Coop_ A Year Of Poultry, Pigs, And Parenting Part 7

I call Anneliese from the kitchen. She is used to indulging my fascinations-that is to say, the woman can stifle a yawn-but it cheers me to report that when she sees the bruise, her eyebrows shoot right up. I have her bring me the digital camera so I can get pictures. This I accomplish by twisting around and shooting at the moon in the mirror. You festoon up a blemish of this caliber, you want some doc.u.mentation for the possible grandkids.

I dither over whether to call the farmer back to see if the dog's shots are up-to-date. I don't want to bother him or get him worked up. It seemed pretty clear to me that the dog had been whipped up by all the excitement. People who excuse biting dogs rank high in my pet peeve list, but I truly believe this incident was an aberration. Then again, there are specific drawbacks to rabies-or hydrophoby hydrophoby, as the cowboys in Louis L'Amour books called it. On the other hand, my puncture wounds are relatively superficial. In the end, I just tell Anneliese to pack me off to Urgent Care if I start walking into walls or s...o...b..ring. For legal purposes I should say that if you find yourself in similar circ.u.mstance, I cannot recommend that you follow my health-care decision-making tree. At dusk I check the pigs one last time. They are lying tight against each other, settled in for the night. I go back in the house and climb the stairs, kiss Amy good night, pause at the crib and listen to Jane breathe, and then crawl in beside my beloved Anneliese. As I pull the covers up and roll gingerly over to sleep on my unbitten side, I think, Yessir-we're in the pig business.

Jane has enough muscle tone now that I can prop her up in the old green chair across from my desk and write while she grins at me. It's pretty handy really-she can't crawl, so she's pretty much stuck wherever I stick her. She grins and slumps, and every now and then I give her a boost. I can usually get ten or twenty minutes in before her face clouds. Then I have a series of stair-stepped actions I implement to postpone the ultimate inevitable monsoon. First I turn the stereo on, normal volume. This captivates her for another five to ten minutes. Then when her brow begins to furrow, I crank the volume. She seems particularly soothed by Steve Earle's thumping version of "Six Days on the Road," which buys me three minutes and eight seconds of additional productivity. Finally, as a last resort, I pull out the guitar and sing some of my own stuff. I sit on the footstool so we are face-to-face. Jane grins and coos for about two minutes, at which point she finds my oeuvre derivative, and her lip begins to square off.

There is this stage-right when she is transitioning from verklempt verklempt to full-out bawling-when her lower lip widens and rolls out, but instead of a rosy little pout, it locks into a position so straight-edged you could grab the kid by the feet and use the lip to strike off wet concrete. One day when she was going from happy to sad I shot the entire transition on a digital camera just so I could doc.u.ment the geometric rigidity of it. I realized halfway through that I was behaving on a par with the heartless producer who films the crying kid cast to demonstrate inferior products in a diaper commercial, but I kept snapping anyway. to full-out bawling-when her lower lip widens and rolls out, but instead of a rosy little pout, it locks into a position so straight-edged you could grab the kid by the feet and use the lip to strike off wet concrete. One day when she was going from happy to sad I shot the entire transition on a digital camera just so I could doc.u.ment the geometric rigidity of it. I realized halfway through that I was behaving on a par with the heartless producer who films the crying kid cast to demonstrate inferior products in a diaper commercial, but I kept snapping anyway.

The day after the pigs arrive, Amy harvests two of the radishes that survived the excavations of Fritz the Dog. She holds them up to either side of her ears, and I take a picture. She is beaming, her front teeth still missing. Then she runs off to rinse and eat them. I remember doing the same thing at her age, rinsing a spring radish under the bra.s.s standpipe beside the garden. I remember the cold water made my knuckles ache, I remember watching the dirt dissolve and flush from the root hairs to leave them feathery and white; I remember the red skin shining beneath the film of water. I always nibbled the bland taproot first. And then that first full bite through the scarlet skin, the crisp crunch, the excitement of springtime snack food fresh from the ground. Over by our standpipe, Amy's lack of front teeth put her at a disadvantage, but she's gnawing a.s.siduously, the radish jammed way back in a corner of her mouth so she can get at it with her molars. Her lips are pulled off-center, but I'd say the crinkle in her nose subst.i.tutes for a smile.

Now that the pigs are in place, I am going to get serious about building that chicken coop. As is standard procedure when I say "I" am going to build or fix something of any size or substance, there is a technical adviser/handholder involved-in this case, my pal Mills. Mills is a good man, but he has regularly led me down the path to iniquity-it was he who got me started on carp shooting, and I have lost a ton of man-hours in the endeavor. He also got me hooked on auctions, and we do spend a little too much time on a certain popular online auction site. My weakness is anything to do with my hometown of New Auburn, Wisconsin, or pretty much anything sporting a vintage International Harvester logo. As for Mills, he is constantly on the prowl for anything to do with firefighting. He has an astounding collection of antique fire extinguishers, and his driveway is lined with discarded hydrants.

Mills is especially valuable in an endeavor like building the chicken coop, because he has a lot of very cool tools-chop saws, nail guns, and so on-and he is quite handy. Even more important, he is a professional-cla.s.s scavenger. I don't mean a guy who picks something up at a thrift sale now and then (he does), I'm talking about a guy who goes to nearly every auction within a forty-mile radius; is an eBay power seller; knows the guy in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the local grocery store who has all the free five-gallon buckets; can put a word in for you with the guy who handles all the sc.r.a.p wood from the furniture factory; and-this is huge-is on a first-name basis with the dump guy dump guy! Mills owns a farmstead. His red barn is jammed with every conceivable form of potentially useful sc.r.a.p and geegaw-steel barrels, discarded RV RV siding, plumbing supplies, secondhand plywood and discontinued signage, doork.n.o.bs, hinges, and used Styrofoam sheeting. Some of the best stuff is outside, hidden from sight behind the pine trees that ring the property. Mills calls these stashes his "Sanford and Son piles." Treated posts, barrels, trailer frames, angle iron-you name it, somewhere out there in the brambles beneath a tarp, he's got it. siding, plumbing supplies, secondhand plywood and discontinued signage, doork.n.o.bs, hinges, and used Styrofoam sheeting. Some of the best stuff is outside, hidden from sight behind the pine trees that ring the property. Mills calls these stashes his "Sanford and Son piles." Treated posts, barrels, trailer frames, angle iron-you name it, somewhere out there in the brambles beneath a tarp, he's got it.

The other day I introduced Mills to Craigslist, and our relationship may not survive. Problem is, our geographic search parameters overlap, plus we regularly covet the same items. Having been on the lookout for a radial arm saw, I was excited when I spotted one on Craigslist for a most reasonable price. It was located south of me in the tiny town of Humbird. In the photo the saw was posed in front of a red garage and looked promising. I contacted the seller immediately. Too late, he said. Someone had already claimed it. Two days later, I ran into Mills. "This Craigslist thing-woo-HOO!" he said. (In conversation, Mills runs heavy to italics.) "I got an amazing amazing deal on a deal on a gorgeous gorgeous saw!" "Poacher!" I said. saw!" "Poacher!" I said.

Lately I have been scoring stuff from Craigslist nearly every week. Rain barrels, fence posts, lumber. I even managed to find another radial arm saw. It was a newer model than the one Mills stole, and I paid less. "JINKIES!" he said when I told him. Nowadays we regularly consult with each other before making contact on Craigslist items. It is my understanding that the original purpose of Craigslist was to help people in San Francisco locate apartments. I am tickled to think it wound up causing two knuckleheads in Wisconsin to fight over used barbed wire and secondhand pickle buckets.

Since Mills has all the equipment and most of the supplies, we decide it will be easier to build the coop at his place, prefab style, then haul it over to our place in pieces. So I am on my way to his house now, with Amy in her booster seat behind me. With my schedule over the past year, "our" efforts to homeschool Amy have quickly devolved into Anneliese doing all the day-to-day hard work while I provide the occasional off-kilter field trip-in this case a morning spent constructing a chicken coop in the company of two grown men whose greatest aspirations tend to center around finding any excuse to shoot arrows at overgrown goldfish.

"Where does Mr. Miller live?" asks Amy as we drive. "Mondovi," I say. "Is that a city or a state?" asks Amy. This is a recurring lesson. We keep two large maps on the wall of Amy's bedroom so she can track me when I call in from the road. Despite our efforts, Amy struggles with the difference between city, state, and country.

"Mondovi is a city," I say. "It's in the state of..."

"Wisconsin?" says Amy. Tentative, but correct.

"Yes. And Wisconsin is in what country?"

Silence.

"The United..."

"...States of America!"

"Where does your daddy work?"

"Denver."

"Is Denver a country or a state?"

"A state?"

"No..."

"A country!"

The exasperation hits me immediately. I am ashamed at how hard it is for me to maintain my patience.

"No! Denver is a city city. And Denver is in Colorado Colorado. That means Colorado is a..."

Silence. Then, quietly, "...a country?"

Tasting the dust of my molars, I make a mental note to shake Anneliese's hand when we return and perhaps print her up some sort of framable certificate honoring her persistence. She would actually prefer that I handle the spelling lessons for a day. The thing is, fifteen minutes later we meet Mills for breakfast, and as Amy jaws with him on a wide range of topics (central theme: horses), I feel the exasperation dissipate in the face of pride in how she comports herself-politely, and with poise beyond her years. It is good for me as a parent to see her with a little rope to run, a chance to operate in the big world with the skills she has. Cities and states can wait. Worse comes to worst, she can carry an index card for the rest of her life.

Amy calls Mills "Mr. Miller" because that is what I call him in her presence. I am old-school in this regard. I believe it benefits the child to know who the grown-ups are. "Heavy on the 'Mister,'" my dad used to say.

When we arrive at Mr. Miller's house, it looks like the place has been preset for a shoot with This Old House This Old House. Several work-tables are arranged on the blacktop drive in front of the red barn, and each is stocked with a wide range of saws, hammers, screwdrivers, drills, nails, screws, earm.u.f.f hearing protectors, safety gla.s.ses, and a generous selection of fitted work gloves. The chop saw is on its stand and plugged in, the air compressor that powers the nail gun is all set with hose neatly coiled, and in a truly elegant touch, bottled water is chilling in a cooler.

First thing I do is strap on my tool belt. Gosh, I like tool belts. Just the very look of them confers competence. I like the way the belt hangs gunslinger low and loose, the hammer dangling in its loop, the handle gently tapping at my thigh as I walk. I like the heft of the nail pouch at my hip, and the way the big fat tape measure slips neatly into its special pocket. I tend to overdo it on tape measures. At last count, I owned seven of them. But the thing is, you're forever needing a tape measure for this little project or that, and my level of disorganization is such that the only useful countermeasure is to throw one in the cart on every other trip to the hardware store and just sow them w.i.l.l.y-nilly all over the place. At this very moment I have two in my office, one in my car, a pair in the house, and at least three in the shop.

I fit Amy with padded kneelers, safety goggles, and work gloves, and then hand her a hammer. She grins when she hefts it and looks around for something to hit-evidence that while variations persist, the love of gear crosses genders. In truth, part of the lesson we hope to convey today is that girls can build chicken coops, too. In Amy's case, the lesson will be redundant: when the light fixture in my bathroom needed replacing, my mother-in-law-she who supported her children by climbing telephone poles for twenty years-did the job because bare wires leave me frightened and confused. She also put the phone line into my office. Amy's grandmother in Colorado raised five kids and ramrodded the farm for twenty-seven years after her husband was killed in an accident. By way of contrast Amy has watched me struggle for twenty minutes to get two corners of a four-sided cold frame to match up. The explication of gender roles is all well and good, but it is likely my hand in this will be light. (Although as a fellow who put himself through nursing school by working as a cowboy in Wyoming, I have addressed the subject previously.) I do antic.i.p.ate a time when I will have to explain to Amy that while most men are happy to see a woman in a tool belt, it is sadly for all the wrong reasons.

If the coop project is to go well, it will all come down to Mills. I am a loyal laborer, and will pitch in full bore, but even with proper guidance I tend to run off the rails. Part of it is a patience issue. Once I get started, I want to finish. This leads to rushing and improper material usage, to say nothing of improper application of hardware-say, trying to drive finish nails with a plumb bob. And even when I do slow down and read the directions, things have a way of going wrong. Remember that electric fence I hooked up for the pigpen? I did the whole thing exactly right-s.p.a.ced and sank three grounding rods instead of settling for just one, linked them together, and clamped (rather than just wrapping) the wire as indicated...a month pa.s.sed before I went to open the shed door and discovered that I had run the ground wire in such a way that the door couldn't slide on its rails without cutting the wire in two. If life was a state fair, I'd have a giant shoe box full of green ribbons embossed with the word PARTIc.i.p.aNT PARTIc.i.p.aNT.

I want the chicken coop mounted on skids, as we intend to move our chickens around. Also, because it does not sit on a foundation, it is not viewed as a permanent structure and will therefore not be taxed as such, or so I believe until the a.s.sessor tells me otherwise and I pony up. Since the skids will be in direct contact with the ground, I tell Mills they need to be made of treated lumber. He grins. "Come with me!" Dressed in his sleeveless T-shirt, ball cap, white athletic socks, and Crocs, he leads us up a trail into the pine trees off the side of the yard, past several Sanford and Son piles, and then, with the civilized flourish of a sommelier pulling back the velvet curtain shrouding a particularly pricey corner of the wine cellar, he strips back a tarp to reveal a stack of beautiful green-treated six-by-six timbers that will be perfect for the job. We lug them back to the yard, saw the ends off at an angle, and begin framing up the floor.

I try to involve Amy wherever I can-when we trim the ends of the skids, I show her how to use a carpenter square to draw a pencil line at the proper angle, and in between, how to stow the pencil behind her ear. Because the skids have to be the same length and we have four six-by-sixes to choose from, I give her the tape measure and let her find the two longest, then determine how much we have to cut from the longer of those two to make them the same length. This leads to a discussion of inches and feet and how when you write measurements on a sc.r.a.p of board, inches are denoted with a double hatch and feet with a single. When Mr. Miller fires up the saw, we put on our earm.u.f.fs and afterward discuss the importance of hearing protection. When we make a mistake, I show her how to pull a nail, and I show her how to extend the reach of the hammer claw by putting a shim beneath the head. Once we get going on the deck, it is mostly a matter of driving straight nails into flat boards, so she can really go to town. She whales away at a steady pace, bending a nail now and then but just as quickly pulling it and grabbing another from the plastic Folger's can. To make it easier to hit the underlying frame I show her how to use a chalk line, and of course she loves this-snapping the taut string with a cottony tw.a.n.g and watching the elongated cloud of purple chalk dust float away and dissipate on the breeze, then reeling the line in to recoat it with chalk, just like a fishing reel with no pole.

We work into the afternoon. I try to keep teaching without being overbearing. I let her measure and mark the boards to be cut. I give her little problems, like, if we need one board sixteen inches long and another board two feet long, can we cut them both from this one long board? I find myself experiencing none of the frustration I felt during the city/state/country grump-up, and Amy takes the lessons well. But mostly she holds her hammer in both hands and haves at 'er. Perhaps the finest thing I teach her all day is how to keep a couple of extra nails in easy reach by holding them in your lips. She loves this, and is currently well-suited: the nails fit nicely where her incisors should be.

At quitting time we have finished the deck. It doesn't look like much-just a wooden floor on two large skids. But it's a start. Mr. Miller took our picture just before we finished. There's me, a lumpy bald guy in cheap sungla.s.ses with sweat darkening his T-shirt collar, resting my hand on the shoulder of a gangly little gap-toothed girl in shorts and pink Crocs, her head higher against my sternum than even a month ago, squinting in the sun and quite literally standing on a good day's work, and-I hope-on a little piece of her education.

Back home, I am walking down to check the pigs when a press of cold wind rushes the yard behind me, and when I turn to look back my heart startles, because a towering billow of pollen has spun from the pine crowns and is twisting up and over the house, so thick and yellow I actually think for second that the attic is afire. Majestic and surreal, right out of the blue. And then it is gone. Down in the pen, the pigs squeal and zigzag madly, kicking up their heels as the first drops. .h.i.t. Now the wind is on a straight line, and the s.p.a.ce between the house and granary goes white as it scours a blizzard of dandelion fluff from our overgrown yard. Then the real rain hits with its hiss and splatter, driving the pigs to their shelter and the dandelion fluff to ground. The land is dry, dry. Our yard is like a brick. We need this.

It rains hard, but not long. In the wake, the sun is already poking through, and steam rises from the asphalt by the garage. A rainbow forms across the ridge. Amy is spinning across the yard with an umbrella. Just like she did, she tells me, "when I was a kid, and I was three."

You can really go off the rails with this scavenging business. While working on the pigpen as the earth has warmed, I noticed a number of seedlings cracking the dirt. Their cotyledons were fat and spoon-shaped on the order of a squash or melon. I a.s.sumed the previous owner must have tossed some garbage down here and figured what the heck, they're off to an early start, I'll transplant them. Take them as a gift of the good earth. So over a period of a week I spoon out the sprouts as I find them and place them in a careful row along the far side of the garden. Soon the first real leaves emerge. They are pointy, kinda like you might see on zucchini. I begin to get a little nervous, however, when I start seeing the things popping up all over the barnyard and around the outbuildings. Then while clearing out the pigpen tangle, I notice a pattern in the distribution of the sprouts and put two and two together: I have been transplanting wild cuc.u.mber. This is the equivalent of transplanting thistles. Honestly, I should get a plant book or something.

Anneliese is taking the lead on the garden. I helped plant onion sets and some kale, but she is doing most of the rest of it. So far she has put in turnips, chard, more radishes, two rows of tomatoes, and several hills of potatoes. And in a touch missing from my bachelor gardening days, she plants marigolds at the end of each row.

Lately Jane fights her bedtime with a ferocity that easily out-sizes her frame, and we have fallen into a pattern after supper in which Anneliese gardens in the remaining light while I try to settle the baby. I am often surprised to find myself here, holding this teensy howling beast to my chest, catching the scent of baby powder, and contemplating how I have come to understand what a "onesie" is at this late stage in my life. Here I am buying diapers when most of my contemporaries are buying graduation cakes.

The kid can really holler. People say that, but seriously: when I cradle her to my chest, invariably she'll hit a note so pure it triggers my tinnitus-the ear nearest her mouth damps down and rings long after she is snoozing. For a while I did my best to ease her gently to sleep in a rocking chair just the way they do it in fabric softener ads, but the screeching went unabated. Then one desperate evening I sat on a giant rubber yoga ball Anneliese keeps in the bedroom and started bouncing. The baby's cries softened. I bounced higher. The cries got softer. One does not wish to do harm, so I held her tight and close, steadying her neck and head in my palm, and went full-bore pogo-b.u.t.t. I'm talking lift and clearance. Nothing gentle about it. And in five minutes, she was asleep. Now we bounce every night. Our bedroom window overlooks the garden, and for the rest of my life when I think of our first year on the farm I will remember my baby clamped to my chest and my beautiful beloved wife grubbing in the garden at twilight, working diligently to feed us over the seasons to come, my vision of her springing in and out of frame with every bounce.

Soporific bouncing is not just for babies. I am looking at a photograph Anneliese took three nights ago. My feet are on the floor and my b.u.t.t is still on the ball, but I have tipped over backwards on the bed. I am sound asleep and so is Jane, curled like a little possum on my chest, my hand still across her back as it was when I drifted off feeling her breath rise and fall.

The pigs have eaten the bag of feed I got from the farmer, so today Amy and I make a run to the feed mill in Fall Creek. There is much that is similar to the New Auburn feed mill Dad patronized when I was a kid-the loading dock, the attached office, the dusty hand truck, and feed pallets all about-but the operation is much bigger than the one of my childhood, with towering bins and a radiating tangle of augers. Dad used to shovel our corn and oats into a howling subterranean grinder at the front of the mill, and then a few minutes later a man named Big Ed brought it back out the door in heavy bags that we wra.s.sled into the truck bed. Today when the man wheels out our pig feed it is pre-bagged in paper sacks laced shut with pull strips, but when I stand at the edge of the dock and sling them in the truck bed, the soft heavy shape of the feed in my arms triggers a comfortable muscle memory. Inside the office the man rings us up on a computer rather than a notepad, but I am pleased to see a pair of farmers lingering and telling lies, just like in the mill of my childhood.

The New Auburn feed mill is long gone. It changed hands several times, the farmers disappeared, and I was a member of the fire department when we burned it to the ground for practice. As we pull away from the Fall Creek mill, I tell Amy how after the New Auburn mill closed Dad used to go to the Chetek mill, where instead of shoveling the feed from the pickup he backed up until his front tires clunked into a bracket and then the man inside hit a switch and a winch lifted the whole front of the pickup into the air, tipping it higher and higher until all the corn and oats just slid right out. I can't imagine such a thing is allowed now, but back then we kids were allowed to ride in the cab as it rose in the air. Amy's eyes are wide. "Oh! Can we go to that that feed mill?" feed mill?"

On the way home we stop at the post office to mail a package to a friend serving a tour in Iraq. Amy drew him a picture and a note about the pigs. She asks, and so I try to explain war. As we drive through the tunnel of trees shrouding the last hill before our house she says we sure are lucky to live here. She doesn't know it, but that boy in Iraq just lost some friends one Humvee ahead of him. I say, Yes, baby, we sure are.

A week now with the pigs, and so far so good. I'm still eager to get the chickens, but for now the pigs are a terrific diversion. It's fun to take the slop buckets down and watch as they devour every single table sc.r.a.p and leftover and rind and tr.i.m.m.i.n.g and old potato we cannot use. The rubber pan I bought is proving to be pretty much useless, as they wade right into their food and upend it in short order. At least it's durable. They root and worry everything in sight. It took them just two days to work loose the legs supporting the water barrel to the point where it was teetering. I had to string electric wire around it to create a boundary and keep them from knocking the whole works flat.

I'm in over my head, but if I pay attention, they give me hints. On one particularly hot day I eased down to watch them and found both pigs at the spigot. They were lain draped across the ground, raising their snoots just far enough to nudge the steel nipple and release the water. Each in turn would take a mouthful, then let it dribble slowly to the ground. Pretty soon they had moistened a good patch of dirt. They rooted around at it, stirring it with their noses. Then they dribbled more water and stirred it again. The cycle continued for quite a while until they had dug a muddy bowl-shaped hole. Soon the hole was so deep they were able to get beneath the new electric strand and were again threatening to undermine the posts supporting the barrel. I made a note to reposition the spigot over the concrete bunk next year so they can't excavate.

Not a bad idea, but not the main point. When I told Anneliese what they were doing, she clarified the obvious. "They need a wallow," she said. Of course. Pigs can't perspire and they need a wading pool to keep cool. I went back and hosed down one corner of the pen. I am careful not to spray the pigs themselves. I have read that the shock of cold water can give them a heart attack. Soon, however, they are scampering in and out of the hose stream, reveling in the cool and snouting around in the drenched dirt. They show no ill effects, and before long I throw caution to the wind and train the water directly on the pigs. Wilbur grunts and just stands there, but c.o.c.klebur actively seeks the stream and often blocks it from Wilbur as she lets it play over her nose and into her mouth. When I finally close the hose their undocked tails spin a happy whirligig as they nuzzle and roll in the fresh mud.

During one of my fits of activity, I built a shelter to provide them protection from the sun and rain. I began with a fine vision of what the shelter would look like. I even planned to roof it with some used shingles I found down in the shed. Nothing says redneck like a blue tarp roof, and I swore I wouldn't go that way. As usual, I overdreamed and underbudgeted, and wound up banging together a bunch of castoff two-by-fours, several chunks of warped particleboard, and-due to hit the road for a stretch with no time for shingling-finished it off with a nice blue tarp. Sigh. On the bright side, it will be easily spotted by the a.s.sessor and should depress our property values accordingly.

The pigs have so far disdained the shelter, and as a result their ears are badly sunburned. Not my fault, I think, but perhaps a better farmer would slather them in SPF 40.

A while back our neighbor Ed drove up the hill with his tractor and rear-mount tiller and churned up a patch beside the pigpen. I planted several rows of sweet corn, some zucchini, and broadcast a pailful of soybeans Amy and I shucked on the porch steps. The plan is to feed the pigs zucchini and sweet corn and then eventually turn them loose on the soybeans and everything remaining. In the process we're hoping they'll chew up the ground and give us a nice garden plot for next year. Piggy as rototiller.

Ed came up because when I tried to till the sod our little tiller hopped and bounced and barely scuffed the dirt. Ed's machine did the job in a trice, and he wouldn't take a thing in payment. I am grateful for the help, but even more grateful for the spirit in which it was offered. It sounded like he was. .h.i.tting some rocks down there and I cringed to think what he might be doing to his equipment.

Taking a break from the desk one afternoon, I put Jane in the backpack and take Amy down to check the pig patch. Everything has come on nicely, but because I scatter-sowed the soybeans, I can't weed them properly, and they are succ.u.mbing to quack. We are wading through the mess when five feet ahead of me I spy a female pheasant and a scattering of pheasant chicks. They are huddled at the edge of an open spot where the previous owner of the farm had a burn pile. The entire family is utterly frozen and pressed flat into the sand and ash. Perhaps the black ash is warm in the sun. What caught my eye was the mother's own eye blinking. When I lean in just the slightest bit for a closer look, the mother flinches, ducks her head, and nearly bolts, but in the end she holds. "Look!" I stage-whisper at Amy, then, "Don't move, don't move!" A look of alarm crosses Amy's face immediately, and I whisper, "It's OK, it's not a skunk or a bear, look, baby pheasants!" Even from five feet it takes Amy several hard looks to spot them, but when she does, her face lights up. We study them silently. How fragile this all is, the mother with her fuzzb.a.l.l.s and coyotes, fox, mink, and fishers all about. "I want to hold one," Amy whispers. I explain why we must leave the birds be, and she is satisfied to leave.

We are still mincing softly away when the pigs break into a fit of oinking and goofball galumphing. I recall how Mister Big Shot was haranguing us the day we worked on the pen, and I wonder if perhaps he was being territorial because this brood was about. Perhaps the old boy was more than strut and cackle...

I get back over to help Mills work on the coop again. There are the usual mishaps. I painstakingly craft two tiny chicken doors. They are hinged on the bottom and designed to drop open, forming miniature ramps. I even cut and nail a series of little cleats the full length of each ramp so the chickens won't slip and fall. Problem is, I get things backward in my head and build them too wide. An oxymoronic bout of fine-tuning ensues. Mills giggles, which helps take the pressure off, and I don't throw a single tool. In the meantime, Mills is constructing walls. He's working steady, the automatic nailer firing with a hiss and thwack as the nails are driven home. I am due for another long stretch of road time and won't be back for a while. I know Mills enjoys projects like this and will probably continue in my absence. Somewhere in my subconscious or shallower, I'm banking on it, in fact. I should be a better person.

The baby continues her bedtime protestations and has been right up to the edge of colicky. One night when Anneliese is in the garden and I am bouncing on the ball and nothing is working, I try humming the standard Brahms lullaby. The kid rages on unabated. Drowns me out. So on a whim, I begin singing the lullaby really, really loud. "LA-LA-LAAAAAH, LA-LA-LAAAAH, go to SLEEEEEEEP NOW MY BABY! "LA-LA-LAAAAAH, LA-LA-LAAAAH, go to SLEEEEEEEP NOW MY BABY!" and by jiminy it works. Shocked her into stopping, I suppose. I feel like Papa Axl Rose.

You can't holler lullabies in the deep of night, however. When she wakes crying I bounce her on the ball in the dark, or walk the floor, but mostly it comes down to Anneliese nursing and rocking her. Lately when I sense that some well-meaning mother is about to give Anneliese advice on how to get the baby to sleep, I jump on the conversation like I'm smothering a grenade. Whatever it is, we've tried it, and it hasn't worked. And the teething hasn't even begun.

Here I am set to leave again, my wife so tired, and so much undone. Again I look at the unmown lawn, and for the thirty-seventh time I tell Anneliese I plan to fence the yard and get some sheep. Let them eat the lawn and sell them in the fall. Save on gas and mowing time. Anneliese has not uttered a word of complaint about my absences, but now she looks at me.

"About the sheep," she says.

"Yes?"

"No sheep."

Later that evening she shares her line of thinking. "I have this vision of you in Des Moines, talking about writing and raising sheep-meanwhile, I'm running through the brush with a howling six-month-old under one arm and dragging a bawling seven-year-old behind me with the other arm while we try to get the sheep back inside a hole in the cobbled-up fence."

This is very hard on my pride, and pretty much on the money.

Sheep. Maybe next year.

And yet there are beautiful days. On a lovely Sat.u.r.day morning when my mother-in-law and all three sisters-in-law are visiting and request some grown-up girl time, I put our two rec.u.mbent tricycles in the back of the pickup truck and drive to a local bike trail (if you question the environmental propriety of trucking one's bicycles around, I encourage you to attempt a series of 10 percent grade hills on a tandem rec.u.mbent with a weeping seven-yearold as stoker and get back to me). Amy is pouty upon departure, wishing as any little girl does to be one of the big girls, but by the time we hit the bottom of the first hill she is happily shooting the breeze. This is becoming an established pattern. After a short drive to the trailhead, we unload the trikes, hook them in tandem, and set out. Behind me she narrates nonstop. "Can you tell I'm helping?" she sings out when we hit a slight grade, and indeed I can. The poor kid, as tall as she is, is nowhere near sized for this bike and is basically lying flat so she can reach the pedals. We roll along the river into downtown Eau Claire, then cut across the old railroad bridge and down to Phoenix Park, where today a local arts festival is in full swing. As we draw near we can hear live music. Amy stops pedaling and sits up in her seat. "It's the Cheese Puff Song Cheese Puff Song!"

The "Cheese Puff Song" has been in heavy rotation around our house for some time now. The artist, Magic Mama, is a local resident. I hustle to get the bike parked, and Amy makes it to the music tent in time for a chorus. For the rest of the show she sits glowing in the front row, singing along to the songs she knows-including "Go Barefoot" and "Take It Outside"-and happily partic.i.p.ating when Magic Mama hands out used potato chip bags and encourages the children to crackle the bags in time.

Next we go to the craft tent and make a puppet. While Amy swabs glue and cuts out eyeb.a.l.l.s, I take two thin strips of construction paper and show her how to make dangly accordion arms like I learned back when I was eating paste. When the puppet is finished, we wander through the farmer's market and stop at the local foods booth, where our friend Aaron lets us sample farm-direct apriums. Amy spots a bevy of belly dancers and says she wants to watch. Who am I to argue? Amy likes the belly dancers very much, and points out her favorite costumes. In order to serve honesty I must skirt the edge of propriety and report the demonstration expanded my appreciation of the female form in both an artistic and a more basic sense, and it didn't hurt that the scent of patchouli was prevalent throughout. Even as a guy with pickup truck sensibilities, I have always gone a little weak in the liver for patchouli. After the belly dancing we find the body art tent. Amy gets a henna tattoo on her foot and I get a henna wedding ring. Can't lose it. Later we wander back over to the music tent, where the musician Bruce O'Brien is accompanying himself on banjo while singing another one of Amy's favorite songs, the chorus to which goes "Peace and joy and harmony, and love is in the middle." She is sitting beside me on a hay bale, and when she leans her head to my shoulder during the chorus I hope he'll reprise it again and again. After the concert Amy asks if she can talk to Mr. O'Brien, and when she looks up at him without guile and says, "I really liked your music," I get teary at her earnestness. We circulate a while longer, Amy gets a ride on a goofy bicycle that is doubling as art, she plays a while with the children of some friends, but there are clouds moving in now, so we have to go. On the ride back Amy pedals just as eagerly as she did on the way in, and when we are tooling right along she says, "I thought this day wasn't going to be fun, but it was was!"

I have been saving the best surprise for last. Anneliese and I have split an order of chicks with our friends Billy and Margie. The chicks have arrived, and I am taking Amy to meet them. (We have a week-long family trip planned soon and won't take our chicks until after we return.) When we arrive, Billy and Margie lead us into the garage, where the chicks are being kept in a wading pool lined with wood chips. They are a sprightly, multicolored bunch, warm under the heat-lamp light. Amy peers over the edge at them, and immediately her eyebrows knit, not in a frown but in that universal feminine look of care. "Oohhh," she says. "Can I hold one?" There was a time Billy doubled as a bartender and bouncer in the type of taverns you enter through a small dark door. He rode a thunderous motorcycle and had the size to back down any man. Today he remains an imposing figure, but his spirit is gentle and he engraves tombstones for a living. A man who has gone from bare-knuckle to Bash, he seems the perfect fellow to carve the dates of your birth and death, so wide is the breadth of his understanding. Now he reaches into the blue swimming pool, carefully closing a chick within the cavern of his roughened hands, and pa.s.ses it gently to Amy, his blackened nails and shredded calluses (he is recovering from the peak of the carving season, when he catches up with a winter's worth of graves in time for Memorial Day) of another creature in contrast to Amy's soft white palms and slender fingers open wide to receive the bird. Carefully she closes her hands until the chick is cupped within, then draws it to her face and inclines her cheek to its fuzzy head.