We talk a lot about birds.

As someone who has spent the better part of a decade out west, I only really felt confident identifying two birds: stellar jays and mountain chickadees. They were loud and always squawking about “seed-burgers.” But even at the end of February when I landed at the farm, I couldn’t believe the amount and variety of birds that stop by here daily.

Cardinals. Nuthatches. Blue Jays. Starlings. Blue birds. Cow birds. Red-winged Blackbirds. Morning Doves. Tufted Titmouses. Chickadees. Robins. And last week, I saw my first Baltimore Oriole (the bird, not the baseball player).

But that’s what the farm has always been: it’s warm and there’s food. The birds have a heated birdbath. My uncles and cousins sit at the kitchen table, talking and watching for birds. I’ve learned so much about my family and about birds in just three short months.

The most unusual but comforting parts have been the idle times. The jigsaw puzzles on the dining room table. The books and crosswords we finish sitting next to each other in silence in the evening when the sunset pours through the west windows. The morning hours before anyone else is awake: where it’s so quiet I can actually hear my own thoughts. I think about how many people have lived here before me, since the 1890s, and about all the unsaid things that quiet brings to the surface.

What is it about family that brings us together and points at all the things that are so unbelievably warm and are also so cold and distant? Where do you ask questions and when do you just keep reading? How do you keep from falling into old familial patterns while also loving and honoring your ancestors?

As someone that has never really been able to feel completely at home, I think the farm is as close as I’ll ever get. I’m in awe at the depth of our roots, how I can’t go very far without running into a cousin, an uncle, a distant relative. And as we arrive at closing date on our own sweet little farmhouse 10 minutes up the road, there’s a lot we want to work on eventually, but I think the first order of business is to get a bird feeder. To remind us that home can be as simple as food and warmth. And the rest may very well take a life time or more to unravel, understand, and appreciate.