January Thaw
It’s been a truly strange stretch of weather around here this month. After a nearly two-week cold snap with temperatures bottoming out below zero after Christmas and stubbornly refusing to get above 20 for a good 10 days, we had a rebound that ended in a couple bizarrely humid, 60-degree days. Add several inches of rain to that, and this is all that’s left of the blizzard: Alas, not everyone made it through the cold spell. Kirk found Louisa Catherine dead in the chicken run the other day. As with our other chicken deaths, there are no clues about what happened. Chickens die suddenly and — as far as we know — quietly. If you’re not sure which chicken was Louisa Catherine, that’s because she never did anything noteworthy enough to mention. She was a gold-laced Wyandotte and cute as a chick: She wasn’t a great layer, and I think she was the only chicken who could tolerate Lizzy’s craziness . She mostly kept to herself and was pretty far under our radar. L