without further ado, here are the 6 new additions to our family. we’re sure they’ll bring us lots of joy, or in the least, some eggs.
Chanticleer, a Red Sexlink
Henrietta, an Ameraucana
Johenna, a Buff Orpington
Lula Moss (named after my great-grandmother), a Silver Laced Wyandotte
Mahitabel, a Barred Rock
Pertelote, a Light Brahma
Currently, they are out in the coop, chirping contentedly and munching on some organic chicken feed. So happy to have them at last.
Today Jonathan and I took a trip to Poultry Hollow Hatchery, from which Jesse and Sarah had purchased a gift card for us for our Christmas present.
It was such an experience right from the beginning, when a mile from the farm we saw a Poultry Hollow owned car herding a nervous goat and two donkeys down the road.
At the farm, we saw an alpaca, several pea cocks, goats, a flock of partridges, dozens of beautiful chicken breeds and some puppies that were free for the taking. We came within an inch of getting one, but I’m glad we didn’t. Between six new chickens, Minette, and a baby on the way, I feel like a puppy would have brought us ever closer to a menagerie. Or a madhouse.
Anyway.
We purchased 6 chickens from the ages of 5-7 weeks. They are just adorable and we are so pleased with them. I will introduce them in my next post, but for now, here is a pictorial summary of our morning at Poultry Hollow.
Our yard is a glory right now. Jonathan and I have let the grass grow up tall in the back yard, mowing paths and certain areas. You can consider it our act of teenage rebellion if you like: when we were in high school we always talked about how we wouldn’t mow our lawn. And now it’s becoming a reality.
It’s more than just an aesthetic choice. It’s about wildness, and letting the wildflowers spring up tall, letting poke berry or sassafras or whatever other native thing that chooses pop up where it likes. So our yard looks like a jungle. And we love it that way.
Our coop is now complete. It has been for a while. I forgot to post it, but we actually earned $500 dollars in the Ms. Cheap contest for our pallet design. You can read about that here. And we’re very hopeful that today is the day we finally go get our chickens. This depends almost entirely on the weather at this point, so here’s hoping it cooperates.
Here is a sampling of photos of our yard and coop. I love how life seems to glow in Spring.
1. An iris that has been transplanted and re-transplanted for decades, and originally came from my great-aunt Velda’s garden in the Appalachian coal community of Briceville, TN. 2. Wildflower 3. Coop trail 4. Coop 5. Interior of the coop 6. Coop 7. Jungle (the woods adjacent to our yard are now the property of the Mooradian/Williams/Moody clan) – I can’t wait for our kids to grow up roaming them thinking they’re 100 acres instead of 1. This will be after we’ve removed and replaced so many of the exotic invasives.
We had such a wonderful weekend.
First, we traveled up the mountain to pick up Joe from school. We only spent one night, but we were able (in true Sewanee fashion) to see so many great friends during our time. We attended three or four grad parties, all of which were so fun and beautiful. We didn’t have the camera out as much as we could have, but we did manage to snap a few shots in Abbo’s Alley.
Then on Sunday we had a very full Mother’s Day, first with a lunch at Jonathan’s parents’ house for his mom Rosie. Jonathan mad galettes and crepes, and Eli and Gypsy brought along every delicious galette or crepe stuffing you can imagine. It was perfect.
Then we headed to my parents’ house for dinner. We cooked out in the back yard, had a little fire on the patio, sang songs while my mom played guitar, and then headed inside to watch an amazing movie, Intouchable, which Jonathan and I had wanted to see forever. It was so good.
All-in-all, a Mother’s Day well spent, and Jonathan even got me a new pair of chacos (badly needed!) as a Mother’s-to-be Day Gift.
This Mother’s Day, of course, feels some different.
As I think on my mother and the other wonderful mother-figures I’m blessed with in my life, this year I contemplate too the lessons I’ve learned from them about motherhood itself.
Starting with my own mom, I am struck not only by how well and how thoroughly she loved my brother and me and how devoted she was to us growing up, but how this never kept her from pursuing her own course in life. I am entering into motherhood a bit younger than many of my friends, classmates, and colleagues, so from time to time I worry that I will be ceding my autonomy too early. But then I look at my mom: she had most of her professional success after I was born, traveled to Europe for the first time when Joe was a baby and continually goes on such adventures, with and without her kids (she just got back from a beautiful trip to Puerto Rico!), and who has maintained such wonderful relationships with her friends, never shying away from a late night out, a raucous concert, or an adventure. And she and my dad are still in love. I don’t think she has ever viewed having kids as a sacrifice or a hinderance.
Instead, I think she felt perpetually called to foster in us the same amount of determination and drive and sense of wonder. I truly couldn’t ask for a better role model as Jonathan and I embark on this next adventure in our life.
As for so many other mother-figures in my life: my Aunt Baba (Rebecca, for whom I’m named), my Nana, my mother-in-law Rosie, so many other family members and family friends: I can’t imagine what my life would be without these people who have continually poured so much love, time, and energy my way. I feel so much peace about life because I know our baby will grow up in a community of caring and compassionate people, and I hope too to emulate as a mom their level of selfless and giving love.
To read more about all the reasons my mom is the best, you can click here, here, or here.
1. 1991, my Aunt Baba’s farm 2. 1996, my parent’s back yard 3. 2011, La Rochelle, France 4. 2011, Zion National Park, Utah 5. 2013, Puerto Rico
so yesterday, Jonathan and I made a pretty big announcement. if you haven’t seen it, here it is:
we’ve known nearly two months now, which partially explains why I haven’t been blogging much. I haven’t been writing much either.
instead I’ve been quietly processing: there is a life growing inside me, a life I will love better than my own.
the morning we found out I was still on spring break and I had planned a hiking trip with my mom in Ashland City, at a rail trail her organization saved years ago.
Jonathan and I had decided we wanted to keep it between us for a while, and so I didn’t tell my mom that day. instead, i just thought on it quietly, and worried a little whenever we hit a pothole on the drive.
that day, on the hike, we walked along Eagle Pass and counted cranes out on the river, named the wild flowers growing along the rail bed, plucked privet up by its roots. mid-morning, we stopped to see an eagle lighting on her nest, peering through binoculars as the she-bird worked the twigs and branches, making a home suitable for her young.
the last several weeks have been full of so much joy. first, we got to tell our families, who were so thrilled. and we got to share the good news with our close friends, all across the country. we were especially excited to tell our long-time dear friends michael and merrill durham, who had told us a mere week and a half before that they were expecting their first child. our due dates are a little over a week apart. we are so excited.
the last several weeks have also been full of lots of nausea, food aversions, throwing up, and fatigue — but that is just par for the course, and i’ve tried to remind myself as we’ve gone along that it’s really a blessing because it means baby is growing just as she should. it also doesn’t hurt that Jonathan takes ridiculously good care of me.
two days ago Jonathan and I went to the midwives for the first time and got to hear our baby’s heartbeat. to date, i believe it to be the most beautiful sound i have ever heard. the powerful, quick, almost too frantically strong beat of a will to live, to grow, to be born.
and then though we’d expected to have to wait a few days until our ultrasound, a spot opened up right after our first appointment and we got to see him or her: a squirming, dancing little human, his head half the size of his body, arms flailing and legs kicking as if in dance.
does it even suffice to say we are in love already? already completely wrapped up in the one inch wonder growing inside me?
well, here is our first picture of our baby.
and here we are, a very happy and very in love papa and mama moody.
(also, check out our back yard in the above photo! what a jungle! we’re loving it.)
1. my husband, and how talented and smart and clever he is. his classes are over for the semester (although he has several papers/exams left to work on), and it has been such a joy having him home with me this week. he makes everything more fun. we’re both super looking forward to the 2+ months we’ll be home together this summer!
2. impromptu music performances by said husband. last night i requested he play Jose Gonzalez’s cover of “heartbeats,” which Jonathan doesn’t know how to play, only then in the course of about 5 minutes he figured it out and played it for me over and over as I fell asleep.
3. this house. right now, it is engulfed by knee-high grass and wild bean sprouts, and the trees, their leaves unfurled for Spring, and a dusting of violets in the back yard. the blueberry bushes we planted last fall have the sweetest buds on them you ever saw, and all our fruit trees have begun turning green and pushing forth branches. this is the house Jonathan and I dreamt of all throughout high school : a cabin, in the woods, that was still within a 10 minute drive to everything.
(oh. my parents bought the house next door to rent out, which means the little half-acre wood behind it will now be ours to explore and roam. we are so thrilled!)
4. the weather. today it is a glory.
5. my job. i’m feeling very settled and happy. Jonathan’s school – he is learning such fascinating things, and I could listen to him talk about what he’s learning for hours. our educations continue to make our life so rich.
6. our communities of family and life-long friends. Nashville is the best.
so, in lieu of a real update, suffice it to say that we are just too happy to ever sit down and keep track of all the things that are making us happy to bursting. i’m sure i’ll get back to blogging here in the next few weeks.
Since I was off work this week, Jonathan and I worked a ton on the coop and we are pleased to say it is 99% done! (Jonathan would say 90% done, but I am an exaggerative optimist).
We have finished the coop and run, all except installing the chicken door in the run, putting in nesting boxes, and finishing off the vent above the human door on the front (which will eventually have a shutter).
We are really pleased with how it’s turned out, especially since we’ve only bought tools, the roof, and the chicken wire for the run.
All the wood except two pieces has been reclaimed from free pallets!
All of which is to say, we will likely be getting our chickens this week, just in time for Easter!
So far, we have come up with four really excellent hen names. Since we are getting 6 chickens though, we would love any suggestions for the other two!
Lately, I’ve been thinking a great deal about that line in Wilder’s Our Town, “Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you.”
if ever I grow sad, it is that I am struck by just such an idea, struck by the brevity of life, the bitter, ephemeral shortness of it, the utter, terrifying frailty of each second, each breath, as it is lived or had and then reels backward to become the past.
wouldn’t it be grand if it could be relived? if any day might be repeated, just to see it over again, just to feel the quotidian blessings of some ordinary moment?
Marilynne Robinson writes in Gilead, “There are a thousand thousand reasons to live this life, every one of them sufficient.” That strikes me as one of the truest sentiments ever articulated. If life was nothing more than a rose bush, or a rain storm, or frost on a winter lawn, that would be miracle and poetry enough to make all existence seem worth while.
My Spring Break begins this afternoon, and I plan to spend a good deal of it contemplating the virtue of the hackberry, just sprouting leaves in the back yard, and the daffodils, just unfurling their colbalt yellow blooms in the front.
a polaroid I took in 2007 while at Radnor Lake with Jonathan.
As I got birthday gift money, Jonathan and I gradually ordered trees from arborday.org. So far, we’ve ordered : 10 Eastern Red Cedars 3 Dogwoods 2 Belle of Georgia Peach Trees 2 Damson Plum Trees 2 Early Richmond Cherry Trees … Continue reading
