Love winter

Cold and sparkly, with a picturesque mist over a glacier-blue lake.

The chicken water is frozen solid. There are four cats haunch-to-haunch on the sofa (with a feline diplomatic incident every few minutes). The icicles AJ brought indoors yesterday are still frozen in a bowl in the hall.

Up in the woods at 800m as the sun rose, my husband stopped to rest and change his sweat-soaked shirts for fresh ones. By the time he was ready to pack the damp clothes into his rucksack, they were frozen and creaking.

When he returned from his walk in the woods, we took our sheepskins and woolly hats out to the churchyard for a plate of pasta and a glass of Crémant du Jura in the sun.

Don't ya just lurve winter?

Early morning discovery

Again six degrees at 8:30am. The benches dotted along the mulattiera up to Carmine Superiore are pools of warmth in the sunshine. A good excuse to sit for a while and ponder our luck to be living here between the glittering lake and the snowcapped mountains.

Hawk strike on palazzo pollo yesterday. Luckily, the chickens thought with their spinal cords and to a girl fled to the warm darkness of the coop, a place where not many right-thinking hawks will boldly go. "Luckily, no-one was hurt", but there were plenty of ruffled feathers - all over the floor of the run.

So this morning I was out and about in the 6am pre-dawn repairing the protective wiring (having had a rather disturbed night populated with dancing penguins, carnival transvestites on stilts and hawks with scimitar beaks). I found the chicks - like the sprogs I left behind in the house - still sleeping. As the pre-dawn painted the sky behind the mountains and studded it with a single star (God doodling), I worked away with little white widgets, green netting and near-frozen fingers.

Then I made a discovery. The only sound in the gloom was what has to be one of the most soothing sounds in the world (after a night of dancing penguins and carnival transvestites on stilts) : the gentle purr of chickens snoring...

The Carmine Caption-Writing Contest

Another warm and sunny autumn day outside, but indoors we're looking pretty war-ravaged after a night of scuola sickness, kindergarten cough and five-year-old fever.

"That stupid cat'll never notice me behind this clover..."

Alternative captions in the comments box, pur-lease! Go on, give us a laugh!

Stuck!

You'd think they'd learn : one door for eggs, one door for cleaning out and one door for chickens. This is the egg door...

Garden update

The end of August brings a sea-change, not only in the weather, but also in the garden - one variety taking over from another even as the first labours on. The tomatoes are beginning to wane, and this afternoon I plan to take out the earlies I planted what seems like a lifetime ago. The beef tomatoes are still going strong, and we'll be bottling tomato sauce for pasta ere long. We're still reeling under the annual glut of white zucchine and cucumbers - AJ's cucumbers have been particularly good. The chilli pepper plants are still laden with ripening fruit, and I have been drying heaps on the window sills for the last three weeks or so. They'll go into chilli oil to help make our winter evenings warmer.

Slowly, though, we see the fruits of summer giving way to the fruits of autumn and winter. The apple tree seems to be producing a few, and the pears are laden. The leeks for our winter soups are marching along in their drill-sergeant rows, and the broccoli I put in last week have stopped flopping and are standing to attention. All the herbs I planted this spring are doing famously - this really was made to be a herb garden and next year we plan to move more in that direction.

Golly, almost forgot! The vines are coming into fruit, and a couple of days ago we tasted the first bunches of our delicious, almost sour, Americana grapes. No good for wine, but as a table grape, beats the overstuffed, oversprayed varieties in the shops hands down.

The garden is a-bloom with the second, or perhaps even the third, flush of roses - the ground cover varieties are particularly prolific right now. The oleander I planted as a screen along the public footway side of the garden are starting to fill in, and they are still abundantly in flower - yellow, white, pink and apricot. The hibiscus are also in flower in shades of mauve, pink and white, and the jasmine are sending out new tendrils in all directions across the wire.

The males from this year's chicken cohort are already in the freezer. There were fewer than expected. Some of the big grays that were sold to us as males turned out to be females (read about their arrival in Carmine here). We also had a spot uh bovver with a fox or two along the way. The girl-chicks, a few more than expected, have started laying, just in time for the older ones in the Carmine population to start their autumn moult, and go on laying strike for the duration. With a bit of luck, the young ones will keep us and our neighbours in eggs while the old ladies are sulking.

That covers all but one of the chicks. The children have named the house hen Clothilde, which means she automatically gets a pension. She'll be allowed beyond the end of her natural laying life, and when the time comes she'll be given a decent Christian burial. That's because when you name an animal it becomes a pet, and we don't eat our pets! Clothilde's leg is improving, you'll be pleased to hear, but it'll be a while yet before she returns to the pond of barracudas that is Pallazzo Pollo. In the meantime, she is growing and growing and growing and growing, from all the tidbits the children give her (she particularly likes M.'s own version of risotto Milanese), and I'm starting to wonder whether we'll actually get her through the pollaio door when the time comes.

More on Clothilde the House Hen in another post.

Late spring chicken update : foxes, bullies and claw foot

Twenty-one degrees at 8:30am. Overcast and once again I've opted not to water the garden in anticipation that the local weather gods will see to it for me.


Little boy blue,
Deliver the goods,
There's hens in the prato
And a fox in the woods
And where's the boy
That looks after the chicks?
Lying in a puddle of sunshine having a gentle post-lunch snooze...

Yup, the fox has cubs to feed and where better to go looking for lunch than our place? The chick-herd awoke from his Sunday slumber when one of our eight Bionda piemontese hens broke the sound barrier in her efforts to escape old Vulpes vulpes, who, a nanosecond later leapt across his legs in hot pursuit. The hen lost plenty of feathers and ended up with a nasty bite in her side, but the chick-herd's world-famous windmill imitation sent the fox back into the depths of the woods. Following our tradition, the hen now has a pension and will not end up in the soup at the end of her laying life like her coop-mates ...

Talking of which, at the weekend we defrosted the bully, who turned out to be really enormous. He produced roast breast and wings to serve four, 6 litres of stock (that's 6 vegetable soups for two), chicken curry for four plus leftovers. That's 20 person meals, several purring cats and a very pleased dog.

And finally, the 21 youngsters have been moved from the bathroom to the coop and are growing like Topsy. They now have real feathers instead of just down, and are gaily bouncing around the place making tons of rose feed. They are here called Big gray, the males being white speckled grey and the girls being a warm patterned brown. Both males and females are noticeably less skittish than the Bionda piemontese, and B. has embarked on a campaign to make friends with as many of them as possible.

This year's lesson in chicken rearing : claw foot doesn't have to be fatal.


We feel bad that we jumped the gun somewhat when three of our four self-hatched chicks developed claw foot in their second week, and we disposed of them in the belief that this must be a genetic defect brought about by inbreeding. Read about it here.


When we bought a batch of 20 chicks, one developed the condition, and I begged for a couple of days in which to try a cure. The magic potion turned out to be one teaspoon a day of an infant formulation of vitamin B complex bought over the counter at the local pharmacist (she's by now used to my strange requests, in atrocious but apologetic Italian). The condition turned out to be a form of cramp caused by B2 deficiency. The suffering chick was miraculously back on its feet within 36 hours, and preventative application of the syrup to the water supply has meant the rest of the crew didn't develop the condition at all.


So, as the sun moves round to shine into our kitchen window and, finally, onto our small terrace, the chicks are growing fast and the hens are laying faster. The children are full of homemade pasta and chicken curry, and on our neighbours' doorsteps there are occasional gifts of surplus eggs.


And ... best of all ... the chickens still make me laugh.

Four minus three equals twenty-one

A shockingly low 10°C at 9am as we played truant from kindergarten and blew straight through Cannobio heading for the Swiss border (oh the thrill of it!). Raining hard and solid. The cucumbers are happy, the zucchini are happy, the tomatoes, the basil, the parsley, the radishes, the lettuces and the strawberries are happy. A very soggy Mama, trailing two soggy ducklings wasn't so content.

Behind the scenes in Carmine, a small tragedy has been unfolding. Not one, but three of the four chicks we managed to hatch this year developed clubbed feet. Click here for more. We fear a vitamin B2 deficiency or a genetic defect that comes from breeding fathers with daughters. But we're not experts - any friendly advice or information gladly (and sadly) received.

So we've had for the last few days a young singleton free ranging in the bathroom - at three weeks he's big enough to skip his coop and investigate the big wide world. When anyone comes in for a spot of private business he skitters across the lovely larch floor and bounces on the least mobile pair of feet he can find. From thence to a knee, an arm and eventually a shoulder, where he sits preening himself proudly.

He reminds me of Jonathan/Johanna, our seagull friend, who lived for several years in the kitchen and on the terrace before being sent into the wilderness to terrorise our second round of chicks. Why should that be? Despite M.'s many attempts to teach the seagull to perch on his shoulder, our web-footed friend could never get the hang of perching, so the similarity lies not in that direction. No, it's the fact that Mama has been spending a large proportion of her time skittering across the lovely larch floor with disinfectant wipes in hand, clearing up the chick's private business... and being reminded of this post...Chick doo-doo is, you may be interested to learn, slightly less corrosive and slightly easier to remove than seagull doo-doo. But they're both devastating to a tight schedule of domestic labour.

So, I hear you cry, how does four minus three equal twenty-one? And what does that have to do with the price of eggs?

Well, yesterday afternoon's mission improbable was to find mister-I've-imprinted-on-a-human (aka Singleton) some chums.

First, I thought the answer might lie with the next nearest fluffy things - the cats. In the absence of mice to chase they must surely be bored enough to want to make a new friend. I caught Trouble lying across the bathroom threshold the other day, listening attentively to the chirping beyond. The look of guarded excitement on his young, feline face led me to believe that perhaps the cats were not it.

Sending Singleton packing back to mama-hen wouldn't do either. Singleton's parents wouldn't believe me when I tell them he's theirs, and at this stage would probably peck it to its place in paradise sooner than check its maternity-ward wrist-band.

So off I went in the World's-Most-Battered, with the two sproglets in tow, to a chappie I know in Verbania who had found me what our little yellow friend seemed to be hankering for...

Twenty two-day-old chicks (a euro a piece, poor things) - 12 boys, 8 girls.

A rent-a-crowd.

A porta-party.

And Mama went chirpee-chirpee-cheep-cheep all the way back up the hill.

Last night, Singleton bedded down in the very centre of a mound of warm, fluffy friendliness once more and didn't give my boots (or the disinfectant wipes) a second glance.

Mission accomplished.

Springwatch 2009 (again)

A strange, uncomfortable day. An open-window day, but overcast with the occasional drop of rain.

With the fall of the cherry blossom, early spring deepens towards Easter. (Now how did that happen? Only two more months to the long summer holidays!)

Carmine Superiore is almost full, with the usual suspects taking up their usual Eastertime activities - clearing and planting their gardens, doing a spot of light home maintenance, bringing in wood from the forest, hauling provisions up the hill, undertaking pest control, and most importantly settling in for some fairly arduous gossip (of which there is plenty).

And all around us there is four-legged rustling in the woods and meadows. The wild boar are once again causing havoc in the outlying meadows. They dig for bulbs and roots and wallow in any place offering a spot of mud. Moves are afoot to give them a welcome they're not expecting later in the year - more of that later in the year!

Last year's frequent visitor, the lone deer, is more and more often sighted up in Ezio's meadow, visible from the kitchen window. There's something comforting about seeing her gently grazing away up there in the quiet early mornings. I take it as a sign of a good day to come.

Talking of signs, there are signs of the marten everywhere, in the form of little piles of doo-doo ("Don't step in the doo-doo, darling"). The Mama cat, who is at the pity-me-pity-me-and-give-me-fish stage of her spring 2009 pregnancy had better hide her little ones good and proper. Martens usually eat only berries and fruit, but they can wipe out a litter in short order - kitten blood is a marten treat.

Of course, the place is crammed with nests, just out of sight, but noisy with chicks of all kinds. Our own two-week-old bionda piemontese chicks, have mastered pecking about and are now working on flying. I can hear the occasional ping from the bathroom as one of them hits his head on the heating lamp. Unhappily, there are now only three of them. Last night brought a scene of French Revolutionary character, when I discovered one hobbling about on its elbows having developed clubbed feet. It happens. Having determined there was only one thing to be done, M. did it (it takes a Prussian), while Mama wept over her remaining round-and-fluffies.

One animal curiously missing from Carmine this year, though - at least from this particular house - is the mouse. I've seen no mice and not a single solitary sign (read doo-doo) of a mouse since sometime last year, when the combined efforts of the cat and M's chocolate-baited traps put an end to all the scurrying about. Although I did catch last year's girl-kitten practising with a pair of AJ's rolled-up socks the other day, so perhaps she knows something we're just about to find out.

And finally, Mama is looking forward to her Easter glass of crémant on Sunday...

Company in Carmine

Fifteen degrees at 8am, rising to 28 degrees at 4pm. Sunny with a breeze.

Holy Week. And Carmine is starting to fill up with Easter visitors. And by the difficulty in finding a parking space by the kindergarten this morning, so is Cannobio.

It's good to see lights in the houses which have been dark for so long. Good to see the smiling faces of our friends and neighbours once again. Good to be planting the garden and tending week-old chicks that now have their wing-feathers, and great to be looking forward to another Enid Blyton summer.

But our thoughts are also with the people of Abruzzo as they scramble across the debris of their lives.

Bulletin : Mama's zero-proof Lent

Nine degrees at nine am. Mercifully not raining for the Monday morning descent, but threatening. The famous four are fine, doing very good impersonations of those round, fluffy chicks you see on Easter cards and in childrens' books.

Steady as she goes on Lent tea-total...although there was a wobble the other night when my husband, the angel in our kitchen, confronted me with a 10-year-old bottle of Michel Lafarge Volnay, to accompany a celebratory supper of roasted venison with pumpkin and dried plums, garnished with roasted garlic.

Until that moment, I hadn't quite realised exactly how much of a sadist M. actually is...

Four plus four

Misty and rainy. A proper drink, finally, for the new roses, currants, rhododendron, lettuces and box.

There are four chicks starting to fluff up nicely under the warming lamp in the chick nursery. I doubt the remaining four eggs will hatch, but the incubator thermostat light is still blinking away in quiet optimism.

Banned entirely from the house, the cats are sulking.

Chick news

Blue skies at 7am, and, somewhat ahead of time, our first chick has hatched, whole and healthy and is tottering around cheeping encouragement at the remaining seven eggs.

So it looks like I'll be spending today with a cup of tea looming over the incubator cheeping encouragement too.

I don't recall signing up to be a farmer's wife...

Yellow

Yesterday, as I sped about VCO province, up and down the lake like a mad thing (thank God for the world's-most-battered Panda), I started to notice a theme.

A yellow theme.

The daffodils gathered in crowds (nay, hosts) everywhere I look are gaily nodding at the ripe lemons in the boughs of the lemon trees that do so well in sunny, sheltered spots. The mimosa trees are giant sculptures made up of thousands of tiny pom-poms towering from the lower slopes of the lakeside. The bright yellow primulas are still flourishing in the stony nooks and crannies. And the forsythia, large and small, are displaying their fragile flowers.

There are yellow butterflies and yellow-breasted birds. Yellow roadworks signs have sprouted up all along the lakeside SS34 (even where there are no visible roadworks), and gangs of chaps are out in yellow overalls painting the alberghi yellow in time for the Easter influx of visitors.

Even B., home from her travels, has ferretted out a yellow sunhat and wears it even in bed, and Mama is tempted to pull on her token yellow T-shirt.


Perhaps some marketing genius should institute a Yellow Festival - a Sunday in March when we all wear yellow, eat yellow, paint our faces yellow and race yellow boats. There could be yellow balloons and yellow bumper stickers, yellow paintballing, yellow cakes, yellow caramelle and yellow cocktails.

Sound like fun?


PS The eggs in the incubator have been candled and eight have quickened. Unless the cats or the kids get them, we may have cute little yellow chicks in a couple of weeks. Fingers crossed.

Carmine quotes No. 14 : which came first...?

A whopping 10 degrees at 8:30am, and 17 as I breezed back past the digital thermometer in Cannobio at 12:30pm. Blue skies with fluffies scudding across the sky chased by a stiff breeze. The mimosas are blooming, the bees are buzzing in the elephant's ears, the cats are quarreling and the children are unmanageable. Spring has sprung.

This year's batch of eggs went into the artificial hen on Saturday night (we can always find something dissolute to do on Saturday nights in Carmine). We've been slowly bringing the incubator up to temperature (a strict thirty-seven-point-five-degrees) over the last few days using carefully sized potatoes in place of the eggs.

When the eggs went in, the potatoes, warm from the incubator, came out and were left on the table, where AJ found them. He soon found Mama with his new discovery :

AJ : Mama, Mama, chicks!

Mama : No, darling, not for 21 days yet.

AJ : Yes, Mama, chicks. I can feel them!

Mama : You can feel them? What do you mean?

AJ: Mama, the potatoes have got chicks in them, I can feel them, they're warm ...


Puts a whole new complexion on the "which came first" question ... the chicken or the ... potato?




For more on how to hatch your own chicks, click on the tag Chick-rearing 2008

Chick-rearing 2009 : preparation

Lent without alcohol day 3 : no problem. (Click here for more.)

Still damp and warm-ish. Starting to think about moving back into the unheated rooms in the house. It'll be nice to spread out again.

With this feeling comes the start of the chicken-breeding programme for this year. Those surplus eggs will be in the incubator shortly!

Now, where is the incubator?