I've been working on a little thing that brings together food and stories from our homestead and I've had the unfortunate realization that a great deal of what happens around here isn't all that appetizing. Not only that, but it goes so far as to be stomach-turning, sick-making, and/or downright turn-you-off-from-eating-this-or-that-food-for-the-foreseeable-future. My attraction to hard won projects is admirable, I can say at least.
To find our way to this morning's Case and Point re: the unappetizing homestead, I've first to tell you that we've had so many broody hens this fall as to feel near affliction. One hen thought lost to the woods popped through the fence a month and a half ago with 8 of the healthiest yellow fluffs we've ever seen. Then another hen, an older gal who was not being romanced by our rooster, happened upon a hidden clutch of eggs and decided to take a 21-day sit while we remained none the wiser. She is now the proud mother of three.
And then there were the two fluffy-footed hopefuls who adopted another hidden clutch of eggs so large it refused containment even from a double rump sit. When discovered by the human kind, exactly how long this effort had been underway was unclear. We were, however, able to settle on the shared feeling that it would be cruel to deprive motherhood of those willing to put in the work. I also remain completely disinterested in accidentally cracking a half-formed chick into my frying pan. So there you have it.
But then weeks, and weeks, went by. We agreed that should Sunday (yesterday) come without a peep, an intervention would have to be made on behalf of our hens' health. And so that is how our ever-curious son was tasked with clearing out a dud of a clutch. As little boys can be counted upon to be, he was both sickened and thrilled by the eggs' rotten contents. Later that day two beautiful pale brown eggs were brought into the kitchen. Balance- wherein we attend to our hens' every need and they in turn support our egg habit -was restored.
After having soaked oats overnight for the menfolks' breakfast, it fell to me this morning to enjoy the celebratory return of the egg before she is completely ushered out by the season's waning light. This time of year I like the comfort of a couple of soft-boiled eggs smashed with salt and pepper and eaten quickly before they have a chance to cool even slightly. Only, the second egg I cracked into was a sick green-brown and as foul-smelling as they come. In my hand was a rotten holdout from the dud clutch, boiled to piping-hot-but-barely-set. How I remained a Person Who Eats Eggs through that is about as clear as my path to sharing the full scope of homestead anecdotes alongside recipes intended to make a person want to eat. That said, I am wholly committed to both the former and the latter.
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Hello. Writing to you from The Home for Wayward Hens and Eggs in Peril. Here the babe of the homestead doles out regrettably expensive chicken feed to his 20-some chickens; meanwhile his mother inexplicably has the privilege of feeding Some Other Farm’s eggs to herself and her family. It is a thing beyond reason. And thus being, we set a friendly trap for the little imp called Skunk two days ago, baiting the thing with eggs we’d rather have eaten. Our thinking was that while there’s little to be done for pullets unmoved by their purpose, at least we could provide a line of defense for our freewheeling old girls who insist on laying in far-flung corners of the homestead. Only, when we stole a peek at our catchings, we were the proud trappers of a well known and, I suppose, loved barn cat who, while waiting to be released, had enjoyed a morning breakfast of eggs. I imagine at this point in the story it would come as no surprise that I recently relinquished an entire morning’s milking after finding the plump backend of that same cat sticking out of my pail. His head and equally plump belly were working to balance and lap in unison, a thing he had not quite mastered and that looked something more like determined bobbing and dunking. No, thank you, I thought. I’ll take the loss. To prevent more of The Drowning Game, the fresh milk was poured into the community scrap and milk bowl by the well and I imagine that was likely the old cat’s plan all along.
And then it was August, as told the sun with her creep towards bed, early and earlier yet. As evidence to her claim, those of us nonplussed by summer’s hurtle towards fall might reference Garden and Cow: the weeds cometh and the cream line pales. Could tell it all by the calendar, sure, but I can’t imagine why anyone'd bother.
As these summer days wane, Luella’s milking stanchion remains functional-yet-roofless, meaning that: when Weather arises in milking hours, I am in it. One recent morning I sat milking Luella as a misty rain settled on what little of my skin could be found. Neck, wrists, ankles. What a gift, that rain. Truthfully I am bit unsettled at the thought of a roofed milking season bereft of the baptism that is a soft rain on the flannel-warmed backside of a neck. (Mmm, amen.) There's little better than a soft rain on a warm morning. It's wont to a slow build towards anything that might make you miserable. It is Weather, yes, but comfortably so. You can even imagine yourself to be the sort of person that really lives in this world Come What May (hell or high Weather, she pleasantly milks) and though an arguable claim, there’s no harm in a little 5 a.m. self-satisfaction.
Rain. Sometimes coming to bless your bent frame while yesterday’s kind found me cursing the whole damned operation that has me sitting under a thousand pounds of heaving orneriness twice a day. Got over it soon as my socks were dry though, go figure. If in the future of shingled milking stanchions cloud-sent blessings are scarce, I imagine I’ll find some corner of the homestead, back curved and neck stretched toward some godforsaken ground-rooted task, in which to accept my anointments. And as it goes, I imagine it’s in that same corner under different skies that I’ll damn the path that brought me there. Can't be helped. In matters of the soul, the line is fine between -moving and -crushing when Come the Rain.
