This was going to be an update about my chickens.
I was going to tell you all about the Chicken Palace.
I was going to tell you about all of these things, but then we found these paw prints in the Forest.
So BH baited a Havaheart trap. Lo and behold…
We found a critter, a young raccoon who had hoped to put chicken on the menu.
Want to see what happens next? Let’s go to the video….
That’s a key question in The Forest. When my husband or I start out a conversation with "You know what would be cool?" it generally means that something fairly cool is about to happen.
Like…. a writing cottage will be built.
Or we take up chicken farming. You get the picture.
So when we were planning for our son’s graduation celebration and my husband said "You know what would be cool?" I knew the fun was about to begin.
He took a deep breath.
"It would be cool to have a real pig roast," he said. "In the backyard."
"With a pig," I said.
"That’s sort of the point," he said.
"How do we do that?" I asked.
"I have no idea," he said, "but we’ll figure it out."
("We’ll figure it out" is our family motto.)
***NOTE – Vegetarians and vegans probably want to stop reading now. ***
**** Vegetarians – I TOLD you to stop reading!!***
(I TOLD you!!)
And then, of course, came the moment that, with hindsight, might have been the reason BH cooked up this scheme in the first place.
Sorry to have been to absent from blogging, my friends. We’ve been taking advantage of the long days in the garden. A very generous friend showed up with a pick-up truck filled with herbs. The herb garden by the cottage that I was going to work on this fall is now on an accelerated schedule! We’ve been eating peas and watching the tomato plants. The basil is ready, too.
(Have you ever made mozzarella cheese? I think I need to try that.)
(Second random comment – my experiment with clover and buckwheat as a cover crop is still very experimental. Have any of you used it in between rows of veggies to crowd out weeds?)
I’ll post my ALA schedule later today. I’m really looking forward to the conference – both to see old friends and to start talking up FORGE, which comes out it 118 days. (Gulp.) Have I shown you the cover yet?
What do you think?
In other book news, WINTERGIRLS has been translated in Spanish and published in Spain.
Any thoughts on this cover? I’m told it should be available soon in Mexico. Here’s an early synopsis en español.
::shifts gears::
For as much fun as I know ALA is going to be, I must admit I am very impatient to get home and get back to writing. I hope to fill a lot of pages between now and mid-October, when the FORGE booktour gets underway. And since I’ll have the writing process on my mind, are there any of you who want me to the Write for Fifteen Minutes A Day Challenge? (Link takes you to the first day of last year’s challenge.)
The rules are simple. In fact, they aren’t even rules. They’re more like guidelines, the Pirate Code of Writing.
1. Commit to write for 15 minutes a day for the entire month of August.
2. Just do it.
Seriously. That’s all there is to it. You don’t have to sign up anywhere, or meet minimum word count goals or complete a whole freaking novel in 30 days.
Anyone up for it? Leave me a message in comments or on my Facebook page or on Twitter, please.
My to-do list for the next 12 hours has now exceeded two pages, so I must either start crossing things off or set fire to it. Or maybe shred for use in the chicken coop.
A bunch of you have written asking for chicken update pictures. Earlier this week, BH and I took a couple of the girls out to help us weed the flower beds.
Along with the garden (we’ve been eating the first peas this week) and the chickens, we’ve been busy in the Forest preparing for ALA and this fall’s book tour. I’ll post my ALA schedule early next week. I’m not sure when I’ll have the tour details… certainly by August. I’ll be on the road a LOT, so I will probably be showing up wherever you live. If you bring your chickens to my booksigning, I will pet them.
On Monday night, we enjoyed a special book event, courtesy of the river’s end bookstore. Author Michael Perry is on tour promoting his new book, COOP, as well as his other titles.
Michael is posting on Shelf Awareness every day on his tour. His blog entry about Oswego gives his take on the evening.
See you on Monday!
Our chickens are two weeks old and all seem very healthy. Incredibly healthy. In fact, I am wondering if our proximity to the nuclear power plant is influencing their stupendous growth rate.
BH has been slowly turning a pile of scrap lumber into the coop, but some recent chicken test flightsaccelerated the schedule. Below you’ll see a video of random clips filmed when we moved the chickens. The dog was very interested in the entire process.
(Note to chicken experts: this is only one part of the cop. Right now it is in our garage. When we move it outside, it will have roosts and a roof and a fenced-in yard that will be electrified (solar-powered!) to keep out hungry predators.)
If you are in the mood for a fix of fluff and feathers, enjoy.
