yum.

The Order of Things

I wrote a few posts back about creating order inside our new home, adjusting to a smaller space and less belongings. After the work of decluttering and tidying is done it feels so wonderful to stretch out and enjoy our home.

A few days ago we butchered a goat. We have created a little farm life here, an extension of what we began at our old home. On a farm there is a never-ending cycle of fecundity and sparsity. In the spring the garden wakes up and begins to grow after the winter pause. The animals bear young; dozen of eggs from the chickens, one or two kids from each female goat. The summer heat and long days full of sun help the garden to produce an astonishing amount of food in just a few months. The tiny chicks and frisky kids also grow with amazing speed. A chicken eats its way to butchering size in just twelve weeks. By the time autumn blows in, the garden has filled the root cellar, freezer and pantry with pounds and bushels and quarts. Also in the autumn the chicken coop feels much too crowded. Roosters loudly compete for attention and require substantially larger amounts of corn and scraps than they did as chicks. Some of the goat kids were male, or simply number too many to feed economically. As the light and warmth wane and the chores of the garden are fewer, butchering time comes.

Just as our home feels roomier and calmer after removing the excess, the chicken coop is quieter and much, much more peaceful after the majority of the young roosters and older hens have been, with enormous gratitude, dispatched to the freezer and pantry. It is much the same with the goats. As the male goats become mature they become aggressive and hard to manage safely. To allow peace to return to the goat pasture, leaving the does to chew their cud and fatten up until they give birth in the spring, we butcher the extra animals after they have done their job of ensuring that another generation will be born. The winter months stretch ahead of all of us, animals and humans, a quiet, less active time. The garden is scrubbed clean by the cold wind and frost while the animals enjoy the warmth of their shelters. In the snug house we plan next year's garden and cook from our stores.

Really, extra is not the right word for the animals we butcher and vegetables we eat during these dark, cold days. Unlike the material excess we gathered for years and then removed from our home, those creatures weren't brought into the world without thought. On the contrary, we put great consideration into just how much food our family requires for each turn of seasons. Each spring we plant what we hope is the just enough seeds and plan to raise just enough meat. We try to raise just enough, not too much, not too little.

I do believe the world could use a lot more just enough right now.

Another Omelet!?

As I considered my options for our second 100-foot meal, I was at first sort of annoyed that my ingredient list this week isn't any different than it was last week. "What am I going to write about if we just eat the same thing again? How boring. 'Look, here's another omelet. End of post'."

It occured to me only when I was photographing the meal that eating eggs again is anything but boring. It is in fact miraculous. I happen to think that eggs may well be the most beautiful thing found in mother nature. I never tire of finding a warm egg nestled in the hay in the barn. It really actually makes me feel excited and special every single time I find one. I never just rush it in the house and stick it in the egg carton in the refrigerator. No, every time I come across a newly laid egg I cradle it in my palm and marvel at how perfectly designed such a thing is, from a human or a chicken perspective.

For a hen, an egg is a way to raise a whole lot of babies at once and therefore insure that some of them will survive to make more chickens. It amazes me that an egg can wait weeks in the cold before a hen decides she has laid enough to spend a few weeks sitting on the nest. Her warmth helps the previously dormant creature inside that shell quickly grow into a perfect little chick, ready to walk and peep and eat the day it hatches.

For those of us with opposable thumbs and slightly larger brains, the egg is no less awesome. Here is a portable food storage device like no other. Eggs keep much longer than most of us think, and really don't need to be stored in as cold a place as our refrigerator. We keep them there out of habit, but a farm-fresh egg will keep in a cool place like a cellar for weeks and weeks. And for those of us who eat with the seasons, the egg is a celebration of spring. Though supermarket eggs are available 365 days a year, our hens only recently began laying again after taking a break during the short, dark days of winter. The first few eggs felt like tiny miracles! We carefully considered how to prepare them. As the days lengthened the girls gave us more eggs each day. Now we find between 6 and 8 every morning.

This morning I sauteed some of the volunteer arugula that just grows in the yard and tucked it inside the omelet, and sprinkled chives on top. I took some pictures, then Aliana and Ellie and I sat down to eat. It was delicious. It tasted just right. It sounds kind of trite, but it tasted like spring, like what we ought to be eating on a morning in march. The girls and I felt really fortunate to be eating such tasty food from our own homestead. It's not a glamorous life, but it is satisfying and fun.

Spring magic

Most mornings at least one of the kids comes out help me with the chores. I milk and feed the goats while Aliana cares for her rabbits. Taking care of the chickens, though, usually falls to the earliest riser of the day. Heading out to the yard in the morning sun we all enjoy seeing the girls come flapping, hopping and running to eat their morning ration of cracked corn and kitchen scraps. As the days have lengthened the chance to do chicken duty has become a more and more powerful incentive to get out of bed. This is because the hens have a very good clock in their little chicken brains, and as we enjoy more and more daylight they lay more and more eggs. Another part of their bird instinct tells them to hide those eggs. So our dear girls lay their eggs all over the place!

This is where the children come in. After the girls have settled down for breakfast the kids take their baskets and have an egg hunt.

Yep, every morning. We have nice, neat little nesting boxes that we built, but the hens ignore those in favor of dark corners of the shed and inviting bushes. The first child who makes it outside in the morning has the best chance at finding the real prize- a green egg. Two of our dozen or so hens are Americaunas. They lay naturally green-shelled eggs. Ladybug and Siren are their names, and they are getting old for chickens, so the green eggs don't come as regularly as they used to. Therefore discovering a green egg has become a special event.

As we approached Easter this year we began to save up the green eggs, as well as the white ones. This year we are going to try using dyes made of natural materials to color the eggs. I found a list here:

http://www.lakewinds.com/store/Natural-Egg-Dye-Recipes-W4698C18760.aspx

I was also pleasantly surprised to find a list of natural dyeing materials in the magazine that our grocery store puts out. Here here!

Isidore reminded me that last year the Easter bunny left some muddy paw prints on the kitchen table when he ate the carrot we left out for him. I do hope he will be a little tidier this year. I wonder if he knows the kids have had so much practice hunting for eggs. He better hide them really well.

The Zoo

Last week our intrepid friend Donna took all three kids to the San Francisco Zoo. They all really wanted to see the newborn giraffe. Unfortunately the mother wouldn't nurse, so they weren't able to see the baby. As you can see in the pictures, though, our dear Aliana had a very special moment with daddy giraffe. She fed him several bananas with her hands, and then the handler suggested she try something a little different.

I must say I personally would not have said yes, but our tallest child is definately a friend of animalkind. Whenever a chicken needs to be caught for wing clipping or dinner she actually becomes a member of the flock. She bends over, uses her arms as wings and begins to speak chicken. I swear. She imitates their happy little clucks and peeps and assures them that she's just a slightly larger breed, and then just scoops one up by the feet and presents it to me proudly.

One morning several years ago I was brushing my teeth when Aliana appeared at the bathroom door with a quart size mason jar in her hand.

"Bellemere?" she said.

"What is it, sweetie?"

"Um, I have a wound."

"What happened?"

"A gopher bit me."

I swallowed my toothpaste and at that point noticed that there was actually a very large live rodent in the jar, and a lot of blood on Aliana'a other hand.

I took the jar from her, covered it with a heavy book and called Donna of the zoo trip, who's a nurse.

After the wound was cleaned and the gopher disposed of I was able to ask Aliana how exactly she came to have a gopher bite.

It turns out it was actually in my defense. Before you imagine a rabid gopher throwing himself against the front door, let me explain.

She was collecting interesting bugs in the vegetable garden and saw Mr. Gopher pop his near-sighted little head out of his hole. She immediately thought of how much I love my garden and the damage he might do. She decided the thing to do would be to pick up him up and stuff him in the jar she was holding to get him out of the garden. He didn't like the plan as much as she did, and he chomped her.

This is the detail that gets me: She didn't let go. She screamed and then continued to cram him the in jar.

Aliana, the girl who is often more animal than person.