Five Green Acres

Here’s wishing you all a great weekend!

Lucy approves, but with less enthusiasm than desired.

After much fanfare, cutting, sweating, and crocheting, I’m happy to declare this rag rug DONE. (insert clapping, whistles, and orchestral explosion of “Hallelujah” here) And in the nick of time, too, as my attention span had almost written off the project on account of boredom and bigger, better, flashier prospects on the horizon. That attention span - so fickle.

But I’m happy to say I really, really enjoyed the project, which is good, because it’s a big house and there are countless more rugs to make for it. Up next: a shoe mat for the kitchen. This would be for the shoes that absolutely refuse to live on the mat that already exists, just a few steps away, and also refuse to live anywhere else but in that particular corner of the kitchen. Not that I’m pointing any fingers here; some of the shoes are mine. So I’ve decided to accept that this must be where they live when not on our feet, but not without a campaign to beautify the operation. So a rag rug it will be, which is perfect, because rag rugs are infinitely washable and absolutely look the part of this vintage-chic kitchen.

This whole giving-in attitude reminds me of a passage in a book I read a few years ago. I think it was this book. She talked a lot about the process of building something or laying out a design. In this case, it was her garden and the paths within it. Rather than arbitrarily laying down paths and plunging forward, she decided instead to observe where the natural paths lay. Where she, pets, and others found themselves taking short-cuts through the yard. Where it was always a hassle to walk around a particular bench, when the natural inclination was to go right through. There are undercurrents of Feng Shui here, to be sure, though I don’t remember her saying as much. This “Observe, then build to suit Function” mentality has stuck with me ever since. It works well with my general attitude of serendipity and go-where-the-wind-blows-me. And this, our first year in this house, is full of observing - what is blooming, how the trees are changing our view, what life is like with chickens. It’s good to keep reminding myself to slow down, observe, and not try to plunge forward so quickly into the realization of this self-sustaining dream. That kind of unrealistic, unresponsive momentum can only lead to the kind of backfiring that we’ve seen here of late, where our expectations (mine, especially) have not matched our results.

So a shoe mat it will be. Queuing Rag Rug Number Two.

And look at how nicely Rag Rug Number One plays with Tablecloth-Turned-Curtains. This bathroom is coming around nicely.

The Mayor called this morning and declared today Craft Day. Or, “Make Yourself Some Sanity” day. I happily obliged. I had some curtains to finish, a half-hearted attempt to curb our brazen exhibitionism through curtain-less windows. Peep show’s over, folks, at least out the bathroom windows.

While I crafted my way into higher moral ground, I had no choice but to let Isadora play with me in my studio. She was given access to several packs of vintage beads that I had thrifted for her and they were soon strewn about the floor. The remainder found their way into an assortment of glass jars I provided.

This particular project has been a work in progress for a long time now. Had you been in our shower bathroom in the past 6 months, you would have no doubt noticed the vintage golf clubs placed in the curtain rod holders. No, I’m not a crazy golf fanatic. I just realized how beautiful these vintage wood clubs were at about the same time I realized that we needed some clever curtain solutions in the bathroom. A classic case of creative synergy, not unlike this racket/painting combo that graces the walls of the same bathroom.

The curtains themselves, which I finished today in honor of Craft Day, were a bit of a challenge. They were cut from a beautiful, albeit tattered and stained vintage tablecloth. And most vintage tablecloths I’ve seen fall into this same category, so the skills I picked up in this particular project will no doubt prove invaluable in projects to come. After devising a way to work around the tatters and major stains, while mazimizing the floral pattern of the piece and the constraint of making two kinda-matching curtains, I spliced two pieces together and embellished the seam with some simple, primitive-looking running stitch embroidery. I almost lined the curtains with a white backing, but alas, did not manage to cut it square, throwing off the whole shape and requiring major work to right it all. I scrapped that idea pretty quickly, reconciled with the idea of a less-than-opaque privacy curtain. A backlit naked silhouette is an enormous improvement on the full-frontal exposure of the past.¹

1. OF COURSE I’m exaggerating. A lot. You may also remember that we live in the country, surrounded by deer, cranes, domesticated poultry, ticks, and mosquitoes. They’ve not yet filed an indecency complaint.

The thermometer has been rising, outdoor busy-ness has commenced, thunderstorms have arrived with a vengeance, and yet we’d not personally arrived at summer. We’d not yet jumped into the free-for-all of sun, beach, grass between the toes, and ice cream that define the summer season. It was as if our Crazy Train of Life missed the stop at Summerland.

Whatever the case, we’ve finally arrived, though not without a few bumps. On the verge of a whirlwind 4th of July weekend, a mysterious illness knocked me on my ass. I can’t remember ever feeling so sick, but I’m thankful to confirm that it wasn’t Lyme Disease, a real possibility in these tick-infested parts. Whatever the diagnosis, it was tamed with antibiotics enough to get in the car and begin our first round of fun - a great, big family get-together with Andrew’s family and small army of close family friends.

One of the highlights: the inaugural run of Isadora’s very own fishing pole. It was her first gift from Grampa, when she was only a few days old, and it has waited patiently all this time.

Worms. Every bit as fun as the actual fishing. I suppose she comes by that honestly.

The Dads worked the pretty pink fishing poles with a dedicated intensity that we’d never before seen, determined to catch and hook the fish for the girls to reel in. And by some stroke of magic, the first fish was caught, reeled in by Isadora, and then soon followed by her cousin’s own fish. Back and forth the bounty shifted, the fish somehow magically following the rules of sharing and turn-taking that make a cousins’ partnership harmonious. The Daddies kept the pace timed perfectly for a 2-1/2yr-old attention spans, with little time for worm interludes between the excitement of reeling in the next catch.

Not too shabby, Daddio.

Last week I had to take matters into my own hands, Rosie the Riveter style. Cookbooks were amok, buckets and baskets strewn about, and every revolution of the washing machine’s spin cycle sent the clutter atop the heap into a frenzied break-dance. The project intended to curb all this chaos had been started a week or more ago, but had gotten swept up in the current of Our Lives and washed away to some remote place downstream.

At some point last week, the steam built up enough to make this kettle whistle, loudly, and I decided that enough was enough. I’m actually pretty capable and handy and all that, but for some reason, inserting anchors into plaster walls seems both too cumbersome and not nearly instant-gratification-enough for me. So I usually leave it to my handyman, Mr. Andrew. (he’s the husband in this story) Turns out this handyman’s itinerary is miles long, with much more pressing projects, if you can believe that.

Enter drill, anchors, perfectly sized screws (bought by Mr. Handyman specifically for the project), some barn wood from our demolished barn, some shelf brackets, and you have yourself the ingredients for some clutter-busting, order-making sanity. My favorite kind.

That’s much, much better.

Really, though, this just may have been an excuse to create a space for this family-heirloom scale and thrifted vintage apothecary bottle.

I promise to get back into the blogging mode next week. It’s been one heckuva week, but I’ve got lots of hope for good things to come - especially from the crafty front. I’m a little bit jealous and a lot inspired by the crazy whirlwind of sewing that Elsie Marley has been doing of late. We’ll see what kind of good things can come out of that.

Have a lovely weekend, everyone!  Oh yes.  We’re off to see Tom Waits.  !!!!

We do. Lots of it, happily, and we’ve been waiting for these guys to show up for weeks. Not that they’re late; only that we misread their RSVP. In case you somehow missed out on the ubiquitous Kindergarten-3rd grade science unit on metamorphosis, I shall introduce you. This is a monarch caterpillar. They eat only milkweed. A shortage of milkweed = a shortage of monarch butterflies. We have no such shortage, hence, we shall be getting a jump on the Kindergarten exercise of watching for a cocoon and then bringing it inside to watch it hatch. Once hatched, we’ll release the beautiful monarch butterfly into the wild so it can prepare for its Mexican vacation. Or wherever it winters over. Is that Mexico?

We’ve got some time; this guy is pretty small, at less than 1/2″. For more on this metamorphosis process, I’d recommend this book. Hee hee.

Happy Solstice to you all! Let the summer games begin.

Time to check back in with the guineas, who are really, really starting to look like actual guineas and not just gawky chicks. The pearled patterning that gives this breed their name is showing up now on the feathers that grow longer by the minute. Now that they can hop and fly beyond the ceiling-less confines of their section of the coop, they’ve started taking ownership. I’ve read that the guineas will quickly claim their rightful spot as Coop Bosses, and got a glimpse of that last night as a couple of guineas chose the backs of some docile hens for a resting place. Despite our intentions to raise them to be tame and friendly, we’ve not handled them nearly enough to overcome their skittishness, which makes for an entertaining show when we enter the coop, as they hop, skip, jump, and fly the heck away from us. Overall, though, they’re doing very well, and we’ve only had one casualty, a guinea with a birth defect.

The “chicks”, however, are another story entirely. A sad and frustrating one, I’m afraid. In a fog of naivete and maybe a little bit of arrogance, we’ve suddenly found ourselves caricatured inside the pages of an age-old children’s tale. You, no doubt, know the story too - the cunning fox (or here it’s likely a racoon) outwits the farmers night after night and walks out with a delicious chicken dinner and a sneer on his lips. We’ve probably read three or four different adaptations of this story to Isadora already, but in each “retelling”, the chicken always manages to outfox the fox. A modern day, underdog twist, perhaps? Completely unrealistic, as it turns out.

We were first alerted to the situation a few nights ago. To prepare for our upcoming Transition The Broiler Chickens From The Orchard To Our Freezer operation (how’s that for a euphemism??), we separated one rooster and what we hoped were all the females (pullets) from the bunch and added them to the chicken coop to join the Lovely Ladies (laying hens) and Guineas. We tucked them all in for a good night’s sleep and tucked ourselves in. The next day was uneventful. The next night, when tucking them in and going through roll call, we thought one might be missing, but recounted several times and dismissed it as our error. The following morning, however, Andrew found a pile of white feathers near the door of the orchard coop.

Still, we thought it an isolated incident. Until late that night. The windows were open, catching the refreshing night breeze when a series of distressed shrieks jolted me out of my light sleep. What could that be? All the chickens were tucked in, safe and sound, I thought.

But the next day, I discovered our folly. The Villain in this story had crawled into the orchard coop through a chicken wire hole that was formerly filled by their heat lamp. At least three chickens had met their demise that night. Panic and shock and a little bit of helplessness shook me for a bit as I cleaned up, and only intensified when a quick walk around the orchard revealed multiple piles of feathers outside the perimeter. No doubt this critter was a regular customer. We were so stupid, in our own la-la land every night as our flock was systematically reduced, one by one.

The chicken learning curve is indeed a steep one, especially when we’re climbing so many other inclines at the same time. And I’d like to clarify that there has, indeed, been hours and hours and hours of reading (real, grown-up books, not the aforementioned children’s stories), thinking, talking, planning, and other responsible actions taken to go about our ever-evolving Chicken Project. Sometimes, though, there’s just no way to gain experience, knowledge, and wisdom without actually DOING. And sometimes, we can only do the best we can at the given time.

To close, I’d like to introduce you to Dapper Dan, our handsome rooster. We think he’s a Blue Andalusian, though there was a free rare chick added to our order, so it’s possible he’s something else entirely. If you have any ideas, let me know. What we do know is that he’s kind, mild mannered, a bit shy, and possesses a nice crowing voice. He’s the crown jewel of the coop and we have high hopes for his protective abilities as he matures a bit more. We hope he’s happy here.

In an effort to conserve time and gas, I’ve been working very hard to limit my forays into town for groceries. For us, that means heading into Madison to visit the food coop, where we’ve been undoubtedly spoiled. It’s been a bit of a culture shock to discover how our eating habits no longer work with the offerings of local grocery store. Taken-for-granted-things like goat cheese, kalamata olives, tamari, basalmic vinegar, artisanal bread, and blue corn tortilla chips have exposed this new truth, not to mention organic or local ANYTHING (produce, honey, maple syrup). Since these are the very things that stock our pantry, I try to make my pilgrimage into town once a week and group my other errands into that same trip. Sometimes, though, it doesn’t quite happen with that frequency, and we’re left with no bread, milk, or other staples.

But we’re still hungry for that after-nap, before-our-late-supper snack, so last week we got a little creative. Way back when Miss Isadora was raisin-size floating in utero, I came upon a recipe for homemade graham crackers. Because, of course, I would always make homemade graham crackers and other more-nutritious foods for my baby and wouldn’t ever buy them. This dogma was clearly the result of some kind of pregnancy-induced, utopian delusion, because I’ve not until this moment made them. And, as revealed, the motives were more necessity-driven than they were tenets of our food doctrine. Nevertheless, they were fun to make, good to eat, and we will definitely make them again, as I continuously strive to meet my own ambitious food goals.

Graham Crackers

1 c. sifted flour - graham or whole wheat

1 c. white flour (whole wheat pastry flour worked well for me)

1t. baking powder

1/4 c. honey

1/4 c. butter

1/4 c. milk + a little more to get the right consistency

Mix dry ingredients, work in butter with a pastry blender. Stir in honey and milk, then knead to form firm balls. Add a little bit of milk as necessary to get this consistency. Roll out to about 1/4″ thick. Cut into squares or use cookie cutters.

Bake at 400° for 15 minutes, or until brown.

I think it might be best to store these in a loosely-fitted container to maintain the crispiness of crackers. We didn’t, and our crackers were more like less-sweet cut-out cookies than crackers, so we’ll try that next time. Also, not having milk, we found that using half and half, which we did have on hand, worked well when diluted a bit. Not that I’d recommend the substitution unless you’re in a real pinch…

If you also have ABC cookie cutters, you’re in luck. The B and the X are especially delicious with this recipe.

Yesterday was a really rough day. Rough as in not good and inconvenient and lacking particular joy. But nowhere near the kind of rough experienced by soooooooo many others during the latest round of storms and mass, unprecedented flooding yesterday. Given that, I feel a little bit like an ass for mentioning that my day wasn’t particularly good, but it is my blog, and I think it makes today look especially good.

Because today is just teeming with new life.

Yesterday, though, I made my usual rounds to feed the chicks, hens, and guineas. What greeted me in the hen house took my breath away. Two hens in the nest boxes had met an untimely death at the hands of some kind of varmint. Blood, feathers, and some innards were strewn about. It marked a sort of turning-point for me, and in the donning of gloves and swift removal of the carcasses, with my stomach in knots, I gained a measure of legitimacy in this new role of homesteader. Rather ironic, too, as this weekend was to be the fated weekend to transition our broiler chickens from their range in the orchard to our chest freezer.

Not less than five minutes after returning to the house, after cleaning the hen house and bolstering the perimeter against future attacks, I greeted my newly-awake-from-her-nap crabby girl and sat down to check out the details of the thunderstorm that had begun to rage outside. The radar casually mentioned something about a Tornado Warning for my county. Oh, WHAT?? That’s right. Tornado’s due in my neck of the woods at approximately 3:35pm, so have tea ready. It was then 3:05ish, so I had some time. To wrangle the girl and put some pants and shoes on her, kicking and screaming. To wrangle some shoes for myself. To wrangle a radio to monitor the situation. To wrangle some sugary snacks to stop the crying, kicking, and screaming of the girl who’d not yet eaten lunch. And to wrangle the dogs who were not outfitted to greet a tornado.

Then safely in the basement, I had a little time for reflecting.

1. I’ve come a long way with my tornado phobia. A big help: the understanding, about two years ago, that a tornado warning means a tornado is somewhere in the county, not necessarily spotted by someone in my town, or in my back yard. Thus, there’s usually time to breathe, then get the heck downstairs.

2. Why the hell aren’t we using our dehumidifier in the basement??? We have one, but have not yet saw fit to plug it in. Enter musty old-basement smell.

3. There may be nothing more insulting that waiting through “Only the Good Die Young” by Billy Joel on the radio for updates on the impending weather crisis. As God is my witness, we will own a weather radio before the sun sets.

4. Frosted Mini-Wheats and their generic knock-offs are truly clever. Great with or without milk, portable, and instrumental in passing 45 musty dark minutes in a basement waiting for the ceiling to fall.

In the end, we emerged from the cave unharmed and not even touched by that storm, who decided instead to revisit a town hit only last week by a previous tornado. Do what you know, right? Eventually, Andrew arrived home safe and sound, with Weather Radio in hand, and we bunkered down to watch the flooding crisis unfold.

And today, with a wee bit of trepidation, I journeyed out to the hen house to investigate some hen squawking. And this is what I saw in the run:

A snapping turtle, I’m assuming. They’ve been getting our attention a lot in the past few days - Andrew, ever the Boy Scout, escorted one across a busy highway last weekend, and last night we learned of the one trying to nest in the garage of Andrew’s parents. I ran to the house, grabbing Isadora and the camera, and we soon were witness to this miracle: (I’d recommend watching with sound the on, to catch the completely un-coached commentary)

Minutes later, we discovered that Momma Finch was not alone in her nest!

And right before naptime today, we were graced with a visit from Momma Deer and her sweet Fawn, who we first met yesterday morning. Photo taken from upstairs window, so ignore the poor quality and look at those spots!

Today has been a fantastic day.