A blessèd state

After three days of glorious sunshine and temperatures in the high 20s, today is overcast and threatening a little rain. 

Good. I won't have to water the garden. But there is everything else. 

Only two days into the 10-week summer holiday and my clean and tidy ideal home is a thing of memory. I'm drowning in cardboard-box tanks that fall apart when you move them, plastic-bottle contraptions that prove Boyle's Law, but soak everything in the process, and stuffed animals at all stages of mutilation spilling their innards from bedroom to study to churchyard and back. I'm up to my ankles in super-scratchable boxless DVDs, and up to my eyes in indecipherable swap cards. 

The cats have colonised the bedrooms, the dog is a dark vortex of insanity in the entrance, and the chicks have developed a suicidal desire to fly the coop through any gap in the wire and offer themselves to the waiting fox. Or buzzard.

And under cover of last night's darkness my beloved husband has returned from his many wanderings. How do I know? Every drawer and cupboard door is open. The place is strewn with shoe polish, toothbrushes, dirty shirts and revolting conference baggies. And every time I try to cross the entrance I trip over the booby-trap boots.

A blessèd state, wife-and-motherhood. And now I know why my grandmother always used the word 'blessèd' to mean !*@?#!!!! 

Half asleep in polka-dot pyjamas

Six am. 

Through the open window comes a squawking and a cackling and a familiar ringing cry from the hen house. Having lost four of my beloved chicks in recent days, I'm out of bed and doing the chicken-house sprint before you can say foxy-loxy. Barefoot in polka-dot pyjamas and still half-blind with sleep. 

Could it be the buzzard, perhaps? Yesterday I witnessed an extraordinary sight - a jay, howling excitedly, wheeling and turning in pursuit of a massive buzzard - following the contours of Carmine's terraces and out of sight over the lake. Seconds later the jay was back, without the buzzard, and howling victoriously.

I know, it's the fox! I can't remember closing the chicken-house door yesterday, my skirt gripped to my waist and bulging with eggs. Did I? Oh God! I'm prepared for a litter of corpses and a drift of soft baby down.

As I reach them, the cockerel begins to crow an all-clear. In a corner of the prato, under the trees, next to the wood pile, I sense rather than see a massive, majestic red stag. He is motionless for a moment, eyeing up the polka-dot pyjamas. Slowly bowing  his hefty antlers in haughty disapproval, he drifts away into the damp gloom.

I let myself into palazzo pollo, counting as I go. The big guys are easy. One cockerel. Check. Seven fat girls. Check. The flock of youngsters are harder to count as they fly to me from all corners of the enclosure like Trafalgar-Square pigeons to a tourist. Stand still! Okay. Seventeen. Check.

From out of the undergrowth one of the cats stalks angrily and sits herself down to wait with a humph. She's staring at me out of cool green eyes. Still sulking that I evicted her last night and passing judgement on the polka-dot pyjamas.

The netting is down, and I spend a few minutes fixing it back up - adept these days with the wirecutters (who'd have thought?). The chicks surround me, some on perches, some on the ground at my feet. Some try to sit on my shoulders, and I gently brush them away, remembering the several pairs of pearl earrings they've stolen right out of my ears in recent weeks. They're understandably attracted to anything that to them resembles grain.

The out-loud laugh that bubbles up I cut short, with a furtive glance around - am I destined for mad old lady-hood?

As I work I realise my little ones are being more than usually attentive this morning. To my knees. 

I look down. 

It seems they like the polka-dot pyjamas if no-one else does, and if I'm not careful I shall be bare-footing it back to the village with them in tatters and my mad lady status well and truly confirmed...

May bulletin

Twenty-eight degrees at 3pm. With a soothing breeze. We expect rain tomorrow.

Here in Carmine today all is quiet but for the tweeting of chicks in their nests, the rustling of lizards in the ivy and the slithering of snakes among the grass. The Easter visitors have for the most part gone away, and the steady stream of tourists has for now slowed to a trickle. 

My own brood of chicks are out in Palazzo Pollo, growing fast. They’ve come to the chicken equivalent of the ugly-wugly acne-greasy-hair stage common to many teenagers. They look as if they are about to expire from some nasty chicken disease, but in fact it’s just their second round of feathers coming in. This brood is particularly pleasing. They seem to have imprinted on me, and when I pay them a visit I am immediately surrounded, pecked and leapt upon. One habitually flies up to my shoulder where he pecks at my grey hairs, and the other day succeeded in stealing a pearl earring. One day I expect to find it again in a roast, like the peasant girl in The Fish and the Ring… I hope so, I had no idea of the price of decent pearls in this part of the world!

In the garden I’ve finally succeeded in planting tomatoes, aubergines, courgettes and basil, and we are already celebrating the first strawberries, cherries and red currants. The roses are a dream this year after a hard pruning in the winter. At San Gottardo their perfume, mingled with melissa and rosemary, filled the church.

Talking of perfume, I was several times at Galzignano, a thermal spa resort near Venice. (Did I mention how much I love spas? I did? Oh. Okay.) Swimming pregnant in the warm spa waters, I found myself surrounded by islands planted with flowering jasmine, and was immediately enchanted. I determined to make Carmine smell as good, and this year have finally augmented our stock of poet’s jasmine by another four plants.

If you happen to pass by while they are in flower – predicted for next week - I hope they bring the enchantment of the Arabian Nights to you too.   

Maundy Thursday, moving day

A bright and warm day with a cooling breeze. The soil is dust-dry underfoot and I can't get the sprinkler to work...

Today, Mama's babies are 17 days old. All the children hereabouts have visited, petted, cuddled and occasionally dropped a chick in the past couple of weeks (and with Easter upon us there are plenty of juvenile feet crashing up and down the staircase in search of fluffy love). 

For the last few days, however, the chicks have been blessed with the power of flight and have taken to jumping out of their cardboard box and, Gremlin-like, have been wreaking havoc in the bathroom. 

Now I used to live in intimate co-habitational bliss with a herring gull, brought as an injured chick from the Castelli di Cannero. It doesn't bear thinking about now that the house is more, shall we say, civilised (it's all relative), but it does mean that Mama doesn't mind the chicks. 

She doesn't mind having 21 chicks hurl themselves at her across the floor like so many plump, fluffy bullets every time she comes into the room.

She doesn't mind when they get into the food sack and spray grain everywhere.

She doesn't mind that slimy, squidgy feeling between her toes.

And she really doesn't mind being sat on like a statue in Trafalgar Square when she's herself sitting and trying to get to the end of the Economist book reviews section despite the fluttering of tiny wings.

But perhaps the cat might do more than take a lively interest in the lively goings on.

"Eeny-meeny-miney-miaow..."

And perhaps we all might decide that a little showertime privacy would be nice.

"No peeking, cheeky!"

And perhaps the avalanche of Easter guests about to dump itself on us starting tomorrow might mind the slime, the smell and the uncertainty of stepping into a seething mass of yellow fluff.

So today was the day for the class of 2011 to fly the nest.

On arrival at Palazzo Pollo, their new quarters, the little ones were immediately sized up by the cockerel. I should explain that when this brood was conceived there were two other cockerels besides this one. Our grand 4-year-old cock died, perhaps trying to keep up with the youngsters in the procreation stakes, and one of the two yearlings went in the freezer, leaving this fella uncertain of his paternal position...

"I want DNA tests on the whole lot of 'em before I show them where the worms are..."

And arriving in situ, they formally met some hens that may or may not be their mothers.

"Are you my Mommee?"

And now Mama is an empty-nester, and is so sad that she has started wondering if anyone would notice if she half-inched a few eggs every day and quietly warmed up the incubator again...

Broody

Weather continuing dry and glorious with highs around the mid- to upper twenties. Could do with some rain, but I'm not complaining...

This week there has been a broody hen in Carmine. For days, Mama has been fretting and fiddling and watching and waiting. Adjusting the temperature a fraction of a degree here, scattering a few droplets of room-temperature water there. Making embarrassing chirping noises that closely resemble the noises she makes when feeding the dog and the cats, and thus sending the poor creatures nuts.

The pasta is boiling dry! Where's Mama? Upstairs. The kids are trying to kill one another! Where's Mama? Upstairs. The phone is ringing off the hook! Where's Mama? Upstairs. Time to go to school! Where's Mama? Upstairs...

Finally, Mama went into labour, and after 24 hours of expectant panting up and down the stairs, checking on the very slow progress, she gave up and went to bed.

That's when it all happened. Sixteen little beaks tapping on shells. Sixteen sets of tiny shoulder muscles bracing and shuddering and making appear tiny spider cracks. Sixteen bedraggled and ugly-as-sin chicks safely hatched and either drying in the incubator or already snoozing safely together in a heap of Easter-yellow fluff.

Bionda Piemontese chicks, less than a day old.

And now Mama is high as a kite on the miracle of new life, and insists on running around town spreading the good news, and will soon, surely, be approached by chaps with gentle voices bearing with them a strange white jacket...

This year's clutch, in the bag

We're getting towards the end of a long wet week, and it's hard for everyone to stop their face looking like one.

To cheer myself up and take my mind off the multitude of wet underthings, overthings, footthings and headthings that are hanging, steaming from every hook, ledge and chairback, I decided to unilaterally declare spring by putting the eggs into the incubator. As if in clucking agreement the girls in the muddy coop produced no less than five eggs to round the clutch up to 30. 

The fingers, toes and claws of two grownups, two dotties, one gun dog, seven cats, three cockerels, nine hens and the resident badger are all firmly crossed in an egg-stasy of hope...

We begin again

Another brilliantly sunny day, and with less wind than yesterday. We hope for warmed bones.

Today begins our fourth season as proud breeders of the lovely Bionda Piemontese (and our seventh keeping chickens). In the next few days I'll be depriving everyone of their breakfast eggs, their lunchtime omelettes and their suddenly-starving-snacks. Instead, the eggs will be set aside in a cat-free, dog-free, kid-free spot and I hope in ten days or less (the shelf-life of a fertilised egg) I'll have enough to make plugging in the incubator worthwhile. 

And maybe, just maybe, 21 days, two candling sessions, 63 rotations and hundreds of checks of thermometer and hygrometer later, we might hear the ghostly chirping of chicks inside their eggs and the tiny tapping of beaks on shells.