Tag: small farm

Back in the Midwest, they’d call my place a ‘farmette’. I learned that term when I moved to Dekalb, and I always thought it was cute and descriptive. I guess you could say that’s what I have, because now I’m a regular at Tractor Supply. Only here in the Northeast you just say ‘small farm’.

Sick Bird

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I used to think that people who brought their chickens to the vet were ridiculous. Come on, taking a hen to the vet? How silly. I’m much more practical and cooler-headed about my birds. Sure sometimes they get sick – a little wheeze or some diarrhea now and then, but they’ll sort it out on their own eventually. After all, they’re farm animals – they live outside. They’re tough. They’ll be fine. I would never take my chicken to the vet – what a crazy waste of money! That sort of thing was for naive, soft-hearted urbanites who merely kept a trio of layers in their back yard with names like Daisy or Myrtle. Not for real country folk like us. (You do know where this is going, don’t you?)

Yes, last night I had to change my tune, eat my words and become humble. One of our hens was truly sick. The very fact that I could easily catch her told me how unwell she was. She was our eldest hen – the chicken who’d started it all. The one we bought as a fuzzy, yellow chick at Tractor Supply one Easter season, the one who bore most of the flock we have today, the one to have survived foxes, raccoons, fishers, mink, hawks. The one who’d seen some thirty coop mates disappear over the past three years to unseen predators, plucked one by one from the flock, or mangled en-masse in a dead of night attack. She had survived it all. While we’ve had many birds casually named things like ‘Keithie One’ or ‘Keithie Two’ (hens named for Elihu’s friend who’d found the eggs they hatched from) or ‘Claras One and Two’ (seems a shame to lose a perfectly fine name just because we lost a hen) this hen was our dear Molly. Our first hen, our only white hen. Our one and only Molly. We had to do something.

When she made no effort to run or even struggle, I knew she was bad off. I’d noticed that in the past week she no longer roosted at night, but stayed on the ground of the coop. She’d lost all the feathers on her butt too – but I’d chalked both changes up to a new, broody sort of behavior. Early spring, perhaps? A motherly mood? Now more serious problems came to mind – did I have an egg-bound hen? I turned to google, and in a few minutes had Molly bathing in a warm sitz bath in the kitchen sink. Admittedly, I’m not as frontier bad-ass as I’d like to think; it took a moment to get into the new mindset needed in order to massage my hen’s bald and bulging ass end. I knew that soon an oiled up finger might need to be inserted into her rear to check for a stuck egg. I just wasn’t up to it yet. So I massaged, felt around for any clues under the skin. I know I wasn’t patient enough with her bath and massage – I was so eager just to get her system moving – to expel whatever was blocking her up – I ended the massage after barely ten minutes, and after making a few more google searches I chose instead to inject some olive oil down her throat to lube her up. I’d added some Epsom salts in order to improve upon the laxative properties of the oil – but she puked it up instead. I later learned Epsom salts can make you nauseous. Oh poor Molly, I wasn’t providing any benefit to her, and I was now seriously concerned about her getting worse.

One half hour later, there I was, walking into the local animal hospital with a hen in my arms – instantly dropping a cool $55 just walking through the door. I justified my visit by considering it to be a mini class in hen health. I’d I thought I’d keep it to that; I was there to learn what ailed her and how I could treat it on my own – the way a real, able-bodied chicken farmer should. But my objective was quickly forgotten in the talk of fecal tests, parasites, antibiotics and dietary supplements. Before I knew it my mother was coming to our aid, visiting us at the vet’s, checkbook in hand. I could afford to walk in, but I couldn’t afford to walk out. Tests cost money, medicine costs money. And apparently, Molly needed some high tech help. Although the vet was able to massage her in a more productive way than I (the gassy smell in the room was good evidence) poor Molly’s system was fairly compromised by this point and needed assistance. The damage? $260. Hmm, let’s see, that means it ended up costing $52 a pound to mend her. Although mom knows my financial situation – that is to say she won’t be holding me to pay her back that huge sum – it’s still kinda of a bummer to know that in the end, we couldn’t do it old-school, on our own. We needed help. Phooey.

Plus it does kind of cast a shadow on the prospect of Eggs of Hope appearing to make a profit. I guess that’s kinda in the tank now anyhow. In the beginning, we did actually make some money. Not much, but some. That was then… Three years ago, when we started out, I’d hoped to keep the operation simple, organic, cheap. The girls would forage all day, reducing the need to buy feed. They lived in the garage at first (this was a disaster – chickens poop quite a lot, and they create dust, dander, just plain a dirty mess…) Live and learn. Fareed popped twelve dollars for a retired international shipping container for their coop – which ended up being, in Elihu’s words – a ‘death capsule’. A year later and a little help from my dad and we had a professionally made coop. But when the workers left us with our brand-new, empty coop, we still needed more stuff. A little extra carpentry for roosts and nesting boxes. Here began my learning process as I started to use my saws, my crude assembly of tools and salvaged lumber. But as with anything in life, there’s more to everything than one fully appreciates in the beginning. I ended up throwing in the towel this past fall, when my roosting bars finally fell under the jostling of twenty birds. For the time being we’re using tree branches stretched across the rungs of a couple dilapidated ladders for roosting bars. And the nesting boxes I made (I’m actually kinda proud of these) still sit on the floor of the coop – rather than a few feet up and on the wall as they should be. The fence which once (well, almost once) enclosed them is now in tatters, and I can’t keep a one of them inside. All in all it’s a sketchy, hillbillyish setup at the moment. But this year, goddamit, I will finally get it all under control.

There’s something to be learned in every new endeavor. And I’ve learned a lot these past three years. Ultimately what I take away from my experience thus far is that having chickens – doing it right, that is – actually does take some organization, infrastructure and yes, money. And sometimes even a trip to the vet.

A Post-Script:  Molly seems a tad better now. At this writing, some twenty-four hours after her trip to the vet, she’s begun to drink water on her own and looks a bit less stressed than she did before.

First Loss

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Elihu and I went out tonight, and although my mother dutifully helped us by closing the mature chickens in their coop and securing the chicks as best she could, when we got home we found three of our most precocious young chicks dead inside the new enclosure. (I say ‘precocious’ because they were the only ones in the flock smart enough to go in after dark, something all mature chickens do naturally, plus they’d been making mock nests inside the coop for a week by now, another display of advancing sexual maturity.) My coop enclosure was sound, however the critter that got in was able to open the wire gate (!) in the outside run and enter the coop through the small chicken door. And we hadn’t even considered that to be a viable entrance for predators. We’d thought our run was secure. HA! Well, as Elihu noted, that while we two were out eating chicken for supper (tandoori, that is) apparently some crafty creature was enjoying a delicious chicken dinner as well.

I was surprised at how sad I felt at first.  Although I’d told Elihu not to look, and that I’d take care of it, he was adamant about seeing what had happened. We picked up the dead chicks very matter-of-factly, noting how warm one was, and from that guessing that she’d only just been done in (two of three were eaten, she was left behind – perhaps we interrupted the intruder?). We walked down the driveway a bit with the remainders of the dead birds and then unceremoniously tossed them into the woods. Not much one can do but to accept it, but it’s still kinda sad. But then again, we just ate a friggin chicken who had a crappy life and died a frightening and painful death. Is that really any better a fate than that of our chicks? (I think not.)

In the end, we’ve learned that we must ramp up our security and our vigilance. While it makes going out at night a little more challenging, I’m determined to figure something out. I’m getting kinda tired of living at the mercy of my chickens. The next major homestead purchase may well be an automatic coop door opener/closer. !

Day of Progress

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Whew. This has been a day. After a shaky start for both of us (see Sick-Abed, Sigh) we arose shortly after noon and began our day. It was a windy, mild spring day with rainshowers in the middle of sunshine and fresh air all around. It was a day of unplanned visits with neighbors, bubble blowing, keyboard moving, coop building, planting, cooking of dinner, whipping of cream, bed making and more. I am plumb exhausted. But what a lovely day we had.

After a short drive through the countryside to call on some friends we settled in to our homesteading. Elihu corralled his chickens in a densely packed flock and spoke to them softly as I began to construct the new room for our chicks. As they cannot be mixed in with the adults yet we need to build a separate, outdoor living space for them. I divided the run with a wall of fence and netting last week, and today set out to build the small room within the garage where they will live for the next few months. Hoping that perhaps the extra labor might not be truly necessary, and that  the hens would accept the youngsters (their own children), we brought the chicks out last week and put one hen in with them. Within minutes she had attacked several rather violently, requiring our intervention. It was confirmed; I had another project yet before me.

Thanks to craigslist and some very kind people in my area I have collected some nice, free pieces of lumber. Assembling these pieces to make a makeshift coop became a bit more challenging than I would have thought. No two pieces are quite the same, some are warped, some have screws or nails still in them. They’ve all been used before. Plus, due to a mid-winter meltdown of our coop heat lamp all the outlets in the garage no longer work (no, it’s not a fuse) and so I must run a super long extension cord from the house to the garage in order to do any work. Not un-doable, it just required a bit more resolve from me to get the silly project underway. It took three long extension cords and a few minutes of setup, but not only did I get underway, but I finished the task. Thanks to some beautiful sheets of 4×8 plywood I was able to create walls in fairly short order. And thanks to the pheasant re-population program in Ithaca, New York I am stocked with a good amount of nylon netting (a kind man there gave me a bag of extra netting when I told him my plans on our visit last summer) which made a fine roof for the small room. I have no idea what Elihu said to his chickens for the hour and a half it took me to construct the room, but he was content to wait it out with their gentle company.

Tonight we test it out. I caught raccoons red-handed in the garage last night, raiding the feed bins as I went to close the coop up for the night. A close call. If it weren’t for the food available to them I’m not sure if my chickens would have all been there waiting. A bin of grain is an easier meal than a feisty hen. (And I have seen bloody evidence of the good fight my hens can put up when challenged!) So tonight, I’ve closed the garage as best I can, and I’ve left the lid to the feed bin loose, so that if a raccoon should be snooping about, the lid will be moved when I go out in the morning. We’ll see. I’m feeling pretty good about my security, yet not good enough to be entirely smug. One can never be smug out here. There’s always a new story to be made at the expense of one’s naivete. So I am confident, yet cautious.

Now it’s bath time and I must drag my son away from his beloved birds.  Elihu has been doing nothing but talking to his chicks all the time that I’ve been here writing. I can hear him in the basement, the one sided conversation mixed with tweets and chirping sounds. Tiny, fuzzy things just four weeks ago, they are now gangly teenagers. They’re not exactly cute, nor do they look entirely like true chickens. They’re in an awkward, in-between sort of stage. They are, however, not chicks anymore. They are young chickens, and they are fast becoming very stinky. It’s amazing how much food they consume. Tomorrow, if we pass our raccoon test, those teenagers are getting their own apartment. I can’t wait.

To bath, to bed. To be continued…

Chicken Day

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Well, really, what day isn’t a chicken day here at the Hillhouse? Today was a bit of a special chicken day however. Nothing poetic and long-winded tonight. Just a quick recount of our day: I brought a three-week old chick to Elihu’s classroom today and he was a rock star for a half hour. Questions directed to me were quickly answered by Elihu. I was merely the chauffeur.

Tonight we went way over budget with a dinner at the irresistible Hattie’s Chicken Shack (oops, I think they call themselves a ‘restaurant’ these days and not merely a ‘shack’). We lived a bit beyond our means tonight, but what a meal we had. Elihu proclaimed, as he finished off the last of his plate, “this is the best chicken I’ve had in my whole entire life”. I was in total agreement. We were full, we were happy.

We made a visit to a secret garden behind the back doors of the restaurants and picked lily of the valley, drinking in the perfume that comes but once a year. That heavenly scent to which nothing else on earth comes close. Aah.

Then we got in the car and began our short drive home. As we reached the winding country roads, a heavy spring rain began. Now cozy in our house, the rain beats loud and hard on the roof. We’ll make a quick trip downstairs to smooch our young chicks and refresh their food and water for the night, then it’s off to bed.

A good day, a chicken day.

Eggs of Hope

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It seems I’ve not mentioned an endeavor which has become rather the foundation of our homestead here in Greenfield. Months ago, when Elihu and I and realized how little money our eggs sales actually generated after we’d met our expenses, we pondered what to do with that money to maximize it’s usefulness. We came upon a book entitled “One Hen” by Katie Smith Milway in which we learned that a little can do a lot. And so Eggs of Hope was born. With our small profits we’ve begun to ‘purchase’ starter chicken flocks through Heifer International.

While the accompanying video and newspaper article at the bottom may be over a month old – very old news indeed – the business is just beginning. Today we registered our domain name and will unveil a new site soon – if dear old mom can manage one more task on her plate.

Lest you think the talk of home-grown eggs being better is all hype – as I was apt to believe once upon a time – I can tell you that the eggs of home-raised chickens are much, much better than those of their poor factory cousins. I might not have been such a believer had I not used a carton of store-bought eggs recently, as our personal use eggs had been earmarked for the incubator. Yup, our eggs’ yolks are a superb orange color, are much plumper, and lastly, they taste very much like an egg should. (Recently we learned that guinea fowl eggs have the very best egg flavor of all, but a sad footnote to this story is that Clara, our only resident guinea hen and sole producer of these delicious, miniature eggs, was recently lost to a wild animal. We miss her. See our you tube channel ‘elihusmom’ for a little cameo of Clara in the video of our chickens on the first warm day.) But life on a farm is like that. It’s sad to lose a member of our flock, but we find peace in knowing the ones we’ve lost had lived happy, healthy lives and furthermore, died that other animals, equally deserving of a meal, should eat well. We just hope they went quickly. !

Chickens are the most miraculous recyclers. Once, in the beginning of our egg pursuits, I found the idea of eating our chickens’ eggs rather gross (and that was even before they began eating bugs!). I can admit this here, because I know many others have felt the same. Before, I’d thought it was just me. Intuitively it makes no sense that the eggs one buys at the store are somehow more edible, safer, cleaner – more whatever – than the ones that just popped out of your hens today. One knows that these eggs have got to be better. Right? Yet for me, eating that first egg was not exactly easy. That was then, this is now. Now I watch with great joy in my heart as our flock happily scratches away in the grass and leaves, gleaning little insects here and there all day long. I watch their progress as they cover the wide expanse of our property, in the woods, in the field, and sometimes, to my chagrin, in my garden. I am always astounded at how much less feed I buy each month – 50 pounds less – when they are allowed to roam free and forage. I am grateful to be an integral part of this process, grateful to know that in some way I am linked to them, and through them, to the land. Hopefully, with our growing little business, we’ll be able to extend that connectedness out into our great big world. Eggs are made to hatch…

A frustrating post-script:
After spending a good 15 minutes trying different methods of inserting the link to the Saratogian article into this post, I am giving up, and asking readers to simply search for “Elihu Conant-Haque” and you will easily find the link for yourself. Sigh.

Easter Morn

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Hallelujah! The Lord has risen, and so has the temperature! Fully expecting to see a figure beginning with 3 or 4 on my kitchen door thermometer, imagine my surprise and joy just now in seeing 60! Really? Wow – gotta let those chickens out, surprised I haven’t hear them crowing yet. (Two days ago I awoke to see snow covering everything, and rather thickly, for a spring snow. I’d thought briefly to post a picture on Facebook, but snow in April hardly warrants surprise for northerners.) It’s a lovely, sunny, warm and still Easter morning here in upstate New York. I look around and imagine all those farmer types who might be just a little miffed that they’ve got to dress up and go to church on such a good day for getting some outside work done. Then I think, well, at least it’s great weather for getting the kids dressed up and loaded in the minivan… That’s better. Should really start this day with a more uplifting sentiment.

Coffee cup in hand, I stand on my front steps and begin to think over all the things I’ve learned so far in my two years here, and then I begin to consider all the lessons yet ahead. I begin a quick inventory of the things that have begun to come into my field of awareness. First off, I’m really glad to have serendipitously come across the author Michael Perry through his latest book “Coop”, which I found directly in my path as I did a final once-over of the local Borders on its last day. Got it for a buck (sorry, Mike). Therein is a nice chunk of not only remembrances that parallel mine in many ways (growing up farming, a late sixties, early seventies childhood, going it alone with a capricious ‘try it and see what’s the worst that could happen’ attitude and more) but a lesson in the end which I would do well to learn from. He comes to the conclusion (bless that man, oh how I wish my ex had felt the same) that it is his wife who really holds down the whole operation as he spends a good deal of time on the road. He credits her for feeding the animals and tending the garden while raising the young children. Then he begins to realize that farming is in itself a job, and that he really cannot both farm and write professionally – at least to the degree he’d thought possible at the outset. My mother expressed her concern recently that this garden/chicken thing is a huge endeavor, and that I should be putting the bulk of my time into The Studio instead. Well, somehow, I’ve managed to juggle things before, and with nice results, so I’ve been thinking I can pull it off. But in the two days since she said this, the reality is beginning to sink in. A 20’x40′ garden. Forty chickens, a new coop and run (which I must build). An eight year old boy. A community arts center with summer camp programs (which I run). A concert hall dedication ceremony and Baroque concert with promo to be done, tickets to be sold. Sheesh. I haven’t even added in my new membership at the Y, my ambitious new ‘women on weights’ class or just general life. Caution rises up in me and a new, more responsible voice begins to emerge, telling me that it’s not about ego, that I have not failed if I can’t pull it all off, that I must remember that everything takes half again as much energy to manifest as one bargains for at the top.

Ok. Today at Easter dinner I will sound out mom and Martha – now the old women at the table – and I will see how crazy my plate looks to them. Just since I awoke about an hour ago I’ve already begun to research tillers and what that labor is about. Hmm. Front tine: cheap, but good for small gardens. Require more effort. Rear tine: expensive, good for big jobs, less grunting. My mom has a small Mantis I can use. That will have to do. I guess before my farmer neighbor came over the other day to offer a kindly consultation on my land, I’d had romantic, Foxfire-ish visions of swinging a hoe in the humid, hot July, laboring down the rows stopping to pluck a potato bug here and there, wiping my brow as I assessed my progress and happy to finally have a good reason to wear my floppy garden hat. Oh dear. I need to slow down and think this over.

I’m just so thrilled to be alive now, to have the tools for self-education right here in this little box. I have become a sponge these past two years. One can investigate virtually anything with google and you tube. That saves one a lot of time and mishap. While there is absolutely no substitute for jumping in and experiencing your own three stooges moments, it behooves one to do a little reconnaissance first. With these tools I add one more; getting out and visiting with those who have gone before. In my search for free lumber on Craigslist, and my forays into the countryside to pick up the stuff, I’ve enjoyed many very educational discussions with folks who’ve been at it for years. Building, fixing, raising, growing. So I’m asking a lot of questions. Man, the information just comes in. And so does the dawning realization that I just might not be able to pull it all off – at least not this year.

In the two decades I spent living with a classical guitarist, the most frustrating thing about it was quite literally, a fingernail. (This is the line that will get all partners of guitarists to smile, the guitarists themselves won’t, and I’ll get into that here.) Fareed was constantly swiping his right hand thumbnail with a teeny fragment of fabric-soft, ultra-fine sandpaper which he ALWAYS carried with him (or almost always – the occasional search for his missing sandpaper was as frantic as the search for the crying baby’s missing pacifier). The right hand thumbnail, to a classical guitarist, is the essence of who he or she is as a player. The very physical condition and shape of the nail combined with the technique (oh dear, to add flesh or not to add flesh? Segovia or Williams?) is what makes the ‘sound’. And by sound I do not simply mean it simply plucks the string; rather it creates the quality of the sound that defines the player. The endless filing of the nail was accompanied by daily and even hourly proclamations that his sound was getting closer. To what? I waited for years to arrive at that destination. My husband was always trying to improve his sound. Improve his thumbnail. Improve the angle at which it reached the string. He was in ceaseless pursuit of that elusive combination of a thousand micro-changes that were apparently ALL of great significance to the end result. He would announce hundreds of times with sincere elation that he’d made a discovery today! And I would try, so hard, and many, many, many times with genuine thrill, joy and love for him at his success, to share in that moment. But I’m sure you can imagine, that at the thousandth such proclamation it was hard to conjure real thrill. It was tiring. This day-to-day emotional roller coaster of the search for the perfect thumbnail shape. I began to get a grouchy about it sometimes. I found it very hard to believe that after years of fussing with it he hadn’t come upon the perfect shape. Or at least perfected some method of getting somewhere in the workable neighborhood.

But indeed, God is in the details. Many times in my new single life in the country I’ve smiled to myself at his unending process with a new light of understanding. I too, am realizing the umpteen million degrees to which one can take any endeavor. And all the different results that manifest from those nearly invisible changes. From growing seeds to monitoring the humidity in my incubator, I’ve seen the effects of subtle changes on the results. I guess I’m now a believer. I wonder how I might give him this gift; how can I tell him, with love, that I am sorry for my exasperation at his tiny triumphs? How can I convey, with humor intended (for it is kinda funny to me now) that I have a better understanding of how much more there is to anything than one can possibly understand at a casual, outsider’s glance? In my heart, I apologize to him many times for this, and I almost always laugh, because I am beginning to be humbled by how many choices go into life.

So on Easter morning, I am taking stock. I am renewed with hope, I am educated by my past. I am going to slow down today. Perhaps I’ll see if the trout lily is up in the woods. Heck, I don’t even know if it grows this far east. There’s so much I don’t know. It’s such an adventure, this life. A pain in the ass to be sure, but humor and gratitude oil the big machine. I’m off to git her started. Nice and slow, Elizabeth, you’ve got a lot ahead.

My Old Home

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I’ve just been snooping through Facebook. I came upon a photo album of the woman who now lives in ‘my home’. While I’m interested to see her children and her life, as I move through the shots all my attention goes to the corners of the frame where I can make out the so-familiar details of what is still, in my deepest heart, my home. I see the raised slate hearth, the jack-on-jack Roman brick wall above it (which my husband and I plotted to cover up when we first peered voyeuristically through the window into the home we knew we would buy, but later learned to love it for the mid-century finery it was), the ratty old kitchen cabinets, the aging window frames, the floor, which I hardly knew, as the owners after us had them redone. I see a post of mine below a photo in which I lightheartedly remarked that I was happy to see the salmon colored, boomerang patterned formica still on the counters, the black plastic tile behind, but saw it wasn’t met with a response. I don’t respond to a fraction of the responses of my own photos, why does my heart cringe the teensiest bit that my nostalgic remark went unnoticed? I search my home for all the details – and my heart almost sighs with relief to see the grand, stunning beams that ran the entire length of the house and that required traffic be stopped when they were brought into Evanston back in 1955… Then my heart stops. And my eyes begin to tear. She writes simply: ‘the glacier threatening to migrate off my roof’. And it hits me. This oh so familiar sight, this roof, those beams, that expanse of glass and sky beyond, it is no longer my house. It is her house. And I cry. I don’t sob, and it doesn’t last long. I don’t cry much these days. I’ve stopped crying about my husband too, for the most part. Not much, not even poverty gets me going anymore. But this, it was too much. It’s MY house, I want to say to her. But it isn’t. And what’s worse, is that I’ve created this woman in my mind to be the sort who might just not get my over-devotion to a house. Who might just think it’s a little creepy that some 6 years gone this crazy woman somewhere across the country still feels such a sense of proprietorship over what clearly is no longer her home.

In fact, the woman who lives there now seems to be a karmically just
inhabitant of that house – at least from my perspective. She is a doula, and she has two young children of her own. She is crafty, handy, motherly. Good energy. And that more than cleanses the rather dark energy of the woman who preceded her (the woman who bought it from me). And it also redeems my failed ‘birth story’. Our beloved cat, Kukla, died in our arms in that house, we were married in the house, and our son, while he wasn’t born (as intended) in our home, he was in fact first sighted there. Close to crowning, Fareed stood at the foot of the bed and said with a smile “I can see the head!”. But that’s as far as that went. After 17 hours of stalled labor, a declining baby’s heartbeat and maconium in my long broken water, it was decided that I would be one of that tiny percent of home births that end up in the hospital. I can remember squatting my way down the front steps when the delivery guy from Dave’s Italian Kitchen was arriving with our bag of dinner. “No, not now, I’m having a baby” I said as I wattled to the doc’s minivan. What happened that day is truly another story. But it weaves me right back into the web of feelings that house created in me. This house, this grand, mid-century home has now replaced the home in which I grew up as my emotional epicenter.

For many years I would dream of the house in which I grew up, 154 Maple Avenue in Wilmette. It was a beautiful Tudor house, built in the ’30s, one whose design had won architectural awards. My father was a harpsichordist, and there were two of the instruments in the ‘sunken’ living room (I still just love saying that – it’s just so, I don’t know, decadent?), leaded windows and huge stone fireplace – the place was easy to create a whole fantasy world around. Especially as a young girl on the advent of her adolescence and in the height of the Led Zeppelin years. Every young man looked like either Donovan or Robert Plant, and the golf course on which we lived, the moor. The Bahai temple was visible from all the northerly windows in the house, my bedroom included. I’m not sure where this came from, but I have a dim memory of someone, somewhere saying that anywhere with a view of the Bahai temple was the most romantic place on earth. And while perhaps this comment was meant in a more classic sense of the word and not so much a titillating nod to eroticism, I always like to cite this statement, adding quickly afterward, “and my bedroom has a view of the Bahai temple”. I was always kidding, and I thought it was cute, but it seems silly now. But the view was something. At night I would lie on my left side, and from exactly where my head lay on the pillow, I would see the entire form, glowing white against the black sky, like a giant orange juicer. The branches from the oak trees gently framed it, my translucent, psychadelic-colored butterfly decals flew up to the sky on the windows, and below was an alter-ish scene of a George Harrison poster from his “All Things Must Pass” album flanked by candles on my dark-stained bookshelf. It was perfect in its time. My room, my fantasies, my feelings, all products of the time. And well-loved memories. This home showed up in my dreams incessantly for the decade after I moved out. My parents sold it, and they too moved on. Yet even after I’d bought my first place – that in itself another stunner (on Lake Michigan, 7th floor, balcony view of Chicago) my dreams took me back to Maple Ave all the time. In different aspects, some rooms recognizable, some not, sometimes the whole house was in a different place, but always it was that house, at least in feeling. The feeling was what I sunk into and comforted myself in. I always just knew in my dreams that the lake was to the east, the temple to the north, the golf course and canal to the west, the lights of the city to the south. Those were the cardinal directions of my heart’s compass for half my life. Until I moved to Judson.

So here I am. On a fine piece of land in rural upstate New York. Half a country away. Spent all day making plans for this little plot of land. I’m trying to love it, it has all the potential one could ever hope for, it’s got a view of the Vermont mountains, a storybook footbridge over an almost running creek, it’s got forest, open field, the steepest hill around – it has it all. But it doesn’t yet have my heart. My heart still gets its fix on the world from my home on Judson. But I’m working on it. Looking back, I see that it’s taken me a few years after each move to catch my heart up. When we moved to Judson I still dreamed (and still do often) of Lunt, that city apartment whose orientation was both the vast, inland sea to the east, and the glowing promise of Chicago spread before one to the south. And yet when I reached Judson I felt I was at home, finally. But it wasn’t final. And there’s one more house between us yet, the one in the cornfields. The home in which I’d tried to set my heart up for its midlife story until it changed once again.

I’m trying my best. I’m growing into my home. It’s slow. My intent is here, but my heart is dragging its feet. That it’s really the only home my son has known helps to make it feel more like my own true home. I think about the idea of home a lot. At least I have over the years. There are nights here in my little cottage where I half wake, and think that I see the lights of my parent’s room down the hall at Maple. Then other nights I wake and believe fully that I am at Judson, and I feel relieved to be home, before I awake more fully to slowly realize where I am. It seems my heart has not come to rest yet. I ponder all the changes in the hearts of my own parents through their journeys. My father is starting to show signs of his Alzheimer’s. It will be interesting to see where he feels he is. Already he’s believed that he’s been moved to a ‘house on the lake’. He spent his childhood in a house on a lake. The very house where I was conceived. His lake house must be imprinted deep into his heart. What makes a place feel like home? Is it the age in which we lived there? The events that happened? Do we cease to identify our souls with a home after a certain point? Where is my home? I wonder. I’ve wondered this so many times. I’ve marveled over how home can be everything to one person, and simply a nice place to pass some life to another. I’m a Taurus, I’m of the earth and I need to know where my home is. Then I will dig in and make it even more my own. Guess that’s what I’m doing now. I’m just going to enjoy being here, because it’s where I am now. And I’ll simply have to adjust if there ends up being just another home on my path, because Lord knows things change. Dear old George was good to remind us that ‘all things must pass’.