8.29.2010

Farm Fresh






It is difficult to express the devotion I feel to our three chickens without sounding completely nuts. But over the 6 months or so we''ve had them, the relationship has become, well, a relationship. When we started down the road of chicken raising, I figured it was going to be a great learning experience and an opportunity to connect directly with an important and every day food source. I didn't expect that my family would be charmed to the point of love by the actual chickens themselves.

Matilda, Honey, and Macaroni have become a part of the family. They are legitimate pets (something I am grateful for given the fact that due to allergies this family will never have a conventional cat or dog) and a source of nearly constant entertainment around here. They have distinct personalities and excel at different things. Honey is our best insect hunter. She can find, or steal from the others, an insect faster than you can believe. Matilda is skittish, but self-assured. She has a regal long neck and does a funny side to side neck wagging thing when you hold her, almost like a dance. Macaroni is our crowd pleaser. She is so full of personality and spunk, I really feel like we've had conversations. She's the most aware of us and seems to genuinely want to interact. And as if all this weren't enough, they eat our leftover food scraps and fertilize our yard!

My kids are in love with having chickens. Cleo is the mother hen and takes her role as chicken boss, protector, and trainer quite seriously. She spends a good hour at least with them every day-petting, handling, and no doubt, torturing them with attention. She attempted to teach them some skills this summer like walking around a maze of golf balls and getting them to sit after a pat on the head. Those efforts haven't been all that successful, but she did manage to get each chicken to jump up to her head height (4 ft) to retrieve raisins and sunflower seeds to eat. When they free range around the yard, both kids hold them and do things like swing in the hammock or dig in the sandbox with a chicken on their lap. I believe all three chickens have taken rides on bikes and scooters-please don't call PETA. The interactions are hilarious and I admire so much the fearlessness and love both Cleo and Flynn show for these animals.

Being chicken owners has had a few annoyances, of course. We used to let them free range all day in the yard but when they went from cute little baby chicks who would stay by our side and aimlessly peck the ground to full grown chickens capable of scratching up and pecking at every single beautiful plant in the yard, we started to get mad. As of last month, Jaren and I both felt the damage was enough to require that they stay cooped and in their run full time. (Luckily we were able to move the coop to a new area to create a much larger space for the chickens and kids to roam together.) The poop is pretty annoying and definitely has a way of sticking deeply to shoes. They are messy eaters and spoil their clean water with dirt the minute you set it down. We've had a scare with a neighbors dog taking a nip at Matilda, and one night we accidentally shut the gate to the coop area when the chickens were out, and when we came home after dark, found all three chickens asleep roosting in trees and on the fence out in the open in our yard.

But seriously these issues are nothing compared to the fun and enrichment the chickens have brought to our family. And let me tell you
the very best thing that has happened to us in weeks was coming home from our vacation to learn that MACARONI IS NOW AN EGG LAYING HEN! Hip hip hooray! Now fully mature, Macaroni has started laying daily eggs and they are lovely; small in size, perfectly oval, and a light brown creamy color. Cleo runs down to the coop in the morning and gathers the egg and every day her excitement is just as much as the day before. It is like a daily treasure hunt for her. I personally love the sound Macaroni makes once she's laid...it's like a triumphant little announcement: BBBOKKK! BBBBOK! BBBOOOKKKK! You can't help but feel her pride embedded in the sound.

It is pretty great to have a pet give you something back-something useful and edible even! Mac's eggs are delicious. The yolks are bright orange, not yellow like the ones I buy, and they taste seriously creamy and rich. I like eggs but I know once all three hens start laying I'm going to have to get serious about ways to use up all the egg plenty. I see lots of crepes, german pancakes, quiches, and egg sandwiches in my future. Tough life!


P.S. Lucky, lucky me...my sister in law, Lisa, is a wonderful photographer and at Flynn's recent bday party captured the above shots of my kids with their chickens. I am so glad to have these moments captured! Thank you, Lisa! Check out her work at http://www.3peasphoto.blogspot.com/

8.20.2010

I still love summer and am a very official Motorist.




I certainly hope absence makes the heart grow fonder because I have been plain absent around these parts, haven't I? Chalk it up to summer travels, minor states of emergencies, and a general feeling of my life being on fast forward. Oh, and school is starting and I possibly went a bit mad and joined the PTA board of Cleo's school! Hello, time commitment!

I'm sad for summer to be coming to a close-there will never be enough days at the pool or bbq'd chicken in my book- but I am feeling ready to usher back some structure in my household. I've been sadly delinquent in crafting and reading and cooking anything that requires time in the oven. My heel callouses are out of hand and it is probably time to put on a pair of socks again. But man, it has been a fun summer. Swimming and tubing on rivers, learning to fly fish, hiking and smelling like campfire, sticky sheets and fans in the window; gin and tonics and fun bbqs and new groovy vintage patio set out on our deck; dirt under my nails and hummingbirds zooming overhead; clouds of white roses and cascades of blue morning glories; training chickens to jump; watching Flynn learn to ride a scooter; sandbox digging, Cleo's fairy house making; road trips and camping plans and happy babies being born and made. Life fairly overflows during summer doesn't it? And summer, I'm still not done with you yet!

We just returned from our annual summer road trip. For the last three years we've made a plan with one of my best friends from college to meet up and camp or spend a few days in a cabin somewhere we want to explore. It has become a great tradition, one made even sweeter by the fact that our daughters are only 3 months apart and fast friends. (We are pretty sure they think they are some kind of relation-some hybrid form between cousins and sisters.) I've gone off about my love of the road trip before, and I can't help but do it again. It is truly the best way to travel if you like landscape and regionalism and believe in the luxury of time. That is probably the single most ironic thing about road trips-the method of transport may not be luxurious and its definitely not convenient- but the act of meandering state to state without regard to time truly is. As a culture, we pride ourselves on quick flights to Vegas and convenient non- stops direct to Paris from Salt Lake, and yet there is nothing in those kind of journeys that makes me feel relaxed, and even less that engages me or piques my interest about where it is I'm traveling to. LIfe looks lifeless when seen from 30,000 feet.

When I lived in New York and rode the subway everywhere, the whole city felt to me like a disorienting mish-mash of disparate locations; walk up a set of stairs at 59th Street stop and you get Bloomingdales, walk up another set at the Bowery and you get restaurant store supply shops and cheap booze. It always felt like a puzzle (or teleporting) and it wasn't until we bought a car and drove the city more that I started to notice the subtle ways the pieces and neighborhoods fit and flowed from one to the next. The same thing happens for me on road trips. I love to watch the land flatten out into grassy plains and deep gorges and then rise up again into voluptuous mountains. You can literally see the tectonics and erosion at play. I like to watch the idiosyncrasies of local places-how some farmers in an area are suddenly partial to circular hay bales and others stick with the tried and true rectangles. Or the way that American cars take over the road as soon as you leave any sizable city. I like that I know that pretty much every small town in America has something called the Knotty Pine. And I love that road signs on forgotten highways often refer to drivers as "motorists" in the very 1950s technical way that we still call our summer cooling devices "air conditioners".

It's really satisfying to me to be thorough, I guess. And road trips are nothing but thorough. There is no way around the hundreds of miles of sagebrush plains that is so much of the West. But instead of noticing the expanse of more of the same, I try and relish it, waiting in suspense for the land to shift and the next town to come into view. It's really great work if you can get it, but believe me, you can get it if you try.

(All photos above are from the recent trip and courtesy of the awesome Hipstamatic app and Shake it app for the iphone. Everything looks better all old-timey doesn't it?)