The farm has felt familiar to me from the day we moved in. Whether it's the similarities to my childhood home- things like an oak at the corner of the driveway, or the pebbled cement walkway, or the gatherings of particular song birds- I have a sense of belonging. The house creaks under our feet and although they aren't creaking from years of our own steps, they are creaks I have heard before, like a distant memory. The truth is that the life that I am living now is being plucked directly from my imagination, straight from endless daydreams. The feeling of this place over the last six months has gone beyond familiarity. It is composed of frequent and dizzyingly...
Our little people are good little humans who struggle everyday to decide and figure out what is right or wrong, and at this age it’s just about being kind.
We were out of town the week after Christmas when the temperatures dropped to double digits below zero. I was anxious to see how the animals were doing when we got home. When I stepped into the coop to examine the flock's combs and waddles I noticed that Rocky's comb was swollen and a sickly pale yellow with frostbite. Rocky is our Rhode Island Red from the original flock. She survived the coyote attack with Henrietta, likely because she's a bit of an outsider. At our old house she would always be straggling behind the rest or off by herself. Her frostbite was easy to spot because she sat off by herself, separated from the others as they squashed together for warmth on the...
I love the winter. Last night I announced to Joel that I was headed out to the barns to bring dinner scraps to the chickens. I was giddy for the walk in the snow and the night quiet. The moon was shining off the top of the barn, serving as a lighthouse to my destination. It was a quiet night and I stopped in the middle of the field to look at the stars. The puff from my breath obscured my view so I continued on, just the crunching of my boots on the snow as satisfying as tinfoil between teeth. When I heard the radio host this morning say it's going to be a warm day and "another great...
