March 2017

My mother zips around the states giving seminars on something that seems rather important to the folks who understand it, my brother became a doctor, I even have a cousin who wrote a book.  Actually there are all manner of brains, professionals, engineers, librarians, nurses, physician’s assistants, and the like in my family. Me? I talk to chickens.  It’s a skill.  My grandmother, ever the encourager, the beautiful lady who taught me to read, has always told me, “Write what you know!”  Hand me a post-it. In short, there’s not much I know.  I’m not a writer, I’m a terrible decision maker, and some of my best conversations go down in a chicken coop. You can’t win them all, Grandma.  Instead of writing what I know, I’ll have to just settle for just writing a bit for me, a bit for Grandma, and a good bit because the chickens need an occasional break from my prattling.  

The Weekly Fluff:

This week was my husband’s birthday. In traditional Wife of the Year style, I mis-calculated when booking my flight for a visit home and missed most of it.  In traditional I Seriously Lucked Out in the Husband Department style, he didn’t really mind.  He went fishing, then met me at the door with veggie burgers and oranges, as you do.  

In other, more depressing news, we lost our charming (if slightly manic) rooster, Mango.

Our chickens free range, because that is the lifestyle they have chosen, flying over their six foot fence daily whether we open their gate or not.  We risk more loss this way, but have ridiculously happy chickens. So far, our few losses haven’t outweighed their happiness; safeguarding with plenty of brush, yappy dogs, Scrappy the bobble-headed owl, and our rooster has sufficed. Mango, in typical teenager fashion, had decided to stage a rebellion over the past couple of weeks. My formerly sweet lap rooster was challenging everything in sight, reducing me to ensuring a sturdy grip on my broom whenever I ventured into his (formerly my) yard. This likely only served to further validate any of  my students’ murmurings as to my preferred mode of travel, but significantly reduced bruising in the absence of shin guards.  If only I had known in my volleyball days that they'd be valuable farming equipment down the road. He had started to mellow out and resign himself to being a notch below me and my trusty broom on the family totem, but I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised that he was undaunted by an interloping hawk.  Although I suppose he did what roosters are in theory are meant to do, in preserving all of his ladies, I miss the little menace dreadfully and the mornings here are far too silent for my liking. 

Of course this has given rise to my most recent expedited Amazon delivery and homesteading project - Project Hatch a Baby Mango - which was greeted at the door by my husband with a shrug, eyeroll, and an offer to share his orange, as you do.  He’s big on citrus right now.