the mole man

we used to have a mole man - the first time he showed up, the countryside grapevine had told him we had a mole problem that needed solving and he came. he took 10 kroner per mole he caught and occasionally, he came to the back door (which opens directly into my kitchen) with one or two in hand, as proof that he was catching them. he would enter without knocking. he was a retired mailman, in his 70s and had a country twang that i, as a non-native speaker of eanish, struggled to understand. when he had caught enough moles, he would come to that back door with his little pencil-scribbled note, asking for 180kr. or maybe 210. cash only, please, he didn't believe in all that netbanking or mobilepay app business. once, i was showing him the way down a tree-lined path to our little apple orchard, where there was an especially pesky mole infestation, and he remarked that it was very romantic. i assured him that it was not. the mole man did not represent romance to me. last year, he got cancer. i'm not sure if he died or not, but he doesn't answer the call of the countryside grapevine anymore. i can't even look him up, because i never knew his name. he was just muldvarpmanden. and now, husband is trying his hand at catching moles himself. and they are mocking him.

100 happy days :: day 90

i took a new way to drive the girls to school and spotted this.
what's not to love about someone thinking on a very grand scale?
out in the middle of nowhere.
worth stopping for a sneaky photo for sure.
and it totally makes me smile.
definitely a moment of happiness.

* * *

you have to read what my cousin is saying about her favorite places in europe.

hint:  one of them is right here at our place!

100 happy days :: day 85

it's a long holiday weekend here in denmark, the last of the spring holidays. our child is off to copenhagen for the weekend with her friends. as one does when one is 14. tho' it's still a bit chilly and working outside requires a heavy sweatshirt and scarf, we've been working in the garden (husband didn't wear a scarf). husband has once again changed up the greenhouse. this time, we used waffley plastic roofing as a covering and he built a back wall with repurposed wood he brought home from the harbor. me, i planted beans and onions and leeks and a couple of squash. in the greenhouse, there are now tomatoes and cucumbers and chilis and a couple of aubergine.

the fox

The fox is a single red stroke that cuts across
the clearing. The colour seems to hang like smoke,
you can almost see where she has come from.

Her musk (though you can smell nothing)
is specific like a thumbprint on the air.
It isn’t raining but there’s a kind of wet
on your face, a stickiness of insect juices dropped.

The fox is rusty-dull, discreet, not radiant or hot
or pulsing. Not agitated. Not randy.

She is completely dream and intelligence
sliding through the wet grass, the stinging nettles,
the little brittle helmets of dry seed,
a flower or two, relics of the drizzly, petalled summer.

The lyric fox goes down to the creek
where dark and dankness will mask her scent
and the lovely rosette of her face.

She’ll be able to pause there, for a while, sip water
while the dogs swirl and bell in front of the Big House.

by Bernadette Hall
(a best new zealand poem 2009)

* * *

i don't normally post other people's words on my blog, but i liked this poem and mood it captures and i felt our beautiful, fine fox deserved fine words.  she is both elusive and canny, but curious and even a bit friendly as well. she's young and we think she lost her mother early and didn't learn natural fear of humans. or perhaps foxes are just adjusting to a more populated world and able to live among us and with us. whatever it is, we are enjoying her presence here while it lasts. our new chickens are locked securely away and the one feral chicken is canny herself and keeps herself safely up high in a tree. the cats and the fox seem to have declared some kind of detente. she was frolicking on the field this evening, quite near the horses, so they are also accustomed to her presence. she's just a beautiful, wild, wary presence here in our midst. and i think we're all a little bit in love with her.

the last hen standing

we awoke saturday morning to silence. no incessant crowing of various roosters, some young, just trying out their crackly voices and one mature but hoarse little black swedish rooster, none of the incessant chatter of what i call chicken cheerleading, which the other hens sometimes do when one of their compatriots is laying an egg. i didn't notice it at first, since it has become part of the background noise of my world. then husband came in from a visit to the compost heap and he asked if i'd seen any chickens this morning. i hadn't yet been out to scatter their grain, so i said no. he said there were an awful lot of feathers around and in the coop and he was afraid we'd had a visit from a fox.

we had indeed. and with around 40 chickens, not a single one remained, save a little black chick, just a few days old (it disappeared before i could take it in under a heat lamp, so i fear it's gone now too). even the pheasant babies they had hatched out had vanished. a snack for a fox and her cubs, no doubt. it was eerily quiet. we walked the property, looking for scared chickens in a tree, unable to believe that a single fox, even with the help of a couple of puppies (cubs?) could take out 40 some chickens without us hearing a thing. it's true we had grown lax. the chickens are completely free range and run around the property all day long, but they always come into the henhouse at night. we'd gotten lazy about closing them in, so we were tempting fate. one neighbor told us that foxes don't hunt in their own territory, so that explained why we'd seen foxes in the area, but never been visited by one in more than two years.

on saturday, when we were out in the garden, both husband and i swore we heard a bit of low chicken chatter, but we never did spot them. they were well and truly scared. we had no sightings at all on sunday, but it was rainy most of the day, so that was understandable enough. then this evening, as i walked down the path to see why the horses were running around like maniacs, i was sure i saw a hen dart across it ahead of me, but she quickly disappeared, so i wasn't sure. then, when i went to take the horses in, i spotted her up in a tree. all alone. she's a pretty one - a real mix of our two breeds - the danish land race and the swedish blacks, one of the young ones, hatched out at easter. i still hold out hope that there are a few of the others around.

i have oddly mixed feelings about the whole thing. on one hand, i'm sad that i didn't properly protect my chickens and on the other, i have a kind of strange, slightly awed respect for a fox that could take so many chickens in one go and leave only feathers behind. there weren't any bodies or blood or carnage at all. in some sense, nature is cool. i'm glad this pretty little hen survived. and i vow to take good care of her, closing her into the henhouse, safe and sound, at night. if she'll just go back over there.

crazy chicken lady

i've been uncharacteristically absent here of late, letting several days go by between posts. it's partially that my words are going elsewhere at the moment (occupational hazard) as i scramble to finish some projects before the summer holiday. it's partially a few days of glorious sunshine last week and weekend that meant i spent every possible moment outdoors. but it's largely because i've become a crazy chicken lady.

we got nine hens and three roosters last summer. i was a bit skeptical of keeping chickens, since they don't seem to be the brightest animals around, but the lure of fresh eggs was too great. we got two nordic heritage breeds - danish land chickens and black swedish ones. and i got a bit of a kick out of them, way more than i thought i would. late in the winter, several of them became broody. pretty soon, the nest boxes were full of broody hens and the egg production had ground to a halt. husband built an addition at the back of chez poulet. all that early brooding resulted in one single little chick, just in time for easter.

he's now grown into a funny, motley rooster that's clearly a combination of both breeds. until his mother hatched out more chicks recently, he was even still getting in with her at night, sitting on top of her in the nest box, tho' he was getting far too big for that. now he's bottom rooster and has to content himself with a corner of the perch, rather far from everyone else. poor dear.

in recent weeks, the five brown hens have managed to hatch out another 14 chicks - 4 little brown ones and 10 black (which i suspect will be combination chickens like the motley rooster - as one of the brown roosters is top dog). the black hens were clearly very sneaky at getting their eggs under the brooding brownies, getting them to do all of the work of hatching out the chicks. we are consequently referring to the chicks all as SHE this time around, as we want them to be future hens. we certainly don't need another rooster around here. in fact, in the near future, one or two are going to be dinner.

there were 5 little brown chicks, but they killed off the first one that had hatched out. he did seem to be a little bit off in the eyes, so we think they knew something we didn't, tho' i was still unaccountably sad about it when i found him. it has made me a bit worried about the rest, so whenever i need a break from writing and editing and planning workshops, i head out to check on them. at the beginning, i needed gloves to lift the brooding hens, but now i just ignore their attempts to peck me and unceremoniously lift them up with my bare hands to see what's going on with the eggs. i find little peeps and help them find their mama again when they've wandered too far away into the tall grass. in other words, i perform all the duties of a crazy chicken lady. i can almost see the hens rolling their eyes at me.

the chicks are of varying ages, hatched out several weeks apart, but there are four brown hens sharing the tending duties between them. there's still one brown hen, sitting on a nest that's down to 7 eggs - and one more hatches every few days. then, when they're big enough to jump down from the nest box, they go and join the others and one of the tending mamas takes them in. the little motley rooster does a mighty duty in chasing the over-interested cats away and thus far, all the chicks have been safe thanks to his efforts. it really does seem to take a village to raise the chicks.

nature is cool.

on my birthday...

i should not have to:

~ change the litterbox
~ clean the chicken coop
~ muck the stalls

(hmm, there is a decided poo-related theme here)

~ or do any laundry.
~ or dishes.

but i should get to:

~ wander the yard in the fog with my camera (they promise it will burn off and the sun will shine).
~ gather the fresh warm eggs from the chicken coop (i get to do this every day).
~ stay in my pajamas as long as i want.
~ spend the entire morning on pinterest if i want to.
~ putter around in the garden.

this evening, we will:

~ go and see bonderøven - a charming self-sufficiency guy who has a t.v. program and should be quite entertaining.

* * *

it's funny, i'm not really that fussed about birthdays. my family got up this morning and made me breakfast and brought me a mug of steaming tea - it was a very nice way to wake up. but mostly, it feels like a regular day. i don't really feel older than i did yesterday, and 45 is just a number (30 + 15) - it isn't as old as it once was, says husband, who turned 47 last month.

sometimes it does seem strange that at a time when you're "supposed" to be settled in - with the perfect house and the perfect career - that we basically started all over again with a house that's a ten-year project (8 years to go) and i'm embarking on a new venture with new partners, rather than just having a paycheck every month. starting over when we're supposed to be comfortably enjoying the fruits of our previous labors.

but then, in the stillness of a foggy morning, i wander out to the pasture with my camera and i see the horses peacefully munching away at the grass that's springing forth. and even tho' it's not perfect - it's messy and a huge job and sometimes hard and frustrating - it just feels right.

i'm in the right place at the right time and exactly the right age.

it's a frosty winter world

our weather is changing - after several weeks of what is for us bitter cold - temps down to -18°C (that's around 0°F) - it's warming up to around freezing. that means gorgeous, still, foggy frost in the morning. whenever i have a wander with my camera in the morning quiet out here in the country,  all the broken water pipes and ugly ceilings and mis-matched windows fade away into unimportance.

this quiet, unbroken, gorgeous stillness is why we're here.

i know what everyone's getting for christmas

our bunny mira surprised us this week, by having FIVE baby bunnies in her first go! and we thought we'd separated her from sophus in time, but apparently bunnies are very fertile and 8 months old isn't too young to have babies. what's even better is that she's obviously doing a very good job of taking care of them, as they're fat, warm and healthy, tho' oddly i've not yet actually seen her IN the nest box with them. all that i've read indicates that's totally normal and they're very active - popping around like popcorn when we uncover them for their photo shoots - so she must be doing a good job. there are three grey and two light ones and we can't wait 'til their eyes are open. i'm sure you'll be seeing more of them in the coming weeks.

baby animal alert!

i found this adorable little hedgehog toddling around in the garden this evening. i'd been hoping to catch a glimpse of a baby one all summer, but hadn't seen one 'til today. she may very well be the cutest thing i've ever seen. and yes, i gave her a rather big pile of cat food. we've got to fatten her up and make sure she can make it through the winter.

into the woods

we went for a walk down in our forest today.
it's a bit swampy in spots.
but mostly, it's deeply quiet.
alive and primeval in its silence.
timeless.
secure.
photosynthesizing.
and oh so very green.
i have this sense that it is enormously patient.
it has been here for years
and will continue long after we're gone.
there's something magical about that.