On Thanksgiving and Grief

It’s been 364 days since I last wrote and I’ve never had so much inside me, yet so little power to articulate. The past year’s events mean life will never be the same. And yet in so many ways, life is the same. The week after my mom died I reached out to a friend who regularly buys eggs to see if she needed some. She did but expressed she hadn’t wanted to bother me during this difficult time. My answer: “Well, the chickens keep laying no matter what.” And in so many ways that says it all. 

When I think back on my summer, all I really remember is sitting with my mom every day while she slowly released her strong grip on life, and also tending my garden. During this time, my best friend offered to come work in my garden, understandably assuming that I was letting it go. But in truth, it was the most weeded and watered and productive it had ever been. It was my solace. I needed to keep my hands busy and to see life springing forth in abundance and blessing.

Life going on is a severe mercy... it pierces and taunts, but what would we do if it didn’t? 

You are sad, and then your kid proudly dresses himself and shirts are backwards and patterns are clashing and life is hysterical for a moment. And those moments keep happening and the laughter rings more true each time.

There are long stretches when the color seems drained from everything and then suddenly the sky is ablaze and beauty is everywhere and you can’t bring yourself to feel the sadness in that moment.

You want to lock yourself away and cry for a good, long while, and then the cows escape the pasture and you have a cow pie closer to your front door than you ever thought possible, and once again the laughter comes.

You are humbled to realize that death is so strong, so devastating, and then hope reminds you that it is life that always prevails, for there will be life…

SO much life.

You think this life may never seem sweet again and then your daughter (the one that you pull your hair out a little over) hugs you close and whispers, “I’m glad I have you.” 

And you remember the one you had for forty-one years: the one who thought you were the most amazing person on earth, the one who exaggerated your talents terribly, and the one, who if you could be just a fraction of the person she thought you were, you would be doing alright. 

And you are thankful, so very thankful for the life she lived, for the love she gave, for the Place she now dwells, for the Savior she’s now with. And you know that if you hadn't loved her so much, you wouldn't miss her so much, and you wouldn't have it any other way. 

It is life, all of it... so bitter, yet so sweet. And God sifts it all through His mighty hands and allows us to live the life He unfolds before us with grace. And what can you do but be thankful? 

1. Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow;
   Praise Him, all creatures here below;
   Praise Him above, ye heavenly host;
   Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Grace upon Grace

To be grateful is to recognize the love of God in everything 

He has given us -- and He has given us everything. 

Every breath we draw is a gift of His love, 

every moment of existence is a grace, 

for it brings with it immense graces from Him." 

–Thomas Merton

I last wrote on the last day of summer. On the first day of autumn my mom was diagnosed with stage 4 ovarian cancer. The two months since have seen trial upon trial. The two months since have also seen grace upon grace. And as I've always suspected, His grace is sufficient.

The lavish abundance of my material blessings do not escape me. I am grateful, as always, for food we've grown ourselves, 

for animals living as God intended on our farm, 

and for the shelter of a warm, dry home, (as well as the comfort of a hot cup of tea after a long day's work).

However, I well know that men and women cannot live on bread alone. We are body and soul. So this Thanksgiving as we celebrate and give thanks for our literal harvest, a harvest that sustains our physical bodies, I am also pausing to give thanks for a spiritual harvest, which is sustaining my soul. 

When life is tranquil and I walk with God, I may not even be aware that I am planting seeds and nourishing soil that will sustain me in times of trial. But those words of His that I hid in my heart during times of plenty and the good things He blessed me with in times of ease are allowing me to now trust Him and lean on Him as winter comes. Uncertainties, challenges, and uncomfortable stretching are authenticating my faith. 

Some spiritual blessings I'm thankful for:

a mother showing me courage, faith, trust, and gratitude in the midst of a battle for her life. Despite what she is facing, she is more thankful than ever; 

the beauty of a world ablaze and the senses that allow me to take it all in and appreciate it and the balm it gives to the soul;

fog that rises off the river and shrouds us and doesn't allow us to look too far beyond what is right before us - a reminder of grace for today;

a household teeming with life (so much life!), and love, and imperfection, and forgiveness.

Most of all I am thankful that the sun always rises, no matter what the day prior held, that His mercies are new every morning, and that He will sustain us no matter what the new day holds.

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; 

His mercies never come to an end. 

They are new every morning. 

Great is thy Faithfulness.

~Lamentations 3:22-23 (ESV)

Psalm 100

A psalm. For giving grateful praise.

Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth.

   Worship the Lord with gladness;

    come before him with joyful songs.

 Know that the Lord is God.

    It is he who made us, and we are his;

    we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.

 Enter his gates with thanksgiving

    and his courts with praise;

    give thanks to him and praise his name.

 For the Lord is good and his love endures forever;

  his faithfulness continues through all generations.

The Last Summer Post

The crickets felt it was their duty to warn everybody that summertime cannot last forever. Even on the most beautiful days in the whole year – the days when summer is changing into autumn – the crickets spread the rumor of sadness and change."

~ E.B. White, Charlotte's Web

Today is the last day of summer, but in truth, it has not felt like summer for a couple of weeks. The stifling heat has relented, the parched ground has been satiated, the crickets have indeed spread word of change, and our carefree days have been replaced with schedules and routine.

A few summer notables:

* My 40th birthday gift from last December is finished and installed at the end of our driveway. We are official now. I could not love it more.

* My beloved, beautiful, tabby cat Digory was hit by a car. 

Thorin and Digory

For 24-hours we thought we were going to be able to save him, but we ended up having to put him down. He was the best farm cat, killing (and often eating) 1-3 critters every day, and he loved me so much he even dropped a squirrel at my feet in the middle of dinner. His favorite place to be was on my shoulder, and I would carry him around as I did my farm chores. True, he was an imfamous chicken killer and we have not lost a single chick or juvenile chicken since he died, so that is just a very faint silver-lining. He would often be absent for days at a time, so I always knew I needed to hold him loosely out here in the country. I just thought he'd go as a wild animal's dinner, not by car. 

I waited exactly one week before going to Salem Friends of Felines to find another cat. (I promised Caleb if anything ever happens to him I will wait significantly longer before replacing him.) Since we just did the kitten thing with Thorin a few months ago, I wasn't super excited to do that again. We ended up with the sweetest 9-month old cat. The kids wanted him even over the adorable kittens because he was an absolute love. 

We named him Huckleberry Finn Williams, and he has yet to catch a single critter (aside from a couple of moths). He may be our lover, while Thorin, who was Digory's protege, is turning into our fierce hunter.

Huck and Thorin have become friends

and bravely protect our driveway.

* For years we have been looking for a cider press. New presses are $600-$1000, which is hard to justify for a once/year use. Occasionally we would find a used one on Craigslist for $200-$300, only to have it slip through our fingers. They always sold extremely quickly and were often too far away for us to get to them in time. I was getting my haircut when I received a text from my dear farm neighbor, who knew of my desire for a cider press. (I speak of these neighbors often, as they have been so generous and gracious in helping us to learn these country ropes.) She sent me a picture and said her husband was at a farm sale and a cider press was $150 and did I want them to buy it for us? BUY IT!!! And they did, and her husband worked them down to $120.

They even did a little internet research on my behalf and determined it was built in 1874. Cleaned up versions are selling for $1,000 on ebay. We may take a sandblaster to the rust at some point... or we may not. We're hoping to press some cider and wine this fall, but even if we never use it, it is a beautiful piece of history. 

*Caleb built a long-dreamed of firepit and we were able to get one fire in before the burn ban took effect. 

Firepits seem to bring out the love in everyone.

*After a very slow start, and despairing that I would have little produce to show for my gardening efforts this year, the last month has seen me canning and freezing and overall, quite pleased with what I've been able to salvage from this unusual year. 

Last year, I took a break from tomatillos because I had so much salsa still from the previous year. But this year the pantry was depleted, so I again planted tomatillos.

I canned salsa verde

and Mexican tomatillo salsa.

 We've decided that we do not care for the texture of blanched, frozen green beans, so I turned all of our excess beans into pickled dilly beans.

 

In September I finally had tomatoes to process. I froze enough for my two girls' birthday dinners next spring and then set about canning salsa and chopped tomatoes. (We still have plenty of marinara.)

We also grew berries, grapes, broccoli, beets, carrots, cucumbers, corn, potatoes, radishes, squash and peas. Most of these were not stellar crops for us this year, but we enjoyed what we had.

As the sun sets on summer, we are thankful for all of God's Good Gifts to us: animals that we love enough to miss when they're gone, friends who generously lend their time and talent for a gift that truly pleases, neighbors who help make dreams come true, and of course, the bounty of our land which will feed us through the coming winter. Welcome, autumn.

A Chicken Summer

Summer was full of chickens:

New chickens,

old (grumpy) chickens,

under-achievers,

over-achievers,

births,

deaths.

And problems (always problems)... and projects (always projects)...

The chicken problem we deal with most often is broody hens. The natural instinct for a hen to want to hatch eggs leads her to sit on a clutch of eggs (or even just an empty spot if the eggs are collected). Our hens usually go broody in the barn and will quietly sit in the corner of a barn stall forever, unless 1) we allow them to hatch eggs, like this lucky hen got to do this summer,

or, 2) they go in the broody buster, an upside down dog kennel that doesn't allow a hen to hunker down and nest. Three days in the broody buster, and a hen is *usually* cured. We had a revolving door of broody hens all summer long, up to four at one time.

We put these two in the broody buster together.

Hermione is the ameracauna on the left. She is one of our original chicks from 3 1/2 years ago, back when we still named our chickens. The gal on the right is a speckled bantam cochin who we've also had 3 years. She is named after one of the Ingalls sisters from Little House on the Prairie, but I can't remember which one. Bantams are the smaller version of the standard breeds (just like dogs have "toy" versions). In their three years at Good Gifts Farm, she and Hermione have never palled around or been particularly close. However, after their three days in the broody buster together, something remarkable happened. Hermione, who so wanted to hatch chicks, "adopted" the little bantam as her chick. After their release, they were inseparable. Hermione would stand guard while the banty pecked and scratched for food. She would not leave her side for a second of the day. And for several nights in a row, this was the scene on the roost in the coop:

Sssshhh... just let me hold you

Hermione tucking the bantam under her wing to sleep, just like a mama would do with her chick. The whole situation brought us a few chuckles and much joy. A couple months have passed and their relationship has returned to normal.

Our main summer-chicken-project was raising 25 cornish-cross meat chickens.

I know they are adorable and fluffy at one-day old, but I guarantee you, by 8 weeks, they are anything but.

Instead of raising them solely in the barn as we did last summer, we really wanted to get them out on pasture, both for their own health and for sanitation. They were in the barn under the heat lamp for three weeks,

and then we moved them into an old mini-coop that Caleb converted into a chicken tractor by putting wheels on it and placing it in the pasture.

Every day he moved the tractor a few feet to give the chickens fresh grass to peck at and poop on. We still have a few kinks to work out in the watering system (keeping them hydrated was a full-time job for me during those few weeks), but overall this was far superior to keeping them in the barn.

However,  Caleb and I are having serious qualms about raising cornish-cross again. We had to slaughter a week early, at 7 weeks, because we were going on vacation and didn't want our farm-sitter to have to deal with them. Even then, their skin was splitting from their rapid growth and several had gaping wounds under their wings where the heaviness of their breasts had caused the skin to tear. I know it sounds gross, and believe me, it was. Two dropped dead a week before slaughter.

Cornish-cross are designed to grow rapidly with the most-efficient feed-to-weight conversion, and they have the white meat and huge breasts we've grown accustomed to (all commercial meat chickens are cornish-cross).  But they are so, so unnatural. Their legs break or their heart stops if they are allowed to live beyond a certain age. They develop bed-sore type wounds on their breasts because they are always laying on the ground. And they don't exhibit "normal" chicken-type behavior to peck and scratch, to forage, or to roost at night.

Even though we set up a system for them to forage and "range", they could hardly walk. They waddled over to the feeder (where they would sit down to eat) and then lay down all day long. Next time, we have decided to give Freedom Rangers a try. They take four months to raise (rather than 8 weeks), so are not as cost-efficient. But they are true chickens that live and grow the way God designed them to, and from our experience, that may be priceless.

We are raising our own meat and eggs, largely because we want to ensure the animals are treated humanely and that they are fed quality feed, both for their own health and for ours. In the past I was part of a chicken feed co-op with organic feed from Montana shipped here to Oregon at a wholesale price - $28 for 50 lbs. Then I discovered a non-gmo, plus-*many*-organic-ingredients-feed from California at a local pet supply store that was $18 for 40 lbs. I decided non-gmo was a larger priority than strictly organic, and was happier with that price, so I quit the co-op and bought two bags at a time from the store. But this summer I heard from a homesteading friend about a man in Corvallis (30 minutes from us) who is sourcing local ingredients and formulating and milling his own brand of non-gmo, high-quality chicken feed for $18 per 50 lb bag. I knew it would be well-worth a trip down to Mosaic Farms. I filled my van with 700 lbs of feed (both layer for our hens and grower for our meat-chickens), to last 3-4 months.

All the other feed I've bought is compressed into gray pellets that resemble nothing edible. Mosaic Farms' feed is gorgeous. I think I could feed my kids on it in a pinch, though hopefully it will never come to that. I am very thankful for this wholesome, local way of feeding our chickens.

Summer is winding down, and as always, our mama hen abandoned her chicks at 6 weeks. For some reason, that is the age when mamas decide chicks are ready to fend for themselves. Except they really aren't, so we get to step in and help and worry and feed them, and make sure they are in the barn at night. Ah, chickens... it's always something... yet, we always come back for more.  

It's a big wide world outside the barn, little chicks. Fly. Fly!