Busywork

I’ve been away so long, I’m nearly ashamed to show my face around here. Or rather, that would be the case if I worried about stuff like that. But lucky for all of us, I don’t. Let’s just enjoy this me blogging again thing while it lasts, shall we?

Hello Again, Everyone!

Turns out, I’ve been busy. But then, haven’t we all? Actually, that “I’ve been busy” thing bothers me. It comes out too quickly, and sounds a teensy bit as if there’s something wrong with taking it easy. All too often, I toss off “I’ve been awfully busy” as if it’s a good thing, or at least, a useful excuse for my absence. It sounds like I have bought into the factory model of life; must be efficient, make use of every moment, multi-task (even when science tells us that in fact there is no such thing), wear ourselves right to the bone, and get up the next day and do it all over again. But I haven’t. I’m sure it comes as no surprise that I aspire to a more premodern pace of life. Sure, I’m rarely idle, but I try to live life, not just do stuff.

Henceforth, I am going to say, um, something other than I’ve been busy. Maybe something along the lines of “I’ve not taken nearly enough time to sit down and contemplate. There’s been not nearly enough tea-drinking, navel-gazing, day-dreaming, nap-taking or chit-chatting in my life. Or blogging.” Okay, that’s not entirely true. There’s p-l-e-n-t-y of chit-chat in my life. I’m with my girls all day. Believe me, there’s plenty of chatter. Also, I seem to consume several pots of tea daily.

Enough about me. What else? Well, the farm is lovely, as always. It’s fall, so the usual things are falling.

One of our maple trees, helpfully displaying all of its colors

Seedpods are bursting.

milkweed

The birds are readying themselves for winter. Our chickens are molting, which they do every fall. They shed their old feathers in September and early October, and spend the next few weeks sprouting new ones from their bald patches. It is a motley process. Indeed, I suspect that “motley” and “molt” are kissing cousins, linguistically speaking. Feathers are everywhere.

Note the drift of feathers in the background....though this particular hen seems to be done with her molt.

I keep forgetting to go in the coop and pick out all of the white feathers to save for the tree swallows next spring. Apparently, the swallows love to use white feathers to line their nests; a naturalist friend of mine told me that she’s had them pluck them out of her fingertips. Wouldn’t that be incredible? Anyhow, I still need to go save some.

Hen illustrating that indeed, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Though in this case, it's true because their pasture, like most, is overgrazed. Makes you wonder about the original meaning of that saying, doesn't it?

The chickens are laying fewer eggs. It doesn’t really make a lot of evolutionary sense for chickens to lay eggs in the fall, since they’d end up trying to raise baby chicks (which, after all, is the real point of egg-laying) in the cold months of late fall and winter. Molting and growing new feathers also takes quite a bit of energy and protein, so it makes sense that their bodies would put the calories toward keeping chickens properly clad, as it were, instead of making babies.

Unlike plenty of chicken keepers, I don’t put electric lights on my chickens in winter. By all reports, it would keep them laying more regularly by “fooling“ their pineal gland, which regulates their egg-laying-cycle, but I’m always reluctant to mess with Mother Nature. If the chickens take a break from laying eggs in the winter, well then, that’s fine by me. I think She knows best. We will just appreciate their eggs all the more come March, when the laying resumes in earnest and we‘re saddled with the problem of what to do with two- dozen eggs a day. (Coincidence that Easter and Easter eggs fall then? I think not). In the meantime, there will probably always be at least a couple of eggs a day, enough for us to have one, and one left over for Jigs, the mouse-hunting and raw-egg-loving cat who lives in the front of the coop!

Jigs, basking.

The wild birds are flocking up. This morning, Paul and I heard a commotion and went outside to see hundreds of Canada geese flying south. We’ve had our first and maybe second or third frosts, though it’s really only the first one that counts.  The only things left in the garden are the hardy greens, like parsley, kale and members of the broccoli family.  I’ve put most of the garden to bed, which involved the shoveling and hauling of many, many loads of used horse bedding (provided free of charge by our neighbors, who seem glad to be rid of it) to the garden beds, where Dad and I carefully pitchforked it over the bare earth (and quite a few weeds, if I’m going to be entirely truthful here). Unlike messing with chicken or pig poop, forking horse manure is a pleasant job, but we both decided that over the course of our lifetimes, we’ve shoveled much more than our share.

Super duper mulch job

Much of the soiled bedding had partially composted, and the freeze and thaw cycles of winter in mid-Michigan will break down most of what’s left. Over the next year, it will feed the earthworms and nematodes and all the rest of the bioherd in the soil.  A garden is only as good as its soil.  Can you tell that I’m already feeling unreasonably optimistic about next year’s garden?

In the meantime, though, I need to finish mulching, and ready myself for the season of frozen water-buckets, bitter winds, and the sweet, sweet solace of our toasty woodstove.

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