Christmas Fowl
People talk about the perils of having a one track mind. I have at least 3 tracks running at any given time, and I can tell you that has its downsides as well, especially this time of year.
My husband is a chronic whistler of Christmas Carols. I’ve caught him doing it in the middle of July, so this time of year it’s nearly constant. That’s fine, in and of itself. I like Christmas carols and he’s an amazing whistler. The problem is that he gets them stuck in my head, which is again, survivable if he’s whistling something like White Christmas.
The problem arises when he whistles something like Jingle Bells or anything that has one or more parody versions because then in my head it sounds like this.
Track 1: “Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way”
Track 2: “Jingle bells, batman smells, Robin laid an egg.”
Track 3: “Rust and bolts, the heater broke, the door just flew away.”
AT THE SAME TIME.
The only answer is to keep the other tracks busy. Luckily there’s always plenty to do on our little stead this time of year. We’re still dealing with wood for the stove, though luckily, we’ve moved on to next year’s pile, this is the easiest time of year to assess the land for clearing and plan our next projects, and of course, there are the girls.
The ladies aren’t exactly getting into the holiday spirit. The chickens’ egg strike, which I thought would be over in time for Christmas baking, seems to be locked in this year. I’ve heard that if the molt times out just right with the loss of light you can have a virtually eggless winter and that seems to be what we’re facing despite all our efforts. The chicks are on vacation.
The ducks are still producing, though only to the tune of one a day between the three of them. We’ve gotten them a bucket heater to keep their water from freezing, though we still have to haul water down to their run. This would be fine if it were not for the fact that we seem to have unusually smart ducks. They come when they are called by name (even if they loathe coming into actual contact with us) and they seem to have figured out that if they splash out about half of their water they can pretty much create a mini hot tub rather than a bucket of tepid drinking water.
So essentially we do not have any kind of productive homestead; we have a high-end spa for fowl. The ladies, at least, will be having a very Merry Christmas. If anyone has a decent recipe for eggless Christmas treats, please send them my way.