My Life, These Days, At Home

After three months of travel, deadlines, celebrations, more travel, graduations, and other wonderful but completely exhausting things, I have been at home for a long time, like three whole days.

I love being at home.

And I love how being at home isn't boring because all these little stories happen when I'm at home, especially if I have some of my wonderful children around, such as Amy, who is home from Thailand for a far-too-brief time.

Anyway.  These are the sort of things that are happening to me these days:

We used to have chickens, and then they got old, and we didn't have chickens any more for I forget how many years.

But now I have chickens again, since Coastal Farms was giving away chicks on Easter Eve, and Paul got me fifteen.

I love having chickens again.

The nests have sat empty for all these years and needed to be cleaned out before this batch of hens decides to start laying.  They weren't that terrible, with just a few years-old dried up literary awards, as my sister Margaret used to call them.  [Pullet Surprises]

What I needed to clean out the nests was a scheifly, otherwise known as a pancake turner.  But one doesn't just grab a pancake turner out of the drawer to clean nests.

My girls always think I need to declutter and downsize, so I had a bright idea.  I would see if there were any scheiflen way in the back of the drawer.  If so, I'd know that I hadn't used them in a while, and I could safely relegate them to henhouse duty.

Win, win.

So I riffled in the back of the drawer and sure enough, there was a big stainless steel scheifly.

I took it to the shed, cleaned the nests, and laid it by the feed sack to use in the future.

Meanwhile, the girls were getting ready to go camping.

About two hours after I'd taken the scheifly outside, Amy was riffling through the drawer.  "Do we have any long-handled, metal pancake turner we could use for cooking over a fire?"

ARRGGHH.

*     *     *

This evening I went on a walk in the lovely summer eveningness.

My brother-in-law Kenneth's field, just to the north of us, is all windrowed, a lovely golden sight in the fading daylight.

But.

What was that, right by the third row in?

A black shape, still and furry.

No no no, surely not a dead cat.

I walked over to Powerline Road and then turned in the field approach.  Over the bare dirt, through the trees, up to the cut grass, and then I could see it better.  Yes, definitely a cat.

Oh NO.  We've lost a cat to a windrower both of the last two harvests.  It's no fun to lose cats in any way, but dying by windrower is especially nasty, not that I have experienced it, but just from observing.

I hesitated before I crossed the windrow, which is basically a three-foot-wide line of cut, piled stalks of grass, because I wanted to give any snakes underneath a chance to go elsewhere.  And while I paused I looked at the cat, still about 20 feet away, to see if it was breathing.  No, mercifully, no sign of life, so at least it wasn't lying there suffering.

I don't have long enough legs to straddle the windrow, so I stepped right in the middle of it with a very loud dry-stalksy CRUNCH.

The dead cat leaped in the air and ran for the house in a black blur.

I also leaped in the air and felt like I might be having a heart attack, which would still be a nicer way to go than being caught in a windrower.

Happily, the cat and I are both very much alive.

*     *     *

On the way back to the house, I picked up the broom that I'd been cleaning the playhouse with, before I cleaned the chicken coop, and I carried the broom into the kitchen.  Paul was working on his computer.  He looked up and asked, casually,

Quote of the Day:

"So, how far did you fly?"

[Did I mention that I love being at home? And clever husbands.]