I meant to give my lady a surprise. It was hers the moment I saw that twinkle in her eyes at that backwater factory with the Indonesian gems. But how to get it in the house? We had bought an armoire like it years ago and it had been such a nonsensical nightmare trying to get it in the house that we had entirely disassembled it and then brought it in piecemeal. This one I measured though, and it seemed it would just make it. I could bring it in while she was out. She’d be so pleased, thinking I hadn’t even remembered that today was 9 years in to this matrimonial grand adventure. But there were a few elements I hadn’t fully accounted for such as that fact that it weights 8 friggin’ tons and that while it was just skinny enough to get through the door frames (doors removed and one set of doorstop hacked off) it was longer than the hallway itself so how could it actually get into the heart of the house. Saws were brought out. She came home in that stuck-in-the-hallway moment and the surprise was definitely a potent one….. Finally, after several holes in the walls and some abstract gouging of the floor the piece came to live perfectly in its place, completing the bedroom as we’d always known it needed that extra something. And with the bottom finial lopped off it looks even more Indiana Jones, like some massive temple block, hewn from stone in our home, an entranceway to jungle magics. It had taken so long to get the bastard in though that my surprise plans for a movie date were blown. What the hell, childcare was called off and we all went out to our favorite taco stand for some total family romance. As soon as we got home, the CHICKS usurped the gift in their own special way and the notion of being neigh a decade into our wedded bliss was complete.

Our new additions to the farm. Araucana’. Big blue eggs in their future, and ours. This is the fine increase of nature’s way around here. And these start as a couple of feathery, airy, bubble fuffs in your palm. Life chirps at you and you should probably grab Zorba’s zither and dance or cry.

The Shakers believed in maintaining things of importance in the natural world. Traditional farming techniques in their medicinal gardens and heirloom varieties of livestock in their barns. The only thing they forgot to successfully preserve were the Shakers themselves. Zealotry before procreation, not a winning, or Catholic, equation. Thus the lovely Shaker farm we visited is now just a museum, the last five Shakers living out the long years somewhere in upstate New York. We were back in Mass. this summer visiting Ilse’s parents when some neighbors – who had been shown our LA Times article - were happy to offer up that since we had chickens at Sky Farm we’d be interested in seeing the heirloom chickens at the Shaker Village in Hancock. They had been saved from extinction on some volcanic island, or something. Off we went on one of those New England summer days that take precedence over all others. There we found all the elements of the good, if sexually repressed, life. We found the gardens, the fine circular dairy barn, the handy furniture and homespun clothes and of course, the fancy chickens, but we also found the even fancier heirloom turkies. Pearly white with translucently blue heads and gentle foreskin-pink gobbles hanging limply forward. And lo!, there at the corner of their turkey tractor was a single egg that had rolled under the edge by the wheel and escaped the scrutiny of the earlier egg crews. Ilse and I both thought back to our broody hen, the wee Silky, Cecil, soft as a kitten, who is forever sitting on other’s eggs, driven by instinct to maternally hoist herself upon any available oval. Sometimes she sits there, puffed out on nothing at all, determined to incubate. She wants pups. But our wee Silky rooster is either too short, too busy in his Napoleonic frustrations, or just gay and is not handling her business. So to relieve her constant sitting earlier in the Spring we had slipped some fertilized eggs under her and sure enough she brought to light the little chick photo’d in the Times article. That chick was now a big chicken, twice as large as her mother, a bit fearful looking with no neck feathers, and devout in her filial bond. It’s touching to see the two of them cuddled together, child hulking over its mother. And damn if the old girl hadn’t gone broody again. Ilse’s not one to just ruminate on the flowering of her farm and with one swift scoop the egg was up and into her shirt, safe in the warm early incubator of her breasts, perched deftly there on the oxbow of her bra. Ilse had learned from our earlier hatching exploits that fertilized eggs can stand in limbo for up to ten days before entering proper incubation and kick starting the gestation process. So against the odds that it was actually fertilized, and that it would survive the trip, and that our broody hen might foster the proper care once it was slipped under her, for the pure thrill of possible LIFE! we skipped off with the beast of an egg to the nearest FedEx where a cellphone box proved the perfect carrier for our newest experiment in husbandry. But since when are Ilse’s garden efforts not assured their due fecundity? Our house sitter texted the next day, “The Eagle has landed.” And 28 expectant days later, our little Silky ushered in the newest member of the Sky Farm Family, Giles Corey, named after the Salem witch we’ve recently taken a weighty liking to. And mind you, our proud little hen is mother twice over without yet breaking her hymen, a silken miracle that our Shaker brethren in their sexless Christianity must take some small solace in, despite the fact we nicked their fancy heirloom egg.

And thus the eagle has landed safely in the clutches of Sky Farm’s most Laura Ingalls Wilder bosom.

She came down with a handful of hair clips. She looks up earnest and lifts the barrettes to me, “Put these in. Let’s do a photo shoot.” She is not to be denied, eh?

Finally getting pitch-hitting relief on the getting the knots out front. Walked in to find them handling it themselves. Love CHICKS.

Pops recently renovated his home. Good move, out with the old ghosts. But he got rid of lots of cool things that we swift became the beneficiaries of. Hats off to one man’s need for modernization while Ilse and I flourish in our hand-built-home country comforts…

This is some of the ultimate kudos, to have our hard work and ingenuity, and our fancy CHICKS, given the nod on one of the great stalwart sites that keeps the web human, that exults the regency that resides in the quotidian, that turns back the tide of kitsch by stemming its ranks and and placing small, saintly wonders in the hands of those who need them.