Momentary Magic: A Story Excerpt from Hearth & Heart 2017 Winter

        I couldn't tell at first that it was snowing. It just looked like a ripple in the fabric of reality, and the tiny flakes were more like mist than snow.
        The fire in the hearth flared up and burned brighter, and within seconds the ripple had become a full swirling snow storm, driven by the North Wind.
        I bundled up in layers of wool and dug out my pruning shears, intending to cut some greenery for the approaching Midwinter holiday. Then stepping out of my door into the swirling snow, I headed to the forest along the back end of my property, where years ago I had planted a Holly tree.
        I threaded my way carefully through the field, not wanting to even leave a footprint to disturb this work of nature as the snow began to transform the landscape. And as I drew closer to the wooded area, a curious thing happened. The swirling snow seemed to go into slow motion, and the North Wind seemed to calm. The world became very still. The usual local sounds had ceased, and even my footsteps seemed almost completely silent.


Full story available in the 2017 Winter edition of Hearth & Heart at Pegana Press

Momentary Magic i.e. Hearth & Heart part three

Thank you for joining me for this final installment of a three part post which introduces Hearth & Heart, a quarterly short story zine.  Part one, introduced the 2015 Summer edition and in part two, I write about the 2015 Autumn edition.  Which brings Hearth & Heart into the present...

Having finally released Hearth & Heart 2015 Autumn Edition retroactively, I felt free to move into the present and begin work on a brand new zine.  On September 22, 2017  Hearth & Heart 2017 Autumn Edition was released, which is a blend of very old stories and very new stories.  This issue stretched my writing muscles a bit, but I also had to dust off my artistic skills as an illustrator, which had grown very rusty.

Conversation With A Prince was written in 2017 for this edition of Hearth & Heart.  It's one of those stories that is 99% true.  The frontispiece (pictured here) is my one and only pastel which I did in 1992.  It seemed appropriate to use here.

On the Way Upstairs was a fragment of story from 2015.  I had stopped writing it just as the character takes the first step on the staircase.  I was intrigued with how the story began, so was really happy to pick up the threads and finish it.  This is 100% fiction, and in fact found myself facing the challenge of writing about something I had no practical experience with.  It was a fun one to write.  Sort of a time travel yarn with a nautical flavor.  The illustration for that was part pencil sketch and part collage.

The Dream Catcher was a story written in 1990.  I was very young and it shows in the writing style.  Still, I liked the message it conveyed.  There are elements of my childhood in it as well as some elements of a grandmother of mine.  I've been in love with the idea of flying ships since I was 4 years old.  This story has all of that.  The illustration was a pencil sketch of a flying ship against the moon and is mounted it on a background photo of stars taken by the Hubble Telescope.

Getting the Boot - A Story in Elfland  was another fragment of story begun in 2010.  I picked up the threads for this story because I didn't have enough material to release this edition of Hearth & Heart.  Once I began writing it again, it was difficult to wrap it up.  This story seemed to want to go on and on, and really had to stick to a specific number of pages in order to make it into this issue.  It ends with a touch of humor.  I had started an illustration for this story, but as I said before, my skills were rusty and I ran out of time, choosing instead to use a watercolor painting done in 2013.  Oddly enough, it works very well with this story.

The final essay appears on the back cover and is called A New Story.  It's a descriptive little piece that describes the life of a story.

I really had fun writing the stories for this issue and putting it together with the illustrations.  It pushed me out of my comfort zone, and I was surprised at how enjoyable it really was.

To find out more about Hearth & Heart Volume 2  2017 Autumn edition, go to Pegana Press.

Join me next Monday when I'll be introducing Hearth & Heart Volume 2 2017 Winter Edition, scheduled for release later this month.

Momentary Magic i.e. Hearth & Heart part two

On Monday I introduced you to my collected short story zine, Hearth & Heart, Volume 1 2015 Summer Edition.  Today I'd like to turn the spotlight onto the 2015 Autumn Edition.

As I mentioned on Monday, I was having trouble getting the Autumn Edition printed out.  It looked like that edition was simply not meant to be.  With other projects requiring my time and attention, I forgot about it for the next two years.  In fact I even stopped writing during that time.

One day, this past August, I decided I needed to find a way to convince myself seriously that writing was a priority for me.  I had gotten into the very bad habit, of relegating story writing to last place on the list of things that needed done.  Which of course meant that it never got done.  My days were filled with growing food, book binding, seeing BodyTalk clients, cooking, cleaning and doing a thousand things required of me daily.  Plus I was taking two classes.  I wanted to include writing in there, but I couldn't seem to make it happen.

Patreon seemed to be the answer.  If I set up a creator page at Patreon, then I would make a plan, and be able to hold myself accountable.  By creating rewards for the Patrons supporting me, I ended up writing daily out of necessity.  

For my first goal, I decided I would finish Hearth & Heart Vol. 1 2015 Autumn Edition, once and for all.  I used my Patreon creator page to keep myself focused by posting daily progress reports.  And even though I didn't have any Patrons, I posted updates as if I had dozens of Patrons cheering me on.

I still had a lot of trouble with it.  But this time I refused to give up.  The book had been finished for two years, it didn't make sense not to print it, even though it seemed like everything was conspiring to keep me from releasing it.  For example, I made three very confusing and discouraging trips to the print shop, before I finally got what I needed.  I wasted time, gas, and money working with them, but finally, it happened.  I walked into the copy shop with my finished  zine and walked out with 30 copies.

On September 1st 2017, I released (retroactively) Hearth & Heart Volume 1 2015  Autumn Edition.  I know it confused some people for me to do it that way (mostly my husband), but that book was born in 2015.  Besides, I already had a 2017 edition started, and I didn't want to combine them, because three weeks later I released Hearth & Heart Volume 2 2017  Autumn Edition.

The 2015 Autumn Edition of Hearth & Heart was such fun to put together, in spite of the fact that it felt like I was being blocked from printing it.  It's got some quirks to be sure.  For instance the table of contents page had to be glued to another version of the same page.  Here's what happened.  The copy machine I was using made an acceptable image of the photo I was using for my table of contents, but did not make a successful copy of the illustration on the back of that page.  You couldn't even see the pencil sketch illustration, and so I had to have them set the machine to make a darker image.  This time the sketch came out very clearly, but the photograph lost the definition I wanted it to have.  I used a technique that I use when sewing an illustration into a book and then, to make a single page of the two sheets glued them together.  It added time and expense to the project, but it seemed to be the only way to get acceptable results.  Over time, the sheets might separate if the glue becomes brittle, but it will be easy for anyone with a glue stick to fix.

The fun part of this edition of Hearth & Heart for me was the lunch box pocket I made to go with A Fairy Tale from 1969.  Since this story was inspired by an experience I had when I was 7 years old, I wanted to include an image of the lunch box I used when I was that age.  I no longer had the lunch box, but I was able to find a great image of it online.  I used the color image to create a pocket to not only hold a tiny book containing a micro story, but also to hold some other surprises.

But it's the stories that are the reason for Hearth & Heart.  Besides A Fairy Tale from 1969, I also included an essay titled A Hallowe'en Recollection.  Both of these offerings originally appeared in my blog Tea With Whimsy.  They were written a week apart in October of 2012.  They both seemed to be appropriate material for the kind of stories I wanted to offer in an Autumn edition.  And both were inspired from my childhood experiences.

Smile! was a story written about an experience I had in the late 90s.  You never know what may be lurking in doorways.  That story is about 70% true life and 30% flight of fancy.  I leave it to you to know fact from fiction.  Better yet, I leave it to you to just enjoy the story without needing to sort fact from fiction.  We get enough of that in the real world, right?

There Be Giants.  That story was based on an actual experience.  It's a Hallowe'en story with witches and giants.  Again that is a story that is about 50% real life and 50% flight of fancy.  (You may be surprised to learn that the giants are the real life part of the story, not the witches.  I know I was surprised!)

Sky is a short offering that I encased in an illustration, which is pictured at the start of this post.  Yes, it's another door.  I had visualized it being a window, but after all the trouble I had been having reproducing images, and constructing the zine, I decided to go for a simple door effect.  Both Sky and The Witch's Children (a micro story which appears as a tiny book included with this zine) were gleaned from a micro story journal I wrote in 1991.

This edition of Hearth & Heart was my most complicated zine to assemble, but it sure was a lot of fun to design.  If you'd like to check it out go over and take a look at Pegana Press.

On Monday I'd like to talk a little bit about Hearth & Heart Volume 2  2017  Autumn Edition.  I hope you'll join me.

Winter Whimsy at Gallery Boom

I'll be there tabling at this event with my friend Sage Adderley-Knox.

Momentary Magic i.e. Hearth & Heart

Getting to know Hearth & Heart

Hi, It's great to see you again.  I'm here with a friend and I'd really like to introduce you.

Reader, this is Hearth & Heart.  

Hearth & Heart, may I present Reader.  

I knew you two would hit it off.  I hope this will be the beginning of a long and lasting friendship.

About Hearth & Heart

Hearth & Heart is an illustrated quarterly collection of original short stories compiled into a half page zine format.  The stories are often seasonal, and are a blend of fiction and real life.

After writing Winter Tales in November of 2014, I wanted to publish more stories.  Winter Tales was a limited edition letterpress chapbook from Pegana Press, and it wasn't practical to continue to offer the works of an unknown story teller like myself in that same format.

I wanted to self publish and make the stories accessible to a wider audience so I decided upon presenting them as zines.

I published the first Hearth & Heart as Volume 1 2015 Summer Edition.  The stories are a blend of reminiscences, day dreams, and flights of fancy born from ordinary experiences.

For example:  this edition of Hearth & Heart begins with a story titled May Baskets and Spring Flowers.  Originally titled  A Story of May Baskets, it appeared as a blog post in Tea With Whimsy April 30, 2013 and was revised 2 years later to be included in Hearth & Heart.  I still can't decide which version I like better.  The original almost seems more intimate to me.  

Stories To Be Carried, Reading To The Faeries, and The Spider were all written within a two week period during the summer of 2014.  Stories To Be Carried came to me during a walk on a country road.  I made a special illustration for it which appears on the back cover.  Not great, but it was the first time I had drawn anything in about a decade, and I was delighted that it even resembled what I had in mind.  Reading To The Faeries came from actual observations made while in my back garden and appears as a micro story in a tiny book which you will find in a pocket on the last page of the zine.  The Spider is a story of perception and I think it would surprise most people.  It was told by observing the interaction between a fly and a spider.

A Conversation With The Moon came to me after spending the pre dawn hours communing with the full moon in November of 2014  I made a special illustration for this story by putting in a door that opens onto the story.  Under the illustration are a few lines (placed there as a caption) from a blog I used to write called Heal Earth Now.  Posted on  January 16, 2014, it goes like this...With my feet on the Earth, I stand in the silver light of your radiance, wrapped in wool against the cold night.  We watch one another.  And we tell each other stories...  It seemed appropriate under the circumstances.

I was so excited to finish my first zine that I immediately got the next edition ready.  Hearth & Heart Volume 1 2015 Autumn Edition was written, compiled, designed and had all the art work chosen, but the problem I kept running into was that I couldn't get any of the images to print clearly no matter where I went.  It looked like that edition was simply not meant to be...

Please join me here this Thursday as I continue to tell the story of the 2015 Autumn edition of Hearth & Heart.  

New Zine

I just finished the template to my latest zine, Where Do The Spoons Go?  An Adventure Story for Flatware.

It goes to be copied tomorrow.  And then it will be available to order from Pegana Press.  Black and White photocopied paper zine.  24 pages in half page format.  Text light with collage.

Have you ever wondered where the missing spoons go?  This story investigates that question.  Very tongue in cheek.  Humor.

Momentary Magic

I'm considering changing the title of my zine from Hearth & Heart to Momentary Magic.

This is an example of the type of story that appears in Hearth & Heart.  I would appreciate some honest feed back to the following questions.

1.  What are your favorite genres?  (for example:  weird, fantasy, mystery, horror, suspense, etc.)
2.  Who are your favorite authors?
3.  In which genre would you place Stories To Be Carried?
4.  Would you read more stories like Stories To Be Carried?

Please feel free to respond in the comments below.

Stories To Be Carried

528 words

I saw a woman on a dusty road one day. The sun shone hot, and there was the smell of berries and pine trees in the air and the drone of insects, and no other sound was there but for my own breathing as I labored to climb the steep hill we were both on. She was walking down the hill, and she had strapped to her back an enormous basket. And as I approached her, I could see the basket was hanging with the open end downward.
She greeted me, and I her, and then I asked her about the basket.
"It was for the stories I gathered," was her answer.
"But it's upside down. You've lost your stories, " I said with deep concern.
"Well, they weren't really mine, you know," she said leaning in and placing a hand upon my arm as if to reassure me that it was quite alright.
And then her eyes left my face and looked off into a distance which I could not perceive, and she spoke.
"There was a time gone by, when I would collect all the stories I would come across. And whether they spoke of beauty and joy, or they spoke of tragedy and pain, it was all one and the same to me, for each story would wring my heart until it felt like it would burst within my breast.
"And because I gave them my attention, and allowed them to touch my heart, they would cling to me, until I had to find a basket large enough to hold them all.
"And still I went my way in the world, gathering more stories, until my basket became heavy with them."
She paused and looked at me. She made a deep satisfied sigh, and her face resembled that of a child, though she seemed ancient.
I looked back at her eagerly, and I waited for her to continue.
"One day, they just became too heavy to carry. So I simply turned the basket over, and allowed them to escape."
"But didn't they want to stay with you?" I questioned.
"They were old stories. They had grown sleepy. I don't know if they even noticed being loosed."
I pondered this a moment and she continued.
"Now when I meet a story, I can look it in the face, acknowledge it, get to know it even, before I continue on my journey. It's nice to be able to say to a story, "I see you" and then be able to part ways rather than picking it up and carrying it with me."
After a moment of silence, she sighed happily and spoke again.
"I've enjoyed our talk, but I must be on my way," she said gesturing to her path which led down the hill.
I turned to watch her go, and could see other women in the distance making their way up the hill, and all were carrying baskets of varying shapes and sizes.
I knew what I must do. I reached behind me and removed my own basket. Then turning it over, I watched the stories tumble out like colored marbles.

Copyright Rita Tortorello 2014 May 30
This story appeared in Hearth & Heart Volume 1 2015 Summer Edition

Thank you for reading and for your feedback.

Raining

We're having a rainy afternoon in the South Puget Sound area.

The cats are snoozing, Mike is reading, and I am working on our income tax return.

Seems like a good day to write instead, but someone's gotta do it.

Hi ho, hi ho, it's back to work I go...

Here's a page from Hearth & Home vol 1 Summer.  I really do have more of them to release, but this one is the only one that made it to print so far.

What A Difference!

What a difference three weeks can make!

I have been plowing through the work around here.  My Kitchen has never been so clean.  I've lived in this house for 15 years, and I've never had much clear counter space.  It's mostly been covered by dirty dishes, bottles and jars waiting to be washed before going out to the recycling, and various works in progress.  A chaotic jumble about sizes the whole situation up.

But in the first two weeks of 2016, I managed to turn that trend around.  When I came home from the food co-op last week, I actually had a space to set all my groceries, when I brought them in.  The living room and dining room have also been decluttered, as well as The Bindery, which was starting to look a little chaotic.

Three weeks into 2016, and my house is starting to resemble a real home and not just a busy work space.

The Peepers are growing like crazy.  They're 10 weeks old now!!  I'm really excited that 4 of the 5 are pullets and only one is a cockerel.  Of course that still leaves me with a dilemma.  What to do with the excess male bird.  And he is at the moment far more lovable than his pop.

Rocky and I have a tenuous truce, which neither one of us is anxious to put to the test.  It makes cleaning the chicken house and working in that part of the yard difficult though, and if a fence comes down, it becomes a real adrenaline rush to get it repaired.  The secret to my success is that FOOD is the great moderator.

Sparky (Mike named the new one) is my friend.  I'm not sure if he knows the score or not, but he's doing his best to get on my good side, and so far, he's my pal.

Ruby (mom) is finally after 10 weeks, starting to peck at them.  Again, it's that whole FOOD thing.  I introduced her back into the hen yard with Rocky.  I won't say there was a tender reunion, because that's just not Rocky's style, but he was glad to see her.  (I might get more chicks out of that interaction).

She didn't stay put.  She was upset to be separated from the chicks, and wanted me to let them in too.  I decided to let her out instead, and she was OK with that.  Today we tried it again, though.  I guess for the next few days, I'll keep letting her into the hen yard until they remember who she is.  Ten weeks ago she was top hen in the flock.  Now she's at the bottom of the pecking order.  They won't let her near the food, and Rocky wasn't all that thrilled that I fed her a bit away from them.  He wanted to dominate both food supplies.  (Sort of reminded me of Monsanto.)  I had to lure him back to his own food.

I guess I'll just observe how it works out, and if I can bring her and the chicks into the flock--great.  If not, than I'll have two flocks.  I would rather have them all together though, but I'll have to see how Rocky and Sparky will get along.

I'll be glad to get the Peepers out of the back yard.  It was okay when they were still tiny, but now, my back porch and patio resemble a barn yard.  Every evening I have to shovel it off and sluice it down.  (I know, too much information.)

Never the less, I do love them and they always make me laugh.  And they all seem to like being held.

Enough about chickens.

My resolve to move toward zero waste, is coming along.  Last week we generated about a gallon of trash.  (I don't remember what we threw in the trash to even get that much...it must have been some kind of plastic that I ran across when I was cleaning out the kitchen.  I keep finding old plastic squirreled away (I guess I was hoping I would eventually find a use for some of it.)  But as far as the trash goes, typically, I generate about 3 yogurt cups full of plastic trash a week now.  It's getting easier to compost and recycle almost everything else, as long as I pay really close attention to what I am bringing home.  (We haven't bought bacon since the new year--sigh--I do miss it, and I just need to find time to drive over to the meat market, where I can hopefully get some uncured bacon wrapped in non plasticized paper.  #jumping through hoops!)

And finally, I wanted to share that someone who bought Winter Tales through Pegana Press, liked it enough to also buy a copy of Hearth & Heart Summer edition.  He also hinted broadly that he would buy Hearth & Heart Autumn (Coming Soon).  I got a chuckle out of that, until I realized that I had 3 zines partially finished and that I needed to get my butt in gear and get them out.  All the stories have been finished for months, I just need to put them in zine format, which is mostly finished.

But for now, I'm still binding another two batches of books and working on profit and loss for 2015 tax return.  Definitely trying to make sure I stay up with book keeping this year, so it's not so hard later.  The shoe box method, isn't working anymore.  I went in to see if I qualified for a reduced rate in my power bill last year, and the woman said to me.  If you're self employed you should have all your totals already.  I got a hardy laugh out of that, and resisted the temptation to respond with...You've never owned a business before where you did everything yourself, have you?  I have another friend who runs multiple business out of her home too, and it's just her and her partner, just like with me and Mike.  They do everything on their own, just like we do and they work 12 hours or more a day - every day, just like we do.  Tell me, where do people like us find time to make sure their book keeping is up to date?

But now that is on the list for 2016.  Wish me luck.

12 Days of Dec. ~ Day 4 #Zine Feature: Hearth & Heart by @RitaTortorello https://t.co/Nj4WSin1i8 #nature #stories pic.twitter.com/E1tLKorCcn

— Sweet Candy (@SweetCandyPress) December 5, 2015

eeeee!  I can't believe it.

Now, I really do wish I hadn't been too busy to get the next two editions out.  Weeeellll, better late than never.  I guess I'll just have to add two more things to my list of priorities.

THANKS SAGE! for featuring my zine.

Hearth & Heart Autumn 2015 update

________________________
Hearth & Heart Autumn 2015
cover mock up

I was hoping to have this edition out by now, but things keep happening to delay.  I have almost the whole thing ready to go, but I needed to reproduce 4 major images and I'm not satisfied with the quality.  I guess I need to find another printer.

Zoë is another reason.  I have decided not to use that stupid over-sized cone on her, so that means that from time to time, I have to remind her not to start exploring her wound site, while it heals.  She's doing amazing.  I actually got some sleep last night.  I feel lucky that I work from home, because it allows me to be present with her.  One less thing to stress about.  And one thing I know from experience working in energy medicine with my own animals and with others, is that our human stress over our loved ones, slows down their healing process.  My analysis is that it causes an interference pattern in your psyche, which inhibits your ability to "see" your sick animal as healthy.  (Or to use the more familiar language of Abraham-Hicks, --You won't be a vibrational match with that outcome.)

I got some amazing insight into the physiology of a cat, while doing Zoë 's session last night.  It was so magical, that I might try and find a way to share it in story form.

I'm also doing some book binding work right now.  Pegana Press is releasing The Golden Key by George MacDonald with illustrations by Charles Van Sandwyk.  (hopefully by the end of September).  Visit the link to view photos of the book.

Well now it's off to work I go.

Hearth & Heart Autumn Edition

I'm just about ready to release Hearth & Heart Volume 1 2015 Autumn Edition.  This quarterly zine is filled with short stories, and images, as well as some surprises.

The Autumn Edition 2015 features 3 short stories, an essay, and a poem.  Story titles include  A Fairy Tale from 1969, Smile!, and There Be Giants.

Genre: Magical Realism

This zine will be available at Pegana Press Books  as well as at my Etsy shop  A Charmed Enchantment in about a week.  Only about 3 weeks later than I had hoped to release it, but considering my relationship with Time, I did pretty well.

Zine-ing

As a self published author, I thought zines would be a good way to get my short stories out more quickly than writing a full length book.  Plus it adds a whole new layer of creativity to the project.  Plus it's fun.

But there is a dark side to this zine making.  Yes.

I am learning about myself while engaged in this work.  When I told my friend Sage I wanted to try my hand making a zine, she responded by saying that I had the hard part out of the way, because I already had written the stories.

Uh, no actually.  For me, the stories are the easy part.  Stories just sort of tell themselves to me.  It's more like they just happen to me.

The cutting and pasting, now that's hard.  Not kidding-really.  The whole multi media art form thing was very daunting to me.  But I'm getting the hang of it.  And it's very freeing.

I was programmed from an early age, not to deface books.  Not to cut them, or mark them up.  To handle them with care.  My text books in university were only barely touched with a highlighter, if at all.  (Do they still have text books at universities?)

And being a book binder by trade, I am in the business of making books.  So it's very difficult for me to take a pair of scissors even to a magazine.

And collage is all about the layers, right?  But one of my other vocations is that I'm an energy worker/healer type, and in that activity it's all about removing the layers.  So I was baffled by the whole process of collage at first.

When I was a kid I used to write stories and draw all the time.  I got so that I could do very detailed pencil sketches with high lights and shading.  But as I grew into a busy adult, the creative me began shrinking.  And things like writing and artwork began to freak me out.  The less I engaged in those practices the more important they seemed to be, and the less capable I felt myself to be.  By the time I was in my late 20s, I was so wound up with anxiety around artwork, that to do a pencil sketch would take me hours, and then I would leave it unfinished.

That set a precedence, which led to a long string of unfinished stories too.  Then I stopped singing and playing music too.  That whole "not good enough" fear factor just spiraled out into every aspect of my creative life.

Now, many years later, I have reconnected with my creative muse.  I am writing and drawing and singing again, only now my drawings are more like cartoons, and doodles and I'm okay with that, because now they are fun and spontaneous and I actually finish them.

I would much rather have a finished creative scribble, than an unfinished master piece.  And this is why.  Because all of the feeling you're trying to convey in that scribble is actually recorded on the paper.  It is in every way like a vinyl record.  So I know that what I'm trying to demonstrate with a sketch or a doodle is going to communicate itself, even if it's not fine art--and that's what I'm after.

Which brings me back around to collage and zine making.  It's a great process for shining some light into the dusty corners of one's psyche.  And it's a very primal way of expressing creativity which takes me right back to being a kid.

Hey, it's my first zine!  I'm gonna put it on my refrigerator, like the rest of the kid art.

Hearth & Heart is available at Pegana Press.  https://www.peganapress.com/zines.html

Zine Complete

I'm excited to announce that Hearth & Heart is finally complete and on sale now.

You may find it on the Pegana Press website by following the link below.

Hearth & Heart

Hearth & Heart vol. 1 2015 Summer Edition

Hearth & Heart

I am very fortunate to know Sage Adderley of Sweet Candy Distro.  I met her a couple of years ago and to my delight, we have become friends.

Until I met Sage, I had never heard of zines.  But her passion for them is contagious and now I have embarked on creating my first zine.

Hearth & Heart is a quarterly zine which features short stories (of magical realism?).  What is Magical Realism? I just call it life.  I can't help it if it reads like fiction.  --I hope to have copies ready to sell before the week is out.

I have been taking a squint at my blog, (I had to blow the dust off it first) and I realized I hadn't been posting much since Penny died.   Just life happening.  It was Sage who reminded me not to neglect my blog.

So here's an update about the hens.  When the hawk took my Penny, I was determined that would not happen again.  My friends down the road who have chickens gave me a rooster, and he is turning out to be a good protector.  In fact at times he engages in protecting the flock from me, which is always an adrenaline rush.  It's really my boots that he hates apparently.  So we have to work around that.

Chicken drama!  Who knew?

Here's 3/4 of my flock.  Rocky (the barred rock rooster) is in the foreground.  I'm wondering if he will ever stop growing.  He's about twice as big as the girls now.  I fully expect to wind up with a six foot rooster.  Barredzilla!

Working on the zine now.  Will post update when it becomes available.