Many of you are planning your Thanksgiving dinners. Perhaps your family assigns one dish per guest. Perhaps an uncle brings a smoked turkey. Maybe you are taking over the apron strings from your mother and are going to do it all. Putting together a family feast is complicated.

I’m not cooking a classic turkey dinner, but I have invited more than forty people to my home for pie. It would be impossible to pull this off without applying the organizational skills that I learned when working in professional kitchens. Good planning reduces the stress and increases the enjoyment. It means there will be fewer cooking disasters. It means that at the last minute you won’t be saying, Oh, no I forgot to buy the sage! I’ll share what I do here, and perhaps it will help your holiday festivities to go more smoothly.

1. Plan your menu and write it down. I keep a file of all past Pie Parties, with notations on which pies were the biggest hits, how much people ate and drank (this is how I know that year after year, each person consumes half a pie!) and ideas for the next year’s event.

2. Collect the recipes. Even if you know a recipe by heart, write it down. You’ll be creating a shopping list from the recipes, and you don’t want to forget a thing. If a recipe that I’m using is in a book, I copy it, as it is unwieldy to have a half-dozen books open on the kitchen counter. Clippings get slipped into a protective sheet. As I cook, I write notes on the recipes – everything from whether the baking time was accurate to what dish I used. You think that you’re going to remember these things from year to year, but you don’t. The recipes can them be filed away and referred to the next year.

3. Write up a complete shopping list. Put down exact quantities. Not “milk” but “2 cups whole milk.” I count eggs. This year I need 61 eggs for the 20 pies that I’ll be baking. I’ll be buying 5 dozen – my molting girls aren’t going to provide them!

4. Create a cooking schedule, with what you need to do ahead of time, and what gets cooked at the last minute. List every item, and the order that you will do it. My schedule starts two weeks out with pie crusts that I roll out and freeze (16 this year). Next are the pies that can be assembled, baked and frozen. Some pies are assembled and frozen, but then  baked off the day of the party, other pies are baked one day ahead and set, and others need finishing right before the guest come (such as Banana Cream Pie with a Meringue Topping.) Sometimes there are parts of recipes that can be done ahead of time. This year I’ll be baking off butternut squash and slow-cooking onions the day before I assemble the pies. My baking schedule details all of this! Have your cooking schedule broken down into time slots and don’t think that you can do this in your head. Work off the master plan, and you’ll be much calmer. Interruptions? Phone call from crazy Aunt Mary? No matter! You’ll be able to pick up where you left off.

5. Write out another schedule for the other things that need to be done, such as the decor, the dishes, the coffee, and the lighting of candles. This keeps you from scrambling at the last minute. On the day of my Pie Party, I have built into the schedule a relaxing shower an hour before the guests arrive. So, by the time the doorbell rings for the first time, I’m in my party attire (with an apron on, of course!)

6. Always check things off the list after you’ve done them. You’ll need that on-going sense of accomplishment.

I’m halfway through writing up my lists. They will be finished this morning after I’ve posted this blog. Check!

Opal is my big white Delaware hen. The Delaware is a classic, fat hen with a docile temperament. The breed was developed in the 1940s as a meat chicken, so I didn’t expect a lot of eggs from Opal, I just like her looks and personality. That’s why it’s such a surprise that she’s the only Gem who is presently laying. This is especially remarkable because she’s the hen whose eggs were most affected by IB (infectious bronchitis). Even today, with the flock recovered, she continues to lay wrinkled eggs. Her eggshells have creases., but she lays almost daily. In fact, Opal has yet to go through a molt.

Other hens are on the worst dressed list.  When Amber stretches her head up, her scrawny red neck shows, and she looks like she’s wearing a moth-eaten sweater.

The molt is not an orderly, controllable event. It’s affected by genetics, health, weather, and a multitude of other inputs. Two hens of the same breeding and age, living together, can experience the molt in vastly different ways. Here is Ruby. She is not a very good layer, and in October she molted and quickly regrew her feathers.

Her sister, Garnet, who is the better layer of the two, has been dropping her feathers in clumps, and is regrowing them in a dramatic, imitate a porcupine, manner.

Notice the Onyx, the Barnevelder hen, has molted and has replenished her lovely feathers, which to my eye, always looks like the finest of Scottish tweed coats.

You might think, seeing these photos, that the poorest layers  molt first. That’s generally true, but there’s always exceptions. Edwina is 8 1/2 years old. She hasn’t laid an egg for years. Edwina hasn’t molted yet. I honestly don’t know if she will. There’s nothing in my books, vintage, nor modern, about the molting habits of ancient hens. Edwina certainly looks good, doesn’t she?

Other old hens of mine have molted. Buffy is slowly, slowly regrowing her feathers. Twinkydink went through a light molt, hardly noticeable if you didn’t know her well. Betsy has molted and is still getting her new quills in.

Meanwhile, what with the cold and the reduced daylight, I don’t expect to see eggs from the Gems until February. Unless, that is, Opal never does molt and continues, every day, to leave this in the nesting box.

All summer long, the goats offered to help in my garden.

We’re good at pruning, they said.

Yesterday they were finally allowed to help in the lavender and mint bed.

There was a debate about who is head gardener.

I can show you my pruning skill on the roses, said Pip.

No, I said. And that is why the gardeners are wearing leashes.

The flock at Life Care of Nashoba Valley are doing great!

The team of maintenance men who take care of the building and grounds are all trained to care of the hens. I recently stopped by to make sure that they were on top of winter requirements. They’re fine about hauling water out. A tarp will be installed over the run so that it is dry and free of snow.

They’re doing something right there, because they collect four to five eggs a day from five hens. That’s not enough to use in the dining room, but it is enough to reward the people who take care of the chickens.

When I selected the pullets for this flock, I knew that one hen, the Buff Orpington, would be special. She was the most naturally calm and friendly chick I’ve ever known. She’s been named Clementine, and she has totally endeared herself to one of the caregivers at the home. Lisa spends her lunch break with Clementine. Now that the weather is cold and the residents are staying mostly indoors, Lisa has been bringing Clementine inside to visit. I hear that she nestles against Lisa’s shoulder and chuck-chucks happy noises.

When I checked in, Clementine was  busy laying an egg so I didn’t interrupt her. I did, though, get to hear her cheerfully chuckle as she sat in the nesting box. What a sweet hen!

Once every few months, Steve gets together with some friends to play poker. Being guys, they don’t talk about personal stuff. At this last poker game, one of the men said to Steve, “Isn’t it your wife who got the chickens to Life Care? My father lives there and when I visit, we go out to the coop. It gives us something to do and talk about.”

Exactly. That’s exactly what the hens are there for.

If you are new to my blog, you can read the backstory about the nursing home hens beginning here.

Today is my 55th birthday.

I bought a horse.

I have to let that sink in.

I know what horse ownership is like. It means whatever I’m doing, however wonderful it is, I’m thinking, “I should be at the barn.” It means that there is a constant flow of money out. These days it means that at the end of the day my back will hurt.

But it also means this.

Chickens, goats, dogs, husband, kids. My life is already full and rich with relationships. But what happens on the back of a horse can only happen on the back of a horse.

Only a few weeks ago, Steve and I were talking about how happy I was that I was riding again. He said, “buy a horse.” And so I did.

I thought that it would take all winter to find the perfect partner, but, thanks to a HenCam reader who knew someone who knew someone, I found Tonka.

I’ll be boarding him at a stable two miles up the road from my house, where there are other horses to keep him company, and people to attend to his daily needs.

Tonka arrives the first week of December. You’ll be seeing and reading more about him then!