Catherine Nicolai

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319 appearances 2 recordings 1 series first heard Dec 2024 last heard Jan 2025

Catherine Nicolai’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Nothing much happens: bedtime stories to help you sleep · Merry Much Happens - 2024 · 16 Dec 2024 podcast

I'm imagining you with a candle in a Dickensian holder at your bedside. Blow it out. You won't be visited by three spirits tonight, though we do hope you wake feeling like a brand new happy person tomorrow. Let's all take a deep breath in And out. Once more, breathe in. And sigh it out. Good. Holiday at Weathervane Farm. Just hanging the lights would take a day. I didn't mind at all.

It was a special time of year, one that I looked forward to through the rainy days of spring, the summer heat, and especially as the leaves dried and fell. On the drive up the road at night, when the farm came into sight, and you saw the trees wrapped in white lights, the branches suddenly picked out against the dark sky, the roofline of the house and barn, and even the weather vane all glowing.

Well, it made a day of work well worth it. And besides the beauty, it was a way to guide visitors. Our farm relied on the community to help us keep our rescued pigs and goats and donkeys in hay and feed for the winter. So a few years ago, we hatched an idea to bring them all together. It involved lots of twinkle lights, hot cocoa and cider, and Santa hats with holes cut out for long, floppy ears.

After all, who wouldn't want to drive out to the country on a snowy December evening and be wished seasons' bleedings by all the goats? A volunteer knitted giant Christmas sweaters for the donkeys. Our oldest and sweetest dog

a slow-moving pug who couldn't see too well, played Santa Paws, laying on the cushioned seat of a small sled in the barn, where people could tell him what they wanted for Christmas and get their pictures taken. He often snoozed through the whole thing. We strung mistletoe above the pigs' enclosure.

And while no one had actually gone in for a kiss, they did get quite a lot of belly rubs and treats. We found big yoga balls, painted like ornaments, that the goats chased and tried to jump on.

Mostly it was an excuse to bring people close to our animals and let them be reminded of how beautiful they were, how much they enjoyed their lives here, where they would never be in danger, where they would only know love. and that being a part of giving that safety and love was an excellent way to celebrate the season.

Over the years, we'd found a few ways to make the trip out to the country even more worthwhile. A Christmas tree farm down the road began donating wreaths and garlands. And now it was a regular part of the tradition for lots of people to get their front door wreath from Weathervane Farm.

We had urns of hot cocoa and trays of donuts and Christmas cookies set up around heaters on the front porch of the farmhouse. and the tractor hitched to a wagon lined with hay bales to take folks out for rides through the snowy fields. So today, as I took boxes of lights and decorations out to the yard, I was already full of holiday spirit.

I watched the ducks waddling off to the pond, which hadn't frozen over yet, to spend the day sunbathing on the banks. They called to each other as they went, and I sang out, Honk the herald angels sing. I crack me up. I looked down at the lights in my hands. I knew there was a system for this, where to start and a best way to proceed, without getting the cords all tangled up.

But I never remembered. It was always a process of trial and error. So I picked an outlet, plugged in a set of lights, and started to string them up. As I made my way around the back side of the barn, I looked out at the back pasture. We'd had a new addition to Weathervane a while back. Well, two editions, actually. Our first cow.

She'd come at the end of the summer, in need of some medical care and skittish at first. We'd soon learned she was pregnant. And one early morning, a few weeks past, we'd found her with a beautiful, light brown, fuzzy calf laying in the straw. The vet had pronounced them both in good health, and him in need of a name. I couldn't help myself. With his tan, blonde fur and round belly,

he was immediately dubbed Winnie the Moo. Winnie and his mom were chewing in the pasture, and I stepped one foot up onto the fence rail and leaned in to coo with them. Mom lifted her head to look at me. still unsure about all of us. It would take her a while to trust, and that was fine.

Winnie, never having known anything but safety, came right up to the fence, Mom hurrying behind him to keep watch. And she let me reach out, and give him a scratch along his neck. On the nights we had visitors, we'd take them to the smaller barn out back, where they could bed down in the straw and have a bit of privacy.

Maybe some Christmas they would want to don their reindeer antlers and join in the fun. but not this year. I went back to my work, adding more lights and big candy canes the size of shepherd's hooks that stuck into the ground. We'd had a bit of snow the week before, but it had melted away within a day or two. And I was hoping for more before the festivities began. It certainly was getting colder.

I was keeping warm with my work, but I noticed the ducks coming back early from their excursion to nestle in at the barn. I heard a horn blowing down the long driveway. and checked that all the gates were closed, and walked down the drive to wave at a big truck I recognized. The wreaths were here, the yards and yards of garland, made from Easter white pine with its long, soft needles.

And I noticed, among all the greenery, a tree, bundled in twine, stuck in with the rest. I could hear one of our donkeys braying in the yard, excited by a visitor. And I called out, as they climbed from the truck, mealtide greetings. I got one of them to chuckle. The other just shook his head and said, that's it. I'm taking your present back. What present? What did you bring me?

And they hauled the huge Christmas tree out of the open bed and stood it up. It must have been 20 feet tall. I grinned at them. And they grinned back. Where should we put it? I laughed. Somewhere the goats won't knock it over, he said with a sigh. Mistletoe and Marmalade It was our first Christmas together.

Well, we'd had Christmases as friends, plenty of them, and a Christmas in the early days of falling in love. But this was our first Christmas as a married couple, as a blended family. There was me, my ginger cat, Marmalade, my scruffy brown dog, Crumb, and now my love and his sleepy, giant greyhound, Birdie.

In some ways, it felt like we'd been together for ages, and in others, it all felt brand new. I'd known how he took his coffee, no milk, a spoonful of sugar. and I knew his taste in music and the story behind the old green corduroy jacket he'd had since college.

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