Feeding Baby Chicks: A Letter From Six Months in the Future
Dear Tom of six months ago, You're currently standing in your kitchen, staring at a cardboard box from the post office that's vibrating. It sounds like it contains a hundred tiny, furious alarm clocks. You think you've made a lovely,...
Why the Puffy Baby Snowsuit is a Hardware Flaw
I'm currently staring at a photograph of my son from roughly two months ago. He looks like a deeply unhappy neon blue marshmallow. We were trying to leave our Portland apartment for a walk in forty-degree drizzle, and my wife...
The Day My Toddler Brought a Wild Baby Hare Into Our Kitchen
I was elbow-deep in cold dishwater trying to scrape dried oatmeal off a plastic bowl when my four-year-old marched through the back screen door with his hands cupped together like he was protecting a fragile treasure. He had that specific,...
The Real Truth About The Baby Whisper Co Travel Potty On Road Trips
I was standing in the blistering July heat at a Texas rest stop on I-35, holding my screaming oldest child suspended over a patch of dying grass because he absolutely refused to step foot inside the brick building behind us....
Before and After: Smoking Baby Back Ribs With An 11-Month-Old
It's 6:14 AM on a damp Portland Saturday, exactly 43.7 degrees outside, and I'm standing on my patio holding a squirming eleven-month-old in my left arm and a slippery rack of raw pork in my right. I'm staring at the...
The truth about moving your backyard chicks outdoors safely
The guy at the rural feed store with the missing thumb told me four weeks. The homesteading influencer on TikTok, who somehow wears pristine white linen in an active barn, said eight weeks minimum. My neighbor who treats her three...
Finding a Backyard Rescue: What Do Baby Possums Eat?
My oldest son, Jackson, is a walking cautionary tale for why you should never let a five-year-old play unsupervised near a woodpile. Yesterday, he came marching through the back door holding something gray, hairless, and wriggling in his hands like...
What I Wish I Knew Before Feeding Our Backyard Baby Chicks
Dear Sarah of exactly six months ago, You're currently sitting in the driver's seat of the Subaru in the Tractor Supply parking lot. Your iced coffee is sweating all over the center console, you're wearing that stained gray college sweatshirt...
When the Backyard Becomes a Skunk Nursery (And How We Survived)
At exactly 2:14 AM on a Tuesday, I was sitting in the dark, compiling a massive block of legacy code, when I smelled it. It wasn't the usual Portland ambient scent of wet pine needles and artisanal coffee. It smelled...