5 posts tagged “winter”
We are encased in ice. All that is mineral or vegetable is covered on every surface with a gorgeous, glittering, deadly coat of ice. The kind of ice that causes cars to crash and people and horses to slip and break bones. The kind of ice that seals doors and gates shut so you can't get where you need to go. The kind of ice that glues buckets to the ground and lurks under a thin disguise of snow so that you slip, etc.
So far the only casualty on our land has been the bottom branches of the perfectly shaped baby apple tree that I planted in the fall. It will bear the scars of its childhood accident for the rest of its life.
Yesterday, however, I thought there would be a more serious casualty of the weather—my sanity. It's strange how something that can feel so good at one point—staying inside as the storm gets going—can be so crazy-making at another—staying inside when the storm is over.
After a snow storm the duty to shovel, if not the desire to make tracks on that virgin whiteness, calls you outside. But after an ice storm there is nothing to shovel, no tracks to make. Disaster awaits on your porch steps. So you stand by the open door and flick salt onto the steps and hope nobody comes by. Then you go inside and wait for the temperature to rise.
That's what I did yesterday, only the temperature didn't rise. That's fine, I thought. I'll just stay in (my chickens' living quarters are attached to our attached garage) and sit by the fire and read and write. This is what winter in Vermont is all about, delving inward, cocooning.
One hour after the sun had gone down (the middle of the afternoon in some latitudes), I was having an existential crisis. Nothing felt right. I couldn't concentrate. I didn't want to write. I didn't even want to read.
The dogs kept giving me meaningful looks: “Well? What amusements have you planned for us today?”
“Amusements? “ I replied testily. “Why should I provide amusements? You're dogs-- think doggy thoughts, chew a bone, meditate, but stop looking at me that way!”
I went to bed feeling unsettled and dissatisfied, like I was wearing an itchy sweater next to my skin (which in fact I was). And as I lay in the dark I realized that I was experiencing the first assault of the 2008-2009 cabin fever season.
I'll have to learn to hibernate all over again. I have made myself a solemn promise to go outside every day, no matter what the weather. I have arranged with a friend to hold monthly salons. But the fact remains that this is going to be mostly an indoor time, a solitary time.
I was an only child, often lonely amidst adult company, and when I complained of being bored my father would say “How can you be bored? Intelligent people are never bored. Think!”
O.k., I'll think. Thinking has been, after all, humankind's principal resource in bad weather until recently. Surely I can recapture that capacity. Surely spring will come early .
I think I might be running an industrial egg farm. It hasn't been going on for long, but who knows when it will end?
Here are the circumstances that led to my conversion from cuddly and compassionate, quasi-organic chicken keeper to steely-eyed factory-egg producer. A couple of weeks ago, my nine hens stopped laying. They had plenty of good excuses:
The weather turned extra-cold extra-early.
These are the darkest, cloudiest, shortest days of the year, and chickens need daylight to lay. (Right, I don't feel like doing much on cloudy days either.)
They are not as young as they used to be. (Neither am I.)
Some
of them are molting. This is a natural process whereby birds lose
their feathers and replace them with new ones. A molting hen does
not lay. (Having experienced a number of “molts” in my own
life, I can empathize.)
My empathy notwithstanding, I needed eggs, and I wasn't getting any. Meanwhile, the chickens were consuming extra-large rations of expensive laying pellets along with smashed apples, old pumpkins and other tidbits.
There is a magic bullet for getting hens to lay in winter: turning on the lights in the henhouse. Battery hens are kept under lights round the clock, year round. And as a result of this unnatural regime, by their second year they are spent, and slaughtered. I had read plenty of lyrical exhortations to let hens follow the rhythms of nature, wax and wane with the seasons, and so on. If there is one who is fervent about following the rhythms of nature, it's me. Let the hens sleep the winter away, I used to think, let me not interfere with the hibernation that the season imposes, to a greater or lesser degree, on all of us.
On the other hand, I don't keep my chickens as pets, not quite. I have chickens because I want my own source of protein, and manure for the garden. Their affectionate nature and quirky personality notwithstanding, it makes no sense to feed nine hens and a rooster all winter if we're not getting eggs. I had tried all the low-key methods I knew to keep them comfortable. I closed their door at sundown. I employed the “deep litter” bedding method, which means that rather than cleaning out the coop periodically, I keep adding hay and wood shavings. This covers up the droppings and keeps the smells away. Most importantly, as the stuff begins to compost, it generates a certain amount of heat. I also plugged in a heated waterer so they would have access to liquid (as opposed to a chunk of ice) around the clock.
But that was not enough to keep them laying. So I capitulated and decided to go the industrial farming way. I installed an energy-saving bulb and turned it on for a couple of hours in the evening, confident that it would return my hens to reasonable laying rates.
To my surprise, it didn't. I was still having eggless days. One frozen evening, after turning on the lights I stuck around to watch the chickens. There was water in the water bowl, plenty of laying mash in the feeder, freshly smashed apples all over the floor. What more could they want? And then it hit me—these chickens were cold. They stood about with their shoulders hunched and one leg hidden in their feathers. They pecked around half-heartedly at the food, but soon returned to their hunched positions, like wind-blown pedestrians waiting for a bus.
Now what is the nicest thing someone who loves you can do when you're chilled to the bone? Offer you something hot to drink, that's what! Hot cocoa, hot chicken soup (forsooth!), hot coffee, hot tea with milk or a little brandy....
I ran inside and heated a quart of water in the microwave. I shook a bunch of powdered milk into a bowl, added some long-forgotten Farina for good measure, and when the water was good and hot mixed it all together and took it out to the coop. I poured the steaming mixture into one of the chickens' rubber dishes, threw in some laying mash, and presented it.
They clustered round like filings around a magnet. The boss hen tried it first, shook her beak, dipped it again and drank deeply. Her friends followed suit, and so did the rooster Charlemagne. By lights-out the bowl was empty.
Next morning, there were two lovely brown eggs in the nest.
And that's how I've been getting my two eggs a day every since. Ag-center types will say that it's the extra protein that does the trick, or the extra warmth. Perhaps. But I think that my hens realize that they've been listened to and understood, and they are rewarding me in the only way they know.
Animals, and plants too, have a way of responding to kind intentions. If you have experienced this (or the opposite!) I'd like to hear from you.
November
17, 2008
Last winter was an especially cold and icy one in Vermont, and a plague of cabin fever raged across the land. “Never again!” my yoga teacher/herbalist/painter/gardener friend and I swore when it was over. (My friend's name is Dona Friedman, and you can see her work at artistseyestudio.com)
When the days started getting shorter this fall we began casting about for ways to keep ourselves and our friends lively and amused in the dark days ahead. We wanted something easy, basically an excuse to get together with people we like on a regular basis and with a minimum of fuss.
Just about everyone who moves to Vermont—or is born here and decides to stay—has an interesting story. People around here invent their lives and themselves in the best existentialist sense of the word. They blow glass, raise sheep, dry herbs, give massages, run for office...and there's never enough time to hear their stories when you meet them at a party or the post office.
Why not, my friend and I said, ask one of these interesting friends and neighbors to talk informally about his or her life and passions, and invite other friends and neighbors to drop in and listen? In a word, why not have a Salon?
So
we did. Yesterday, Sunday, was the first one. There were nine
people in all. Joanne Smith told us of her transformation from
knitting aficionada in Connecticut to serious shepherd in Vermont.
She was eloquent and witty, and told us amazing and intimate things
about sheep. She let us feel the soft, lustrous yarns spun from the
prize-winning wool of her Romneys. She spread out a sheepskin that
would have made Jason and the Argonauts set sail for Vermont. She
told us about Toby, her sheepdog, more of a friend and colleague
than a dog. (You can see Joanne's farm, her sheep, and Toby at
bearmountainfarm.com)
We drank wine, ate cheese, asked Joanne questions and talked about whatever came into our heads. There was a fire going in the stove, and our little living room rang with talk and laughter.
It was way more fun than a movie, or a play, or a cocktail party. It was a salon, i.e., people turning to each other for stimulation, companionship, and that mysterious something that humans have been getting, since time immemorial, from sitting around a fire, talking.
November
13, 2008
I'm
reclining on the “writing couch” in my study. I'm wearing a
long-sleeved fleece top, a ditto vest, thick pants, and two pairs of
socks. I am wrapped from the waist down in two afghans, and I'm so
cold that my fingernails are blue.
In late summer, from a combination of environmental rectitude, financial considerations, and rage against the oil companies, I got my husband to agree to keep the thermostat at 65F this winter. Now it's 45F outside (balmy, by Vermont standards) and 65F inside, and I can't believe how cold I feel. I think it's because I'm writing.
Colette scattered helpful hints for writers throughout her books: white paper fatigues the eyes, so write on blue paper; if your desk lamp is too bright, wrap a piece of blue paper around the lampshade; above all, keep your feet and legs warm. Her last husband, Maurice Goudeket, tells how Colette, who wrote for hours on end, would start out with an afghan on her lap, then add more and more blankets and shawls as the day wore on until by quitting time she resembled a huge cocoon.
When she married Goudeket, who was some 20 years her junior, Colette was in her 50's, and famous, so she must have had enough money to buy fuel. Still, her 17th century apartment in the Palais Royal was full of drafts, and you know how the French are about drafts. Hence the cocoon. I can barely imagine what it must have been like during the two world wars, both of which she spent in Paris, when there was almost no fuel, and very little food. And yet she wrote, and wrote.
So here I sit, typing away with blue fingers, thinking that I need to get a pair of fingerless gloves and that it was an easy thing to commit to 65F with the August sun beating down on my head. But I'm not ready to turn up the thermostat yet. I like it that my choice to be chilly connects me to generations of writers who sat shivering in their garrets, blowing on their fingers, adding on more blankets, and writing, writing.
October 18, 2008
When I first heard of “voluntary simplicity” several years ago, the movement comprised well-meaning, well-off people who were feeling burdened by their affluence. Their McMansions overflowed with toys, clothing, and appliances. SUVs, station wagons, motor homes, racing bikes and riding mowers spilled out of three-car garages. Every new object brought with it a responsibility (if only to find a place in which to store it) and between work and family duties, these people were too exhausted to enjoy the fruits of their toil. “We don't need all this stuff!” was the battle cry of the time. Occasionally a small voice could be heard murmuring, “and we're hurting the Earth by the way we live.”
That, less than a decade ago, was voluntary simplicity. Apparently we didn't do a good enough job of it, because here we are now, white- and blue-collar, democrat and republican, urban and rural dwellers, cringingly wading into the chilly waters of the new, involuntary simplicity. Foisted upon us by the economic catastrophe, simplicity, willy-nilly, is our future.
Thoreau must be delighted.
Already, signs of change are everywhere. Highway traffic is decreasing, and so are accident rates. The hardware stores around here are sold-out of outdoor clothes lines. My friends and I car-pool to book group and to art openings, and we're all talking about lowered thermostats for the coming winter. Laying hens are in short supply.
Granted, in Vermont these practices don't seem too exotic. Everyone grows a vegetable garden in summer, and in the fall we all play the north-country game of “the first one to fire up the furnace is a chicken.” But this year promises to be different, and battening down the hatches takes on real meaning even in our land-locked state.
I have noticed, however, that for those of us who are not in immediate danger of eviction or hunger, the challenges of the present situation are not without a certain exhilaration. It's hard not to feel excited by the sense of invulnerability that even a small measure of self-sufficiency affords. People are making extra large woodpiles in their yards. I grew winter squashes for the first time, for the chickens to eat when the real cold hits. A friend is experimenting with fermented foods, pickling cucumbers and cabbage to preserve them without need of electricity.
Involuntary simplicity is not without its delights. Witness my simple Saturday. I got up early and went to a nearby village's fabled fall rummage sale, where I bought, for less than two dollars apiece, a number of large wool sweaters that I plan to wear over my regular indoor winter clothes. This, I hope, will enable me to feel comfortable with the thermostat set at 65F, which is our plan for the next six months.
Then my husband and I went down our front field to the wild apple tree that has been loaded with fruit since summer. The apples are small, hard and sour, and we figured that they would make great chicken food. We didn't have to reach up for a single fruit: the ground under the tree was carpeted with apples. In just a few minutes we filled our tub with about sixty pounds of apples, and lugged them to the house.
I put a handful in a pan, covered them in water, and boiled them for a few minutes. They quickly turned soft, and smelled divine. I drained them and carried them to the chicken coop, where they were received quite favorably. I plan to boil the rest of the windfall, bit by bit, and store it in small bags in the freezer, then pop them in the microwave and serve them warm to the chickens on frigid January mornings. I wonder if the dogs too would like them?
At dusk, I picked the last of the broccoli—there was a hard freeze forecast for that night. I steamed it, then sauteed it for supper along with scrambled eggs and some grated cheddar. Soon I will pull up the broccoli plants and take them to the chickens, who will eat every leaf. The kale and chard will continue producing for a while. Then it will be trips to the basement freezer every night before supper.
I find a childish pleasure in all this. It's not unlike going camping and making do with what you have at hand. It's not unlike playing under the table as a kid, saying, “pretend this is our house, and this potato is a loaf of bread....” There are infinite sources of entertainment within the confines of our own yards, if we look closely. The trick to sanity and happiness in this new world is learning to want what we have. If we can manage that, we'll be richer than ever before.
