not like you care, but i am too busy to write...so a food clip

we got the beat, we got the beat, we got the beat--yeah

kk had a doppler this morning and we heard the little heart a thumping. so it is still in there all alive and everything. k is also still dripping dots and skids of blood, so the midwife ordered an ultra sound and then we see her again on june 2 to go over it all.

maybe, k will have one of those strange pregnancies that consists of bleeding throughout. i'm hoping not, but if we get a kid out of it all in the end, well we will take whatever the planet has in store for us.

we decided to take the day off today and work in the yard. we have a new beehive to paint, 3 new garden beds to finish off (i still have to haul some more compost into them), chicken coop/run to muck, new bee frames to string with delightful wild comb in order to go as foundationless as possible, and other urban farmesque things to do.

i'm sticking with the go-gos soundtrack today. yes, we got the beat.

the simple death of raggedty ass

The unwedding keeps getting planned.
I keep being swamped at work.
my mind is so full that I am almost paralyzed. I can't think too straight. Of course, I never really think straight, but you know what I mean...

This week marked our bloody, but not too bloody, baptism into urban farming. We slaughtered raggedty ass on Monday night. I called her raggedty (with a t for the teeee)

A, K and me are a great team.

We set up a log with a relatively flat surface in the back yard. K pulled my hatchet out from our camping supplies. We turned on the mag light, pulled on some warm clothes poured shots of buillet, took sips off those shots, and headed out to the coop.

It was around 8:30 in the evening so the ladies were getting ready for bed. A scooped up raggedty and brought her to the chopping log. She pinned her down with her hands and I grabbed her neck and then I swung.

One chop.
She fluttered.
Regripping of the wings and her neck.
Swing two.
Fluttering subsiding.
Chop three.
It is finished.

We placed her in the a bucket lined with a trash bag and she twitched and twitched some more.

K checked her to make sure she was no longer breathing, cause I could not have handled a prolonged death due to my poor chopping skills.

Raggedty was still.

A and K made it clear that I was not allowed to save her corpse for burial or burning. I've been saving our other dead chicken (Number 6. she fell over dead in early winter, but the ground was already frozen and I could not dig her a grave.) for burial. But, instead, I will soon burn her along with many pieces of paper containing private information of all of the candidates for the new hire at work.

So, poor raggedty ass went out in the trash...

Raggedty had been plenty ill--her ass had frozen chunks of shit and soft egg and dirt and snow hanging from it and her thirst was unquenchable. The rest of the flock ostracized her. She had to be killed and because we did not know what was ailing her we could not eat her...

We came in from the slaughter, and I lit sage and said a blessing for the dear chicken who may or may not have been giving us eggs. We finished the bourbon and went on with our business.

Any which way, she is dead now. I killed her with my own two hands and the help of A's. It went smoothly and I felt so much better knowing she was no longer suffering from enormous ice ass.

My meditation

Taking care of our chickens is my daily (or every other day) meditation time.

The meditation goes like this:
While still inside in the semi-warmth of our kitchen, fill three or two containers with warmish water.
Set outside on back porch.
Dress in large winter jacket and warm hat (usually forget to wear gloves, because I like my hands to be nimble not clumsy)
Make sure my feet have socks on them.
If I am missing socks, go put a pair of socks on cold feet. (kk constantly gets on me about going barefoot in the middle of winter. I’ve lost count of how many times she has placed a pair of slippers in front of me and given me the finger wag and look).

Slip into boots (usually k’s green mucks are perfectly placed on the back porch).

Walk down treacherous steps and through backyard to coop/run.
Greet our ladies with a, “hi lovely girls. How are you this morning?”

Pull snow tarp back and open door.
If we will be home, keep door ajar
If we will be gone, shut myself into the run with the hens

Monitor feed bucket
If feed refill is needed, unclip feed bucket
If no feed is needed, leave feed bucket in place
unclip rubber, water bucket from chain

exit run
with bucket/s in hand

Beat on rubber bucket until ice water releases
Depending on the temperature, sometimes must run hot water over bucket then kick it/ throw it until ice releases

Take bucket/s on back porch.
Fill emptied water bucket with warmish water
Fill feed bucket with feed and oyster shell mix

Walk back down treacherous steps and through backyard to coop
Re-enter run
Hang up the water and feed

exit run

If we have special scraps, retrieve them from porch or kitchen

Back to run.
Feed the ladies the scraps.

Check hen house for extra amounts of chicken shit.
Remove with small rake and throw into compost heap.
On some days, refill pine and straw in hen house.

Check for eggs in nesting box.
Lately, only 1 or 2 are there.

Collect eggs.

Walk back to house.
Slip out of boots.
Go inside the house.
Put away eggs.
Wash hands with warm water and soap.

Meditation ends.
20-30 minutes of good chicken work and quiet, cold emptying of mind and preparing for another day

our year in pictures--part 1

not that a year can belong to any human, but here are some of the things we did and loved while doing it...


I did not write about it here, but after the miscarriage, etc. k and i held a special ritual to say goodbye to that which could have been and the pain of trying to conceive for so long then having it happen so quickly then losing it all at once. our friend drew our blood and then we froze it and then we mixed it with soil from our yard and lavender from my garden and we burned flames and read poems and threw it all in the river that i love--huron.


herb and corn garden with bees--sweet lovely creatures that create life giving liquid. ever thankful is my heart for their existence.


and then we had chickens.


the front of the house where we make our lives. someday, i hope to build a bike rack with a thyme bed beneath it, so that when we lock our bicycles the deep green scent of thyme comes alive.


the community garden that i am steward of--we had a lot of gardeners.


that's my mama with me. we rode to the top of a hill in northern michigan. me and k whipped my ma into agonizing leg pain. but she loved it. and so did we.


at k's dad's place up north with my wee boy nephews and girl niece. my sis and her husband and ma and dad all came on vacay with us and we had a lovely time! I am so proud of my little sister; she is a very, very good mama (and her man a very good daddy) and their children become more amazing human beings every single day.


discovering karaoke with dear friends at this strange joint and the house dog a poodle with pink and purple dyed fur.


a mantis in northern michigan. how i love this part of the planet and all the creatures that roam here.


we dug a swale during my permaculture course with mid.west permaculture. it was sweaty and delightful.


our baby, bike ypsi, kept on cyling along. we held another spring ride and another fall ride and hosted all kinds of fun rides and participated in advocacy efforts. how i love to bicycle and how i love the community cycling creates.


a thatch roof we saw during my permaculture course field trip.


threw a big thanksgiving with k and a and had all our families over!


my love; my darling; my lifemate; my best friend in the whole damn world with the big lake behind her--the lake we both love the lake that feels ancient and cold and bigger than this little living we are doing here beneath the stars.

dead chicken/enormous hair

Winter wind has met us--cold and breaking the dusk and night sky with the knotted knuckle hand of a fierce whip cracker.

In the bust of cold that has draped itself over this fair Midwest state, one of our chickens took her last breath. K found her dead in the corner of the run yesterday evening. She picked up the lifeless hen and placed her in a plastic bag. Now, I need to dig a hole and bury her.

The ground is semi frozen—not deeply frozen yet, but for sure tougher to work than earth in August or September or October. I need some daylight hours to crack the shovel into a tuft of grass and turn it and lay the wee dead bird down in the soil.

In Savage Beauty—a bio of Edna St. Vincent Millay—the author tells the story of when Edna’s mother passed away in the depths of a frigid winter and they had to blast the side of the hill open with dynamite to get her body into the earth.

If only I had some dynamite to blow a hole in the backyard under the sleeping red bud and then rest our feathered friend in the December dirt.

However, I always arrive home from work when the light is fast fading from the sky, and I leave when the light has just arrived. So for now the chicken is in a bag in the red wheel barrel in the garage.

And, I am still up to similar shenanigans. Riding my bicycle, working, cooking, traveling around the usa when my toes get the tickle.

I’ve also been sporting some enormous hair lately. And while I know that the big hair has nothing to do with the dead chicken or how I pass time on a daily basis, it has something to do with hilarity. Hilarity is that dose of jolliness that I need sometimes to make it through these dark, winter days. How perfect that I simply have to look in the mirror at my own curly mess of hair to ignite that tin can echo laughter in the flabby parts of my belly.

I’m not really sad about the dead chicken; she lived a good, good life. We will go through less feed, now. I’m just a little nervous that she may have had some disease that will spread through the rest of the flock. I think this is not the case, but I have this tendency to make everything into something more convoluted than it really is.

But then I turn to my own head of hair and it shakes me back to a place with steady ground and more realness than those imagination disasters in the gray parts under my skull. Night scatters cold wind through the decaying leaves and frozen ground and a dead chicken stays put in the shelter of the garage and my heart leaps at the thought that tomorrow the sun will soar behind cloudy skies and I will trace the pattern of the days with the tips of my fingers and the prints of my hands will leave solid sections of stars across this time, this now. Each winter day will teach that lesson of patience to be, just be, and sour lipped laughter will abound at the reflection in the mirror.

yearning without devotion

lately, ambivalence has struck a chord in the sinewy parts of my muscles. it is that in between place--the not too deep in the dark but not quite above water place.

michigan winter always casts a fervent deep blue over my days. sometimes the blue appears gray and other times it is trying for azure and little specks of sunlight on the horizon shift over the silhouettes of barren trees and dried stalks of sunflowers.

i'm not apathetic. i'm just yearning without devotion. without devotion to act on the yearning that has singled itself out on the deep red threads of my heart. and i do act in small ways, but i do not jump into my dreams with fierce confidence.

when it comes to that which i am not ambivalent about, i become animated with delight and willing to sweat and sweat and work and work on the little projects around my small homestead. cause it is the keeping of bees and the raising and tending to of chickens and the planting of trees and the preservation of food and the cooking of things we have grown or that have been grown close to where we make our home, these things make my throat tense up with a tightness close to joy.

i do not necessarily think it is bad or wrong to not act right away on making the big changes in my life--the changes that would lead to eradicating the ambivalence.

the small steps i have taken lately to move closer to working with the land and the creatures who live around my family are outlined below in some pictures with words. also, i will be attending the young farmer's conference this week in new york and i am not ambivalent about that at all. i am super happy about it.



did i tell you that i am in love with honeybees. they are miraculous and beautiful beings that rush forth sweetness from their bodies and create such useful and intricate comb.

the above picture is me going into the hive for a late fall harvest. i did it on my own and things went very well. the girls are so mild and mostly just not interested in humans unless of course i stay in their space a little too long.



more bees



comb and honey in a bucket. i cut the comb into the bucket and used a paint scraper knife on the end of a long pole and crushed and crushed the comb and honey. i crushed it till it was a liquid mess that i could drag the knife through more easily. then i strained it through painters' sieve cloth and let the weight of it press out the liquid honey in two batches for 24 hours each.

then i jarred it.

and i also made labels. someday, i'll show them to you.

And, I love my chickens very much. They are so funny. Kk says she cannot help but smile when she watches them run around the yard and i agree. They are like our little, Pomeranian dog friend, Lilo, she always makes me smile and so do my chickens. Except the chickens' tongues have never entered my ear with wet, slobbery, stanky kisses and they never will.



and someday sooner than later i want to get some goats. The picture above is me milking a goat at the ann arbor reskilling festival. i would probably get Nigerian Dwarf goats (not pictured above--Nubian above). But k says no for now.



oh, and I also like to cook stew over fire.



and walk through the old cemetery in this town i love...

i'm not ambivalent about those things.