A Little Perspective on Something to Do

Fortunately it was only a dusting.

After Tuesday's minor blizzard the snow cover has been thoroughly refreshed after last week's unseasonable thaw.  Sunshine and temperatures crowding 50 had transformed the blanket of white into a soup bowl of mud.  Crossing the road to retrieve the mail became a slog through porridge.  Gathering eggs was a battle against sinking into mucky oblivion.  But if winter in Iowa, once upon a time, was 4-months of an uninterrupted curtain of cold, the climatic seesaw of more recent years means that it's never a very long wait for change.  With scarcely a blink of an eye, Sunday's 45 and sunny became Tuesday's 15 and snow.  Which, of course, turned into Thursday's 35 and cloudy.

None of this really matters, of course, except to the chickens who are about as interested in traipsing through the mud as they are the snow.  Not so much.  And so it was that last week I distributed straw across the muddiest spots to create something of a bridge, and then the past two days more straw over the snow for a more tolerable path.  The girls get cranky when confined to their runs for days on end, and I figure it's to my benefit to invite them out in the open and to provide them means to accept.  However ephemeral may be the sunlight these days, their physiologies can benefit from what there is, and we all need space from time to time to spread our wings.  Yesterday, then, once again I broke apart a square bale and made for them some roads.

And then late afternoon it started to snow.  All I could think to do was sigh.  The seesaw had tilted again.

And then I chuckled.  More snow is hardly a crisis -- it is February, after all.  A "pink slip"?  That's a problem.  A bad diagnosis?  That's scary.  Earthquakes?  Terrorist attacks?  Crop failure?  Now we are talking tragedy.  Snow on top of straw in the chicken yard?  That's not even an inconvenience.  It's merely the next chore in a constantly generated list of benign activities around the farmstead.  It is, in other words, life.  Boredom, after all, is a lousy alternative.  And a little constant grounding in the essential basics of food, water, warmth and shelter can only be a good thing.  And that is why we bought all that straw:  in anticipation of these very days.  And the chickens can use the attention.

And my wings can use some stretching, as well. 

My steps left prints on the front porch this morning -- prints, not dents, which is to say that last evening's snow was, indeed, but a dusting.  No shoveling will be required.  Yesterday's straw toss is not negated.  That said, I may go out and throw a little more...

...just to keep in practice in the midst of these chilly but pretty darn good days.