survivors

I got home in time tonight to putter a bit in the garden after dinner as the light waned and turned rosy. I finally dug in the two basil and two cilantro plants I picked up more than a week ago, planted two rows of mixed lettuces for cutting, some French Breakfast radishes and some Black Beauty zucchini. As I did, I realized that nearly every bed in my front garden contains certain plants that exist in those places either because they remained from last summer or because, like the fennel which has nearly completely populated one of the street-side beds, their parents cast seed far and wide.

That fennel jumped the sidewalk from where it reseeded last summer, in the same place I had actually planted it the summer before. It is keeping company with the cilantro plant (blooming in the center of the bed) which overwintered as a handful of leaves on a couple of stalks, kept warm and snug beneath a pile of dried oak leaves all winter--completely by accident.

In another bed, a gnarly shallot, another refugee of two summers ago, shares real estate with three new tomato plants:

In yet another, I have left in place something(?) from the mustard family which also overwintered, mostly exposed to the elements (tough guy!) and planted around it four tomato plants and, along the back of the bed, a row of peas. By the time the tomatoes get big enough to crowd out the peas (and they will) the peas will be long harvested and gone. Tonight I stuck a few radish seeds in around the tomatoes with a similar timeline strategy.

I've been pleased to leave the mustard, which I'm not terribly interested in eating, to serve as early food for some critter. I figure it's a fair trade--I leave the mustard for the critter and the critter leaves the rest of the plants for me. And now, the mustard is enjoying a last blooming hurrah:

butter-yellow flowers against the iron-colored leaves

Arugula, both civilized and wild, also overwintered and has re-seeded--hard to tell the parents from the children and the grandchildren at this point.

I've left it where it grows, tucking pepper plants into the same bed. And it is also flowering, beautifully:

the wild...

...and the civilized arugula

But the most nutritious survivor by far has been the chard. It soldiered through the winter, partly and carelessly sheltered by leaves. When the weather warmed, it sprang immediately to life, producing giant leathery leaves that have fed us several meals already this spring with another basketful harvested this evening. It is trying to go to seed but I keep cutting off the skyward shoots. 

the chard, post-harvest

We'll see how long I can frustrate it into producing more leaves. Looking to the future, I've tacked a basil plant to the end of its row and another in an empty spot in the middle--to go with the four basil plants behind the chard and looking a little cold burned from the near-freeze we had a couple weeks ago. Tonight I planted lettuces in the front of the bed.

It gives me great pleasure to watch the patchwork of my little beds emerge and transform, some at my hands but so much of it courtesy of the sun, rain, soil and the plants' own tenacious drive to survive and reproduce. It's truly stunning.

a gratuitous shot of pea blossoms, one of my favorite sights of spring!

raise high the roof(beam)

And tack down the floor, while you're at it. That's what yesterday was all about. Ever since the successful move, I have been itching to get out there and finish the coop. But between the weather and my crazy schedule... I've been doing almost as many playing gigs in the past couple weeks as I used to do in similar stretches back in the old days when I was "only" a musician. And whenever I do have a free evening or weekend block of time, it rains. Or, like it eventually did yesterday, hails. But I'm getting ahead of myself.


Yesterday did not look like a sure bet, weather-wise, but when it wasn't actually raining yesterday morning, we decided to seize the opportunity--a whole day off for both Hank and me. The first order of business was to get the floor in: sheets of 19/32" plywood, cut to fit the 6x6 square of the coop. Actually, I had started on the floor Wednesday night, figuring I could at least cut the boards to fit and install them another day. That turned out less than successfully. For my first cut (and the first time I'd used the circular saw since last summer) I needed to shear about 23 inches off the end of a 4x8 sheet. For those of you who are unfamiliar with it, 19/32" plywood is quite heavy. I cut halfway across one direction and moved around the other side to cut the other half. As I finished the cut, the scrap fell (as it naturally would) directly on to my left shin/ankle, leaving a pretty impressive gash, which stubbornly insisted on bleeding in a manner that required me to deploy my Girl Scout first aid skills: elevation and pressure. So much for that effort. [On a side note, as I sat waiting for the blood to stop, I checked my email and, as long as I was stuck there, responded to a message. That response appears to have been crucial in favorably resolving a case I've been working on since 2008. So it wasn't all a loss.]


So yesterday I was feeling decidedly mortal and a little anxious as we set to work. The floor went in without incident and looked terrific:

Next came the rafters:

I should say right now, in the unlikely event anyone reading this might be tempted to use these photos as some kind of a guide to coop construction, this roof structure is decidedly improvised. I have done lots of construction projects over the years, but somehow I've managed to avoid ever having to do a roof. I knew I wanted a corrugated aluminum shed roof but none of my resources really gave a good model for how to design and construct one. So I spent a fair amount of time imagining and drawing. But even then, there were things that ended up different from how I had imagined them--mostly because materials didn't perform exactly as I had imagined they would. It's a good lesson to remember.


Part of the rationale for putting the floor in before constructing the roof was the idea that we could place a ladder more easily and safely on the floor than on the soft dirt around the coop and work on at least part of the roof from inside the coop. I'm glad we did, but even that did not prevent me from having to climb up the giant ladder (not seen in any of these photos) with a drill to drive screws through the aluminum roof at the tallest point of the coop (which towers over the yard at about 10 feet at its peak). 

This shot gives a sense of the coop's majesty

I was not thrilled. As I get older, it seems likelier and likelier to me that I will seriously injure myself doing one of these projects. That whole drill-12-feet-in-the-air maneuver seemed precisely calculated to land me on the ground with several broken bones. You may be relieved to hear that it didn't. Still, as my enthusiasm for risk flagged, Hank stepped up and, capitalizing on his superior height (at least that's what we told ourselves), did the lion's share of the scary work.


At one point, the skies darkened, thunder rumbled and great big raindrops started to fall. We retreated inside for a pause, but when that storm cell passed, we resumed work. By the end of the afternoon, we had both floor and roof in place:

And then Hank went off to coach a high school reed trio and I picked up the tools. And not a moment too soon. Around 6:00 the tornado siren sounded. I looked outside, listened, sniffed the air. It seemed fine, so Max and I didn't immediately head for the basement. A few minutes later, I looked out the window and then back at the clock--it was dark as night to the north and west. At which point I grabbed phone, computer and fiddle (and Max, of course) and hustled into our basement "closet room"--a windowless space on the northeast corner of the house outfitted as a large closet/linen storage area. I checked the radar map on my computer and Max quelled anxiety by scrolling through funny pictures online on his. After a few minutes we heard what sounded like Maddy's nails clicking on the floor above. Maddy is terrified of storms and I had assumed she was already in the basement, where she tends to flee as the barometric pressure drops. Then I realized the clicking we were hearing was more than just Maddy's nails. I popped out of the closet room to call her down to us. As I did I could see it out the basement window--massive chunks of ice, like demonic ping-pong balls, falling from the sky, bouncing as they hit the driveway. 


We were lucky. We lost a few branch tips from our plums and the hood of my car has four distinctive new dimples. But no windows were broken and no one was hurt. And the coop, with its shiny new roof, was not blown away by a coop-snatching tornado!

as seen from the back porch...which, incidentally, has been tapped as the next project!

the (not so) big move

As it turns out, the building department was right: my "practical difficulties" were nothing that couldn't be overcome with the help of a few good friends willing to risk life and limb and extreme muddiness in the service of code-compliant chicken habitat.

We had set Saturday as the moving date, mostly because my friend Susie, upon hearing at rehearsal of my coop-geography dilemma offered to help after the next rehearsal (which, of course, was Saturday) and then my other friend Cynthia chimed in that she'd help too and it started to seem like we might have a critical mass. Other friends had already volunteered: Alex and Becky, Matt and Liz, Thomas--and all, miraculously, seemed to be available Saturday at 4:30. I promised refreshments and, at some future time, an eggy bounty.

All week long I watched the weather forecasts. It was supposed to rain on Friday but to mostly stop raining by Saturday. I felt confident we'd be okay, but that's also typical of me. Twenty years ago I planned our wedding to take place completely outdoors in the gardens of an Indiana historic site with a reception under a marquee on the lawn at my mom's farm. Mom could barely contain her anxiety about what the weather would do. I, on the other hand, was always sanguine, which only seemed to fuel her anxiety. In the end that late-June day could not have been more perfect, weather-wise and pretty much every other-wise, too. Which only reinforced my meteorologic optimism.

But last Friday and Saturday brought us a biblical deluge. Again and again on Saturday morning it would ease up a little and the sky would briefly lighten, only to darken again with heavy curtains of rain. The foundation we had laid for the coop looked like a tiny muddy swimming pool. Around 1:00 Matt texted: "We still on for moving or did the flood waters take care of it for us?" When I headed out to rehearsal shortly after that, about four inches of water stood in the clear plastic bin I had used to cover the basil earlier in the week when the nighttime temperatures made one last plunge into the thirties.

When I went into rehearsal it was still gloomy and drizzly. I was glad when Susie said she had brought boots for herself and for Cynthia. At break it was still pretty gray. But when we emerged at the end of rehearsal the sun was gloriously shining and the pavement nearly dry! The weather gods apparently support chicken husbandry.

I drove home in a hurry, knowing that folks would already be there and wanting to make sure Hank had laid out the snacks as I had instructed. I had made guacamole and some mango salsa and intended to put out some cheeses and bread. I had also imagined a festive centerpiece using a wonderful vintage egg dish from our friend Kit and some Easter candy markdowns:

When I pulled up, there were a couple of extra cars out front--a good sign. As I came through the front door, Max, who was lounging on the sofa, cheerfully informed me: "We already moved it! It's already done!"

Sure enough--I burst through the back door to see the coop frame, perfectly and wonderfully positioned on its new foundation (no longer looking like a swimming pool) nearly in the middle of the yard, a cluster of friends milling about admiring their handiwork and the sun streaming down through the trees on the entire scene.

photo by Becky Homan (thank you!)

I got a full account of the move, how they'd checked to see just how heavy it was and determined that the 7 of them (Alex, Becky, Matt, Liz, Thomas, Hank and Max) could lift it just fine, how Hank had used a rake to clear the cable line, how they'd shifted it to the new spot and had a momentary concern about whether it was oriented properly, how there had been only one injury (Matt barked a knuckle). It took a while for the done-ness of it to sink in to my brain. For a while, we all stood about chatting and Thomas' son Claus (sensibly shod in adorable rain boots) played contentedly with a stick in a Maddy hole that had become an impressive mud-puddle. In a little while Susie and Cynthia appeared at the gate, superfluous mud-boots in hand.

Claus and Hank

I gave a tour of the herb garden and a tour of the ruin of the old summer kitchen, including its colorful fireplace:

Eventually we adjourned inside for refreshments and conversation about chickens and music and food. It was a truly wonderful stretch of afternoon with a wonderful sense of community. Thank you, friends!

Of course, now I can no longer put off completing construction!

earthworks, déjà vu

So I probably should have been documenting the progress of the Richmond Heights chicken ordinance as it happened but the truth is that I became so disheartened at the way it all fell out that I started to question whether the whole chicken venture was folly. But here's what happened: in early December, the City Council finally voted to enact an ordinance allowing residents to keep up to five chickens. 


The process was pretty ghastly, with a fair amount of uncivil nastiness from the anti-chicken council members toward the pro-chicken folks. And those anti-chicken cretins managed to load the ordinance up with lots of deterrents. The setbacks for chicken coops and pens are far more onerous than for any other kind of structure one might place on one's property (20 feet from any property line or 25% of the width of the property; 40 feet from any residential building or place of business on an adjoining property). One must also obtain a permit to keep chickens, applying for which "authorizes City officials at all reasonable times and in a reasonable manner to enter upon and inspect the property with respect to which such permit is applied for to determine whether the keeping of chickens violates this section or any other applicable ordinances" and for which distinct pleasure I get to pay $25 a year. 


None of which criticism is meant to undervalue the tremendous efforts of the people who managed to stay with the process (even after I lost the stomach for it) and get it passed, especially Linda Haynes Lieb and the Friends of Richmond Heights Sustainability Committee. She did yeoman's work and has earned my gratitude and respect.


Some of you may recall that we had begun, last summer, to construct a new coop and had gotten as far as framing it out when it began to seem doubtful we'd ever get a chicken ordinance. The new coop frame, which was terrifically sturdy (and heavy), was erected in the old chicken yard, much closer to the western property line than 20 feet or 25% of the width of our property. 

remember this?

No problem, I thought. The ordinance includes a provision whereby one can apply for a variance of the setbacks "if there are practical difficulties in compliance and proof of notice of the variance application is sent to all adjoining property owners." And one submits "written consent by all adjacent property owners directly affected by any encroachment." The neighbors to the west are super supportive and were quite happy to give their consent. Surely, the burden of having to move the partially constructed (and did I mention heavy?) coop through a fence to a different location in our decidedly un-level back yard would satisfy the "practical difficulties" test.


So, after considerable back and forthing in my own mind and quite a lot of insistence on Max's part that he was still traumatized and not ready to try again with chicks, I finally resolved to at least get the permit, leaving open the option that we could, collectively, decide the time had come.


Last Monday morning I stopped off at City Hall with my completed permit application, written permission from the neighbors, a (very lame) drawing of the backyard depicting the location of the coop and my $25 check. I was directed to the "chicken person" who seemed doubtful about my "practical difficulty" which gave me a sinking feeling. He promised to go look at it, though. After a couple of calls which were necessary to clear up confusion about which nascent structure was the chicken coop (don't ask), I knew I was in trouble when the chicken person informed me that it was his boss who made the final decision about whether or not to grant the variance. He was already shifting the blame for what he knew was going to be an adverse decision. Ugh.


Sure enough, the call came back from the chicken person: denied. I asked to speak with the boss. He was unsympathetic to my plight. He asserted that granting my variance would be "against the spirit of what the City Council intended" and suggested that maybe I should have waited to start building until after the ordinance was passed and I got my permit. Well, duh. He also seemed unmoved by my suggestion that the City could lend me a forklift to help with the relocation.


I contemplated, for about 45 seconds, an appeal. I considered how the Missouri Administrative Procedure Act might apply to my particular situation. I envisioned introducing legislative history to counter the claim that my variance would somehow defile the spirit of the ordinance. I sighed heavily. Then Hank, ever the voice of reason, said, "Let's just move it and do everything by the book. That's how we win." And of course he was right.


I've had several volunteers to help move the coop and it looks like we'll have a coop-moving this coming Saturday. I figure with 8 strong people we can shift it without too much injury to anyone. We'll have to take down a section of fence, which is manageable. But the question remained: where should it go?


Yesterday, Hank and I took the tape measure out into the yard. We chose a spot where it will still get a good amount of sun during the winter and will be well-shaded during the height of summer. We will orient it the same way, with big windows facing south and east. And the run will still go off to the north. And it will be fully compliant with the setbacks.
But the new spot was far from level, of course. 

So today we were out again with our shovel and rake, digging out and leveling the new coop site. It was a familiar exercise. Maddy once again reveled in our presence in her yard, engaged, for once, in something she could totally relate to. Again, she did some digging of her own, in solidarity. 
And when we were through, this is what we had: 

If any of you are free on Saturday around 4:30 in the afternoon, come on by and help with the big move. Refreshments will be supplied!

winter walks

It is perhaps a little late to be writing a post about winter walks. March 31, 2012 in St. Louis has me buying tomato and pepper plants, weeding the lettuce, peas, spinach, radishes, turnips and kale I planted about a month ago and cutting a bunch of unutterably fragrant lilacs just at the end of their bloom to fill my grandmother's pale blue Fiesta-ware pitcher. This has been the strangest of winters and the most precocious of springs.


But before it recedes too far in memory, I want to document winter's best ritual: my far-ranging walks.


More than two years ago, Hank and I (and Maddy the dog) began the practice of a nearly-nightly walk, which delighted Maddy but truly suited all three of us just fine. When we started, that fall, we'd walk only a few blocks in any direction. Gradually, as we built stamina and curiosity, we ventured farther and farther afield, discovering new neighborhoods and lengthening the walk to as much as four miles most nights. By mid-winter that year we were die-hards, going out no matter the weather, trekking through snow and frigid temperatures as if we had never really been Floridians.


The neighborhoods we strolled were mostly developed in the first four decades of the 20th century and the architecture is varied and stunning. The Moorlands, Hampton Park, Claverach Park, Brentmoor Park (East and West), Carswold...each more opulent than the next, with homes ranging from the merely gracious to the truly over-the-top. But what makes these neighborhoods so walkable is their abundance of green space and mature trees.


And, as a direct result of the topography, abundant wildlife. That first winter, which was quite cold and snowy, we saw very little wildlife on our nightly walks aside from the unsurprisingly plentiful rabbits and squirrels. But as spring broke that year and daylight stretched to accommodate our evening walks, more diverse fauna revealed itself. Birds of every kind: robins, sparrows, finches, crows, jays, cardinals. Those same squirrels and rabbits, or their progeny. Swarms of bats, wheeling in the twilight overhead. Cacophonous frogs, crickets, cicadas and other unnameable insects. Red foxes jaywalking anxiously through Claverach or slipping into the wild edges of Carswold.


During the winter just past, I did quite a lot of walking alone. Starting last fall, Hank very often spent his evenings hunkered down in his basement workshop, practicing and making reeds in anticipation of an audition. But most nights Maddy and I were undeterred and set off into the dark. We also took advantage of certain sunny weekend afternoons and even one or two rainy ones, but I often returned from those walks feeling I had missed the mystery and moodiness of the night-time walk, including scenes like this January moonrise:

And in February, this winter's rare night-time snowfall: 

The walks of the past few months revealed some new and particularly thrilling fauna. One fall afternoon, Maddy and I turned a corner in East Brentmoor Park to spy a raccoon-sized, gray-brown furry mammal trot across the street and disappear into a storm drain. I was baffled as to its identity until I did a google search on images of Missouri mammals and realized it was none other than a woodchuck, aka groundhog! Every time we round that corner I look for it and every time since that first sighting I have been disappointed. On a mid-winter evening, also in East Brentmoor, we were treated to the distinct scent of a skunk two nights in a row but never again since. And by February, on nights when the moon was large, we'd see giant Vs of geese lofting far above, returning north.


But by far the most magical companion I encountered over the past few months was a surprisingly companionable owl. For great stretches of the winter I heard him nearly every night, hooting gently in a tree just above as I passed below: hoo-h-hoooo, hoo-h-hoooo… He had several regular haunts and seldom remained in the same place from night to night. Sometimes, if I failed to encounter him at one of his nearest perches I would prolong the walk to see whether I'd find him farther afield--a strategy that very often paid off. Many nights he became my familiar: hooting first in one tree as I passed under it and then again from another farther along the road, seeming to track my progress. 


Although I heard him so often and so regularly as to feel he waited for me nearly as intently as I sought him out, I never could see him--until one especially moony late-winter night. He was tracking me again, moving from tree to tree as I walked. I heard him alight overhead in a leafless sycamore tree and I peered up at the white branches, silhouetted against the sky. One swayed heavily from the impact of his landing. I focused on it, visually tracing its length--and there he was, perched majestically, every bit the shape of a stereotypical owl. We eyed each other for several quiet minutes, Maddy confused at my side (we never ordinarily stand still!), before I walked on, full of delight.


I never saw him again after that and a few weeks ago even his aural presence disappeared from my walks. I wonder where he's gone and hope it's only a seasonal shift. I miss the magic of his company on my walks, although as we've moved firmly into Spring, the frogs and insects have returned to take his place, a chorus to his haunting baritone. Perhaps we'll meet again in October.

letters of a woman homesteader (a sort of book review)

Last month, in anticipation of my upcoming birthday (now just 20 days away for anyone who cares) I splurged on a Kindle for myself. I had found myself in conversation with a friend about our respective histories as readers and overcome with sadness contemplating how my own reading has tapered off to such a drizzle from the torrent it once was. It's been a confluence of factors: motherhood, the forced reading march through law school, entire days now spent glued to a computer screen. My best (and almost only) pleasure reading in recent years has taken place in the hammock overlooking Green Lake, on vacation. 


I'd been coveting a Kindle ever since we bought one for Hank's mom last Christmas and I thought maybe, just maybe, having an entire library on a wafer-thin device would restore my reading to at least a respectable stream once again. So I took the plunge.


Of course, having bought the thing, I needed something to read. An aside: I find it very frustrating to have hundreds of books sitting on my shelves, bought and paid for, many from Amazon, but no way to transfer them to my Kindle. One of the brilliant aspects of iTunes, in my opinion, is the manner in which a CD can be imported into iTunes and then, voila! it can be transferred to my iPod. If Amazon was clever, I think they'd come up with a system whereby one could (at a minimum) download for free to Kindle an e-copy of any book that user had purchased from Amazon. Tell me why that wouldn't work.


Anyway, I began shopping for books to download and quickly realized that I could very easily rack up a bill equal to the cost of the device in a matter of moments. And so I turned to the free downloads. Many books in the public domain have been made available free for Kindle. I bypassed the piles of Jane Austen I'd already read and downloaded Dickens' Bleak House, recommended to me by a colleague at the ICSOM conference in the context of discussions about bankruptcy; Uncle Tom's Cabin, which I've never read; and the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, also new to me. And I spotted a book called Letters of a Woman Homesteader, which looked like it was right up my alley. Boy was I right.


These letters were written by Elinore Pruitt Rupert Stewart to a former employer between 1909 and 1913 from her homestead in Burnt Fork, Wyoming. It's not entirely clear what happened to her first husband, but after a stint working as a domestic in Denver, she and her small daughter Jerrine headed out to Burnt Fork, where she was to work for Mr. Clyde Stewart and intended to stake her own claim to a homestead there. The writing is sophisticated, colorful and energetic--and her dry wit is a delight. Here is her description of the drive and her situation upon arriving in Burnt Fork in April of 1909:

Meantime my new employer, Mr. Stewart, sat upon a stack of baggage and was dreadfully concerned about something he calls his "Tookie," but I am unable to tell you what that is. The road, being so muddy, was full of ruts and the stage acted as if it had the hiccoughs and made us all talk as though we were affected in the same way. Every time the stage struck a rock or a rut Mr. Stewart would "hoot," until I began to wish we would come to a hollow tree or a hole in the ground so he could go in with the rest of the owls. 

At last we "arriv," and everything is just lovely for me. I have a very, very comfortable situation and Mr. Stewart is absolutely no trouble, for as soon as he has his meals he retires to his room and plays on his bagpipe, only he calls it his "bugpeep." It is "The Campbells are Coming," without variations, at intervals all day long and from seven till eleven at night. Sometimes I wish they would make haste and get here. 

There is a saddle horse especially for me and a little shotgun with which I am to kill sage chickens. We are between two trout streams, so you can think of me as being happy when the snow is through melting and the water gets clear. We have the finest flock of Plymouth Rocks and get so many nice eggs. It sure seems fine to have all the cream I want after my town experiences. Jerrine is making good use of all the good 
things we are having. She rides the pony to water every day. 

I have not filed on my land yet because the snow is fifteen feet deep on it, and I think I would rather see what I am getting, so will wait until summer. They have just three seasons here, winter and July and August. We are to plant our garden the last of May. When it is so I can get around I will see about land and find out all I can and tell you.

Yes, you noticed! She had chickens!!! And not just any old chickens, but Plymouth Rocks.


In May, as expected, she went to Green River, WY to register her claim. The trip there and back took a week. Here is her description of the evening of the first day of travel, bordering on rhapsodic:

The sagebrush is so short in some places that it is not large enough to make a fire, so we had to drive until quite late before we camped that night. After driving all day over what seemed a level desert of sand, we came about sundown to a beautiful cañon, down which we had to drive for a couple of miles before we could cross. In the cañon the shadows had already fallen, but when we looked up we could see the last shafts of sun-light on the tops of the great bare buttes. Suddenly a great wolf started from somewhere and galloped along the edge of the cañon, outlined black and clear by the setting sun. His curiosity overcame him at last, 
so he sat down and waited to see what manner of beast we were. I reckon he was disappointed for he howled most dismally. I thought of Jack London's "The Wolf." 

After we quitted the cañon I saw the most beautiful sight. It seemed as if we were driving through a golden haze. The violet shadows were creeping up between the hills, while away back of us the snow-capped peaks were catching the sun's last rays. On every side of us stretched the poor, hopeless desert, the sage, grim and determined to live in spite of starvation, and the great, bare, desolate buttes. The beautiful colors turned to amber and rose, and then to the general tone, dull gray. Then we stopped to camp, and such a scurrying around to gather brush for the fire and to get supper! Everything tasted so good! Jerrine ate like a man. Then we raised the wagon tongue and spread the wagon sheet over it and made a bedroom for us women. We made our beds on the warm, soft sand and went to bed. 
 

It was too beautiful a night to sleep, so I put my head out to look and to think. I saw the moon come up and hang for a while over the mountain as if it were discouraged with the prospect, and the big white stars flirted shamelessly with the hills. I saw a coyote come trotting along and I felt sorry for him, having to hunt food in so barren a place, but when presently I heard the whirr of wings I felt sorry for the sage chickens he had disturbed. At length a cloud came up and I went to sleep, and next morning was covered several inches with snow. It didn't hurt us a bit, but while I was struggling with stubborn corsets and shoes I communed with myself, after the manner of prodigals, and said: "How much better that I were down in Denver, even at Mrs. Coney's, digging with a skewer into the corners seeking dirt which might be there, yea, even eating codfish, than that I should perish on this desert -- of imagination." So I turned the current of my imagination and fancied that I was at home 
before the fireplace, and that the backlog was about to roll down. My fancy was in such good working trim that before I knew it I kicked the wagon wheel, and I certainly got as warm as the most "sot" Scientist that ever read Mrs. Eddy could possibly wish.

I can imagine finding it too beautiful a night to sleep on a bed of soft, warm sand, sheltering under only a wagon tongue and a sheet of canvas, with the discouraged moon and flirtatious stars above and coyotes and sage chickens playing out a drama alongside. Although I'd expect after a full day of hard driving sleep would come easily. And I can't imagine being even remotely cheerful about waking up covered in several inches of snow. In May.


So much of this book spoke to me. Elinore was full of spirit and humanity. She understood the value in a life lived close to the earth, at a time when, thanks to the industrial revolution, more and more people were moving to the cities and seeking their fortunes away from the land. Spending my days as I do now, tethered to a desk laden with electronic devices, mostly sedentary, I very often think we've got it all wrong. My grandparents grew up in the Great Depression, close to privation and borne of that generation that believed city living was synonymous with a better life. They always cautioned me not to work too hard--by which they meant physical labor. Physical labor was to be avoided; desirable was the modern life in which machines did the hard work for us, liberating our bodies and minds for more pleasurable pursuits. But the joke was on us because the way that story came out has us laboring every bit as hard as our forebears--except instead of doing so in the open air, moving our limbs about and feeling the sun and wind on our skin, we breathe stale, conditioned air, rarely rise from our desks and only see the sun and the wind as they course through our urban concrete cañons, on the other side of the glass. And then we wonder why we're so sick and depressed all the time.


Even in 1913, when the choice was between hard physical labor on one's own land and hard physical labor in the service of another, I think Elinore had it right:

When I read of the hard times among the Denver poor, I feel like urging them every one to get out and file on land. I am very enthusiastic about women homesteading. It really requires less strength and labor to raise plenty to satisfy a large family than it does to go out to wash, with the added satisfaction of knowing that their job will not be lost to them if they care to keep it. Even if improving the place does go slowly, it is that much done to stay done. Whatever is raised is the homesteader's own, and there is no house-rent to pay. This year Jerrine cut and dropped enough potatoes to raise a ton of fine potatoes. She wanted to try, so we let her, and you will remember that she is but six years old. We had a man to break the ground and cover the potatoes for her and the man irrigated them once. That was all that was done until digging time, when they were ploughed out and Jerrine picked them 
up. Any woman strong enough to go out by the day could have done every bit of the work and put in two or three times that much, and it would have been so much more pleasant than to work so hard in the city and then be on starvation rations in the winter.  

To me, homesteading is the solution of all poverty's problems, but I realize that temperament has much to do with success in any undertaking, and persons afraid of coyotes and work and loneliness had better let ranching alone. At the same time, any woman who can stand her own company, can see the beauty of the sunset, loves growing things, and is willing to put in as much time at careful labor as she does over the washtub, will certainly succeed; will have independence, plenty to eat all the time, and a home of her own in the end. 

Here I am boring you to death with things that cannot interest you! You'd think I wanted you to homestead, wouldn't you? But I am only thinking of the troops of tired, worried women, sometimes even cold and hungry, scared to death of losing their places to work, who could have plenty to eat, who could have good fires by gathering the wood, and comfortable homes of their own, if they 
but had the courage and determination to get them.

Of course I've never had to live as she did and perhaps it would have broken me. Perhaps I have fallen under the spell of an idyllic agrarian fantasy. And perhaps I have the best of all possible worlds, putting my wits to work in the service of good people most days, dipping into the well of creativity to make music on some days, and, between times, stepping out into my yard to cultivate food for our table. And I've never had to awaken outdoors in several inches of snow. But the photos of the ruddy and vigorous Elinore at this page suggest she was nothing but content with her lot!


If you want to read the book, you should probably stop reading now, because I can't resist including Elinore's account of how she finally managed to prove all she set out to prove. Listen to this recitation of abundance:

I never did like to theorize, and so this year I set out to prove that a woman could ranch if she wanted to. We like to grow potatoes 
on new ground, that is, newly cleared land on which no crop has been grown. Few weeds grow on new land, so it makes less work. So I selected my potato-patch, and the man ploughed it, although I could have done that if Clyde would have let me. I cut the potatoes, Jerrine helped, and we dropped them in the rows. The man covered them, and that ends the man's part. By that time the garden ground was ready, so I planted the garden. I had almost an acre in vegetables. I irrigated and I cultivated it myself. 

We had all the vegetables we could possibly use, and now Jerrine and I have put in our cellar full, and this is what we have: one large bin of potatoes (more than two tons), half a ton of carrots, a large bin of beets, one of turnips, one of onions, one of parsnips, and on the other side of the cellar we have more than one hundred heads of cabbage. I have experimented and found a kind of squash that can be raised here, and that the ripe ones keep well and make good pies; also that 
the young tender ones make splendid pickles, quite equal to cucumbers. I was glad to stumble on to that, because pickles are hard to manufacture when you have nothing to work with. Now I have plenty. They told me when I came that I could not even raise common beans, but I tried and succeeded. And also I raised lots of green tomatoes, and, as we like them preserved, I made them all up that way. Experimenting along another line, I found that I could make catchup, as delicious as that of tomatoes, of gooseberries. I made it exactly the same as I do the tomatoes and I am delighted. Gooseberries were very fine and very plentiful this year, so I put up a great many. I milked ten cows twice a day all summer; have sold enough butter to pay for a year's supply of flour and gasoline. We use a gasoline lamp. I have raised enough chickens to completely renew my flock, and all we wanted to eat, and have some fryers to go into the winter with. I have enough turkeys for all of our birthdays and holidays.    

I raised a great many flowers and I worked several days in the field. In all I have told about I have had no help but Jerrine. Clyde's mother spends each summer with us, and she helped me with the cooking and the babies. Many of my neighbors did better than I did, although I know many town people would doubt my doing so much, but I did it. I have tried every kind of work this ranch affords, and I can do any of it. Of course I am extra strong, but those who try know that strength and knowledge come with doing. I just love to experiment, to work, and to prove out things, so that ranch life and "roughing it" just suit me.

The Stewart Homestead, now a ruin  

And now I will stop because to paraphrase Elinore, who was forever apologizing for the length of her letters, said:"I am ashamed of my long [blog posts], but I am such a murderer of language that I have to use it all to tell anything."

the coops of port oneida, part seven (eckhert coops)

Oh, how the days of August have flown away from me... As I sit down to write this, I note that it has been sixteen days since my last post. The truth is that with my own chicken-dom on hold, with things proceeding slowly and unremarkably at the city council and with my inordinate busy-ness over the past weeks, posting here has been a low priority. But tonight the coops of Port Oneida call out again and we pay a visit--the last of the summer--to another charmed spot on that peninsula.

Henry and Catherine Eckhert were among the early settlers of Port Oneida, arriving in Michigan from Bohemia in 1857 and settling on their farm in 1862. The farm sits at the corner of Basch and Kelderhouse Roads, in a slightly elevated position with views to the south of Peter and Jenny Burfiend's farm and the Lawrs' farm. Although nearby and to the east, Ole and Magdalena Olsen's farm is obscured by the same trees that keep it feeling lonely and secluded.

The position of the Eckherts' farm, on a corner, gives it a unique feeling of openness and accessibility consistent with its reputation as the party house of Port Oneida. Reported to be the scene of many dances, I suspect it was also the spot where at least a few matches budded among the scions of Port Oneida families. The broad farmyard, ringed by outbuildings, welcomes visitors into a kind of giant outdoor room. It's easy to imagine the boys and girls of Port Oneida, milling about the yard in the twilight--laughing, dancing, stealing a kiss or two. And perhaps shooting a few hoops.

Barnside hoop!

I actually paid two visits to the Eckherts this summer. The first time around, a work crew, although not on site, was clearly in the midst of restoring several of the buildings, including the coop and brooder house. Their big flatbed truck and blue tarps made photographing difficult, but I snapped a few, peered through some windows and figured I'd had enough.

The second time, I hadn't even intended to stop. I was on my way to pay a goodbye visit to one of my favorite spots, the Schmidt farm (sadly coop-less). I was headed north on Basch Road and nearly past the Eckherts when I spotted not a boy or girl lingering in the yard but a sizable wild turkey! I pulled the car over, parking it on the road, grabbing my camera and attempting to sneak up on the turkey. Of course, you can imagine how that went. Me: tiptoeing around the corner of the barn, camera at the ready. Turkey: long gone into the fields behind the farm, gobbling all the way.

But once in the yard, I realized that both flatbed truck and blue tarps were gone, making photographs much easier. The coop and brooder sit side by side at the corner of the yard farthest from the house:

L to R: barn, coop, brooder, glimpse of house (red), small barn

The south-facing coop is jaunty in green and sports wooden vent stacks at either end of its gable roof. The shed-roofed brooder nestles close by.

I inspected the coop and found it closed with what I'm sure is yet another example of the handiwork of Martin Basch:

And, much to my delight, that was all that secured it! I unhooked the door and stepped inside. There are the nesting boxes, outfitted with straw as if a hen could return at any moment to deposit an egg.

Although the door threatened to shut me in, I moved to the other room, where the roosts and dropping boards are similarly at the ready. I adore this roost made of straight, bark-stripped saplings laid into V-notched boards. Simple, functional, retaining the natural character of the tree...and I bet the hens loved it.

I left the coop and re-latched the door. The brooder was similarly unsecured and I took a look inside. It is less immediately legible than the coop, although there is a bundle of branches that are clearly former roosts. But the hardware on the repurposed brooder door is far more elaborate than the coop's simple Basch hook:

And so, dear readers, we've come to the end of the Port Oneida coops for this summer. As I had on the day we first drove into Port Oneida at the beginning of the summer, I shed a tear as I drove away on M-22 for the last time. On that first day, I was overjoyed to be back in what I knew to be an extraordinary place, but one about which I still knew so little. On the last day, having immersed myself in their histories and their environs, I felt as though I was bidding farewell to all those intrepid settlers whose stories I had come to know. But it is a temporary goodbye. Next summer I'll be back, to dig a little deeper into their stories, to wander longer among the ruins of their homes, farms and orchards...to imagine a life built on the (admittedly poor!) soil of Port Oneida. 

And, although I looked in every cemetery I spotted, I never did find Orpha's grave. Next summer, I'll find it and lay a bouquet there, wherever she lies.