Michelle Webster-Hein

It’s been coming around more often lately. There are rare days when it hangs sullen and gray over everything, like a drop ceiling of stratus clouds. Usually, though, it’s a kernel of feeling at the cusp of some worthy pursuit that my lesser nature does not want to do—exercising, cleaning out the chicken coop, working…

Yesterday my daughter and I spent the afternoon riding our bicycles up and down the road behind our house. We packed the bike trailer with water and apples, a picnic blanket, and Alyosha’s stuffed dog Snoozles, who “really just needed to get out of the house for a while.” (Testify, Snoozles, testify.) Such an afternoon…

Our neighbors are raising a flock of ducks that waddle about their property in a little troop, bickering back and forth. Whenever I walk out into the yard, I can hear their quacks and blatts and ratchets from across the road, an enjoyable counterpoint to the squawks of our chickens, who gather at their fence…

Over the past week I’ve been prepping the beds in my vegetable garden. This involves a tool called a broadfork, which, aptly named, is a very broad upside-down fork with several long blades and two handles sticking up on either side. To work the blades down into the earth, you have to jump on the…

I spent several hours this morning procuring and sanitizing two weeks worth of food for my family. I wore a mask and gloves and an outfit that I stripped off as soon as I stepped in the door. I sprayed all of the packages down with Lysol, a product I never used to use, while…

As of tomorrow afternoon, we homeschooling parents will have reached the end of our first quarter—a supremely comforting thought. Michigan schools shut down with twelve weeks to go in the year, and assuming they don’t open again until September, we’re one fourth done with our pre-summer duties. One fourth is a significant portion. At the…

I’m now using Tuesday mornings to teach my children to bake, and in baking there’s nothing more basic than bread. This morning Alyosha and Silas proofed the yeast and waited for it to bubble. They wore their arms out stirring in the flour. They threw their whole bodies behind the kneading of the dough. They…

Yesterday there was a magnificent wind, so I took a long walk and let it push me forward and back. I watched the trees lean with it and the birds ride the invisible eddies of air. If trees didn’t bend, they would break, and the same is true for any number of things. If I…

The four of us have been on top of each other for two weeks, and honestly, it’s getting old. The kids seem unusually loud and constantly ravenous, except after I spend an hour cooking them a healthy meal. I’m trying not to betray my annoyance, which today is triggered by almost everything they do—eating crackers…

We have lived here in Waterloo for a little less than a year. We are rather bad at mowing. We’re trying to turn our yard into a farm. We host a bass-heavy, Friday-night band practice in our barn. Also, our children like to yell and invite themselves over places and politely inquire as to the…