Who has two horns and zero holiday guilt?

This guy, who wants the same for you (minus the horns).

You deserve to be nourished: With good food, good company, and time to rest and recover during this bonkers time of year. I forbid you from feeling guilt over not doing enough, eating too much, or refusing plans that don’t refill your cup. You can tell anyone who is offended to take it up with me.

— Petey, who wishes you a guilt-trip-free holiday season

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Here’s What’s Happening At Good Spirits Farm

My Thanksgiving farm tradition is giving all the animals a little extra food, even if they don’t really need it. This year, we were so busy with Farm Baby and trying to cook some sort of semblance of a Thanksgiving meal, that we didn’t get out to do Thanksgiving animal feasts until it was almost dark. But the sheep, as always, were delighted by their windfall of alfalfa.

By the time we got to the chicken shack, they’d already gone to bed for the night. “Don’t worry, Chiki Minaj will come out,” I told Todd. Sure enough, she was the only one to come running when she heard the shake of the feed bucket. (I had to come back the next morning to give everyone else their treat.)

Our first snow came as a total surprise. The forecast was for cold, but we woke up to a dusting. I love the farm in the snow, but I’m less enthused when it shows up without warning. If I don’t get a jump on prepping for it—hauling extra hay out making sure the electric fence lines, which are white, are flagged so the animals can see them—I end up having to do a lot of rushed work in the cold and wet, which no one likes!

(In case you’re wondering, this is what it looks like to go throw hay in blowing snow with a baby on your chest. You borrow your partner’s sweatshirt and stretch that sucker over both of you.

Two nights of 13 degree lows meant that Ruth Bader Ginsbird, who chose a terrible time to molt, ended up having to be moved into the house. She’s currently got so few feathers on her hind end, I worried she’d freeze to death in the chicken house.

To help her grow her feathers back, I’ve been giving her a special hard boiled egg each morning for breakfast. (If you’re wondering if it’s okay to let chickens eat eggs, know that the yolk is not, in fact, a baby chick, as many people think. Instead, it is what the baby chick consumes as the fertilized embryo develops.)

With more cold weather in the horizon, I need her feathers to grow back stat! No one likes a bare birdie bottom!

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Here’s What I Loved This Week

I love that starting a family means starting new traditions, too. Thanksgiving feasts for all critters is my tradition, but listening to Arlo Guthrie’s classic “Alice’s Restaurant” is Todd’s (made especially important this year by Alice’s passing away). So now it’s our tradition, with Farm Baby bouncing along in his bouncer. What are your beloved (if not super typical) holiday traditions? I’d love to hear them!