Lambsquarters (14 page)

Snow is the fence’s enemy, snow and deadfall and too many feet scrambling over the rails, climbing between posts where the weaknesses lurk, prying off bits and stressing the wood.

Because of the way the fence lies, north and south with the edge of the wood to its west, it is protected, sheltered from frost, guarded from rain. There is no snow load pushing it down, or heaving against it with the force of nature, the sheen of silver. But in a storm
the west wind finds the high branches of the sugar maples, hurls them down, pounding the fence, snapping a top rail, injuring a stake, shifting a wire askew. And so the inspection.

Autumn is a time for putting the farm to bed for the winter. We bring the sheep into the fold from their summer pastures, mulch the gardens with blankets of straw, snug the house with storm windows and doors and stack the woodshed to its rafters with fuel. Thomas takes our son and daughter with him to check and strengthen the rail fences when the weather turns and the leaves have abandoned their branches and line the forest floor. Crunching through the mulch like miniature soldiers, their red and blue rubber boots disappearing in the burnt umbers and scarlets and siennas that rise to their knees, the children swoop down for armfuls, which they pitch to a sky now forked with the bare branches of dormancy. No matter that their tosses are only inches above them, their eyes focus far, they see their leaves fly beyond the tallest tree, and they feel sure they’ve sailed beyond the limits of the sky’s roof. And while they play, their father steadily checks each wavering section of the fence, each turn of the stake. These are not posted panels, only precariously staked corners balanced and counterbalanced: tree roots, rocks, boulders and stumps left no choice for the fencer, who could only go around them, never through. The snake slithers with grace through terrain
that would never accept the spade.

Each section, half a rod or so, joins up with its neighbour at a right angle (or less, or more) depending on the trees it embraces, and rests its head on the other’s tail. Stakes are pounded in on each side of the join with the butt of an axe or the head of a maul and then wired. Number nine, still the farmer’s friend. A wrap, a twist, a clip. The fence pliers do the job all in a trice, their gripping jaws the perfect size, thin enough to grab in small sections, strong enough to grasp. They have snipping blades all round, opposing angles meeting in a pinch of wire shiny at its break.

The children wear themselves out running back and forth as their father moves at a measured pace from rail to rail, the dog now panting at his side, now herding the kids or rabbits or flushing a grouse. The children’s cheeks redden, their hair fills with chaff and they invent horse and saddle trees, witch and wardrobe trees, and stumps that turn into stages for impromptu puppet shows. Before the fence is done, their games are through. They whinge and stamp and want to go home until finally, the fencerow fixed, their father bundles them into the wheelbarrow and pushes them up the hill, through the field and to the house where I make hot chocolate with melting marshmallows on top and listen to the tales of the woods. An opera for three voices.

HEN AND EGG

WHEN SHE IS JUST ABOUT
to lay an egg, a hen lifts herself up slightly from her sit on the nest. Though she doesn’t really stand, she lifts herself higher than a dog would sit, hunkered down on its hind legs, or even than a puppy would sit, one leg lagging to the side. A hen assumes more of a crouch. With her head thrust slightly forward, wings at her sides, she pops her tail up, stretches her legs and rises to a squat. A combination of plié and curtsy culminating in an egg.

During the time she spends in the nesting box before she lays an egg, a hen tucks her legs out of sight like a figurine. Each hen, in succession, tends to choose the same spot in the large nesting box for her deposit. If you can’t wait for a sitting hen to finish her lay, you can reach under her to gather eggs from the clutch that has amassed by mid-morning—well you can, but sometimes you pay for it with a quick beak to the
hand. The hens in my coop are gentle; not one has pecked me, despite my burrowing in under the soft bodies and rolling eggs away. But when I reach under a sitting hen, I’m gathering the eggs laid by her neighbours. She sits in anticipation of laying, not hatching.
Her
egg is yet to come.

Laying hens, battery hens, are selected to produce eggs, not incubate them. But a Bantam hen will sit on anything. It is her vocation to brood. My father-in-law says a Banty would sit on a piece of shit if she thought it would hatch. She does think it will hatch. She’s quite sure of it. She will sit for days past the hatching time. Eternal hope of the Banty. These hens are so good they hire out. They hatch pheasants, ducks, anything ovular that they can shelter under their feathery girth.

The protective instinct is linked with broodiness. Interfere with the sitting Banty and you get pecked. Get too close to a Banty rooster and you get attacked. They are small, tough, scrappy individuals, richly coloured and diversely marked. No two barnyard Banties are quite alike—some have feathered legs, some have spurs. They dress like courtesans and biker sluts. But they love their eggs, and if they decide to take a turn at sitting on them, there’s not much you can do but wait for the chicks to poke and peak their way through their feathered nursery curtains.

Because they are so broody, Banty hens reproduce like rabbits. This would be fine if they cloned themselves,
added only egg layers, but roosters abound, and what to do with surplus roosters? Keep them together and they fight. Only one rooster rules the roost. The others become bedraggled, decline into depression, die. A Banty rooster in the pot is a meagre offering: no romance, little meat. All that strutting and crowing makes sinew. Tough guys to the end.

Banties are organic gardeners, voraciously eating flocks of earwigs. They decorate the lawn with plumes and pomposity. But before long, one disappears under the rhubarb with a clutch, and another struts out from the drive shed with a brood, and soon you are plagued with cockfights, and have very few fresh eggs.

Leghorns are popular with the serious egg producer. Small, white birds, they eat little and produce endless supplies of large white eggs. Doesn’t matter what you feed them, their eggs are always white. Egg colour depends on the breed of the chicken. Nothing else.

Even though I know the colour of the shell makes no difference, that the inner chemistry is the same, I truly believe in brown eggs. They just look healthy, not only because they have colour, but also because it varies. Brown eggs have shades of brownness—sometimes spots, freckles even. They have character. They sit up in egg cups with authority, style.

I have experimented with different brown-egg breeds. Barred Plymouth Rocks are large black and white striped birds, plump as piebald pigeons. They’re
beautiful to look at, but they put food into their feathers, not their eggs. I’ve tried Rhode Island Reds, fair conkers of birds the colour of freshly hatched chestnuts, but again they feed their feathers, not their eggs. So now I stick with a hybrid chicken, an Isa or a Comet, small efficient feeders, who lay often and well.

Chickens are photoperiodic. They come to life in the light. It’s best to buy pullets in the spring, when the days are getting long, to extend their season. It takes twenty weeks for the chick, from the time she first peeks through her broken shell, to create eggs. I’ve hatched my own chicks and have bought day-old chicks, but pullets are the least trouble. By the time the hatchery has them to size, they are beautiful, healthy and ready to lay. Once, a pullet I had just picked up delivered an egg on the way home. She couldn’t wait, just popped it out in the cardboard carrying box.

But baby chicks are hard to resist. Every few years, around Easter, I break down and get a few day-olds. I set up a box in the kitchen and glory in their demanding peeps, their brilliant down, which looks as if it was coloured by the yolk they thrived on. They beg to be handled, fondled, petted, before they go through the metamorphosis of feathering. The children squeal and fuss, pet the silky fuzz with one finger, hold the chicks in their laps on the kitchen floor, a paper towel strategically placed.

Downy chicks are dazzling; full-feathered pullets
glossy and nubile, but the stage between the two makes the ugly duckling look like a peacock. Nothing is so bedraggled as a partly feathered chick. The yellow fades, white plumes emerge on the wing tips, and red feathers, which will become as rich as Irish tresses in the sun, grow in spotted and patchy, brown as old dried blood sprinkled anyhow. The neck grows bare, like that of a plucked turkey, and the head feathers sprout randomly, exacerbating a compromised intellectual reputation.

No sight (or smell) for the kitchen now, these unloved creatures are banished to the barn where the cats watch them frenziedly, following their moves like tennis fans. The chicks eat and grow, sip water in a crouch then stretch full up to swallow, their prickly necks inviting feline attack from behind the safety of chicken wire.

Then one day they blossom, unfurl from cocoons of mismatched skin and quill-shafts as full-fledged hens, smooth, shiny, svelte. Their heads are sleek, their necks bob with confidence, their wings flex and show perfect symmetry, unfolding like delicate Japanese fans. They strut like soon-to-be debutantes, waiting to come out, eager for the season and the marriage market. And like those courtly characters of Jane Austen and Fanny Burney, their time of adolescent grace is sweet but short. Soon they turn into Eliot’s Sophy Pullet. By twenty weeks the urge to lay is upon them, and they settle into the domesticity of the daily deliverance of
an egg. A chore repeated like laundry, never over, never done.

They take to the nesting box by instinct and culture. Dark and spacious, made of smooth pine and lined with straw, the box is about three feet off the ground with a small platform at the diminutive centre doorway. I cover the entrance with a piece of cloth, chintz, canvas or burlap, to give the birds the dark and privacy they desire. Their instinct draws them, but I’m sure they imitate each other, the pullets following the older hens into the box, taking on the culture of the laying hen. The top of the box is angled and hinged, and an old drawer handle is strategically placed to shed, rather than collect, the droppings of those who like to lounge on the upper edges.

After feeding laying mash, a combination of grit, corn, other grains and nutrients, as well some oyster shells if their eggs are getting thin, I take my wicker basket and open the nesting box to gather the eggs. Always it is a thrill. Some mornings I find a clutch in a pile— five or six eggs from my half-dozen hens. I find fewer eggs in the winter and in the early mornings of dark days. Occasionally there are two piles, or even more, for the box is large. Frequently I find a hen strutting about in the doorway, or just getting off the nest, her job done for the day. But sometimes I have a hen who hangs around for a while—maybe my timing is such that I coincidentally catch her waiting to lay each day. Just as
I am about to reach in and gather the eggs beneath her she raises up her body, ever so slightly, and assumes a crouch. I stand to watch as she extends her neck, raises her tail and ever so gently bears down. If a chicken had teeth, she would clench them at this moment.