Yesterday afternoon and into the evening, forty people were here for my new-traditional Pie Party. Almost eighteen pies were eaten. There was laughter and conversation, and one happy little dog had his butt scratched by four young girls all at the same time. I’ll have photos and tell more later this week, but today I’m busy. My friend, Cindy, is taking me up to Maine in her truck and trailer to pick up Tonka. Hopefully, we’ll arrive back here in Carlisle, and settle him into his new home, a stable two miles from my house, before dark.

The Pie Party was a good excuse to celebrate turning onto this path of horse ownership, and so I decorated the Butternut Squash, Apple and Brie Galette like this:

I know you’ll understand if I’m not at my computer for the next few days!

Every day, multiple times a day, I give thanks. I am thankful for where I live. There is beauty all around me, in the small details, like the moss underfoot, and there in the larger landscape, like the pink sky at night. I share my days with intelligent and loving people. My animals keep me in the present, and remind me to enjoy the journey.

The last two years have been filled with the miracle of hearing. My two cochlear implants have returned to me not just the ease of conversation, but also the minute details of life, only apparent through this sense – a dog’s pant, a twig snap, the tick of my wristwatch. The sounds of birds in the trees have become birdsong. A running stream is musical. Every day I give thanks to the long line of researchers and scientists and doctors who have made this possible.

I know that on this planet, I am one of the lucky ones, here, today, with my wealth and my freedom, my ability to make choices, and the wherewithal to make them reality, I do not take any of it for granted.

The underlying tenet of the type of animal training that I do is that although you keep in mind a large goal, you get there by breaking it down into small steps, each one carefully built on the one before. Do you want your dog to come? Before you ask your dog to move to you, what do you need? Think about it. She needs to look at you. Reward the glance, and then the focus, and then, finally, the movement to you. First it will be a slow trot, and at last there will be that all-out, pell-mell joy of the fast recall. Although this sounds like a tedious and lengthy way of doing things, it actually progresses amazingly fast. Be aware of, and reward, the seemingly minor moments. Ignore what isn’t right. Soon you will have achieved your objective. This is how I try to go about my days. I have my large goals, but I celebrate the very small steps needed to get there. And so I am most grateful to you, my readers. I could be writing about matters of political and societal importance. Certainly I think about those things. But, you give me an excuse to take the time to focus on seemingly inconsequential events – a hen’s molt, the last carrots from the garden, the baking of a pie. My daily blog is a place in which I can pay attention to those moments of grace, Like the animal training that I do, when the focus is on the small positive steps, the better the whole becomes.

Have a most wonderful day.

There are three Speckled Sussex hens in the Big Barn flock. Florence is the smallest and most uniformly speckled. Agatha is easy to spot from a distance – she’s the heavier hen that is gallumping around. In the barn, Agatha is the one up close and inquisitive. Etheldred is Agatha’s size, but her coloring is distinctive. It’s not up to breed standard. There’s too much white.

At a few month’s of age, Etheldred’s chest sported a white bib.

As she matured, more spots turned up on her brown feathers and the reverse happened on her chest, with more brown mingling in. Her head became white. I joked that she was a bald eagle.

I thought that after the first molt in 2012, that this would be Etheldred’s permanent look. She wouldn’t win any ribbons at a poultry show. She was more white and blotchy than what the “standard of perfection” calls for, but I thought her beautiful.

Etheldred has just finished her second molt, and to my surprise, she has grown in even more white feathers, especially on her neck. I can sympathize. This year I’ve gone mostly grey.

I wonder if, each year when Etheldred molts, that she will grow in more white feathers, until she has totally changed her plumage.

Have you ever had a hen that sported a different look after a molt?

Two weeks ago, I was at the Equine Affaire (a horse trade show/extravaganza) where I came across the Lucerne booth. They sell hay from their farm in Maine. I’ve been looking for a source of chopped alfalfa to feed to my flock, and they sell it in bags (although it’s coated in molasses, it’ll do in a pinch.) When I told Rich, the company president, what I wanted alfalfa for, he showed me a new product that they’ve just developed specifically for backyard flocks called Koop Clean.

Before the advent of bagged shavings, chicken keepers used all sorts of bedding in their coops. Hay and straw is not absorbent, tends to mold, and can cause crop impactions, but it was inexpensive and widely available. To make it usable as bedding, farmers chopped it into bits. Farms were equipped with simple machines to do this work. Koop Clean takes that old idea – chopped stalks of hay and straw – but adds a new component. Mixed in is ground zeolite, which is a naturally occurring mineral that absorbs moisture and odor.

Rich gave me a bag to try.

I shoveled out (and put into the compost) all of the wood shavings in the Little Barn and replaced them with Koop Clean. The Ladies were ecstatic. They went right to work, scratching and pecking. I spied on them via the HenCam. The Koop Clean kept them busy all day, except for Buffy, who happily settled down onto the soft bedding.

This is what you want to see – active, foraging hens. In the winter it is hard to achieve in a small space. Scratch grains tossed into the bedding don’t last long. Even hanging a cabbage has them rooted to one spot. (Some people use deep litter, and In another post I’ll go into detail about why I don’t like that option for backyard flocks.)

I really liked how the flock behaved with the Koop Clean.  The only problem was that the girls were kicking it up with such enthusiasm that I had to raise the waterer to keep it clear of flying bedding.

When first spread out in the coop, it smelled wonderful – a true barn smell, of sweet dried grasses, like late summer in a field. As the week wore on, that aroma dissipated, but the odor of chicken manure didn’t take over, despite the fact that it accumulated as usual, especially under the roosts. I muck out weekly, and the manure was as dry and as easy to pick up as it is in shavings. The task would, however, have taken a tad less time without the rabbit’s help.

I was impressed enough with the trial that I bought four bags. The product is not yet widely available, so I used the dealer search page on the Lucerne website to find a store that carried it.  I had to drive a ways to purchase it, but I always love an excuse to go to a new feed store, and Orde Farm in Hollis, NH was worth the trip.

I spread out a bag in the Gem’s coop. To contain costs, I didn’t remove their clean old shavings. The Gems didn’t care – they set right to foraging and happily clucking over the change in their bedding.

Koop Clean is more expensive than what I’ve been using. It is $13 a bag, rather than $7 for pine shavings. Still, I think it will be worth it, at least for the winter. The hens will eat bits of the hay, and will stay healthier because they’ll be active. I get the benefit of the barn smelling like what I think that a barn should. I don’t know yet how frequently the bedding will need to be replaced, or how dusty it will be compared to shavings. When I find out, in a month or so, I’ll let you know.

Koop Clean is a good product. Almost good enough for me to excuse the spelling of Koop.

In case you are wondering – I don’t take sponsors or advertising here – the ads you see are put there by Google (I get paid a small amount for each ad clicked on.) My comments here are not influenced by the manufacturer.

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!