life

do they have large talons?

/ abby hummel / 4 Comments

“Do the chickens have large talons?”
“Do they have what?”
“Large talons.”
“I don’t understand a word you just said.”
— Napoleon Dynamite (Paramount Pictures, 2004)

This is not going to become an organic-chicken-raising urban-farming blog, but here are a few more updates for our chicks’ devoted fans.

1) The fuzz is on the way out. This Rhode Island Red is Golda. She is displaying her fancy wings and (let’s be honest here) the cutest tail feathers of all time.

tail feather

2) I can’t tell the Barred Rock chicks apart and we might give some of them away, so two names rotate between all four. This little lady might be Winifred or Simone. She is displaying her talons.
talon

3) You can get another peek at all six in this video – they are still reasonably adorable and like to peck their beaks on the side of their box.

a box of chicks

/ abby hummel / 8 Comments

After trying to convince me his little project was for our future children, Aaron finally confessed that his “play house” wasn’t for kids, it was for chickens. And he told me if I ever put a child in this coop, whether it was ours or someone else’s, he would probably call Child Protective Services, but that our future chickens would really like it. Since Aaron had a great experience raising hens when he was a kid and we both harbor secret urban homesteading fantasies, we’ve been talking about chickens every spring for four years. They have always been in the long-term plan, and whenever one of us works on anything in our shed Aaron talks about transforming it into a coop. He realized chickens were legal in our city and when he discovered the massive supply of DIY-coop-building plans from other hippy-ish blogs, there was no turning back. We just happened to go to a farm supply store this weekend and… now the rest is history:  We have six little chickens in our laundry room. (This is the year of MAKING IT HAPPEN, after all.)

I do want to say that I didn’t have animals growing up (except a hamster named Pecan, may she rest in peace), so this is pretty new to me. I have firmly indicated that I am not interested in raising any cloven-hoofed animals, but I could probably be convinced to get a horse if resources allowed and we had kids who would manage the riding and caring. I’m pretty sure no one is reading this for my treatise on hobby farming – you just want pictures of the chicks. I will happily oblige.

1) Chicks at the store. We couldn’t leave them there: chicks 12) Transporting them home in a box:
chicks 23) Aaron carefully observing them. He is such an animal-lover that I can’t believe we haven’t had anything serious until now:
chicks 34) The chicks enjoying their temporary box home in the laundry room:
chicks 4…But, wait! There’s more! I TOOK VIDEOS. Indulge yourself as you see fit.

Aren’t they cute!? I’ve heard they might even stay this way for a few days.

Vander Port preparations!

/ abby hummel / 11 Comments

“I don’t think you should get your hopes up for this wedding dress trip, Mrs. Hummel, because I have two sisters just like you and I’ve gone shopping with them both before.  I don’t think there is anything fun about it. You’re probably going to be really disappointed.” – a nine-year-old boy in my piano studio.

My first Sabbath of Lent started off with a sudden burst of tears. While I scrambled eggs before church, Aaron showed me a meteorologist’s report indicating a big snowstorm for the end of the week, and said I should prepare myself to make a hard decision about my weekend plans: driving (solo) to Michigan for a special day of wedding dress shopping for my sister Bethany, who is getting married in July. I knew Midwestern road trips in February were never a sure thing when I put this on my calendar, but facing the reality of a predicted blizzard in an area not known for decent road conditions was entirely disheartening.

Almost everyone I know heard my tale of woe during the week, and many faithfully prayed this trip would work out for me. With three sibling weddings coming up this summer, extra time to visit and prepare for the big day(s) are a luxury, so it is likely this dress shopping trip would be my only time to celebrate with Beth before her nuptials. This was it! The trip HAD to happen! And then my prayers were mercifully answered with a very light snowstorm so I could travel safely. This probably came at the expense of children all over my county who hoped and prayed for a snow day from school. I hurried through the local library and grabbed some random audio CDs off the shelf to keep me company on the road.

I listened to Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua during my drive. I cried when she spoke of her sister’s cancer diagnosis, and it made me so glad I was going to spend this weekend with my own sisters. After I arrived and recovered from the car time, my mom and all three of us girls spent a long Saturday shopping for a wedding gown. We watched Beth start off nervous and quiet, (probably overwhelmed by thousands of yards of lace, satin, taffeta, ruffles, ruching, sparkles, and appliques)  transforming through the day into a confident, comfortable, well-spoken Bride – with the perfect dress to match! I wiped a few tears when she first wore it. Grandma had to stay home nursing an injured knee cap, so we took secret forbidden iPhone pictures for her.

After all this hoopla, we ended our Saturday with a party celebrating the engagement with both sides of the new family. Now that she’s engaged to Isaac, Beth is marrying into a family of our old home-school friends. (Aaron and I even went to college with the oldest brother and his wife.) During the past ten years of friendship we’ve all known we would somehow become related, since “they have boys and we have girls,” and we have called ourselves “The Vander Ports,” a combination of our last names, for years during our movie nights and beach parties. For a while it wasn’t clear where the romantic connection would eventually happen to bring brother-sister friendships into an official capacity, but Beth and Isaac are finally making good friends into a big extended family. We made plans for the wedding and swapped stories, laughing until we cried on more than one occasion.

vanderports

The Vander Ports (minus Caleb) — best wedding party ever! 

Then I cried a bit when I had to leave on Sunday morning. We chose to move forward with Aaron’s PhD knowing that this career was not ever going to bring us back to the same towns (or state, probably) as our families, but it’s really draining that the current distance requires such sacrifices to get back and forth. During that long trip back, I listened to A Mighty Heart by Mariane Pearl, and I sniffled along with her tale of love and sacrifice, losing her husband Danny at the hands of Islamic terrorists in Pakistan. My story isn’t the same as hers, but she hit me hard; I was very ready to be home and celebrate that my husband was alive. When I arrived, I found Aaron working on a project in the garage. He says it is an A-frame playhouse for our future kids. I think it looks suspiciously like a chicken coop, which he recently mentioned was legal in our neighborhood.

chicken coop Oh, my!

(It seems like there was altogether WAY too much crying over such a great weekend, no?)

learning forgiveness

/ abby hummel / 5 Comments

Hardship brings with it an unwelcome guest that stays much longer than the original suffering: a new and unfamiliar set of personal-connection tools. Life difficulties are hard not just because of the initial situation, but also because moving through dark suffering changes relationships and the way you interact with people, whether you like it or not. I was just marveling at how grief is not a one-time experience but an ongoing spiritual journey while managing an internal battle with myself, processing a bunch of recent conversations that were really hard and hurtful for me. They were challenging not because there was anything wrong with the others involved, but because I have suffered and then because of this I am different. Healthy, encouraging, refreshing relational connections for me happen under a very different set of rules than they might for someone else.

[Image credit HERE]

[Image credit HERE]

I live in the real world, and I am blessed with people all around me, so I connect with many others for work, fun, church, ministry, and community projects. Sometimes this blessing is a challenge to my heart – all this connecting means that, by default, I have to do a lot of forgiving. And it’s forgiving for things I can’t ask an apology over, wiping clean my heart’s slate of these very real offenses that will never be recognized as such by anyone else. I’m in the middle of a huge chunk of this right now. It feels like I have been doing this for a long time, and it is easy to grow quite weary.

But natural weariness isn’t the defining factor here; I’m a Christian, which means the gospel is always relevant to my life and there is supernatural strength accomplishing what I cannot. I read the Psalms and know God’s mercy is over all that He has made. So I have to remind myself these moments of salty-wound-rubbing and salty-tear-spilling are all covered by that mercy, preaching to my own heart that this is part of why the Lord has compassion on us, why he suffered and saved. His clemency is entirely superior over any of these perceived wrongs, and I need it extended to me even more than to any of this stuff going on around me. His mercy is over me, and them, and those flippant words, and the abundance of flippant words I’ve carelessly spilled, and my sadness, and all this every-day experience of the Fall.

The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
The Lord is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made.
The Lord is faithful in all his words and kind in all his works. 
The Lord upholds all who are falling, and raises up all who are bowed down. 
The Lord is righteous in all his ways and kind in all his work.
My mouth will speak the praise of the Lord, and let all flesh bless his holy name forever.
-Psalm 145, esv. 

Outpost Memories

/ abby hummel / 2 Comments

We spent some time last night with college friends swapping stories about our days at Hillsdale College, and I felt a pang of regret that I didn’t mention something in my last post. Yes, it’s cold in our house sometimes now, but it’s nothing like the house Aaron lived in during our Senior year.

The Outpost, as everyone called this house, was a special place. I have heard it was a dignified dwelling in it’s heyday, which was supposedly just one college generation — a few years, really — before us. However, when Aaron came back from Iraq and moved in to one of the upstairs bedrooms, it was clear that the former grandeur had faded. We (six guys and the girls who visited frequently) soon began referring to this house as “The Slum,” and the landlord, unfortunately, “The Slumlord.” The occupants discovered that, among other problems like the porch collapsing,  the walls were as thin as cardboard. When the weather chilled they could only afford enough heat to keep the pipes from freezing.

the outpost

This was pretty problematic. One time it was SO COLD that Aaron and I both sat on his bed under the covers slurping our hot chili dinner before premarital counseling. I think his room-mate felt a little uncomfortable with that arrangement. Turnabout is fair play – one time we came in and saw him with his girlfriend huddled under a makeshift tent of a blanket over a space heater. On another occasion, a group of us watched a movie piled on a couch in our own sleeping bags.

Sorting through these photos brings back so many memories! There were nicknames for several of the house’s occupants and various special ladies, a mouse that drowned in the sink of dirty dishes, and plenty of the things you’d expect from a bunch of guys living in a house together: chore disputes, strange smells, and even some bathroom drama. Those guys did put on a special dinner that winter before a dance, which was the nicest the place looked all year.

outpost dinner

It’s good to remember these humble beginnings, though I’m sure our memories are a little more fond than we would have suspected during the Outpost days…

Outpost driveway(Isn’t she a beaut!?)

thermostat wars

/ abby hummel / 12 Comments

“In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle. David sent Joab, and his servants with him, and all Israel. And they ravaged the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah.” (2 Samuel 11:1, esv)

It is not spring right now. Far from it. But the fact that we are far from spring makes this a time when this household goes to battle over something a little less serious than King David and the Ammonites: the thermostat. Our house is just old enough to be pretty drafty, and so extreme outside temperatures (like today’s high of 6 degrees Farenheit) create a conflict in our overall vision of living frugally and comfortably. Not surprisingly, Aaron falls a little harder on one side, and I fall on the other. (This happens in the summer, too, and sometimes results in pillow fights.)

A piano mom told me the worst part of waiting for her husband to finish his PhD was eating Ramen noodles. I like to cook so we manage to eat pretty well;  the heating bill is one of our most noticeable spending cuts. I discussed these biannual Hummel Thermostat Wars with some students earlier this week. “Let me guess,” one of the young men ventured, “You want to be comfortable and Mr. Hummel wants to save money?” A cousin, familiar and sympathetic with our plight, mentioned that her friend from Wisconsin hosted an online quiz to see where other people set their thermostats in the winter. “The temperatures at your house were outside the range of responses,” she grinned.

thermostat warsSince I do agree with the overall reasons for conservative home heating for now, when it gets really cold, I have resorted to wearing an old fleece bathrobe and an extra pair of wool socks in the evenings.  In addition to my ridiculous thermalwear get-up, we drink lots of hot tea and make the most of our new electric blanket. I can usually distract myself and think cheerful thoughts even though it’s cold, but that plan falls apart when Aaron looks at me and starts laughing hysterically.

teaBut I must ask – do you have any other suggestions for battling the chilly house? Beside the most obvious answer, since our current temperature setting is actually a compromise already. How do the thermostat wars work out in your home?

chapters

/ abby hummel / 5 Comments

There is exciting progress in life at our house lately! Mostly for Aaron – but it’s one of the benefits of marriage that you get to celebrate extra over your spouse’s blessings because of the whole one-flesh thing.

Finally! The book chapter he slaved over, the one that kept us home for Thanksgiving last year instead of celebrating with family, is published! It’s a technical reference publication, not exactly light reading for scientific laymen.

aaron book collage

Finally! The last day of his status as “inactive Reservist” with the Marines was Saturday, so the military chapter of life is completed.

desert "cammies" in the closet - proud to have them, but excited to pack these away !

desert “cammies” in the closet – proud to have them, but excited to pack them away, too!

Tomorrow begins the “chapter” of his life as a twenty-eight-year-old, too. Every birthday I think of the flat-rate box I proudly brought to the post office and sent to Iraq to mark his twenty-second year, decorated with stickers and markers, and it makes me ever grateful for the chance to share the special day together now. So tonight we celebrate with brownies and venison stew, enjoying the luxury of beating hearts, relative sanity, and four limbs attached to his torso, while marveling how old and young this feels all at once.

2013: The year of “MAKING IT HAPPEN”

/ abby hummel / 3 Comments

Our holiday memories this year center around traveling. We visited our families for both Thanksgiving and Christmas, which made for lots of fun and lots of driving. (My little Honda passed the 100,000 mile marker somewhere around Kalamazoo, MI!) Aaron reinjured his knee playing ice hockey and now receives consistent encouragement to visit a doctor, and we’re both enjoying the benefits of our Christmas loot: eating lots of air-popped popcorn, drinking homemade lattes, and keeping warm in wool socks. We really lucked out in the loot department this holiday season.

And now, without much time to really refresh over break, we’re heading full-force into a new year of grace and growth. After Aaron’s four-and-a-half years of PhD slaving, we’re close to the end of this grad school thing, though without a solid graduation date yet. It could be this year. Or it could be later. We don’t really know. It’s hard to even think about “resolutions” or “goals” for the new year because so much is unknown about the future. I suppose this is always true, but it seems very apparent that everything about our life – employment, family, church, house, income/finances, location – could drastically change in the next twelve months. Or it could all stay the same!

During our possible-moving-scare last spring, we had a walk-through with a Realtor to discuss exactly what this house needs before advertising it for sale, and since we have a list to work on, our plan for this year is “make it happen” at home by finishing one house project each month. We slacked off on projects of all sizes this fall while Aaron was hunting and I was drowning in work. I may still be drowning this spring, but we’ll be able to get stuff done together. First up? Finishing the kitchen. Shocker, I know. And luckily (for me!!), our bathroom plans were heartily approved for resale interest, so we’ll start working on that when it gets a little warmer.

But for now, we’ve been working on all the little finishing details for the kitchen project and we’re hoping to wrap them up by the end of January! It’s really embarrassing and disheartening to know we started this all two years ago. Next time we redo a kitchen, we’re hiring out some of the stuff and  we’ll take time off work for our labor instead of squeezing all the magic into weekends.

So this is what the year has looked like for us so far. I’d say it’s pretty exciting!

head lamp; fashionably spray-painted vent.

Aaron is wearing his head lamp while installing our fashionably spray-painted vent cover.

Happy New Year!

how many promises! (advent 2012)

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The first candle from our advent wreath

The first candle from our advent wreath

My explanation of the first few weeks of Advent 2012 would probably be much like everyone else’s: I’m busy and I don’t feel like I’m “reflecting” or “waiting expectantly” for the Lord at all. This fall has required lots of time-management, work, and bravery, but it has been very good. I am still a little bit tired and worn out from all of that. (When you are in high school or college and work really hard all semester, you come home and your mommy makes you food and takes care of your home. Not so for grown-ups like me.) And now, after teaching, tests, sharing about hard things, countless piano lessons, four recitals, bible studies, book clubs, and packaging up lots of venison, I’m finally on Christmas break. By some miracle, Aaron has had half the normal amount of stuff to do this week. He’s waiting on results for something… I don’t totally get why this happened now, but it means we’re both home a lot, and we spend our time listening to carols, enjoying the fireplace, and drinking lots of hot cocoa stirred with candy canes. This is fun!

Receiving Christmas cards in the mail is one of my favorite parts of the holiday preparations. This year I found adorable mini-clothespins at a craft store, so we’re keeping a card-line. It’s so special to see these friends and family on our mantel! Mailing Christmas cards seems like a throw-back, a trend of days gone by, but we’re still hanging on to this tradition. Communication and relationships are so much more important than the technology we usually use to facilitate them. Sometimes sharing something tangible is a special way to express your well-wishes and encouragement to others – and I’m glad I’m not the only person who thinks this way!  (My friend Hannah said it well: “Luckily, I went to a college attended by many people (most of them ladies – let’s be real here) who still practice the art of letter writing.”)

christmas cardline

This week’s blizzard required some significant snow-removal efforts on our driveway. As I looked out the window from my cushy perch in the house, I snapped this shot, and it occurred to me that Aaron was not only clearing the snow from around my car, he was also sweeping it off the top. He is a good man. Also, I’m really excited about these winter-wonderland surroundings!

blizzard

Our Christmas travel plans are probably augmented because of all this snow, but it’s hard to complain when we are inside and cozy by the fire.

It feels only fair to admit that I’ve had an outline for a post called “Advent is for those who fail” in my folder for almost three weeks. At this point, I’m pretty sure I won’t actually sit down and finish it before Christmas. The basic point is that  those who fail should use Advent to look forward in hope to Christ, who unfailingly fulfills all promises. This is great news, especially for people who have a hard time sitting down and finishing projects, even when they are on a break.

For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ. And so through him the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God. – 2 Corinthians 1:20, niv.

And in case we missed you in the “real mail” – Merry Christmas!

Mock_One

Shady Business

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Almost four years ago, we fell in love with a little house nestled up into a hill with trees all around. I think it reminded us a little more of our native Michigan than most other real estate we had inspected, and Aaron likes yard work more than inside work, so we bought it. We haven’t regretted this decision, but oh boy! These trees have taken a little more tending than we expected.

A Tale of Two Trees

Last summer our city decided to take down a tree in our neighbors’ yard, which we thought was great, since it hung over our house and made us nervous during windy storms. And taking it out would mean our newly seeded grass in the back yard could get more sunlight.  Well. Surprise! Even though the tree is in the other yard, the removal crew felt it was acceptable to climb up  our hill of newly sprouted grass on their way to taking down the tree and leaving the branches on the other place in the yard that has new growth.

It’s kind of hard for the newly sprouted grass to grow after being trampled or covered with branches. All the fresh grass was afflicted in some way.  This brought Aaron much grief, so he made some calls and the city sent someone over to reseed the area after we got our yard cleared out from the branches from our neighbor’s tree that was cut down by the city.  (We were responsible for moving the branches even though it wasn’t our tree.)

The person who came to put down new seed in our yard accidentally roto-tilled a bunch of wires by our shed, which took down land lines and internet all over the neighborhood. Then the person who came to fix our internet somehow didn’t get our connection reset so we were offline for two days.

The worst part? They only took the parts of the tree that were in the way of the wires. This is what we see in the backyard now. 
Luckily, our latest tree adventure wasn’t quite so challenging. After some procrastinating, we decided to fell the huge tree in front of our front door, the one that took two people’s arms to span the circumference, that was touching the house and making horrid creaking sounds against the roof every time the wind blew. It pains me to say this, because I think I have DIY in my DNA, but  it was so huge and foreboding, being over the house and right by the door, that we saved up and paid someone else to do this. We drove away from Iowa last week to spend Thanksgiving with family and left our forestry project for the real professionals.

When we came home, we just had a stump and some sawdust.
I finished teaching some piano lessons Monday evening and came out to find Aaron laboriously assaulting the stump with this axe, so I asked, “Are you making this into a planter or did you have a bad day at the lab?” (It will be a planter, we hope. But Aaron will have to be in charge of the plants since I always kill them.)