Progress on Several Fronts: Putting Up and Putting By

We've been doing a lot of "putting up" around the farm lately. One of the most exciting things we've put up was actually invented by our neighbor up the road, Frank Cardopoli. Frank, who has a great deal of experience in both farming and business, has designed a device that makes the lives of chickens and their owners much more pleasant, particularly during the hot, dry days of summer. Called "The Chicken Fountain," it provides fresh, clean water to a flock 24/7--no more daily emptying, filling, or cleaning out that icky, slimy stuff that seems to collect constantly inside conventional chicken waterers.

Frank was kind enough to donate one of his Fountains to our farm, and even came (with his daughter, two sons, and niece) to help us install it. Now that's my kind of neighbor!  Below is the story of The Chicken Fountain, as told by Frank on the product's website, www.chickenfountain.com (where you can find more detailed information about the Fountain and how to purchase one for yourself!).

I love having backyard chickens but hated the task of cleaning the water bowls and refilling them. Vacations were hard to plan because finding people that were available to keep the chickens watered was not easy. Summers were the worst because the chickens needed more water and the water in the dish would evaporated more quickly due to the heat. Not to mention how unhealthy it was for our dogs, goats and other farm animals to drink the water that was full of bird droppings! I set my mind to build a system that was easy to install, provided a constant flow of clean water, and was completely maintenance free. I spent many nights in the barn working on this concept and, quite frankly, failed a number of times. Then it hit me! Why not just make a passive flow unit that could be hooked up to the garden hose?? There wouldn't be pressure regulators to fail, no start up high pressure, no manually refilling buckets...Just cool, clean water every time the chickens went to drink. I finally perfected the unit and felt so strongly about it that I wanted to make it available to every flock owner that hates cleaning the mess of dirty, unhealthy water dishes.

Our growing flock is not only now happily hydrated, but also newly protected. For among the other things we've put up at the farm lately are a secure chicken run (off the coop) and extra electric wiring (on the barnyard fence). We weren't expecting to have to make these improvements--that is, until a fox came along a few months ago and started picking off our laying hens. If you've been reading this blog for a while, you might recall the first couple of fox attacks we endured. At that point, we suspected that a coyote might the culprit, but as our diner became more and more bold, s/he began showing up all hours of the day, standing on the other side of the barnyard fence and peering in, just waiting for our hens (who were now being locked in the coop most of the time, poor dears) to show their delectable selves. If we ever did make the mistake of leaving the hens out while we popped back into the house for lunch or a rest, we were likely to regret it. Altogether, we lost 14 hens.

As lovely as the girls and I consider foxes to be, and as happy we are that beings wild and wooly still wander the forests near our home, this was not a tolerable situation. To the rescue came another helpful neighbor, Tom Tevepaugh. He suggested that we call an acquaintance of his, J.R. Troyer, to ask if he could build a run for the hens and reinforce our fencing at a reasonable cost. J.R. came out almost immediately, talked with us about what we wanted, gave us a good price for the work we agreed upon, and returned within a few days, bringing with him his assistant, Moses. They worked hard and did a beautiful job. G-P added still more security by extending the extra wires J.R. and Moses along strung along the top of the barnyard fence to cover all of its 5 gates. And now not only are our laying hens again happily roaming freely, but we have also been able to let the young chickens (now 10 weeks old) out to free-range as well. What a relief it is to have our tranquilly lively, cluck-cluck-clucky barnyard back.

While the guys were out building and wiring, the girls and I were doing some belated "spring cleaning" in the barn. The stall where the young chickens have been for 6 weeks or so now had gotten pretty rank, and the heat of the summer had turned the place into quite an odoriferous nightmare. The same goes for the goat and donkey stalls. So out went the old, nasty wood chips and hay, and in came nice, fresh bedding. Walls, water buckets, and feeders also got scrubbed down. The blisters and sore muscles I gained from all the shoveling, hauling and scrubbing were made well worthwhile by that nothing-so-sweet (and nothing-so-short-lived!) smell of fresh barn stalls. Mmmmm.

I've also been spending quite a bit of time "putting by." So far this summer, I've made several batches of strawberry jam, a couple of batches of blackberry jam, and for the first time ever, blueberry jam.  In each case, the girls and I have been fortunate to find organically grown (or in the case of the blackberries, wild) berries to pick right here in the Davidson area. (In addition to the jam, the blueberries contributed to some wonderful muffins; you can find the recipe for them below.) We've also been blessed with LOTS of cucumbers from our garden. So I have canned three different kinds of pickles: spicy kosher dill, garlic dill, and bread and butter. The bush beans also did well this year, so several packets of those went into the freezer. Next week I hope to start canning tomatoes, marinara sauce, and maybe some homemade ketchup. These will be new adventures for me, so I'm sure there are some surprises ahead. (Hopefully none of them will be quite as trying as when I completely botched the water bath for one batch of pickles, had a jar break into a billion bits in the middle of the next run, and--during the final effort of the day--had a lid go magically floating off another jar, once again mucking up the entire water bath with its contents! I was not a happy canner.)

The herbs have also done pretty well this summer--especially the basil! It's been just lovely. In fact, I've discovered a new summer pleasure: making basil bouquets. As aromatic as they are lovely, they compliment a table set with garden-fresh food like nothing else. I have made lots of pesto, as well as some basil sauce (without the nuts and cheese). I store these sauces by dividing each freshly made batch into ice cube trays and then freezing them. I store the frozen cubes in resealable plastic bags and then can use just as many as I need (and it rarely takes very many) to finish a veggie, fish or pasta dish during the months when fresh herbs are hard (or expensive) to come by.

The oregano, thyme and dill have yielded generously, as well, and the rosemary has done fairly well. Besides using all of these now to flavor our summer dishes, I have started drying them in a storage closet upstairs, along with some sage and extra thyme from yet another kind neighbor. Drying herbs yourself is ridiculously easy to do, and the result is much tastier (and certainly cheaper!) than the stuff you'll get from the baking aisle of the grocery store. To do it, just clip your herbs with a good bit of stem (or buy them this way at your local farmers market). Gently rinse off any dirt that may be hiding in the leaves and then air dry them on a towel. Once they are no longer damp, gather the stems into several small bunches and tie them at the bottom, using a foot or so of twine or string. Take these to a dark, dry, low-traffic room in your house and hang them upside down for a week or two, until the leaves feel dry and crumbly when you touch them. (Making sure there is no moisture left in the leaves will ensure that they stay good during the coming months.) Remove the leaves from the stem and crush them as finely as you like. Store them in small plastic bags or glass spice jars. Voila!--you've got the makings of delicious dishes for months to come.

Are their some things you especially enjoy "putting up" or "putting by" during the summer? If so, feel free to share them here. In the meantime, I leave you with recipes for a couple of the items I've mentioned above. Hope you enjoy!

Fast Favorite Garlic Dill Pickles

(Adapted from www.epicurious.com. Original recipe written by Eleanor Topp and

Margaret Howard, published in The Complete Book of Year-Round Small-Batch Preserving.)

I doubled this recipe, and it worked fine. In some jars, I used small whole cucumbers, in some thick slices, and in others larger cucumbers cut lengthwise into spears. To a few of the jars, I added some crushed red pepper. You could also add a whole hot pepper to each jar, if you also like your pickles zesty. I hope to try that once the cayenne ripen! Ingredients: 8-10 small pickling cucumbers (about 3 pounds) 2 cups white vinegar 2 cups water 2 tablespoons pickling salt 4 heads fresh dill or 4 teaspoons dill seeds 4 small cloves garlic Directions: 1. Prepare a boiling water bath* and sterilize 4 pint jars in the bath. Leave them in the bath to stay warm. Immerse the the lids and bands in warm water.  2. Cut a thin slice from the ends of each cucumber 3. Meanwhile, combine vinegar, water, and salt in a saucepan and bring to a boil. 4. Remove hot jars from canner. Place 1 head fresh dill or 1 tsp dill seeds and 1 clove garlic into each jar. Pack in cucumbers. Pour boiling vinegar mixture over cucumbers to within 1/2 inch of rim (head space). Apply the lids and screw on the bands. Process 10 minutes for pint jars and 15 minutes for quart jars in the boiling water bath. Yield: 4 pints

*You can find easy instructions on how to can using a boiling water bath at the Simply Canning website.

Blueberry Buttermilk Muffins

Ingredients:

2½ cups all-purpose flour

1½ teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

¾ cup sugar

¼ teaspoon salt

2 large eggs, beaten

1 cup buttermilk

½ cup (1 stick) butter, melted and slightly browned

1½ cups blueberries (preferably fresh, but frozen are okay)

2-3 tablespoons sugar for sprinkling on top of muffins (optional)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400°. Grease (preferably with butter) 24 muffin cups. Sift the dry ingredients together in a large bowl. In another bowl, whisk the eggs, buttermilk and butter. Make a well in the dry ingredients and pour in the liquid ingredients, mixing gently and quickly. Very gently fold in the berries. (If using frozen berries, coat them in a tablespoon or two of all-purpose flour before adding them. Shake off any excess flour.) Spoon the batter into the greased muffin cups. If desired, sprinkle each muffin with a bit of sugar. Bake until golden brown, between 20 and 30 minutes.

Yield: 20-24 muffins.

(You can also bake this batter in small loaf pans. When doing so, I decrease the oven temperature to 375° and, of course, extend the baking time.)

Harvest Time

A bountiful basket

The Harvest

-Franca de la Pena

Golden sheaves stand ripening

in the setting sun

Bounty of a fruitful harvest

A year's labor well spent.

From tiniest seed to trees laden

with sweet promise

The earth gives forth her joy in abundance.

It's hot. Really hot. The mercury hit 102 in Davidson on Saturday. And today looks like it's going to be in the upper 90s. Doing the chores in the barn is now a sweaty, stinky enterprise, even in the early mornings and late evenings. Summer has descended upon us, and it looks like she's here to stay.

Inca Jewel Sunflowers line the garden fence.

But we're not complaining. Not for a second. For alongside summer's heat come the biggest, best harvests of the year. Baskets of sweet peas; bunches of deep-green broccoli; bowls of salad greens; mounds of juicy cucumbers; bouquets of cheery zinnias, sunflowers, and marigolds; bags of okra spears; aromatic bunches of basil and sprigs of oregano, dill, parsley, mint, and thyme; platters of tender bush- and pole beans; and of course, enough zucchini to feed two armies. These are some of the things we have harvested so far here at Little Bent Creek Farm. And there is still much to look forward to: the carrots, corn, onions, celery, leeks, and peppers have yet to fully mature.

Romaine and Slobolt Lettuce have fed us for weeks.

Heinz Paste Tomatoes slowly ripen on the vine.

Every trip out to the garden these days is an exciting adventure. "Look, mama, look!" the girls exclaim, "The okra is ready to pick!" "This green bean is so long!" "Mmmmm . . . these peas are sweet!" "Ouch! That cucumber is prickly!" Although I've enjoyed harvesting produce from the gardens I've had in the past, I had never had nearly as much fun at it as I have this year. For this year, I've gotten to share in my girls' elation as they see the plants they helped start from seed, transplant, water, and weed now offer them mouthfuls of pleasure and fulfillment.

Yellow Dent Corn towers over the Three Sisters plot. 

Danvers Carrots form sweet fingers underground.

And it's all just so pretty. Truly, does anything beautify a kitchen counter more dramatically than a basketful of freshly picked garden produce? Or a row of canning jars filled with the fruits of one's own labor? I don't think so.

Recently canned strawberry jam, blackberry jam, and kosher dill pickles

Zinnias and zucchini 

No matter what economic challenges or limitations she may be facing, a gardener in the midst of the harvest season is rich. To be able to nourish your family with food you've grown yourself is to know a kind of wealth that cannot come from earning a wage. It is the sort of wealth that one immediately wants to share rather than horde (especially when it comes to the zucchini!); a kind of wealth that instills humility and awe rather than pride. It is a kind of wealth that makes one want to whisper prayers of gratitude all day long, . . . and to never ever complain about the heat.

Farm Camp

 What do you get when you add together 40 chicks, 8 hens, 3 goats, 1 donkey, 20 kids, and countless bugs, dirt, and creek water? Little Bent Creek Farm Camp!

Last week was an especially exciting and eventful week here at the farm as we hosted one of Woodland Discovery's 2012 summer camps. (For information about other Woodland Discovery summer camps, click here.) Carolyn Walker, Woodland Discovery director and camp leader, had lots of fun, engaging, and educational activities planned. A central part of the Little Bent Creek Farm Camp experience was doing daily chores (grooming animals, feeding hay, cleaning stalls, weeding, and so forth). This was completely new stuff to most of the kids, but they all managed to contribute in some way (sometimes very creatively!) to nurturing the animals and/or tending the garden. They also spent time doing crafts, baking, playing games, singing, experiencing new tastes and sounds, and studying a variety of topics--including farm animals, local wildlife, organic gardening, and environmental stewardship. I think it's safe to say that we all learned a great deal from one another.

All of the photographs below were taken by Patti McKinnon, who, along with her son Niall, provided invaluable assistance to "Ms. Carolyn" and me throughout the week.

Singing and Dancing Together

Grooming the Goats

Chatting with the Goats

Getting to Know the Donkey

Riding the Donkey

Cuddling Chicks

Grinding Wheat

Making Homemade Bread

Exploring the Creek

Hunting Tadpoles and Minnows

Touring the Garden

Weeding the Garden

Harvesting Produce

Enjoying a Peaceful Moment Among the Three Sisters

Listening to the Sounds of a Farm

Gathering Sticks

Saying Goodbye 

We'll miss you!

Farming Ants

The girls started a new industry at our little farm recently: ant husbandry. A couple of weeks ago, they ran inside asking for some plastic containers for their new livestock. "New livestock?" I asked, not sure if I should be alarmed. "Hmmmm. That sounds interesting." "Yes!" they excitedly confirmed, "We're going to raise ants!" Their Auntie Jules (who was with us for another fun-filled working weekend) quickly grabbed several items from the cupboard to give them, and they happily rushed back outside.

Evidently, Segi and Simi had been immersed in their make-believe "playings" in the Enchanted Garden--their name for the little wooded garden area near the bird fountain in front of the house--when they found a few ants crawling around on the ground underneath them. They had quickly agreed that these creatures needed some extra TLC. So they laid down some bedding, put out bottle caps for water troughs, and for feed buckets, set out the plastic containers Jules handed them. Now at each meal of the day, Segi (the 7-year-old) not only lays aside a bit of food for Ragamuffin (the fairy who rides around on her shoulder and sneaks our socks at night) but for the ants as well. She's given them lots of apple, banana and pear bits, as well as pieces of bread, crackers, cookies, chips, pretzels, and vegetables. She says that their favorite food so far is banana slices.

Luckily, it's not too complicated to figure out what to feed members of the formicidae family. They are tiny but voracious omnivores, and even though they are partial to sweets, they will consume nearly anything that has the potential to nourish them: seeds, oils, fruits, vegetables, and sometimes other insects and dead animals. This dietary flexibility has allowed them to thrive on all the world's continents except for Antarctica. Their eating is generally a communal, cooperative endeavor. According to the article "What Do Ants Eat?" at eHow.com,

Ants will utilize scouts to locate food and then lay down a trail for the rest to follow back to it. They accomplish this by using chemicals called pheromones, which they lay down after finding something to eat. They will eat what they find and then head back to the colony where the pheromones will cause the other ants to get worked up and leave to follow the trail back to the source. They will use their antennae in the air and locate the trail, eventually establishing a path that the rest of the colony can easily follow. The ants need to do this quickly before ants from other colonies discover the food.

Some ants also work together as farmers! Ants whose preferred food is honeydew, a sugary-sticky liquid produced by plant-eating aphids, have been know to collectively raise aphids both for their honeydew and for meat. Researchers at the Imperial College London discovered a few years ago that ants sometimes seem to be sedating their itty-bitty livestock to better control them. According to the study (cited in this 2007 article in Science Daily) they "use the tranquillising [sic] chemicals in their footprints to maintain a populous 'farm' of aphids close to their colony, to provide honeydew on tap." Wow--who knew ants were such complex, fascinating creatures? Actually, quite a lot of biologists, including the founder of sociobiology, Harvard professor and renowned author, E.O. Wilson. But of course, most of the rest of tend to assume they're just another one of those irritating little creatures better shooed from the picnic table than attended to.

Children can teach us so many, many things. One of the most valuable lessons my own kids have taught me (over and over again--like most adults, I need repeated instruction before most lessons even begin to sink in) is the value of looking with wonder and appreciation at objects and beings we've grown to consider mundane and thus uninteresting. When we allow ourselves to do so, the world immediately becomes a much richer place to be. Suddenly, the constant planning, calculating, and fretting most of us spend so much of our time immersed in gives way to awe, and we can--if only for a moment--be truly present. I think this must be the revolution that Alice Walker urges us toward in her poem, "We Alone."

We alone can devalue gold 

by not caring 

if it falls or rises 

in the marketplace. 

Wherever there is gold 

there is a chain, you know, 

and if your chain 

is gold 

so much the worse 

for you. 

Feathers, shells 

and sea-shaped stones 

are all as rare. 

This could be our revolution: 

to love what is plentiful 

as much as 

what is scarce.

Recoveries and Losses

We've had quite a bit of trauma at the farm during the past couple of weeks. First of all, Daisy (one of our Saanen-Alpine kids) developed scours--a polite, old-fashioned term farmers use to refer to diarrhea among young livestock. I wasn't too alarmed at first, assuming that something in the kitchen scraps we had tossed them that day had upset her stomachs (she has four, after all--so chances are one or more of them are going to be upset sooner or later!). But when she continued to be sick the next day, I began to get worried. Like many young dairy goat kids, she and her sister, Snowdrop, are scrawny little things, and it didn't look like she could afford to lose much more of her meager substance.

That evening, I called the farmer who'd sold her to us for some advice, and she recommended we give her some Pepto-Bismol, hydrate her as best we could, watch her closely, and call a vet if necessary. "She could die from this, you know," she said at the end of our conversation. G-P ran to the store for the PB and an oral electrolyte solution, and I--seeing as how I had no idea how to dose a goat--did a quick web search. I found what seemed like some decent tips and made the best dosage guess I could. I also tried to clean her up a bit (she was fairly smeared with the stuff by this point, and quickly rubbing it off on the other goats). Unfortunately, this was all for naught; she was still very ill (and filthy) the next morning. Since G-P still wasn't ready to call the vet yet, I had to leave her in this state when I headed out for my Habitat for Humanity volunteer stint around 7:30. I'm afraid I had a hard time concentrating on the paint job I was completing that day, as my mind kept drifting back to Daisy.

Not long before we finished the interior walls, G-P called to tell me he'd decided to call the vet after all--but not for Daisy. Snowdrop, he reported, had collapsed in the pasture and didn't seem able to get up. What?!? I grabbed my keys and headed back home. When I got there, I found both goats lying close together under some shade trees, Daisy still a desperate mess and Snowdrop now shivering and glassy-eyed. Was she in shock? It was hard to tell. I covered her with a folded sheet and sat there with the two of them waiting for the vet to come, contemplating what might have happened. The best we could guess was that she had been bitten by something. We'd seen a very large snapping turtle around the yard and pasture during the previous week. Maybe Daisy had accidentally gotten too close to it. Or could it have been a snake? The bite mark on the inside of her leg wasn't very large.

In any case, "Dr. Bob" arrived in his mobile-medical-unit pickup a little while (it seemed like ages) later. He gave Snowdrop a couple of shots and oral meds, dewormed Daisy, and gave me a fairly dizzying array of instructions on how to administer the liquids and injections he was leaving with us. "You ever given shots before?" he asked. "Well, uh, yeah, about 18 years ago when I worked at an AIDS hospice, but . . ." "Okay--you shouldn't have a problem. Just grab some flesh and push it in."

So I began another new farming adventure: administering medicine to livestock. It really wasn't that hard (except for the time the needle broke apart from the syringe halfway through one of the injection). And it was awfully satisfying to see the effort pay off, as both Daisy and Snowdrop gradually began to recover over the course of the next several days. Dr. Bob returned in less than a week to check up on Daisy and Snowdrop and to do check-ups/vaccinations/deworming on all the goats and Ellie Mae (the donkey) as well. After that visit, I got another round of meds to administer (all orally this time, thank goodness!)--more probiotics for Daisy, antibiotics for both she and Snowdrop, and Iodine to try to clear up Ellie Mae's strange cough. G-P thought all this was a bit much for a few scrawny goats and a farm donkey. So he couldn't help but deliver yet another one of his mini-lectures on Nigerian animal husbandry. "Back in Nigeria we never gave our goats medicines, and they never died," he announced one afternoon. (He later claimed he was going to qualify this statement, but my older sister and her family were here visiting, bore witness, and readily agreed with me that this one deserves a special place in the Annals of Great G-Pisms.)

I was feeling pretty good at this point. Our 40 baby chicks in the brooder seemed to be thriving--eating and drinking greedily and growing by leaps and bounds. Crystal and her chicks seemed happy in the extra barn stall, which we'd equipped with a dog crate (for an extra-safe bed), pine shavings, and food and water. And both Daisy and Snowdrop seemed to be getting back their active, inquisitive, sweet personalities. Maybe they were even gaining a little weight. Ellie Mae's cough persisted, but I wasn't too worried since I knew it might take some time to clear up.

Then, on Memorial Day, when our family went out to a hardware store to get materials for closing in the extra coop for the rapidly growing chicks, we had another visit from a predator. We have no idea what it was, but it got both Autumn and Libre. Unfortunately, it was Segi who found the body of Autumn (her own beloved hen) in the woods by the house. She was shocked and devastated--sobbing and running into my arms, so discombobulated that she couldn't let go yet wouldn't let me hold her. We never found a trace of Libre. Now we had only one chicken left out of the first ten we started with last fall: Crystal, Simi's hen.

Little did we guess that she would soon be gone as well. The next morning, around 11 or so, the girls came running into the front yard to interrupt my flower planting and tell me I had to come to the barn NOW. Two of the Rhode Island Reds were missing, as was Crystal. "Her baby chicks are huddling together in a corner of the crate!" Simi exclaimed. I was once again not overly alarmed. I assumed Crystal had finally left her babies for a few moments to get some fresh air, and the Reds were probably just hiding in one of the stalls of the barn. After all, this couldn't be happening again. But Crystal wasn't out getting fresh air. And the Reds were nowhere to be seen. They were gone. Vanished. The only sign we could find of any of them was a small pile of Rhode Island Red feathers on the ground outside the stall Crystal had been in. It must have been more than one animal. And it/they must have been quiet and fast. (We'd been in the yard planting for quite a while and hadn't heard anything we registered as unusual.) Whatever it/they was/were evidently managed to scale stall walls and hop in to get Crystal, and then scale the walls again to retreat--without leaving a single sign of its/their presence. Could a pack coyotes do that? Or foxes? Raccoons? Weasels????

I was stunned. How could we lose five chickens in two days without hearing or seeing a thing? And, more importantly: What were we going to do now? Were we going to have to give up completely our commitment to letting our animals live free range? The false sense of security I'd had since we bought Ellie Mae a few weeks ago was now gone--especially once I found her shortly after the attack cowering with the goats in her stall, obviously shaken and scared. Poor dear. G-P was less than sympathetic, of course. "What was the point of buying a donkey if she's not going to guard anything? Even in broad daylight?" he wanted to know. "But she did," I countered, a little more meekly than usual. "She was probably in there protecting the goats. And one of the surviving Reds was also in the stall with her, crouched down underneath her tummy." G-P was not impressed.

For the first time since we started putting together our little farm last fall, I'm feeling discouraged. And very tired. It has been really important to us to let our animals live as freely and naturally as possible. Our insistence on free ranging them has not been so much for practical reasons as for ideological--or rather, ethical--ones. We believe that if people are going to keep animals in order to exploit the products and services they provide us, we should treat them as well as possible and let them live as free a life as possible. We have seen allowing them to free-range as an essential part of following our principles. But it's evidently not going to work--at least not within our budget and alongside our other priorities. (We can't afford to make the fence around the barnyard and pasture fully predator-proof, at least not at this stage in our lives. Even if we could, there are probably too many trees hanging over it, allowing predators like raccoons to drop into the barnyard no matter what kind of fence we put up. And G-P is decidedly against buying a trained guard dog to pick up where Ellie Mae seems to be leaving off. (He's allergic to them, and their barking drives him nuts.)

So we're going to spend most of the weekend ahead trying to finish closing in with welded wire that extra stall in the barn (for the 40 baby chicks that will soon be too big for the brooder) and constructing a 6-foot covered run off of the coop. I'm lobbying for making the run as big as possible. But it will still be a small, artificial space compared to the openness our chickens--most of whom are now gone--have enjoyed before. (We'll plan to let them out in the pasture for at least a couple of hours a day, when we can keep a close eye on them.) I'll continue to hope we can figure something else out, but for now, we will follow the Scottish proverb, "better bend than break.," and grieve with Maya Angelou . . .

The caged bird sings with a fearful trill

of things unknown but longed for still

and his tune is heard on the distant hill

for the caged bird sings of freedom.

The free bird thinks of another breeze

and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees

and the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright lawn

and he names the sky his own.

(excerpt from "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings")